FOOTNOTES:

The Cognitive Factor in Religion.

§34. We conclude, then, our attempt to emphasize the cognitive factor in religion, with the thesisthat every religion centres in a practical secret of the universe.To be religious is to believe that a certain correlation of forces, moral and factual, is in reality operative, and that it determines the propriety and effectiveness of a certain type of living. Whatever demonstrates the futility, vanity, or self-deception of this living, discredits the religion. And, per contra, except as they define or refute such practical truth, religion is not essentially concerned with theoretical judgments.

The Place of Imagination in Religion.

§35. But neither religion nor any other human interest consists in essentials. Such a practical conviction as that which has been defined inevitably flowers into a marvelous complexity, and taps for its nourishment every spontaneity of human nature. If it be said that only the practical conviction is essential, this is not the same as to say that all else is superfluous. There may be no single utterance that my religion could not have spared, and yet were I to be altogether dumb my religion would, indeed, be as nothing. For if I believe, I accept a presence in my world, which as I live will figure in my dreams, or in my thoughts, or in my habits.And each of these expressions of myself will have a truth if it do but bear out my practical acceptance of that presence. The language of religion, like that of daily life, is not the language of science except it take it upon itself to be so. There is scarcely a sentence which I utter in my daily intercourse with men which is not guilty of transgressions against the canons of accurate and definite thinking. Yet if I deceive neither myself nor another, I am held to be truthful, even though my language deal with chance and accident, material purposes and spiritual causes, and though I vow that the sun smiles or the moon lets down her hair into the sea. Science is a special interest in the discovery of unequivocal and fixed conceptions, and employs its terms with an unalterable connotation. But no such algebra of thought is indispensable to life or conversation, and its lack is no proof of error. Such is the case also with that eminently living affair, religion. I may if I choose, and I will if my reasoning powers be at all awakened, be a theologian. But theology, like science, is a special intellectual spontaneity. St. Thomas, the master theologian, did not glide unwittingly from prayer into thequæstionesof the "Summa Theologiæ," but turned to them as to a fresh adventure.Theology is inevitable, because humanly speaking adventure is inevitable. For man, with his intellectual spontaneity, every object is a problem; and did he not seek sooner or later to define salvation, there would be good reason to believe that he did not practically reckon with any. But this issimilarlyandindependentlytrue of the imagination, the most familiar means with which man clothes and vivifies his convictions, the exuberance with which he plays about them and delights to confess them. The imagination of religion, contributing what Matthew Arnold called its "poetry and eloquence," does not submit itself to such canons as are binding upon theology or science, but exists and flourishes in its own right.

The indispensableness to religion of the imagination is due to that faculty's power of realizing what is not perceptually present. Religion is not interested in the apparent, but in the secret essence or the transcendent universal. And yet this interest is a practical one. Imagination may introduce one into the vivid presence of the secret or the transcendent. It is evident that the religious imagination here coincides with poetry. For it is at least one of the interests of poetry to cultivate and satisfy a sense for the universal; to obtain animmediate experience or appreciation that shall have the vividness without the particularism of ordinary perception. And where a poet elects so to view the world, we allow him as a poet the privilege, and judge him by the standards to which he submits himself. That upon which we pass judgment is thefitness of his expression. This expression is not, except in the case of the theoretical mystic, regarded as constituting the most valid form of the idea, but is appreciated expressly for its fulfilment of the condition of immediacy. The same sort of critical attitude is in order with the fruits of the religious imagination. These may or may not fulfil enough of the requirements of that art to be properly denominated poetry; but like poetry they are the translation of ideas into a specific language. They must not, therefore, be judged as though they claimed to excel in point of validity, but only in point of consistency with the context of that language. Andthe language of religion is the language of the practical life. Such translation is as essential to an idea that is to enter into the religious experience, as translation into terms of immediacy is essential to an idea that is to enter into the appreciative consciousness of the poet. No object canfind a place in my religion until it is conjoined with my purposes and hopes; until it is taken for granted and acted upon, like the love of my friends, or the courses of the stars, or the stretches of the sea.

The Special Functions of the Religious Imagination.

§36. The religious imagination, then, is to be understood and justified as that which brings the objects of religion within the range of living. The central religious object, as has been seen, is anattitudeof the residuum or totality of things. To be religious one must have a sense for thepresence of an attitude, like his sense for the presence of his human fellows, with all the added appreciation that is proper in the case of an object that is unique in its mystery or in its majesty. It follows that the religious imagination fulfils its function in so far as it provides the object of religion with properties similar to those which lend vividness and reality to the normal social relations.

The presence of one's fellows is in part the perceptual experience of their bodies. To this there corresponds in religion some extraordinary or subtle appearance. The gods may in visions or dreams be met with in their own proper embodiments; or, as is more common, they may beregarded as present for practical purposes: in some inanimate object, as in the case of the fetish; in some animal species, as in the case of the totem; in some place, as in the case of the shrine; or even in some human being, as in the case of the inspired prophet and miracle worker. In more refined and highly developed religions the medium of God's presence is less specific. He is perceived with

"—a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."

