FOOTNOTES:

So particularized, it is, however, no longer philosophy, and philosophy has (I hope I may say this without professional bias) an inalienable place in the life of reason. This place is rationally defined for it by the discovery of its ground and function in the making of civilization; and by the perfection of its possibilities through the definition of its natural relationships. Thus, it is, in its essential historic character at least, as fine an art as music, the most inward and human of all arts. It may be, and human nature being what it is, undoubtedly will continue to be, an added item to the creations wherewith man makes his world a better place to live in, precious in that it envisages and projects the excellences and perfections his heart desires and his imagination therefore defines. So taken, it isnot a substitution for the world, but an addition to it, a refraction of it through the medium of human nature, as a landscape painting by Whistler or Turner is not a substitution for the actual landscape, but an interpretation and imaginative perfection of it, more suitable to the eye of man. A system like Bergson's is such a work, and its æsthetic adequacy, its beauty, may be measured by the acknowledgment it receives and the influence it exercises. Choosing one of the items of experience as its medium, and this item the most precious in the mind's eye which the history of philosophy reveals, it proceeds to fabricate a dialectical image of experience in which all the compensatory desiderates are expressed and realized. It entices minds of all orders, and they are happy to dwell in it, for the nonce realizing in the perception of the system the values it utters. By abandoning all pretense to be true, philosophic systems of the traditional sort may attain the simple but supreme excellence of beauty, and rest content therewith.

The philosophic ideal, however, is traditionally not beauty but truth: the function of a philosophic system is not presentative, butrepresentative and causal, and that the systems of tradition have had and still have consequences as well as character, is obvious enough. It is, however, to be noted that these consequences have issued out of the fact that the systems have been specific items of existence among other equally and even more specific items, thought by particular men, at particular times and in particular places. As such they have been programs for meeting events and incarnatingvalues; operative ideals aiming to recreate the world according to determined standards. They have looked forward rather than backward, have tacitly acknowledged the reality of change, the irreducible pluralism of nature, and the genuineness of the activities, oppugnant or harmonizing, between the items of the Cosmic. Many they ostensibly negate. The truth, in a word, has been experimental and prospective; the desiderates they uttered operated actually as such and not as already existing. Historians of philosophy, treating it as if it had no context, have denied or ignored this rôle of philosophy in human events, but historians of the events themselves could not avoid observing and enregistering it.

Only within very recent years, as an effect of the concept of evolution in the field of the sciences, have philosophers as such envisaged this non-æsthetic aspect of philosophy's ground and function in the making of civilization and have made it the basis for a sober vision which may or may not have beauty, but which cannot have finality. Such a vision is again nothing more than traditional philosophy become conscious of its character and limitations and shorn of its pretense. It is a program to execute rather than a metaphysic to rest in. Its procedure is the procedure of all the arts and sciences. It frankly acknowledges the realities of immediate experience, the turbulence and complexity of the flux, the interpenetrative confusion of orders, the inward self-diversification of even the simplest thing, which "change" means, and the continual emergence of novel entities, unforeseen and unprevisible, from thereciprocal action of the older aggregate. This perceptual reality it aims to remould according to the heart's desire. Accordingly it drops the pretense of envisaging the universe and devotes itself to its more modest task of applying its standards to a particular item that needs to be remade. It is believed in, but no longer without risk, for, without becoming a dogma, it still subjects itself to the tests of action. So it acknowledges that it must and will itself undergo constant modification through the process of action, in which it uses events, in their meanings rather than in their natures, to map out the future and to make it amenable to human nature. Philosophy so used is, as John Dewey somewhere says, a mode and organ of experience among many others. In a world the very core of which is change, it is directed upon that which is not yet, to previse and to form its character and to map out the way of life within it. Its aim is the liberation and enlargement of human capacities, the enfranchisement of man by the actual realization of values. In its integrate character therefore, it envisages the life of reason and realizes it as the art of life. Where it is successful, beauty and use are confluent and identical in it. It converts sight into insight. It infuses existence with value, making them one. It is the concrete incarnation of Creative Intelligence.

