then, is a colorless name for things in their spatial-temporal conjunctions. Things are experience when these conjunctions are immediately present in the mind; in other words, when they are directly known here and now, or when such a here-and-now knowledge is possible. In other words, we are again brought back to a fundamental insistence on direct or presentative knowledge. In respect of this insistence James is a lineal descendent of Berkeley, Hume, and Mill, and a brother of Shadworth Hodgson and Ernst Mach. In all of these writers the insistence on the immanence of the object of knowledge has tended to lead to phenomenalism; and James, like the rest, is a phenomenalist, in the sense of being opposed to dualism and transcendentalism. But in his later writings, at least, he has made it perfectly clear that while things are "what they are known as," they need not be known in order to be. Their being known is an accidental relation into which they directly enter as they are. To limit knowledge to experience means only to limit it to what may be immediately apprehended as here and now, to what may be brought directly before the mind in some particular moment of its history. James's empiricism means, then, first, that ideas are to be tested by direct knowledge, and second, that knowledge is limited to what can be presented. There is, however, a third consideration which is both an application of these, and the means of avoiding a difficulty which is supposed to be fatal to them. This is what James calls "radical empiricism," the discovery that "the relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves." "Adjacent minima of experience" are united by the "persistent identity of certain units, or emphases, or points, or objects, or members . . of the experience-continuum." Owing to the fact that the connections of things are thus found along with them, it is unnecessary to introduce any substance below experience, or any subject above, to hold things together. In spite of the atomistic 1 Cf. "Does Consciousness Exist?" with "The Knowing of Things Together," Psych. Rev., Vol. II, 1895. Cf. also below, p. 368. 2 Meaning of Truth, preface, p. xii. Cf. Pluralistic Universe, pp. 279280. • Pluralistic Universe, pp. 326, 356. Cf. Principles of Psychology, Vol. I. p. 459. sensationalists, relations are found; and in spite of Mr. Bradley, relations relate. And since the same term loses old relations and acquires new ones without forfeiting its identity, there is no reason why a relation should not unite things and still be adventitious and variable. Thus the idealistic theory, which, in order that there may be some connection, conceives of a transexperiential and immutable connection, is short-circuited. This handling of the question of relation at the same time proves the efficacy of the empirical method, and the futility of "intellectualism." Percepts and of Intellectu alism § 8. The critical application of James's theory of knowledge follows from his notion of conception and its relation to perception. "Abstract concepts . . . are salient aspects of our concrete experiences which we find it useful to single out." He speaks of them elsewhere as things we have learned to "cut out," as "flowers gathered," and "moments dipped out from the stream of time." " Without doubt, then, they are elements of the given and independent world; not invented, but selected and for some practical or theoretical purpose. To knowledge they owe, not their being or their natures, but their isolation or abstraction and the cognitive use to which they are put. This use or function tends to obscure the fact that they are themselves "objective." They have, as a matter of fact, their own "ideal" relations, their own "lines of order," which when traced by thought become the systems of logic and mathematics.1 The human importance of concepts and of ideal systems lies in their cognitive function with reference to the manifold of sense-perception. Therefore it is necessary to inquire just what kind of a knowledge of the latter they afford. Since they are extracts from the same experience-plenum, they may be, 1 Cf. "The Thing and its Relations," in Pluralistic Universe, pp. 347369, passim. Cf. also above, p. 353, and below, pp. 373-374. 2 Meaning of Truth, p. 246. • Pluralistic Universe, p. 235. Cf. Principles of Psychology, on "Conception," and "Reasoning," Chapters XII and XXII. • Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 15, 16. Cf. Meaning of Truth, pp. 42, 195, note; Pluralistic Universe, pp. 339-340; Principles of Psychology, Ch. XXVIII. Here as elsewhere of two apparently conflicting statements I have taken the later. The latest and best statement James's view of concepts is to be found in Some Problems of Philosophy, Ch. IV-VI. and to a large extent are, similar to their perceptual objects. But it is never the primary function of an idea to picture its object, and in this case, at least, a complete picturing is impossible. Because, in the first place, concepts are single and partial aspects of perceptual things, and never a thing's totality. Although conception exhibits these aspects clearly one by one, sense-perception, apprehending the thing all at once, or concretely, will, in spite of its inarticulateness, always convey something it may be only the fullness of potential conceptswhich conception misses. It would follow, then, that a concept is true of a percept only so far as it goes. But those who employ concepts are prone to use them "privatively," that is, as though they exhausted their perceptual object and prevented it from being anything more. This "treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what the name's definition fails positively to include," is what James calls "vicious intellectualism." But, in the second place, there is a more specific reason why concepts cannot adequately express the existential sense-manifold. Not only are they unequal to it because abstracted from it, but they are