CHAPTER XII.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PURE EXPERIENCE.

II. -- CRITICISM.

§ 220. It is with considerable misgivings that I enter upon a discussion of the Philosophy of Pure Experience for fear lest I be told in reply that I have misunderstood. The general standpoint and significance of this philosophy seems to me to be clear enough; but I may be mistaken. And if I am, and have, in consequence, misunderstood what is meant, let me at once apologise to Professor James and to the late Avenarius, at the same time pleading in excuse what Professor James himself has said, viz. , that

a philosophy of pure experience . . . presents so many points of difference, both from the commonsense and from the idealism that have made our philosophic language, that it is almost as difficult to state it as it is to think it out clearly, and if it is ever to grow into a respectable system, it will have to be built up by the contributions of many co-operating minds.^{1}

Where the author of a new system of philosophy doubts his own power to think that system out, it is rash, perhaps, to attempt to criticise; yet when a system, while yet inchoate, is offered to the Philosophic world, the critic is justified in spite of the difficulty of his task in making the attempt.

§ 221. The real difficulty, however, is not so much in regard to the philosophy of Pure Experience itself, as in regard to its connection with Pragmatism and Humanism. The former is unquestionably a metaphysic; Pragmatism as such is not metaphysical. Yet that so many pragmatists should have adopted a philosophy of Pure Experience, and that the expressions used by pragmatists and humanists when speaking ex professo as pragmatists and humanists, should correspond almost word for word with the dicta of the philosopher of Pure Experience, indicates that there is, at any rate, a certain harmony and congruity between the two; and this Professor James admits.^{2} On the other hand, Mr. Peirce assures us that "the real world, the system as a whole, is, by definition, outside the sphere of Pragmatism," and that "the genetic account of the origin and selection of truth is not a philosophy of reality."^{3} Dr. Schiller, too, protests that 'Axioms as Postulates' is "purely epistemological in character," and that "the conception of knowledge as developing by the progressive determination of a relatively indeterminate and plastic matter never pretended to be more than an analysis of knowledge."^{4} Against this, however, one has to set the fact that the expressions used in the expositions of these 'epistemological' doctrines are of a metaphysical character. It is, indeed, not easy to determine in what sense such terms as 'matter,' 'form,' 'fact,' 'plasticity,' 'normal objectivity,' 'the making of reality,' are used, if they are not used in a metaphysical sense. And even if they are not meant metaphysically but are used in some strange and unnatural signification they seem to be deliberately chosen; and this intentional ambiguity suggests that if Pragmatism is not already a metaphysic it may at any moment become one. In fact. Mr. Peirce, in spite of his declaration to the contrary, which I quoted above, himself tells us that Synechism, which, he says, includes Pragmatism as One of its branches, is "first shown to be true with mathematical exactitude in the field of Logic, and is thence inferred to hold good metaphysically."^{5}