FOOTNOTES:1The word relation suffers from ambiguity. I am speaking here ofconnexion, dynamic and functional interaction. "Relation" is a term used also to express logical reference. I suspect that much of the controversy about internal and external relations is due to this ambiguity. One passes at will from existential connexions of things to logical relationship of terms. Such an identification of existences withtermsis congenial to idealism, but is paradoxical in a professed realism.2There is some gain in substituting a doctrine of flux and interpenetration of psychical states,à laBergson, for that of rigid discontinuity. But the substitution leaves untouched the fundamental misstatement of experience, the conception of experience as directly and primarily "inner" and psychical.3Mathematical science in its formal aspects, or as a branch of formal logic, has been the empirical stronghold of rationalism. But an empirical empiricism, in contrast with orthodox deductive empiricism, has no difficulty in establishing its jurisdiction as to deductive functions.4It is a shame to devote the word idealism, with its latent moral, practical connotations, to a doctrine whose tenets are the denial of the existence of a physical world, and the psychical character of all objects—at least as far as they are knowable. But I am following usage, not attempting to make it.5See Dr. Kallen's essay, below.6The "they" means the "some" of the prior sentence—those whose realism is epistemological, instead of being a plea for taking the facts of experience as we find them without refraction through epistemological apparatus.7It is interesting to note that some of the realists who have assimilated the cognitive relation to other existential relations in the world (instead of treating it as an unique or epistemological relation) have been forced in support of their conception of knowledge as a "presentative" or spectatorial affair to extend the defining features of the latter to all relations among things, and hence to make all the "real" things in the world pure "simples," wholly independent of one another. So conceived the doctrine of external relations appears to be rather the doctrine of complete externality ofthings. Aside from this point, the doctrine is interesting for its dialectical ingenuity and for the elegant development of assumed premises, rather than convincing on account of empirical evidence supporting it.8In other words, there is a general "problem of error" only because there is a general problem of evil, concerning which see Dr. Kallen's essay, below.9Compare the paper by Professor Bode.10As the attempt to retain the epistemological problem and yet to reject idealistic and relativistic solutions has forced some Neo-realists into the doctrine of isolated and independent simples, so it has also led to a doctrine of Eleatic pluralism. In order to maintain the doctrine the subject makes no difference to anything else, it is held thatnoultimate real makes any difference to anything else—all this rather than surrender once for all the genuineness of the problem and to follow the lead of empirical subject-matter.11There is almost no end to the various dialectic developments of the epistemological situation. When it is held that all the relations of the type in question are cognitive, and yet it is recognized (as it must be) that many such "transformations" go unremarked, the theory is supplemented by introducing "unconscious" psychical modifications.12Conception-presentation has, of course, been made by many in the history of speculation an exception to this statement; "pure" memory is also made an exception by Bergson. To take cognizance of this matter would, of course, accentuate, not relieve, the difficulty remarked upon in the text.13Cf.Studies in Logical Theory, Chs. I and II, by Dewey; also "Epistemology and Mental States," Tufts,Phil. Rev., Vol. VI, which deserves to rank as one of the early documents of the "experimental" movement.14Cf. "The Definition of the Psychical," G. H. Mead,Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago.15Cf.The Logic of Hegel-Wallace, p. 117.16Bosanquet's Logic, 2nd Ed., p. 171. The identification of induction and procedure by hypothesis occurs on p. 156.17Ibid., p. 14 (italics mine).18Perhaps the most complete exhibition of the breakdown of formal logic considered as an account of the operation of thought apart from its subject-matter is to be found in Schiller'sFormal Logic.19Cf. Stuart on "Valuation as a Logical Process" inStudies in Logical Theory.20The New Realism, pp. 40-41.21Cf. Montague, pp. 256-57; also Russell,The Problems ofPhilosophy, pp. 27-65-66,et passim; and Holt'sConcept of Consciousness, pp. 14ff., discussed below.22Cf. Angell, "Relations of Psychology to Philosophy,"Decennial Publications of University of Chicago, Vol. III; also Castro, "The Respective Standpoints of Psychology and Logic,"Philosophic Studies, University of Chicago, No. 4.23I am here following, in the main, Professor Holt because he alone appears to have had the courage to develop the full consequences of the premises of analytic logic.24The Concept of Consciousness, pp. 14-15.25It is interesting to compare this onlooking act with the account of consciousness further on. As "psychological" this act of onlooking must be an act of consciousness. But consciousness is a cross-section or a projection of things made by their interaction with a nervous system. Here consciousness is a function of all the interacting factors. It is in the play. Itisthe play. It is not in a spectator's box. How can consciousness be a function of all the things put into the cross-section and yet be a mere beholder of the process? Moreover, what is it that makes any particular, spectacle, or cross-section "logical"? If it be said all are "logical" what significance has the term?26Cf. Russell'sScientific Methods in Philosophy, p. 59.27Holt,op. cit., pp. 128-30.28In fact, Newton, in all probability, had the Cartesian pure notions in mind.29Holt,op. cit., p. 118 (italics mine). Cf. also Perry'sPresent Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 108 and 311.30The character of elements and the nature of simplicity have been discussed in the preceding section.31Ibid., p. 275.32Ibid., p. 275.33This lack of continuity between the cognitive function of the nervous system and its other functions accounts for the strange paradox in the logic of neo-realism of an act of knowing which is "subjective" and yet is the act of so palpably an objective affair as a nervous system. The explanation is that the essence of all deprecated subjectivity is, as before pointed out, functional isolation. That this sort of subjectivity should be identified with the "psychical" is not strange, since a living organism is very difficult to isolate, while the term "psychical," in its metaphysical sense, seems to stand for little else than just this complete isolation. Having once appealed to the nervous system it seems incredible that the physiological continuity of its functions with each other and with its environment should not have suggested the logical corollary. Only the force of the prepossession of mathematical atomism in analytic logic can account for its failure to do so.34But it would be better to use the term "logically-practical" instead of "subjective" with the psychical implications of that term.35An analysis which has been many times carried out has made it clear that scientific data never do more than approximate the laws and entities upon which our science rests. It is equally evident that the forms of these laws and entities themselves shift in the reconstructions of incessant research, or where they seem most secure could consistently be changed, or at least could be fundamentally different were our psychological structure or even our conventions of thought different. I need only refer to theScience et Hypothèseof Poincaré and theProblems of Scienceof Enriques. The positivist who undertakes to carry the structure of the world back to the data of observation, and the uniformities appearing in the accepted hypotheses of growing sciences cannot maintain that we ever succeed in isolating data which must remain the same in the kaleidoscope of our research science; nor are we better served if we retreat to the ultimate elements of points and instants which our pure mathematics assumes and implicitly defines, and in connection with which it has worked out the modern theory of the number and continuous series, its statements of continuity and infinity.36In other words, science assumes that every error isex post factoexplicable as a function of the real conditions under which it really arose. Hence, "consciousness," set over against Reality, was not its condition.37C. Judson Herrick, "Some Reflections on the Origin and Significance of the Cerebral Cortex,"Journal of Animal Behavior, Vol. III, pp. 228-233.38Psychology, Vol. I, p. 256.39H. C. Warren,Psychological Review, Vol. XXI, Page 93.40Principles of Psychology, I, p. 241, note.41Ibid., p. 258.42Psychology. Briefer Course.P. 468.43Angell,Psychology, p. 65.44Psychology, Vol. I, p. 251.45Thorstein Veblen:The Instinct of Workmanship, p. 316.46It may still be argued that we must depend upon analogy in our acceptance or rejection of a new commodity. For any element of novelty must surely suggest something to us, mustmeansomething to us, if it is to attract or repel. Thus, the motor-car will whirl us rapidly over the country, the motor-boat will dart over the water without effort on our part. And in such measure as we have had them hitherto, we have always enjoyed experiences of rapid motion. These new instruments simply promise a perfectly well-knownsortof experience in fuller measure. So the argument may run. And our mental process in such a case may accordingly be held to be nothing more mysterious than a passing by analogy from theoldways in which we got rapid motion in the past to thenewway which now promises more of the same. And more of the same is what we want."More of the same" means here intensive magnitude and in this connection at all events it begs the question. Bergson's polemic seems perfectly valid against such a use of the notion. But kept in logical terms the case seems clearer. It is said that we reason in such a case by "analogy." We do, indeed; but what is analogy? The term explains nothing until the real process behind the term is clearly and realistically conceived. What I shall here suggest holds true, I think, as an account of analogical inference generally and not simply for the economic type of case we have here to do with. Reasoning is too often thought of as proceeding from given independent premises—as here (1) the fact that hitherto the driving we have most enjoyed and the sailing we have most enjoyed have beenfastand (2) the fact that the motor-car isfast. But do we accept the conclusion because the premises suggest it in a way we cannot resist? On the contrary, stated thus, the premises clearly donotwarrant the conclusion that the motor-car will be enjoyable. Such a