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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through I lie lull lexl of 1 1 us book on I lie web al |_-.:. :.-.-:: / / books . qooqle . com/| A 614,283 1 Jfc ' f . CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION . 1-16 BOOK I.— RECONSTRUCTIVE DEFINITIONS. CHAPTER I. Consciousness (pp. 19-31). § L Discernment .... II. Object . . . . . III. Reality ..... IV. Idea ..... V. Objects are subjective or non-subjective. Percep- tion and Apperception VI. Inattention essential to Apperception VII. Sense-perception VIII. Apperception not essential to discernment IX. Apperception not intuitive of the Ego as Inex tended . . . . X. 1. Inapperceptive discernment should be ranked as a species of Consciousness 2. Latent discernment of light 3. Latent pain .... 4. Latent emotion « 5. Latent mental precursors and matrices of in- tellection ..... 19 20 20 20 21 22 23 23 24 25 25 26 26 27 VI CONTENTS. § X. 6. Consciousness is a genus that includes as species such latent events as the above 7. Enumeration of species comprehended by Consciousness .... XI. 1. Consciousness complete or incomplete 2. Consciousness normal or abnormal . XII. Discernment either apperceptive or inapperceptive XIII. 1. Distinctness and indistinctness 2. Indistinctness supposes objectivity . 3. Indistinctness abditive and inabditive 4. Distinctness graduates into indistinctness CHAPTER II. Knowledge (pp. 32-39). § XIV. New meaning of the term thesis XV. Certitude and Certainty XVI. Knowledge denned. It is either "certive" or "non-certive" XVII. Knowledge is either conscious or unconscious XVIII, 1. The new terms "thesic affection" and "cog- nitive compliment " explained . 2. Thesic affections are either complete or incom plete, proximate or non-proximate . 3. Proximate thesic affections are either native or acquired . . . XIX, Knowledge does not suppose the truth of what is known . . . . XX. 1, 2. Necessity ,3. Seeming of necessity 4. Complete and incomplete seeming of necessity .5. Inconsistency . 6. It is not a species of Inconceivableness 7. Seeming of inconsistency is k either intuitable or unintuitable , . . 8. Guaranteed and unguaranteed certitude 9. Guaranteed and unguaranteed knowledge PAGE 28 28 29 29 29 30 31 31 31 32 33 33 34 35 ,35 36 36 36 37 38 38 38 38 39 39 CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER IIL Eeason (pp. 40-57). PACK 4Q 40 40 § XXI. Probability ..... XXII. 1. Opinion . . . . . 2. Strong and faint opinion . 3. Emotive and unemotive opinion. Confidence, Faith, Self-confidence . . .41 XXIII. Belief comprehends strong opinion . .41 XXIV. Doubt . . . . .42 XXV. Non-significant assertion . . .42 XXVI. A Judgment is a non-significant assertion . 43 XXVII. Question. It is either communicative or in- communicative . . . .44 XXVIII. Apprehension . . . .44 XXIX. Vindication of these definitions of Judgment and Apprehension . . . .44 XXX. A Judgment is either a Certitude or a Strong Opinion . . . . .47 XXXI. Exposition of Vice-judgment . . .47 XXXII. Mnemonical, judicial, vice-judicial, and practi- cal Question. Eeason defined . .48 XXXIII. 1. Secondary meaning of the term " reason " . 48 2, 3. Practical and non-practical reasons. It is essential to reasons to be connected with question . . . . .49 XXXIV. 1, 2. Non-practical reasons are either Axioms or Evidence . . . .50 XXXV. Inference is judgment caused by evidence. It is essential to Inference to be Discovery. Definition of Discovery . . .51 XXXVI, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Intuition. It is either certive or non- certive, judicial or non -judicial, conscious or unconscious, distinct or indis- tinct . . . • .51 viii CONTENTS* PAGE § XXXVII. 1. Datum . . . . .54 2. Data general or particular . .54 3. Data guaranteed or unguaranteed . 54 4. Data judicial or non-judicial . .55 XXXVIII. Axiom. Axioms are either discoverable or undiscoverable , . .55 XXXIX. Fact . , . . .57 XL. Reasoning communicative or tacit . .57 CHAPTER IV. The Apparitional and iNAPPARrriONAL (pp. 58-63). § XLI. 1. Objects that are, and objects that are not, appearances . . . .58 2. The former consist chiefly of objects of sensational and emotive intuition . 59 3. Of complete and incomplete appearances . 60 4. Counterfeits of general names. Concepts of life and power Inapparitional . .60 5. Examples of the Inapparitional . .62 XLII. Refutation of the doctrine of the Law of the Conditioned . . . .63 CHAPTER V. Attention and Comparison (pp. 64-68). § XLIII. X. Attention is discernment that depends on intentional effort. It is not discernment of the central object of the "objective field" 64 2. Quasi-attention . . . .66 3. Attention is essential to discrimination, not to discernment . . .66 XLIV. Contrast is elucidation by difference. It is a sine qua non of objectivity. Difference is either contrastive or non-contrastive . 67 CONTENTS. ix PAGE § XLV. 1. Comparison is attention or quasi-attention to contrast . . . .67 2. It is judicial or non-judicial . . 68 3. Secondary meaning of the term " com- parison" . . . .68 OHAPTEE VI. Redintegration (pp. 69-71). § XL VI. 1. Redintegration explained . .69 2. It operates latently in and upon an uncon- scious part or accessory of the mind . 69 3. It connects mental with bodily event. Skill depends on it . . .71 CHAPTER VII. General Synthesis (pp. 72-73). § XL VII. 1, 2. General Synthesis denned . . 72 3. It is either conscious or unconscious . 73 CHAPTER VIII. Retrospect (pp. 74-78). \ XL VIII. 1. Retrospect, Remembrance, and Memory denned . . . .74 2. Counterfeits of Remembrance . .75 3. Conceptual remembrance . .75 XLIX. 1. Piecemeal formation of the idea of Time . 76 2. This explains the law of Expectation of the like of the past . » .77 3. Retrospect is mnemonical, historical, or transcendent . . .78 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. Substance (pp. 79-112). PAGE § L. Plan of the Chapter . . . .79 LI. Quantity . . . . .80 LII. 1, 2, 3. Sum . . . . .80 LIII. Monad . . . . .81 LTV. A Unit is an object destitute of Unveiled Plurality . . . . .82 LV. 1. A Kind is a Sum that comprises all the like of a given archetype . . .83 2. What hides the generality of Sums that are not accounted Kinds . . .84 LVI. Self-sufficients and Self-insufficients denned. Ab- ditive and inabditive self-insufficients . 85 LVII. Concrete and inconcrete . . .85 LVIII. Certain inabditive self-insufficients contain a con- crete . . • .86 LIX. 1. Attribute. It supposes a concrete support, but may have an inconcrete support. A Subject is a support of an Attribute. Fallacy of the received idea of Substance . . .86 2. Attributes apparitional and inapparitional . 88 3. Quality, Change, and Relation, three species of attributes not perfectly prescindable . 89 LX. 1. Quality. Essence not necessarily a Quality. Essence is that which by its resemblances and differences determines the general place of a thing . . . .89 2. Essence is either natural or factitious, import- ant or unimportant . . .91 3. Attributes are either essential or accidental 91 4. Quantity is a species of Quality for convenience regarded as a contrary of Quality . .91 5. Protean quality . . . .91 CONTENTS. xi PAGE § LXI. Change. It is either natural or supernatural. Natural change is either optional or unoptional : the latter supposes that what changes remains the same . . . . .92 LXII. 1, 2. Relation explained . . . 93 LXIII. 1. A Substance is a naturally ungenerable con- crete . . . . .94 2. It may be either a Self-sufficient or a latent Self-insufficient . . . .95 3. Substance perdurable . . .95 4. Substance material or immaterial . .96 5. A material substance is either an Atom or a Body . . . . .96 6. The non-perdurable quality, Collocation of concrete parts, is coeval with Material Sub- stance. The perdurable is fundamental but not antecedent to the non-perdurable. The first Cause is either Substance undergoing beginningless change, or a Creator who had terminated an eternity of idleness by a caprice . . . . .96 7. Unoptional change does not suppose change of collocation of concretes . .97 8. Is an inconcrete self-sufficient possible ? .98 9. Chaos not necessarily the precursor of Cosmos 98 10. Is the substance of the material universe Ex- tended ? The evidence does not shut us in to any conclusion . . .99 11. It is expedient to familiarise the mind with the idea of the Extended self-insufficient .102 1-2. Leibnitz* doctrine, that inextended things are not interiorly modifiable by interaction, un- warranted .... 103 13. Greek myth corroborates this new idea of Sub- stance . . . . . 103 14. Orderly concurrence of aptitudes . .105 LXIV. - Misuse of the term Subject . . .107 xii CONTENTS. PAGE § LXV, As Essences are in respect of naturalness and importance, so axe their kinds . .107 LXVI, Primary and Secondary Kinds . .108 LXVII, Essences that are manifested by accidents . 108 LXYIIL The bearing of Essence on the recognitive faculty is independent of verbal sign and of knowledge of Kind . . .110 LXIX. 1. The kind, Things, is the swmmum gervus. It is divisible into the sub-genera, Entities and Quesits , . . .110 2, Entities divided into Vacant and Non-vacant entities . . . .111 LXX. Infima* species . .112 CHAPTER X. Mind (pp. 113-117). § LXXL Mind is a concrete .... 113 LXX1I. Mental event includes Unconscious event . 115 LXXIH. Propensity denned . . .116 LXXIY. Mental qualities unintuitable . .116 CHAPTEE XL Sensation and Sbnsr-pbbckptiok (pp. 118-131). § LXXV. 1. Sensation is consciousness given as being a bodily attribute . . .118 3. It isgivenas being proper to a part of the body 119 3» Vice-sensation . . . .119 4» Sensation quasi-intuitive and unintuitive . 119 5, To be object of apperception is essential to Sensation .... 120 6* Sejosational-discernment . .120 LXXVL 1. Sensational -discernment is comprised by sensational -perception and sensational- apperception .... 120 CONTENTS. xiii PAGE § LXXVI. 2. Sensational -perception is comprised by sense-perception and in-looking sensa- tional-perception . . .120 LXXVII. 1. Sense-perception may be attentive or inat- tentive .... 121 2. Inattentive tactile perception distinguished from sensational apperception . .121 3. To be objective to apperception is essential to sense-perception . . .122 4. The immediate object of a sense-perception consists of a cardinal and a dependent constituent . . . .122 5. The supersensuous faculty. The dependent constituent derives either from redinte- gration or from the supersensuous faculty 123 LXXVIII. The products of the supersensuous faculty oc- casioned the scepticism of Hume . .124 LXXIX. The possible fallaciousness of a datum does not impair its value as a differentia . .124 LXXX. 1, 2, 3. It is correct to rank a certain species of hallucination as being a species of sense- perception. Hallucination rudely defined. Sensational deceptiveness not confined to hallucination . . . .125 LXXXI. All colours, sounds, flavours, and odours, are not sensations . . . .126 LXXXII. Defence of the classification that ascribes know- ledge of the life and consciousness of others to sense-perception . . .128 LXXXIII. Space and Cosmos constant objects of sense- perception . . . .130 LXXXIV. Certain sensations are given as involving, others as not involving, either pain, plea- sure, or desire . . . .130 LXXXV. Appetite . . . . .130 xiv CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. Apperception (pp. 132-138). "fc PAGE § LXXXVL 1. Confusion of Apperception with Reflection 132 2. Reflection defined. It is essential to Re- flection to be attentive, and to Apper- ception to be inattentive . .133 3. Spiritual office of Reflection . .134 4. Reflection fatigues, Apperception is easy as breathing . . 1 34 5. Reflection has been confounded with psychological study . . .134 6. It is essential to Reflection to be objective to Apperception . . .135 LXXXVII. Apperception is either psychical or corporal 136 LXXXVIII. Apperception is not cognisant of mental structure . . . .136 LXXXIX. The datum that the Ego is immediately ap- perceived is not an axiom . .136 XC. Experience exhibits no example of Apper- ception without Sensation . .138 CHAPTER XIII. Emotion (pp. 139-142). § XCI. 1. Emotion . . . .139 2. Certain emotions are given as being per- ceptive. Heart-knowledge . .139 3. Emotive aspects . . .140 XCII. 1. Sympathy. It is either homogeneous or heterogeneous . . .141 2. Ascriptive Emotion . .142 CONTENTS. xv CHAPTER XIV. Experience (pp. 143-172). PAGE § XCIII. 1. Fallacy of common notion of Experience . 143 2. Ratiocinative and Irratiocinative knowledge 144 3. One and the same event qud source of a ratio- cinative knowledge is not, and qud source of irratiocinative knowledge is, an Experi- ence. Considered in respect of their objects, Remembrance and Hallucination are not Experiences . . .145 • 4. In so far as knowledge is derived from com- munication it is not derived from Experi- ence ..... 145 5. Experience is mental event that originates Irratiocinative Non-hallucinative Uncom- municated knowledge . . .146 XCIV. Experience of hallucination is partly apper- ceptive and partly perceptive . .146 XCV. 1, 2. Latent Experience. The knowledge it begets is at first Unconscious, and is ascribed to Induction . . . .147 3. Quasi-inference . . . .149 XCVI. 1. Duration . . . .150 2. Time-series . . . .150 3. Paradoxic and Anti-paradoxic Experience . 151 XCVII. The former supposes the unreality of its imme- diate object . . . .152 XCVIII. Action of paradoxic experience on the mind analogous to that of the pencil-point making a crayon picture . . . .153 XCIX. Two species of anti-paradoxic experience ex- plained . . . . .154 C. Explanation of the kind of experience that ori- ginates knowledge of such series as Custom . 155 CI. 1. Defect of previous ideas of Experience . 156 xvi CONTENTS. PAGE § CI. 2a. In the name of Experience Positivism de- poses experience . . . .157 26. It rejects the datum of experience respect- ing Power . . . . .157 2c, d. It contradicts experience respecting the quality, Life . . . .161 2e. Does the Positivist doctrine evince a radical difference of mental structure ? . .165 CII. Experience begets Opinion and Doubt . .166 CIII. 1, 2. Empirical negation and Empirically-nega- tive Knowledge explained . . .166 CIV. Of the Obvious Past, the Specious Present, the Real Present, and the Future . .167 CV. The idea of Time indicative of the poverty of the knowing faculty . . .168 CVI. Experience and Judgment not always easily distinguishable . . . .169 CVTI. Experiment not limited to Experience . .169 CVIII. The interaction of Man and ;his Environment which generates Skill is not Experience . 170 CHAPTEE XV. No Knowledge X Priori (pp. 173-188). § CIX. Nothing common and proper to the Kinds ac- counted d priori. Have Axioms and ideas of Time and Space an attribute common and proper to them ? . . . .173 CX. Axioms are the offspring of experience . .174 CXI. Kant's argument that the ideas of Time and Space are d priori . . . .175 CXII. Refutation of Kant — 1. An intuition of an Extension supposes, but does not ^suppose, discernment of a Void 176 2a. Kant begs the question whether it be com- petent to experience to beget knowledge of the Absolute . . .176 CONTENTS. xvii PACK § CXII. 26. He violates Parsimony . . .178 2c. Proof that Experience is cognisant of what is given as Absolute . . .179 2d. Time and Space not given to all minds as Absolute . . . .180 2e. Cause of the error that Experience is not cognisant of the Absolute . .181 3. Certain men discover Infinity . .182 CXIII. 1. Mill's argument for the empirical origin of all knowledge fallacious . .183 2a. Example and Instance defined . .184 26. Instances that cannot bear indistinctly on the mind .... 184 gjt 2c. Error of the supposition that certain axioms are made known by a bearing of instances 185 CXIV. The negation of the A Priori entails no great divergence from those who hold to it. The experience that generates Axioms generates the Ineffaceable . . . .187 CXV. 1. Experience is comprised by six species, viz. — 188 Apperception. Reflection. In-looking Sensational perception. Sense-perception. Emotive perception. Latent Experience. 2. The operations of the supersensuous faculty do not constitute a species of Experience. They beget Transcendent and Non-trans- cendent knowledge . . .138 CHAPTEE XVI. Recognition (pp. 189-202). § CXVI. 1. Recognitional attribute . , .189 2. Familiarity a species of recognitional attribute 189 b xviii CONTENTS. PAGE § CXVI. 3. Recognition is either Identification or non- identific recognition . . .190 4. Identification is either temporal or non-tem- poral. Temporal identification is either recognitive or non-recognitive . .190 5. Recognition is either conscious or unconscious 191 6. It is empirical or non-empirical . .191 7. Empirical recognition is caused by a latent action of likeness on the mind . .191 CXVII. 1. Unitiveness. Likeness is either Unitive or Non-unitive . . . .191 2. The higher degrees of Unitiveness tend to hide, the lower to leave exposed, the plur- ality of the object . . .192 3. The law of e pluribus unwm . .192 4. Unitive Likeness causes Empirical Recog- nitive Identification and Empirical Non- identific Recognition. The action is latent 192 5. Difference of recognition caused by Unitive Likeness from recognition caused by non- unitive likeness . . .194 6. It is probable that but for something ex- trinsic to it which modifies its action, Uni- tive Likeness would always cause Identifi- cation, — never Non-identific recognition . 195 CXVIII. 1. An Archetype is an ideal type of which all the individuals of a Kind are Antitypes . 196 2. A recognitive identification is an individual of a possible Kind . . .197 CXIX. Non-identific recognition does not refer to Kind 197 CXX. Recognition is either Redintegrative or Non- redintegrative. The former has been mis- taken for Reasoning . . .198 CXXI. Fact is not conclusive that Recognition depends on prior discernment . . .200 CONTENTS. xix CHAPTER XVIL Will and Instinct (pp. 203-227). PACK § CXXII. 1. Intention. Intentional action. A Choice is an action that consists of a study and a preference. The study is, the prefer- ence is not, an Effect. Will is Power of Choice. A Volition is a preference in- volved in a choice . . ., 203 2. Intentional action is either Optional or Un-optional .... 204 CXXIII. 1. The greater part of human Jntentional actions are Un-optionaL It is essential to a Choice to refer to a Practical Alter- native. The comprehension of the kind "Instinct" should be enlarged to make room for the species, Unoptional Inten- tional Action . . .204 2. The genesis of the idea of Instinct justifies the enlargement . . .205 3. Instances of Intentional Action that obtain in spite of Will . . . 205 CXXIV. Instinct either intentional or blind . . 206 CXXV. The datum Every beginning has a cause is not universally true, and is not conclusive against Freedom . . . 206 CXXVI. 1. Deliberation. It is either Selective or Expectant .... 207 2. There are counterfeits of Selective deliber- ation ; There are instinctive ideas of Agenda : They make up our minds for us. In Volition we make up our minds 207 CXXVII. 1. Conduct is the office of Will, but is not proper to Will . . . 208 2. The office of Will is to steer, not to propel 209 3. Conduct is either Begular or Irregular . 210 xx CONTENTS. PACK § CXXVIII Permission of the Will . . .210 CXXIX. 1. Plausibility of the Necessarian argument. Duty demands that we counteract it by an arbitrium that we are Free . 211 2. Predictableness of human action does not prove that the action is necessitated . 213 CXXX. A counterfeit of Purpose by which we are frequently duped . . .214 CXXXI. Volition a purely psychical act . .214 CXXXII. 1. Attention is not Volition . .215 2. There are degrees of Emotive Impulse that put Will in abeyance . .216 CXXXIII. 1. Has modern physiology adduced evidence that should discredit the doctrine of the Soul? . . . .216 2. The hypothesis of the " Cardinal atom " is available against the evidence . 216 3. Definitions of the terms Life, Nutrition, Organ, Function, Reflex -action, and Non-vital Functional action . .219 4. Rebuttal of the physiological evidence . 223 CHAPTEE XVIII. General Ideas (pp. 228*248). §CXXXIV. 1. Difference between an idea of a Kind as a Sum of the parts and one that symbolises it as a Whole. The former is, the latter is not, a General Idea. There are ideas of Kinds that symbolise the Kinds as being Monads. A General Idea of a Kind that does not symbolise the Kind as a Whole . . . .228 2. Conception. Concept. The terms General Idea and Concept synonymous . 229 3. Concepts are either Abditive or Inabditive 229 CONTENTS. xxi PAOB § CXXXIV. 4. They are either Mediate or Immediate . 231 5. Immediate objects other than concepts serve as Types. Design is a process of form- ing such a Type. Ideal images of anti- types do not accompany a Typical ideal image .... 233 6. How the same ideal image may serve as mediate concept to a genus and its species 234 7. Purely ideal mediate concepts are mere figments . . . . 234 CXXXV. 1. The mental process termed Abstraction, as not " withdrawing " from the concrete, is not correctly denotable by that name 235 2. Falseness of the metaphor that represents the process as " abstractive " . .237 3. The process should be termed Subtle Dis- crimination . . . .238 4. General terms should pass for General Ideas 239 5. The doctrine of Abstraction is bolstered by " Ihapparitional " Ideas . .240 6. Power of words to excite emotion without the help of ideas . . .241 7. Ideas of * Quesits " help the doctrine . 242 8. The Moral Imperative not discredited by being classed as a Quesit . . 243 CXXXVI. Mnemonical Concepts . . .243 CXXXVII. The primitive source of ideas of Kinds is the Latent Action of Unitive Likeness on the mind .... 244 CXXXVIII. Experience of several individuals of a Kind is a sine qua non of an Idea of the Kind 245 CXXXIX. Detection of the birth-throes of General Ideas 245 CXL. 1. General-Synthesis . . .246 2. Synthesis of attributes constituting Essence is not General-Synthesis . . 247 xxii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. Quantity and Number (pp. 249-263). PAGE § CXLI. 1. An idea of a Sum is not necessarily an idea of a Number .... 249 2. "Plurive" and "implurive" subjects of quantity . . . .251 CXLII. 1. Climactic plurive species. A Number is an individual of a climactic plurive species. The plurive scale . . .251 2. Justification of definition of Number . 252 CXLIII. 1. Ratio . . . . .252 2. Proportion is equality of ratios . .253 CXLIV. 1. Genesis of numerical discernment. First epoch 253 2. Second epoch the origination of the first numerical sign . . . .254 3. Third epoch the denotement of a like number by the same sign, making a given sign com- mon and proper to all the individuals of a plurive species, and also a general sign . 255 4. Fourth epoch the first discernment of an un- intuitable number. What the. recognisable trait is to the intuitable number that the numerical sign is to the unintuitable num- ber. This puzzled philosophers and begot Nominalism .... 256 5. Fifth epoch the invention of counting. The end and reason of counting is the ascertain- ment of an unintuitable number . .258 6. Sixth epoch the denotement of a number by successive exhibitions of fingers. This secured the Decimal system . .258 7. Seventh epoch the substitution of vocal for digital numerals. CONTENTS. xxiii PAGE § CXLIV. Eighth epoch the promotion of a vocal nu- meral into a general type or Concept. Ninth epoch the first numerical judgment that does not result from counting. Tenth epoch the substitution of numerical signs for numerical ideas as the sole im- mediate objects of arithmetical discourse . 259 CXLV. Evidence that Natural Language was the pre- cursor of Vocal Language and Digital Signs the precursors of Vocal Numerals . . 260 CXLVL The question How the lingual instinct in the gen- eration of numerical names followed the method of decimal digital signification, an open one . 261 CXLVII. The lingual instinct generates rules for making words . . . . . 262 BOOK II.— REASONING. CHAPTER I. Judgment (pp. 267-277). § CXLVIII. Psychology should study Reason in the domain of Logic . . .267 CXLIX. 1. Judgments are either Augmentative or Unaugmentative : the latter are not necessarily Analytic and Explicative . 267 2. Augmentative Judgments are either In- tuitive or Inferential. The former include operations of the Definitive faculty . . , .268 3. The definitions of Geometry are examples of the product of the Definitive faculty 270 4. The latter overlooked by Logicians . 270 5. Judgment is General or Non-general, Synthetic or Disjunctive . .270 xxiv CONTENTS* PAGE § CL. 1. Inference consists of a Discernment of Evi- dence and a consequent conclusion . 271 . 2. It is either Deduction or Induction. Deduc- tion is inference from evidence that eluci- dates a complete seeming of necessity. In- duction is Non-Deductive inference . 271 3. Deduction either General or Non-general . 272 4. Important difference between Deduction and Induction . . . .272 5. Deduction is either partially or wholly guar- anteed ..... 272 6. It is essential to Deduction to elucidate a seeming of Inconsistency of the Opposite . 272 7. Supplementary and Non-supplementary in- ference . . . .273 CLI. Proof-Sufficiency . . . .275 CLII. 1. Recondite and Non-recondite Implication . 275 2. Supplementary inference is that which elicits its conclusion from Non-recondite implica- tion. Evidence which exposes what is hidden in recondite implication is unknown prior to the inference . . . 276 CHAPTER II. Induction (pp. 278-289). § CLIII. 1. Induction is either General or Non-general . 278 2. Non-general induction involving evidence on which a general induction depends does not depend upon the general induction . 278 CLIV. 1. An unconscious beginning of knowledge caused by experience of instances, and a proximate thesic affection so caused, are not Inductions . . .279 CONTENTS. xxv PAQl §CLIV. 2. Data that obtain unconsciously arc non- judicial, and either general or non-general. Non-judicial data : they are either general or non-general ; (the non-general are either individual or unique) ; they are' either guaranteed or unguaranteed . .281 3. Every, experience involves a datum. Un- guaranteed general data are products of pure experience . . . .281 4. Quasi-inferential data. Unconscious general- synthesis determines such data . .281 CLY. 1. Accidental and Non-accidental induction . . 282 2. A Non-accidental General induction is one that has for evidence a considerable natural regular series. Accidental induction is determined by the law of Like inherence Like appearance . . .282 CLV1. Orderly concurrence of aptitudes excludes pre- sumption of fortuitousness . .283 CLVII. Blind causes of Belief . . .284 CLVIII. 1. Geometrical illustration of difference between Deduction and Induction : 2. — that Deduction from a mediate concept does not need two efforts : 3. — that Objectivity of the General is not needful to Deduction. 4. — that there are Inapparitional Objects . 285 CLIX. Arithmetic mainly an art for applying technical substitutes for counting. Its conclusions are Inductions . . . .288 CHAPTER III. Syllogism (pp. 290-297). § CLX. 1. Law. Imperative and Natural Law. Causes regular and irregular. Laws of Belief „ 290 xxvi CONTENTS. PAOl § CLX. 2. Families of Theses and Families of Beliefs . 291 3. Exponents of laws of Belief. They are either obverse or reverse, a Dictum de omni or a Dictum de nullo. An exponent of a law of Belief may be a major premiss . .292 4. Laws of Belief either Common or Uncommon : the latter either Eccentric or Morbid . 292 5. Guaranteed and Unguaranteed exponents . 292 CLXI. 1. Relation of Syllogism to wholly-guaranteed Deduction .... 293 2. No symbol of Evidence in Syllogism. Evi- dence intervenes between the premisses . 294 3. Induction excludes Syllogism » .295 4. The error that Deduction is Inference from the General is an offspring of the error that Syllogism is The Form of Deduction . 296 5. End of Logic qud art. Psychology the off- spring of Logic . . . .297 BOOK III— PERSONAL AGENCY DEPENDENT ON SELF-DENIAL. CHAPTER I. Science (pp. 301-308). §CLXII. 1. Chief purport of the chapter . .301 2. Definition of Science . . .301 3. Why the definition does not affirm the Un- consciousness of the knowledge . . 304 4a. The abditive concept gives Science as a vague concrete inhabiting scientific men. Utility of this symbol .... 304 46. Science is either Theoretic or Practical The reason of this division different from that given by Aristotle. Art defined, and dis- tinguished from Science. Skill defined . 305 y mm CONTENTS. xxvii PAOB § CLXIII. Thoroughness . . . .307 CLXIV. Difference between Scientific Certitude and Certitude grounded on Authority . 308 CHAPTER II. Deduction of an Unconscious Part of the Mind and of Unconscious Mental Event (pp. 309-331). § CLXV. Theorem to be demonstrated . .309 CLXVI. 1. A durable knowledge supposes a durable Mental Modification related to the con- scious knowledge as organ : the modifi- cation and its action are Unconscious . 310 2. Unconscious equivalents of interpretations and theories prove the theorem. So also the bearing of such equivalents on Indeliberate action. So too the bearing of unconscious knowledge of environing Customs . . . .311 3. Prophetic and guiding analogues of sensa- tion prove the theorem . .317 4. Deductions from evidence of which all the parts are not simultaneously discernible prove the theorem . . .318 5. The train of ideas or conscious mental events suppose a train of unconscious mental events. The enhancement of the brain by increase of knowledge sup- poses an unconscious mental modifica- tion, which proves the theorem . 320 6. Dream incidents, e.g. dream-conversations and poetic composition in dreams, sup- pose unconscious mental event, and prove the theorem . .322 7. Change of belief not caused by reasoning proves the theorem . .324 xxviii CONTENTS. FACT §CLXVL 8. The latent action of Unitive Likeness on which pictorial illusion and Recognition depend, proves the theorem . . 325 9. Redintegration and the mental modifications it causes prove the theorem . . 326 10. The latency of Latent Experience proves the theorem .... 327 11. Negatively-empirical knowledge proves the theorem .... 328 12. Surprise caused by deviations from the cus- tomary proves the theorem . . 328 13. That we are sometimes stayed by unconscious equivalents of motives proves the theorem 329 14. The unconsciousness of the proximate ante- cedent of Design proves the theorem . 330 15. Unconscious equivalents of intention to re- sume interrupted work prove the theorem 330 16. Unconscious equivalents of an appreciation of Weight prove the theorem . .331 CHAPTER IBL The Brain a Part of the Mind (pp. 332-337). gCLXYIL 1, 2. Proof that the Brain is a part of the Mind 332 CLXVllL Errors incident to privation of knowledge of the dependence of Consciousness on Cor- poral event .... 335 < CHAPTER IV. Wisdom (pp. 338-382). § CLXDL What is Wisdom ? , . . 338 CLXX. Apology for the term « Moramess" . . 339 CLXXT. " Moralness n and " preter-moral * denned . 340 CLXX1I. Definitions of the terms " impero-moralness " and "pukhixMBondiiess" . 342 CONTENTS. xxix PAOl §CLXXHI. Obligation explained. It comprehends Duty and obUgation-in-respect-of-what-is-not-due 342 CLXXIV. Right denned . . . .343 CLXXV. 1. Examination of the mental qualities on which depend the affections and emotions that are of a nature to elicit moral ap- proval : — .... 344 2. Altruism denned. It comprehends Sordid and Non-sordid altruism. The latter comprehends Egotistic and Disinterested altruism .... 344 3. Heterogeneous Sympathy proper to Non- sordid altruism . . .345 4. Disinterested Altruism is either Reverential or Benevolent . . . 345 5. Benevolence denned. It comprehends the five species, Embryonic, Adolescent, Adult, Affectionate, and 'Super-affectionate, bene- volence .... 345 Disinterestedness essential to Super-affectionate Benevolence .... 346 Benevolence a faculty and a propensity . 347 6a. Reverence defined. The Impersonal Im- perative . . . .347 66. Importance of the thesis that Reverence is incapable of Heterogeneous Sympathy . 349 6c. Reverence engenders moral purity . 353 Gd. Dignity is proper to Reverence . .356 6«. Righteous reverence defined . .357 6/. Reverence is intuitive . . .357 7. The Consuetudinal faculty . .357 8. The Pulchro-moral faculty . . 358 9. Constituents of the Moral Faculty . 359 10. Moral Goodness is either Impero-moral or Pulchro-moral ; and either structural or non-structural . . .359 W CONTENTS. PAGE £ C^XX Y* \ \ » Critical and dynamic offices of the Impero- moral faculty after it has shed its pro- visional constituent . .360 IS, The application of the natural ardour of godliness for the development of Bene- volence is peculiar to Christianity . 360 1 3a. Perfect Impero-moral goodness includes Generosity . . - .361 136. Generosity is a kind of proportion be- tween propensities . . .362 14. Perfect Impero-moral Goodness excludes Self-love. Self-love is infantile, "De- tachment n is manhood . .363 1 5. Impero-moral goodness includes all Pul- chro-moral goodness, except Courage and Fortitude . . . 365 16. Moral Badness . . . 365 17. Conscience . . . . . 366 CLXXVI. 1. The Moral Faculty is not chargeable with caprice .... 367 2-5. Exposition of Paradoxical goodness . 367 6. Paradoxical goodness concurs with cer- tain speciosities to impart an air of caprice to the Moral Faculty . 370 7. Confusion of Depraved with Moral ap- proval helps the error . .371 8a. Moral discernment falsified by Fierceness 372 86. Anger a convulsion . . .373 CLXXVII. Utilitarianism the devil's counsellor against the Moral Faculty . . .374 CLXXVIII. 1. Wisdom defined . . .376 2. It is the cardinal constituent of the Summum Bonum . . .378 3. The conversion of Godliness into Wisdom the End of Christianity . . 380 CONTENTS. xxxi PAGE § CLXXVIII. 4. Wisdom identical with the Christian spirit It may survive, but could not have ob- tained without, godliness . .381 CHAPTER V. Man the Puppet, Dupe, and Victim of Unconscious Force (pp. 383-387). § CLXXIX. Dependence of Consciousness on cerebration does not exclude Volition . .383 CLXXX. Without self-denying Effort to conform be- haviour to Wisdom, men are dupes, pup- pets, and, for the most part, victims, of Nature .... 385 INTRODUCTION. I. If I am not deceived, the following pages will show that, in so far as the study of Mind is concerned, those who have affected to employ the method of research which exclusively proceeds on intuition and deduction have been false to the method ; have been betrayed into a morass of indefinite ideas and un- warranted assumptions ; have, as regards the general, mistaken parts for their wholes ; have been extremely perfunctory, so that while they have been ambitious to achieve exhaustive explanation, they have not been at pains to provide for themselves solid standing ground ; have got themselves into such a plight that their motions are no longer a means of progress ; and that they have brought unmerited disgrace on the method which their indolence has misapplied. I show that a legitimate and vigorous use of the method might have anticipated induction as regards the existence of an unconscious part of the mind, and of unconscious mental events of which conscious mental events are effects. One of the most famous of the philo- sophers who have brought this reproach on deduction has B g THE ALTERNATIVK Kivmt \\n mi elaborate treatise on pwre Eeason, while Imwing nn to popular indefiniteness respecting Eeason. Dlamtiwlotig about the relation of experience to know- ing abound, while a part of experience has been \miv(WMt11y mistaken for the whole. An unimportant kind which it wan convenient to Logicians to put in w\M under the name Judgment, has masked one of thti mortt important of the differences it behoves philosophy to distinguish, the difference between Ap- |m*hen*ion and Judgment properly so called. Recogni- tion i* dug to a latent bearing of likeness of a certain dnftfttt on the mind. This bearing is now for the first lima madti known, The existence of consciousness void of iwlf* consciousness or what Leibnitz terms AWMWptton >**s overlooked. Unconscious know- \rfch inference — ^with <\iN^h*nwnta of atttibafc* *** (§ HM **** supports of k)\* ivw*WtnWng atttihnt*** Faftio* *o imagine that * tvwqvfcit* wrta* in an Had been ltam the first fotttng and ilfowwng it* **Nfc* Of tbfe philosophr (a *wa\ G* *H* tfo*t Www. *M. INTRODUCTION. 3 What confusion must have reigned to give plausi- bility to the desperate doctrine, that the mind may be conversant about things inconceivable ! Infinity and the First Cause are held by Sir William Hamilton to be things inconceivable, things unthinkable, and, never- theless, things about which the mind is somehow con- versant The doctrine pretends that its marvel is determined by a law which it names the Law of the Conditioned. It has been approved by the adhesion of such notable minds as those of Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Henry Longueville ManseL By applying the notion of the species, ideas that are not appearances — inapparitional ideas, — I dare believe that I have pre- cipitated the confusion which gave plausibility to the doctrine. An error which confounded Essence with Quality I have corrected. The confusion of Will with intentional-instinct overcasts psychology, ethics, and morality. A mental act which differs from attention only in the respect that it persists in a mind which would fain be rid of it, was confounded with attention, to which it is essential to depend upon conscious effort, — effort that the agent is free to suspend at pleasure. The delu- sion which Nature puts upon us in connection with this counterfeit of attention, viz. that it is a voli- tion, — that, in respect of it, we are free agents — exemplifies a delusion commensurate with nearly the whole of the practical life of mankind. The removal of the error (Bk. III.) exposes a fact of tremendous importance. Proving deductively that Mind includes an unconscious part, the theatre of unconscious mental events, and inductively, that this part includes or is comprised by the brain, and that an unconscious mental event — a corporo-mental event — is a condition 4 THE ALTERNATIVE. sine qua non of a consciousness, I show that nearly the whole of the practical life of man is, has been, and, for an indefinite time to come, threatens to be, transacted by an tmconscious force or agent, — that we have been pup- pets, not personal agents — dupes as well as puppets — and, in view of the prevalence of wretchedness in human, life, victims. I show that from this state of puppet, dupe, and victim, there is but one way of escape, that of self-denying conduct according to Wis- dom. If, adopting an ideal of character opposed to his instincts, a man resolve to live in conformity with that ideal, and at cost of self-denial live accordingly, his practical life is initiated and controlled by his conscious mind, and is truly a personal life. In respect of it, ho is voluntary, — a free-agent He is master of himsolf, and, to a certain extent, of Nature. If this practice have, as Christianity presumes it to have, the property of altering the instincts with enhancement, the agent is in the way of terminating the conflict between Will and Instinct, by substituting a new man for the old, — in the new, a mind that is partly the oifapring of the will What a salvation had Christianity elicited aueh a purgatory from the will of Christendom ! Having exposed what was false in the connotation of the term Substance, 1 employ the term as denoting according to the true part of its connotation, le. as denoting the naturally ungenerable and unannihilable part of the univrnm, what may be termed its perdur- ftklft part,-— that which, in changing, remains always intrinsically tho aamo — the truly % f*nd/imf*tel part of th* rA irA* \ ahow that aubatanee is the subject of an attribute in virtuo of which it is sometimes mind, *\\\\ for Ih* moat part, an oquivalont of mind. This Mtrlbuti t Urm DfrtoVy fNffwwrfkv <>f aptitndcs, dis- INTRODUCTION. 5 tinguishing it from a species that has been quite over- looked, viz. disorderly concurrence of aptitudes, or that which causes disorder. To the former is due the Cosmic character of the universe ; to the latter Chaos. Orderly concurrence of aptitudes is the ground of natural the- ology. During a certain phase of mental development, a law of belief gives it as presupposing a Designer— an intelligent first cause. I show that scrutiny strips the datum of the speciousness that made it seem to be a necessary truth. I exhibit in a new light the relation of Deduction to syllogism. The exhibition exposes two kinds of laws of belief, one relative to necessary truth, the other bearing on induction : it shows that there are exponents of laws of belief, and that the exponents of the laws relative to necessary truth are axioms, whereas those of the other kind are scarcely truthlike. It shows that syllogism has, if any, a merely fanciful connection with non-deductive inference. I prove that all knowledge is the offspring of experience — that there is no such thing as knowledge it priori, — that, nevertheless, in the controversy about the relation of knowledge to experience, the advocates of knowledge A priori have the best of it. As regards that controversy, my role is eclectic. It is the same as regards the question between Conceptualists and Nominalists. I show that both are partially right and partially wrong, that there are no such things as Abstract Ideas, and that there are such things as con- cepts : the vicarious function of names, whereby they serve in place of ideas, has made them pass for abstract ideas. Philosophy has been obstructed by the begging of vexed questions involved in the connotations of many 6 THE ALTERNATIVE. of its most important terms, e.g. the begging of the question at issue between idealists and materialists when the term Sensation is understood to connote relation as attribute to a material subject — a body. The idealist denies that there is such a thing as a body or a bodily organ of the consciousness termed sensation. I define sensation, consciousness given as being either wholly or in part a bodily attribute. This definition does not imply that there is such a thing as a body : it does not imply that the connoted datum is true. It makes the term defined equally convenient to every school of philosophy. In all my fundamental defini- tions I eschew in like manner assumption and petitio principii. I draw my principal general lines within the pale of the records of consciousness visible to retro- spect. This domain exhibits to retrospect, not merely records of the simplest units, but also records of groups of consciousnesses determined by the mutual likeness of the units and their difference from all other units. Our ideas of kinds of consciousness originate in discernments of these groups, e.g. the groups, visual consciousnesses, auditory consciousnesses, remembrances, judgments, inferences, imaginations, etc. Of the kinds thus manifest to retrospect, I select those that seem to be the divisions of the domain of consciousness the demarcation of which facilitates in the greatest degree an exhaustive survey of the field, — first the subgenera, then the species, defining or otherwise indicating them by what is intrinsic to them in respect of which they resemble, or differ from, one another. This classifica- tion, which excludes petitio principii, I make the foundation of psychology. If it be not a terra firma, there is no footing for knowledge. This terra firma seems to be connected by data, including axioms, with INTRODUCTION. V a reality outside consciousness, a reality known as the not-self. I take for granted the veracity of data that are not tainted by inconsistency, and, moving upon them with the confidence of Common Sense, intuitively and inferentially explore what I take to be unconscious reality. Thus I discover the existence of unconscious mental event, and that Mind includes an unconscious part Accepting from the datum that there is such a thing as matter, that there are such things as Cosmos, human bodies, bodily organs of consciousness, e.g. the eye, ear, etc., and inductively inferring that what are given as nerves, spinal marrow, and encephalon, are also organs of consciousness, I fall in with the confluence of physiology and psychology, and allow that mental events include physiological processes. II. The author is a disciple of the school of common sense. The spirit of the school has suggested to him a method which has steered him to some of the most important of the conclusions of this treatise. What then is common sense, and what its method in philo- sophy ? Common sense is the mental quality which disposes the bulk of men to unanimity under like cir- cumstances, and to conservatism in respect of the actual system of their beliefs. The conservatism tends, not only to be tenacious of actual beliefs, but also to mould all accessions to belief. Our actual beliefs dispose, as a rule, to judge in accordance with them, inclining our minds towards certain hypotheses and away from others — a disposition, by the way, that 8 THE ALTERNATIVE. manifests itself without any conscious reference to beliefs with which an hypothesis in question may agree or disagree. The accordant hypotheses, when candidates for belief, present a verisimilar aspect, and the discordant an inverisimilar one, without exhibiting agreement or disagreement with any actual belief. Conservatism in respect of belief is not proper to those who are qualified by common sense : a considerable minority of the conservative are of an eccentric mental structure, which causes them to differ notably from the majority as to system of belief. These and those who are devoid of conservatism as to belief are either partially or altogether devoid of common sense. People who, in relation to certain topics, are eccentric, are sometimes, in respect of all others, the reverse. The verdicts of common sense are sentiments so differentiated from all other kinds of sentiment save one that, except in so far as they are liable to be confounded with senti- ments of that kind, they are easily recognizable. For example, they are readily distinguished from approvals and disapprovals of the religious, moral, and aesthetic faculties, and from assents and dissents of Eeason in which common sense does not concur, and to which it does not demur. The sentiments with which they are liable to be confounded are those that constitute the assent and dissent of eccentric conservatism. These seem to the subject to be verdicts of common sense, from which indeed they are not distinguishable by any intuitable intrinsic difference. If they were, since it is presumable that common sense is a better guide than eccentricity, we should be better equipped for the voyage of life, and especially for the conduct of philo- sophy. It has been well said of common sense that it is a ballast which, although it keep the ship aground in I INTRODUCTION. 