REFORMED LOGICA SYSTEM BASED ONBERKELEY'S PHILOSOPHYWITH AN ENTIRELY NEW METHOD OFDIALECTICBYD. B. McLACHLAN

'Spiritsare active, indivisible substances;Ideas[objects] are inert,fleeting, dependent things, which subsist not by themselves, but aresupported by, or exist in minds or spiritual substances....The causeof Ideas is an incorporeal activeSubstanceor Spirit.'—Berkeley.

—Berkeley.

London

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.

PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1892

'Looking to the chaotic state of logic text-books at the present time, one would be inclined to say that there does not exist anywhere a recognised, currently-received body of speculation to which the title Logic can be unambiguously assigned, and that we must therefore resign the hope of attaining by any empirical consideration of the received doctrine, a precise determination of the nature and limits of logical theory.'Encyc. Brit., Art.,Logic.

Encyc. Brit., Art.,Logic.

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The object of the following treatise is to give an intelligible account of the principal facts of Mind, with a method for the right expression and criticism of Reasoning. It is based on principles not before applied to such a purpose. The current systems of Metaphysic are obscure and difficult simply because they start from false premises, not because the nature and operations of Mind cannot, if properly understood, be made as comprehensible to beginners as other branches of knowledge. The rules of Dialectic are quite within the capacity of any intelligent schoolboy, and should be an essential part of early education, like Arithmetic.

Let not the student be repelled at finding a philosophy reputed to be one of the most difficult taken as the basis of this work. It is Berkeleyism considerably modified. Also it is to be borne in mindthat a philosophy is not to be judged by itsprimâ facieprobability, but by its power of explaining many facts in a coherent and lucid way. A theory that does this should not be rejected for a seeming paradox at the outset.

Most of the theoretical and all the dialectical parts of this work can be adapted to Realistic thinking, by treating the judgments of the two Berkeleyan categories as intuitions instead of inferences.

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Philosophies are either Ideal or Substantial. The ideal are those which resolve all things, actual and possible, into thought or consciousness. They seek to find in consciousness the reason and meaning of itself, or, if this be impossible, to account for each item in consciousness by defining its relation to some other item, or to some general mass of consciousness. This type of philosophy includes German transcendentalism and idealism, and some species of Buddhist and Persian metaphysic. European idealists are seldom consistent, for at the basis of their philosophies (or at the apex) they placeGod, who is not an item of human consciousness, actual or potential, and who therefore occupies, whether it be admitted or not, the relation of substance to human thought.

Substantial philosophies affirm that thought invariably inheres in some sort of Substance, for whose service it exists. It is incapable of independent being, and cannot be understood abstracted from its substance. It is intermittent, called up when wanted, and is liable to variation and aberration.

Substantialists differ however as to what the substance of human intelligence is. Some hold that it is the human body. Consciousness exists, they argue, for the use of the body and varies with its condition. This class of philosophers may be subdivided into Materialists and Metaphysicians (including logicians).

Materialists believe that consciousness is a product of the physical body—has therefore no existence before the body is formed or after it is dissolved. It is really as physical as the teeth or hair.

In metaphysic the intelligence is supposed to have a principle of existence apart from the body, and does not, or need not, share the fate of the body. The body is nevertheless regarded as the substance or superior fact during the union of the two. This is an eminently inconsistent philosophy, for if consciousness has an existence apart from body it must be in some other substance, and if so its relations to that substance are more important than its relations to the body, and should be the first object of inquiry. Metaphysic is in its development an idealism, sincethe connection admitted between body and thought is too slight to afford a sufficient explanation of intelligence, and no other substantial relation is known.

The notion that an invisible immaterial substance may underlie consciousness has occurred to some philosophers, among others to the illustriousBerkeley. His theory of Vision, which has never been refuted or even weakened, is founded on this hypothesis.