statement of the premises is wholly formal andex post facto. What, then, is our actual mental process in the case? The truth is, I think, that we simply—yes, "psychologically"—wish to trythat promised unheard-of rate of speed! That comes first and foremost. But we mean to be reasonably prudent on the whole, although we are avowedly adventurous just now in this particular direction! We, therefore, ransack our memory forother fast thingswe have known, to see whether they have encouragement to give us. We try to supply ourselves with a major premise because the new proposal in its own right interests us—instead of having the major premise already there to coerce us by a purely "logical" compulsion as soon as we invade its sphere of influence. And confessedly, in point of "logic," there is no such compulsion in the second figure: there is only a timid and vexatious neutrality, a mere "not proven."Why, then, do we in fact take the much admired "inductive leap," in seeming defiance of strict logic? Why do we close our eyes to logic, turn our back upon logic, behave as if logic were not and had never been? In point of fact, we do nothing of the sort. The "inductive leap" is no leap away from logic, but the impulsion of logic's mainspring seen only in its legitimate event. Because we have not taken care to see the impulse coming, it surprises us and we are frightened. And we look about for an illusive assurance in some "law of thought," or some question-begging "universal premise" of Nature's "uniformity." We do not see that we were already conditionally committed to the "leap" by our initial interest. Getting our premises together is no hurried forging of a chain to save us from our own madness in the nick of time. We are only hoping to rid ourselves of an excess of conservative ballast. To reason by analogy is not to repress or to dispense with the interest in the radically novel, but to give methodical and intelligent expression to that interest.47Aristotle'sNicomachaean Ethics(Welldon's transl.), Book VIII.48Cf. Aristotle'sPolitics(Jowett's trans.) III. 9. §6 ff. and elsewhere;Nicom. Ethics, I, Chap. III (end).49Cf. Veblen:op. cit.50W. McDougall in hisSocial Psychology(Ed. 1912, pp. 358 ff.) recognizes "incomplete anticipation of the end of action" as a genuine type of preliminary situation in human behavior, but appears to regard this as in so far a levelling-down of man to the blindness of the "brutes." But "incompleteness" is a highly ambiguous term and seems here to beg the question. "Incompleteness" may be given an emphasis in which it imports conjecture and hypothesis—almost anything, in fact, but blindness. Rather do the brutes get levelled up to man by such facts as those McDougall cites.51I takeroutineto be the essence and meaning of hedonism. There are two fundamental types of conduct—routine and constructiveness. Reference may be made here to Böhm-Bawerk's pronouncement on hedonism inKapital und Kapitalzins, 1912 (II-2, pp. 310 ff.): "What people love and hate, strive towards or fight off—whether only pleasure and pain or other 'lovable' and 'hatable' things as well,—is a matter of entire indifference to the economist. The only thing important is that they do love and hate certain things.... The deductions of marginal utility theory lose no whit of their cogency even if certain ends (dependent for their realization upon a supply of goods inadequate to the fulfillment of all ends without limit) are held to have the character not of pleasure but of something else. The marginal utility may be a least pleasure or a competing least utility of some other sort...." (p. 317). This is a not uncommon view. As W. C. Mitchell has suggested, it is too obvious to be wholly convincing. (Journ. Pol. Ec., Vol. XVIII. "The Rationality of Economic Activity.") Veblen has made it perfectly clear that particular matters of theory are affected by the presupposition of hedonism. (Journ. Pol. Ec., Vol. XVII,Quart. Journ. Econ., Vol. XXII, p. 147 ff.) The matter is too complex for a footnote, but I think it of little consequence whether "pleasure" be in any case regarded as substantively the end of desire or not. This is largely a matter of words. What is important is the practical question whether a thing isso habitual with me that when the issue arises I cannot or will not give it up and take an interest in something newthe "utility" of which I cannot as yet be cognizant of because it partly rests with me to create it. If this is the fact it will surely look as if pleasure or the avoidance of pain were my end in the case. Hedonism and egoism are in the end convertible terms. There is conduct wearing the outward aspect of altruism that is egotistic in fact—not because it was from the first insincere or self-delusive, but because it has become habitual and may in a crisis be held to for the sake of the satisfaction it affords. Genuine altruism, on the other hand, is a form of constructiveness.52Until after this essay was finished I had not seen John A. Hobson's book entitledWork and Wealth, A Human Valuation(London, 1914). My attention was first definitely called to this work by a friend among the economists who read my finished MS. late in 1915, and referred me in particular to the concluding chapter on "Social Science and Social Art." On now tardily reading this chapter I find that, as any reader will readily perceive, it distinctly anticipates, almostverbatimin parts, what I have tried, with far less success, to say in the foregoing two paragraphs above. Hobson argues, with characteristic clearness and effect, for the qualitative uniqueness and the integral character of personal budgets, holding that the logic of marginality is "an entirely illusory account of the psychical process by which a man lays out his money, or his time, or his energy" (p. 331). "So far as it is true that the last sovereign of my expenditure in bread equals in utility the last sovereign of my expenditure in books, that fact proceeds not from a comparison, conscious, or unconscious, of these separate items at this margin, but from the parts assigned respectively to bread and books in the organic plan of my life. Quantitative analysis, inherently incapable of comprehending qualitative unity or qualitative differences, can only pretend to reduce the latter to quantitative differences. What it actually does is to ignore alike the unity of the whole and the qualitativeness of the parts" (p. 334). Hobson not only uses the analogy of the artist and the picture (p. 330) precisely as I have done, but offers still other illustrations of the principle that seem to me even more apt and telling. Though not indebted to him for what I have put into the above paragraphs, I am glad to be able to cite the authority of so distinguished an economist and sociologist for conclusions to which I found my own way. Other parts as wellof Work and Wealth(e.g., Chapter IV, on "The Creative Factor in Production") seem to have a close relation to the main theme of the present discussion.53It may be worth while to glance here for the sake of illustration at an ethical view of preference parallel with the economic logic above contested. "The act which is right in that it promotes one interest, is, by the same principle," writes R. B. Perry, "wrong in that it injures another interest. There is no contradiction in this fact ... simply because it is possible for the same thing to possess several relations, the question of their compatibility or incompatibility being in each case a question of empirical fact. Now ... an act ... may be doubly right in that it conduces to the fulfillment of two interests. Hence arises the conception of comparative goodness. If the fulfillment of one interest is good, the fulfillment of two is better; and the fulfillment of all interests is best.... Morality, then, issuch performance as under the circumstances, and in view of all the interests affected, conduces to most goodness. In other words, that act is morally right which is most right." (Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 334. Cf. alsoThe Moral Economy). It is evident that constructive change in the underlying system (or aggregate?) of the agent's interests gets no recognition here as a matter of moral concern or as a fact of the agent's moral experience. Thus Perry understands the meaning of freedom to lie in the fact that "interests operate," i.e., that interests exist as a certain class of operative factors in the universe along with factors ofothersorts. "I can and do, within limits,act as I will. Action, in other words, is governed by desires and intentions." (pp. 342 ff.). The cosmical heroics of Bertrand Russell are thus not quite the last word in Ethics (p. 346). Nevertheless, the "free man," in Perry's view, apparently must get on with the interests that once for all initially defined him as a "moral constant" (p. 343).54In a recent interesting discussion of "Self-interest" (T. N. Carver,Essays in Social Justice, 1915, Chap. III) occurs the following: "We may conclude ... that even after we eliminate from our consideration all other beings than self, there is yet a possible distinction between one's present and one's future self. It is always, of course, the present self which esteems or appreciates all interests whether they be present or future. And the present self estimates or appreciates present interests somewhat more highly than it does future interests. In this respect the present self appreciates the interests of the future self according to a law quite analogous to, if indeed it be not the same law as that according to which it appreciates the interests of others" (p. 71). This bit of "subjective analysis" (p. 60), a procedure rather scornfully condemned as "subjective quibbling" on the following page, must be counted a fortunate lapse. It could be bettered, I think, in only one point. Must the future self "of course" and "always" get license to live by meeting the standards of the present self? Has the present self no modesty, no curiosity, no "sense of humor"? If it is so stupidly hard and fast, how can a self new and qualitatively different ever get upon its feet in a man? In some men no such thing can happen—but must it be in all men impossible and impossible "of course"? And what of the other self? Carver has not applied the "methods of subjective analysis" tochangefrom selftoself or from interest in selftointerest in others. The present tense of formal logic governs fundamentally throughout the whole account.If this essay were a volume I should try to consider, from the point of view of constructive intelligence, the explanation of interest as due to the undervaluation of future goods.55Fite,Introductory Study of Ethics, pp. 3-8.56Dewey and Tufts,Ethics, pp. 205-11.57The term "egocentric predicament" (cf. R. B. Perry:Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 129 ff.) has had, for a philosophic term, a remarkable literary success. But at best it conveys a partial view of the situation it purports to describe. The "egocentricity" of our experience, viewed