9 shallow water, is indispensable for keeping her up- right where there is depth enough to float. Hume experienced the correcting influence of common sense when he found that he could not take his scepticism abroad with him. When I treat of Science (Chapter I. Book III.) I shall show that, according to the signification to which the term Philosophy has been narrowed within the last forty years, philosophy is the motherlye of science, — at least of theoretic science, and that satisfactoriness to common sense is the attribute which differentiates theoretic science from philosophy. So long as the products of philosophy do not justify themselves by evidence satisfactory to common sense they are not science nor constituents of science ; but in acquiring that evidence they undergo the crystallizing process which makes them either one or the other. Meta- physics is an example of a product of philosophy that has failed to satisfy common sense, and is therefore excommunicated by science. Positivism is a revolt of common sense against metaphysics as well as theology. Psychology is not, like metaphysics, an offence to common sense: it is even a favourite candidate for admission to the rank of science ; but it has not yet exhibited satisfactory credentials to common sense. Sociology is still in the liquid state, but manifestly about to crystallize. So much for common sense : let us now consider its method as pilot of philosophic speculation. Philosophic speculation aims at two things, viz. knowledge of facts, and the elimination of inconsistency from the system of our beliefs. As regards the elimi- nation, we should not hug the coast of certitude, but boldly put to sea in quest of a system of hypotheses 10 THE ALTERNATIVE. in harmony with facts and with each other, not fearing to provisionally adopt, as favourite candidates for belief, hypotheses which, although otherwise well recom- mended, do not capture certitude. If the speculation achieve a system of hypotheses perfectly explanatory of a vast multitude of facts and in harmony with one another, the system, owing to a well-known mental law, would compel certitude of its truth. The explorer starts on the voyage equipped with a system of beliefs and with common sense which serves him, not only as ballast, but, in connection with his beliefs, as compass ; for, besides saving him from dangerous careening, it indicates the direction he should take, viz., along the line of consistent hypotheses that most accord with his beliefs and in the least degree innovate upon the system of those beliefs. For example, if two data be inconsistent with one another, he is to prefer that the elimination of which would cause the greater change in the system of his beliefs. Of course common sense is tenacious of all data that are not discredited by incon- sistency, but, above all, of those that serve as founda- tions of morality and religion, e.g., that there is a soul, that we are free agents. When such data become doubtful, the moral and religious faculties unite in a challenge to Will to prevent doubt from causing the moral paralysis and decay that might be inevitable if certitude of the falseness of the datum were in place of doubt They suggest to Will to apply what was known to the Latins under the name arbitrium, — an act which founds resolve on mere opinion, an act indispensable to those who have to navigate a sea of conjecture. Decree, they exclaim, the truth of the questionable datum, and, as regards conduct, rely on it as though it were the certitude it substitutes. Man- INTRODUCTION. 11 liness, it seems to me, concurs with morality, religion, and common sense, in this challenge. How should it indolently "gape on" while doubt is undermining human dignity ? Considering the fallibility of the human mind, its dependence on data, the necessity it is under to proceed upon conjecture, the superiority of a limited conservatism to an unballasted proneness to novelty in the interpretation of nature, and the probable degradation of the race if it lose faith in free agency and responsibility, it seems to me that the foregoing method is recommended by transcendent credentials. The method repudiates the doctrine that virtue is an impediment to research — an impediment as indisposing the mind to beliefs that are hostile to it : the method proceeds on faith that virtue or wisdom is a faculty as needful to research as that of vision, though also as fallible. It is true that, if men be no better than maggots, the discovery of that truth by research under the tutelage of Wisdom risks postpone- ment ; but is the postponement a respite or a loss ? Morals at least would not be the worse for it. The tendency of the method to prevent research from bolt- ing is elucidated by the extravagance of the doctrine, that human behaviour is exclusively automatic — that consciousness has no more to do with it than the whistle of the locomotive with its motion. All that can be said for this doctrine is that it is not incon- sistent, and that it is competent to molecular change to cause behaviour which seems to be intentional. To infer from the facts which indicate this competence that man is a mere automaton, is a non sequitur. The method puts the doctrine out of court. 12 THE ALTERNATIVE. III. It is new, even to philosophy, that exploration and discovery are possible to the faculty of Definition. It is taken for granted that the office of the faculty is confined to the humble work of making knowledge ship-shape, and explaining the meaning of words, — that he, for example, who achieves a definition of In- duction has not augmented — has merely arranged — knowledge. The obvious agreement of definitions with the known tends, when they augment knowledge, to hide the appearance of increase. The detection of a differentia is an increase of knowledge, and often an increase of the greatest importance ; but, though this must be manifest to the discoverer, it tends to elude those to whom he imparts his discovery : they think that they have profited only by having their know- ledge put for them in a clearer light. An analogous error disputed Bacon's title to be the originator of an intellectual epoch. Forsooth, people had inferred induc- tively prior to Bacon, and therefore the Novum Organum contained nothing new. It has escaped philosophers that the faculty of definition was the supreme faculty of Socrates, and that his dialectic was a method of driving people to the border of definition which was to enrich the world with new knowledge. Now in this Essay error is sapped and truth put in its place by a noiseless process of definition that tends to exclude an appearance of addition to knowledge. I might easily seem to have done no more than decant the known into another form. It is important, no less to the reader than to myself, that this error be avoided. X INTRODUCTION. 13 IV. The treatise consists of three books. The First con- sists of Definitions demanded by a new classification of mental events and faculties — not the less new that the classes are denoted by familiar names. The Second treats of Seasoning. The Third consists of expositions which concur in showing the dependence of personal agency on Self-Denial. The first chapter of the third book shows that science is unconscious knowledge. The second deduces from familiar mental event the existence of an unconscious part of the mind and of unconscious mental event. The third proves that the unconscious part of the mind is corporal, consisting of the encephalon, etc. The fourth is an exposition of Wisdom. The fifth proves that man has been for the most part puppet, dupe, and victim of unconscious forces, and that self-denying conduct is a sine qua non of escape. It may be asked, — at this hour of the day, so long after Leibnitz had called attention to un- conscious mental event, and Dr. Carpenter had popular- ized knowledge of unconscious cerebration,— what need was there of a deduction of an unconscious part of the mind and of unconscious mental event ? I answer that, except as regards the insignificant species of un- conscious event noticed by Leibnitz, it has never been shown that there are unconscious mental events. It has been abundantly shown that certain unconscious events are conditions sine qua non, and otherwise accessories, of mental action, but never hitherto that mental events include other unconscious events than those indicated by Leibnitz. No one will suspect 14 THE ALTERNATIVE. Professor Bain of overlooking the bearing of corporal upon mental event, yet his definition of Mind supposes mental event to exclude unconscious event. Accord- ing to Professor Bain Mind is a sum of operations and appearances that are either feelings, volitions, or thoughts. 1 Even Mr. Lewes, who held that event of which the obverse aspect belongs to the kind, mental events, has a reverse aspect which correctly ranks it, as being a neural tremor, in the kind, corporal events, 1 "The operations and appearances that constitute Mind are indi- cated by such terms as Feeling, Thought, Memory, Reason, Conscience, Imagination, Will, Passions, Affections, Taste. But the Definition of Mind aspires to comprehend in few words, by some apt generalisation, the whole kindred of mental facts, and to exclude everything of a foreign character." w Mind is commonly opposed to Matter, but more correctly to the External World. These two opposites define each other. To know one is to know both. The External, or Object, World is distinguished by the property called Extension, which pertains both to resisting Matter, and to unresisting, or empty Space. The Internal, or the Subject, world is our experience of everything not extended; it is neither Matter nor Space. A tree, which possesses extension, is a part of the object world ; a pleasure, a volition, a thought, are facts of the subject world, or of mind proper. " Thus Mind is defined, in the first instance, by the method of con- trast, or as a remainder arising from subtracting the External World from the totality of existence. It happens that the External World is easily defined 0* circumscribed ; the one well-understood property, Extension, serves for this purpose. Hence the alternative, or the correlative, Mind, can be circumscribed with equal exactness. But it is desirable to possess, in addition to this negative definition, how- ever precise it may be, a positive definition, or a specification 6f the quality or qualities that appertain to the phenomena designated mind. Now, we have not here the good fortune to be able to refer to a single precise quality, like Extension for the object world ; we must refer to several qualities that conspire to make up our mental framework. Hence our positive definition, instead of being a unity, is a plurality, and is not only a Definition, but also a Division of the Mind." "The phenomena of the Inextended Mind are usually compre- hended under three heads : " — " I. Feeling, which includes, but is not exhausted by, our pleasures \ INTRODUCTION. 15 inadvertently implies that unconscious event is not mental. But, though it had been inductively shown, the scientific spirit would exact a corresponding de- duction if the latter were possible ; not indeed in these days when induction is celebrating its prodigious suc- cesses in an orgie, but so soon as Philip shall have become sober. This treatise purports — 1st, a reconstruction of psychology; 2nd, exposure of the alternative that gives the treatise its title. The alternative is this — either puppet, dupe, and victim of unconscious forces, or self-denying conduct for the achievement of Wisdom. Although the work of reconstruction occupies nearly the whole of the treatise, and, if it bear any fair pro- portion to the labour bestowed upon it, should not be and pains. Emotion, passion, affection, sentiment — are names of Feeling." " II. Volition, or the Will, embracing the whole of our activity as directed by our feelings." " III. Thought, Intellect, or Cognition. Our Sensations, as will be afterwards seen, come partly under Feeling, and partly under Thought." — The Senses and The Intellect. Does Professor Bain advertently imply in the term, inextended mind, that there is such a thing as extended mind ? If he do and intend us to understand that extended mind is a bodily organ of which inextended mind is a function, are we also to understand him as teach- ing that mental event does not exclude unconscious event ? No ; for he limits inextended mind to the conscious events, feeling, volition, and thought. A better instance of the intoxication of the scientific spirit by the successes of the inductive faculty than the foregoing extract could scarcely be found. It tells us — 1st, That operations and appearances constitute the mind ; 2nd, That mind is a species of experience, viz. experience of the inextended ; 3rd, That it is the totality of Being minus extended things ; and then it implies (I believe inadvertently) that a species of mind is extended. In the old days, before induction had kicked over the traces, Professor Bain, by whose valuable contri- butions to philosophy I have profited, would not have thought and written thus. 16 INTRODUCTION. unworthy of the attention of psychologists, it is, in respect of the exposure, a mere husk. My intention in laying bare the abjectness and wretchedness of our condition coincides with that of the Gospel without its supernaturalism and mysticism. It is to stir an insur- rection against the Infernal in Nature, for the subver- sion of the reign of Instinct and substitution of that of Wisdom and Will. I BOOK I. -DEFINITIONS. CHAPTEE I. CONSCIOUSNESS. I. According to the primary meaning of the word per- cewe, one perceives not only when he sees, hears, smells, tastes, and undergoes tactile consciousness, but also when he imagines, remembers, conceives, judges, appre- hends danger in an emotion of fear or sacredness in one of reverence. According to this signification and the corresponding one of the cognate term, perception, the latter denotes the affection of mind that is correlated to objectivity, — the mind's embrace of an object. Philo- sophers have in modern times assigned a narrower signification to the term, perception. Convenience demands another alteration of its meaning, opposing it, as I shall presently explain, to what Leibnitz terms apperception. Accordingly, stripping the word discern- ment of its connotation of contrast, I assign to it the meaning originally annexed to the term, perception. Discernment and objectivity are correlatives, and per- ception is a species of discernment. This arrangement is facilitated by the fact that the term, discrimination, has been a synonym of, and can do duty for, the term discernment. ^ 20 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l II. According to its primary signification the term object denotes what is discerned. Custom has impaired its utility by making it a synonym of the term, Thing. I employ it as though this abuse had not obtained. A discerned tree is, and an undiscerned tree is not, an object. Discernment and object, like concavity and convexity, are but opposite aspects of the same thing. III. Certain objects, e.g. muscoe volitantes, Ariel, or Fal- staff, are said to be unreal, others, as Mount Atlas, reed. When we contrast a pain with an idea of a pain the contrast lights up the reality of the former and the unreality of the latter, and the reality of all sensation, emotion, and volition, is, in like manner, put in relief when contrasted with the ideas of them. The ideas are mere objects ; the sensations, emotions, and volitions, are something more than objects. It is in virtue of the something- more that they are realities. Accord- ingly, Eeality may be defined, entity that comprises something more than objectivity. IV. According to Pythagoras, and after him Plato, idea is the common name of Types eternally existent in the' chap, l CONSCIOUSNESS. 21 mind of God, — types conformably to which all contin- gent things were made. The meaning of the term was altered by popular misunderstanding and license so that Locke could apply it as the common name of objects. Thus understood, a stone, when object, and a toothache, are ideas. Locke did not intend this inor- dinate extent of signification. His definition extended it to real objects, but it is probable that he had only unreal objects in view. I believe that I am represent- ing the popular and philosophical understanding of the term in defining it as being the common name of unreal objects not given as real. According to this definition the immediate objects of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and tactile discernment, are not ideas. V. Self-consciousness is the objectivity of an individual to himself. It is therefore a mistake to oppose sub- jective consciousness to objectivity : it is a species of objectivity. Objectivity is either subjective or non- subjective ; in other words, objects are either subjective or non-subjective. What has been accounted opposition of subjective and objective consciousness is really opposition of subjective and non-subjective objectivity. Every normal discernment of which the object com- prises all that is objective at any one instant is discern- ment of a subjective and a non-subjective object, the former comprising what is given as self or the Ego and its appurtenances or modifications, the latter the not- self, the non-moi, the non-Ego. Such a discernment, accordingly, consists of two constituents, one known as 22 THE ALTERNATIVE. book t. self-consciousness, and by Leibnitz more conveniently termed Apperception, 1 the other what refers to the opposed object The constituent that refers to self and its modifications I term apperception, and the other, perception. It is now obvious that I am conservative as regards the meaning of the term, perception, and that my innovation affects only the import of the term, discernment. VI. One may make himself the object of his own atten- tion. Self, as object of its own attention, is not a sub- jective object. When object of attention it is doubly objective, non-subjectively to the attentive discernment and subjectively to an inattentive one. Make the experiment. Attend to the Ego. The attentive dis- cernment is involved with an inattentive discernment of self as subject of the attention. You attentively per- ceive self, and inattentively discern (apperceive) self as subject of the attention. This gives us the differentia of apperception, viz., inattentiveness of discernment of what are given as self and its modifications. Accord- ingly, Apperception is discernment that is inattentively referent to what are given as self and its modifications, and Perception is discernment of a non - subjective object. 1 Philosophy is indebted to Leibnitz for the term apperception. What he employs it to denote he defines, in contrast to perception, as follows, — " Perception is the internal state of the monad symbolic of things external, and apperception is the reflex knowledge of this in- terior state — a state not given to all souls nor at all times to the same soul." chap. i. CONSCIOUSNESS. 23 VII. Let perception involved in seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and undergoing tactile consciousness, be termed sense-perception. VIII. Is there such a thing as discernment without apper- ception ? Yes : there is a species of abnormal discern- ment of which privation of apperception is the differentia. What sometimes occurs to patients suffering acute pain during sleep is an instance. They sometimes lose self- consciousness during sleep without getting relief. The pain persists. It is riven to the memory of the Jufferer as a thing that exists^ ae and L though nothing else existed save time and space. It involves no reference to an Ego given as being its subject. Here we have discernment without discernment of a person discerning,— a perception unconjoined with an apper- ception. Ecstasy gives us examples of discernment to which the Ego is not objective. Wordsworth's descrip- tion of an event of this kind in the Excursion is a fiction modelled on fact Eothen tells us that he experienced " a vegetable sense of cold," meaning, I take it, cold given, not as an attribute of a body annexed to an Ego, but as self-subsistent. The following mental event was given to the writer as having occurred while he was in a swoon. A discernment void of self-conscious- ness seemed to have for object a figure consisting of several luminous variously - coloured concentric rings, 24 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l the largest about twelve feet in diameter. Time, space, and the figure, seemed to comprise all being. There was no spectator. After a while an impersonal won- der contemplating the figure obtained, and then, after a while, "I" was suddenly annexed to the wonder as sub- ject to attribute : for a moment I was aware of myself as gazing at the figure, and with the vanishing of the figure I recovered. 1 IX. Subjective objectivity includes the body of the subject and certain of its states and changes. In every normal discernment embracing all that is at the time objective, the subject apperceives his body. In sense-perception he apperceives the perceiving organ, e.g. in seeing he apperceives the eye. We apperceive the expressions of our faces, the attitudes and motions of our bodies. One of the profoundest errors of philo- sophy is the assumption that self- consciousness is co^ant of nothing more than self given as subject of consciousness, and of varieties of consciousness which it undergoes, e.g. remembrance, imagination, judgment, emotion. The assumption begs a moment- ous question, viz., that self is given as being a soul, 1 Comte reproaches psychology with a defect that is incident to its infancy and adolescence, namely, inattention to abnormal mental event. The reproach was ill-timed, for psychology was even then approaching a confluence with physiology and morbid pathology. What advantage it derives from the connection is instanced in the text. Those who imagine that psychology should not stoop to gather its facts from hospitals, lunatic asylums, and generally from the exceptional, will do well to consider the reproach of Comte. ^\ chap. i. CONSCIOUSNESS. 25 i.e., as being inextended and a monad. It is highly probable that the idea of an inextended subject of consciousness, a soul, is a product of philosophy, derived from the datum, that self is a durable thing, and from evidence that the body is a mere series void of a temporal identity measuring what is given as the life- time of the putative subject. It is probable that, in the infancy of human individuals and societies, the body is given as being the self. This datum easily maintains its ground so long as consciousness is all but absorbed in sensation, but is less tenacious in pro- portion as consciousness is more engaged in discourse. When the idea of an inextended self emerges, it is favoured by the ascendancy of discourse. X. 1. To what known and named kind are we to assign the mental event, discernment-unconnected-with- apperception ? Known and named kinds afford it no room. It has been overlooked by philosophy as well as by popular experience. The kind with which it has most affinity is what has been hitherto denoted by the name, consciousness. But before deciding to treat it as a congener of this kind and to transfer the name Consciousness to the genus of which they are species, let us consider another ignored kind of mental event which is also a candidate for admission into the genus. The following are instances of the kind. 2. If where the light is subdued a man inad- * vertently close his eyelids for some seconds and be 26 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. then asked whether he sees anything, the question would develope an erroneous knowledge in him that he sees nothing. If, while the lids are closed, he cover them with his hand, he deepens the darkness, which establishes that, between the closing of the lids and the covering with the hand, his visual faculty had been the theatre of an event or entity, that is better entitled to the name, light, than the sethereal vibrations of which it is an effect. This ignored event pretends to be a consciousness. 3. Belief sometimes discovers to us that we have been undergoing a mental event which, if it be not entitled to the name, pain, is nameless. The drawing of a blind shuts out a glare, the closing of a door a noise, that had been ignored, and so affects us that a sigh or groan of relief escapes us. The fact that the event was ignored does not make us indifferent to its recurrence. 4. We see in others, and they see in us, signs that are given as signs of emotion, when the putative subject is ignorant that he is undergoing the emotion ascribed to him. How often does resentment shoot its arrows at us when the subject believes himself not only to be free from anger but to be actuated by regard for our interest or by pious zeal. We frequently discern emo- tion in ourselves which is given as having had a latent beginning and growth. People of conduct are led by their vigilance to the discovery of kinds of emo- tion that never manifest themselves in vulgar experi- ence. It achieves what is known in mystical language as discernment of spirits. The discovery penetrates even to emotions, which, when discerned, are found to chap. I. CONSCIOUSNESS. 27 be the conscious sides — the faces or appearances — of states of the heart that are moulds of emotion, states of which " mood " is the common name. For example, one comes to detect an emotion that signifies a tendency to anger at a time when the heart is altogether free from anger,— nay is disposed to mirth, although with a tincture of irony. Or one may detect an emotion significant of a mood that is a mould of low and trivial sentiment. The discerned events are given as being emotions, — emotions that existed antecedently to, as well as at the time of, the discovery. If the datum be true, if the events be indeed what they seem to be, are they not Consciousness of which the subject is ignorant ? 5. There is a mental event connected with exercises of memory which presents a claim equal to that of sensation and emotion to be accounted consciousness, and it refers to latent individuals of its species which, having a like claim to be classed as consciousnesses, are adducible as instances of latent consciousness. When we endeavour to remember, the effort proceeds upon a mental event that more resembles sensation than any other familiar species, a somewhat that inten- sifies and loses intensity, enhancing in proportion as it intensifies our consciousness of power to recall, and degrading it in proportion as it loses intensity. It culminates, so to speak, in the remembrance which it predicts, and, if it expire without having caused remembrance, we feel that it is impossible to recollect ; we have lost the clue. To those who notice the clue it is impossible to doubt that all effort to remember proceeds on such an event or such all but the " illa- tency." Analogous events, only more resembling emo- 28 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. tion than sensation, move men to undertakings for which they previously felt no disposition, no courage, no aptitude. It fills them with consciousness of power to realise such or such an end, and for the most part truly. The mathematician feels that it is in him to solve the problem by which he has been perplexed : it is the Muse of the poet, the painter, the musical com- poser. When it is noticed it is given as being the like, save as to being known, of mental events that have always borne on human enterprise. It is sur- prising that a mental event of so low an order should be, as it were, the matrix of the highest intellectual exercise and success. If it be not ranked as conscious- ness our system of kinds has no room for it, and, if it be, it establishes the existence of latent consciousness. 6. I make free to transfer the name consciousness from the kind discernment - involving - apperception, by which the name has been hitherto monopolised, to the genus of which that kind, and the kind, discern- ment-unconnected-with-apperception, and the kind instanced by the ignored light and pain, are species. The innovation exposes a genus hitherto unknown, and is innocent of any greater infringement than the trans- fer of a name from a species to its genus. I was shut in to the alternative of inventing for the genus a new name or transferring to it that of one of its species. The aversion of the mind to new names I deem a sufficient apology for my choice. It was impossible to avoid a shock to mental habit. I trust it will be found that I have avoided the greater violence. 7. The enlargement of the signification of the term, consciousness, makes it the common name of such l chap, l CONSCIOUSNESS. 29 mental events as ideas, perceptions, apperceptions, re- membrances, imaginations, judgments, speculations, sen- sations, emotions, intentions, and choice or volition properly so called. The term consciousness admits of the indefinite article before it and of the plural form. A volition, an idea, or a perception, is a con- sciousness, and the three are consciousnesses. XI. 1. Discernment unconnected with apperception, and such latent consciousnesses as the ignored light and pain, have this in common, that, considered as con- sciousnesses, they seem to be incomplete. Conscious- ness accordingly is divisible into complete and incomplete consciousness. The former consists of Apperception and all apperceived consciousnesses, the latter of all unapperceived consciousnesses. 2. An incomplete consciousness that obtains in a self-conscious mind, e.g. ignored light and pain, may be distinguished as normal ; one that obtains in a mind void of self-consciousness, e.g. pain without self-con- sciousness, as abnormal. XII. Discernments that involve apperception may be distinguished as apperceptive, all others as inappercep- tive. These distinctions afford us convenient terms. They enable us to put briefly and plainly what was 30 THE ALTEBXATTYE. book l not previously expressible without drcnmlocutioii and obscurity, viz. that hitherto apperceptive discernment has monopolised the name, consciousness, and that the name now denotes the genus of which apperceptive discernment, inapperceptive discernment, and ignored complete consciousness, are species. 1 XIIL 1. I have now to explain what I understand by the terms distinctness and indistinctness. They denote nndefinable attributes of objects. When a tree is an object of visual perception and attention it is a distinct object, and its qualities, eg. its solidity, colour, faun, etc,, are indistinct objects. When a grove is an object of visual perception and attention it is a distinct object, and those of its trees that are nearest to the centre of the field of vision may, if not too remote, be distinct objects. In the second case, the trees near to the circumference of the field of vision mav be indis- 1 The advantage of restoring the term. conscioiisnest, to the larger signification from which it was warped by philosophy, is evinced by the. misnomer, " unconscious feeling/' employed by the late Mr. Lewes. According to the popular and better understanding of the terms, am- seiousness and feeling, fooling is a species of conscionsneK. so that the term *' unconscious feeling " affects common sense with the shock of contradiction. The term Feeling has been popularly applied as denot- ing emotion and sensation ; but when philosophy detects the species, ignored or latent consciousness, that species tends to fall under the sub^genna, feeling. Latent consciousness is what Mr. Lewes Tnign»i*M»a unconscious feeling. Not Mr. Lewes, but philosophy, is responsible for the misnomer. The kind of consciousness which it denotes is never absent from the waking mind, and probably comprises what there k of owtacio uw fif wi In the lowest animaK chap. i. CONSCIOUSNESS. 31 tinct. The qualities of a tree that is an indistinct object are more indistinct than those of a tree that is distinct. Of distinct objects those that are objects of attention are more distinct than those that are not. Thus we see that there are degrees of distinctness and of indistinctness. It is essential to the object of atten- tion to be distinct, but objects of inattentive discern- ment are not necessarily indistinct. 2. Indistinctness supposes objectivity. What is not an object cannot be indistinct. 3. There are two well-marked degrees of indistinct- ness, viz., that which does, and that which does not, exclude knowledge of the indistinct object. The indis- tinctness of normal inchoate consciousness, e.g. the ignored light, is an example of indistinctness that excludes knowledge of the object. Let indistinctness of this degree be distinguished as abditive. The indis- tinctness of objects near the circumference of the field of vision is an example of the kind that does not exclude knowledge. Let it be distinguished as m- ccbditive. 4. Distinctness graduates, through instances, into inabditive indistinctness, and the latter into abditive indistinctness, as neighbour colours of the rainbow graduate one into the other, equally excluding a detec- tion of boundary and doubt of the existence of specific difference. For example, the graduation excludes the possibility of ascertaining a minimum of distance from the centre of the field of vision beyond which a thing that, within the distance, would be distinct, is indis- tinct. CHAPTEE II. KNOWLEDGE. XIV. In order to explain what is denoted by the term, Knowledge, I must take a liberty with the term, thesis, assigning to it a partially new meaning. I trust that the importance of the new signification, to which no other known term is, by its connotation, so well adapted, will be found a sufficient apology. I employ the term, thesis, as denoting a thing which, when objec- tive, is verbally expressible by a proposition and not otherwise. Imagine yourself seeing at a distance a person who so affects your faculty of identification as to beget in you a faint opinion that he is your father, imagine that the opinion alternates for a time with the opposite opinion until, getting near to the object, you become certain that it is your father. The objects of the fluctuating opinions and of the certitude which finally supplants them are not propositions. No verbal formula is on such occasions objective ; and a proposi- tion is a verbal formula. But an object such as it is the nature of a proposition to express, one exhibiting the aspect of probability, must be present to each of the opinions ; to the affirmative opinion an object cor- chap. n. KNOWLEDGE. 33 responding to the proposition, The person I see is my father, to the negative one an object corresponding to the proposition, The person I see is not my father ; and a third kind of object must be present to the final certitude, viz., one corresponding to the proposition, The person I see is my father, but exhibiting the aspect of certainty instead of that of probability. Now these several objects are ideas intimately connected with the immediate object of the perception, — ideas which it is important to distinguish from that object. It is import- ant to distinguish them from propositions as not being verbal, and, as being ideas, from the immediate object of perception. XV. The correlatives, certainty and certitude, are undefin- able. The former is an attribute and aspect of a thesis, the latter an attribute of a mind to which the former is objective; in other words, when a thesis exhibits the aspect, certainty, the corresponding discern- ment involves the attribute, certitude. Certainty and certitude refer to truth, — to the truth of the thesis which they suppose. The correlation of certainty to certitude supposes that there is no such thing as abso- lute certainty. XVI. We are said to fow>w~what is not altogether strange to our minds, e.g. the name, John, the figment of fancy, D 34 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. Ariel, a song, an art, 'and also to know what we are certain of, e.g. the truth of the thesis, Two and two are four. If the relation of mind to what is not altogether strange to it be knowledge, knowledge is a genus com- prised by the two species, knowledge that does, and knowledge that does not, suppose certitude. So far as I know, philosophy has ignored the genus and regarded knowledge as supposing certitude. This I presume has been an inadvertence, and I therefore adopt the popu- lar view, according to which knowledge is mental relation to what is not altogether strange. Knowledge that supposes certitude I distinguish as " certive," and the opposite as " non-certive" XVII. Knowledge is either conscious or unconscious, the former when the thing known is objective, otherwise the latter. The mathematician's knowledge of mathematics, subsists when he is in dreamless sleep. A man is not necessarily nor always ignorant of what he is not think- ing about, and what he is not ignorant of, though he be not thinking of it, he knows. Popular language implies the existence of unconscious knowledge. In. conformity with it I presume to disregard the dictum of Hamilton, "consciousness and knowledge each in- volves the other." But though consciousness be not essential to knowledge, it is essential to certitude and certainty. These determine knowledge, but are not commensurate with it in time : they necessarily obtain, but obtain only when the knowledge they determine is conscious. chap. ii. KNOWLEDGE. 35 XVIII. 1. There is a kind of mental affection of which tendency - to - become - knowledge is the differentia. For example, — the painful experience of the burned child begets a mental affection to the thesis, All things like that which burned me have a burning property, an affection involving a tendency to become knowledge. If the experience occur before the child has acquired the idea of the kind, luminous things like that which burned him, it is not a knowledge, but, to become knowledge, it only needs that experience beget know- ledge of the kind. Again, every man has a native or congenital affection to the general thesis, A whole is greater than its part, and this affection precedes know- ledge of the land, Wholes. It is not then a knowledge. To become a knowledge it is necessary that experience connect with it a knowledge of the kind, wholes. These affections, as being affections to theses in virtue of which the theses tend to assume the aspect of cer- tainty, may be distinguished as " thesic." Let us denote by the name cognitive complement the knowledge needful to convert a thesic affection into a knowledge. According to this analysis a " certive " knowledge is a "thesic" affection conjoined with its cognitive com- plement. 2. Thesic affections are either complete or incom- plete, the former when they are, the latter when they are not, knowledges. Incomplete thesic affections are divisible into those that lack nothing to make them complete, but their cognitive complements, and those that lack something more. Before the child is burned 36 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. he is the subject of a mental affection which the burning develops into the incomplete "thesic" affection to which I have referred. The former is so to speak an embryo of the latter : it is an affection to the thesis to which the latter is related, and is therefore a " thesic " affection. But it lacks something more than cognition of a cognitive complement to make it a constituent of a knowledge. It lacks the painful experience. Let incomplete "thesic" affections that lack nothing of completeness but their respective cognitive complements be distinguished as proximate, and all others as non- proximate. 3. Proximate thesic affections are either native or acquired. Those that relate to axioms are native, all others are acquired. From this point of view it is obvious that geometrical axioms afford no ground for the theory of knowledge & priori. XIX. Knowledge does not suppose the truth of what is known. If it did, man would be infallible. There is a false as well as a true knowledge. XX. 1. With a view to the exposition of two opposed species of knowledge, viz. guaranteed and unguaranteed chap. n. KNOWLEDGE. 37 knowledge, I have to make some explanations respect- ing Necessity and consistency. 2. Necessity is undefinable. It is an attribute, e.g. an attribute of the existence of the first cause, and, if realities correspond to the ideas of time and space, of the existence of time and space. Necessity has been incorrectly opposed to contingency. Contingency is the differentia of event and of what depends upon event, of beginnings and of what begins or can be sup- posed to have begun. But necessity is an attribute of contingent as well as of non-contingent things, for example of the existence of the Ego, or of the equality to one another of contingent things that are equal to the same, e.g. that of two gold rings that are equal to a third. The contingency of the rings supposes that of their equality ; the equality is necessary as well as con- tingent. Necessity accordingly is divisible into con- tingent and absolute necessity. The necessity that is an attribute of the equality of contingent things equal to the same is an example of contingent necessity ; that which attaches to the existence of the first cause or beginningless substance exemplifies absolute necessity. 3. It is important to distinguish between necessity and a seeming of necessity. According to experience a seeming of necessity is not always true. Before science ascertains the relativity of the "up and down" of v^ space, it seems to be a necessary attribute of space, — the thesis, Space involves an " up and down," seems to be a necessary truth. Before weight is discovered to be gravitation and while yet it seems to be a necessary truth that space involves an "up and down," the thesis, Falling is the alternative of support, seems to be 38 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. a necessary truth. Now, in so far as the mind is con- versant about what is given as being necessary, it is restricted to seeming of necessity, and, since the seem- ing may be false, (and we have no test by which to distinguish true from false seemings of necessity) Beason finds itself without the perfect security which intuition of the necessary seemed to have afforded. We are fallible as regards what is given as being necessary truth. 4. Fire exhibits a seeming of necessity to burn, which, when contrasted with the seeming of necessity to be true presented by axioms, shows a defect that is fitly connoted by the name, incomplete seeming of necessity. I accordingly divide seemings of necessity into complete and incomplete. Necessity to cause of which the seeming is incomplete is an attribute of Nature — an attribute of all secondary causes. All axioms and all theses of which the truth is demon- strable exhibit a complete seeming of necessity. 5. Inconsistency is necessity to be untrue. 6. Inconsistency has been held to be a species of inconceivableness or unthinkableness. This as I shall show more fully by-and-by (xli 4) is an error. A square circle is conceivable, although it is impossible to form a corresponding image. If square circles were inconceivable there could be no question about them. So thinkable are they that we are now reasoning about them. 7. Seemings of inconsistency are either intuitable or unintuitable. That of the opposite of an axiom is chap. n. KNOWLEDGE. 39 intuitable : that of the thesis, The three angles of a triangle are unequal to two right angles, is unintuitable. 8. The discovery of the species complete and in- complete seemings of necessity exposes two species that may be distinguished as guaranteed and unguaranteed certitude, and two corresponding species, guaranteed and unguaranteed certainty. The difference between guaranteed and unguaranteed certitude is qualitative, not quantitative. My unguaranteed certitude that there is a reality corresponding to my idea of Cosmos is not quantitatively inferior to my guaranteed certitude that the sum of the parts is equal to the whole ; but when I study these certitudes and their theses I discern a flaw in the unguaranteed certitude that does not dis- credit the guaranteed certitude : the seeming of neces- sity correlative to the former is incomplete ; it affords room for consistency of the opposite, whereas the other seeming of necessity seems to exclude possibility of a consistent opposite. Nevertheless it cannot be cor- rectly said that one is more certain when his certitude is guaranteed than when it is unguaranteed. 9. Knowledge that involves guaranteed certitude is guaranteed, and all other knowledge is unguaranteed. CHAPTEE III. REASON. XXI. Probability is undefinable. like certainty, it is the differentia of a species of theses. It is quantitative, graduating from a minimum to a maximum that is scarcely distinguishable from certainty. Its minimum is a degree of a scale that graduates from a zero at which theses scarcely exhibit a sign of verisimilitude, and, indeed, this scale is itself part of a greater one which ascends from that zero to certainty. XXII 1. An Opinion is the mental relation to a thesis supposed by probability of the thesis. If it were ten- able that opinion is a species of discernment, it might be defined as discernment of probability, but opinions, like knowledges, are for the most part unconscious, and must be defined accordingly. 2. Opinion varies in degree with the correlated chap. m. REASON. 41 probability. Its higher degrees are, as it were, a terra firma upon which the mind rests and acts with as much confidence as upon certainty, for which reason opinion of those degrees may be distinguished as strong, and the opposite species as faint, opinion. 3. Opinion is divisible into the species, emotive and unemotive opinion. Faith, the confidence on which enterprise usually proceeds, and the opinion involved in fear, are examples of emotive opinion; belief in the Darwinian hypothesis, of unemotive opinion. Strong emotive opinion that has for object one's own power or the power and good disposition of another, is confidence. That which has for object divine power and goodness is faith ; that of which the object is one's own power is self-confidence. Self- confidence, which is a species of courage, is the fountain of enterprise, not a sine qua nan, — for a coward may be theoretically enterprising, — but the main source. XXIII. Circumstances have prepared the term, belief, for a more extended and important signification than what has been hitherto annexed to it According to this signification, a belief is either a knowledge or a strong opinion. Viewing belief as a genus, it comprehends the subgenera, knowledge and strong opinion. The latter comprehends the species, strong emotive opinion and strong unemotive opinion. 