§ 222. May not this be true also of the epistemological theory propounded in 'Axioms as Postulates'? It is not unlikely. If the statements there made, repeated and oft-times repeated in Humanism and Studies in Humanism, are not to be interpreted in a metaphysical sense, their value is insignificant. For it is the duty of the epistemologist to assign the conditions of knowledge, and if, instead of assigning its real conditions, he assigns fictitious and merely methodological conditions, his theorising is idle and useless, and his speculation sheer waste of time. It is, however, difficult to take the pragmatist's philosophy of experience, even in Dr. Schiller's case, in a non-metaphysical sense. For, in the first place, Dr. Schiller is not a realist. He admits that Realism has 'high pragmatic warrant,' and even a 'high degree of truth,' but, strictly, the real world is merely 'a construction within primary reality,' i.e., Within a purely chaotic experience which as yet is neither subjective or objective appearance or reality.^{6} He admits also that "in ordinary life we assume that we live in an external world, which is 'independent' of us," and that "it would be a great calamity if any philosophy should feel it its duty to upset this assumption. For it works splendidly, and the philosophy which attacked it would only hurt itself."^{7} Nevertheless Dr. Schiller does attack it on the very next page, where he tells us that the pragmatically real world, i.e., the real world as we know it, is but an elaborate construction composed of the more efficacious parts of experience which have been selected by man on account of their utility and dubbed 'independent' facts, powers, persons, etc., and which have been 'ejected' and 'extended' from his consciousness and endowed with an 'independent' existence and 'transcendent' reality, because he was unwilling to accept responsibility for them.^{8} These 'facts' and these 'realities' are not, however, really independent or transcendent, but are 'immanent' within the cognitive process, and live wholly inside the tissue of experience.^{9} Nor are we logically forced to extrude them. Our motive is emotional and volitional.^{10} "'Truth' and 'reality' are valid, not because they are 'independent' of us, but because we have 'made' them, and they are so completely dependent on us that we can depend on them to stay 'true' and 'real' independently of us."^{11} Doubtless, reality is not wholly of our making. It supposes pre-existing fact. But pre-existing fact does not presuppose the real world of common sense, but the pre-existence of 'primary reality,' or of chaotic experience.^{12} In short, 'reality is experience,'^{13} and we might even say 'reality' is 'my' experience, were it not that the statement might lead us into solipsism, whereas, for the present, at any rate, we must admit 'an intimate and plastic correlation between reality and the experient.' Yet times may change, and a more 'child-like attitude may be feasible in heaven,' where our ideals of a more 'harmonious universe' may be realised, where experience will become, we may hope, intellectually transparent and continually harmonious, and where, consequently, there will be no 'need to postulate anything beyond our experience to account for it.'^{14}

§ 223. But how is our experience to be thus transformed? Chiefly it would appear by the growth of knowledge; for in knowing we make not only the 'true' but the 'real,'^{15} and "the difference verification is as great in the wrought by pragmatic case of reality as it is in that of truth."^{16} True, Dr. Schiller is here speaking of the making of 'subjective reality,'^{17} or knowledge -- though why in that case he should distinguish between reality and truth it is difficult to see; but he also maintains that in knowing we really alter reality, and cites no less than five ways in which this may take place.^{18} (1) "The making of truth," he says, "really alters subjective reality" -- a fact which few would dispute, but the real question, of course, is as to reality proper, i.e., objective reality. (2) "Our knowledge when applied alters real reality, and is not real knowledge if it cannot be applied." This, again, is fairly obvious, but to know and to apply one's knowledge are not the same thing. Application implies action and experiment which is not, as such, knowledge. Hence, that knowledge itself alters real reality still remains to be proved. (3) "Human beings are affected by the opinions of others." Surely, the opinions of others do not affect us directly, but only through their actions and words in which those opinions are expressed. (4) "Mere knowing alters reality so far at least as one party to the transaction is concerned."^{19} Dr. Schiller is here referring to the knower; hence this fourth case differs very little from the first. Moreover, the influence of cognition on the knower is not in question. (5) The last instance of the 'making of reality' is the most interesting of all. Dr. Schiller argues that not only where men and the higher animals are concerned, but "even on the purely physical plane on which our transactions with other bodies are conducted, there is response to our cognitive manipulations which varies with our operation, and so therefore there is real making of reality by us."^{20}

§ 224. Inanimate things "respond to our cognitive operations on the level on which they apprehend them." Now, ordinarily, by 'cognitive operations,' one would understand either thought or perception. but 'cognitive manipulation'^{21} suggests physical action as well. Hence, once again, we are left in doubt as to whether Dr. Schiller is propounding a new doctrine, or whether he is merely affirming again and again an indisputable fact. One thing, however, seems to be clear, and that is that Dr. Schiller is firmly convinced that somehow or other we really do make reality, and make it in a metaphysical sense; for the purpose of his chapter, entitled The Making of Reality, is to prove that reality is something which grows up in the process by which truth is made, and to show that this is valid, not only for the theory of knowledge, but also as a 'theory of the Cosmos.' True, he makes a distinction between 'discovering' and 'making' reality, and tells us that "to wish for a chair and find one, and to wish for a chair and make one, are experiences which it is not easy to confuse." But we must remember that this distinction for Dr. Schiller is purely pragmatic,^{22} and that our only reason for saying that we do not really make the chair which we find is, that "its behaviour is such that it is Practically inconvenient or impossible to ascribe its reality to our subjective activity"^{23} we do not want to be held responsible for its behaviour, at any rate not just at present, though we may become more lenient and reasonable later on. In any case, we alter reality, even if we do not wholly make it. For not only is it irrational to assume