in its relation to action, seems, rightly considered, less a "predicament" than an opportunity, a responsibility and an immunity. For in relation toaction, it means (1) that an objective complex situation has become, in various of its aspects, a matter of my cognizance in terms significant to me. That so many of its aspects have come into relations of conflict or reënforcement significantfor meismyopportunity for reconstructive effort if I choose to avail myself of it. Because, again, I am thus "on hand myself" (op. cit., p. 129) and am thus able to "report" upon the situation, I am (2) responsible, in the measure of my advantages, for the adequacy of my performance. And finally (3) I cannot be held to account for failure to reckon with such aspects of the situation as I cannot get hold of in the guise of "ideas, objects of knowledge or experiences" (Ibid.). Our egocentricity is, then, a predicament only so long as one stubbornly insists, to no obvious positive purpose, on thinking of knowledge as a self-sufficing entitative complex, like a vision suddenly appearing full-blown out of the blue, and as inviting judgment in that isolated character on the representative adequacy which it is supposed to claim (cf. A. W. Moore, "Isolated Knowledge,"Journ. of Philos., etc., Vol. XI). The way out of the predicament for Perry and his colleagues is to attack the traditional subjective and representative aspects of knowledge. But, this carried out, what remains of knowledge is a "cross-section of neutral entities" whichstillretains all the original unaccountability, genetically speaking, and the original intrinsic and isolated self-sufficiency traditionally supposed to belong to knowledge. The ostensible gain achieved for knowledge is an alleged proof of its ultimate self-validation or the meaninglessness of any suspicion of its validity (because there is no uncontrolled and distorting intermediation of "consciousness" in the case). But to wage strenuous war on subjectivism and representationism and still to have on hand a problem calling for the inventionad hocof an entire new theory of mind and knowledge seems a waste of good ammunition on rather unimportant outworks. They might have been circumvented.But what concerns us here is the ethical parallel. The egocentric predicament in this aspect purports to compel the admission by the "altruist" that since whatever he chooses to do must be his act and is obviously done because he wishes, for good and sufficient reasons of his own, to do it, therefore he is an egoist after all—perhaps in spite of himself and then again perhaps not. The ethical realism of G. E. Moore (Principia Ethica, 1903) breaks out of the predicament by declaring Good independent of all desire, wish or human interest andindefinable, and by supplying a partial list of things thus independently good. What I do, I do because it seems likely to put me in possession of objectiveGood, not because it accords with some habit or whim of mine (although my own pleasure is undoubtedlyoneof the good things). It is noteworthy that Perry declines to follow Moore in this (op. cit., p. 331 ff.). Now such an ethical objectivism can give no account of the motivation, or the process, of the individual's efforts to attain, for guidance in any case, a "more adequate" apprehension of what things are good than he may already possess, just as the objectivist theory of consciousness (=knowledge) can supply no clue as to how or whether amoreor alesscomprehensive or a qualitativelydifferent"cross-section of entities" can or should be got into one's "mind" as warrant or guidance ("stimulus") for a contemplated response that is to meet a present emergency (cf. John Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,"Psychol. Rev., Vol. IV). Thus neither sort of deliverance out of the alleged predicament of egocentricity abates in the least the only serious inconvenience or danger threatened by subjectivism.58Cf. W. Jethro Brown,The Underlying Principles of Modern Legislation(3d ed., London, 1914), pp. 165-68.59Bosanquet:Principle of Individuality and Value, pp. 13, 15, 20, 24, 27, 30.60The case against the Austrian explanation of market-price in terms of marginal utility has been well summed up and re-enforced by B. M. Anderson in his monograph,Social Value(Boston, 1911). Anderson finds the fatal flaw in the Austrian account to consist in the psychological particularism of the marginal utility theory. The only way, he holds, to provide an adequate foundation for a non-circular theory of price is to understand the marginal estimates people put upon goods as resultants of the entire moral, legal, institutional, scientific, æsthetical, and religious state of society at the time. This total and therefore absolute state of affairs, if I understand the argument, is to be regarded as focussed to a unique point in the estimate each man puts upon a commodity. Thus, presumably, the values which come together, summed up in the total demand and supply schedules for a commodity in the market, are "social values" and the resultant market-price is a "social price." This cross-sectional social totality of conditions is strongly suggestive of an idealistic Absolute. The individual is a mere focussing of impersonal strains and stresses in the Absolute. But the real society is a radically temporal process. The real centers of initiation in it are creatively intelligent individuals whose economic character as such expresses itself not in "absolute" marginal registrations but in price estimates.On the priority of price to value I venture to claim the support of A. A. Young, "Some Limitations of the Value Concept,"Quart. Journ. Econ., Vol. XXV, p. 409 (esp. pp. 417-19). Incidentally, I suspect the attempt to reconstruct ethical theory as a branch of what is calledWerttheorieto be a mistake and likely to result only in useless and misleading terminology.61Positive Theory of Capital(Eng. trans.). Bk. IV, Ch. II. The passage is unchanged in the author's latest edition (1912).62It is pointed out (e.g., by Davenport in hisEconomics of Enterprise, pp. 53-54) that, mathematically, in a market where large numbers of buyers and sellers confront each other with their respective maximum and minimum valuations on the commodity this interval within which price must fall becomes indefinitely small to the point of vanishing. This is doubtless in accord with the law of probability, but it would be an obvious fallacy to see in this any manner of proof or presumption that therefore the assumptions as to the nature of the individual valuations upon which such analysis proceedsare true. In a large market where this interval is supposed to be a vanishing quantity is there more or less higgling and bargaining than in a small market where the interval is admittedly perceptible? And if thereishiggling and bargaining (op. cit., pp. 96-97), what is it doing that is of price-fixing importance unless there be supposed to be a critical interval for it to work in? Such a use of probability-theory is a good example of the way in which mathematics may be used to cover the false assumptions which have to be made in order to make a mathematical treatment of certain sorts of subject-matter initially plausible as description of concrete fact.63As I have elsewhere argued ("Subjective and Exchange Value,"Journ. Pol. Econ., Vol. IV, pp. 227-30). By the same token, I confess skepticism of the classical English doctrine that cost can affect price only through its effect upon quantity produced. "If all the commodities used by man," wrote Senior (quoted by Davenport,op. cit., p. 58), "were supplied by nature without any interference whatever of human labor, but were supplied in precisely the same amounts that they now are, there is no reason to suppose either that they would cease to be valuable or would exchange at any other than the present proportions." But is this inductive evidence or illustrative rhetoric? One wonders, indeed, whether private property would ever have developed or how long modern society would tolerate it if all wealth were the gift of nature instead of only some of it (that part, of course, which requires no use of produced capital goods for its appropriation).64Certain points in this discussion have been raised in two papers, entitled, "The Present Task of Ethical Theory,"Int. Jour. of Ethics, XX, and "Ethical Value,"Jour. of Phil., Psy., and Scientific Methods, V, p. 517.65Cf. also John Dewey,Influence of Darwin upon Philosophy, and Dewey and Tufts,Ethics, Ch. XVI.66International Journal of Ethics, XXV, 1914, pp. 1-24.67Dreams of a Spirit Seer.68Cf. A. W. Moore,Pragmatism and Its Critics, 257-78.69Croce,Philosophy of the Practical, pp. 312 f.70G. E. Moore,Principia Ethica, p. 147.71Ethics, ch. V.72G. E. Moore,Principia Ethica, p. 149.73Rashdall,Is Conscience an Emotion?pp. 199 f.74Ibid., 177.75G.E. Moore,Ethics, Ch. III.76Dewey and Tufts,Ethics, pp. 334 f.77Methods of Ethics, p. 380.78Individualism, 55, 61, 62.79Lectures III and IV, especially 175, 176, 235-39.80Pp. 111 ff., 172-75, 329 ff.81Pp. 73, 186, 236, 261 f., 267, 269.82124, 182, 301.83263 ff., 123.84Pp. 180, 241.85P. 180.86Art and religion have doubtless their important parts in embodying values, or in adding the consciousness of membership in a larger union of spirits, or of relation to a cosmic order conceived as ethical, but the limits of our discussion do not permit treatment of these factors.87Cf. my paper, "Goodness, Cognition, and Beauty,"Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. IX, p. 253.88Cf. Thorndike,The Original Nature of Man; S. Freud,Die Traumdeutung,Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben, etc.; McDougall,Social Psychology.89The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. IX, p. 256.90Cf. Plato,Republic, IX, 571, 572, for an explicit anticipation of Freud.91This "new psychology" is not so very new.92Cf. Hocking,The Meaning of God in Human Experience, for the most recent of these somnambulisms. But any idealistic system will do, from Plato to Bradley.93Cf. James,The Varieties of Religious Experience.94Cf. Jane Harrison,Ancient Art and Ritual.95Cf. my paper, "Is Belief Essential in Religion?",International Journal of Ethics, October, 1910.96"Metaphysics,"Book Lambda.97This is accomplished usually by ignoring the differentia of the term of religion, and using it simply as an adjective of eulogy, as in the common practice the term "Christian" is made coextensive with the denotation of "good," or "social." For example, a "Christian gentleman" can differ in no discernible way from a gentleman not so qualified save by believing in certain theological propositions. But in usage, the adjective is simply tautologous. Compare R. B. Perry,The Moral Economy; E. S. Ames,The Psychology of Religious Experience; J. H. Leuba,A Psychological Study of Religion; H. M. Kallen,Is Belief Essential in Religion?98The condition of England and Germany in the present civil war in Europe echoes this situation.99Cf.Republic, Books V and VI.100Cf.Winds of DoctrineandReason in Common Sense.