42 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l XXIV. Doubt is privation of certitude as regards a thesis that makes some pretension to belief, — one supported by some incentive to belief. When the mind is sus- pended between opposite incentives to belief of equal force, pure doubt (doubt unattended by any leaning to belief) obtains. Doubt is essential, but not proper, to opinion. It is either conscious or unconscious. XXV. There is a mental act which, although it be uncon- nected with an intention of communication or with words or any significant act, so resembles a funda- mental constituent of what is commonly denoted by the term, assertion, that it is entitled to be. classed as a species of assertion ; in other words, the signification of the name, assertion, should be enlarged so as to include it. According to this arrangement, assertion is either significant or nonsignificant, the former when it does, and the latter when it does not, involve a pro- position. The correlatives, affirmation and negation, are essential to assertion. An affirmative proposition implies negation of the opposite of what is affirmed, and a negative one affirmation of the opposite of what is denied. But in certain cases both correlatives are obvious, and in others one of them is latent, — latently implicit, — relatively to the assertor. In propositions constituting narrative one of the correlatives is gener- ally latent. In philosophical and scientific proposi- chap. in. REASON. 43 tions, on the other hand, both correlatives are obvious. The assertor consciously denies the opposite of what he affirms or affirms the opposite of what he denies. Now obvious affirmation and negation are essential to non-significant assertion. When evidence begets dis- covery the discovery is united with a non-significant assertion involving obvious affirmation and negation, as in the case of the juryman to whom the evidence dis- covers the guilt of the accused, or in that of the mathematical pupil to whom it discovers the truth of the theorem. Now significant assertion is not con- fined to discovery. If the truth of what is known, e.g. that I exist, be put in question, the question may excite a non-significant assertion affirmative of the existence and negative in respect of its opposite. XXVI. A judgment is a nonsignificant assertion. It in- volves a conscious reference to opposite theses, being affir- mative of one and negative of the other. It is essential to it to be conscious. It is instantaneous, it has no duration — the knowledge which it initiates, or which precedes and follows it and refers to the same object, is not a judgment. I know when I am not thinking of the matter that things equal to the same are equal to one another ; if this be put in question in my mind, I judge that it is true, and I may dwell for a certain time on the truth: the unconscious knowledge that precedes the truth and the dwelling on the truth are not judgments. 44 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l XXVII. A Judgment supposes question. Question is unde- finable. It comprehends the two kinds, communi- cative and incommunicative question, the former b^ing that which is put by one person to another, and the latter that which the mind puts to itself. XXVIII. Apprehension is discernment that is not a judgment. All actual objects that are not objects of judgment are objects of apprehension. Judgment involves apprehen- sion. To judge that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, there must be apprehension of right angles, of a triangle, and of its three angles. Apprehension unconnected with judgment, e.g. percep- tion, remembrance, fancy, is simple apprehension. XXIX. Some of the greatest errors that deface and obstruct philosophy are incident to oversight of the boundaries that divide judgment from apprehension, and it is remarkable that, while the spontaneity from which language for the most part proceeds respects those limits, it is by philosophers they have been effaced. The name, Judge, is appropriated to the functionaries on whom the administration of law mainly depends, and it connotes the differentia of the mental acts that constitute the supreme part of their function. These chap. in. REASON. 45 acts are non-significant assertions respecting what is in question. They are types of a kind of mental event that is entitled to the greatest possible distinction. No better disposition can be made of the familiar term, judgment, than to confine it to the denotement of individuals of this kind. The popular tendency as regards the use of the term has been to apply it in this way, but the tendency has been thwarted by philoso- phers who would have the term to be the common name of mental events that are expressible by credited propositions, — a kind as real and of as much import- ance as the kind, Men with a mole on the cheek. Logic originated the perversion. Overlooking the fact that propositions express objects of simple apprehension as well as objects of judgment, and excite simple appre- hension as well as judgment, e.g. the proposition, It rains, uttered without question, or the propositions that constitute a narrative, they accounted every mental event that is expressible by a proposition a judgment. They thus put in relief a kind to which the indolence of philosophy could refer a great and perplexing variety of mental events the sorting of which might otherwise cost toilsome study and long delay ; and the temptation prevailed. According to Sir William Hamilton, to be conscious is to judge : to see, hear, smell, etc., is to judge. "The fourth condition of consciousness," he tells us, "which may be assumed as very generally acknowledged, is, that it involves judgment. A judgment is the mental act by which one thing is affirmed or denied of another. This fourth condition is in truth only a necessary con- sequence of the third, — for it is impossible to discri- minate without judging, — discrimination or contra- distinction being in fact only the denying one thing 46 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. of another. It may to some seem strange that consciousness, the simple and primary act of intelli- gence, should be a judgment, which philosophers in general have viewed as a compound and derivative operation. This is however altogether a mistake. A judgment is, as I shall hereafter show you, a simple act of mind, for every act of mind implies a judgment. Do we perceive or imagine without affirming, in the act, the external or internal existence of the object ? Now these fundamental affirmations are the affirma- tions, — in other words the judgments, — of conscious- ness." * Accordingly, we are required to believe that the first perception of the infant involves a synthesis of the perceived appearance with the mental symbol or idea of reality, and that the appearance and the symbol present themselves disjoined, but as candidates for union, to the judging faculty, which, without a reason for the synthesis, unites them. Is it not a needless invoking of prodigy to demand that the infant, at the very beginning of conscious life, generates an idea of existence unconnected with a symbol of an existent somewhat ? What hinders our supposing that the reality of the appearance is given without any mental act that could be accounted a synthesis and, for that reason, classed with the judgments of those who are specially known as judges ? That analysis can detect, in the infant's apprehension, what is expressible by a proposition, is surely no reason for diluting the valuable common meaning of the term, judgment, of which Sir William Hamilton remarked, "the name has been exclusively limited to the more varied and elaborate comparison of one notion with another and the enouncement of their agreement or disagreement." 1 Lectures on Metaphysics, Lecture XI. chap. in. REASON. 47 XXX. A judgment may be either a certitude or a strong opinion. Judgments that involve certitude may be distinguished as cognitive, and those that involve strong opinion as incognitive. XXXI. There is a species of apprehension which so re- sembles judgment that the difference between them seems at first sight scarcely important enough to be specific. The exigencies of a battle elicit, as they occur, from the inventive faculty of either general commanding, ideas of means which he at once applies without having referred to their opposites,— without assertion. He does not affirm that the measures sym- bolised by the ideas are apt, he does not deny that they are deficient in aptness. The ideas are objects of apprehension, not of judgment. Although the aptness of the means which he invents and applies exhibits to him an aspect not of certainty but of probability, and the correlative opinion would seem to suppose a con- scious, reference to opposites, no such reference obtains. Conscious reference to opposites is not essential to conscious opinion. The chess-player opines that the move he is about to make is apt, but he does not always consciously refer to the opposite theses, it is apt, it is not apt ; he does not judge that the move is apt. When occasion elicits from craft a satisfactory scheme, the schemer does not usually affirm the fitness of the scheme and deny the contrary ; the scheme is appre- 48 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. hended as apt, not judged to be apt. Now this kind of apprehension resembles recollection, — effort of memory consequent to question — as being apprehen- sion consequent to question and to a corresponding attention in quest of an object, but it has an affinity with judgment which recollection does not possess. This affinity consists in a likeness for the peculiarity of which language has provided no name. Let appre- hension having this affinity be known by the name " vice -judgment ." Vice- judgment is conversant only about agenda. XXXII. Incommunicative question is divisible into several species which are respectively determined by the faculty addressed. Question addressed to memory, e.g. what is the name of the person approaching, is mnemonical ; that addressed to will or intentional in- stinct, e.g. with what motive comply, is practical ; that addressed to the faculty of judgment is judicial ; that addressed to the faculty of vice-judgment is vice-judicial. Attention caused by judicial question is speculation. Reason is the faculty of judicial and vice-judicial ques- tion, of speculation, of judgment and vice-judgment. This definition seems to me to exhaust all the offices of Eeason. XXXIII. 1. A reason, according to a secondary signification of the term, is an objective and questioned incentive to either intentional action or belief. To be a reason, an chap. in. REASON. 49 incentive must be discerned and connected with ques- tion. An unobjective motive that instinctively causes action is not a reason. A condition or law of belief that latently determines a belief is not a reason. When Bakewell discovered the connection between a tendency to rapid fattening and a certain make of cattle, he had not in view the general principle, A thesis affirmative of a universal connection of certain subjects with certain attributes, if accredited by many instances of its truth and undiscredited by a contrary instance, is true. Although this principle contributed as law of belief to determine the induction, it bore latently on BakewelTs mind, and therefore not as a reason. To be a reason, an incentive to belief must be connected with question respecting the thesis to be believed. Beliefs that originate without questions are not caused by reasons. 2. Eeasons that are incentives to action may be distinguished as practical, those that are incentives to belief as non-practical. 3. When a man, moved by a desire of a forbidden pleasure, and also by a counteracting sentiment of duty, deliberates what he shall do, — with which motive comply, — both motives are practical reasons, whereas a motive which bears without being in question or in any way objective, is not a reason. Action consequent to motives that are not reasons is, as I shall fully show in a subsequent chapter (xvii.), instinctive, not voluntary. By the way, a confusion of Will with intentional instinct, — instinct that begets intentional action, — is the main cause of modern infidelity respect- ing the freedom of the will. E 50 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l XXXIV. 1. Non-practical reasons are divisible into two species, of which one may be distinguished as cuxyiorruztic, and the other as evidential,~^-0T evidence. When a non-practical reason is itself the thesis to be believed it is axiomatic, — an axiom — what has been termed a self-evident truth ; otherwise it is evidential. Accord- ingly, an evidence may be defined a non-practical reason that is not itself the thesis in respect of which it is an incentive to belief 2. The foregoing definition retrenches the customary meaning of the term, evidence, effacing the species, self-evidence. In the Dictionnaire des Sciences Philoso- phises Evidence is defined " dans les objets ce qui les fait paraltre et les rend intelligibles," — that in objects which causes them to be apparent and renders them intelligible. According to this definition, axioms and objects of perception are evident, — contain evidence of their own truth, — are self-evident. Now the classifi- cation which annexes this meaning to the term, evi- dence, is not without a basis of likeness ; but the kind which that basis supports is, as regards psychological theory, not worth attention. To make it a genus relatively to the various species to which the name, evidence, is conveniently applied, would be to give occasion for a more minute and cumbersome generalisa- tion than is needful, and for a needless addition of technical terms. My definition supposes " evidence " to be an object that tends to cause belief respecting another object. ^ chap. in. REASON. 51 XXXV. Inference is judgment caused by evidence. It is essential to it to be a beginning of belief memorable to the subject, — a discovery. One cannot infer what he already knows. He may consider the relation of a thesis, the truth of which he formerly inferred and has not forgotten, to the evidence that made it known to him, but this is not to infer ; or, he may invent new evidence of the truth, but the invention is not infer- ence. One can reinfer only on the condition of having forgotten. It is customary to speak of evidence as inferring the conclusion. This of course is figurative. What does not seem to the subject to be discovery is not inference. XXXVI. 1. Theology originated the term intuition, denoting by it immediate discernment of God, — an event which the theologian held to be supernatural. Philosophy borrowed the term from theology, employing it to denote mental event that originates immediate know- ledge of reality. Perception and the mental event wherein originates knowledge of the Ego and its modi- fications were supposed to be its principal species. This theory of intuition was exploded by the discovery of the mediateness of perceptive knowledge. Kant, allowing the mediateness of perception, persisted in treating it as a species of. intuition. Hamilton, insist- 52 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l ing that perception is immediate knowledge of reality, held it to be in that sense intuitive. Intuition, accord- ing to Schelling, is immediate knowledge of the Abso- lute. The Scotch and French schools of Common Sense held intuitive knowledge to be belief or judg- ment that obtains without reasoning or reflection. The writer is at one with this school as regards the extension of the kind which he denotes by the name, intuition. He has not succeeded in laying bare its differentia ; but the following seems to him to be the equivalent of a definition. Intuition is knowledge not caused by such means as evidence or counting. Infer- ence is the species to which intuition is most conspic- uously opposed. Knowledge of number achieved by counting is not intuitive, because of the intervention of the counting. If there be other kinds of knowledge that, because of mediateness, are unintuitive, it is highly probable that the mediateness has such analogy with that of evidence and counting as justifies the use of the epithet " such " in the substitute for definition. 2. Intuition is either "certive" or " non-certive." Sense-perceptions are examples of " non-certive " in- tuitions, intuitions of the truth of axioms of those that are " certive." " Non-certive " knowledge may originate either in intuition or in inference, e.g. knowledge of one's father or of London Bridge is an example of non-certive knowledge that originates in intuition; knowledge of electricity is an example of non-certive knowledge that originates in inference. That which arises in inference is unsatisfactory, that which arises in intuition is the reverse. To the uncultured mind non-certive knowledge that originates in intuition seems to be exhaustive: to all minds that which * chap. in. REASON. 53 originates in inference is as unsatisfactory as the pos- session of a needle in a bundle of hay. 3. Intuition is either judicial or non-judicial, the former when it is, the latter when it is not, a judg- ment Discovery of the truth of the datum, To be contained in a region is essential to a limit, is an example of judicial intuitions. Owing to a certain indolence of the mind, certain limits, e.g. the sky and the plane of the earth in respect of the apparent void that commonly passes for space, are not at first appre- hended as limits surrounded by a region. So little are they so apprehended that the discovery of infinity is due to a quest of an absolute limit, such as an abso- lutely limiting sky. The knowledge cannot be sup- posed to obtain unconsciously, nor consciously out of a judgment. Discovery of the truth of the datum, An extension consists of extensions, and of that of the datum, A time consists of times, data from which we deduce infinite divisibility, is also an example of judi- cial intuition. Perception and ordinary recognition are examples of non-judicial intuition. Certain judicial intuitions are discoveries; others are not. The discovery of the truth of the axioms, A time consists of times, an extension of extensions, a limit of a part of space supposes a beyond, exemplifies the former: the judgment that things equal to the same are equal to one another is an example of the latter. 4. Intuition is either conscious or unconscious. Perception is an example of conscious intuition. In- tuition that begets knowledge of a custom, of the suc- cession of day and night, of the seasons, of a kind of which the differentia is not known, is an example of 54 THE ALTERNATIVE. BOOK I. unconscious intuition, for it consists of a latent process that fabricates the knowledge out of material furnished by several experiences, — as will be more fully shown when I treat of experience (chap. xiv.). 5. Conscious intuition is either distinct or indis- tinct. 1 Intuition that is discovery is an example of distinct intuition, e.#. finding what one is looking for. Ordinary recognition, e.g. the identification involved in seeing an acquaintance, is an example of indistinct intuition. Apperception is also an example of this kind. XXXVII. 1. A Datum is a thesis of which the truth is intui- tively known? 2. Data are either general or particular, the former when they do, the latter when they do not, consist of general theses. The datum, Things equal to the same are equal to one another, is an example of general data, the datum, It rains, incident to seeing rain, is an example of particular data. 3. Data are either guaranteed or unguaranteed, the guaranteed being those of which the opposites seem to 1 Indistinctness supposes objectivity. It is not predicable of what is not objective. 3 According to a secondary signification of the term! datum, a pre- miss is a datum. chap. in. REASON. 55 be inconsistent. The datum, Things equal to the same are equal to one another, is an example of guaranteed data ; the datum, The object 1 see exists independently of vision, is an example of unguaranteed data. 4. Another important division of data, viz., into judicial and non-judicial data, will fall to be considered when 1 treat of Induction (Book II., chap. ii.). XXXVIII. An axiom is a guaranteed datum. Axioms are either discoverable or undiscoverdble. The axiom, A whole is greater than its part, is an example of the latter. The axioms, A space limit is contained in a space, A time limit is contained in a time, are examples of the former. The thesis, Two triangles that have two sides and the included angle in the one equal to two sides and the included angle in the other are equal, is a discoverable axiom. The mental structure admits of our apprehending a space limit, — a limit of a part of space — e.g. the sky, as though it did not sup- pose a beyond, — as though it were not essential to it to be contained in a space. A like mental indolence gives room for the apprehension of a time limit, — a limit of a part of time — e.g. the beginning of Cosmos, — as though it were not essential to it to be contained in a time, as though it did not suppose an antecedent part of time. To disabuse itself of the error, the mind needs to be roused to scrutiny : over and above seeing, it must look. The scrutiny dissipates the error without the help of evidence, so that intuition, and not infer- 56 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l ence, is the discoverer of the truth of the theses, A space limit is contained in a space, A time limit is contained in a time. In relation to certitude the theses are axioms, not conclusions. A child is told that above the sky is a region named Heaven. His imagination had bounded this region by another sky which, in advance of scrutiny, had passed with him for a limit not contained in a space, — a limit that does not sup- pose a beyond. But scrutiny is challenged, and when he strives to imagine the limit as excluding a beyond, he fails. Another region bounded by another sky emerges. Several other abortive trials of this kind, which perhaps project him into a seventh heaven, terminate in the certitude that there is no end of upward beyonds. So, in the writer, somewhere about his seventh year, originated his idea of Infinity, — an event that constitutes one of the most conspicuous and ineffaceable epochs of his life. He did not distinctly formulate the thesis, A space limit is contained in a space : he unconsciously discovered its truth : the event originated unconscious knowledge of the truth of the thesis. One might easily fall into the error that the discovery was a conclusion. It might be supposed that the abortive trials were so many instances of the exclusion of containing spaces by space limits, and con- stituted evidence for the induction, that all such limits exclude containing spaces; but the discovered thesis is guaranteed, whereas it is not competent to induction to beget discernment of inconsistency of the opposite, and multitude of instances has no weight with deduc- tion. On this more light will be thrown when we treat of Deduction and Induction. Ignorance that it is essential to evidence to be a thesis other than the thesis urged on belief misled Euclid into a counterfeit chap. m. REASON. 57 of demonstration as regards the thesis, Two triangles that have two sides and the included angle in the one equal to two sides and the included angle in the other are equal The thesis, although not obvious without scrutiny, convinces scrutiny of its truth without the help of another thesis. XXXIX. Fact is intuitable reality. The name, fact, is some- times used as denoting unintuitable as well as intuit- able reality; but, as it is important to distinguish intuitable reality by a special name, the name should be confined to the narrower meaning. XL. Reasoning is either communicative or tacit, the former when it is discourse for the enlightenment or deception of another, the latter when it is discovery of truth or argument, or speculation in quest of such discovery. CHAPTEE IV. THE APPARITIONAL AND INAPPARITIONAL. XLI. 1. Colours, sounds, odours, flavours, ideas of bodies, are examples of objects that are appearances. Identity, familiarity, durability, infinity, necessity, value, polity, are examples of objects that are not appearances. If the term, phenomenon, were applied according to its etymological import, it would be the common name of objects that are appearances, it would be confined to these, while the immediate objects symbolic of identity, familiarity, durability, etc., would not be classed as phenomena. But the distinction between objects that are and objects that are not appearances is now I believe made for the first time, and therefore the term, phenomenon, cannot be supposed to have been customarily restricted, even by philosophers, to the former. For this reason it is presumable that the kind to which Kant applied and restricted the term, intuition, includes objects that are not appearances; that discernment of identity, for example, is, according to this idea, an intuition. Had he confined the term to the denotement of discernment of objects that are appearances, he would have turned its familiarity to I \ chap. iv. THE APPARITIONAL & IN APPARITION AL.. 59 good account, for no species of discernment better deserves a familiar non-descriptive 1 name. To fill the void I distinguish immediate objects that are appear- ances and the corresponding remote objects as appa- ritional. The idea of a man is an apparitional idea, and a man (supposing man to resemble the ideal image whereby he is known) is apparitional. The idea of electricity is inapparitionaL The ideas of identity, durability, familiarity, etc., are inapparitional, and the things they symbolise are inapparitional. I also distinguish as apparitional all discernments of which the objects are appearances, and the opposite species as inapparitional. 2. Appearances, whether immediate or remote ob- jects, include all objects of sensational intuition, e.g. colour, figure, solidity, flavour, odour, heat, cold, and the corresponding remote objects; they include all objects of emotive intuition, e.g. beauty, ugliness, virtue, purity, vice, foulness, nobleness, baseness, and the concretes of which these are attributes. They seem to include representations of past consciousness from which we derive what we know of consciousness that is not sensationally or emotively intuited, e.g. repre- sentations of remembrance, imagination, judgment, voli- tion, etc. I do not pretend to trace the whole of the boundary that divides between appearances and the inapparitional. I am at a loss in which of the kinds to place our ideas of mental events not originally made known by sensational or emotive intuition, and in which to place the Ego qud object. 1 Non-descriptive names are those that respectively consist of a single word, e.g. man; descriptive names are those that respectively consist of two or more words, e.g. John's horse. 60 THE ALTERNATIVE. book r. 3. Appearances are either complete or incomplete. An appearance that, except as regards what is needful for contrast, is possible out of connection with any other appearance, is complete: all other appearances are incomplete. The appearance of a man, a horse, a cloud, is an example of complete appearances ; that of solidity, circularity, angularity, of incomplete appear- ances. The importance of this division will appear when we treat of Abstract Ideas (chap, xviii). 4. There are counterfeits of general names, counter- feits that denote no kinds, correspond to no concept — to no idea whatever — yet serve as hinges of ques- tion and judgment, e.g. the counterfeit, square circles, which gives ground for the judgment, square circles are impossible. Such counterfeits tend to impose be- lief that they correspond to concepts and that the con- cepts are inapparitional. I was betrayed into this error and therefore think it expedient to warn the reader against it. The concepts symbolic of life and power are in- apparitional These qualities are liable to be con- founded with the appearances that manifest them ; but, when distinguished from these, e.g. force from motion, it is plain that they are inapparitional I shall show [§ CI. 26] that a species of power is appari- tionally symbolised but scrutiny finds that the thing symbolised is inapparitional. The utility of the discovery of the inapparitional is instanced in the solution of the following question ; — seeing that what is apparitional in the immediate object of a tactile or visual perception never includes more than what corresponds to a part of the body perceived, and that, when we remember or in any way i' chap. iv. THE APPARITIONAL & INAPPARITIONAL. 61 think of the body without perceiving it, what is apparitional in the immediate object of the remem- brance or thought corresponds to only a part of the body, how do we come by an idea of the body, — of the whole of the body ? We cannot by any effort appari- tionally imagine the whole of our friend, or of a house, or more of either, in any one instance, than can be simultaneously perceived. But if we never discern an appearance that corresponds to the whole of the friend or the house, and if there be no such thing as an inapparitional object, the fact that the whole of the friend or house is known to us mocks the criterion of inconsistency of the opposite. The solution is, that percepts symbolic of bodies, and the corresponding immediate objects of imperceptive discernment, consist of apparitional and inapparitional constituents, the apparitional constituent being symbolic of only a part of the remote object, and the inapparitional one of the complement. One can apparitionally imagine all the parts of his house successively, but can never have an apparitional idea of all of them. The fact that one can imagine the whole partly by means of an . appearance and partly by means of an inapparitional object, and that he can, with perfect facility, succes- sively and apparitionally imagine the other parts shift- ing from one imagined part to another without losing the idea of the whole, causes the assumption that he simultaneously imagines all the parts by means of an apparitional idea. But experiment is decisive that we see and otherwise discern only parts of bodies, and this supposes, unless it be held with Eeid that we think and consciously know without the" intervention of ideas, that discernment of bodies has for object an in- apparitional complement 62 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l 5. Contrast a thing considered as sample with the same thing not so considered, say a handful of wheat or a mathematical diagram, the wheat relative, as sample, to a cargo, the diagram to a kind of angles, triangles, or circles. How different is the object con- sidered as sample from what it is when not so con- sidered. But is the difference an apparitional object ? Clearly not. What is denoted by the word " all " — the somewhat that excludes more — is also an example of the inapparitional object. The ideas of Nothing, and Annihilation, are inapparitional objects, but objects perfectly consistent and intelligible. Extreme Nomi- nalism is probably the offspring of ignorance of the kind, inapparitional objects. The constitution of the mind is such that it is competent to names to be at times the sufficient substitutes of both apparitional and inapparitional ideas. This function, favoured by ignorance of the kind, inapparitional objects, suggested the hypothesis that general names are in all cases the sole objects of general judgments. As though a man whose circumstances had transferred him from less to more agreeable customs could not know the good that had befallen him if he had not the general name, custom, or a corresponding general name, to be a nucleus of the knowledge. The idea of Custom is in part inapparitional. We 'remember our customs by means of a sample without any reference whatever to a name. By means of such samples we imagine, compare, and expect customs without reference to a name. One may imagine a counterpart of St. Paul's occupying the site of the Tuileries, the ideal image of the Cathedral being in no respect, save as to its circumstances, different from that whereby we think of the real St. Paul's. But the total object of which the chap. iv. THE APPARITIONAL & INAPPARITIONAL. 63 latter image is a part, differs from that of which the former is a part, the one including a symbol of reality, the other a symbol of unreality. These symbols are inapparitional constituents, the one of the total object of one of the discernments, the other of the total object of the other. Now to every discernment its total object must seem either real or unreal, and therefore the total object of every discernment must involve an inapparitional constituent. XLII. The idea of Infinity is not an appearance of an infinite magnitude. It is a mere inapparitional symbol. Sir William Hamilton, taking it for granted that the infinite is not cogitable without an appearance of an infinite magnitude, which he rightly knew to be impossible, judged that the infinite is incogitable, — un- knowable. How, being unknowable, it could be in question, he does not inform us, but, instead, constructs for us a stupendous hypothesis concerning what he terms the Law of the Conditioned. He might as well, on the ground that we are incapable of an ideal image of all actual and possible triangles, deny that we know the universality of the equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right angles. The immediate object of this knowledge is an inapparitional symbol. The infinite referred to when the object is infinite divisi- bility, is also symbolised by an inapparitional symbol. The symbol originates in the discovery of the truth of the unobvious axioms that an integral part of time consists of integral parts of time, or an integral part of space consists of integral parts of space, or that an extension consists of extensions. CHAPTEE V. ATTENTION AND COMPARISON. XLIIL 1. The common idea of attention supposes it to be discernment dependent on volition. But volition, as will be fully shown when I treat of Will (chap, xvii.), is merely a species of intentional action, the opposed species being action of instinct that proceeds on inten- tion. The error that gives all intentional action as volition being dissipated and the common notion of attention correspondingly modified, Attention is found to be (and so I define it) discernment that depends upon intentional effort, whether voluntary or involuntary. I am corroborated by Sir William Hamilton not only as regards the difference between the genus, intentional action, and its species, volition, but also as regards the thesis that it is intentional action, not volition, that is essential to attention. "I am persuaded," he says, " that we are frequently determined to an act of atten- tion, as to many other acts, independently of our free and deliberate volition." * A mental event, however that resembles attention in every respect save that of dependence on intentional effort, is commonly con- 1 Lectures on Metaphysics. Lecture XIV. chap. v. ATTENTION AND COMPARISON. 65 founded with attention. There are objects that fascinate and all but absorb the mind, for example, intense pain or recent good fortuna So far is the concentration of mind caused by such objects from being dependent on intentional effort that the utmost efforts of the subject to direct his mind to other objects are abortive. This kind of discernment then, if dependence on intentional effort be essential to atten- tion, is not attention. It is a mistake to advise the grieved friend to divert attention from the grief. He does not hold to, but is held by, the grief. Another error mistakes for attention the discernments of the point of greatest vividness in the field of objects that simultaneously occupy a mind. Following the analogy of the term " field of vision," the term " objective field" has been given as the common name of the wholes of which the parts are the objects that are simultaneously present to a single mind. The field of vision is but a part of the objective field. In both there is a point of maximum of vividness. In propor- tion as objects in the field of vision are remote from this point they are obscure, and there is a correspond- ing gradation from vividness to obscurity in the objective field. When one is absorbed in meditation with his eyes open in broad daylight, although he is not looking, he sees, and his field of vision has its point of greatest vividness, but the point is not an object of attention. We have good reason to believe that the point of greatest vividness in the objective field, like that in the field of vision, is not always an object of attention. Eeverie does not exclude from the objective field a point of greatest vividness, but it does exclude attention, for privation of attention is its differentia. Accordingly, discernment of the point of greatest vivid- F "% 66 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l ness in the objective field is not always attention. Attention makes the point of the objective field on which it is directed the point of greatest vividness, but inattention does not exclude from the field a point of greatest vividness. It is not true that " there is no consciousness without attention." 1 2. Let the concentration of mind that is caused by the attraction of the object be termed qvasi-attention. 3. Attention is essential to discrimination, but not to discernment. We discern, but do not discriminate, the distinct parts of the field of vision that surround the centre, and of these the parts near the centre are more vivid than the remote. The discernment of the various apparent sizes of the visual object which the percipient is approaching, is a notable example of undiscriminating discernment ; every one of them is discerned, and for lack of attention not one discrimi- nated. The discernment begets an unconscious know- ledge that approach to and recession from a visual object occasion variation of the apparent size of the object ; but few, if any, remember individual instances of such a variation. We undergo a series of percep- tions of different sizes, but not discernment of the series. The experience may found in our minds the condition of a remembrance of the series, in other words, it may give us unconscious knowledge of the series, but this knowledge is not discernment of the series. When one perceives an increase of temperature, he undergoes a series of perceptions of degrees and also discerns the series. A comparison of this series with that of the perceptions of sizes exposes in the one a discernment that is wanting in the other. 1 Sir William Hamilton's Lectures. Lecture XIV. "F" " chap. v. ATTENTION AND COMPARISON. 67 XLIV. Contrast is elucidation by difference. It is a con- dition sine qua non of objectivity. No contrast no discernment. Difference is divisible into that which is, and that which is not, contrastive. The difference between colours, that between odours, that between sounds, the difference between any two correlatives, are examples of contrastive difference. XLV. 1. Comparison is attention or quasi- attention to contrast Contrast without comparison, e.g. that which determines the objects of vision that are not objects of attention or quasi-attention, may be distinguished as fundamental; contrast involved with comparison, as dependent. Dependent contrast presupposes objects given by fundamental contrast. Certain philosophers employ the term, comparison, as denoting discernment of relation. This is a departure from the popular meaning of the term which is the reverse of conveni- ent Relations are objective in every perception,— % -e.g. in the perception of a man the mutual situation of the parts of his body, in that of a canal the parallelism of its banks, — but every perception does not involve what is commonly signified by the term " comparison," because they do not all involve attention to contrast The objectivity of parallelism of the banks in the per- ception of a canal is indistinct, and therefore the corre- 68 THE ALTERNATIVE. book r. lated discernment is inattentive. It is essential to the object of comparison to be distinct. 2. Comparison is either judicial or non-judicial; the former when the discernment which it involves obtains under question, otherwise the latter. When it is in question whether a temperature has increased, and one judges that it has, the judgment is involved in a judicial comparison; when, without question, one is conscious of increase of heat, the discernment is involved in a non-judicial comparison. 3. To consider two or more objects with a view to comparison is termed comparison. This is a secondary meaning of the term. CHAPTEK VI. REDINTEGRATION. XLVI. 1. We owe to Sir William Hamilton the denote- ment by the name "redintegration" of the great mental law hitherto known as the law of the Association of Ideas, and, in this name, an explanatory connotation of the peculiarity of the law. It is this ; — when a part of a cause which had for effect a certain mental event is acting on the mind, the mind tends to generate and undergo the like of the whole event. For example, I see a carriage in motion and at the same time hear a certain sound which is then for the first time given to me as effect of the motion of the carriage ; on another occasion I hear the sound with- out seeing the carriage, and my mind generates and undergoes an image of a moving carriage given as cause of the sound. The like of only a part of the cause is in action, and nevertheless the mind produces the like of the whole corresponding mental event 2. But Sir William Hamilton does not seem to have been aware of the full scope of the law which he so happily named. He supposed it to be confined to 70 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i the suggestion of thought by thought, whereas the operations which it determines are mainly in and upon either an unconscious part or an unconscious accessory of the mind : the connections and order of conscious- nesses which it determines being mere effects of latent operations. The operations are evidence of the exist- ence of an unconscious part or accessory of mind which bears to consciousness such a relation as the magic lantern bears to the pictorial disc it casts upon the screen. All the figures in the disc and all its pictorial changes are effects of the lantern and of changes wrought in it, and all the objects in the field of consciousness and all their changes are effects of the part or accessory and of its changes. No figure in the disc is in the relation of cause to any other figure, and although many consciousnesses are remote causes of others, no consciousness is a proximate cause of another. Visual perception of solidity exemplifies the bearing of the law of redintegration. Concurrent vision and touch give an object as being of a certain colour and solid. % Afterwards, when the like of the colour bears on the eye without any concurrent tactile experience, the object is apprehended as solid. Now, in the second perception, the symbol of the colour does not precede that of the solidity ; they obtain simul- taneously; therefore the action of the external cause of the perception whereby the redintegrative work is wrought must have been upon a mental part or acces- sory outside the pale of consciousness. It is not the symbol of the colour which suggests that of the solidity, as Sir William Hamilton's theory pretends, but a latent action upon some such mental part or accessory as Physiology has found the encephalic and nervous system to be. \ chap, tl EEDINTEGRATION. 71 3. Connections and sequences of mental symbols are not the only products of redintegration. It con- nects mental event with the motions and attitudes of the body. I shall show, by-and-by, that trains of cerebrations underlie and cause the train of ideas, so that both are subject to the law of redintegration. Skill is the offspring of redintegration, which disposes the organs to produce automatically the whole of a series of actions intentionally begun, if the actions have been repeatedly otherwise performed, e.g. walking to a given place according to intention when the mind is otherwise occupied, knitting, spinning, sometimes playing the piano in sleep, reporting while asleep in the House of Commons (a fact authenticated* by Dr. Carpenter), etc. CHAPTEE VII. GENERAL SYNTHESIS. XLVII. 1. As* I shall have occasion to employ the term, general synthesis, before I define Kind and Essence, and the order of definition requires that kind and essence be defined in advance of what I term general synthesis, I give in this chapter an explanation of the meaning which I annex to the term, an explanation which, although in its right place it is a definition, makes no pretension here to scientific exactness. 2. The mental act which generates a beginning of knowledge, whether conscious or unconscious, that individuals of one kind are to those of another in the relation of subject to attribute, may be termed "general synthesis." It is not pretended that the term truly describes what is wrought by the act it denotes, it is merely figurative and technical. When an English- man in Scotland discovers, by his own experience, that Scotchmen are shrewd, he seems to put together in the relation of subject to attribute the concept that serves as sample of the kind, Scotchmen, and that which serves as sample of the kind, shrewdness or shrewd- chap. vu. GENERAL SYNTHESIS. 73 nesses. This seeming of synthesis of concepts suggests the figurative name, " general synthesis." 3. General synthesis may be either conscious or unconscious. The first physicist who saw a diamond burn underwent a conscious general synthesis in the judgment, All diamonds are combustible. The general synthesis of the burned child is an example of uncon- scious general synthesis. Eepeated inattentive and undiscriminating discernments of connections of events, •e.g. of that of rain with a certain appearance of clouds, sometimes beget an unconscious general synthesis, e.g. that clouds of that appearance are subjects of a condi- tion of imminent rain. The discernments so modify the mind that the general synthesis might obtain either consciously or unconsciously. An accident conjunctive with the completion of the modifying process might make the synthesis conscious ; without such an accident the synthesis must obtain uncon- sciously. Unconscious knowledge of physiognomical indications, and of symptoms, and an unconscious equivalent of weather- wisdom, obtain in this way. The knowledge manifests itself for the most part in individual instances, scarcely ever in general judg- ments. The subject knows, he cannot tell why, that such or such a person is untrustworthy, or has such or such a malady, or that it is about to rain or clear. Something, he knows not what, in the person or the sky, informs him; the person or sky is significant, although the difference that makes it so is undiscerned. CHAPTER VIII. RETROSPECT. xlviil 1. Retrospect is discernment of what is given as being the whole or a part of the obvimis past or as having belonged to the obvious past, e.g. the time antecedent to Cosmos, the foundation of Rome, Caesar, a past experience of the subject. Retrospects com- prehend a remarkable species which deserves a mono- poly of the name, remembrance, viz. retrospect that seems to be immediate discernment of a past event undergone by the subject. The seeming is obviously inconsistent, but none the less a valid differentia. I shall restrict to this signification my use of the term, Remembrance, and correspondingly that of the term, Memory. Memory I understand to be the faculty of remembrance. According to Sir William Hamilton, " Memory is the power of retaining knowledge in the mind, but out of consciousness." l This is clearly a wide departure from the common idea of remembrance and memory, and by no means an improvement. It supposes a man to be remembering what he is not thinking about, e.g. the foundation of Rome or the 1 Lectures on Metaphysics. Lecture XX. chap. vm. KETROSPECT. 