that the Real has a determinate nature which the knowing reveals but does not affect; [but] the actual situation is a case of interaction . . . . in which the subject and the object determine each other . . . . . When the mind knows reality both are affected, just as when a stone falls to the ground, both it and the earth are attracted; and just as in our social relation we frequently put questions which are potent in determining their own answers, and without putting the question would have left the subjects undetermined. [Hence] the 'determinate nature of reality' does not subsist 'outsde' or 'beyond' the process of knowing it.

Previous to trial, it is indeterminate, really and from every point of view . . . . within limits which it is our business to discover.^{24}

§ 225. As a matter of fact, Dr. Schiller never does discover these limits, but this deficiency we must overlook as we have yet to find out how reality is altered or 'made' by the knowing of it. Do we impose forms upon the plastic receptivity of matter directly, or do we impose them only through the mediation of action? If mere cognition can impose them, we can never know the object at all, but only the object as altered by our knowing it. Hence, for all that we know to the contrary, knowledge and reality may be one; and reluctant as I am to believe that Dr. Schiller has been uttering mere platitudes, I prefer this alternative rather than to think that he has adopted so irrational and sceptical a theory. I take it, then, that when we are said to make reality, what is meant is that by our actions we modify reality. And I am confirmed in this opinion when I reflect upon Dr. Schiller's pronouncements in regard to 'mere knowing.' It is, he tells us, merely 'an intellectualist abstraction,' a fragment of a total process, which always ends in an action which tests its truth," and "to establish the bearing on reality of the making of truth we must consider the whole process as completed, i.e., as issuing in action, and as sooner or later altering reality."^{25} He then goes on to speak of knowing and of cognitive operations, not in the ordinary and accepted use of the terms, but in his pragmatic sense as including action; and to prove from this that cognitive operations (knowing proper plus action) alter reality. The whole force of the argument for 'the making of reality' rests, therefore, upon this peculiar use of the term knowledge as including the action which sooner or later follows it. And that knowledge in tkis sense produces effects in, and elicits responses or reactions from, even inanimate objects no one will deny. Dr. Schiller's theory that 'knowledge alters reality' sounds strange to us merely because he is using terms in a strange and unwarranted sense and arbitrarily ignoring a distinction that all psychologists admit, viz., the distinction between cognition and action.

§ 226. If we agree, then, to understand by knowledge, knowledge plus action, the thesis that knowledge alters reality becomes painfully obvious.^{26} Several difficulties arise, however, as soon as we extend this 'making of reality' to all that seems objective. For if we interpret Dr. Schiller realistically and regard matter, in spite of its formless and wholly plastic receptivity as something really distinct from our minds, not only is it difficult to conceive how it could have existed in such a state, but it is also difficult to imagine how its evolution could have begun. It is conceivable that our ancestors might have contrived somehow to endow with forms the formless receptivity of their environment but, unless they also communicated activity to it, this wholly plastic matter could not have reacted in response to these or to any other attempts to 'inform' it and if it did react, then it must have reacted in a more or less definite manner and so must have had already a minimum of structure. In other words, if we suppose matter to bave been independent of mind, and yet to have evolved solely under the influence of l'action-pensée, we are confronted with a contradiction, for either matter was wholly formless and plastic, and so could not react, and consequently could not evolve; or else matter could react and so could not have been at the outset wholly plastic and formless.