1The word relation suffers from ambiguity. I am speaking here ofconnexion, dynamic and functional interaction. "Relation" is a term used also to express logical reference. I suspect that much of the controversy about internal and external relations is due to this ambiguity. One passes at will from existential connexions of things to logical relationship of terms. Such an identification of existences withtermsis congenial to idealism, but is paradoxical in a professed realism.

2There is some gain in substituting a doctrine of flux and interpenetration of psychical states,à laBergson, for that of rigid discontinuity. But the substitution leaves untouched the fundamental misstatement of experience, the conception of experience as directly and primarily "inner" and psychical.

3Mathematical science in its formal aspects, or as a branch of formal logic, has been the empirical stronghold of rationalism. But an empirical empiricism, in contrast with orthodox deductive empiricism, has no difficulty in establishing its jurisdiction as to deductive functions.

4It is a shame to devote the word idealism, with its latent moral, practical connotations, to a doctrine whose tenets are the denial of the existence of a physical world, and the psychical character of all objects—at least as far as they are knowable. But I am following usage, not attempting to make it.

5See Dr. Kallen's essay, below.

6The "they" means the "some" of the prior sentence—those whose realism is epistemological, instead of being a plea for taking the facts of experience as we find them without refraction through epistemological apparatus.

7It is interesting to note that some of the realists who have assimilated the cognitive relation to other existential relations in the world (instead of treating it as an unique or epistemological relation) have been forced in support of their conception of knowledge as a "presentative" or spectatorial affair to extend the defining features of the latter to all relations among things, and hence to make all the "real" things in the world pure "simples," wholly independent of one another. So conceived the doctrine of external relations appears to be rather the doctrine of complete externality ofthings. Aside from this point, the doctrine is interesting for its dialectical ingenuity and for the elegant development of assumed premises, rather than convincing on account of empirical evidence supporting it.

8In other words, there is a general "problem of error" only because there is a general problem of evil, concerning which see Dr. Kallen's essay, below.

9Compare the paper by Professor Bode.

10As the attempt to retain the epistemological problem and yet to reject idealistic and relativistic solutions has forced some Neo-realists into the doctrine of isolated and independent simples, so it has also led to a doctrine of Eleatic pluralism. In order to maintain the doctrine the subject makes no difference to anything else, it is held thatnoultimate real makes any difference to anything else—all this rather than surrender once for all the genuineness of the problem and to follow the lead of empirical subject-matter.

11There is almost no end to the various dialectic developments of the epistemological situation. When it is held that all the relations of the type in question are cognitive, and yet it is recognized (as it must be) that many such "transformations" go unremarked, the theory is supplemented by introducing "unconscious" psychical modifications.

12Conception-presentation has, of course, been made by many in the history of speculation an exception to this statement; "pure" memory is also made an exception by Bergson. To take cognizance of this matter would, of course, accentuate, not relieve, the difficulty remarked upon in the text.

13Cf.Studies in Logical Theory, Chs. I and II, by Dewey; also "Epistemology and Mental States," Tufts,Phil. Rev., Vol. VI, which deserves to rank as one of the early documents of the "experimental" movement.

14Cf. "The Definition of the Psychical," G. H. Mead,Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago.

15Cf.The Logic of Hegel-Wallace, p. 117.

16Bosanquet's Logic, 2nd Ed., p. 171. The identification of induction and procedure by hypothesis occurs on p. 156.

17Ibid., p. 14 (italics mine).

18Perhaps the most complete exhibition of the breakdown of formal logic considered as an account of the operation of thought apart from its subject-matter is to be found in Schiller'sFormal Logic.

19Cf. Stuart on "Valuation as a Logical Process" inStudies in Logical Theory.

20The New Realism, pp. 40-41.

21Cf. Montague, pp. 256-57; also Russell,The Problems ofPhilosophy, pp. 27-65-66,et passim; and Holt'sConcept of Consciousness, pp. 14ff., discussed below.

22Cf. Angell, "Relations of Psychology to Philosophy,"Decennial Publications of University of Chicago, Vol. III; also Castro, "The Respective Standpoints of Psychology and Logic,"Philosophic Studies, University of Chicago, No. 4.

23I am here following, in the main, Professor Holt because he alone appears to have had the courage to develop the full consequences of the premises of analytic logic.

24The Concept of Consciousness, pp. 14-15.

25It is interesting to compare this onlooking act with the account of consciousness further on. As "psychological" this act of onlooking must be an act of consciousness. But consciousness is a cross-section or a projection of things made by their interaction with a nervous system. Here consciousness is a function of all the interacting factors. It is in the play. Itisthe play. It is not in a spectator's box. How can consciousness be a function of all the things put into the cross-section and yet be a mere beholder of the process? Moreover, what is it that makes any particular, spectacle, or cross-section "logical"? If it be said all are "logical" what significance has the term?

26Cf. Russell'sScientific Methods in Philosophy, p. 59.

27Holt,op. cit., pp. 128-30.

28In fact, Newton, in all probability, had the Cartesian pure notions in mind.

29Holt,op. cit., p. 118 (italics mine). Cf. also Perry'sPresent Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 108 and 311.

30The character of elements and the nature of simplicity have been discussed in the preceding section.

31Ibid., p. 275.

32Ibid., p. 275.

33This lack of continuity between the cognitive function of the nervous system and its other functions accounts for the strange paradox in the logic of neo-realism of an act of knowing which is "subjective" and yet is the act of so palpably an objective affair as a nervous system. The explanation is that the essence of all deprecated subjectivity is, as before pointed out, functional isolation. That this sort of subjectivity should be identified with the "psychical" is not strange, since a living organism is very difficult to isolate, while the term "psychical," in its metaphysical sense, seems to stand for little else than just this complete isolation. Having once appealed to the nervous system it seems incredible that the physiological continuity of its functions with each other and with its environment should not have suggested the logical corollary. Only the force of the prepossession of mathematical atomism in analytic logic can account for its failure to do so.

34But it would be better to use the term "logically-practical" instead of "subjective" with the psychical implications of that term.

35An analysis which has been many times carried out has made it clear that scientific data never do more than approximate the laws and entities upon which our science rests. It is equally evident that the forms of these laws and entities themselves shift in the reconstructions of incessant research, or where they seem most secure could consistently be changed, or at least could be fundamentally different were our psychological structure or even our conventions of thought different. I need only refer to theScience et Hypothèseof Poincaré and theProblems of Scienceof Enriques. The positivist who undertakes to carry the structure of the world back to the data of observation, and the uniformities appearing in the accepted hypotheses of growing sciences cannot maintain that we ever succeed in isolating data which must remain the same in the kaleidoscope of our research science; nor are we better served if we retreat to the ultimate elements of points and instants which our pure mathematics assumes and implicitly defines, and in connection with which it has worked out the modern theory of the number and continuous series, its statements of continuity and infinity.

36In other words, science assumes that every error isex post factoexplicable as a function of the real conditions under which it really arose. Hence, "consciousness," set over against Reality, was not its condition.

37C. Judson Herrick, "Some Reflections on the Origin and Significance of the Cerebral Cortex,"Journal of Animal Behavior, Vol. III, pp. 228-233.

38Psychology, Vol. I, p. 256.

39H. C. Warren,Psychological Review, Vol. XXI, Page 93.

40Principles of Psychology, I, p. 241, note.

41Ibid., p. 258.

42Psychology. Briefer Course.P. 468.

43Angell,Psychology, p. 65.

44Psychology, Vol. I, p. 251.

45Thorstein Veblen:The Instinct of Workmanship, p. 316.