75 equality of the angles of a triangle to two right angles. It evinces the confusion in which the ideas are in- volved, and the need of a new classification. 2. Eetrospect sometimes refers to events that were experiences of the subject but are quite forgotten, e.g. that during a certain remote period the subject regularly breakfasted, dined, and slept. The object of this retrospect is not immediately, but is mediately, given as having been an event undergone by the subject. At first sight the retrospect opposed to remembrance presents the aspect of an inference, and belongs to a kind of mental event of which I shall treat by-and-by (xcv.) under the name, quasi-infer- ence. If the subject endeavour to explain the origin of the knowledge it involves, the first suggestion likely to oner itself is that it sprang from an inference too rapid for notice, and based on the evidence that priva- tion of regular breakfasts, dinners, and sleep during any considerable period is an event too conspicuous to be forgotten. That no such inference obtained or was possible, is proved by the fact that, ever since the period in question, he was unconsciously cognisant of the pretended conclusion. The knowledge was an unconscious product of experience, a kind of mental event which will occupy our attention by-and-by. The contrast of this knowledge with that of remembrance serves to reveal in the latter a superior degree of intimacy and satisfactoriness attaching to the differentia, seeming of immediateness. 3. Having in view the difference which the above contrast exposes in mnemonical knowledge, we are able to distinguish a species of remembrance that 76 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l would otherwise be liable to be confounded with non- mnemonical retrospect. A change from adversity to prosperity occasions a change of the customs of a life which tends to make the dreary ones a frequent object of retrospect They are not forgotten, they are re- membered, not directly, but by means of an ideal event that serves as type in respect of which they are anti- types, — a true concept. Nevertheless the retrospect seems to be an immediate discernment of a past event undergone by the subject, and is therefore a remem- brance. XLIX. 1. It is probable that the idea of time is developed piecemeal, and that its constituent which symbolises the past originates in a remembrance. It is consis- tently conceivable that the infant, undergoing remem- brance before he had undergone expectation, should have the past incidentally for object before an ideal symbol of the future obtained in him. An ideal symbol of the past is not possible apart from one of the present, so that the infant's idea of the past, un- connected with a reference to the future, must sym- bolise the past in contrast to a present. It is also consistently conceivable that the infant, undergoing expectation before he had undergone remembrance, should have the future incidentally for object before ideal symbol of the past had obtained in him, the fittaft being given in contrast to the present. And, since consistency does not object to the possibility of a gradual development of the idea of Time, such a de- chap. viii. RETROSPECT. 77 velopment is probable. When the origin of an idea can be consistently imputed to experience, common sense demands that it be. so imputed, though the notion of an A priori origin of the idea be consistent. It seems to me probable that expectation contributes its quota of the idea of Time, viz. the symbol of the future, before remembrance develops a symbol of the past. Irritability having caused the first suckling of the nurse's breast, when the infant's mouth again en- counters the nipple redintegration would connect with the tactile perception the idea of the associated satis- faction as being imminent, determining an expectation, and therein a symbol of the future. It seems to me probable that the circumstances of the infant favour the obtaining of such an expectation in advance of a remembrance, and, therefore, the objectivity of the future in advance of that of the past. 2. The thesis that expectation caused by redinte- gration engenders the idea of the future, is corroborated by its explanatoriness. It explains the great law of expectation of the like of the past, — how we are determined to count on a future that mainly resembles the past, — a law which probably determines or con- tributes to determine our belief that, for an indefinite time, nature will function as she has functioned. The infant's first idea of the future, according to this theory, is the idea of an imminent event like one he had pre- viously experienced. He makes no comparison, he discerns no likeness, he does not refer to the past ; but what he anticipates is the like of a past object of his experience. Because he experienced that object, he expects the like. The future he expects is necessarily the counterpart of what he experienced ; but events 78 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l will instruct him to expect variety as well as similarity, only the variety is to be superficial, the similarity fundamental 3. Let retrospect that has for object what is given as past event be distinguished as historical, and that which has for object past time unconnected with event as transcendent. A retrospect that has for object the foundation of Eome, or that I breakfasted this morn- ing, is historical ; one that contemplates time anterior to Cosmos is transcendent. CHAPTEE IX. SUBSTANCE. L. One of the leading intentions of this chapter is to define hind and essence. A kind being a species of sum, it behoves to define the term " sum " before defining Kind. But a definition of the term, sum, depends upon a definition of the term " unit." Now, the differentia of the kind, units, is far from obvious, seeing that a unit may itself consist of units. To find out what is common and proper to units that do and units that do not consist of units, for example, to a monad such as an atom, an emotion, a volition, and such a unit as one hundred, one thousand, one million, is not an easy matter. I shall have to tax the attention of the reader in quest of the differentia of Unity. Essence being a species of attribute, I should define " attribute " before I define essence. But, attri- bute having been hitherto held to be a correlative of substance, it becomes necessary, as a preliminary of a definition of attribute, to examine the idea of Sub- stance. But this idea breaks down, or rather evapor- ates, under scrutiny. The valid idea which it masks proves to be that of the correlatives " concrete " and 80 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. " attribute." Not the speciosity, Substance, but the reality " concrete," turns out to be the support of attribute. I define essence and accident, showing that essence differs from quality. I briefly consider the three grand divisions of attributes, viz. qualities, changes or events, and relations. I next attach the term, substance, relieved of the erroneous part of its meaning, to a signification to" which it has been always tending, making it the common name of all parts of the to irav that are naturally ungenerable and annihila- ble ; and I exhibit a superlative attribute of substance which makes it an equivalent of Mind, viz. orderly concurrence of aptitudes. LI. Quantity is that in a thing in virtue of which it is possible for the thing to be greater, less, or equaL It is the pivot of the relations " greaterness," " lessness," and equality. After I have defined Quality I shall show that quantity is a species of quality. LII. 1. We have no common name for subjects of plurality, things of which each consists of two or more things, but the received meaning of the term, sum, recommends it as the best to connote bare plurality. The difference between a sum and a whole is not chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 81 obvious. Wholes are a species of sums, viz. sums of which the units are so related that the relation gives to their plurality the aspect of being involved in unity, e.g. the sum of the molecules that constitute a stone. The mind can at will eliminate from the idea of the parts of a whole the symbol of totality, and consider them discretively as constituting a mere sum,— a non- total sum. Euclid avails himself of this power in the axiom, The sum of the parts is equal to the whole. 2. Plurality, or the differentia of sums, is a species of quantity. It does not necessarily nor always exhibit the aspect of quantity. Crowds, herds, swarms, constellations, dots composing a picture, are only occa- sionally apprehended as subjects of quantity. The feature common and proper to all perceptible pairs, that common and proper to all perceptible triads, that to all perceptible quaternions, that to all perceptible units, do not necessarily nor always exhibit the aspect of quantity. 3. Certain sums may be distinguished as eccentric, others as uneccentric. The sum consisting of creation, Caesar, mathematics, and madness, is an example of the kind, eccentric sums ; a regiment, a bird, a flock, of uneccentric sums. LIII. Let monad be the common name of things that are not sums. This extends the signification of the term beyond what Leibnitz assigned to it, but advantage- G 82 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l ously, and so as to be easily accommodated to the meaning it displaces. Atoms, souls, sensations, ideas, emotions, volitions, are examples of monads. LIY. The term, unity, is frequently employed as denoting the opposite of plurality. This is incorrect, for there are pluial as well as non-plural units, eg. the sum, a hundred guineas, is one of ten plural units that con- stitute the sum, a thousand guineas. What then is a writ f The definition depends upon the discrimina- tion of two unobvious kinds, one of which may be termed pseudo-monads, and the other veiled sums. Certain sums tend to pass for monads, e+g. a stone, a mountain; they consist of concrete parts, but the plurality is masked; such sums I distinguish as pseudo-monads. When the object of attention is a sum that is given as consisting of sums, eg. a hundred guineas consisting of five piles of twenty guineas each, the plurality of the parts is obscured, — not hidden, but is as it were veiled. Accordingly certain sums exhibit the aspect of veiled plurality and others that of un- veiled plurality. A sum of which the plurality is veiled may be termed a veiled sum. Xow monads, pseudo-monads, and veiled sums, are objects that re- semble each other and differ from all other things in this respect, that they are without unveiled plurality. Privation of unveiled plurality then is the dijfcirmtia of a species of objects. The name, unit, is the common name of these objects. Accordingly, a w*it is an object that is destitute of mrnmttd plurality. Unity chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 83 or the essence of a unit is the opposite, not of plurality, but, of unveiled plurality. LV. 1. A Kind is a sum that comprises all the like of a given archetype, — or comprises all the like of any one of its units. It may be objected that twins, and the assembly of all men on the day of judgment, are sums that comprise all the like of a given archetype but are not kinds. They are kinds, but kinds viewed under a strange aspect, and the strangeness hides the aspect of kind. The ordinary idea of a kind contains no symbol of a limit of the sum it symbolises, and the effect of this privation is that when all the individuals of a kind are presented to the mind as a sum of which the limit is conspicuous, the sum does not seem to be a kind. The local boundary of such sums as Twins and An assembly of all nZ jars upon mental habit when we are challenged to regard them as kinds. By the way, when I say that the ordinary idea of a kind does not contain a symbol of a limit of the sum it symbolises, I do not imply that it symbolises an infinite or an indefinite sum. It is one thing to sym- bolise a sum without symbolising a limit of the sum, and quite another to symbolise it as limitless — as infinite or indefinite. Euclid's contrast of the sum of the parts and the whole instances the possibility of thinking the several without assigning it a limit, and of not assigning it a limit without apprehending it as limitless ; the whole, in this contrast, being the several viewed as bounded, and the sum of the parts being the same several not so viewed. As regards the offence 84 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. to mental habit which tends to discredit the definition, it is easily atoned by dividing Kinds into those that are and those that are not important, and by sweeping out of sight, as unimportant kinds, all those which the habit ignores. 2. A cause which it is instructive to consider has contributed to hide the general aspect of sums that might be, but are not, accounted kinds. No sums save those that make themselves objects of public knowledge could acquire a non-descriptive name. Therefore the lingual instinct assigns no non-descrip- tive name to kinds that are not objects of public knowledge. The consequent nominal exclusion of sums unobvious to public notice from the rank of kinds tends to hide their general aspect even from the philosopher. What is instructive in the consideration of this tendency is that it brings to light an important part of the method of the lingual instinct. A sign that is at first instinctively employed to denote an individual and is then proper to that individual, is afterwards; through the influence of the faculty of recognition, employed to denote other like individuals, and so becomes common. In becoming common it acquires a connotation, viz. connotation of the kind to which the individuals belong, so that the kind is necessarily an object of public knowledge with those amongst whom the common name is in use. The connotation suggests the employment of the name slightly modified as name of the kind, — a proper name of an object of public knowledge. Thus is fashioned an instrument of great utility whereby an object of public knowledge is made to be an indicator of one not publicly known. I chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 85 LVI. Let self-sufficient be the common name of things that depend for existence on nothing extrinsic to them other than time and space. Cosmos is an example of the kind Self-sufficients. Whether it contain parts that are self-sufficients, is a question which seems to be insoluble. Every body and atom may, for aught we know, depend for existence on every, or some other, body or atom. Such an interdependence may consti- tute the universe a monad. Let self-insufficient be the common name of all things that depend for existence on something other than time and space. The depend- ence may be such that it tends to be manifest when the subject is objective. Let such dependence be dis- tinguished as inabditive, and dependence of the oppo- site kind as abditive. Let self-insufficients of which the dependence tends to be manifest be distinguished as inabditive, and all others as abditive. The assign- ment of a general place and a name to the kind, abditive self-insufficients, does not imply that there is such a reality as an abditive self-insufficient. It implies, in this direction, nothing more than that the idea of the kind is not inconsistent. The kinds, Qualities, Eelations, and Events, are species and ex- amples of the sub-genus, inabditive self-insufficients. LVII. Let concrete be the name of a complement of inab- ditive self-insufficients that is either a self-sufficient or an abditive self-insufficient, and let the adjective, con- 86 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l crete, signify the state of being a concrete. The logical meaning of the word has fitted it beyond any other to take on the new meaning which I now assign to it. I take leave also to coin the word " inconcrete" signifying, as noun, reality that is not a concrete, and, as adjective, the state of being such a reality. Con- creteness differentiates a species of sums of self- insufficients. The life, weight, and memory of a man constitute a sum of inabditive self-insufficients that is not a complement and is not concrete; the sum of the inabditive self-insufficients which comprise the man is a complement of self-insufficients and a concrete. An inconcrete sum of inabditive self-insufficients is an inabditive self-insufficient ; a concrete sum of them is either a self-sufficient or an abditive self-insufficient LVIII. There are abditive self-insufficients that contain concretes, e.g. a bodily organ. The relation of vital connection with an organism is essential to an organ and makes it an inabditive self-insufficient, whereas the solid part is a concrete. Every correlate that contains a solid part, e.g. a parent, a child; a sun, a planet ; a lawyer, a client ; a physician, a patient ; is an abditive self-insufficient that contains a concrete. LIX. 1. An Attribute is an inabditive self-insufficient, e.g. Solidity. It may be either an alienable or inalienable chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 87 attribute of its concrete ; e.g. memory is an alienable, solidity an inalienable, attribute of its concrete. An attribute supposes a concrete support, but may have also an inconcrete support; e.g. the virility of virile elo- quence, being a modification of the attribute, eloquence, has that attribute for support, and also the concrete supposed by the supporting attribute, viz. the orator. A support of an attribute is termed Subject. Subjects are either concrete or inconcrete. An attribute of an inconcrete subject is also an attribute of a concrete one. We tend to think of support as something several from, and altogether independent of, the thing supported; but this is not true of the species of supports termed subjects. What a subject supports is a constituent of the support, e.g. lead supports its own weight, and the weight is a constituent of the support. Oversight of this notable difference of sub- jective from all other support occasioned an inconsist- ent idea, — that of Substance. Unable to imagine the possibility of a concrete support of attributes, and necessitated to ascribe to them a support that is not itself an attribute, philosophers were obliged to adopt the inconsistent thesis, that a subject of the kind supposed by all attributes is not an attribute nor a complement of attributes. To this impossible thing they gave the name "substance." They were not deterred by the fact that an analysis of body finds in it no room for a constituent that is not an attribute, e.g. an unextended thing serving as support of a solidity, an extension, a figure, a mobility, and a weight Combine in thought these six qualities and nothing else, and your synthesis has constituted a symbol of a body. Try to enhance it by the addition of something unextended serving as support to the six qualities, and 88 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. you find no room for improvement. It is surprising that the superfluity survived the raking it received from Locke: it is as robust in the philosophy of Hamilton as in that of Aristotle. Hamilton puts it as being an incomprehensible thing imposed by a neces- sity of thought, — a thing that is neither attribute nor concrete, but somehow clothed or penetrated with attri- butes. Attributes he holds to be intelligible things, and some if not all to be intuitable. He gives room for the understanding that if it were possible to imagine an intelligible support of attributes the un- intelligible one named substance should be rejected by philosophy; and the idea of a concrete support of attributes being the idea of an intelligible support, is entitled, on this understanding, to expel and replace that of substance. The name Substance, however, has been tending to a meaning different from that in which it has been hitherto understood,— a meaning of great importance to philosophy, and one carrying with it so much of the old signification of the term that the latter is ready to put on its new import with scarce any violence to mental habit. In ridding philosophy of an obstruction I am not to deprive language of a familiar and useful term. After I have examined the three grand divisions of attributes, Qualities, Changes, and Eelations, I shall explain the new old meaning which I recognise as rightfully belonging to the term, Substance. 2. Attributes are either apparitional or inappari- tional, in other words, either sensible or supersensible. Solidity, colour, and figure, are examples of apparitional attributes: power, not given as discernible by sense, e.g. that of the moving billiard-ball to cause motion, chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 89 is an example of inapparitional attributes. Inappari- tional attributes occasioned the scepticism of Hume. The structure of his mind obliged him to assume that sensible experience comprises experience, and that be- lief in the existence of what is not given as existing by sensible experience, is groundless. He accordingly- dismissed the symbol of Power from his philosophy, and substituted that of necessary-connection. 3. Attributes comprehend three species, viz. Qua- lity, Change, and Eelation, whereof two, viz. quality and change, are, in respect of all other things save the third, prescindable ; Eelation exhibits no peculiarity that completely separates it from Quality and Change. It has hitherto eluded definition. LX. 1. A Quality is an attribute that is a part of its subject, and either an inseparable part or one that tends to be permanent Qualities accordingly compre- hend the two species, separable and inseparable quali- ties. All human faculties on which the existence of the subject does not depend, — for instance Eeason, a faculty which the subject sometimes survives, — are examples of the kind, separable qualities. According to certain philosophers quality and essence are identical, and accident is opposed to quality. This division supposes essence to be quality on which the existence of the subject depends. Convenience demands a more extended meaning for the term, essence. If it be restricted to inseparable quality we imply that there 90 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. are kinds void of essence, e.g. the kinds, Essence, Ked- ness, Benevolence, Solidity, and the kind, Vertebrata, of which the essence is concrete. Essence is that which, by its resemblances and differences, determines the general place of a thing — its place in the system of kinds. Subject and essence may be identical, e.g. redness is its own essence. Essence may be concrete, e.g. a spine is the essence of an individual of the kind, Vertebrata. Accident is attribute that does not deter- mine the general place of its subject, e.g. this or that thought or emotion, or the state of health or illness, is an attribute that does not determine the general place of the subject. The existence of the material orb known as Mars does not depend on its motion around the sun; the motion therefore is an accident of the orb: but it is a part of the essence of the planet, M^rs, for regular motion around a sun is essential to a planet. The being projected or having been projected is, relatively to the projected body, an accident, but it is part of the essence of a projectile. To possess medical skill is an accident of the possessor qud man, but it is part of the essence of the physician. These examples expose an ambiguity of the term Subject which tends to envelope our ideas of essence and accident in some confusion. To prevent confusion, it needs only that what is denoted by the term Subject be carefully dis- tinguished, mindful that what is essence relatively to a given thing may be accident relatively to a part of the thing ; e.g. revolution around a sun is essential to the planet, Mars, whereas it is a mere accident of the orb, Mars, which is but a part of the planet The acuteness of an acute angle is the essence of the angle qud acute, and an accident of the angle qud mere angle. II chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 91 2. Essence is either natural or factitious, important or unimportant The essences of organised things are examples of natural essence ; those of the kinds, houses, and physicians, of factitious essence. The seventy- sevenths of solids, men born on Friday, the cows in John's field, are examples of kinds of which the essences are unimportant. 3. Attributes are either essential or accidental. Those on which the existence of the subject depends are essential; all others are accidental. Eevolution around the sun is an essential attribute of the planet, Mars, and an accidental attribute of the orb, Mars. The life of a man is an essential quality ; his visual faculty an accidental one. 4. Quantity is a species of quality. It is common and convenient to treat of quantity as though it were the opposite of quality, and for the sake of convenience we shall continue to do so. Custom sanctions the employment of the generic name of a thing as connot- ing privation of the differentia of some species of the genus to which the name refers, for example, in the depreciatory assertion " he is an animal," or " she is a mere female," or in the contrast of "ideas" and "things," or that of "words" and "acts," whereas words are acts and ideas are things. By nominally opposing Quantity to Quality we merely oppose it to all other qualities. 5. Let the term, Protean quality, denote an accident the specific like of which is a condition sine qua non of the existence of the subject, e.g. the figure of a piece of wax, and let a kind of such accidents, e.g. the kind, figure, 92 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. be termed a Protean kind. The existence of a piece of wax depends upon the Protean kind, Figure, but not upon any individual of the kind. I term the kind Protean on the metaphorical pretext that an abstract figure underlies every particular figure, as the Eealists supposed an abstract Man to be the basis of every concrete man and to be one and the same in all con- crete men, — one and the same variously metamor- phosed. — Note that the substitution of one Protean quality for another of the same kind in a concrete, e.g. the substitution of a square form for a round one in a piece of wax, does not affect the temporal identity or duration of the concrete. The temporal identity of a concrete is determined by the temporal identities of its qualities that are not Protean. The importance of this observation will appear when we treat of Sub- stance. LXI. A Change is a temporal beginning or end or a series of such beginnings and ends. It is either natural or supernatural. Natural change is either optional or unoptional. The beginning and end of a volition constitute an optional change; all other change is unoptional. An unoptional change is a beginning or end, or a beginning and end, of something naturally generable and annihilable, involving a metamorphosis of something not naturally generable and annihilable, the latter being divested of one naturally generable and annihilable attribute and clothed with another, e.g. the naturally ungenerable constituent of water divested of liquidity and clothed with hardness or chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 93 aeriformity. By the way, — unoptional or meta- morphic change supposes that what changes remains the same. Supernatural change is a beginning or an end not naturally caused, e.g. a creation. An event is either a change or a beginning, an end and an inter- vening duration, e.g. the beginning, duration, and end of Caesar. LXII. 1. A relation supposes two or more things; the relation of a thing in one state or circumstance to itself in another is not an exception. For example, the relation of resemblance between the Bismarck of yesterday and the Bismarck of to-day supposes the two different circumstances yesterday and to-day. Identity may appear to be a relation and an instance of a relation that does not suppose two or more things. But identity is not a relation. It is compounded with a relation on which the discernment of it depends, and so is mistaken for a relation. That with which it is confounded is the relation of two or more aspects of a single remote object, e.g. that of Bismarck existent yesterday and that of Bismarck existent to-day, to the single enduring object Bismarck ; or that of the aspect " four " and that of the aspect " two pairs " to the same real sum ; or that of the aspect " acclivity " and that of the aspect " declivity " to the same incline ; or that of the aspect "sum of the parts" and the aspect " whole " to the same complement of parts, 2. Belation is either extrinsic or intrinsic. Con- 94 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l sidered in respect of the things related a relation is ex- trinsic, e.g. the fraternity of two brothers is extrinsic to each of them; considered in respect of a subject of which it is a constituent, a subject that is not one of the things related, e.g. the mutual relation of any two qualities of the same concrete gud constituent of the concrete, a relation is intrinsic. A given relation may be extrinsic in respect of one subject and intrinsic in respect of another. Extrinsicality distinguishes ex- trinsic relations from qualities, but intrinsic relations being constituents of their subjects, their difference from quality is as remote from saliency as the differ- ence between two primary colours. LXIII. 1. We now revert to Substance. By a change of connotation we may annex to the term Substance a signification which it has always been tending to acquire. The thesis that the Universe is a series of Universes which either spring or are created out of nothing, and either naturally return to nothing or are supernaturally annihilated, could not be seriously entertained by a sane mind. We are constrained to believe in the duration or temporal identity 1 of the Universe, or rather of a concrete part of it. But parts of it are of comparatively brief duration, e.g. the forms we impose on wax, the liquidity which the atoms or molecules of melting ice assume, the aeriformity which 1 Duration is coincidence of the same with a divisible part of time or with all time. An instant is an indivisible part of time, — a mere limit of a part of time. chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 95 the same atoms or molecules assume in becoming gases. The Universe, therefore, consists of parts of which the duration is, and parts of which the duration is not, commensurate with its duration. The former are those which science allows to be naturally ungenerable and unannihilable, the latter are naturally generable and annihilable. The former, as being in the relation of support to the latter, may be distinguished as funda- mental, — fundamental constituents of the Universe. Every natural change, volition excepted, is a meta- morphosis of a fundamental constituent of the Universe, a constituent that is divested of one naturally gener- able and annihilable attribute and endued with another. Certain metamorphoses of fundamental constituents are obvious, e.g. growth ; others are unobvious, needing the eye of science to detect them, e.g. lightning, rain, the apparent annihilation of fuel. Now the idea of Substance is in part the offspring of metamorphic change symbolising not only support of attribute but also persistence under change and transcendent dura- tion. Excluding what error inserted into the idea, viz. that what it symbolises is inconcrete, we come by a definition of substance that eclectically reconciles Locke and Aristotle. It is this, — a substance is a naturally ungenerable concrete. 2. A substance may be either a self-sufficient or an abditive self-insufficient. 3. For brevity's sake let the naturally ungenerable be known as the perdurable, and all other entity as the non-perdurable. Substance and its inalienable qualities are perdurable. 96 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. 4. Substance is either material or immaterial That of which solidity is given as being a constituent is material ; all other substance is immaterial. An im- material substance capable of being a subject of con- sciousness is a soul or spirit. 5. A material substance is either an atom or a body; the former if it do not, the latter if it do, consist of separable material parts. Although ex- perience acquaints us with no atom of a size percep- tible by sense, an atom is not necessarily minute. 6. As being a substance composed of mobile sub- stances, — a concrete composed of mobile concretes, — the material Universe includes amongst its qualities a Protean quality, viz. an individual of the Protean kind, arrangements or collocations of the concrete parts of the Universe. It is impossible that the material Universe could exist out of some collocation of its concrete parts, and no such collocation is neces- sary to its existence. Non-perdurable quality, then, is coeval with material substance, and if the latter be pre -eternal so also is the former. As regards the material Universe the perdurable is fundamental to but not antecedent to the non-perdurable. Nor, if the material substance of the Universe be pre-eternal, is it antecedent to change: it is fundamental to but not antecedent to change. There is no escape from this thesis but in the hypothesis that material substance is the creature of a spiritual substance — a Creator. This hypothesis is not inconsistent, but it is disgraced by its implication, of a pre-eternity of inactivity passed by the Creator antecedently to the creation, and of a capricious termination of the pre-eternity by a creation. chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 97 The mind to which Being without dignity is a sty— the reverential mind — has to choose between pre- eternal substance undergoing coeval change, and a Creator culpable of a pre -eternity of idleness ter- minated by a caprice. The former of these hypotheses is burdened by the condition of infinite regress, but it is not inconsistent. 7. We have irresistible though undemonstrative proof that certain non-perdurable attributes, amongst others dynamic attributes, depend upon certain colloca- tions of material substances. When vapour locally succeeds to gas, water to vapour, and ice to water, different collocations of material substances are given as being determining conditions and essential accom- paniments of non- perdurable attributes; a different collocation of the same substances is given as determin- ing a different set of attributes. An organism is a collocation of material substances, and like organisms are given as being, the subjects of like susceptibilities, powers, and instincts; different organisms as being the subjects of different susceptibilities, powers, and instincts. We have cogent evidence for the belief that changes of collocation of the substances constitut- ing the brain and nervous system are the proximate causes of all consciousness except volition. The evidence has swept the bulk of the scientific world to the conclusion that all change either is or depends on change of collocation of substances. This implies that what is termed volition is an effect of a motion and collocation of material substances, a change that obtains outside consciousness. The conclusion tramples upon a datum which is the pivot of human dignity and of morality, the datum which affirms that man is H 98 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. capable of choice, in other words, that the human will is free. Is it wise to allow undemonstrative evidence to undermine a datum of such importance, or modest to pretend to knowledge that, in the domain of Nature, no change is possible but what either is or depends upon change of collocation of material substances ? Does not the dogmatism of such a pretension bear to that of theology a ratio about equal to that of a beam to a mote ? 8. Is an inconcrete self-sufficient possible ? If the idea of such an entity be inconsistent I have failed to discern the inconsistency, but, happily, philosophy is not pressed to tax itself for an answer. 9. The primordial state of substance is commonly held to have been chaotic. Mythology, the Mosaic revelation, and a favourite conjecture of modern science, affirm the antecedence of Chaos in respect of the Cosmos. The evidence that suggested and sup- ports the theory of evolution deserves as regards our astral system serious consideration, but does it warrant an inductive leap to the conclusion, that all material substance was primarily and during a pre-eternity a chaos ? A part of the Universe might lapse into a chaotic state, recover, and exhibit signs of the recovery. This possibility protests against the inference of a universal pre-eternal chaos. Abortion rebukes all effort to infer the history of eternity. That an important part of event has been what is fitly described by the epithet, evolutionary, and that natural laws include laws of evolution, — laws of change from a lower to a higher type, — are theses so strongly attested that scarce any philosopher is now minded to chap. ix. . SUBSTANCE. . 99 dispute them ; but, to jump from these theses to the judgment that all substance was pre-eternally a sum of substances which, had there been any eye to observe them, would have exhibited no difference one from the other except difference of quantity, and that the pre- eternity was brought to a close by a beginning of differentiation and integration, is unwarrantable. The utmost warranted by the evidence is that the to irav has been temporarily, and either wholly or in part, chaotic. It may have pre-eternally alternated between chaotic and cosmic states, or parts of it may have so alternated, but Chaos has not been more a matrix of Cosmos than Cosmos of Chaos; and, in respect of attributes, the latter must be as heterogeneous as the former, for every difference of a developed thing supposes a corresponding difference in its embryo. Evolution is not, as Mr. Spencer defines it, a change from homogeneity to heterogeneity, but a change from heterogeneity that is not, to heterogeneity that is, of a nature to be perceptible by sense. 10. Is the substance that constitutes the material Universe extended, or unextended? The hypothesis that it is unextendedy and that nothing real corresponds to the ideas of Space and Extension, seems to be con- sistent. It seems to afford a consistent theory of the Universe, — indeed a simpler one than the datum which encumbers being with space and extension. The soul or subject of consciousness may be an unex- tended substance connected with the other unextended substances constituting its organism, and having for its habitat a composite of still other unextended substances; and our idea of the connection, though symbolising it as being a relation of an unextended thing to extended 100 THE ALTERNATIVE. book t. things, may be valid as enabling its subject to elicit event according to anticipation and intention. The likeness or unlikeness of an idea to a remote object which it symbolises is of no practical importance. We have valid knowledge of things exterior to con- sciousness when the things and their laws are sym- bolised by ideas which, though dissimilar to both, enable us to anticipate their events and to act so as to ^elicit anticipated events. The illiterate man is not ignorant of sound, heat, light, colour, because he does not apprehend them as molecular storms. The pro- gress of science is ever more and more undoing the prejudice that the remote objects of knowledge resem- ble our ideas of them. Kant has made bold to deny the existence of a reality answering to the idea of Space, and a considerable part of the philosophic world has acquiesced. It may be objected that, if there be no reality resembling the idea of Space and Extension, geometry must be a chimera, not a science. The answer is that there are realities and conditions of reality which correspond to, without resembling, those ideas, and geometry is, in a certain degree, the condi- tion of a correct cognitive relation. On the other hand, no show of inconsistency forbids the tenet that substances are both simple and extended, that they are void of substantive parts, — the parts to which the controversy respecting infinite divisibility refers. It is true that extension supposes such parts as halves, quarters, eighths, etc. But it does not suppose them to be self-sufficients. They may be incapable of existence apart from the whole of which they are parts. The qualities that compose the whole, minus the ex- tension, may be such that the like could not be a complement in connection with any greater or less chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 101 extension, nor therefore constitute a self-sufficient part of the thing. The controversy respecting infinite divisibility has been kept alive by the inadvertent assumption that an extended thing must be a self- sufficient, and must consist of cohering parts, an assumption which a moment's scrutiny dissipates. It seems on the contrary to be a necessary truth that bodies consist of extended parts which are not sub- stances and do not cohere ; for a cohesion is a relation, and a relation supposes two or more related things of which one, apart from all other things, could not, as support, afford the relation possibility of existence; so that cohesion supposes things which do not consist of cohering parts. Now, cohering things, to constitute an extended thing, must be themselves extended ; for no sum of cohering unextended things could be an extended thing ; therefore extended things consist of extended parts without mutual cohesion. The necessity of the truth may be discerned from another point of view. Hardness that depends upon cohesion, e.g. that of adamant, supposes a hardness that does not depend upon cohesion ; it is a sum of hardnesses of the latter kind. Hardness of the latter kind may be distin- guished as elemental, that of the former as non- elemental. Elemental hardness supposes its subject to consist of parts that are extended, but are not self- sufficients nor mutually cohesive : indeed elemental hardness may be held to be solidity proper, and the term, solidity, to have a secondary signification when it denotes non-elemental hardness. Admitting, then, that there are realities corresponding to the ideas of Time and Space, we are free to suppose that bodies are composed of extended parts which are not themselves aggregates of cohering parts, but consist of extended THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. 102 Luteed in by any sign of inconsistency to a conclusion ^■pering the question whether the substances that poee the material Universe are or are not extended. Common sense, however, prefers the thesis, that matter is extended. 1 1 The idea of the extended self-insufficieTU affords -oat to minds that fail to find footing on the notion of . jjjjyg divisibility. They find a terra firma in the unity which it supposes. It will not be amiss to taniliarise the mind with this idea, and with the con- sistency of the repugnant thesis, that Bodies are self- insufficient. The mobility of bodies and their change- ableness as to mutual situation seem at first sight to suppose that they are self-sufficients, but the seeming avows its deceptiveness to a little scrutiny. A body xn«y depend for existence on the remainder of the material Universe, and, if it do, which supposes the material Universe to be a single substance or monad, it is, in spite of its mobility, a self- insufficient. Familiarity with the consistency of the thesis, that Bodies are self-insufficients, helps to undo our tend- ency to mistake unguaranteed data for necessary truths. It is not impossible that the thesis might one day prove to be the key, and the sole one, to a perfectly satisfactory explanation of the Universe. If it should, it would command and would deserve to com- mand universal acceptance at the cost of superseding data which, in the present state of our knowledge, it would be absurd to discredit. If we were lamed by the error, that mobility supposes the movable thing to be a self-sufficient, we should be able, when all other conditions of that explanation obtained, to profit by ^ chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 103 them. The familiarity tends to rid the mind of this kind of obstruction. 12. Leibnitz held that unextended things are not interiorly modifiable by interaction. This tenet banishes the theory of natural causation as regards such things, and substitutes that of Pre-established Harmony. Its reason is that parts which admit of local change are a sine qua non of susceptibility to modification. The idea of Cause is the offspring of intuition of motion, and is all but invariably connected with the idea of motion. This has begotten the prejudice that causa- tion supposes motion, a prejudice to which we owe the ingenious hypothesis'of pre-established harmony. How baseless it is appears" when we consider that between a cause and its immediate effect there intervenes no means, nothing that could be considered explanatory of the " how " of the cause. The vast variety of modi- fications which the thinking substance undergoes, though there be good reason to suppose that it depends on changes of extended parts (those of the brain), is totally unexplained by such changes. The antecedents that explain their sequents are, if any, extremely few. In view of our almost utter dearth of explanation as regards the " how " of the operation of cause, it seems strange that we should think ourselves competent to judge that there can be no natural interaction between unextended things or between extended and unex- tended things. The naturally ungenerable accident, weight, is an example of a modification of one thing by another that cannot be supposed to depend on a local change of parts. 