Berkeleyan substantialism combines the characteristic features of the other theories, and affords an easy solution of many difficult problems in philosophy. It has in common with idealism—whence it is sometimes, but erroneously, called by that name—that it regards allmaterialbodies and things as facts or items of consciousness. It agrees with materialism that a substance is essential to consciousness, and that the consciousness of man serves the needs of his body, though that is not the highest use to which it can be put. It confirms the metaphysical view that intelligence is not, in its abstract or essential character, dependent on the body, and may therefore survive the body.

This is the theory on which the following logic is based: I shall refer to it briefly as Substantialism.

Substantialism has two main divisions—Ontology, which treats of the mental substance in itself, and Logic or Metaphysic, which deals with its consciousness. The present essay is specially concerned with logic, but certain ontological premises must be assumed to render the logic intelligible. This follows from the subordinate relation of consciousness to substance.

The substantial mind consists of two principal parts—a SELF and a PLASMA—the Atman and Akaśa of Sanscrit philosophers.

Self is the seat of Energy and Consciousness. The plasma is inert and unconscious; it protects the Self and receives, communicates, and retains impressions of experience, both the external and the internal1.

The Self would be conscious though isolated from other minds, at least from those of its own grade of being. It would feel the fluctuations of its energy. But the experience called 'external' depends on the mutual action of minds. It is the form into which their consciousness is thrown when they come in contact. It lasts no longer than the contact, and so has only a casual existence.

The constitution of the mind is not given by Berkeley, and on other points also we must supplement and correct his philosophy. He was wrong as regards the mental cause of the perception of the Inorganic or Dead.

Since external experience implies that another mind is operating upon ours, what mind is operating when we perceive an object that is apparently mindless? Berkeley replies that it is the supreme mind that is then acting upon us.

Many objections can be urged against this view. I will mention only one, which seems to me conclusive. By every canon of judgment we possess, the living or organised is better—more important and significant—than the lifeless and elemental; so if Berkeley's reasoning be valid the phenomena excited by finite and created beings are superior to those excited by their Creator. The movements of a living man are referred to a human mind—a putrescent carcase is a vision immediately induced by the Deity.

The beauty of the starry sky is irrelevant to the question. Apart from the finite life and thought that may be associated with the stars, they have no more philosophical importance than a spadeful of sand.

A more reasonable account of the inorganic is found in several ancient philosophies. Gnostics and Neo-Platonists referred the elemental to a cosmic mind (Demiurgos) intermediate between human beings and the Supreme. The demiurgic mind is inconceivably greater and more powerful than the human, but is not necessarily better in quality. It is the origin of all natural forces, and its organic processes are what we term 'physical laws.' This is the explanation of inorganic consciousness which I feel disposed to adopt, but to discuss it fully would carry us too far from the subject of this work.

The next point relates to the body. What is its function in substantialism? The brain, says Berkeley, is an idea in the mind, and he ridicules the notion that one idea should generate all other ideas. This is an argument against materialism. No doubt he would have admitted, though he does not say so, that the body-idea facilitates, or at least must precede, the experience of other ideas. He would not have denied that it is aninstrumentalidea.

Since his time an important discovery has been made with reference to the constitution of the body. I allude to the Cell theory. It is no longer possibleto regard the body either as a self-moving machine (if this is not a contradiction in terms), or as a lump of 'dead matter' animated by the mind. It is a society of minute animals2, each having a certain degree of independent energy and liberty of movement. They are organised and governed by the human or animal mind with which they are associated. In short, the relation of the cell to the man is analogous to, if not quite the same as, the relation of the man to the cosmic being.

This discovery complicates the problem of 'external' consciousness, without however affecting the principles on which a substantialist would endeavour to solve it. Instead of conceiving human minds as coming into immediate contact in perception, we have to conceive the cellular systems of each as forming a medium between the two. We do not perceive the other mind immediately or intuitively; what we perceive intuitively is certain affections in our own organism, which we must first refer to the other body, and then to the mind behind that body. Our knowledge of other human beings is thus altogether inferential.

