established itself at all, it can by the same means enlarge its domain. And if interests can have freed themselves as they have from preoccupation with immediate bodily exigencies, they can by a further and like progression still further reduce the tribute which they pay to the once omnipotent environment.

There is in fact such a forward movement of life. It becomes freer and more powerful with time. The forms of life which are most cherished-intellectual activity, the exercise of the sensibilities, and friendly social intercourse are the very forms of life which are capable of maintaining and promoting themselves. "If," says a living scientist, "we make a curve of the ascent of vertebrates, . . . we find that, as the curve ascends, the ordinates of marital affection, parental care, mutual aid, and gentler emotions generally are, on the whole, heightened step by step. That organisms so endowed should survive, in spite of the admitted egoistic competition that is rife, is nature's sanction. The earth is the abode of the strong, but it is also the home of the loving." And that which is true of the development of animal life at large, is true in greater measure of the development of human life. The liberalization and betterment of life through the agencies of civilization the diversification and refinement of interests, the organization and solidification of society, and above all the growth of reason is at the same time the guarantee of its stability and further expansion.

The Hazard of Faith

§ 9. It is customary to assume that if man cannot be proved to have possessed the world from the beginning, he must renounce hope of possessing it in the end. Thus Mr. Russell apparently infers that if "Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving," then it must follow that his life is "brief and powerless," that "on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark."

1 J. Arthur Thomson and Patrick Geddes: "A Biological Approach," in Ideals of Science and Faith, edited by J. E. Hand, pp. 69-70.

The rigorous and truth-loving mind will sacrifice hope on the altar of science, and get what comfort it can from the emancipation and freedom of reason. In this spirit Darwin wrote: "The safest conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the scope of man's intellect; but man can do his duty." And to-day, in the name of the logical method and the realistic metaphysics, Mr. Russell concludes that "for man . . . it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power."

That such a philosophy of life is more admirable than superstition, sentimentalism, or complacent optimism, few will deny. But if martyrdom is to be proclaimed as a gospel for men, it must be more than courageous; it must be in the best sense wise and profitable. The conviction that the abandonment of religious hope is the supreme moral of science and philosophy, must rest entirely upon the supposition that consciousness is impotent. It must be supposed that interests and ideals can do no more than create "a new image of shining gold," a dream of better things, with which for the moment to embroider that "outward rule of Fate," which no living hand can stay.2 But if ideals work, if consciousness, instead of creating the mere toys and playthings of the imagination, does actually make things good; then renunciation is as fatuous and unreasonable as it is gratuitous.

It is true that the claims of religious optimism cannot be proved. But neither can it be proved "that all the labours of the age, all the devotion, all the inspiration,

1 B. Russell: "A Free Man's Worship," in Philosophical Essays, pp. 60, 70; Darwin: Life and Letters, Vol. I, pp. 276-277.

Russell: op. cit., p. 66. For a similar view of the idealizing but impotent function of consciousness, cf. G. Santayana, Life of Reason, Vol. I (Reason in Common Sense), Ch. IX.

all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe of ruins."1 To pretend to speak for the universe in terms of the narrow and abstract predictions of astronomy, is to betray a bias of mind that is little less provincial and unimaginative than the most naïve anthropomorphism. What that residual cosmos which looms beyond the border of knowledge shall in time bring forth, no man that has yet been born can say. That it may overbalance and remake the little world of things known, and falsify every present prophecy, no man can doubt. It is as consistent with rigorous thought to greet it as a promise of salvation, as to dread it as a portent of doom. And if it be granted that in either case it is a question of over-belief, of the hazard of faith, no devoted soul can hesitate. Justified by the victories already won, he will with good heart invite his will to the completion of the conquest.

There is nothing dispiriting in realism. It involves the acceptance of the given situation as it is, with no attempt to think or imagine it already good. But it involves no less the conception of the reality and power of life. It is opposed equally to an idealistic anticipation of the victory of spirit, and to a naturalistic confession of the impotence of spirit, In this sense all bold and forward living is realistic. It involves a sense for things as they are, an ideal of things as they should be, and a determination that, through enlightened action, things shall in time come to be what they should be.

1 Russell: op. cit., pp. 60-61.

APPENDIX

THE PHILOSOPHY OF WILLIAM JAMES'

The Place of the Problem of Mind in James's Philosophy

I. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

§1. A philosophy so complete and so significant as that of William James, touching, as it does, every traditional problem, and expressing through the medium of personal genius the characteristic tendencies of an epoch, cannot be hastily estimated. There is no glory to be won by pressing the attack upon its unguarded defences; while solemn verdicts, whether of commendation or censure, would surely prove premature and injudicious. But there is perhaps one service to be rendered to James and to philosophy for which this is the most suitable time, the service, namely, of brief and proportionate exposition. Every philosophical system suffers from accidental emphasis, due to the temporal order of production and to the exigencies of controversy. Towards the close of his life, James himself felt the need of assembling his philosophy, and of giving it unity and balance. It was truly one philosophy, one system of thought, but its total structure and contour had never been made explicit. That James should not have lived to do this work himself is an absolute loss to mankind, for which no efforts of mine can in the least compensate. But I should like to make a first rude sketch, which may, I hope, despite its flatness and its bad drawing, at least suggest the form of the whole and the proper emphasis of the parts.

1

1 Reprinted from the Philosophical Review, Vol. XX, 1911; and from The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, Vol. XIX, 1910.

2 James left an unfinished "Introduction to Philosophy," in which he had made a beginning of a systematic restatement of his thought; but owing to its incompleteness it does not, as it stands, afford the reader the total view which was in the author's mind as he composed it. It has been published since his death under the title, Some Problems of Philosophy.