1 3. Greek myth intimates that my exposition of Sub- i 104 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. stance is a revival of a pre-historic philosophy. What should it symbolise by the metamorphoses of Pan but those of to irav } — all natural change, or the substantive Universe ever putting off and on non- perdurable attributes ? The symbol almost literally indicates what it symbolises, and it is part of a system of symbols which, as being signs of a cosmogony that modern science is only too prone to adopt, corroborate one another. According to this cosmogony Cosmos is the offspring of Chaos. Primordially and pre-eternally Being comprised only Time and Chaos. Besides the attributes adverse to order — the Titans — Chaos in- cluded an attribute or power (Ops) in virtue of which it tended to generate order, so that its concrete con- stituents — its substances — should become constituents of Cosmos. As needing the co-operation of time to engender and to mature her offspring, Ops was the wife of Chronos or Saturn ; but duration was denied to her children, as though Time, jealous of it, devoured every nascent germ of order. At last a beginning of order escaped the notice of Time, and the embryo developed into Cosmos. When it achieved strength that guaranteed a duration which as to infinity rivalled time, Saturn was deposed (not destroyed) by his son Jupiter — Order — Cosmos. So far the philosophy which Greek myth expressed was merely deductive ; but under the figure of the insurrection of the Titans it exhibits signs of a pre-historic geology conversant with the Plutonic upheavals which according to modern geology played so great a part in the causation of the Earth's structure. The Titans hurling fragments of the Earth's crust at Jove, rocks which fell back upon and reburied them, — has not this an imposing air of signi- fying an abortive outbreak of chaotic incandescent -.1- ^-^B^fc^__ l ^••~ - , t chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 105 violence ? Is it not possible that a pre -historic civilisation may have expected a cataclysm which would extinguish science, and sought to give signs of itself to a future civilisation by putting into mythic parcels, portable by barbarian or even savage minds, indications that man had already attained to the height of the interpreting science. That cosmogony tends to shape the idea of the divine is evinced by the Hindoo Trinity consisting of a creator Brahma, a preserver Vischnou, and a destroyer Siva, 14. Substance possesses an attribute in virtue of which it is the equivalent of Mind, the attribute orderly concurrence of aptitudes. The opposed species, disorderly concurrence of aptitudes, seems to have been altogether overlooked, as though there were no concurrent aptitudes in the various parts of Chaos to generate and maintain disorder. Orderly concurrence of aptitudes tends to elicit belief according to a remark- able law, which will have it that the concurrence pre- supposes a Designer. To this law we owe natural theology. The organic kingdom exhibits the most felicitous examples of orderly concurrence of aptitudes ; all reversionary processes, of disorderly concurrence of aptitudes. Brahma and Vischnou symbolise the one, Siva the other. Orderly concurrence of aptitudes is the con- dition sine qua non of the Cosmic character of the to wav, of the organic kingdom, including man, of the human brain, and therein of the proximate conditions of all human design and of human intellection of every kind. It is the source of all the marvels of the world of instinct, the source of science, philosophy, art, skill, and even of religion. Wisdom is its offspring. Its proceedings, on account of their likeness to designed 106 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. actions, have seemed to be the proceeding of an im- personal Reason, — a speciousness that has of late be- gotten the inconsistent theory of "the unconscious idea." It works with and without consciousness, — as mind or as a mere equivalent of mind. In what is known as "reflex" action, when the action is not coupled with consciousness, as in the withdrawal of a paralysed limb from contact with an irritant, or in the instance of a decapitated frog removing with his foot a drop of acid poured upon his back, we have an example of orderly concurrence of aptitudes unconnected with consciousness, and behaving as a mere equivalent of mind. In what is known as consensual action, 1 e.g. the instinctive motion of the eyeballs adjusting them to single vision, a motion assumed to be caused by the visual sensation resulting from the impact of rays on the retinae, orderly concurrence of aptitudes is coupled with consciousness, and behaves as mind. It contains 1 It is probable that the difference which is supposed to separate consensual from reflex action is not real. The action termed consen- sual may be the effect, not of the consciousness supposed to be its cause, but, of the somatic event that is the proximate cause of the consciousness. Analogy protests strongly in favour of this hypothesis. When an extraordinary object of vision causes surprise, the visual per- ception is not antecedent to the surprise. They obtain simultaneously, and therefore as co-effects of the proximate cause of the perception. Recognition involved with sense-perception is not consequent to the perception : both are effects of the same encephalic event. What redintegration annexes to the immediate object of a sense-perception that is not itself the creature of redintegration, e.g. the unseen part of a seen man, tree, or house, is not consequent to visual consciousness of the seen part : both parts are simultaneously perceived and are co-effects of the same encephalic event. When one slips, and, through the raising of a leg, recovers his safe relation to the centre of gravity, he is aware, if he be a practised observer, that consciousness of the slipping is not antecedent to the raising of the leg. The cerebral change that is the proximate cause of his consciousness of slipping is also the proximate cause of his instinctive effort to recover the safe position. chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 107 a divine and an infernal part, the divine being all of it that makes for virtue and wisdom, the infernal that which makes for malignity, impurity, and misery. LXIV. The term, subject, applied to that of which we pre- dicate, is a misnomer, seeing that a negative proposition denies that the so-called subject is a subject, e.g. the proposition, A is not guilty, denies that A is subject relatively to guilt. Let the term denoting that of which one predicates be known as first term of the proposition, and the term denoting what is predicated be known as the second term of the proposition. Let the member of a thesis hitherto denoted by the first term of a proposition be termed first member of the thesis, and that denoted by the second as the third member of the thesis; the copula is the second member. In negative theses the first members are not subjects, and in certain affirmative theses the first members are not subjects. The first member of the thesis expressed by the proposition, The statue is marble, is not a subject, nor is the third an attribute. It might be correctly predicated of the statue that it is a piece of marble, and as correctly of the piece of marble that it is a statue or a stone. LXV. As essences are in respect of concreteness, natural- ness, and importance, so are their kinds; in other 108 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l words, there are concrete and inconcrete, natural and fictitious, important and unimportant, kinds. LXVL Kinds are further divisible into those of which our ideas do, and those of which our ideas do not, form upon discrimination of a determining differentia. The idea of the kind, acute angles, supposes discernment of the differentia, acuteness; that of Mankind forms with- out discernment of the differentia of the kind. Public knowledge does not even now afford a definition of Man. A kind the idea of which does not form upon discernment of a determining difference may be dis- tinguished as primary, kinds of the opposite species as secondary. Secondary kinds comprehend kinds the ideas of which originate inadvertently and kinds the ideas of which originate consciously. The various species of trees are examples of the former, the species Vertebrata of the latter. The former may be dis- tinguished as obvious, the latter as unobvious, second- ary kinds. LXVII. There are essences that are manifested by accidents. Those of the various species of the vegetable and animal kingdoms are so manifested. The essence that differentiates the species Man is manifested by a system of accidents constituting a form similar to that of Caesar, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth. The resem- »_»_. . „__ _ chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 109 bling systems of attributes that manifest the essence in the various individuals of the species differ greatly from one another, — as much as the form of an infant from that of an adult man, or the form of a woman from that of a man, or that of a Hottentot from the form of a shapely European; to say nothing of the endless diversities of people of the same age, country, culture, and pursuit. It is wonderful that such great differences do not exclude the likeness which manifests the specific essence. The frequency with which these similar systems of accidents are presented to the faculty of recognition that refers to Man, so relates them to the mind, that when circumstances lead it to look for the differentia of the human animal an ima- gined sample of them tends to pass for it. But when it is considered that men are often deprived of one or more of the organs that determine the typical form constituting the supposed differentia, philosophy is obliged to acknowledge that what it took to be essence is a mere system of accidents. It cannot, however, surrender the belief that there is a human essence. Inconsistency prevents the surrender. This taxes the inventive faculty and it begets a new idea of the differentia, according to which the differentia is an organic tendency to develope and maintain a human form, — a form like that of Caesar. In like manner we get at the essences of all things that are classed according to their visible qualities, systems of acci- dents being the effects and signs of the essences. The abortive efforts to define Man, — which provoked the irony that flung a plucked chicken into one of the Greek schools, proceeded on the error that mistook for essence the system of accidents which is its effect and sign. 110 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. LXVIII. The bearing of essence on the recognitive faculty- is independent on verbal sign. It excites recognition in the lower animals as well as in man, and the former connect with it no name. When the dog barks at a beggar he manifests recognition, and in that recog- nition the bearing of the essence of the human indi- vidual as well as of the accidents that signify a mendicant animus and habit. The bearing is also inde- pendent on idea of kind. Eecognition, as I shall soon explain (chap, xvi.), excludes reference of its object to a kind. LXIX. 1. Let Thing be the common name of individuals of the summum genus. Is existence essential to things, — to the thing, possibility, as well as to. the thing Substance ? The absolute necessity of a whole to be greater than its part, and of a two and a two to be a four, is a thing that would be though nothing existed save time and space. Its existence — if it can be said to have existence — is independent of the existence involved in such things as atoms, molecules, bodies, spiritual substances, and the attributes of these. Is this necessity an existence, — an entity ? I put the question in order to plead the vagueness which it is likely to evoke in apology for the makeshift division of the summum genus, Things, which I find it convenient to chap. ix. SUBSTANCE. 1 1 1 make. I divide Things into two subgenera, viz. entities, and things which I make free to term quesits ; the former comprising all things to which the popular mind easily imputes reality, the latter such things as possibility and necessity. I do not imply in the name, entities, that existence is proper to entities, — that it is not an attribute of quesits. I leave the question open. This rude division gives us two kinds which we distinguish, as we distinguish primary kinds, without discerning their differentia, and it gives us names of the kinds which suggest the question that elucidates the kinds. One advantage of the name, quesit, is, that it enables us to treat perspicuously and concisely of a kind of object which delusively tends to pass for an abstract idea and to support the doctrine of Abstraction (cxxxv. 8). 2. It may be objected that I class time and space as entities, whereas it is in question, whether realities correspond to our ideas of Time and Space. My classi- fication does not beg this question. The term entity, as I employ it, connotes, not existence, but, objectivity that tends to impose itself on the popular mind as real. The pretension of Time and Space to reality pales before scrutiny, and yet, to deny it is to deny the reality of extension and event, e.g. the existence of matter and motion (lxiii. 10). Common sense pro- tests that in the present state of knowledge such a negation is frivolous. But we shall do well to signalise the great difference between such entities and those of which the entity, body, is an example. Let us accord- ingly divide entities into the two kinds, vacant and non-vacant entities, putting Time and Space as the great exemplars of the former. I leave it to the 112 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. reader to determine in which of these two kinds he will place points, lines, mobile voids, and temporal beginnings and ends. LXX. Infimce species constitute the lowest degree of the scale of kinds. An infima species is a kind of which the individuals differ from one another in no important respect, e.g. circles of an inch diameter. CHAPTEK X. MIND. LXXI. According to Positivism, Mind is merely either — 1st, the consciousness or sum of consciousnesses that obtains at any instant in an individual, or 2nd, the sum of the consciousnesses, both simultaneous and successive, that obtain throughout life in an individual. Their defini- tion transfers the name, Mind, from the subject of con- sciousness, to which spontaneous generalisation had annexed it, to what that generalisation ranked as the determining attribute, — the consciousness. It implies at least distrust of two axioms, one that mind is a durable thing, the other that consciousness is an attri- bute. It must be allowed to the credit of Positivism that it is a method originated and in part determined by a revolt of Common Sense. Deduction that pro- ceeds on axioms, after having achieved one great suc- cess, — Mathematics, — had betrayed speculation into the labyrinth known as Metaphysics, where it wasted human intellect, while Induction, proceeding on un- guaranteed data, was proving itself by its fruits to be the better way. Consequently Metaphysics and its method lost credit with Common Sense, which was I 114 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. then for confining speculation to the pursuit of un- guaranteed knowledge. It would thenceforward have utility and the enablement of precision to be the sole tests of truth. It inadvertently arrogated the liberty of rejecting data inconvenient to its spirit, — those that sloped to Metaphysics. In this its impetus carried it beyond its goal. It could maintain itself on the slope without falling into Metaphysics. It could admit that mind is a concrete or sum of concretes and conscious- ness an attribute, without rolling into pertinent insol- uble questions, saying to these with Horatio, — "It were to inquire too curiously." It has not improved the situation by taking up the alternative that mind is not a durable thing and that a consciousness is not an attribute. I restore the name, Mind, to its old signifi- cation. It denotes a concrete or mm of concretes that either is or involves what lacks nothing essential to a subject of consciovsness. So far as this definition implies, a mind may be material or immaterial, it may exclu- sively consist of an immaterial subject of consciousness, or of this and the brain, nervous system, and other parts of the organs of sense. It does not imply that the subject of consciousness is a spirit. It consists with the consistent thesis that the subject of conscious- ness is an atom, which might, in certain relations, be incapable of consciousness, and might be a constituent of an inorganic body. Solidity and extension do not exclude from their subject susceptibilities and powers adequate to the highest exercises of mind. We have conclusive though undemonstrative evidence that know- ledge mainly depends upon modifications of the brain wrought by experience, that it is neither more nor less than the relation of the subject of consciousness to such modifications, that knowledge acquired by experi- chap. x. MIND. 115 ence antecedently to a certain injury to the brain has been superseded or destroyed without any manifest degradation of power to acquire such knowledge anew from like experience. Mind, therefore, it might not unreasonably be held, includes both those modifications and the modified organ. I shall show by-and-by that those modifications, serving as bases or hinges of unconscious knowledge, are in live connection with conscious knowledge, — that, as unconscious equivalents of reasons, they determine conscious knowledge. When this is proved, it must be admitted that bodily organs are constituents of the human mind ; not accessories, but constituents. Our definition admits of such a conclusion. LXXIL It is obvious that an inception, enhancement, decay, or termination, of an unconscious knowledge, is a mental event ; — that, therefore, mental events include unconscious events. Unconscious mental events are not confined to inceptions, terminations, and changes, of unconscious knowledges. They include redintegra- tive operations, e.g. that which in the mind of the burned child inserts the symbol of ardent heat into the immediate object symbolic of the next luminous thing he sees ; they include the latent bearing of like- ness on the mind, to which, as I shall explain by-and- by, we are indebted for recognition, for the grouping of minima visibilia into bodies, and of bodies into flocks, herds, crowds, swarms, etc. They include the latent mental processes which beget our knowledge of primary kinds and our knowledge of our own customs 116 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l and of those of our social environment, — processes to be fully explained when I treat of Experience (chap, xiv.), whereof they are species. It is not important, nor would it be easy, to ascertain the differentia of mental event. Indefiniteness in respect of it, however, har- bours no risk of error. LXXHI. Let "propensity" be the common name of all mental qualities that are presupposed by motives, intentions,, and actions which proceed upon intention; e.g. the appetites, irascibility, fear, reverence, benevolence, con- science, the moral sense, the aesthetic sense. LXXIV. Mental qualities, whether faculties or propensities, are things unconscious and unintuitable. Apperception is not cognisant of them. They are knowable only through inference. Their existence is signified, to the illative faculty, by the consciousnesses of which they are the mental causes ; e.g., sensations of hunger and thirst and sexual yearnings and pleasures signify to the illative faculty their unintuitable mental causes, the appetites; emotions of anger signify to it their unintuitable mental cause, irascibility ; remembrances, their unintuitable mental cause, memory ; judgments, their unintuitable mental cause, Season. Apperception is cognisant of but one durable part of the mind, viz. •chap. x. MIND. 117 the Ego or subject of consciousness; but whether that be material or immaterial, whether the immediate object symbolic of the Ego be a reality or a mere symbol, it is ignorant. To pretend, as Positivism pre- tends, that consciousnesses comprise the mind, is to deny that there exists a complement of qualities corre- sponding to our ideas of memory, imagination, Eeason, propensity. If there be no such qualities, no differ- ences of the proportions in which they are compounded, in different men, what determines the order of mental ■events, the regular recurrences of like consciousnesses on like occasions, the constancy of character of the individual mind and its differences from other minds ? If the qualities be cerebral, why then, the brain is •either the mind or a part of the mind. The existence of the qualities is presupposed by the events, con- sciousnesses ; and the concrete subject of the qualities, whether material or immaterial or a composite of matter and spirit, is Mind. CHAPTEK XI SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. LXXV. 1. The consciousnesses, hunger, thirst, heat and cold of one's own body, what we are conscious of when relieved of bodily pain, vertigo, nausea, the various thrills that constitute bodily pleasure, are examples of what is commonly denoted by the term, sensation. They suppose discernments of which they are respec- tively objects, but are not given as being themselves discernments. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and tactile consciousness, are intuitions that are given as being involved in sensations, sensations to which it is essential to be intuitive as well as intuited. We intuite the motions and attitudes of our bodies without sight or touch, also the expressions of our faces, and, when we perceive by means of one of the five senses, we intuite the sense as well as the thing perceived. All these intuitions are given as being involved in sensations. What is common and proper to the con- sciousnesses to which we give the common name, sen- sation, is, appearance of being an attribute of the body of the subject. The appearance is such as to make it doubtful whether the consciousnesses be not given as ■tfMm chap, xl SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 119 attributes of composite subjects, each consisting of an inextended Ego or mind and a body ; but the datum is decisive as to the human body being either the exclusive or the partial subject. Accordingly, I define Sensation, consciousness given as being a bodily attri- bute. 2. A sensation is given as being an attribute of a part of the body, e.g. hunger, of the stomach, thirst, of the throat, vertigo, of the head, visual intuition, of the eye, auditory intuition, of the ear. 3. Consciousnesses that differ from sensation only as being latent, or as being inchoate^ I term vice- sensation. Pain that survives the self-consciousness of the sleeping patient is an example of the kind, vice-sensations. The latent consciousness that obtains when the eyes are closed in moderate light is also an example. The kind of consciousnesses to which the name, sensation, is commonly applied, is undefinable except upon condition of dividing it into the species which I denote by the names sensation and vice-sensa- tion. This division brings it within the pale of defini- tion, which is of course a gain for science. It exposes an obvious differentia of one of the species, viz. the being given as a bodily attribute, and also a differentia of the other, which, although obscure, suffices for defini- tion. The genus may be defined, consciousnesses given as bodily attributes, and consciousnesses so resembling these that, although not so given, the likeness binds them together in even a more intimate general union. 4. Let sensation given as being intuitive be distin- guished as quasi-intuitive, and all other sensation as 1 20 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. unintuitive. The term "quasi-intuitive sensation" does not commit us as regards the question whether sensa- tion do or do not involve discernment. 5. It is essential to sensation to be object of apper- ception. This it is that differentiates it from vice-sen- sation. It is sometimes doubly objective. One may- have a moderate pain in the foot to which he some- times attends but is for the most part inattentive : when he attends to it, the sensation is doubly objective, — objective to a perception and an apperception, — to an attentive and an inattentive discernment. The attentive discernment seems to be locally remote from it, as being situated in the head ; the inattentive one to be more than locally near it: they seem to be mutually interpenetrative. 6. Let discernment that is given as being involved in sensation be distinguished as sensational, and all other discernment as non-sensational. LXXVI. 1. Sensational discernment is divisible into sensa- tional perception and sensational apperception. 2. Sensational perception is divisible into sense- perception, i.e. perception given as being involved in a sensation of one of the five senses, and a species that may be named in-looking sensational perception. When one attends to the expression of his oym face, or, with- out looking, to the attitude of his body, the perception chap. xi. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 121 is given as being sensational, but not as being involved /in a sensation of one of the five senses. As being directed inward upon the body of the subject, the per- ception is fitly characterised as in -looking. Actors and unprofessional mimics have frequent occasion for the exercise of in-looking sensational perception. Atten- tion is essential to it and differentiates it especially from apperception qud discernment of bodily events. We apperceive, as well as perceive, our natural lan- guage, and, generally, the motions and attitudes of our bodies. LXXVII. 1. Sense -perception is either attentive or inatten- tive. We usually attend to but a small part of the field of vision, and one whose mind is absorbed by discourse attends to no part of it. 2. Parts of the body of the subject are sometimes objects of attentive sense-perception, as when a man looks at his hand, and sometimes of inattentive sense- perception, as when a man sees, without looking at, his hand, or, inadvertently clasping his hands, perceives by each the other. According to Buffon, these double perceptions are conditions of the discrimination of self from its environment. Inattentive tactile sense-per- ception has so much in common with sensational apper- ception that it takes attention to distinguish between them. Both are sensational inattentive discernments referent to the body of the subject. They differ only in this, that one is, and the other is not, given as being involved in a sensation of one of the five senses, the 122 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. tactile sense being understood to include the whole of the sensitive periphery. 3. It is essential to sense-perception to be con- joined with and objective to apperception, by which it is apprehended as a modification of the Ego. The apperception has especially for object, 1st, the per- ceiving organ, e.g. the eye, ear, nose, mouth, or hand ; 2nd, the relation of the thing perceived to the per- ceiving organ, a relation given as proximate cause of the perception; 3rd, the perception, including the sensation in which it is given as being involved. These are the objects that are extinguished when, owing to ecstasy, apperception is in abeyance and sight persists. Philosophy has all but ignored them. They were noticed by Plato and Aristotle, but no place was assigned to them in the system of Kinds. 4. The immediate object of ordinary sense-percep- tion consists of two constituents, of which one is, in respect of the other, cardinal. The cardinal constituent is either — 1st, solidity, including extension and figure, or, 2nd, colour including extension and figure, or, 3rd, sound, or, 4th, flavour, or, 5th, odour. The dependent constituent is an attribute or sum of attributes which scrutiny finds to be intangible, invisible, inaudible, and neither a flavour nor an odour, eg. the symbols of identity, durability, power, thickness, the life and consciousness of others. When we interrogate the mind as to whether these objects are indeed objects of visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile intui- tion, a negative datum emerges. Sense disavows all but the cardinal constituents of sense-perception. The lingual instinct conforms language to the datum. To chap. xi. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 123 say that one sees the identity involved in the object of a visual perception would be to violate usage. It is agreeable to common sense to distinguish sense- perception into two parts, one which may be termed its cardinal part, corresponding to the cardinal con- stituent of its object, the other, which may be termed its dependent part, corresponding to the dependent constituent of its object. Colour is the cardinal part of visual perception, and discernment of whatever over and above colour extension and figure is objective to the perception, is its dependent part. 5. The dependent part of the object of sense-percep- tion is derived from one or other of two sources, one redintegration, and the other a faculty hitherto unre- corded. This faculty, as supplying immediate objects or constituents of immediate objects beyond the scope of sense intuition, may be denoted the swpersensuous faculty. It contributes to the dependent part of the object of sense -perception such constituents as the symbols of identity, durability, power, thickness, and of the life and consciousness of others. Indeed we owe to it the idea of the third dimension whether in void or thickness, for the experience which occasions the idea does not account for it as being an object of sense. Eedintegration contributes to the dependent object of sense -perception such . constituents as the symbol of solidity annexed to colour when a solid is visually perceived, or the visual aspect of an unseen speaker when he is heard. It furnishes the complements of immediate objects of which only parts bear directly upon sense, as the unseen parts of a seen man or tree or house. 124 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i LXXVIII. The constituents furnished to the objects of sense- perception by the supersensuous faculty occasioned the scepticism of Hume and the elaborate system of Kant. They justified scepticism by refuting the doctrine of Natural Eealism ; but they afforded no ground for the doctrine of knowledge d priori. If knowledge of power is, as Kant pretends, to be accounted & priori because a reality answering to the idea of Power is not immediately objective to sense-perception, — to what Kant terms the internal sense, — knowledge of thick- ness should also be accounted d priori ; but matter is thickness (is given as being thickness), and therefore knowledge of matter should be accounted d priori, — which leaves nothing worth notice to be object of knowledge d posteriori. Thickness is hidden from sense behind its surfaces. The mental symbol of it is as much the product of the supersensuous faculty as the mental symbol of power. LXXIX. The datum that certain sensations are discernments may be false, but the falseness of the seeming does not prevent its being a valid and useful differentia, serving as a line of demarcation in the map of gener- alisation. As affording a basis of descriptive termi- nology, it may be a means of proof of its own falseness. chap. xi. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 125 LXXX. 1. The foregoing definition of sense-perception is amenable to the objection that it supposes a species of hallucination to be a species of sense-perception. In dream and waking hallucination we have perceptions that are given as being involved in sensations of one or other of the five senses, whereas no reality corresponds to the immediate objects. According to the definition, this discernment belongs to the kind, perception ; we see, hear, smell, taste, and undergo tactile conscious- ness, in dreams, and in waking hallucination. Psycho- logical classification has ignored the relation of hallu- cinative exercises of the senses to sensation, but spontaneity has classed them conformably to our definition ; for it is common to speak of seeing, hear- ing, smelling, tasting, and touching, in dreams. The name " visionary" implies that perception comprehends the species, hailucinative perception. 2? Hailucinative and non-hallucinative perception present to apprehension no marks by which they are immediately distinguishable. It would seem, at first sight, as though there must be such a mark, since dream, when remembered, is apprehended as hallucina- tion. But this apprehension is immediate ; it is not caused by a sign. It resembles, in this respect, imme- diate identification. One does not at first remember the events of the dream as realities, and then infer from a sign that they are mere fictions; they are given, from the first, either to memory or to a faculty that coalesces with memory, as fictitious. Hailucina- tive and non-hallucinative perception, therefore, con- 126 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. sidered as mere consciousnesses, exhibit no intrinsic difference. They are rudely distinguishable by a cir- cumstance that attends hallucination, viz. that it is commonly given to memory and to the observation of others as hallucination. I accordingly define Hallu- cinative sense-perception, sense-perception differentiated by deceptiveness that tends to become soon obvious. Hal- lucination I define, deceptive sensational discernment of which the deceptiveness tends to become soon obvious. It comprehends the two species hallucinative sense- perception and hallucinative in-looking sensational discernment. Men who have lost a limb sometimes undergo an in-looking sensational discernment of a fictitious substitute. 3. Sensational deceptiveness is not confined to hallucination. When sense-perception gives the reality perceived as immediate object ; when it gives colour, sound, flavour, odour, cold and heat, as things that are not consciousnesses ; when it gives the earth as being a plane, the sky as a crystalline vault, the moon as a circular disc of a few inches diameter; when it* gives the like as the same and masks succession under the appearance of duration ; — it is deceptive, but there is no tendency in the deceptiveness to become soon obvious: on the contrary, the detection of it is in every civilisation a late achievement. LXXXI. When it was discovered that the immediate objects of sense-perception are unreal, colour, sound, odour and chap. xi. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 127 flavour were indiscriminately classed as sensations, tjiose of them that are given as attributes of things different from the perceiving organ as well as those that seem to be such attributes. The influences tend- ing to beget this confusion were certainly strong. To the scientific mind it was obvious that consciousnesses of both kinds are products of bodily organs, and the general bond that connects flavour with flavour, sound with sound, etc., is so intimate, that it tends to mask any difference demanding a general separation. But dependence on a part of the body of the subject scien- tifically discerned is one thing, and the seeming of dependence that determines the kind to which the term, sensation, was originally annexed, is quite another. The seeming is wanting to certain consciousnesses to which science correctly imputed the dependence. Ac- cordingly, prior to discovery they were not accounted sensations, and to class them as sensations is to sup- plant the differentia that originally determined the kind, — indeed still determines it for the unscientific. If this differentia be suppressed, if we beg in the term Sensation the affirmative of the question mooted by the idealist and answered by him in the negative, we debar ourselves from the use of the term in our dispute with him. Our definition of the term not only restores it to its original signification, but conforms to the rule of giving philosophy and science a system of terms unencumbered by seriously questionable connotations. The definition does not imply that there is not a kind correctly denotable by the name, flavour, which com- prehends both sensations and non-sensational conscious- nesses, nor does it imply, that there is not a kind of consciousnesses differentiated by dependence for exist- ence upon a part of the body of the subject, a kind 128 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l that comprehends both sensational and non-sensational consciousness. The kind which I denote by the name, Sensation, excludes those of them that are given as attributes of things perceived by sense, and includes those that are not so given ; it excludes the red of the rose, the sound of. the flute, the odour of the violet, the flavour of the wine ; it includes the bad odour and flavour which a disordered digestion sometimes occa- sions, the sounds termed " ringing in the ear," the lumin- ous crescent caused by pressure upon the eyeball, the colours, sounds, odours, flavours, and tinglings excited by an electric current that traverses a certain part of the brain. LXXXII. Intuition of life and consciousness other than our own has not received from philosophers the attention it deserves. They have put us off with the shallow hypothesis that, observing the resemblance of other men and of the lower animals to ourselves, — how they have organs of sense like our own, and leave a state of rest as we do without being compelled into motion by the action of another body, — we, in accordance with the law of belief which gives the unobvious like as inhering in the obvious like, impute to them the like of the life and consciousness which we experience in ourselves. Now, the natural language of the mother elicits from the infant such signs of cordial intuition of the emotions from which it proceeds, that we must suppose the infant to be at least vaguely intuitive of those emotions, and therefore of the life and conscious- ness of the mother. But no such natural language chap. xi. * SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 129 had previously obtained in the infant, so that he could not know, by experience of anything occurring in him- self, of the connection of its signs with such or such emotions, nor therefore that the signs exhibited by the mother resemble signs that had obtained in himself. Moreover the experience of the infant affords him no such idea of his own form as to enable a discernment of the resemblance to it of other forms. It is highly probable that the natural language of our own species has the property of causing intuition of the emotions from which it proceeds independently of any prior mental event, and therein of life ftnd consciousness other than those of the subject. But this does not sanction the judgment that intuition of life and con- sciousness other than those of the subject is thus originated, for we intuite the life and consciousness of the lower animals without the aid of natural language. There is no inconsisteucy in the hypothesis, that we at first impute life and consciousness to all bodies, and that the intuition of certain things as inanimate is a product of experience. The occasional behaviour of children and of savage adults to inanimate things gives some countenance to this hypothesis ; the worship of stocks and stones and the tendency to prosopopeia also lend it countenance. We are not here concerned to find a solution of the question. It is enough for us to establish that our knowledge of the life and conscious- ness of others is intuitive, not achieved by means of com- parison or inference. This being established, it follows that the intuition which originates the knowledge is sense-perception. We perceive life and consciousness, and perception of the inanimate supposes the per- cipient to be aware that the object is without life and .consciousness. Symbols of life and conscious- K 130 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l ness are occasional constituents of the object of perception. LXXXIII. Space and Cosmos are constant objects of sense- perception. The perception is necessarily inattentive. If we endeavour to make space and Cosmos objects of attentive sense-perception, we find ourselves attending to mere ideas of them. Space and Cosmos are given to sense-perception as the habitat of all its other objects. LXXXIV. Certain sensations are given as involving desire, e.g. hunger, thirst, the sexual sensation, the sensation con- sequent to suspension of breathing. Pleasing sensa- tions that do not menace departure, e.g. warmth, sensations constituting or incident to relief, the sensa- tion caused by agreeable muscular exertion, are given as not involv4 desire. Certain sensations are iiven as involving neither pain, pleasure, nor desire, viz. those to which no uneasiness succeeds. LXXXV. Appetite is the common name of certain of the sensations that are given as involving desire, e.g. hunger, thirst, the sexual sensation. The name is limited to chap. xi. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 131 those that are of periodic recurrence. The most notable are hunger, thirst, and lust ; but the craving for rest when we are fatigued, for exercise when the supply of animal force is ample, for sleep during a considerable part of the twenty-four hours, are readily allowed to be appetites. If the animal economy in man were such that the need of respiration should occur only at periods separated by intervals of three or four hours, and the need were manifested by the sensation by which it is now manifested when respiration is sus- pended for a few seconds, that sensatiorl would be accounted an appetite. CHAPTEE XII. APPERCEPTION. LXXXVI. 1. What is denoted by the term, apperception, has been confounded with a species of perception which Locke denoted by the name, " reflection." He says of it, " though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called 'internal sense.'" 1 He implies that attention is essential to " reflection," im- puting the child's ignorance of psychical event to his inability as regards reflective attention. Eeflection, he implies, attentively inspects such mental events as perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, 1 and so begets knowledge of them. According to Ancillon, — "The reflective Ego ... is never developed in the majority of mankind at all, and even in the thoughtful and reflective few it is formed only at a mature period, and is even then only in activity by starts and at intervals." 2 This sentence is opportunely cited by Sir William Hamilton, and that it implies what agrees with his theory of Eeflection is cor- 1 Human Understanding, B. II. chap. 1, sec. 4. 2 Metaphysics, Lecture XIX. ■tfSllHI \ chap. xii. APPERCEPTION. 133 roborated by his remark that " The faculty of self- consciousness corresponds with the Eeflection of Locke." 1 This remark, in view of his doctrine that self-conscious- ness is essential to consciousness, 2 exposes the vicious- ness of the confusion of apperception with reflection ; for it implies that consciousness is wanting to the majority of mankind. 2. Reflection is perception given as having for immediate and sole object a consciousness of its sub- ject. It is essential to it to be attentive. If such a thing were possible as an inattentive reflection, it would not be distinguishable from apperception, and philo- sophy could know nothing about it. Unintuitive sensations and unintuitive emotions endure its gaze, but not discernments. It sometimes surprises and is surprised by a discernment, but the object seems to vanish at the instant it is seen. Whether there are men who have the power to watch their intellectual operations and the discernments involved in discourse, — in remembering, imagining, etc. — the writer is ignor- ant ; but that there are none such seems to be proved ' by the meanness of the results of psychological specu- lation. There seems to be no room in the mind for a study of discernment. The aversion of discernment to be attentively discerned is shown by the fact, that when reflective attention is turned upon an intuitive emotion the intuitive element of the emotion vanishes at once, leaving a part that tends to recover the element so soon as reflection withdraws its eye. An irascible per- son who aims at conduct may profit by the mental law under which this curious kind of fact obtains. If he watch the emotion, anger, he occults its object, and, 1 Metaphysics, Lecture XXIX. a Lecture XI. 134 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. deprived of discernment, the emotion tends to decline and perish. If he persist long enough the emotion dies. If he cease to stare at it before it has lost its intensity, it is sure to recover its object and its first force. 3. ^Reflection watchful of the spirit of its subject that he may keep it pure, has an important function in what is known as the spiritual or interior life. It speedily discovers to the ascetic those of his instincts that are opposed to the Christian spirit. One of the first striking results of Saint Theresa's surrender to her vocation was her psychological enlightenment ; nor is this wonderful, seeing that the instincts symbolised by the Christian trinity of evil, the Devil the World and the Flesh, must expose themselves in strife with the new spirit 4> Xo mental exercise is more fatiguing than reflection It differs greatly in this respect from apperception, which is as little fatiguing as breathing or the pulsation of the heart. 5. ^Reflection has been confounded with philosophic stady of ideas of kinds of mental events, — a study that is the hmTiifftfiiate source of psychology. Apper- ception of mental everts begets ideas of corresponding fends*. c#l of the kinds*, perception, remsnbrance, JMftgimfciMi jqrigHMHTft, as experience of event exterior to eoBfieMOSKSS begets ideas of motion and rest, force awl JnedOMBS^. action ami reaction, births growth, and 4nfck> Tie mmd is not a conscious party to the pro- dtati&a rf sSAer set of idea&. Between the conscious e sp rn m ee titafc begets them and their inception there chap. xii. APPERCEPTION. 135 intervenes no discourse. They are the offspring of a latent action of the mind fecundated by conscious experience. The study of these concepts, whether of those that are symbolic of mental events or of those that symbolise unconscious events, is not an exercise of reflection. The judgments which it engenders, and in which are explicated what is either obviously or unobviously implicit in the concepts, do not derive from reflection. The study is occasionally interrupted and assisted by an experiment on the mind which some- times has the effect of freshening, augmenting, retrench- ing, or in some way correcting, one or more of the concepts studied. We set Eeason, memory, or imagina- tion, to work in order to study afterwards the record of the operation, — not to study the operation while it is proceeding. It is the connection of this kind of experi- ment with the study of ideas of mental event that causes the confusion of both study and experiment with reflection and self-consciousness. This, by the way, exposes the futility of Comte's objection to psychology as being the product of a mere counterfeit of observa- tion. The psychologist, he maintains, is confined to the method of attempting to observe his mental opera- tions while the faculties are at work, which he correctly holds to be abortive; and, with this error, he is for scourging psychology out of the temple of science. 