The cellular medium explains why we are not generally aware of the substantial constitution of other minds; it is veiled by the intervening organisms.

The relation of body to mind, the reason of embodiment, and so forth, are questions of prime importance in ontology, but in logic we are concerned only with the object in consciousness, without reference to the apparatus of perception. The instrument of intellectual perception may in its proper character be ignored.

All the current academic metaphysic is ideal. Materialists, when they attempt to explain thought, fail to attach it properly to the body, or to account for that large and important division of mental activity which has no bearing, direct or indirect, on bodily welfare. They drop their materialism at an early stage of their enquiry and continue on the metaphysical method.

Hence in none of the current systems is there any true principle of arrangement in the treatment of logical phenomena. Unless we know the use of a thing we cannot describe it, let alone explain it. We know not the relative importance of its parts, and we arrange them according to superficial resemblances,or on some arbitrary principle which conceals instead of revealing their meaning.

Substantial philosophy alone possesses a principle of coherence. The facts of consciousness are determined by anterior facts of substance, and there can be only one true mode in which to present them—they must follow and reflect the substantial order. They will thus appear as a consecutive and coherent system of ideas, no one of which could be otherwise placed without damage to the whole. This is perhaps the most important respect in which substantial logic differs from others.

The doctrine of Categories has to receive full development in order to elucidate the genesis of the 'material world.' Except to a substantialist the categories have no particular value, and so they are barely mentioned in the academic systems.

The theory of Reasoning or Dialectic (logic in the narrower sense) given in the following chapters, will be found totally different from the academic. It does not merely state in other words or metaphors the doctrines laid down in works of the Aristotelian type,—it declares that the theory of reasoning taught in these works is altogether false. Our argumentation is not conducted in syllogisms, either tacit or explicit. This has been suspected by several critics of logic, but no attempt has been made to substitute a more correct theory and method.Of course logicians do not always reason wrongly, and true arguments may be stated in the syllogistic form. What I mean is that logicians nowhere tell us in what right reasoning essentially consists, and for want of a distinct notion on the subject they all of them occasionally admit as valid, arguments that are not so.

The main dogma of substantialism should be kept in view in reading the following pages. It is mind alone that is conceived as having solidity and energy: material things are temporary forms of our consciousness; they have length and breadth but no depth, and they are without energy, even passive resistance. If an object cannot be removed at pleasure, what resists us is the other mind causing that object, not the object itself.

As far as possible I have utilised the existing logical terminology. But substantialism has notions which require special technical words, and I have not hesitated to invent such when necessary. On the other hand, I have rejected the latinisms of current logic, which have never been assimilated by modern languages. The English language is good enough for all the purposes of logic.

1:The mental substance is thefifth essenceof the initiate Greeks and of Alchemists. They also called itchaosandfirst matter. 'Man was made of that very matter and chaos whereof all the world was made, and all the creatures in it: which is a most high mystery to understand, and must, nay is altogether necessary to be known of him that expecteth good from this art, being the ground of the wisdom thereof. Foolish men, nay they that the world holds for great doctors, say and tell it for truth, that God made man of a piece of mud, or clay, or dust of the earth, which is false; it was no such matter, but a Quintessential Matter which is called earth, but is no earth.'—De Manna Benedicto.2:See Stricker'sManual of Histology;Bioplasm, and other works, by Dr. Lionel S. Beale, M.B., F.R.S.; and an article on the New Psychology, by A. Fouillé, in theRevue des Deux Mondesfor October 15th, 1891.

2:See Stricker'sManual of Histology;Bioplasm, and other works, by Dr. Lionel S. Beale, M.B., F.R.S.; and an article on the New Psychology, by A. Fouillé, in theRevue des Deux Mondesfor October 15th, 1891.

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The mind has at physical birth one uniform quality of plasma and consciousness. By education and experience a portion of the plasma is gradually changed, and the consciousness excited by this portion is what we callIntellect. The word may also stand for the plasma so differentiated.