46It may still be argued that we must depend upon analogy in our acceptance or rejection of a new commodity. For any element of novelty must surely suggest something to us, mustmeansomething to us, if it is to attract or repel. Thus, the motor-car will whirl us rapidly over the country, the motor-boat will dart over the water without effort on our part. And in such measure as we have had them hitherto, we have always enjoyed experiences of rapid motion. These new instruments simply promise a perfectly well-knownsortof experience in fuller measure. So the argument may run. And our mental process in such a case may accordingly be held to be nothing more mysterious than a passing by analogy from theoldways in which we got rapid motion in the past to thenewway which now promises more of the same. And more of the same is what we want."More of the same" means here intensive magnitude and in this connection at all events it begs the question. Bergson's polemic seems perfectly valid against such a use of the notion. But kept in logical terms the case seems clearer. It is said that we reason in such a case by "analogy." We do, indeed; but what is analogy? The term explains nothing until the real process behind the term is clearly and realistically conceived. What I shall here suggest holds true, I think, as an account of analogical inference generally and not simply for the economic type of case we have here to do with. Reasoning is too often thought of as proceeding from given independent premises—as here (1) the fact that hitherto the driving we have most enjoyed and the sailing we have most enjoyed have beenfastand (2) the fact that the motor-car isfast. But do we accept the conclusion because the premises suggest it in a way we cannot resist? On the contrary, stated thus, the premises clearly donotwarrant the conclusion that the motor-car will be enjoyable. Such a statement of the premises is wholly formal andex post facto. What, then, is our actual mental process in the case? The truth is, I think, that we simply—yes, "psychologically"—wish to trythat promised unheard-of rate of speed! That comes first and foremost. But we mean to be reasonably prudent on the whole, although we are avowedly adventurous just now in this particular direction! We, therefore, ransack our memory forother fast thingswe have known, to see whether they have encouragement to give us. We try to supply ourselves with a major premise because the new proposal in its own right interests us—instead of having the major premise already there to coerce us by a purely "logical" compulsion as soon as we invade its sphere of influence. And confessedly, in point of "logic," there is no such compulsion in the second figure: there is only a timid and vexatious neutrality, a mere "not proven."Why, then, do we in fact take the much admired "inductive leap," in seeming defiance of strict logic? Why do we close our eyes to logic, turn our back upon logic, behave as if logic were not and had never been? In point of fact, we do nothing of the sort. The "inductive leap" is no leap away from logic, but the impulsion of logic's mainspring seen only in its legitimate event. Because we have not taken care to see the impulse coming, it surprises us and we are frightened. And we look about for an illusive assurance in some "law of thought," or some question-begging "universal premise" of Nature's "uniformity." We do not see that we were already conditionally committed to the "leap" by our initial interest. Getting our premises together is no hurried forging of a chain to save us from our own madness in the nick of time. We are only hoping to rid ourselves of an excess of conservative ballast. To reason by analogy is not to repress or to dispense with the interest in the radically novel, but to give methodical and intelligent expression to that interest.

"More of the same" means here intensive magnitude and in this connection at all events it begs the question. Bergson's polemic seems perfectly valid against such a use of the notion. But kept in logical terms the case seems clearer. It is said that we reason in such a case by "analogy." We do, indeed; but what is analogy? The term explains nothing until the real process behind the term is clearly and realistically conceived. What I shall here suggest holds true, I think, as an account of analogical inference generally and not simply for the economic type of case we have here to do with. Reasoning is too often thought of as proceeding from given independent premises—as here (1) the fact that hitherto the driving we have most enjoyed and the sailing we have most enjoyed have beenfastand (2) the fact that the motor-car isfast. But do we accept the conclusion because the premises suggest it in a way we cannot resist? On the contrary, stated thus, the premises clearly donotwarrant the conclusion that the motor-car will be enjoyable. Such a statement of the premises is wholly formal andex post facto. What, then, is our actual mental process in the case? The truth is, I think, that we simply—yes, "psychologically"—wish to trythat promised unheard-of rate of speed! That comes first and foremost. But we mean to be reasonably prudent on the whole, although we are avowedly adventurous just now in this particular direction! We, therefore, ransack our memory forother fast thingswe have known, to see whether they have encouragement to give us. We try to supply ourselves with a major premise because the new proposal in its own right interests us—instead of having the major premise already there to coerce us by a purely "logical" compulsion as soon as we invade its sphere of influence. And confessedly, in point of "logic," there is no such compulsion in the second figure: there is only a timid and vexatious neutrality, a mere "not proven."

Why, then, do we in fact take the much admired "inductive leap," in seeming defiance of strict logic? Why do we close our eyes to logic, turn our back upon logic, behave as if logic were not and had never been? In point of fact, we do nothing of the sort. The "inductive leap" is no leap away from logic, but the impulsion of logic's mainspring seen only in its legitimate event. Because we have not taken care to see the impulse coming, it surprises us and we are frightened. And we look about for an illusive assurance in some "law of thought," or some question-begging "universal premise" of Nature's "uniformity." We do not see that we were already conditionally committed to the "leap" by our initial interest. Getting our premises together is no hurried forging of a chain to save us from our own madness in the nick of time. We are only hoping to rid ourselves of an excess of conservative ballast. To reason by analogy is not to repress or to dispense with the interest in the radically novel, but to give methodical and intelligent expression to that interest.

47Aristotle'sNicomachaean Ethics(Welldon's transl.), Book VIII.

48Cf. Aristotle'sPolitics(Jowett's trans.) III. 9. §6 ff. and elsewhere;Nicom. Ethics, I, Chap. III (end).

49Cf. Veblen:op. cit.

50W. McDougall in hisSocial Psychology(Ed. 1912, pp. 358 ff.) recognizes "incomplete anticipation of the end of action" as a genuine type of preliminary situation in human behavior, but appears to regard this as in so far a levelling-down of man to the blindness of the "brutes." But "incompleteness" is a highly ambiguous term and seems here to beg the question. "Incompleteness" may be given an emphasis in which it imports conjecture and hypothesis—almost anything, in fact, but blindness. Rather do the brutes get levelled up to man by such facts as those McDougall cites.

51I takeroutineto be the essence and meaning of hedonism. There are two fundamental types of conduct—routine and constructiveness. Reference may be made here to Böhm-Bawerk's pronouncement on hedonism inKapital und Kapitalzins, 1912 (II-2, pp. 310 ff.): "What people love and hate, strive towards or fight off—whether only pleasure and pain or other 'lovable' and 'hatable' things as well,—is a matter of entire indifference to the economist. The only thing important is that they do love and hate certain things.... The deductions of marginal utility theory lose no whit of their cogency even if certain ends (dependent for their realization upon a supply of goods inadequate to the fulfillment of all ends without limit) are held to have the character not of pleasure but of something else. The marginal utility may be a least pleasure or a competing least utility of some other sort...." (p. 317). This is a not uncommon view. As W. C. Mitchell has suggested, it is too obvious to be wholly convincing. (Journ. Pol. Ec., Vol. XVIII. "The Rationality of Economic Activity.") Veblen has made it perfectly clear that particular matters of theory are affected by the presupposition of hedonism. (Journ. Pol. Ec., Vol. XVII,Quart. Journ. Econ., Vol. XXII, p. 147 ff.) The matter is too complex for a footnote, but I think it of little consequence whether "pleasure" be in any case regarded as substantively the end of desire or not. This is largely a matter of words. What is important is the practical question whether a thing isso habitual with me that when the issue arises I cannot or will not give it up and take an interest in something newthe "utility" of which I cannot as yet be cognizant of because it partly rests with me to create it. If this is the fact it will surely look as if pleasure or the avoidance of pain were my end in the case. Hedonism and egoism are in the end convertible terms. There is conduct wearing the outward aspect of altruism that is egotistic in fact—not because it was from the first insincere or self-delusive, but because it has become habitual and may in a crisis be held to for the sake of the satisfaction it affords. Genuine altruism, on the other hand, is a form of constructiveness.