§ 227. Dr. Schiller is not unaware of this difficulty, for he mentions it on p. 434 of his Studies, and proceeds to answer it by telling us that there is no answer, for " the whole question is invalid, because it asks too much. It demands to know nothing less than how reality comes to be at all, how fact is made absolutely. And this is more than philosophy can accomplish or need attempt." But, surely, this is not the case. We do not ask how reality in general began, for clearly, as a whole, reality never could begin. What we want to know is the origin of contingent reality, of that reality which we find around us and which is subject to change, and of the knowledge which we, human agents, possess of that reality. Panpsychism, which is but another form of the philosophy of Pure Experience,^{27} gives some sort of answer to this question. Indeed, it seems to be, as I have already pointed out, if not the necessary, at least the natural, complement of Pragmatism and Humanism. For while to the collection of psychic experiences in which reality consists, Humanism adds the dynamic element by means of which one series of experiences, i.e., one mind, is able to act upon another series or mind, and thus explains how by interaction and mutual modification the different worlds which each has constructed for himself are gradually brought to unity; the philosophy of Pure Experience, on its side, gets rid of the inconsistency of a wholly plastic and formless, yet existent, matter by transforming it into rudimentary minds endowed with some activity and at least a modicum of structure. The material universe, in fact, becomes, as M. Bergson puts it, "a kind of consciousness in which everything compensates and neutralises itself."^{28}

Toward this solution of the difficulty Dr. Schiller inclines;^{29} yet it is a solution which one can hardly regard as satisfactory. The question whence come the forms which we impose upon the quasi-conscious beings-for-themselves, otherwise known as material things, has yet to be answered. But in attempting to answer this question the Pragmatic Method breaks down. It affirms that all categories and principles, and all the forms which we impose upon the plastic receptivity of matter, have had a history. But if everything has had a history, nothing could ever have begun to be at all, and as soon as you assign a beginning to anything, you affirm the existence of something which has not had a history. Thus the pragmatist is compelled to allow that there is an initial basis of reality and truth which has not been made by us; and the question then arises whence that basis with which knowledge began. And, as we have seen,^{30} in order to answer this question, the pragmatist is forced to have recourse either to Apriorism or to the theory of Aristotle. In a wholly genetic theory of knowledge the origin of knowledge is not only inexplicable, but impossible; and in a wholly genetic theory of the universe reality could never have come into being at all.

§ 228. Closely connected with this question of the origin of knowledge is another difficulty which confronts the pragmatist when he tries to back up his Pragmatism by a paupsychic version of the philosophy of Pure Experience. In a panpsychic universe all that exists is mind, and all knowledge is about mind, hence the problem is how different minds come to know one another. The metaphysical conditions of knowledge, according to Professor James, are (1) a plurality of minds, and (2) a common world which can be known by each. These conditions, however, apply only to our present stage of development, and are expressed in the language of common-sense. Consequently, when used by the philosopher of Pure Experience, they have to be re-interpreted. Thus the 'plurality of minds becomes "the practically irreversible structure of our consciousness, defining the general forms within which our answers must fall;^{31} while the 'common world' becomes "a most chaotic pure experience which sets us questions," and which at most possesses but a 'minimum of structure'; a chaotic pure experience which belongs, I take it, to psychical beings in an abnormally low stage of development. Now, if knowledge is to make any progress, somehow or other these two sets of psychical beings or experiences must interact. But how is this possible? Professor James has agreed to do without the concept of causation, and he expressly denies that we have any direct apprehension of the nature of other minds. Our thoughts, he says, do not perceptually terminate in other minds, but lead us only to their 'brink,' to their "chromatic fringes, and to the hurtful words and deeds which are their really next effects."^{32} If, then, minds are in themselves unknowable, and if everything is of the nature of mind, how do we get any knowledge at all? To say that we postulate other minds is obviously no solution of the difficulty whatsoever, for if we cannot experiment upon other minds, and they cannot react upon ours, there is no possible way in which our postulate can be verified. The universe having been reduced to individual psychical beings, between which no interaction can take place, each individual is shut up within the limits of his own experiences. He cannot communicate them to anybody else. Hence we are driven to Subjective Idealism or Solipsism.

§ 229. Professor James might have got out of the difficulty by admitting some form of monistic Idealism or Absolutism, but that would have been too repugnant to a pluralist; or he might have admitted, with Dr. Schiller, that mind and matter (i.e., other minds less developed) can interact; but this would have implied the validity of causation. Accordingly, he has recourse to another experiment, and postulates a common world of space. If we are to be able to communicate one with another, there must be something in common between us, and as our minds do not terminate in the same percepts (since the percepts of different persons are never precisely the same), it is better to say that they terminate in the same place, or space or pseudospace, or something or other of that kind which is very much like space.