The consciousness pertaining to the plasma left in its primitive state isSentiment, which generally corresponds to what is termed the moral nature of man.

Intellect is a temporary condition arising out of the need to preserve the Self from hostile and inharmonious surroundings. The adaptation is artificial, and may therefore be well-done, or ill-done, or over-done.It is over-done when too much of the plasma and mental energy is devoted to intellectual purposes—when the individual has, to use a common expression, more head than heart. In this case the end is sacrificed to the means.

I conceive the intellect as a hardening of the plasma in its superficies, the formation of a sort of rind capable of receiving finer, sharper, and more enduring impressions than the plasma of sentiment; and, being harder, it is better able than the latter to resist enfeebling influences. Its duty is to challenge and inspect vibrations before permitting them to pass inwards to the region of sentiment. Yet the intellectual consciousness is itself a degree of sentiment, and in intellects not sufficiently trained it may be impossible to distinguish thoughts that are purely intellectual, from thoughts that are also to some extent sentimental. Upon minds of this sort the best-prepared arguments have no hold; they must be mixed with oratory and poetry to receive any attention. It need not be said that a mind which responds only to 'persuasive' language is feeble of intellect. It lives in the present only, and is incapable of far-reaching designs. It is to the intellect we owe the power of conceiving the past and future, and of laying plans for the future.

A mind properly intellectualised is, of its kind, strong and self-controlled. With the intellect defectivethe man exhibits passion, undue excitement and demonstrativeness. He responds to the least stimulus, like an exposed nerve; his energy is wasted in explosions. Sentiment is the inmost nerve of man—intellect its protecting sheath. The most carefully trained intellect is liable at times to be carried by assault or stratagem; then follows a feeling of emptiness occasioned by loss of energy. On the other hand an appearance of self-command may be really due to apathy,—the mind is of a low type and callous to influences that usually affect its species. If it is bad to be explosive, it is perhaps worse to be incapable of exploding.

Intellect is not the supreme or ruling intelligence of man. It initiates nothing. It is a light to direct our steps, but we do not walk where the light happens to fall—we make it fall where we desire to walk. Hence the diversity of occupation and intellectual accomplishments in men. Each acquires the sort of intellect he thinks will be sentimentally most serviceable to him; and on matters concerning which he has not learnt to reason he consults other men. We are not born rational beings; we are in no sense rational on all subjects; we are rational only on those few which we have mastered.

Men pretend to act from reason only, and perhaps they do on matters to which they are indifferent. But in general their rationality consists in findingpretexts for what on sentimental grounds they have already resolved to do, and in finding ways and means to carry out their resolves. Sentiment is the moving spring of conduct: intellect is the executive faculty. Those historical philosophers are mistaken who suppose the progress of mankind results from intellectual discoveries and inventions. These are effects, not causes, of progress—effects ofsentimentaldisagreement with previous conditions.

Intellect is little more than an extension inwards of our senses. It is an epitome and rearrangement of their observations, and is as instrumental as they. We are not necessarily improved by a development of the intellect forced upon us from without. Education is sometimes a dagger put into the hands of an assassin. The best education is largely sentimental (moral), for that is not confined to preserving the mind we have—it gives us another and a better mind, and so indirectly improves the intellect.

This word has several meanings which it may be well to notice.

Asveracityit means an agreement between our thoughts and our language. It supposes that we takereasonable pains to learn the conventional laws upon which language is founded, and then endeavour as far as possible to bring our speech in conformity with these laws. Since language is an art (like music) it may be acquired well or ill, so that a mistake in the use of a phrase or term is not regarded as untruth. There must be deliberate abuse of language to constitute a lie.

Agreement between an idea of memory and the actual experience—correct recollection—is another meaning of truth.

Also truth may signify agreement between an inferential thought and the fact to which it refers, although the fact has not yet been observed. In this sense truth must be construed liberally. We never foresee a future fact exactly as it will take place. Our anticipations are vague and our preparations for them general, but that on the whole is enough for our purposes. At least it is all that reason affords us. If we are absolutely certain of a future fact and can figure it in the mind precisely as it will take place, that means that it has already occurred so often that we are virtually using our memory, not our reason.