52Until after this essay was finished I had not seen John A. Hobson's book entitledWork and Wealth, A Human Valuation(London, 1914). My attention was first definitely called to this work by a friend among the economists who read my finished MS. late in 1915, and referred me in particular to the concluding chapter on "Social Science and Social Art." On now tardily reading this chapter I find that, as any reader will readily perceive, it distinctly anticipates, almostverbatimin parts, what I have tried, with far less success, to say in the foregoing two paragraphs above. Hobson argues, with characteristic clearness and effect, for the qualitative uniqueness and the integral character of personal budgets, holding that the logic of marginality is "an entirely illusory account of the psychical process by which a man lays out his money, or his time, or his energy" (p. 331). "So far as it is true that the last sovereign of my expenditure in bread equals in utility the last sovereign of my expenditure in books, that fact proceeds not from a comparison, conscious, or unconscious, of these separate items at this margin, but from the parts assigned respectively to bread and books in the organic plan of my life. Quantitative analysis, inherently incapable of comprehending qualitative unity or qualitative differences, can only pretend to reduce the latter to quantitative differences. What it actually does is to ignore alike the unity of the whole and the qualitativeness of the parts" (p. 334). Hobson not only uses the analogy of the artist and the picture (p. 330) precisely as I have done, but offers still other illustrations of the principle that seem to me even more apt and telling. Though not indebted to him for what I have put into the above paragraphs, I am glad to be able to cite the authority of so distinguished an economist and sociologist for conclusions to which I found my own way. Other parts as wellof Work and Wealth(e.g., Chapter IV, on "The Creative Factor in Production") seem to have a close relation to the main theme of the present discussion.

53It may be worth while to glance here for the sake of illustration at an ethical view of preference parallel with the economic logic above contested. "The act which is right in that it promotes one interest, is, by the same principle," writes R. B. Perry, "wrong in that it injures another interest. There is no contradiction in this fact ... simply because it is possible for the same thing to possess several relations, the question of their compatibility or incompatibility being in each case a question of empirical fact. Now ... an act ... may be doubly right in that it conduces to the fulfillment of two interests. Hence arises the conception of comparative goodness. If the fulfillment of one interest is good, the fulfillment of two is better; and the fulfillment of all interests is best.... Morality, then, issuch performance as under the circumstances, and in view of all the interests affected, conduces to most goodness. In other words, that act is morally right which is most right." (Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 334. Cf. alsoThe Moral Economy). It is evident that constructive change in the underlying system (or aggregate?) of the agent's interests gets no recognition here as a matter of moral concern or as a fact of the agent's moral experience. Thus Perry understands the meaning of freedom to lie in the fact that "interests operate," i.e., that interests exist as a certain class of operative factors in the universe along with factors ofothersorts. "I can and do, within limits,act as I will. Action, in other words, is governed by desires and intentions." (pp. 342 ff.). The cosmical heroics of Bertrand Russell are thus not quite the last word in Ethics (p. 346). Nevertheless, the "free man," in Perry's view, apparently must get on with the interests that once for all initially defined him as a "moral constant" (p. 343).

54In a recent interesting discussion of "Self-interest" (T. N. Carver,Essays in Social Justice, 1915, Chap. III) occurs the following: "We may conclude ... that even after we eliminate from our consideration all other beings than self, there is yet a possible distinction between one's present and one's future self. It is always, of course, the present self which esteems or appreciates all interests whether they be present or future. And the present self estimates or appreciates present interests somewhat more highly than it does future interests. In this respect the present self appreciates the interests of the future self according to a law quite analogous to, if indeed it be not the same law as that according to which it appreciates the interests of others" (p. 71). This bit of "subjective analysis" (p. 60), a procedure rather scornfully condemned as "subjective quibbling" on the following page, must be counted a fortunate lapse. It could be bettered, I think, in only one point. Must the future self "of course" and "always" get license to live by meeting the standards of the present self? Has the present self no modesty, no curiosity, no "sense of humor"? If it is so stupidly hard and fast, how can a self new and qualitatively different ever get upon its feet in a man? In some men no such thing can happen—but must it be in all men impossible and impossible "of course"? And what of the other self? Carver has not applied the "methods of subjective analysis" tochangefrom selftoself or from interest in selftointerest in others. The present tense of formal logic governs fundamentally throughout the whole account.If this essay were a volume I should try to consider, from the point of view of constructive intelligence, the explanation of interest as due to the undervaluation of future goods.

If this essay were a volume I should try to consider, from the point of view of constructive intelligence, the explanation of interest as due to the undervaluation of future goods.

55Fite,Introductory Study of Ethics, pp. 3-8.

56Dewey and Tufts,Ethics, pp. 205-11.

57The term "egocentric predicament" (cf. R. B. Perry:Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 129 ff.) has had, for a philosophic term, a remarkable literary success. But at best it conveys a partial view of the situation it purports to describe. The "egocentricity" of our experience, viewed in its relation to action, seems, rightly considered, less a "predicament" than an opportunity, a responsibility and an immunity. For in relation toaction, it means (1) that an objective complex situation has become, in various of its aspects, a matter of my cognizance in terms significant to me. That so many of its aspects have come into relations of conflict or reënforcement significantfor meismyopportunity for reconstructive effort if I choose to avail myself of it. Because, again, I am thus "on hand myself" (op. cit., p. 129) and am thus able to "report" upon the situation, I am (2) responsible, in the measure of my advantages, for the adequacy of my performance. And finally (3) I cannot be held to account for failure to reckon with such aspects of the situation as I cannot get hold of in the guise of "ideas, objects of knowledge or experiences" (Ibid.). Our egocentricity is, then, a predicament only so long as one stubbornly insists, to no obvious positive purpose, on thinking of knowledge as a self-sufficing entitative complex, like a vision suddenly appearing full-blown out of the blue, and as inviting judgment in that isolated character on the representative adequacy which it is supposed to claim (cf. A. W. Moore, "Isolated Knowledge,"Journ. of Philos., etc., Vol. XI). The way out of the predicament for Perry and his colleagues is to attack the traditional subjective and representative aspects of knowledge. But, this carried out, what remains of knowledge is a "cross-section of neutral entities" whichstillretains all the original unaccountability, genetically speaking, and the original intrinsic and isolated self-sufficiency traditionally supposed to belong to knowledge. The ostensible gain achieved for knowledge is an alleged proof of its ultimate self-validation or the meaninglessness of any suspicion of its validity (because there is no uncontrolled and distorting intermediation of "consciousness" in the case). But to wage strenuous war on subjectivism and representationism and still to have on hand a problem calling for the inventionad hocof an entire new theory of mind and knowledge seems a waste of good ammunition on rather unimportant outworks. They might have been circumvented.But what concerns us here is the ethical parallel. The egocentric predicament in this aspect purports to compel the admission by the "altruist" that since whatever he chooses to do must be his act and is obviously done because he wishes, for good and sufficient reasons of his own, to do it, therefore he is an egoist after all—perhaps in spite of himself and then again perhaps not. The ethical realism of G. E. Moore (Principia Ethica, 1903) breaks out of the predicament by declaring Good independent of all desire, wish or human interest andindefinable, and by supplying a partial list of things thus independently good. What I do, I do because it seems likely to put me in possession of objectiveGood, not because it accords with some habit or whim of mine (although my own pleasure is undoubtedlyoneof the good things). It is noteworthy that Perry declines to follow Moore in this (op. cit., p. 331 ff.). Now such an ethical objectivism can give no account of the motivation, or the process, of the individual's efforts to attain, for guidance in any case, a "more adequate" apprehension of what things are good than he may already possess, just as the objectivist theory of consciousness (=knowledge) can supply no clue as to how or whether amoreor alesscomprehensive or a qualitativelydifferent"cross-section of entities" can or should be got into one's "mind" as warrant or guidance ("stimulus") for a contemplated response that is to meet a present emergency (cf. John Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,"Psychol. Rev., Vol. IV). Thus neither sort of deliverance out of the alleged predicament of egocentricity abates in the least the only serious inconvenience or danger threatened by subjectivism.