Really I do not see how 'space' is going to help Professor James out of his difficulty unless he is willing to interpret it realistically. Indeed, it is no easy task to discover what precisely space can mean in a philosophy of Pure Experience. It must be some aspect of experience, however, for ex hypothesi there is nothing but experience in existence. Moreover, when a given experience, per se pure and simple, has been analysed post factum into a dual aspect, we could hardly say that space belonged to the subjective aspect, so that it must belong to the objective. Or, in other words, when two people perceive the same thing, as we say, the objective and spatial aspects of their respective experiences are really identical. Whence it follows that when A and B perceive the same thing, the piece of experience in question, say Memorial Hall, has not only a dual, but a triple aspect, viz., the objective and spatial aspect Memorial Hall and the subjective aspects of A's and B's consciousness respectively. Nay, more, should there happen to be a crowd gathered in front of Memorial Hall, that fortunate piece of experience would thereby obtain an indefinite number of subjective aspects, each of which would be the other side, so to speak, of the same objective experience. But if this given piece of experience is really one and the same, and is really common to all the different minds that perceive it in such a way that they can only be separated from it and regarded as distinct by an abstraction, then minds in reality are not distinct and individual, but are at bottom one. Thus starting from Pure Experience as interpreted by the Personal Idealist or the panpsychist, we arrive at a conclusion which is utterly incompatible with Personal Idealism, and indeed with any species of pluralistic philosophy, a conclusion which ultimately must lead us on to Monism. On the other hand, if space is interpreted realistically, it is independent and distinct from mind and experience ceases to be one thing which we retrospectively distinguish into a subjective and an objective aspect, for it is and has been all along dual in that the somebody who experiences is really distinct from the something (viz., space) that is experienced. But if this much is granted, why restrict the common object of all perception to space? Why single out an abstraction and make that real, instead of admitting, with common-sense and the realist, that the material world as a whole is real? Common-sense Realism is a much better solution than a half-thought-out philosophy which seems to tear us in pieces and cast some one way, some another.

§ 230. The disruptive tendency of the philosophy of Pure Experience may be further illustrated by the theory that the known in conceptual thought is a "possible experience." When my knowledge does not terminate in an actual percept, it refers, I am told, to a 'possible experience.' What is this 'possible experience,' and to whom does it belong? Is it but another name for Mill's 'possibility of sensation'? Apparently not; for this would mean Subjective Idealism, which we must try to avoid. 'The beyond must be of an experimental nature; and if not a future experience of our own (it cannot be merely a future experience of our own if it really exists) or a present one of our neighbour, it must be a thing in itself, i.e., an experience for itself whose relation to other things we translate into the action of molecules, ether-waves,'^{33} etc. So far, so good the possible experience exists, for it is the experience of a psychical something; and, once again, this ' opens the chapter,' as Professor James says, 'to the relations of Radical Empiricism to Panpsychism.' The 'possible experience' in question, however, is a possible experience for me, so that somehow or other I must be able to get at it but how I cannot conceive. I shall be told, I suppose, that when I move about or take a journey, my experience 'grows by the edges,' and may end by coinciding with the experience of that psychic something which I know. Whether such an account of the way in which we come to perceive objects is adequate I leave it to the reader to judge. Personally, it does not seem to me to explain anything at all, for it does not tell me how I am going to appropriate to myself that other experience which, for me, is only possible, and at present belongs to somebody else who is quite distinct from me. The transition from possible to actual experience still remains a mystery. The 'conterminousness of different minds' and the 'concatenated union' of different parts of the world of Pure Experience seem to be little more than words, and they certainly cannot help us. Indeed, the very 'termini' which are supposed to exist between different minds in this hypothesis, serve but to shut each mind up in its own experience and to prevent it from passing from there to other experiences at present belonging to other minds or to psychic things in themselves. Relations of contiguity (nothing between) are equally unavailing, for what is contiguous ipso facto does not interpenetrate. Yet I must be able somehow to get from my own to the experiences of somebody else, otherwise, for me, they are not possible experiences, and I cannot know them at all. Hence I am forced to admit a 'transcendental leap,' or else to postulate a common something. And if I choose the latter course, again I am driven backwards to the Monism of a previous chapter or forwards to the Realism of the next. Either that common something is inside or it is outside the minds that experience it. If it is outside, and we wish to avoid the salto mortale, we must admit causal interaction and direct apprehension of the nature of reality; if it is inside, we must modify Personal Idealism and admit the 'through and through type of union, each in all and all in each,' which is the characteristic of monistic Idealism.