An inference may be considered true if it is the best we can draw from the information at our command, though in point of fact it may prove to be very incorrect.

There is no mass of speculative Truth which everybody ought to possess on pain of being considered foolish or miscreant. This notion, formerly so prevalent, betrays gross ignorance of the nature and function of intellect. It makes intellectual speculation an end in itself. Our ideas must be such as serve the uses of our sentimental or inner soul, and since the sentiments (tastes) of men vary widely, so ought also their intellectual ideas. Though change of sentiment modifies ideas, change of ideas does not modify sentiment. There is therefore no sort of good in uniformity of belief in itself. It is creditable to modern times that men have shaken off the procrustean beliefs of the Middle Ages, and are free to adapt their intellects to their real sentimental needs. The numerous sections into which speculative thought is now broken up, and the frequent changes of theory, are signs of healthy and active sentiment.

In matters of social policy, where large bodies of men have to carry out a single design, uniformity must be attained by persuasion or compromise. But such matters relate only to physical well-being, into which philosophical truth can hardly be said to enter.

This relative and, in the widest sense, utilitarian view of intellectual truth applies both to quantity and quality of ideas. We should not learn what we do not sentimentally require. That is waste of power. Uselessknowledge is folly, said both Plato and Aristotle. To mistake knowledge to be the pursuit of man is to confuse the means with the end, says the author of the Bhagavad Gita.

The quality of our ideas must not be good beyond our necessities. If they are, we shall suffer by acting on them. They will land us in circumstances for which our nature is not fully prepared.

If there were an abstract or standard truth, it would be good for every species of being, and no doubt the thoughts of a man are nearer to it than the thoughts of a horse. Therefore a horse ought to be improved by receiving a human intellect. But if we could insinuate into a horse's mind the knowledge possessed by an educated man, we should spoil what may have been a good horse and produce a monstrous and horrible man. So is it with ourselves. If we could receive knowledge far in advance of our requirements or out of relation to them, it would drive us mad or be itself madness. Our constitution and necessities determine what we can know and what we ought to know. Not all possible knowledge is good, and what is good for some may be useless or bad for others. Schopenhauer says well3: 'The faculty of Knowing ... has only arisen for the purpose of self-preservation, and therefore stands in a precise relation, admitting of countless gradations, to the requirements of each animal species.'

If our interests were single and uniform, one consistent scheme of intellectual knowledge would suffice. We need never be in fundamental contradiction with ourselves. Every advance in knowledge would illustrate and confirm what we had already learned.

But we are not of this simple constitution. We are first and essentially minds, we are next and temporarily embodied minds, and in each of these characters we have distinct and, to a great extent, conflicting interests. Hence we have to acquire different species of knowledge and admit different standards of truth. The ideas that serve the interests of the embodied man are false to the same man considered apart from his embodiment, and contrariwise—false, in the sense of being useless and perhaps misleading.

Hence the existence of Common-sense for the embodied interests, and Philosophy for the purely mental interests. Science is common knowledge carried to its utmost perfection, but not partaking in the least of the philosophical character.

Realismis the notion of perception that is acquired with our common knowledge. It is seldom explicitlydefined or defended, for in order to this a comparison with philosophic theories would have to be made, and the defects of realism would be apparent. The realistic view is so named by philosophers to distinguish it from their own views.

For corporeal purposes it is useful to believe, and it is therefore relatively true, that there is a real space which would exist although all objects were removed from it. Objects are real solid things stored in space like casks in a cellar. They have fixed dimensions notwithstanding that they appear to contract and dilate as we leave or approach them. It is quite 'natural' they should appear smaller at a distance. Distant perception is conceivable, therefore it is possible, and since calculations based on this assumption are verified by experience, it must and does take place. Time also is as real as space, and would exist by itself though space and its contents were annihilated. It is a sort of stream.