But what concerns us here is the ethical parallel. The egocentric predicament in this aspect purports to compel the admission by the "altruist" that since whatever he chooses to do must be his act and is obviously done because he wishes, for good and sufficient reasons of his own, to do it, therefore he is an egoist after all—perhaps in spite of himself and then again perhaps not. The ethical realism of G. E. Moore (Principia Ethica, 1903) breaks out of the predicament by declaring Good independent of all desire, wish or human interest andindefinable, and by supplying a partial list of things thus independently good. What I do, I do because it seems likely to put me in possession of objectiveGood, not because it accords with some habit or whim of mine (although my own pleasure is undoubtedlyoneof the good things). It is noteworthy that Perry declines to follow Moore in this (op. cit., p. 331 ff.). Now such an ethical objectivism can give no account of the motivation, or the process, of the individual's efforts to attain, for guidance in any case, a "more adequate" apprehension of what things are good than he may already possess, just as the objectivist theory of consciousness (=knowledge) can supply no clue as to how or whether amoreor alesscomprehensive or a qualitativelydifferent"cross-section of entities" can or should be got into one's "mind" as warrant or guidance ("stimulus") for a contemplated response that is to meet a present emergency (cf. John Dewey, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,"Psychol. Rev., Vol. IV). Thus neither sort of deliverance out of the alleged predicament of egocentricity abates in the least the only serious inconvenience or danger threatened by subjectivism.

58Cf. W. Jethro Brown,The Underlying Principles of Modern Legislation(3d ed., London, 1914), pp. 165-68.

59Bosanquet:Principle of Individuality and Value, pp. 13, 15, 20, 24, 27, 30.

60The case against the Austrian explanation of market-price in terms of marginal utility has been well summed up and re-enforced by B. M. Anderson in his monograph,Social Value(Boston, 1911). Anderson finds the fatal flaw in the Austrian account to consist in the psychological particularism of the marginal utility theory. The only way, he holds, to provide an adequate foundation for a non-circular theory of price is to understand the marginal estimates people put upon goods as resultants of the entire moral, legal, institutional, scientific, æsthetical, and religious state of society at the time. This total and therefore absolute state of affairs, if I understand the argument, is to be regarded as focussed to a unique point in the estimate each man puts upon a commodity. Thus, presumably, the values which come together, summed up in the total demand and supply schedules for a commodity in the market, are "social values" and the resultant market-price is a "social price." This cross-sectional social totality of conditions is strongly suggestive of an idealistic Absolute. The individual is a mere focussing of impersonal strains and stresses in the Absolute. But the real society is a radically temporal process. The real centers of initiation in it are creatively intelligent individuals whose economic character as such expresses itself not in "absolute" marginal registrations but in price estimates.On the priority of price to value I venture to claim the support of A. A. Young, "Some Limitations of the Value Concept,"Quart. Journ. Econ., Vol. XXV, p. 409 (esp. pp. 417-19). Incidentally, I suspect the attempt to reconstruct ethical theory as a branch of what is calledWerttheorieto be a mistake and likely to result only in useless and misleading terminology.

On the priority of price to value I venture to claim the support of A. A. Young, "Some Limitations of the Value Concept,"Quart. Journ. Econ., Vol. XXV, p. 409 (esp. pp. 417-19). Incidentally, I suspect the attempt to reconstruct ethical theory as a branch of what is calledWerttheorieto be a mistake and likely to result only in useless and misleading terminology.

61Positive Theory of Capital(Eng. trans.). Bk. IV, Ch. II. The passage is unchanged in the author's latest edition (1912).

62It is pointed out (e.g., by Davenport in hisEconomics of Enterprise, pp. 53-54) that, mathematically, in a market where large numbers of buyers and sellers confront each other with their respective maximum and minimum valuations on the commodity this interval within which price must fall becomes indefinitely small to the point of vanishing. This is doubtless in accord with the law of probability, but it would be an obvious fallacy to see in this any manner of proof or presumption that therefore the assumptions as to the nature of the individual valuations upon which such analysis proceedsare true. In a large market where this interval is supposed to be a vanishing quantity is there more or less higgling and bargaining than in a small market where the interval is admittedly perceptible? And if thereishiggling and bargaining (op. cit., pp. 96-97), what is it doing that is of price-fixing importance unless there be supposed to be a critical interval for it to work in? Such a use of probability-theory is a good example of the way in which mathematics may be used to cover the false assumptions which have to be made in order to make a mathematical treatment of certain sorts of subject-matter initially plausible as description of concrete fact.

63As I have elsewhere argued ("Subjective and Exchange Value,"Journ. Pol. Econ., Vol. IV, pp. 227-30). By the same token, I confess skepticism of the classical English doctrine that cost can affect price only through its effect upon quantity produced. "If all the commodities used by man," wrote Senior (quoted by Davenport,op. cit., p. 58), "were supplied by nature without any interference whatever of human labor, but were supplied in precisely the same amounts that they now are, there is no reason to suppose either that they would cease to be valuable or would exchange at any other than the present proportions." But is this inductive evidence or illustrative rhetoric? One wonders, indeed, whether private property would ever have developed or how long modern society would tolerate it if all wealth were the gift of nature instead of only some of it (that part, of course, which requires no use of produced capital goods for its appropriation).

64Certain points in this discussion have been raised in two papers, entitled, "The Present Task of Ethical Theory,"Int. Jour. of Ethics, XX, and "Ethical Value,"Jour. of Phil., Psy., and Scientific Methods, V, p. 517.

65Cf. also John Dewey,Influence of Darwin upon Philosophy, and Dewey and Tufts,Ethics, Ch. XVI.

66International Journal of Ethics, XXV, 1914, pp. 1-24.

67Dreams of a Spirit Seer.

68Cf. A. W. Moore,Pragmatism and Its Critics, 257-78.

69Croce,Philosophy of the Practical, pp. 312 f.

70G. E. Moore,Principia Ethica, p. 147.

71Ethics, ch. V.

72G. E. Moore,Principia Ethica, p. 149.

73Rashdall,Is Conscience an Emotion?pp. 199 f.

74Ibid., 177.

75G.E. Moore,Ethics, Ch. III.

76Dewey and Tufts,Ethics, pp. 334 f.

77Methods of Ethics, p. 380.

78Individualism, 55, 61, 62.

79Lectures III and IV, especially 175, 176, 235-39.

80Pp. 111 ff., 172-75, 329 ff.

81Pp. 73, 186, 236, 261 f., 267, 269.

82124, 182, 301.

83263 ff., 123.

84Pp. 180, 241.

85P. 180.

86Art and religion have doubtless their important parts in embodying values, or in adding the consciousness of membership in a larger union of spirits, or of relation to a cosmic order conceived as ethical, but the limits of our discussion do not permit treatment of these factors.

87Cf. my paper, "Goodness, Cognition, and Beauty,"Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. IX, p. 253.

88Cf. Thorndike,The Original Nature of Man; S. Freud,Die Traumdeutung,Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben, etc.; McDougall,Social Psychology.

89The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. IX, p. 256.

90Cf. Plato,Republic, IX, 571, 572, for an explicit anticipation of Freud.

91This "new psychology" is not so very new.

92Cf. Hocking,The Meaning of God in Human Experience, for the most recent of these somnambulisms. But any idealistic system will do, from Plato to Bradley.

93Cf. James,The Varieties of Religious Experience.

94Cf. Jane Harrison,Ancient Art and Ritual.

95Cf. my paper, "Is Belief Essential in Religion?",International Journal of Ethics, October, 1910.

96"Metaphysics,"Book Lambda.

97This is accomplished usually by ignoring the differentia of the term of religion, and using it simply as an adjective of eulogy, as in the common practice the term "Christian" is made coextensive with the denotation of "good," or "social." For example, a "Christian gentleman" can differ in no discernible way from a gentleman not so qualified save by believing in certain theological propositions. But in usage, the adjective is simply tautologous. Compare R. B. Perry,The Moral Economy; E. S. Ames,The Psychology of Religious Experience; J. H. Leuba,A Psychological Study of Religion; H. M. Kallen,Is Belief Essential in Religion?

98The condition of England and Germany in the present civil war in Europe echoes this situation.

99Cf.Republic, Books V and VI.

100Cf.Winds of DoctrineandReason in Common Sense.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:Punctuation has been normalized. As well as obvious misprints have been corrected.

Back to Index Next