§ 231. It is hardly necessary for me to show that the arguments here used against the philosophy of Pure Experience as expounded by Professor James, apply also to the Empirio-Criticism of Avenarius, for I have already shown that the two philosophies are fundamentally the same. Subject and object, character and content, independent and dependent vital series are but different aspects of one and the same entity, experience, relatively distinguished in retrospection, but not really distinct. Logical relations between character and content and functional relations between psychosis and brain-state are added, but they explain nothing; and the Psycho-physical Parallelism which they imply cannot be proved to hold except for sensations and images and those connections and groupings of images which are classed under the general heading of Association of Ideas. Hence the same difficulties arise as before, and similar alternatives present themselves. Either experiences are grouped in finite centres or they are not. If they are, we have Pluralism and must either admit causal interaction or else assign a common Ground and if they are not, we have Experience left standing by itself; without substance, yet giving rise to differences; without Ground, yet somehow producing appearances, and from its primary state of undifferentiated purity by some mysterious process, evolving a conglomeration of ideas, illusory, insignificant, useless, only to return in the end, aided by the philosopher, to the same dull state of flat and meaningless monotony.

§ 232. The philosophy of Avenarius suggests another difficulty which may be urged against the philosopher of Pure Experience. Avenarius introduces pro tempore and by the assistance of his Empirio-Critical postulate the existence of other minds. Yet he forgets to tell us how it comes about that 'character' is grouped together in these postulated minds, or how it is that while character appears to be so grouped content may extend to an indefinite beyond. No unity of Ground is presupposed as the condition of the grouping of feelings, thoughts and volitions in these pseudo-real centres of experience which are eventually to disappear and hence the concept of the self finds no place in the philosophy of Empirio-Criticism.

By Professor James the concept of the self is treated in like manner, and is emptied of all real significance Personality and unity, conceptions so prominent in Personal Idealism, and so forcibly thrust upon us by the data of experience are almost entirely wanting in his mosaic philosophy. Relations of various degrees of intimacy are much to the fore, but no unity of Ground is admitted, and consequently for Radical Empiricism there is no real self. Professor James does not scruple, indeed, to use realistic terminology. Again and again he speaks of 'minds' which think and feel, and which 'actuate' bodies. But neither in his Principles of Psychology nor yet in his metaphysical sketches is a real self to be found as the result of his careful analyses. The self for him is merely a system of memories, purposes, strivings, fulfilments or disappointments; an aggregate of relations intimately cohering together, co-conscious and somehow leading one into the other, yet without any unity in the background, or any substance to explain this fortuitous concourse of psychical characteristics. What is it holds together these various items, memories, purposes, strivings? What is it forms them into a system? How is it that they interpenetrate and suffuse one another's being while others are left outstanding? How are they distinguished from one another and yet united in synthesis? What is the significance of that little word 'my' when I say that my experiences pass continuously from one to the other, yet never pass directly into the experiences of somebody else? What is the significance and what the use of those purposes, strivings and needs which, together, determine the 'will to believe,' if they do not belong to a real person, a real unity, who knows that he has them and demands that, whatever may happen to other purposes and needs, his, at any rate, must and shall be satisfied?