necessarily unlike it, in that the most characteristic aspects of the sense-manifold cannot be conveyed in conceptual form. This is the chief ground of James's indictment of intellectualism, and is of critical importance to the understanding of his philosophy. It is important once more to note that the cognitive use of ideas does not depend upon their similarity to their objects. They may be abstracted aspects of their objects, or they may be entirely extraneous bits of experience, like words, connected with their objects only through their functional office. Now it is James's contention that the most characteristic aspects of existence can be ideated only in this second way. They cannot be abstracted, they cannot themselves become the immediate objects of thought, although they can, of course, be led up to and functionally represented. Every bit of experience has "its quality, its duration, its extension, its intensity, its urgency, its clearness, and many aspects besides, no one of which can exist in the isolation in which our verbalized logic keeps it." The error of intellectualism lies in its attempt 1 Pluralistic Universe, p. 60. Cf. also pp. 218 ff., and Meaning of Truth, pp. 248, 249 ff. • Pluralistic Universe, p. 256. to make up such aspects as these out of logical terms and relations. The result is either a ridiculous over-simplification of existence, or the multiplication of paradoxes. The continuity of change, the union of related things, the fulness of the existent world, has to be sensed or felt, if its genuine character is to be known, as truly as color has to be seen or music heard. So that, so far as these aspects of existence are concerned, concepts are useful for "purposes of practice," that is, to guide us to the sensible context, and not for "purposes of insight."1 "Direct acquaintance and conceptual knowledge are thus complementary of each other; each remedies the other's defects." Knowing is always in the last analysis witnessing - having the thing itself within the mind. This is the only way in which the proper nature, the original and intrinsic character, of things, is revealed. Thought itself is the means of thus directly envisaging some aspects of things. But owing to the peculiar conditions under which the mind operates, it is practically necessary to know most things indirectly. So thought has a second use, namely, to provide substitutes for aspects of things that can be known directly only by sense. The peculiar value of thought lies, then, in its direct grasp of the more universal elements, and in the range and economy of its indirect grasp of those elements which, in their native quality, can be directly grasped only by sense. Knowledge in all its varieties and developments arises from practical needs. It takes place within an environment to whose independent nature it must conform. If that environment be regarded as something believed, then it signifies truth already arrived at obediently to the same practical motives. But if it be conceived simply as reality, as it must also be conceived, then it is prior to all knowledge, and in no sense involved in the vicissitudes of knowledge. In short, James's theory is epistemology in the limited sense. It describes knowledge without implying any dependence of things on the knowing of them. Indeed, on the contrary, it is based explicitly on the acceptance of that non-mental world-order which is recognized by common sense, by science, and by philosophical realism." 1 Op. cit., p. 290. Cf. Lectures V, VI, and VII, passim. • Cf. Meaning of Truth, Preface, and pp. 190-197, 212–216. The Right to Believe III. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION § 9. James's contribution to the study of religion is so considerable and so important as to stand by itself, beside his psychology and his philosophy. In the present meagre summary I shall deal only with what is directly related to the fundamentals of his philosophy, namely, to his theory of mind and his epistemology. Religion, like knowledge, is a reaction of man to his environment. Its motives are practical, and its issues, tests, and successes are practical. Religion is "a man's total reaction upon life." It springs from "that curious sense of the whole residual cosmos as an everlasting presence, intimate or alien, terrible or amusing, lovable or odious." The positive or hopeful religion says" that the best things are the more eternal things," and "that we are better off even now if we believe so. There is a practical motive leading to some such belief, and there is an additional motive for taking the hopeful rather than the despairing view. Applying the theory of truth already expounded, it follows that that religious belief is true which satisfies the demands which give it birth. So far this might mean simply that it is important for life to have an idea of the ultimate nature of things, and as hopeful an idea as possible; in which case the true religion would be the idea which succeeded in meeting these requirements. It would be the verified hypothesis concerning the maximum of hopefulness which the universe justifies. But the case is not so simple as that. For no idea of the ultimate nature of things can be verified, that is, proved by following it into the direct presence of its object. And meanwhile it is practically necessary to adopt some such idea. So the question arises as to whether the general acceptability of an idea, including its service to other interests than the theoretical interest, may in this case be allowed to count. To accept an idea, or to believe under such conditions and on such grounds, is an act of faith. What, then, is the justification of faith? Faith does not mean a defiance of proof but only a second best, a substitute where the evidence is not conclusive. "Faith 1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 35. In the "Varieties" the topic is circumscribed for the sake of convenience; cf. p. 31. Will to Believe, pp. 25, 26. |