6. When one reflects, he is inattentively aware that he is reflecting, i.e. a reflection is always attended by an apperception. This contrast puts in the most strik- ing relief the difference between the two. 136 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l LXXXYTL Apperception, qud referent to a consciousness, may be distinguished as psychical, and, qud referent to a bodily event, as corporal. LXXXV11L Apperception does not acquaint us with the struc- ture of the mind; it acquaints us with no mental quality except the existence of the subject of conscious- nessu AH other mental qualities are unintuitable. Apperception acquaints us with certain mental events, with consciousnesses, but not with the mental attributes which they presuppose, — for example, with remembrance but not with memory, with imaginations but not with the faculty, Imagination, with conceptions but not with the conceptual faculty, with judgments but not with the faculty, Keason, with motives and intentions but not with a moving or intending faculty, — not, if there be such a thing with WilL How penuriously know- ledge of the mind — knowledge that can afford to be brought to book — is imputed to us, is evinced by the opinion, now obtaining ascendency amongst philoso- phgs, that the immfdiatp object which passes for the Ego is not a reality but a mere modification of consciousness. T.XYYIY The immediate object of apperception that passes chap. xn. APPERCEPTION. 137 with it for the Ego or subject of consciousness, is it real ? To Descartes the affirmative seemed to be an axiom, and the pivot of all guaranteed knowledge. It is the support of his famous argument, Cogito ergo sum. The affirmative is a datum ; but its pretence to be an axiom is not universally allowed. To certain minds the idea of subjectless consciousness does not seem to be inconsistent. Indeed, by perhaps the majority of modern physiologists, consciousness is implicitly held to be subjectless. They hold it to be an effect of ganglionic, cerebral, or other corporal event, but not an attribute of a bodily organ or organism in such a sense that the organ or organism could be supposed to be conscious. If this be true, the immediate object of apperception given as being the Ego is not real ; nor is it a true symbol. If it be held that the symbol is true because the organ or organism corresponds to its significance as the thing signified, it is only partially true. It is untrue in so far as it symbolises the remote object as being, not only a source or cause, but also, a subject of consciousness. Admitting that there is a subject of consciousness, — a thing that, besides being a source or cause, is also a subject, of consciousness, — it does not follow that the immediate object of apper- ception which passes for the Ego is real. When a patient who during sleep undergoes unapperceived pain awakes and apperceives the pain, the immediate object of the apperception may consist of a real and an un- real object, viz., the pain, and a symbol of the subject of the pain. The idea of cerebration causing in the soul a pain and with it a symbol of a subject of conscious- ness, is not inconsistent : therefore the datum, that the immediate object of apperception is real, is not guaranteed — is not an axiom. We seem to be at 138 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. present without means of ascertaining whether the datum be or be not true. Here we have striking proof that inconsistency of the opposite is not an indefectible guarantee. Until physiology exposed the dependence of consciousness on corporal event, the thesis, that the immediate object of apperception is real, seemed to be an axiom, and now it is manifest that the seeming is merely specious, and that its speciousness is determined by privation of a thesis — by poverty of philosophic imagination. (§ xx. 3.) XC. Experience affords no example of apperception without sensation. It must therefore be conceded to the materialist that, in all probability, sensation is a sine qua non of apperception, — that the unconscious " niento-corporal " event which causes the one neces- sarily causes the other. CHAPTEE XIII. EMOTION. XCI. 1. Emotion is consciousness involving either pleasure or pain, and given as having the heart for its habitat, but not as its subject. It differs from sensation only in the respect that it does not seem to be a bodily attribute. Its difference from sensation is put in sharp relief when events that usually cause painful emotion cause instead a sensational pain in the heart. Pain, pleasure, and desire, are proper to sensations and emotions. 2. Certain emotions are given as being perceptive, others as being imperceptive. The datum that gives emotion as being perceptive is so obscure that its exposure had to await the advent of Hutcheson, but, once detected, it is easily made plain to all the world. The attribute, sacredness, is no more empirically know- able apart from an emotion of reverence, the attribute, beauty, apart from an aesthetic emotion, the attribute, duty, apart from a moral emotion, than light is empiri- cally knowable by the blind. Fear is essential to the empirical perception of danger, a peculiar emotion of 140 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l approbation to that of nobleness, a peculiar emotion of aversion to that of vice. Emotive perception is what is denoted by the name sentiment. One may have an unemotive knowledge or belief and a heart-knowledge or sentiment of the same thesis, e.g. that there is a God ; that the moral imperative is the will of God ; that an enemy who has insulted and otherwise injured the subject, as not having achieved personality and therein power of choice, is a proper object of pity, not of censure or resentment ; that the retributive spirit is a stultifying devil, which makes a hell upon earth, and, without impairing the efficiency of civil surgery, should be drowned in charity. When, in the change known as " change of heart," the heart discovers what was previously known only to the intellect, the discovered thesis is not recog- nised, and the discoverer learns with surprise that it is possible for one to discover what he knew before. Heart -knowledge of the deliverances of revelation is what Christendom terms faith. The emotive element of the knowledge is quantitative, so that those in whom it is greater seem to know better. Under certain cir- cumstances, e.g. those which give occasion for obedience to divine command, it is an incentive, and either instigates, or, as motive, solicits the will. This ex- plains the relation of faith to works in virtue of which works are the measure of faith. It will appear by- and-by (§ clxxix.) that wisdom is a high degree of heart- knowledge of moral law, and that " as a man thinketh in his heart so is he." 3. By the way, the immediate objects of emotive perception are a species of aspects which, on account of their dependence on emotion, may be termed emotive chap. xiii. EMOTION. 141 aspects. The discrimination of the species enables controversy respecting the foundation of morals to come to close quarters, instead of making passes in the dark altogether wide of the mark. Those who insist upon the absoluteness of the moral imperative must allow that it is knowable only by a contingent aspect which depends upon the emotive constitution of the person knowing. Is that aspect a phantom of the heart unrelated to the absolute? — or is it a face of the absolute determined by its contact with the contingent? XCII. 1. When treating of Wisdom (Bk. III. chap, iv.) I shall have occasion to refer to a species of sympathy that has not been hitherto noticed. On this species and a kind of emotion on which it depends, we have now to bestow a moment's attention. Sympathy is emotion caused by what seems to be the emotion or sensation of another, and having a tendency to dispose to kindness; e.g. pity, and convivial emotion. The ascription of emotion ov sensation to another being is a condition sine qua rum of sympathy. Sympathy is divisible into that which does, and that which does not, arise out of concurrence of emotions of the same kind. Conviviality is sympathy that arises out of such a con- currence : pity for one in pain is sympathy that does not so arise. Let sympathy of the former kind, as being conditioned by homogeneity of emotions, be dis- tinguished as homogeneous, and sympathy of the latter kind as heterogeneous. Sympathy is further divisible into that which does, and that which does not, either 142 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. * beget or enhance a feeling of fellowship. Homogene- ous sympathy always excites such a feeling. Not so heterogeneous sympathy. Pity for a lower animal in pain has no tendency to cause or enhance such a feeling. 2. There is reason to believe that the immediate object symbolic of the emotion which we intuitively ascribe to another is for the most part agreeable. There are people who, without sympathy or antipathy, have pleasure in the intuitive ascription of emotion to others. Many who seem to be incapable of sympathy have pleasure in the intuitive ascription of emotion caused by the drama and by romance. This it is, probably, that throngs the scaffold and constituted the bad plea- sure with which a Eoman watched a shipwreck from his villa. Poets, dramatists, and writers of romance, have an exceptional power of imagining the emotions of others, and, apart from sympathy, have pleasure in its exercise. Men who are greatly swayed by public opinion sometimes seem to imagine the censure of which they take themselves to be the objects by means of a vicarious emotion, in which, as though they were a part of the critical public, they condemn themselves. It is probable that the power of worldliness is due to such vicarious and symbolic emotion. I do not risk much in taking for granted the existence of what I shall term ascriptive emotion. Heterogeneous sympathy depends upon ascriptive emotion. CHAPTEE XIV. EXPERIENCE. XCIII. 1. If experience were defined, event involving a rela- tion of a mind to a reality in virtue of which the reality is immediately objective and known to the mind, the definition would correspond to the common notion of experience. This notion supposes the mind to embrace as it were and penetrate the reality, and, so, to have it for object and object of knowledge. The supposition received a shock to which it has since succumbed when physiology detected the series of nerve and cerebral changes that intervene between peripheral contact and consequent sense - perception. That a cerebral event, and not a proximity of the thing per- ceived, should be the proximate cause of sense-percep- tion, discredited the datum of immediate objectivity of reality in the foremost species of experience. When Hume showed, or seemed to show, that power or cause could not be immediately objective, the idea of it was transferred from the kind ideas d, posteriori to the kind ideas & priori, so intimately connected were ideas imputed to experience with immediate objectivity of reality. But. the common notion of experience, 144 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. although it supposes that kind of objectivity to be intimately connected with, does not suppose it to be essential to, experience ; for the notion, although pro- foundly altered by proof that, certain consciousnesses excepted, reality is never immediately objective, has, in philosophic minds, survived that proof. What then is the differentia of Experience which contributed to determine the ictea of it prior to the physiological discovery, and now determines the philosophic idea of it ? To answer this, question it is necessary to dis- tinguish and name two species of knowledge that have hitherto escaped notice. . 2. Let knowledge that originates in a ratiocination, and refers to an object other than the ratiocination, be distinguished as ratiocinative; 1 and all other know- ledge as " ilTatiocinative. ,, (I make free to enlarge the synonyms, Eatiocination and Seasoning, and their cognates, from the narrow signification to which con- trary to a law of language they have been confined, and to use them as denoting every exercise of Keason, its barren scrutiny as well as its most fruitful deduc- tion or induction.) Knowledge of infinity, as originat- ing in an act of Eeason and not having the act in which it originates for object, is an example of ratiocinative knowledge; on the other hand, know- ledge of the judgment that originates knowledge of infinity, is an example of irratiocinative knowledge. Again, knowledge of the guilt of John, inferentially originated, is ratiocinative, and knowledge of the originating inference is irratiocinative. 1 To distinguish this kind of knowledge as "judicial" would be preferable, but that it would commit us to a contradiction in terms, viz. that in one of its aspects a judgment might be non-judicial. chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 145 3. I call attention to the foregoing division of knowledge and the terms it occasions in order to provide verbal material for a definition of Experience, A judgment qud source of knowledge of itself is an experience, and, if it originate a different knowledge, qud source of that knowledge it is not an experience. When evidence originates knowledge in me of the guilt of John, the judgment in which the discovery- obtains, qud source of knowledge of the guilt of John, is not an experience, whereas qud source of knowledge of itself it is an experience. By confining the signifi- cation of the term Experience to irratiocinative know- ledge, we exclude from the kind, experience, agreeably to the common and philosophic idea of it, judgment qud source of knowledge of something other than itself, and we place in the kind the self-same mental event qud source of knowledge of itself. Eemembrance and hallucination, like ratiocination, overlap as it were and hide a part of the boundary of experience. Considered with reference to its object a remembrance is not an experience, but, considered as source of the knowledge of which it is itself the object, it is an experience. As not originating the knowledge of its object it is not experience; for it is essential to experience to be originative of knowledge. Hallucination considered with reference to its object is not experience, but, considered as source of the knowledge of which it is itself the object, it is experience. Dreams are experi- ences of dreaming, — the source of our knowledge of that kind of event, — but^ because their objects are not realities, considered with reference to those objects they are not experiences. . 4. Knowledge, to be empirical, must be, not only L 146 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. irratiocinative and non-hallucinative, but also, uncom- municated by the expression of another. Knowledge communicated by one man to another, whether by doctrine, testimony, or expression of any kind pro- ceeding from intention to communicate, is not the immediate and pure offspring of experience. 5. What is proper and common to all species of events that have been classed together under the name Experience is, origination of irratiocinative non-hallu- cinative uncommunicated knowledge. This is what is the differentia and has been a part of the differentia of things denoted by the name Experience. Accord- ingly, I define Experience, mental event that originates irratiocinative non-Jvallurtinative uncommunicated know- ledge. XCIV. The experience of which reasoning and remem- brance are at once the sources and objects is appercep- tive. Experience of hallucination is partly apperceptive and partly perceptive. The subject is one that deserves an attention and analysis not hitherto bestowed upon it. The apperceptive part of the experience obtains contemporaneously with the hal- lucination, the perceptive when the hallucination is first remembered. The perceptive part of the experi- ence is mnemonical, at least it is involved in a remembrance. While we dream the dream events are given to apperception as real ; to the first remembrance of them they are given as figments of imagination. Without the corrective action of the remembrance the experience needful for the origination of knowledge of the hallucination is incomplete. chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 147 XCV. 1. Experience, according to the common notion of it, is event which the mind consciously undergoes, e.g. sense-perception ; but latent mental processes are con- cerned in begetting knowledge which that notion ascribes to experience. Knowledge of primary kinds (§ lxvi.) originates in experience which consists of a con- scious and a latent part. The conscious part acquaints us with individuals, not with a kind, not with a sum given as comprising all the like of a given type. There needs a mental event other than mere experience of individuals, e.g. mere sense-perceptions or apperceptions, to group, as it were, the mental symbols of individuals into sums, and annex to each sum the aspect of com- prising all the like. A latent mental process causes an equivalent of such a grouping and annexation, and per- fects in the unconscious region of the mind an equivalent of an idea of the kind. Primary kinds made known by experience alone are unconsciously known before they are consciously known — before ideas of them obtain. Know- lege of primary kinds originates thus unconsciously during adult life long after we have become capable of distinctly noticing our conscious mental processes, especially when one travels into remote lands and makes acquaintance with new species. We do not always discriminate the specific attributes of the strange species which then become known to us, nor are we conscious of a discourse constructive of ideas of the species. We are unconsciously, before we are consciously, cognisant of them. Another notable example of latent experience is experience of indistinct instances or those 148 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. that, apart from question of any general thesis, bear on the mind so as to cause knowledge of the truth of such a thesis, e.g. of the general connection of whiteness with the other attributes usually discerned in swans; of that of combustibility with the other attributes of coal, wood, and turf ; of that of the hunger ^appeasing pro- perty of food with its other attributes ; of that of the thirst-appeasing property of water with its other attri- butes. A latent process consequent to such experience begets unconscious knowledge of the corresponding general truths, e.g., that swans are white, that coal, wood, turf, etc., are combustible. Such knowledges have been hitherto held to be the offspring of inference, and have been accounted inductions. Knowledge of natural signs, e.g. symptoms, weather-signs, physiognomical signs, originate in ex- periences which involve the operation of the latent mental event known as redintegration. Hectic, for example, having frequently borne on the mind in con- nection with other symptoms of consumption, is, through the action of redintegration, when it appears alone, apprehended as a sign of consumption. Weather signs and signs of human character have a similar origin. Knowledge of dream originates in experience that in- volves a latent constituent. Dreaming is a part of the experience that begets the knowledge, but only a part : the complement is a latent mental event of a noteworthy character ; it clothes the thing known with an attribute which shows itself to remembrance as hallucination. What seems to the dreamer while dreaming to be a real event seems to his remembrance to have been a figment. Experience therefore extends beyond the sphere of events which the mind consciously undergoes. In Chapter II., Book III., I deduce from familiar mental events the occurrence of unconscious mental chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 149 events and the existence of an unconscious part of the mind. The facts were as familiar at the dawn of philosophy as they are to-day, without a suspicion on the part of philosophers that an important part of knowledge originates as unconscious knowledge. The possibility of unconscious mental event was not ima- gined, and privation of power to imagine it gave an air of necessary truth to false theses respecting the origin of certain species of knowledge. Knowledge of primary kinds was supposed to be due to discrimination of differentiae which refused to show themselves to the eye of philosophy, and certive knowledge (§ xvi) due to unconscious intuition was imputed to elaborate discourse of the illative faculty. 2. Let experience that consists of latent processes be distinguished as latent, and the opposite species as manifest. Latent experience is always supplementary to manifest experience. 3. Let latent experience consequent to experience of instances be distinguished as quasi-inferentialy and let the knowledge it begets be also distinguished by the same term. It is important to stigmatise, by this epithet, the deeply-rooted error that mistakes for in- ference a species of experience. An exposition of a species of experieuce which I distinguish as experience of time-series calls for de- finitions or explanation of the terms, duration, time- series, and motion. 150 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. XCVL 1. Duration is coincidence of the same with a divisible part of time or with all time. It is a species of what may be termed time-coincidence. This genus is comprised by the two species, duration, and what may be denominated serial coincidence with time. The coincidence of a man with the time between his birth and death is an example of duration, that of a melody with a part of time exemplifies serial time- coincidence. Time, duration, and serial time -coinci- dence, have a common and proper attribute to which no name has been given ; they are congeners of a nameless genus. Analogously, space and the extended things it contains have a common and proper attribute, — are congeners of a nameless genus. 2. Let series that coincide with a divisible part of time or with all time be denominated time-series, and let event that is merely instantaneous be denominated non-serial event. Every point in space and every divisible part of space is an absolute place. It is a place by virtue of its relation to other points and parts of space, and absolute because it and they and the relations between them exist of necessity. A series of absolute places comprising all such places within its limits is continuous. A motion is coincidence for an instant with each place of a continuous series of mutually equal, absolute, places, without the interven- tion of a divisible part of time between any two of the instants} 1 I here indicate rather than express what I take to be a truth : I do so by means of two inconsistent theses, one that two instants un- chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 151 3. The foregoing definitions prepare us for a defini- tion of a species of experience which research has not hitherto had occasion to bring into view. Experience of time-series, e.g. motions, music, days, nights, seasons, customs, comprehends a species of which the differentia is, that the whole of the object seems (inconsistently) to exist at the present instant ; e.g. motion that seems to be occurring at the present instant, increase of light, heat, pleasure, or pain, that seems to be occurring at the present instant. When we watch the flight' of a bird, a part of the flight seems to be occurring at the present instant, and a part to have occurred prior to the present instant. Experience of this pre-present part exemplifies the species of experi- ence opposed to that which I am putting in relief. All experience of time-series save what refers to those that are extremely brief, e.g. a flash of forked lightning, consists of experiences of both kinds, one referent to a series given as occurring at the present instant, and the other as referent to a series given as having occurred prior to the present instant. The whole object, if the time of the experience do not exceed a few seconds, seems to be contained in a larger present of which the present instant seems to be the term. Let us dis- tinguish these two species of experience, the one as paradoxic, because it apprehends as occurring at an instant what coincides with a divisible time, the other as antirparadoayic. divided by a time are possible, the other that two mutually continuous places undivided by a space are possible. In my explanation of motion the two inconsistencies are opposed and cancel each other. The explanation is a pis alter, but in the region of the antinomial we have no right to be fastidious. 152 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. XCVII. Experience of time-series supposes an immediate and a remote object, and that the beginning of the immediate object either coincides in time with the end of the remote one or is altogether posterior to it. For illustration of this truth as regards paradoxic experience let us consider a paradoxic experience of motion. To see a motion either is or involves the seeing at an instant what coincides with a divisible time. Divide the time of any extremely brief visible motion into the five equal parts ABODE. The motion cannot be seen during the time A, for the parts of it that measure BCDE have not yet obtained. It cannot be seen during the time C, for that which measures the time A has ceased and the parts which measure D E have not yet obtained. It follows that the whole of the motion is not immediately visible at any instant whatever, and that the immediate object of the perception must be unreal, must be a mental modification serving as vicar or symbol of a remote object, viz. the motion, and that the beginning of the immediate object must be either coincident with or posterior to the end of the remote one. Several successive perceptions, each having for object a part of a motion, however rapidly one may follow another, are not a perception of the motion, and, if a perception of the motion obtain, it must be by means of a modification of consciousness symbolic of the motion, — an immediate unreal object symbolic of a remote one. The several perceptions are no more a perception of the motion than vision which discerns every object in its field is perception of the chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 153 field of vision. The field of vision is invisible. Para- doxic experience of intensification of pain also illustrates the dependence of experience of time-series on an im- mediate object vicarious of a real and remote one ; for, when the greater of the contrasted degrees of pain obtains, the less has ceased to exist, and must be sym- bolised in the contrast by an unreal and vicarious object. As regards anti-paradoxic experience the truth is obvious, since it is essential to the object of this kind of experience to include what the subject knows to have ceased to exist, e.g. any pre-present part of a bird's flight observed during two or three seconds. XCVIII. Paradoxic experience on which an anti-paradoxic experience depends acts upon the mind somewhat as the pencil point with which a crayon picture is made acts upon the paper. Each modifies what it acts upon, and the series of its actions is the antecedent and cause of a modification different from what is caused by any unit of the series,— in the one case a picture, in the other the object of an anti-paradoxic experience: a single impact of the pencil point causes a dot, not a picture ; a single bearing of the paradoxic experience causes not the object of the anti-paradoxic experience, nor one resembling it, but an object resembling a minute part of it In all probability the analogy fails in this respect, that the dot is a durable thing and a constituent of the picture, but the product of the paradoxic experi- ence is not a durable thing nor a constituent of the object of the anti-paradoxic experience. The metaphor 154 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. which puts the mind as being a tabula rasa on which experience depicts is not to be mistaken for a literal expression of fact It is not to be supposed that when we remember an object of experience we discern a durable modification of the mind. Of course a durable modification of the mind caused by the experience generates the immediate object of the remembrance, but the object is one thing, and the modification another ; the one is fugitive, the other durable ; the one is the equivalent of an organ, — an equivalent fashioned by the experience, — the other an effect of the function of that equivalent. This I put now as extremely probable ; by-and-by (Book III.) I shall show that it is certain. XCIX. Anti-paradoxic experience comprehends a species of which the peculiarity is, that its objects exclusively consist of parts specifically like their wholes and coun- terparts of objects of the related paradoxic experiences : it also comprehends a species of which the objects include parts unlike any of the objects of anti-paradoxic experience. A visual experience of the flight of a bird during five seconds is an example of the first of these two species : the whole of the motion consists of motions that were objects of the paradoxic experiences on which the anti-paradoxic experience depends. Experience of a dream or of a Kind is an example of the second. The objects of the paradoxic experiences on which the experience of a dream depends include nothing like the fictiveness ; on the contrary, their objects are given as being realities. The objects of the paradoxic experi- chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 155 ences on which experience of a Kind depends includes nothing resembling an idea of the general. C. Knowledge of individuals of the kind, Custom, is the product of latent experience, and is at first unconscious. Custom being a time-series, I forbore to treat of its relation to latent experience until I had treated of those series. All of us are cognisant of our own customs before they become objective to us, and many of the customs of the society we frequent are likewise un- consciously known before they are consciously known. Equivalents of ideas then are evolved in the unconscious part of the mind by latent experience. Analogy warrants a strong presumption that knowledge of the kind, custom, obtains unconsciously in advance of a concept of the kind. The discovery that knowledge of custom originates unconsciously gave a certain specious- ness to the thesis, that knowledge of such series as the tide, the succession of day and night, that of the seasons, is also at first unconscious, — a speciousness that detained and had wellnigh prevailed with me. These series first become known as objects in the field of retrospect, objects mirrored in expectation. Paradoxic and anti-paradoxic experience, helped by redintegration, modify the mind, qud organ of retrospect and expecta- tion, so that the organ generates an objective field consisting of such series. # 156 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. CI. 1. How superficially experience has been studied is evinced by the doctrine of Locke, that it is com- prised by the two species, sensational intuition and intuition of one's own consciousness, and it is evinced by the doctrine of Kant, that experience consists of sensational intuition. 1 Knowledge of the life and con- sciousness of others is not ascribable to sensational discernment nor to apperception, but the knowledge is universally allowed to originate in experience. Know- ledge of thickness originates in experience, yet thickness is neither tangible, visible, audible, testable, or smell- able. Temporal identity is not a thing to be objective to sensational intuition nor to intuition of one's own consciousness, but the knowledge of it is the product of experience. The symbol of it is the product of the mind borne upon by a certain degree of likeness. All who have treated of experience have overlooked that species of it which I denote by the name Mooking sensational perception. A thorough study of the genus, Experience, involving due attention to all its species, would probably have spared philosophy Hume's negation of the empirical origin of the idea of power, and Kant's negation of that of the ideas of time and space. It would have found that, in certain species of experience, causes totally dissimilar to their effects beget an im- mediate object that passes for a reality, — one which avows to scrutiny that it is purely a creature of the 1 Kant teaches that intuition of one's own consciousness is sensa- tional, — a rude and needless effacement of an important and distinct boundary. j^agfc^a^Maiai— l^fc^^MiihA^Mfc^ i Vi ".'- ' ,"^ti chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 157 mind, and merely a symbol of a possible or probable reality. This symbol may, as regards human inten- tional action, conveniently correspond to, without in the least resembling, the reality. 2a. The error which takes for granted that sense- perception and apperception comprise experience, com- bined with impatience of ideas that tend to betray scrutiny into metaphysical maundering, and afford to calculation no prescient point of view, contributed to engender Positivism. Blazoning the sovereignty of Experience, Positivism behaves towards it as a mayor of the palace, discarding some of its most important data, e.g. that there is a concrete and durable subject of consciousness, the thing denoted by the name Mind, the thing which denotes itself by the pronoun, " I "; that there is a quality in virtue of which certain concretes are causes, the quality denoted by the name Power ; that life is a species of power, — a dynamic quality. I have already exposed what seems to me to be the error of Positivism as regards mind : let us see whether its doctrine respecting power, and the species of power termed life, be not even less excusable. 26. Immediate objects symbolic of power are familiar to sense-perception. To the burned child burning-power seems to be a tangible thing, and when we are pushed the pushing power seems to be a tangible thing. Power is objective to apperception. We apper- ceive what seems to be power applied by ourselves. In these cases an immediate object symbolic of power (whether truly symbolic or the reverse I do not pretend to imply) seems to be tangible. There is a species of power that belongs to the kind, inapparitional attri- 158 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. butes (§ lix. 2.). When the impact of one billiard- ball upon another then at rest is followed by the stoppage of the impinging ball and the motion of the other, our apprehension of the event involves an apprehension of the impinging ball as subject of an attribute such as is denoted by the name, force, and this attribute explains itself to scrutiny as being power active; the quality, Power, is raised for the time into the occasional attribute, Force. When we see water poured upon fire, and the apparent conversion of fire into cinders follows, the visual experience involves the apprehension of a quenching-power in the water. In these cases sense makes no pretension to perceive the power, — no such pretension as it makes in respect of burning or pushing power when the subject is burned or pushed, — but, nevertheless, experience is intuitive of the inapparitional or supersensible attribute, power. The existence of power and force, then, is a datum of experience, and, as reasoning depends upon data, the negation of the existence of those attributes is an arbitrary and cap- ricious undermining of the ground of Eeason. The effort of Positivism to emasculate objects as regards the attributes, power and force, is an enterprise against what is, for most minds, a necessity of thought, a necessity that is explanatory in respect of the most important part of events related to each other as ante- cedents and sequents. The attribute of mental con- stitution on which the necessity depends gives these antecedents and sequents as causes and effects. Abolish this datum and you make a part of the mind chaotic. The idea of necessary connection between antecedent and sequent contains only a part of what is contained in the idea of cause and effect. The first part of every hour is in necessary connection with the second J chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 159 part ; it is its necessary antecedent, but not therefore its. cause. Something more than the idea of a necessary connection of antecedence and sequence is necessary to the idea of cause, viz., the symbol of power. Suppose the impinging billiard-ball to be coated with black paint and to impart a speck of the paint to the ball which its impact sets in motion. Here we have two antecedents of the motion of the second ball, both equally proximate as regards time and space, and one of them is held to have no bearing whatever on the motion. A countless multitude of events are proximate antecedents of every beginning of motion, and only one of them is accounted cause of the motion. Can it be supposed that this one, taken together with the concrete which it supposes, involves no attribute of a nature to necessitate the sequent. A necessity of thought excludes such a supposition ; it compels belief in such an attribute, and that attribute is something more than necessary antecedence ; it is what we denote by the name, power. It is true that the idea of power, like that of time, baffles scrutiny. When we consider power in relation to immediate effect it seems to vanish into nothingness, and then we are tempted to think that we mistook those effects, considered as means relatively to remote effects, for power. Power is no more prescindable than the colours of the rainbow, — at least it has not been hitherto prescinded. We fail to distinguish it from inertia, and from susceptibility. But we have no more right to deny its existence on that account than we have to deny the existence of the colours of the rainbow. The idea of power has not been developed out of the confusion in which the difference between causes and mere occasions-dynamic conditions, and what may be termed " adynamic " con- 160 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l ditions — is still in part immersed. The shadow at which one starts is a condition of the start, but certainly not a dynamic one. Is it a cause, or a part of the cause, or is it a mere occasion of the start ? The cir- cumstances, minus emotion, which give occasion for an indeliberate intentional act, are conditions of the act, but not dynamic. Are they, in respect of the act, causes or parts of causes, or are they mere occasions ? According to Mill, a cause is the sum of the conditions. 1 If this be true, time and space are parts of, at least, all natural causes, for they are conditions sine qua non of all natural events. It seems to me that only dynamic conditions should be accounted causes, the adynamic being ranked as mere accessories. - But, in spite of these embarrassments, the confusion from which the idea of Power exempts us vastly exceeds what the idea involves; and we should no more think of rejecting the idea because of its defects than of plucking out our eyes because they sometimes deceive us. We should regard it as an embryo which culture is in process of matur- ing, and hope perfect explanatoriness from the maturity of the idea. If we abolish the idea of power we abolish that of cause; for the idea of an adynamic condition, or a sum of adynamic conditions, is not the idea of a cause. If there be no such thing as power the thesis, ex nihilo nihil fit, is untrue ; every event springs from nothing; antecedent events are as im- potent in respect of the sequents that seem to be their effects as antecedent in respect of sequent parts of time; the impact of the billiard-ball that seems to cause the motion of the ball impinged upon has no more to do with the apparently consequent motion than any of the infinitude of events simultaneous with 1 A System of Logic, Book III. chap. v. § 3. chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 161 the impact : that electric action ceases if, in connection with an electric battery, we substitute twine for wire, does not suppose an aptitude in the wire that does not exist in the twine ; events follow in the one case that do not in the other, but not at all because of an attribute— a power— in the wire that is not in the twine : the uniformities of events are causeless ; they occur by chance ; the order of our thoughts is not an effect of our nature; there is no reason why the thoughts and their order should not, as Hume imagined, obtain without the existence of a man : indeed, with power and cause we abolish nature, for nature is power. 2c. Experience gives life as being a quality, — a quality proper to animals, not common to animals and plants. Philosophic inference has pronounced it to be quite a different thing, a thing not proper to animals, but proper and common to animals, plants, and certain of the parts of these, 'e.g. the cells of which animals and plants are composed. Moreover, it repudiates the datum of experience, that life is a quality, and holds it to be a series of events, viz. the series constituting nutrition, reproduction, and generally what are known as vital acts. Even Stahl, who main- tained that life depends upon the soul, held it to be a series of events. " life," he says, " is the result of the conservative action of the soul," — which supposes it to be a series of events resulting from a series of psychical acts. By modern biologists life is held to be a series of events known as vital. In his Principles of Biology Mr. Spencer defines life, "the continuous adjustment of internal to external relations." An examination of the genesis of the idea of life finds M 162 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. that experience puts it as a quality. The kind, animals, is a primary kind. Latent experience begets in the unconscious region of the mind an equivalent of an idea of the kind, animals, before the idea obtains. Death elucidates the specific attribute of the kind. When, for the fiist time, one makes acquaintance with death, perhaps seeing a body that was the body of his father, brother, wife, or child, and is a corpse, the con- trast informs him that something has departed from the body, something which an exposition of the dis- coveiy would describe as being characteristic of animals and a condition sine qnd ncn of their peculiar motions. The rigidity of death is given as excluding not merely the suppleness and the motions characteristic of animals, but also a dynamic quality on which the motions depend. The experience ignores the events that are proper and common to animals and vegetables, e#. nutrition, reproduction, etc, events which are knowable only through inference; and, accordingly, life, as at first discriminated and as it is commonly apprehended by children and the illiterate adult, is given as being proper to animals Children, and the illiterate adult— all those who know respecting life only what experience teaches — always learn with surprise that plants have life. The idea of the fijfinmim of life, as given by experience, includes a symbol of essential connection between life and sensi- bility. Such, on the avouch of experience, is life — the dynamic quality manifested by the intuhahle notions proper to animals* Science iefenned the idea of life given by experience and subsequently sub- stituted fer it an ittai that be*r> to it scarce an v nrwiiManuu finding that there are events which are «fti aauton to animals and Tt^getafcfes* and chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 163 that these are of much greater importance than those which exhibit life to experience, science discarded from the idea of life given by experience the symbol of astriction to animals, reforming it into the idea of quality on which depend events proper and common to animals and vegetables. In logical language, it dimin- ished the comprehension and increased the extensidh of the idea. In depriving the idea of the symbol of astriction to animals, it deprived it also of that of essential connection between life and sensibility ; for common sense could not be brought to allow that plants are capable of consciousness, and evolution, nutrition, and reproduction are unconscious events. So far science merely reformed the idea of life given by experience, but now it was to substitute quite another idea, according to which there are as many lives as cells and organs in an animal or vegetable. Every organ, every cell, has a life of its own, and the life of the animal or vegetable is either the sum of the lives of its cells and organs, or a life begotten of that sum. An obvious animal or vegetable is an aggregate of unobvious animals or vegetables. According to this hypothesis, the idea of a swarm of midges or a hive of bees being compacted into an animal is not altogether unworthy of serious entertainment. Fis- siparous generation, and the fact that mechanical division can convert a part of a polype into a polype, are the pretext for this affront to the authority of experience. A decent regard for that authority would have put up with the explanation that, when a part of an animal or vegetable converts into an obvious animal or vegetable, a new life begins. I venture to say that biology cannot adduce a fact which is not as satis- factorily explicable in this way as by the revolutionary 164 THE ALTERNATIVE. , book i. hypothesis. The growth of hair and nails in a corpse, and the behaviour of the corpse under certain currents of electricity, should have excluded, or at least post- poned, the hypothesis. The growth of hair and nails in a corpse proves that growth, although proper to organisation, is not necessarily a vital event — much less is the series of events which evolve the additions to hair and nails an individual of the kind, life. There are qualities that depend upon antecedent, but not on present, life ; such is the quality that evolves hair and nails in lifeless bodies and makes the prodigious reaction to the electric current of an organism which survives life. This by the way. — life and organisa- tion are not interdependent. The amoeba protests that life is possible without organisation, and the hair- growing corpse, that organisation without present life is possible. If, according to the Darwinian theory, the more complex forms of living things proceed from the simpler, unorganised living things must have been the primordial ancestors. We are the offspring of the amoeba or of some other unorganised animal Life is the precursor of organisation. 1 To return, — as regards the question, What is life ? Positivism heads an insur- rection against experience. 