§ 233. Pragmatism cannot be reconciled with a Personal Idealism such as has been outlined in the symposium which bears that name, until it assigns to personality a fuller meaning than is assigned to it in Radical Empiricism and in the philosophy of Pure Experience. Purposes, unless they are purposes for somebody, needs, unless they belong to a real self, satisfactions, emotions, will, action, unless they are united and co-ordinated by a living personality, are abstractions quite as empty and meaningless as those of 'pure intellect' or 'mere knowing.' Faculties and functions which work together for a common end are intelligible only if they are grounded in a real and living unity, and unity and functions alike are abstractions if separated and considered apart. Professor James feels a great repugnance to putting the Kantian 'hurly-burly' of sensations within the soul; yet sensations are neither more nor less 'chaotic' than memories, strivings, purposes and felt-transitions without a soul. Kant, with his transcendental Unity of Apperception, which is at bottom but another name for the unity of a rational self, is at any rate able to explain the synthesis of the many in the one. But Professor James and the philosophers of Pure Experience not only fail to account for this synthesis, but, neglecting presuppositions, seem to forget that a mosaic is not a mosaic at all, nor a series a series, unless the individuals which compose it somehow form a unity, or are capable of being apprehended by a mind which itself is a unity. The pragmatist cannot be content with such a philosophy. He is pragmatically bound to restore real unities to their proper place in a metaphysic of the universe and in a theory of human knowledge, for without them we are left with a burly-burly whiich, in spite of its felt-relations, is more chaotic and more unintelligible than any Kantian manifold, and with a philosophy which is wholly incapable of answering any rational question, of serving any rational purpose, or of satisfying any human need.

§ 234. Supposing, however, that this restitution has been made, that the unities destroyed by Pure Experience and the selves annihilated by Radical Empiricism have been reinstated, and that the philosophy of Pure Experience has been transformed into Personal Idealism, can the pragmatist find here a metaphysic which will satisfy his rational needs? I think not, for Personal Idealism and Paupsychism themselves are incomplete and tend to disruption. The discrepancy which arises when an attempt is made to account for intercommunication between mind and mind we have already pointed out; but the incompleteness of Personal Idealism may be shown in quite another way. It seems to assume, with Fichte, that the Universe consists of a system of rational, striving Egos. A multiplicity of rational beings, however, cannot be an ultimate fact. This multiplicity must be accounted for, and it cannot be accounted for by saying that each rational ego exists of its own nature, and is necessary independently of its neighbours; for this would lead to a contradiction. A necessary being which is wholly independent of anything else, must be infinite, since, being independent and distinct, there is nothing which could limit it. Yet de facto it is not infinite since there are ex hypothesi other beings which have perfections that it does not possess. A multiplicity of rational beings, then, cannot individually be necessary. Either they must form a systematic whole which finds its unity and necessity in an immanent Ground, in which case their personality is once more destroyed, for they no longer have any self which is really distinct from that Ground; or, while still retaining their personality and their mutual independence, they presuppose some Being who is one, infinite and necessary, and whose existence and purposive action is the real, though not the immanent, Ground of theirs.

§ 235. Thus, so far as real and personal unities and a real and personal God are concerned, we have come back to Realism. One assumption alone bars the way to a complete return, and that is the assumption which is common to all Idealisms, viz., that the subject experiencing and the real object experienced are not distinct. That it is an assumption is evident; for the testimony of direct experience is negative, and the testimony of common-sense belief is opposed. 'Pure experience, if we have any, tells us nothing whatsoever about real unities, for though we do not distinguish the self from the not-self, we certainly do not regard them as one; nor do we do so when our experience is Purely objective, as it is said at times to be, for then there is no self-consciousness at all. The fact remains, therefore, that as soon as reflection supervenes on an act of direct experience, things and the conscious self, objects and the psychical acts in which they were known, in a word, what is experienced and we who experience, are held to be really distinct; and this distinction is referred back by us to the act in which -- according to some -- it passed unnoticed. It is the denial of this distinction which has led to Absolutism and to the inconsistencies and inexplicable mysteries which are to be found therein. And it is the denial of this distinction which has led to the philosophy of Pure Experience which is even more inconsistent and more mysterious still.