All these propositions are true for certain necessary purposes. We begin to form such ideas from the moment we are born, and during the years of infancy we are doing nothing else intellectually but working out the notions of space, time, magnitude, distance. Most of our school education is of the same kind. By the time we reach maturity realism has become so rooted in our intellect that—as regards the majority of men—no sceptical considerations are strong enoughto unsettle them. For why? They enable the natural man to provide sufficiently well for his bodily needs and other needs depending therefrom, and he has therefore no motive for doubting his realism or for acquiring any other sort of ideas. He is quite right to abide by those which have answered his purposes.

It is not from without but from within that doubts arise as to realistic truth. They arise when the mind has acquired power over and above what is needed for bodily uses, and begins to think on its own account. Sentiments are felt which do not depend on or refer to bodily life, and a new intellect has to be formed to explain and protect these sentiments. This new intellect is Philosophy. It is the science and practical conduct of mind considered as abstracted from body.

Much of the obscurity of philosophy is traceable to the superstition of a fixed standard of truth which must be recognised universally. We are reluctant to accept philosophical hints and inferences because they conflict with truths that have been physically verified. Or—which is more common—we take up a few philosophical propositions and tack on to them all the science we know, believing they make a homogeneous whole, because truth must be self-consistent.

Time and labour would be spared if we could be told at the right moment that truth is expedience4,and that there is no need to harmonise philosophy and science. We are each of us two men in one, and each of these men must be allowed to think for himself. There is no reason why they should quarrel; there is no reason why they should even argue. The science in our mind should not be ousted to make room for the philosophy; let them exist together and work alternately. When the mariner is at sea he must mind his ship and study the weather; when he is on shore he may neglect both. So when we are navigating the body we have to think in categories proper to its safety; as philosophers we dismiss the realistic categories and think in other forms, but we need not then call the realism false or foolish. In its proper place it is right and true5.

Between realism and substantialism there is therefore no necessary conflict or competition. They are each indispensable. It is absurd to carry realism into philosophy, and no less absurd to carry substantialisminto common affairs, or to reproach a substantialist because he acts and speaks occasionally like other people. It is probable however that in a community largely composed of substantialists the realism of common action would be less stringent than is now found necessary.

3:Will in Nature, 'Physiology of Plants.'4:This does not apply to truth in the sense of veracity.5:Greek philosophers never understood the dual standard of Truth, and insisted that philosophy was the best preparation for every sort of employment. The people, though generally unwise in political matters, had sense enough not to entrust the care of their temporal interests to philosophers, and so the universal utility of philosophy had few opportunities of being tested. A Macedonian king committed the custody of Corinth and its citadel to a philosopher, Persaeus, who was promptly expelled by Aratus—a mere soldier. Persaeus frequented the schools again, and on the well-worn theme that 'none but a wise man is fit to be a general' being brought up for discussion, he said, 'It is true, and the gods know it, that this maxim of Zeno once pleased me more than all the rest; but I have changed my opinion since I was taught better by the young Sicyonian.'—Plutarch'sLife of Aratus.

3:Will in Nature, 'Physiology of Plants.'

4:This does not apply to truth in the sense of veracity.

5:Greek philosophers never understood the dual standard of Truth, and insisted that philosophy was the best preparation for every sort of employment. The people, though generally unwise in political matters, had sense enough not to entrust the care of their temporal interests to philosophers, and so the universal utility of philosophy had few opportunities of being tested. A Macedonian king committed the custody of Corinth and its citadel to a philosopher, Persaeus, who was promptly expelled by Aratus—a mere soldier. Persaeus frequented the schools again, and on the well-worn theme that 'none but a wise man is fit to be a general' being brought up for discussion, he said, 'It is true, and the gods know it, that this maxim of Zeno once pleased me more than all the rest; but I have changed my opinion since I was taught better by the young Sicyonian.'—Plutarch'sLife of Aratus.

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