2d. But granting that parts of the animal or vege- table have lives proper to them, respect for experience requires us to believe that the life is a quality, not a series of events, and that it is a power, — the power to cause certain vital events. 1 Bichat, and those who hold with him that life supposes organs, are rebuked by the amoeba ; and growth in a corpse refutes the assertion of Mr. Lewes that a corpse is not an organism. — Physical Basis of Mind, p. 9. chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 165 2e. Has not the aversion of Positivism to meta- physics a deeper cause than mere aversion to squaring circles ? Certain minds may be incapable of the idea of the inapparitional attribute, as the colour-blind are incapable of discernment of certain colours. To such a mind the name, Power, could denote nothing more than invariable antecedence in respect of certain sequents. I cannot imagine how it could apprehend the antecedence as being necessary, although Hume, the great spokesman of those "who give occasion for the hypothesis, allows a nexus, which he terms neces- sary-connection, between events related by invariable antecedence and sequence. I shall show (§ cxii. 2d) what gulfs yawn between different orders of mind as regards the ideas of Time and Space, and it seems to me not improbable that we are now in the way of discovering another. Perhaps, as giving more reason for intellectual humility and agreement to differ, the discovery should not be an occasion of regret. But let me not be understood to imply in this suggestion or in any contention with Positivism disparagement of the splendid abilities of Comte or of the notable men who have upheld his doctrine. If it were proved that there are minds which exclude intuition of inappari- tional quality, the conclusion would not involve a corollary that those minds are inferior. For aught we know the exclusion might be an advantage, not a defect. It has not prevented Positivism from being in the van of science. The evolutionary thinking of the race has its course, like that of a river, determined by opposition ; it is dashed by headland to headland, and the mental structure of the Positivist is one of the great headlands ' that give direction to philosophy. It is infirmity, not strength, that is prone to depreciation of opponents. 166 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. OIL Experience begets opinion, and doubt, as well as knowledge, but it is essential to it to beget knowledge, and accidental to beget opinion and doubt. Percep- tion sometimes involves an inchoate action of the faculty of identification, and therein an opinion and doubt, or a pure doubt, respecting an identity. This experience, it might be thought, is one that does not beget a knowledge. But it does beget a knowledge, viz. a knowledge of the existence of the thing of which the identity is in question. era. 1. Experience occasions a kind of knowledge which philosophers have altogether ignored, viz. knowledge of what the subject is not experiencing (knowledge which memory converts into knowledge of what has not been experienced), e.g. that I am not beholding an elephant or a mountain, that I have not seen the Andes. It also occasions the knowledge that its real field does not include certain things, for example, that there is not an elephant or a mountain in the real field of vision. It occasions a third kind of negative knowledge, viz., that what has not been experienced by any man nor inferentially discovered does not exist. The genus of these three kinds of knowledge is differentiated by what may be described as derivation from empirical negation, and the knowledge may be termed empirically chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 167 negative knowledge. It may be divided into two sub- genera, which may be termed, the one internal, and the other external, empirically negative knowledge. The former is knowledge of what is not or has not been expe- rienced, the latter comprises two species which may be distinguished, the one as extravagant, the other as non-extravagant, empirically negative knowledge. The product of the law of belief which obliges men to assume that the humanly known exhausts the know- able, although of great utility, is certainly extravagant. Knowledge that what is not now being experienced is not now here— not now within the real domain corresponding to the symbolic domain of experience, — although far from indefectible, is not extravagant. Internal empirically negative knowledge is all but indefectible. The knowledge is internal as being con- fined to the field of immediate objectivity. 2. Empirically negative knowledge is a good example of the kind of knowledge of which the differentia is that it obtains unconsciously, — is, in its inception, unconscious — also of unconscious knowledge to which no conscious knowledge ever corresponds. How many have lived and died unconsciously know- ing, and never consciously knowing, that they had never seen the Andes. CIV. The relation of experience to time has not been profoundly studied. Its objects are given as being of the present, but the part of time referred to by the 168 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. datum is a very different thing from the conterminus of the past and future which philosophy denotes by the name Present. The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past — a recent past — delusively given as being a time that intervenes between the past and the future. Let it be named the specious present, and let the past that is given as being the past be known as the obvious past. All the notes of a bar of a song seem to the listener to be contained in the present. All the changes of place of a meteor seem to the beholder to be contained in the present. At the instant of the termination of such series no part of the time measured by them seems to be a past. Time, then, considered relatively to human apprehen- sion, consists of four parts, viz, the obvious past, the specious present, the real present, and the future. Omitting the specious present, it consists of three ultra- entities — not to say nonentities, — viz. the past, the future, and their conterminus, the present. The specious present is a fiction of experience. CV. By the way, — how much respect has been had to the endowment of man with an adequate faculty of knowledge is evinced by the idea of Erne. The idea is a fundamental one, being the hinge of the idea of Event, and nevertheless is stigmatised by various in- consistency. As symbol of what consists of the past, the present, and the future, it is a symbol of a putative entity composed of the three nonentities, the past which does not exist, the future which does not exist, chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 16d and their conterminus the present : the faculty from which it proceeds lies to us in the fiction of the specious present. Have we indeed reason to rely that human fallibility is not radical ? CVI. Experience and judgment are sometimes so in- timately combined as not to be distinguishable without scrutiny, and in such cases experience seems to be in essential connection with question. Columbus' first perception of transatlantic land, being connected with question whether such land did or did not exist, was combined with the judgment " transatlantic land exists;" and the perception has at first sight the air of being dependent on question, — essentially connected with it. The connection is merely accidental. CVII. What is denoted by the term, experiment, is not limited to experience. A mathematician may, with- out use of sense, experiment with and upon mere ideas of numbers and mathematical diagrams, so as to dis- cover properties of numbers and figures and invent rules, e.g. the rule of three or the rule for making an equilateral triangle. 170 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. CVIIL • Human skill is given as being the effect of an interaction of man and his environment, an interaction that pretends to be a species of experience. In so far as the interaction originates knowledge, — knowledge how to perform — it is certainly experience, but, as there is a kind of skill that does not seem to be in- volved with knowledge how to perform, all interaction that begets skill does not present a good title to be accounted experience. Skill unrelated to the knowing faculty by a rule of performance without which it is not in the province of art and is not verbally com- municable by one man to another, e.g, skill in hitting a mark with a stone, is not involved with knowledge, and the interaction that begets such skill fails to make good its pretension to be accounted a species of expe- rience. An operative, by his skill in compounding certain chemicals used for dyeing, achieved for his employers a great success, but was quite incapable of discerning the rule according to which his skill pro- ceeded. Here we have an example of skill uninvolved with knowledge, and of an interaction of man and his environment which, although productive of skill, does not fall within the kind hitherto denoted by the name experience. If we enlarged the idea and comprehen- sion of the kind so as to make room in it for the interaction that begets skill, the proceeding would demand of us a still greater enlargement, whereby the kind should accommodate, as a species, the latent bodily processes that transmit to offspring faculties acquired by an ancestor. Philosophers have already taken this chap. xiv. EXPERIENCE. 171 liberty ; a bold way of philosophising due to the dis- regard and even contempt * of the deductive spirit and method which has resulted from the great success of induction. If the philosophers who have thus inno- vated upon the kind, experience, had undertaken to define the kind, it is probable that they would have encountered difficulties which would at least have cooled their precipitation. To undertake to define, tends to arrest and allay the temper of indiscreet rapidity in philosophy, ll brings J book and tends to beget a humbler intellectual temper. I do not see my way to a definition of Experience accommodating so great an innovation and conformed to the rule of eschewing assumption, especially of begging vexed questions. It seems to me not impossible that one day, owing to an advance of knowledge, the interaction which begets skill and the processes of hereditary transmission of acquired faculty may be found to be species of a genus entitled to the name, experience ; but at our present stage of knowledge we are not pre- pared for a definition affording legitimate accommoda- tion to the new candidates. The verbal communi- cation to one man of knowledge originated by the experience of another, is not an experience ; it is the offspring of, but not, an experience. How then should we account the processes whereby a faculty, whether of intuition or skill, acquired by an ancestor, is trans- mitted to his progeny, an experience ? The laxity of the inductive spirit as regards definition — its tendency to overlook differences which are not as near to obvi- ousness as they are important, — has begotten an idea of experience according to which knowledge derived from 1 The author of Philosophy Without Assumptions sneers at deduc- tion, — at reasoning that pretends to infer what "must be." 172 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l one's own experience is not distinguished from verbally imparted knowledge originated by the experience of another. My knowledge that there is a country named China is indeed the offspring of experience, but not of my experience. It is guaranteed to me, not by expe- rience, but by the law of confidence in the assertions of others; whereas they may err or lie. I have defined experience without assuming the existence of a material human body or a material environment, mak- ing the term as available to the idealist as to the materialist. This advantage must be forfeited if the comprehension of the kind be enlarged so as to embrace event that originates skill not founded on knowledge of rule. CHAPTEE XV. NO KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. CIX. All guaranteed knowledge, including knowledge of axioms and knowledge that originates in guaranteed inference, is accounted it priori. According to Kant, knowledge of time and space is h priori. Allowing these three kinds of knowledge to be a priori, what is the differentia of knowledge it priori ? Not the being congenital or unacquired, for guaranteed knowledge that originates in inference, e.g. Mathematics, is acquired. Not origination outside of experience, for the knowledge achieved by what is known as the inductive leap originates outside of experience, and it is not accounted a priori; it is separated from experience by a gulf which the leap traverses. There seems to be no other attribute that is proper and common to the three kinds of knowledge in virtue of which they could be reason- ably supposed to comprise a genus denotable as know- ledge it priori. But, if we eliminate guaranteed knowledge that originates in inference, it may, without flagrant inconsistency, be held that knowledges of the two remaining kinds are congenital, the antecedence referred to by the adverb it priori being that of con- 174 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. genital knowledge in respect of experience. This indicates the history of the term, knowledge d priori. Axiomatic knowledge w$s at first the only knowledge denoted by the term ; then the signification of the term was extended so as to embrace all deductive or guar- anteed science, and was finally stretched by Kant so as to include knowledge of time and space. Now if it be shown that axiomatic knowledge and the ideas of Time and Space are the creatures of experience, we destroy the foundation of the pretension of guaranteed science to be knowledge d priori, and so prove that there is no such knowledge. This I proceed to show. CX. Axiomatic knowledge is divisible into knowledge of discoverable, and knowledge of undiscoverable, axioms. The axiom The sum of the parts is equal to the whole is an example of undiscoverable axioms ; the axiom, a limit is the conterminus of two beyonds, of discover- able axioms. Knowledge of undiscoverable axioms begins unconsciously. The process by which experience supplies the pertinent cognitive complement to the per- tinent thesic affection (§ xviii.), converting an incom- plete thesic affection into a complete one, is latent. The latency excludes the possibility of discovery prior to a late development of philosophy. On the other hand, question and effort to make the contrary an object of knowledge are needed to convert the incom- plete thesic affections that refer to discoverable axioms into complete ones, — into knowledges. It is obvious that knowledge of undiscoverable axioms originates in chap. xv. NO KNOWLEDGE & PRIORI. 175 the experience which supplies the pertinent cognitive complements, but it is not obvious that knowledge of discoverable axioms so originates. This, however, admits of proof. The kinds that are the subjects of discoverable axioms, e.g. limits, beginnings, events, causes, are made known by experience, and the mental symbols of them are so fashioned by the experience in which they originate that scrutiny must needs find in them the attribute which the axiomatic proposition predicates. The experience makes essen- tial to the subject the condition of a complete seem- ing of necessity in virtue of which scrutiny intui- tively sees in the pertinent thesis an axiom, — sees inconsistency in the opposite* thesis. For example, it inserts into the idea of a limit the condition of the complete seeming of necessity that a limit is between two beyonds ; into the idea of a beginning the complete seeming of necessity that a beginning is an effect. The property of experience whereby it generates the con- ditions of deductive discovery of the infinite and the absolute were hidden in our ignorance of the possibility of unconscious knowledge and of the latent operations of experience. This will be further illustrated by the exposure of the empirical origin of the ideas of Space and Time. CXI. Kant holds that knowledge of space and time is & priori. He grounds the doctrine on the following arguments ; — a. The idea of Space cannot be a product of external experience, or that which has for object the universe external to the mind or any part of it, because that experience presupposes an idea of space, an idea 176 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l of an extended thing without one of space being impos- sible : &. The idea of Space involves an idea of non- contingent existence, for space is given as existing of necessity, a consistent notion of the non-existence of space being impossible ; but experience takes no cog- nisance of the non-contingent ; it is confined to cognis- ance of the contingent : c. The idea of Space is the idea of an infinite monad ; the symbols of infinity and of a unity that excludes separableness of parts are essential to it, so that it could not be the offspring of an addition of part to part, but springs complete into being; it cannot, therefore, be accounted a collective or general idea ; to hold that a part of space is first apprehended, and that then other parts are successively added and finally a complement of infinity, is inconsistent. CXII. 1. Now it is true that a sense-perception of an extension supposes a discernment of a void, (whether of an infinite and absolute void may for the present be left an open question), but it does not presuppose such a discernment. It is not only conceivable but it is highly probable that an impression made by a solid upon a tactile afferent has the property of causing a sense-perception that has for object both a solid and a void. 2a. The second argument begs the question whether it be competent to experience to beget knowledge of the non-contingent, and, more generally, of Necessity. We might alter the meaning of the term Experience, so chap. xv. NO KNOWLEDGE 1 PRIORI. 177 that it should denote a kind of mental events of a nature to initiate knowledge of the contingent. It might be a most expedient arrangement, but the philo- sopher who makes free to do this should give us notice of the change, and define the kind to which he applies the term. Kant does neither. Following Leibnitz he asserts, as though it were a self-evident truth, that what all the world understands by the term, experience, does not give cognisance of the non-contingent, of what could not not-be. He thereby implies, or seems to imply, that it is not cojnpetent to a latent encephalic event consequent to a ; tactile impression to cause a discernment of both a solid and a non-contingent void. If it have this property, it is idle to pretend, as Kant pretends, that it produces the two objects of the discern- ment in different ways, one & priori, and the other & posteriori, — as idle as to pretend that the friction of the lucifer match elicits the consequent light from the match, and the consequent heat from the substance against which the match is rubbed. The speciousness of the doctrine, that certain ideas originate with, but not in, experience, covers just so much emptiness. It is true that space is given as a thing which could not be tactilely discerned, but physiology annulled the datum when it ascertained that the proximate cause of a sense -perception is an event occurring in a nerve centre, and not at the periphery. So long as belief is determined by the datum, that the immediate object of sense -perception is real, and that its relation to the percipient is the proximate cause of the perception and the immediate object of the inlooking sensational dis- cernment which attends the perception, so long it is also determined by the datum, that space, as being intangible, is not discernible by means of the tactile N 178 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. sense. But when it is known that the relation of the perceived reality to sense, e.g. the contact of a solid with the hand, is only a remote cause of the perception, that a series of latent nerve and cerebral changes inter- vene between that and the proximate cause, that the latter is extremely unlike the object of the discernment which is its immediate effect, and that, in all proba- bility, the object is unreal and a mere vicar of the reality with which the perception puts its subject in cognitive relation ; when, also, it is considered that a tactile impression could not beget the idea of a solid without a concurrent idea of a void, the principle of parsimony demands (and the demand encounters no reasonable objection) that impressions on tactile afifer- ents have the property of causing discernment of space. The discrimination between mental events that beget knowledge of the non- contingent and those that acquaint us with only the contingent, is one of great importance, but, to secure it and elicit from it all its significance, it is not necessary to innovate upon the common idea of experience. If the mental organism be such as to yield after a little practice to a tactile impression the idea of an absolute void, then experience, according to the common notion of what the name denotes, acquaints us with the non -contingent, — with the absolute void termed Space. 26. We have ideas of contingent and mobile voids, e.g. the apparent void in the cabin of a moving ship. Of course the apparent void is really a succession of the parts of space filled with air, but our concern at present is with the idea> not with the reality. Now, according to Kant, there must be two sources of ideas of voids, one & priori for the idea of Space, the other chap. xv. NO KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. m & posteriori for ideas of contingent voids ; ideas of places, like those of voids, comprehend ideas of non- contingent places, e.g. the parts of space, and ideas of contingent places, e.g. a ship's cabin or hold, a pocket, the squares of a chessboard. To accommodate to Kant's theory we must allow two sources of ideas of Place, one a faculty of cognition & priori, the other a faculty of cognition & posteriori. Kant holds that the idea of Time, like that of Space, is d, priori. But we discern musical intervals that seem at first sight to be con- tingent, and avow to scrutiny that they are parts of time and therefore absolute. Are our ideas of these & posteriori, and our ideas of obvious parts of time & priori f The offence to the principle of parsimony involved in such a multiplication of faculties is obviated if we consent that experience takes cognisance of the non-contingent as weU as of the contingent, and that it is the source of the ideas of Space and Time. It is probable that, at first, all void and matter not given as beginning, ending, or in motion, is given as non- contingent and unsusceptible of change, but that experience of the change of place and of the apparent becoming and annihilation of bodies undoes the datum as regards matter, whereas there is nothing to disturb its empire as regards space. The idea of Place would not be possible without experience of determining material limits, and the determining matter was prob- ably apprehended as being an absolute boundary when the place was apprehended as absolute. The aversion to the idea of the earth's motion which resisted the theory of Galileo not improbably had its root in this law of experience. 2 c. Space is given as involving a non- contingent 180 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. 44 up-and-down," until the relativity of the latter and its dependence on gravitation are discovered. That gravi- tation determines our intuitions of " up-and-down * is proved by a very simple experiment. Put into a stereoscope a photograph of a projecting beam : apply the stereoscope to the eyes so as to exclude all visual objects save the photograph: look at first downward, then forward, and then upward ; when you look down- ward the beam appears to project from a floor, when forward from a wall, when upward from a ceiling. The relation of the eye to the object is the same in the three cases, so that the differences of the intuitions must be owing to those of the relation of the head to the line of gravity. The idea of" up-and-down," then, and of its non- contingency, depends upon gravitation, and therefore upon experience. In respect of this idea gravitation is a mould of experience. The pre- tension, therefore, that it is not competent to experience to be cognisant of the non-contingent, is unfounded. 2d. According to Leibnitz and Kant intuitive know- ledge & pi*iori is differentiated by necessity, i.e., the tiling known A priori seems to be necessarily true. Tried by this criterion, knowledge of space and time is not d priori. Descartes and Leibnitz are conspicuous examples of a species of mind to which space and time are given as being contingent. To the mind of Locke time was given as contingent, — as being a mere attribute of event — and space as being infinite and absolute. To the writer space was given as absolute before he dis- cerned its infinity. By the way, these facts, though they refute Kant's doctrine respecting the origin of our knowledge, make for another important part of his doctrine, namely, the dependence of knowledge on chap. xv. NO KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 181 mental moulds. They show us these moulds deterr mining opposite seemings of necessary truth, making it seem to one mind necessarily true that time and space are infinite and absolute, and to another that they are finite and contingent. They reprove dogmatism, and prick its pretence that, as Jacobi holds, we grasp the Absolute in immediate knowledge. The poor conceit, that the circumstances contribute one constituent of knowledge and the mind another, loses countenance in their presence. They explain that we have mistaken a seeming of necessary truth for necessary truth, and that demonstrative science has no better endorsement than the seeming. They chasten us with the humili- ating conviction that the mind is radically fallible, and admonish us to take refuge in lowly trustful scepticism. If the evidence drawn from profound differences of mental structure be too recondite to be convincing, proof of a homelier kind is at hand. Experience .acquaints .us with contingent things that are opposites, e.g. light and darkness, sound and silence, opacity and transparency, and in respect of these, begets such axiomatic knowledge as that no light is dark, no silence is sonorous, no opaque thing is transparent. Kant's pretext, that such knowledge is determined by the principle of contradiction, avails nothing, the principle being, not a source of knowledge, & priori, but, a mould of experience. 2e. The doctrine that experience excludes cognis- ance of the non-contingent emanates from a teeming cause of error, viz. the mistaking certain conspicuous species for their genus, — in other words, oversight of obscure species. Experience, of itself, begets only two knowledges of the non-contingent, viz. those of time 182 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. and space, 1 objects which it gives for the most part as indistinct accessories of other objects, and never as objects of attention. All other objects of experience unassisted by inference are given as contingent, — none of them as exhibiting a complete seeming of necessity. 3. The third argument breaks upon the fact that certain men discover of themselves the infinity of space long after space had been given to them as a void between the sky and the earth. One of the most conspicuous events in the childhood of the writer was this discovery (§ xxxviii). It seems that the idea of a limited absolute void precedes,, at least in certain cases, that of the infinity of the void, and that we acquire the idea of Space piecemeal That we acquire it deductively from the axiom, A boundary is surrounded by a region, I have shown in my argument against the LawoftheConditioned(§xxxviii.,xliL). Kant's doctrine, that necessary truth is proper to knowledge d, priori, translated into the doctrine that seeming of necessary truth is proper to knowledge & priori, is refuted by two data, viz. there is a non- contingent "up-and- down," and, falling is the alternative of support,— data that are the offspring of an experience determined by the latent bearing of gravitation on consciousness. It is also refuted by the datum, I exist, a seeming of necessary truth of such importance that it has been made the foundation of a dogmatic philosophy. The 1 Knowledge of First Cause is the remote offspring of experience and the immediate offspring of an inference. It depends on the datum, Except the parts of time, what begins is effect. It takes an inference to elicit the knowledge from the datum. The part of experience in the generation of the knowledge is the generation of knowledge of beginnings and effects. chap. xv. NO KNOWLEDGE 1 PRIORI. 183 existence of the Ego is contingent, and, according to Kant, the contingent is not knowable d priori. There- fore, the seeming of necessity of the existence is the offspring of experience. Geometry refutes the doc- trine ; for geometry is a science of the properties of figures indifferent whether they be contingent or non- contingent, whether parts of space or extended things. If it be true that it originated as an instrument for the ascertainment of the boundaries of land, it at first re- lated exclusively to the contingent. That it grounds nothing on the non-contingency of space is proved by the certitude which it elicits in minds to which space is given as being contingent, e.g. those of Descartes and Leibnitz. In so far as it builds on problems it builds on the contingent, for problems have to do with the factitious, e.g. with a made circle, and the factitious is contingent CXIII. 1. No knowledge is antecedent to or independent on experience; but familiar species of experience — those which have hitherto seemed to comprise all experience— have so small a share in the origination of the kinds of knowledge accounted d, priori (the kinds comprising guaranteed knowledge) that even now, in view of the reasons of the opposite doctrine, the mind of the writer tends to revolt to the doctrine of knowledge d, priori. The arguments on which its opponents have hitherto pretended to found the oppo- site theory are fallacious. Mr. J. S. Mill especially, a conspicuous opponent of the doctrine, is amenable to the reproach of having derived a true conclusion from 1&4 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l a false reason* — one that had not even the excuse of being specious. He held that we derive our know- ledge of axioms from experience of instances, — in- stances so numerous and of such binding force, that the syntheses they caose* although accidental, exhibit a complete seeming of necessary connection. We are concerned to expose the fallacy of his argument, to ascertain what an instance is* and to lay bare a species ef experience of instance but for the latency of which there wvhzM not hive been room for the coittrover^y. 2&. An. example is * p*r$Mr&^xr wZferfra*ra tf t& &•£. cc ctf tie trash of a gesNzai thesis.. An exaELpfce SEhnscraar** 1 ei the smath e£ a general sheas 2s an imgtomGL I: to» stake kamewm to- a c£3i the IkfswL bcm I skew 15* a bSSt. I taw reraise to- a marc eaaettjik : :£. to n*le fcwn t* iis: tie exptagreres* >rf 4g£ xrexrewoar. I sxpikoe sccw- rr iis zraaanae. I tar* wafers* t^ ix eTgrrjiif- siua is- ijr Tn^CKnifc. In die tfH£ sas* I ik*. ir ibe *fch*c I 5^ u:jl. LJiucase lihe $n&k rf 4 xstttfcil itesis isosfc as ib* ibssR. JLH £im- 2?.. Th«re is * ^snwass « ixKCfiuses x: wiich ir 5s ss$t«ttw£ to >* &*&in&. 3?wr insaoisf must tairibir wnajwea: to inaiKiw^s rf * wcarit Vina, it is *nat -WtlfiJ^WtW T-0 tftitflR. IT TtiMC ilufeCTltf^T ill- Xht TTTTT»r| It is jmflgKtttitfl to th*> Toltttiro: oc wihiususe xo xhe jfthsr jtisritafte* of the swwi u> Inear iniiisciiixsiJy nn il** mind : in &«,. tho indistiiuq Ivssrmc IwnnijT Tkecrat xhe *tmm&ra$ Vnwtailgfc. Tina «iH swwis «r -wimfe. Bm il is *w* «tmrpottiiti to thr ^citatum, srotdiry of xhe snzn **f th* :j«fcs to th* "wJuilc. to ho iaii jscmrihr objective. chap. xv. NO KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 185 Accordingly, the indistinct objectivity of the relation of whiteness to swans made every observed swan an instance relatively to the false thesis, All swans are white, whereas it is impossible that the equality of the parts to the whole should be indistinctly objective and so make the whole an instance relatively to the general thesis, The sum of the parts is equal to the whole. It needs extraordinary occasion, such as the circum- stances that originally led to the discovery of mathe- matics, or those that engage the mere pupil in the study of that science, to make such a relation objec- tive. 2c. According to Aristotle, whose doctrine has been lately revived by Mill, axioms are the offspring of in- duction; and by induction both Aristotle and Mill meant experience of instances. They imply that there is a period in the mind of every individual in which, though the terms be understood, the individual could not assent to the truth of the axiom, the sum of the parts is equal to the whole ; but, after several occasions of seeing sums of parts denuded of the appearance of totality and comparing them with themselves qud clothed with that appearance, and intuitively discerning their equality to one another, he inductively infers that, in all cases, the sum of the parts is equal to the whole. Now it seems to me highly probable that the violence of this hypothesis would have been spared had its advocates distinguished the species, instances to which it is essential to be distinct. Neglecting this species, and aware that the indistinct objectivity of certain instances causes general knowledge, they judged, I take it, that knowledge of axioms might be the effect of a like objectivity, that the infant mind could be as indo- 186 THE ALTEENATIVE. book i. lently instructed by the one as by the other. But, allowing this apology, it does not exempt from reproach incurred by oversight of the fact, that, from the time memory begins to record experience to the commence- ment of the study of mathematics, the mind never encounters such a distinct object as equality of a sum of the parts to the whole ; whereas the doctrine that axiomatic knowledge derives from induction requires that equalities of sums of parts to their wholes so haunt the discernment of the infant as not only to establish certitude of the truth of the pertinent general thesis but also to impart a seeming of inconsistency to its opposite, — a seeming of which no skill of the most enlightened can divest it. No one, I presume, will entertain the idea of the prodigious discourse which this doctrine of Aristotle imputes to the infant mind. It is clear that the advocates of knowledge & priori were right in so far as they denied that the knowledge in question is the offspring of experience of instances, although wrong in denying that it is the offspring of experience. The doctrine, that the aspect of necessity to be true exhibited by axioms results from experience of instances of exceptional frequency and intimacy, splits on the fact that the negation of the reality of the not-me does not exhibit a seeming of inconsistency. The thesis, I am all that exists, although extremely absurd seems perfectly consistent ; yet the instances of synthesis of what is given as the not-me with reality surpass all others as to frequency and intimacy. The thesis that men's heads are above their shoulders, although pressed upon the synthetic faculty by excep- tional frequency and intimacy, makes no pretension to be an axiom. chap: xv. NO KNOWLEDGE A PRIORI. 187 CXIV. To hold that experience is the source of all know- ledge entails no necessary divergence in any other respect from the theory of Mind of those who believe that a part of human knowledge originates away from experience. What Kant distinguishes from all other knowledge as knowledge&^wwi the writer distinguishes as guaranteed knowledge. The writer agrees with Kant that a complete seeming of necessity guarantees one of these kinds of knowledge, and not the other. As regards the word " transcendental/' the agreement is nominal as well as real That very knowledge which Kant denominates transcendental knowledge the writer denominates transcendental knowledge. According to Kant it is pure knowledge & priori, according to the writer it is guaranteed knowledge of the non-contingent ; in the view of both pure mathematics exemplifies transcendental knowledge, and applied mathematics guaranteed knowledge that is not transcendental. Kant allows that all knowledge begins with experience, but claims that what he terms knowledge & priori does not arise in experience. The writer holds that Kant overlooked a species of latent experience, viz. that which generates axiomatic knowledge, and, mistaking the obvious part for the whole of experience, correctly held that what he terms knowledge & priori does not arise out of what he took to be the whole of experience. A notable difference distinguishes the experience that generates the axiomatic part of guaranteed knowledge from all other experience, viz. that the knowledge cannot be forgotten. It is so grounded in as to be inseparable from the structure of the mind. No wonder, in view of the latency of its origin and its inseparableness from the mind, that it was taken to be independent of experience. 188 THE ALTERNATIVE, book i. CXV. 1. Experience comprehends and is comprised by the following six species : — Apperception. ^Reflection. Inlooking sensational Perception. Sense-perception. Emotive Perception. Latent Experience. Of these, apperception and reflection have always been more or less confounded. Even Leibnitz does not completely distinguish between them. Two of them, viz. inlooking sensational perception and latent experi- ence, have been altogether overlooked. In limiting Experience to the operations of the external senses and what he terms the internal sense, Kant quite overlooks the empirical character of emotive perception. As to the comprehension and extension of experience he follows Locke, from whom he borrows the term, internal sense. 2. The operations of the supersensuous faculty, being always subsidiary to those of the other empirical faculties, e.g. the faculties of apperception and sense-per- ception, do not constitute a species of experience. They contribute to experience two kinds of immediate objects, viz. those that are symbolic of the contingent, e.g. the symbols of identity, durability, power, thickness, etc,, and those that are symbolic of the non-contingent or absolute, e.g. the symbols of time and space. Let the latter be distinguished as transcendent, and the former as non-transcendent. Let knowledge of transcendent objects be distinguished as transcendent. ^■fc^M^alfc i 1 ■ it JU^m. !■■ i CHAPTEE XVI. RECOGNITION. CXVI. 1. There are immediate objects that are differentiated by an attribute significant of objectivity to former discernment, — significant either that the object was formerly discerned, or that its like was formerly dis- cerned. Recognition is the* common name of the dis- cernments supposed by those objects. .Let the differentia of the object of recognition be termed recognitional attribute. 2. Familiarity is a species of recognitional attribute. It signifies that the object has been either object of many discernments, or the like of objects of many dis- cernments. When the object of recognition has been discerned but once before, its recognitional attribute tends to be the hinge of a remembrance of the former discernment. Objectivity void of the recognitional attribute, or of all but some faint tincture of it, is what is known by the name " strangeness." By the way, it is highly probable that the mind is not susceptible of wonder until it has become accustomed to the familiar, — that infants at first experience no surprise, but need 190 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. to be for some time exclusively conversant with familiar objects to be susceptible of that emotion. 3. A recognition either is or is not an identification. Let recognitions that are identifications be termed recognitive identifications, and those that are not " non-identific " recognitions. 4. Identification differs according as it has or has not reference to identity in time, e.g. the identity of a present with a former object of vision. When one notices that the acclivity and declivity of the same incline are but different aspects of the same thing, he identifies, but the identification has not respect to a temporal identity. Accordingly, identification is divi- sible into temporal and non- temporal identification. The former is either recognitive or irrecognitive, recog- nitive when it is caused by the likeness of a present to a former object of discernment, otherwise irrecogni- tive. When the constituents of water known to have been in a given place convert into ice, and the water is consequently given as having become ice, a temporal identification obtains (viz. of the ice with the water), but the identification is not recognitive, — it is caused not by a likeness but by a bearing of sameness of place on the mind. 1 By the way, the identification is delu- sive, for the water has not become ice ; certain of its constituents, through annihilation of the constituent, liquidity, and substitution of the constituent, hardness, have become constituents of ice. An analogous error 1 This kind of intuition has been ignored by philosophy. If classed at all, it would probably be classed as an inference, as though it were involved in a discourse wherein the idea of the place is given as evi- dence from which the identity is inferred. Perception is not more free from discourse, assertion, and the intervention of evidence. chap. xvi. RECOGNITION. 191 of the faculty of identification has begotten the doctrine, that water is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. Note that identification by means of evidence, as of one's hat by evidence of the place in which it was deposited, is not recognition. 5. The knowledge involved in recognition is for the most part unconscious. One knows, but not consciously, the identity of familiar objects of perception while he perceives them, and also their likeness to other things formerly perceived. If the identity of a perceived familiar object be in question, the knowledge of it is conscious, but circumstances of a nature to put identity in relief are rare. 6. ^Recognition involved in experience I distinguish as empirical, all other as non- empirical The visual recognition of an object as being a man, is an example of empirical recognition. The train of ideas consists of objects of non-empirical recognition. Eemembrance of an object not present to sense involves non-empirical recognition. 7. Empirical recognition is the effect of a latent action of likeness on the mind. To show this it is necessary to distinguish and name two species of like- ness which philosophy has overlooked. CXVII. 1. Likeness of and above a certain degree has a remarkable property, viz. tendency to cause several 192 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. things to pass for a single thing. For example, it causes the several things constituting a crowd, a swarm, a flock, a galaxy, a regiment, to pass for a single thing ; it causes the several parts of a stone to pass for a single thing. Likeness of a lower degree has no such tendency. Men and insects resemble each other as to many im- portant bases of likeness, e.g. life, organs of sense, etc., but the resemblance has no tendency to gather them into a unit before the eye of intuition. Let the unify- ing tendency of likeness of and above the degree referred to be termed " unitiveness, ,, and let likeness differentiated by unitiveness be distinguished as " unitive." Likeness, accordingly, is divisible into unitive and non-unitive likeness. 2. The higher degrees of unitiveness tend to hide, and the lower to leave exposed, the plurality of the object the aspect of which it contributes to determine, e.g. to hide the plurality involved in a perceived stone, to leave exposed that of a crowd. Our debt to unitive likeness is so great that one wonders how the creditor should have so long remained unknown. Without its help perception could have no objects but least-per- ceptible things such as minima visibilia. The idea of Cosmos would not be possible. An indefinite severality would distract consciousness and hold it in worse than brute impotence. We should be void of ideas of plurality, number, kind, whole, and part. Such is the dependence of intellection on unitive likeness. 3. The law according to which unitive likeness operates may be termed the law of e pluribus unum. 4. The function of unitive likeness is not confined chap. xvi. RECOGNITION. 193 to what is regulated by the law of e pluribus unum ; it has a property whereby it also causes empirical recognitive identification, and empirical non-identific recognition, and its action on the mind in this causa- tion is latent. The identification involved in a visual perception that has an acquaintance for object is due to the unitive likeness of the acquaintance as object of a former perception to himself as object of the present perception. If the likeness be reduced by certain disguises below the unitive degree, identification does not obtain, and, if a counterpart of the acquaint- ance be perceived and no extrinsic circumstance such as the simultaneous presence of the acquaintance or a knowledge of the extraordinary resemblance interfere, identification obtains. Such facts are conclusive that empirical recognitive identification is effect of an action of unitive likeness on the mind : that the action is latent is a negative datum of remembrance, for we all remember that our identifications involved no reference to likeness. The likeness acts without exhibiting itself : the action is such that it supposes an uncon- scious part of the mind that is its theatre, and an un- conscious modification of that part of the mind, a modification which is the proximate cause of the know- ledge of identity. In empirical non-identific recogni- tion, the mind does not consciously refer to likeness. The recognitional attribute exhibits no likeness to the empirico-recognitive discernment to which it is objective : its significance is addressed to a different discernment, — one that is not empirical It is objective to the former, but not as a sign : it is significant only to the latter. The discernment to which it is significant must be a comparison, and recognition excludes comparison. I am aware that this statement has an air of inconsist- o 194 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. ency, but it will be redeemed by an example. I see a dog which I never saw before, and, nevertheless, he exhibits to me an aspect of familiarity, his appearance being unitively like many canine appearances that were formerly objective to me. I do not think of the like- ness, I make no comparison between the present appear- ance and former appearances, the familiarity is an extremely indistinct part of the object of my vision, and to my present discernment signifies nothing ; but I have unconscious knowledge of which it is the con- dition that I have seen many such appearances before, and, if I interrogate the familiarity, it manifests itself as a sign of frequent prior objectivity. The discern- ment to which it unfolds its signification is not an experience, and it involves a comparison. It follows, that the action of likeness on the mind which causes empirical non-identific recognition is latent. It is essential then, to empirical recognition, to be effect of a latent action of likeness on the mind. 5. An important difference distinguishes empirical recognition caused by unitive likeness from empirical recognition caused by non-unitive likeness. Let us consider an example of this difference. One sees in the distance a thing which is given as being a solid of a certain shape and size. He recognises in it the qualities, colour, solidity, shape, and size, and nothing more. This recognition, if he attend to the object, is unsatisfactory. As he approaches the thing it assumes more and more the appearance of a man and finally makes the observer certain that it is a man. The re- cognition is now satisfactory. The observer rests in it. The first of these two recognitions tends to make the subject aware of an ignorance, the second to make bitn chap, xvl RECOGNITION. 