§ 236. But am I right in saying that all Idealisms make the disastrous assumption referred to above? Perhaps I, too, have exaggerated? Indeed, it would seem that I have. For I observe a tendency among many idealists, notably Personal idealists and possibly Professor Mackenzie, to deny altogether this assumption, and to adopt a philosophy which, in all respects but one, is a Realism. Idealists of this kind admit individual existents and affirm that they interact; but in order to explain interaction they postulate that the world, which the realist calls material, is at bottom spiritual. This I cannot but regard as a misnomer, for the material world is essentially different from man. On the other hand, between the knower and the known there must be some similarity of nature, and if to the so-called material world we assign a reality less perfect than that which belongs to man, it is largely a question of words perhaps whether we call it spiritual or not. Spirituality, however, connotes intellect and will; and to predicate those of material things is neither consistent with facts nor necessary in order to explain knowledge. Interaction we must postulate; but interaction is possible even if things are material, as I shall endeavour to show in the following chapters; whereas if all things are spiritual, as the idealist assumes, interaction is simply a mystery which no one can explain.

In any case this Idealism is not that which the pragmatist has adopted. It might, indeed, be called a form of Panpsychism; but to Panpsychism the pragmatist adds his doctrine that in every case reality is really altered by our knowledge of it. Nothing is more reasonable than to suppose that, if there be anything personal at the bottom of things, the way we behave to it must affect "the way it behaves to us."^{34} And, as we have seen, Dr. Schiller not only does assume this for each and every really cognitive act, but strives by might and main to prove it, while at the same time denying that the contrary hypothesis is capable of rational defence. Consequently, our knowledge is never knowledge of reality, but only of modifications produced in reality by the very act of knowing it; and that second factor which must be admitted into reality, "but is not of our making,"^{35} must remain for ever unknowable. The pragmatic theory of knowledge, therefore, if logically carried out, either drives us back in Kantian Scepticism with its wholly useless and meaningless Ding-an-sich; or, if interpreted metaphysically, leads us on to a philosophy of Pure Experience which, of all philosophies, is the most hopeless, for its power of explaining the universe is absolutely nil, and as soon as an intelligent meaning is put upon its atrocious terminology it at once bursts with discrepancy and leaves us no better off than when we started.

{1} "A World of Pure Experience," p. 570.

{2} Ibid., and cf. The Meaning of Truth, pp. 124, 128, 132, 215, 220.

{3} Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy, article, "Pragmatism."

{4} Studies in Humanism, p. 17 (note).

{5} Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy article "Pragmatism," and cf. article "Synechism."

{6} Studies in Humanism, p. 201, and cf. p. 187.

{7} Ibid., p. 459.

{8} Ibid., pp. 470, 471.

{9} Ibid., pp. 426, 460.

{10} Ibid., p. 470.

{11} Ibid., p. 462.

{12} Ibid., p. 201.

{13} Ibid p. 463.

{14} Ibid., p. 486, and cf. supra, § 214.

{15} Cf. ibid., Essay vii., " The Making of Truth," and Essay xix., "The Making of Reality."

{16} Ibid., PP. 43', 432, and Cf. pp. 198 et seq.

{17} cf. ibid., p. 429.

{18} Ibid., pp. 438 et seq.

{19} Studies in Humanism, pp. 438, 439.

{20} Ibid., p. 444. (It should be noted that 'making' here implies co-operation and reaction, it does not mean 'creating,' though what appears to us as "original and rigid" may be "conceived as having been made by analogous processes,")

{21} Studies in Humanism, p. 430.

{22} Ibid., p. 201.

{23} Ibid., p. 430. (Italics mine.)

{24} Humanism, pp. 11, 12 (note).

{25} Ibid., p. 440.

{26} That knowledge always includes action, as Dr. Schiller assumes and as his theory demands, is contradicted by the facts of experience, cf. supra, § 98.

{27} cf. "A World of Pure Experience," p. 369.

{28} Matière et Memoire, p. 262.

{29} Studies in Humanism, pp. 443, 446, et seq.

{30} cf. supra, 99.

{31} Professor James qualifies this statement by adding "that the structure was wrought in us long ago," but this qualification can apply only to some features in the present structure of mind, otherwise we should again be involved in the difficulty of getting knowledge to start.

{32} "A World of Pure Experience," p. 563.

{33} "A World of Pure Experience," p. 569.

{34} 'Axioms as Postulates,' § 24.

{35} Studies in Humanism, p. 468.