195 aware of a knowledge. The first excites, and the second satisfies, curiosity. Let recognition of a nature to content the intellect with what seems to be know- ledge of knowledge be distinguished as sufficient, and all other recognition as insufficient. 6. It is probable that the action of unitive likeness on the recognitive faculty, if nothing extrinsic to the likeness and the faculty interfere with it, would always cause identification, that non-identific recognition is always due to a cause extrinsic to the likeness and the faculty. When experience does not inform us that there are several individuals of a given type, our recog- nitions of an individual corresponding to that type are always identifications. All recognitions relative to the type to which the face and figure of Napoleon corre- spond are identifications ; but, if nature had regularly and abundantly produced individuals corresponding to that type, knowledge of the fact would cause the re- cognitions to be non-identific. If all human males were counterparts of Napoleon, and all human females of Josephine, recognitive identifications of human beings would be impossible, — all recognitions having man for object would be non-identific. That the appearances which cause recognitions of the sun and moon cause identifications and not non-identific recognitions, attests the tendency of unitive likeness to cause identification rather than non-identific recognition. The appearances present a better title to be regarded as appearances of several like things than as several appearances of the same thing ; for, until the rotundity of the earth was discovered, it was inexplicable how the sun got back to the east or the moon to any of its visible starting points. The more verisimilar interpretation of the appearances was that they appertained to the several, not to the same. 1*6 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l CXVHL 1. The individuals that constitute a kind resemble not only each other but also an ideal type, i~g~, indivi- duals of the kind, mankind, resemble a mental image of * Man. The type may be appaiitional or inappari- taonal ; that of mankind is appaiitional, that of policy, emit, negotiation, or virtue, inappaiitionaL The type is really any one of a species of types, e^„ there are as many ideal types of mankind as there are occasions on which mankind is objective, but it is convenient to the habit of thought and, if not to the veiy structure of the mind, at least to that of language, to pretend that the type is a durable unique, — an archetype, 1 — one which somehow exists in eveiy mind cognisant of the kind it typifies The name, Idea, is supposed to have bean o^ginatod by Plato *s the common name of such types* and Plato regarded them, not only as durable things, but* as tagmningless and everlasting appanages of the mind of God. But though it be discreet and ptifcaps indtsfwusahle to adopt the fiction, ve should gwod oursehvs gainst the sublime and pious error of MaMranbhtk JaoohL and Schelling. thai ve are imme- diafe^y* becians* of parckapauon in divine consciousness, OMNWSMft with the Absolute* Let erckftgpt be the wane of ideal types of kinds. * Al■li^^^*^fc^^^^^1**Vi•**«7^l« txiAs; uniques we MVA^pwit w WHANMliif^i^ tait weiMc Vcdagr dmr xkst do ni %kfr wait' w^w vma wik ♦8p? , *ini* {iNMitPMiss rf Aawn«Mi^twd»%» bfe ftfi fr» *P » fe^ »I *__—-- chap. xvii. WILL AND INSTINCT. 209 the intervention of will, — for choice, — for voluntary conduct. 2. The office of will is to steer, not to propel. What wind or steam is to the action of the helmsman, that propensity is to will. This truth is sometimes brought home in painful intuition to people suffering from the disorder of which melancholy is the chief symptom, — especially to the philosophic patient The ebb of force from the propensities threatens to strand them on apathy. I mean by apathy, not privation of all emotion, for horror replaces motive, but, privation of motive. The ebb of motive seems to them to be the ebb of voluntary power. It is only when wisdom, and possibly prudence and craft, demand painful resist- ance to propensity, that will has opportunity. Pro- pensity is competent, without the aid of will, to transact, and does in fact transact, all the ordinary business of life. Even conflict of motives occasions but rarely the interference of will ; for the most part, the strongest motive prevails and instigates ; it makes up our mind for us. Ignorant that the subversion of propensity involves the subversion of will, Stoicism proposed to found an empire of Will on the ruin of propensity. Asceticism tends to fall into the same error, and, sometimes, in a passion of propitiatory obsequiousness, would fain efface both will and pro- pensity, and substitute an adoring godliness. Mummies of worshipping bulls are found in Egypt, the knees bent and the eyes turned adoringly upward. The asceticism to which I refer would fain evacuate created conscious being of all but the animus thus symbolised ; no movement of intellect, no variety of emotion, should disturb the eternal monotony of the worship it affects. p 110 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l A right understanding of the dependence of volition on propensity rids Christian practice of ascetic distortion, and restores the Christian life to the largeness and ease enjoined by the example of one who professed that he came eating and drinking, — who frequented marriage feasts and all manner of innocent festive gatherings. 3. Conduct is either regular or irregular, the former when the agent refers to a rule extending through a kind of occasions, the latter when his view is confined to the present occasion. According to Christianity, regular conduct has for its chief end the reformation of the propensities, (" sanctification ") the subordinate end being the conformity of the practical life to moral dignity l and the welfare of society. Perhaps the most momentous difference between Borne and Protest- antism is, Uiat Rome clings to the trust which expects sanctification to result from Christian conduct, whereas Protestantism has drifted into the belief that the hope is Vtopian. CXXVIII. I have incidentally referred to permissions of the will. I now proceed to explain exactly what they axe. A voluntary being is responsible, not only for his, voli- tions, but also, for voluntary omissions. He may detect the culpability of an instinctive intention pre- vious to ivvivspouding performance, and not arrest it. This is wlua has beam happily termed a * permission the will" It is not an act. it is not a volition. iti-xnn.1 tfetftna "wom:di^it^"M4gnrt*tketfC|fenBfwof chap. xvii. WILL AND INSTINCT. 211 We have therefore to distinguish volitions from per- missions of the will. A free agent is as responsible for his permissions of the will as for his volitions. CXXIX. 1. It must be acknowledged that the argument of the Necessarian presents a potent plausibility to those to whom induction has displayed the immensity of the domain of law. This is amply attested by its success with men of science. Philosophers who hold to the existence of will have no better ground than the datum, that it exists. If their opponents could show that the datum is inconsistent, they would be obliged to surrender. This, happily, the necessarian has failed to show; but nevertheless, the advocates of freedom find it difficult to keep their ground against the torrent of evidence that necessity, under the form of law, determines all event, — evidence backed by proof that instinct counterfeits the aspect of will, and, under that seeming, transacts nearly the whole of the practical life of man, that data are at the best a pis atter, and that belief in free agency is itself a transgressor of a datum, viz. the datum that Event is effect. Now what be- hoves if the evidence beget doubt? Belief, or some equivalent of belief, in will, is the pivot of virtue. Self-denial is essential to virtue, and, to believe that necessity determines all our acts, is to believe that we are incapable of self-denial. A thorough conviction, a heart-conviction, that we are without power of choice, carries with it moral paralysis.- Although doubt does not paralyse, it makes us weak against temptation. 212 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. And in proportion as temptation prevails, it diminishes our power of resistance and enfeebles our moral faculty. Has the faculty of intentional action no resource in this emergency ? — Is it challenged by no duty ? An arbitrium is possible, — a decree that Will exists, that we are responsible. A man may pledge himself to act for ever according to this decree, and, by his conduct to the^end of life, justify the pledge. Taking Christ for his model he might, by ordinate self-denial, 1 improve his instincts and make probable the possibility of man becoming Christlike. Think of it, a world of Christs ! — Christlike lovers, — Christlike husbands and wives,— Christlike parents and children,— Christlike citizens ! Humour, mirth, sport, festivity, aesthetic enjoyment, of Christlike men ! To abandon a chance of contributing to such a promotion of his race, to abandon the cause of human dignity and happiness — the cause of wisdom, — rather than interfere with the impotence of doubt, to drift upon doubt into moral perdition, — is not this as unmanly as it is unwise ? And what though the arbitrium cleave to an error, if it achieve for man the greatest possible dignity and happiness ? By making him master of himself, it augments his mastery over Nature, and mastery over Nature is the paramount end of science. Truth, or the agreement of belief or assertion with what is and what is not, is also an end of science, but subordi- nate, and of infinitely less importance. Wisdom, com- mon sense, prudence, and purity (the principle of our nature that is averse to the opposite of dignity) concur 1 Ordinate self-denial excludes the application of bodily pain and all mental pain save what is incident to the avoidance of evil and needful for growth in wisdom. It is compatible with innocent mirth and inno- cent enjoyment of every kind. MkrfM*«l_aM««— MMtal chap. xvii. WILL AND INSTINCT. 213 that it is unworthy to rot in doubt, being free to lift ourselves, by an arbitrium, out of the mire. And to this we are incited by the consideration that the main argument of the necessarian is a petitio principii. He sets up as an axiom, as though the opposite were inconsistent, that preference of one of two opposite motives supposes the preferred motive to be the stronger. It does not. The idea, that a man is free to prefer the weaker member of a practical alternative, is perfectly consistent and has the sanction of a datum. Dignity or duty may be opposed in the alternative to strongest desire, and, for the sake of it, the weaker member of the alternative may be pre- ferred. Induction finds it probable that the weaker motive is sometimes preferred. A man in middle life may turn from doing wrong, pledge himself to live for the future according to Christian principles, and live accordingly to the end of his days. Is it to be sup- posed that he is never solicited after his conversion by a bad motive stronger than the Christian one which he prefers ? This I maintain is not probable ; experience of temptation by the religious attests the contrary. 2. The necessarian alleges that predictableness of human action proves the empire of necessity over all human action. It proves no such thing. Eegu- larity of conduct would be characteristic of a reign of will, and the regularity would be a condition of pre- dictableness. Human intentional action, however, has been predictable not because the agents were free, but because they were instinctive; for will has meddled but little with human action. !214 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. cxxx. When an emotion that is the effect and manifesta- tion of a propensity is more than a mere velleity, and is not held in the condition of mere motive by the opposition of an emotion caused by any other propen- sity, it tends to become an intention, and to be con- verted into one, needs only to be united with the needful idea of an agendum. If it refer to what can be presently done, it necessarily causes present per- formance ; if to performance after a certain interval, it assumes the air of being the offspring of deliberation, and commonly passes for that with its subject. We are on the way to discover for ourselves how copiously nature uses delusion when we detect her making us her dupes in this respect If the reader will be vigilant for the detection of this imposture, I engage that it will not be long before he discovers strong and important intentions that pretend to be but are not the offspring of deliberation. He will find that his mind is made up for him without his participation. Eesent- ment is apt at this kind of imposture. CXXXI. Allowing what I shall prove by-and-by, that a body either comprises or is a part of the mind, is the body the apperceptive agent supposed by Choice ? Does it by its unconscious action make itself a subject of con- sciousness, and so fit itself to be a choosing agent, or chap. xvii. WILL AND INSTINCT. 215 does it by that action capacitate a non- corporal thing — a soul — to be such an agent ? If the latter hypo- thesis be true, volition is distinguishable from all other mental event as being purely psychical, — as being neither an unconscious action of the corporal part of the mind nor an effect of one. That action contributes the indispensable occasion and circumstances of volition, the needful apperception and practical alternative, but it contributes nothing as cause to the act constituting the preference. If the opposite hypothesis be true, and if, nevertheless, volition be possible, then the uncaused act involved in choice is distinguishable from all other mental event as one that is neither an unconscious mental action nor the effect of one. Every other mental event either is, or is the effect of, an unconscious action of the corporal part of the mind. This, by the way, is a fact with which it is important to familiarise the mind in order to break up and altogether destroy the native and habit -rooted error, that such events as attention, speculation, judgment, reasoning of every kind, are purely psychical acts and indeed volitions. CXXXII. 1. Attention is not volition. It is not the immedi- ate sequent of a practical alternative. It is no more a volition than the muscular contraction which in obedi- ence to intention lifts the hand. Whenever one looks or listens he attends, but looking or listening is not choosing. If it were correct to say of acts consequent on volition that they are voluntary, attention conse- quent on volition is voluntary ; but the distinction I 216 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. have made between will and instinct calls for a corre- sponding alteration of the adjective, voluntary. 2. There are degrees of emotive impulse that put will in abeyance. It is only in the temperate zone of emotion that man is voluntary and responsible. Ignor- ant of this truth society has exposed the individual to inordinate risks, and exacted of him impossible for- bearance. CXXXIIL 1. A free agent must either be, or involve, a souL To prove that man has not a soul would be to prove that he is not a free agent. Modern physiology has been discrediting the doctrine of the soul by evidence that the soul is a supernumerary in the economy of life, that it has no office, that things which cannot be supposed to possess a soul manifest both life and con- sciousness. Has it thus made good that man does not possess a soul ? Has it annulled the datum, that a man is a durable thing ? Has it shown that, like the projected part of a fountain, he is a mere series both as to matter and form ? If it have, it has emptied Being of dignity. But happily we are still able, in the name of dignity and common sense, to hold to the negative. 2. When physiology showed that the human body is a mere series, philosophy, tenacious of the funda- mental datum that man is a durable thing, judged and taught, and common sense universally'accepted, that the durable constituent of man — the soul — is the subject of conpcionfmess and the principle of life. Death was chap. xvn. WILL AND INSTINCT. 217 regarded, not as the annihilation of the soul nor of a mere bodily attribute, but as the cessation of a relation between soul and body on which life depends. If physiology should succeed in showing that life does not depend upon a soul, common sense would not there- fore be driven to surrender the datum of a human temporal identity that measures at least the interval between birth and death : it could still hold that the durable constituent of man is the subject of conscious- ness. Indeed, the author once found himself so pressed by the besieging physiological evidence that he was obliged to retire into this citadel ; but at last a successful sally cleared the town of the enemy. Though all be not lost by such a retirement, yet so much is lost, because of the intimacy of the relation between life and consciousness, that it behoves the party of wisdom to be tenacious of the dependence of life upon the soul. But to hold our ground, we must humble ourselves to an alliance with the lower animals, and even the vegetable kingdom. This was obvious to Bishop Butler, who therefore rebuked the human arrogance that denied souls to the lower animals. Let us allow that whatever has life has a soul, and that the rank of the soul depends upon that of the connected body ; that in the vegetable kingdom, and perhaps throughout a consider- able part of the animal kingdom, the body has not the wherewithal to make the soul conscious, and that all the action in that region which seems to manifest con- sciousness and intention is reflex. In connection with a human organism a soul acquires the possibility of becoming a free-agent and a subject of wisdom. We may even sanction an eclectic reconciliation between spiritualism and materialism. We may adopt the con- sistent hypothesis, that Certain atoms are qualified to be, 218 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. in certain relations, subjects of the quality, life, and, in others, of both the quality, life, and that on which de- pends the occasional attribute, consciousness. The quality of the atom on which life depends may bear such a relation to life as inactive power bears to force. In certain relations the power, combustibility, is inactive, in others it is active and thereby becomes force. So, apart from the relation in which an atom is the cardinal atom of an organism its quality on which life depends is not life, but is life when the atom is in that relation. Outside of the relation in which an atom is qualified to be a subject of life it may be part of an inanimate thing, e.g. a stone. This hypo- thesis is the reverse of prepossessing. It has no grace to compensate, in the view of common sense, the repug- nancy of its novelty. It has nothing to recommend it but its consistency and the fact that it is the only visible plank within reach of the drowning datum, that animals and plants are durable things. Before we surrender to the monstrous and degrading thesis, that our father, wife, child, or friend, is nothing more than one or other of u series of bodies formed out of food, common sense demands that we shall either hold to the datum against the rebutting evidence, on the ground that deduction is not good against so fundamental and important a datum, or adopt any consistent hypothesis, however im- probable, that saves the doctrine. For my own part, I employ the hypothesis as a mere measure of defence — a temporary intrenchment against the evidence that is for killing the soul. I confront the evidence with a consistent hypothesis, and so paralyse its pretension to be demonstrative. Note that our knowledge of matter is all but confined to knowledge of body, and that of atoms we know nothing directly from experience. For chap. xvii. WILL AND INSTINCT. 219 all we know, atoms (if they exist at all) may not be even solid — may not have extension. Experience therefore has nothing to object to the large possibilities which the hypothesis claims for its " cardinal atom." 3. Before presenting and refuting the evidence against the dependence of life upon the soul it is necessary to define the terms, life, nutrition, organ, and function, to show that there is such a species as non- vital functional action, and to augment the extension of the kind, reflex action, so that it shall embrace, as one of its species, non- vital functional action, and, as another, unintentional reaction proper to living things and things that have lived whether attended or not attended by consciousness. Life seems to be undefinable except on the condi- tion of regarding the kinds, animals and vegetables, as primary, (§ lxvi.) and assuming that our knowledge of them is scientifically sufficient without definition. On this condition Life may be defined the quality (§ ci. 2c) proper and common to animals and vegetables. 1 It is not definitively indicatable by nutrition nor by function, although Comte and Blainville held the former to be 1 The invariableness of the connection between bioplasm and life and between bioplasm and germs has given rise to the notion that life is not proper to animals and plants, but belongs also to a material that is a matrix of animals or plants. According to this notion a seed in a grocer's shop, though not a plant, is a living thing. If the above definition be valid, a germ, as not being an animal or a plant, is not a living thing ; nor indeed is a part of an animal or plant a living thing. When such a part ceases to be an organ — loses the quality in virtue of which it was an organ — it is usual to say of it that it is dead. The predicate is untrue except it be regarded as metaphorical or determined by a secondary meaning of the terms, life and death. Death is not truly predicable of that which has not lived, nor, therefore, of a mere part of an animal or plant. 220 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. the essential part of life, and Bichat held life to be a sum of functions. This will be obvious when we ascer- tain precisely what nutrition and function are. According to the common notion of nutrition it is a process which a single durable body undergoes and in respect of which the body is at once agent and patient. The notion is erroneous. Not a single body, but a series of bodies, is the agent and patient concerned in nutrition. It causes a series of bodies each of which save the last is a part of the cause of the succeeding one. Nutrition is a process of concurrent decomposition and recomposition that causes a series of bodies which tend to pass for a single durable body, each body of the series, save the last, being an agent in respect of the process. The movement of water projected from a fountain is a partially analogous process. It causes a series of bodies that tend, only in a less degree than the series caused by nutrition, to pass for a single durable body; but no unit of the fountain series is agent in respect of the process that causes the series; The cause of the movement is altogether extrinsic to the units of the series, whereas each unit of the series caused by nutrition, save the last, is, in respect of the nutrition, agent. Growth is a species of nutrition, viz. nutrition that makes the dimension of each succeeding body greater than that of the preceding one. Now, if it be true that the hair of a corpse has grown, it is not true that nutrition depends on and is a definitive sign of present life — is what can be correctly termed a vital event. The evidence for post-mortem nutrition may not be conclusive, but it suffices at least to postpone the dogma, that life and nutrition are inseparable. When the sarcode refuted Bichat's definition of life those who were tenacious of the mutual commensurate- ft-MMMhMiaMMMiaiiHIbvMtWMiMiMkA^^M^^u chap. xvn. WILL AND INSTINCT. 221 ness of life and organisation were for reforming the idea of organ so that it should no longer symbolise a correla- tive of an organism, (a complement of organs) and, accordingly, we are taught in the Physical Basis of Mind (page 7) that — " There are organisms that have no differentiated organs. Thus a microscopic formless lump of semi-fluid jelly-like substance (Protoplasm) is called an organism because it feeds itself and repro- duces itself." This is a needless and perplexing inroad upon the ideas of organ, organism, and function. Accord- ing to those ideas an organ is correlated to an organism, i.e. it is one of two or more organs of one and the same animal or plant; and function is proper to organs. Science is not a gainer by the substitution of an idea of the organ which admits that an animal or vegetable may consist of but one organ. Ideas and language may be made convenient to biology without such violence. An organ is one of two or more parts of an animal or vegetable body, parts differentiated by difference of aptitudes in respect of kinds of acts which compose the natural history of the body. A function is an act or a series of acts of the kind in respect of which an organ is apt. Aptitudes that differentiate organs may* be dis- tinguished as functional. An organ supposes a func- tional aptitude, but not a function. The hand, eye, and ear of the new-born infant, because of their functional aptitudes are organs, though they have never functioned and might never function. Vital acts — acts dependent on present life and on which the continuance of the life of the subject depends — may be either functional or non-functional Those of the sarcode, as not having organs for agents, are non-functional. Functional acts may be either vital or non-vital. The growth of hair 222 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l or nails in a corpse is an example of non-vital func- tional acts. The behaviour of a corpse under voltaic stimulus, the contraction of the pupil in response to the impact of a beam of light when the eye is one detached from a recently-killed animal, are examples of non- vital functional action. The increase of extension of the kind, reflex action, by the addition of the species, non-vital functional action, calls for a new definition of the former. Reflex action is unintentional reaction proper to living things and the remains of living things. This definition en- larges the extension of the kind so that it embraces not only non- vital functional action but also unintentional reaction of which the agent is conscious, such as the counterpoising lifting of the leg when one has slipped and is falling backward. The term, reflex action, commonly signifies reflection by an efferent nerve of an impression conveyed to a nervous centre by an afferent nerve. According to the altered signification this kind of action may be distinguished as efferent. Keflex action comprehends the species vital action, e.g. nutrition, reproduction, etc. According to the late Mr. Lewes {Physical Basis of Mind, page 354), " The reflex theory once admitted, a rigorous logic could not fail to extend it to all animal actions." Although I have restricted reflex action to unintentional action, I think that it might be advantageously extended to all action proper to living things and the remains of living things, volition excepted. In that case the terms, reflex action, and instinctive action, would with a mere difference of connotation denote the same thing. The contrastive opposition of reflex action and volition would illuminate the great office of will during the chap. xvii. WILL AND INSTINCT. 223 first era of human development, namely, the transfer- ence of man from one kind of reflex action to another, from primary automatism, which makes him puppet, dupe, and victim, to a secondary automatism conform- able to wisdom, bearing to it the relation of a well- equipped ship to its master, and, together with will, constituting wisdom. 4. Two hypotheses respecting the nature of life dispute human belief: one of them may be denomi- nated the psychical and the other the anti-psychical hypothesis. According to the former, life depends upon a relation of a single durable part of a living thing to its other parts, a relation in virtue of which the single part is cardinal in respect of its whole, and constitutes the whole a durable individual. Each of . the non-cardinal parts of what are known to human experience as living things is a series, not a durable individual: the duration of the cardinal part of the living thing compensates the instability of the non- cardinal parts, and, in spite of their incessant changes, constitutes the whole a durable individual. According to the anti-psychical hypothesis life does not depend upon such a relation : an animal or plant is at any given moment comprised by atoms or molecules that serve it as constituents for only a brief part of its duration, and certain of the parts of the obvious animal or plant are really unobvious animals or plants, having lives of their own independent of their respective wholes, lives capable of persisting if the parts be de- tached: the life of the obvious animal or plant is either the sum of the lives of its parts, or a life some- how begotten of, and dependent upon, these. The psychical hypothesis has the support of two funda- 224 THE ALTERNATIVE. book l mental data, one, that animals and plants are durable things, the other, the datum involved in a man's apprehension of himself as being the same throughout time of which he has remembrance. To whatever in man affects human dignity the hypothesis is com- mended as sacred. If there be no soul, volition is impossible and moral goodness has no rational support. The opposed hypothesis grounds its right to credit on the effects of fissiparous generation, mechanical division of animals and plants, and the behaviour of fragments of mutilated animals. A cutting develops into a plant like its whole. The tail part of a worm cut in two evolves a head, and the head part a tail, and both become perfect worms. Granting that in these cases the plant or animal contains a durable part, one or other of the divided parts must be separated from it and, nevertheless, both not only manifest life but develop into perfect plants or animals : hence the conclusion that the life of at least one of the parts could not have depended on any thing in the whole answering to the idea of a soul. The conclusion is a non sequitur. Let A and B signify the divided parts and C the cardinal part. Suppose the division to leave C with A. It may now be the cardinal part of A as it was before of A B, and an atom of B may be- come its cardinal part, originating a new life and a new living individual. It is more convenient to common sense to put up with this explanation than to throw overboard the temporal identity of its subject. As for the behaviour of fragments of mutilated animals, its evidence is refutable without taxing common sense to make itself at home with a pis alter. I have shown that owing to the attributes, orderly and disorderly concurrence of attributes, substance is all but omnipo- OftttiMita^tfte 1 <:hap. xvii. WILL AND INSTINCT. 225 tent for good and evil By virtue of the former it is the unconscious cause of evolution, of the order about which astronomy is conversant, of the processes by which the earth has become what it is, of the produc- tion of the conditions of life and of the mind of man. Its unconscious power is the undesigning cause of all design, of all ratiocination, of poetry, music, eloquence, wit, craft, emotion, in fact of every event whatever except volition. In view of this wealth of resource we should not presume to judge that, in the domain of reflex action, it is incapable of mimicry of intentional action. When we see the parts of an earwig or Aus- tralian ant that has been cut in two turn upon each other and apparently fight to the death, or the trunk and legs of a headless frog behave as though they were furnished with sensibility and intelligence, we should not con- clude that mutilation can promote a rump into an intelligent animal: the opinion that in such cases non-vital reflex action mimics intentional action is less extravagant — more congenial to common sense. When the senseless polype seeks the light or seems to fight . for food with another polype, we should see in the act mere mimicry of intentional action. The mimicry of prescience and providence wrought by the instincts of the lower animals should teach us to forbear from setting bounds to the capability of reflex action in respect of mimicry. It is probable that the behaviour of the somnambulist is mere mimicry of intentional action — mere unconscious reflex action. The psychical hypothesis implies that death cannot be gradual — that there is no such thing as dying by inches — no such thing as the death of a part of an animal or plant. Death is the cessation of the rela- tion between soul and body on which life depends. Q 226 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i, « For aught we know to the contrary asphyxia might involve a cessation of all function without causing death. The distinction between somatic and molecular death is groundless. There is no such thing as mole- cular death : loss of functional aptitude of a part of the body is not a death of the part. A thing that is part of an animal or a plant may be made by detach- ment a living thing ; but qud part it is not a living thing and is therefore unsusceptible of death. As regards explanatorily the psychical hypothesis leaves nothing to be desired. It explains that certain corporal events affect the soul so as to make it a sub- ject of consciousness, that in the absence of such events the soul is unconscious, that, being made conscious and the consciousness involving a practical alternative, the soul is qualified to choose. This agrees with the data, 1st, That a man is a durable individual, 2nd, That consciousness has a subject, 3rd, That man is a free agent, 4th, That consciousness excludes exten- sion—is not a corporal event. It confirms the credit of the datum-giving faculty, and therefore that of common sense. It exempts from the necessity of con- sidering such inconsistent hypotheses as the vibrati- uncles of Hartley, rebaptized by Lewes neural tremors — indeed from the convulsive dialectic that in any way strives to identify consciousness with corporal event. And how futile are the objections to the psychical hypothesis. Forsooth, it is inconceivable that soid and body could act upon one another! — anatomy had not been able to find the soul with its scalpel \ — the principle of parsimony objects that the soul is superfluous ! So conceivable is the interaction of soul and body that it has been matter of common belief to the bulk of men for ages. There is a false i — - — ■ - - i * ' ■ k. • . - - -^ 1 » .. L - v , chap. xvn. WILL AND INSTINCT. 227 presumption abroad that, to know a cause, is to know how an antecedent operates ; and, as the idea of psychical causation in respect of corporal events affords no room for such a knowledge, it is held that reality cannot correspond to the idea. I have shown (§ lxiii. 12) that, considered in respect of immediate effects, knowledge of cause is not knowledge how an ante- cedent operates. Betweeji a dynamic event and its immediate effect intervenes no event — no event the indication of which could be an answer to the question how the dynamic event causes. To those who are distinctly aware of this truth the idea of psychical causation is beset by no mystery or difficulty that does not equally embarrass that of corporal causation. If the anatomist have not found a soul with his scalpel, neither has he an atom nor even a molecule ; and as for the principle of parsimony, its pretension to abolish the soul deserves nothing better or worse than a smile. CHAPTEE XVIII. GENERAL IDEAS. CXXXIV. 1. An idea of a Kind may symbolise the kind as a whole, or as a sum of the parts, — in the one case veiling the severality and enhancing the aspect of unity, in the other enhancing the aspect of severality, and obscuring that of the unity. The idea of all men congregated on the Day of Judgment symbolises a kind as a whole; that denoted by the term, all men, in the proposition, all men are mortal, sym- bolises a kind as a sum of the parts. What is pre- dicated of a kind symbolised as a whole is not supposed by the predication to be true respectively of its individuals, whereas what is predicated of a kind symbolised as a sum of the parts is supposed by the predication to be true respectively of its individuals. An idea of a kind symbolised as a sum of the parts is supposed by the predication to be true respectively of its individuals. An idea of a kind that symbolises the kind as a sum of the parts is general ; one that symbolises the kind as a whole is non-general. But a general idea is not therefore definable as one which symbolises a kind as a sum of the parts. There are t^^— Jfca^ i i . — ,.l« Jrfi chap. xvm. GENERAL IDEAS. 229 ideas of kinds that symbolise the kinds neither as wholes nor as sums of the parts. The idea of solidity is such a one. It inconsistently symbolises the kind as a monad pervading a multitude of subjects, viz. solids. The plurality of the kind is hidden from ordinary discernment, and has been hitherto only vaguely discerned by philosophic scrutiny. Such ideas have been correctly classed as General Ideas or Concepts, but not hitherto under the sanction of a correct definition of such ideas. The classification obtains this sanction when we define a general idea to be an idea of a kind that does not symbolise the kind as a whole. This definition excludes from the kind, general ideas, such an idea as that of a congregation of all men, and makes room for ideas of kinds that hide the plurality of the respective kinds. 2. The terms " general idea " and " concept " are synonymous. The 7 term Conception has two meanings; first, discernment of which the immediate object is a general type, second, the faculty of that kind of dis- cernment. A concept is the immediate object of a conception. 3. Concepts are either abditive or inabditive; the former being those that do, and the latter those that do not, hide the plurality of the kind they symbolise. Concepts symbolic of the concrete, e.g. concepts of men, horses, circles, angles, are inabditive; those symbolic of the inconcrete, e.g. of solidity, weight, justice, dignity, are for the most part abditive. General ideas of the inconcrete attributes, figure, colour, odour, heat, cold, although symbolic of the inconcrete, are inabditive. The abditive concept has overlaid the plain face of concrete and attribute with confusion and mystifica- 230 THE ALTERNATIVE. hook l (ion. Besides hiding the plurality of the kind it pretends to symbolise, it occasionally and not rarely symbolises the kind as a concrete which somehow penetrates, and, so to speak, inhabits, a multitude of concretes, transforming into a concrete what experi- ence for the most part gives as a sum of attributes. Take for example the abditive concept symbolic of Solidity. There are as many solidities as solids, and there are such species of solidity as hard, liquid, and aeriform solidity. If this severality be hidden the kind must be conceived as a monad, and, as this monad cannot be conceived as depending on this or that solid as attribute upon subject, it tends to pass for a concrete pervading a multitude of concretes ; and such in fact is the common notion of Solidity when not brought to book. Thus what is given by experi- ence as an attribute is represented by the abditive concept as a concrete. The stone, the lead, the lake, the gas, are so many concretes that are pervaded by the " monadic " concrete, solidity. Its deceitfulness is probably helped by the proper name which the lingual instinct annexes to the kind it symbolises. Proper names are for the most part applied to concretes, and, the names of kinds symbolised by abditive concepts ; proper, habit will have it that the thing denoted * concrete. But it is probable that, as regards the f of the mind to mistake attributes for con- as, the abditive concept is not the only culprit. i to be minds to which experience gives as i are commonly apprehended as attri- i abditive concept does not seem to be thu ideas of forces as being concretes, I originators of the theory s, — Mayer and Colding.l d Mind, pogo 160. chap. xvm. GENERAL IDEAS. 231 Positivism is a revolt against the tendency, but not a temperate one : it assails not only the concreteness, but also the reality, of attributes that are not appearances (§ ci. 26). A flash of intuition revealed to the writer that experience itself is capable of involving the in- abditive concept. While for the first time in the gallery of the Louvre, after he had seen perhaps three or four pictures of Claude Lorraine, on seeing a fourth or fifth there sprang into the view of his mental eye an appearance that seemed to be a monad pervading all the Claude pictures. It was their style, — the style of Claude, — but the writer did not then know that this dazzling novelty was not a unique, that it was a species of the genus, Style. On seeing in the distance a fifth or sixth picture of Claude, he divined it, by its participation of the putative monad, to be a Claude. He did not infer, he intuited, its relation to the other pictures and to Claude. In this instance a visual intuition involved an abditive concept symbolic of the differentia of a species of pictures, — the species, Claude's pictures. By the way, — the intuition refutes Nominalism as against Conceptualism. 4. Concepts are either mediate or immediate. A mediate concept is one that symbolises a kind by means of an individual serving as type of the kind. An immediate concept is one that symbolises a kind with- out the mediation of such an individual. The idea corresponding to the term, a triangle, in the pro- position, The three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, is an example of mediate concepts. The idea corresponding to the term, mankind, in the proposition, Mankind is a species of the genus Verte- brata, is an example of immediate concepts. It* i 232 THE ALTERNATIVE. book i. symbolises a kind without the mediation of an indi- vidual apprehended as type. Mediate concepts may be, but are scarcely ever, and never spontaneously, symbols of inapparitional kinds. Those that symbolise apparitional kinds, e.g. mathematical figures, consist of an image and an inapparitional constituent in virtue of which the image is a type, — is analogous with a sample. Let the individual serving as type in a mediate concept be known as the " nucleus " of the concept, and let mediate concepts relative to appari- tional kinds be known as " apparitional." The nucleus of an apparitional concept may be either an ideal image or an image given as being a reality, e.g. the triangle A B C on the blackboard. The discovery of the method of constructing an equilateral triangle must have been by means of an ideal image; for nature affords to observation no such figure as the mutually intersecting circles and contained triangle without an image of which the method is unknowable. A real figure of the kind must be the offspring of invention, and must therefore have been preceded by an ideal pattern. When a geometrical discovery elicited the cry of evprj/ca! the discoverer was in a bath, not before a blackboard. 1 But although original geometrical dis- covery is not possible without the ideal image, the nucleus of the pupil's first geometrical concept serving as pivot of a deduction is always though not neces- sarily a percept,— a reality,— a diagram. The diagram is apprehended as general type, — as a sample of a kind, — and is thereby qualified to distribute to all its antitypes, not as Mr. Mill held, by a second effort, but 1 The dependence of original geometrical discovery on the purely ideal concept refutes Mr. Mill's doctrine that it results from experi- ment on a diagram. 1 chap. xvm. GENERAL IDEAS. . 233 at once, the like of whatever deduction finds in the type. Accordingly, mediate concepts are divisible into those that have, and those that have not, a reality for nucleus. Let the former be known as realistic, and the latter as purely-ideaJL The purely-ideal mediate CQncept refutes a part of the negation of Nominalism. 5. Purely-ideal mediate concepts are familiar things. Design is a process of constructing such a concept or pattern, e.g. that of the kind, steamboats, which obtained in the mind of Fulton before he con- structed the first real individual of the kind. Our needs suggest to us ideal images of the things needed, — images that bear to certain things external to the mind the relation of type to antitype, of sample to that from which it is drawn,— images through which we somehow refer to a kind, store, or scattered supply, containing an individual that may be separated and appropriated. The ideal type may not perfectly re- semble any one of its types, and these may differ from one another as much as a war-horse from a Shetland pony, a St. Bernard dog from a village cur ; but the differences do not hide the likeness that makes the mental image a type. The ideal type evinces mental thaumaturgy in another way. The inventor's ideal type of the forthcoming kind is never accompanied by an image of several antitypes given as being the kind or a part of the kind. When with his mind's eye he sees antitypes, the type is not objective. 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