God is here found in an interpretation of the common and the natural, rather than in any individual and peculiar embodiment. And here the poet's appreciation, if not his art, is peculiarly indispensable.

But, furthermore, his fellows are inmates of "the household of man" in that he knows their history. They belong to the temporal context of actions and events. Similarly, the gods must be historical. The sacred traditions or books of religion are largely occupied with this history. The more individual and anthropomorphic the gods, the more local and episodic will be the account of their affairs. In the higher religions the acts ofGod are few and momentous, such as creation or special providence; or they are identical with the events of nature and human history when these areconstruedas divine. To find God in this latter way requires an interpretation of the course of events in terms of some moral consistency, a faith that sees some purpose in their evident destination.

There is still another and a more significant way in which men recognize one another: the way of address and conversation. And men have invariably held a similar intercourse with their gods. To this category belong communion and prayer, with all their varieties of expression. I have no god until I address him. This will be the most direct evidence of what is at least from my point of view a social relation. There can be no general definition of the form which this address will take. There may be as many special languages, as many attitudes, and as much playfulness and subtlety of symbolism as in human intercourse. But, on the other hand, there are certain utterances that are peculiarly appropriate to religion. In so far as he regards his object as endowed with both power and goodness the worshipper will use the language of adoration; and the sense of his dependencewill speak in terms of consecration and thanksgiving.

"O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee:My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee,In a dry and weary land, where no water is.So have I looked upon thee in the sanctuary,To see thy power and thy glory.For thy loving-kindness is better than life;My lips shall praise thee."

These are expressions of a hopeful faith; but, on the other hand, God may be addressed in terms of hatred and distrust.

"Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?I think myself; yet I would rather beMy miserable self than He, than HeWho formed such creatures to his own disgrace."The vilest thing must be less vile than ThouFrom whom it had its being, God and Lord!Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred,Malignant and implacable."[104:13]

"Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?I think myself; yet I would rather beMy miserable self than He, than HeWho formed such creatures to his own disgrace.

"The vilest thing must be less vile than ThouFrom whom it had its being, God and Lord!Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred,Malignant and implacable."[104:13]

In either case there may be an indefinite degree of hyperbole. The language of love and hate, of confidence and despair, is not the language of description. In this train of the religious consciousness there is occasion for whatever eloquence man can feel, and whatever rhetorical luxuriance he can utter.

The Relation between Imagination and Truth in Religion.

§37. Such considerations as these serve to account for the exercise and certain of the fruits of the religious imagination, and to designate the general criterion governing its propriety. Buthow is one to determine the boundary between the imaginative and the cognitive? It is commonly agreed that what religion says and does is not all intended literally. But when is expression of religion only poetry and eloquence, and when is it matter of conviction? If we revert again to the cognitive aspect of religion, it is evident that there is but one test to apply:whatever either fortifies or misleads the will is literal conviction. This test cannot be applied absolutely, because it can properly be applied only to the intention of an individual experience. However I may express my religion, that which I express, is, we have seen, an expectation. The degree to which I literally mean what I say is then the degree to which it determines my expectations. Whatever adds no item to these expectations, but only recognizes and vitalizes them, is pure imagination. But it follows that it is entirely impossible from direct inspection to define any givenexpressionof religious experience as myth, or to define the degree to which it is myth.It submits to such distinctions only when viewed from the stand-point of the concrete religious experience which it expresses. Any such given expression could easily be all imagination to one, and all conviction to another. Consider the passage which follows:

"And I saw the heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon, called Faithful and True; and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. And his eyes are a flame of fire, and upon his head are many diadems; and he hath a name written, which no one knoweth but he himself. And he is arrayed in a garment sprinkled with blood: and his name is called The Word of God."[106:14]

Is this all rhapsody, or is it in part true report? There is evidently no answer to the question so conceived. But if it were to express my own religious feeling it would have some specific proportion of literal and metaphorical significance, according to the degree to which its detail contributes different practical values to me. It might then be my guide-book to the heavens, or only my testimony to the dignity and mystery of the function of Christ.

The development of religion bears in a very important way upon this last problem. The factorof imagination has undoubtedly come to have a more clearly recognized role in religion. There can be no doubt that what we now call myths were once beliefs, and that what we now call poetry was once history. If we go back sufficiently far we come to a time when the literal and the metaphorical were scarcely distinguishable, and this because science had not emerged from the early animistic extension of social relations. Menmeantto address their gods as they addressed their fellows, and expected them to hear and respond, as they looked for such reactions within the narrower circle of ordinary intercourse. The advance of science has brought into vogue a description of nature that inhibits such expectations. The result has been that men, continuing to use the same terms, essentially expressive as they are of a practical relationship, have come to regard them as only a general expression of their attitude. The differences of content that are in excess of factors of expectation remain as poetry and myth. On the other hand, it is equally possible, if not equally common, for that which was once imagined to come to be believed. Such a transformation is, perhaps, normally the case when the inspired utterance passes from its author to the cult. Theprophets and sweet singers are likely to possess an exuberance of imagination not appreciated by their followers; and for this reason almost certainly misunderstood. For these reasons it is manifestly absurd to fasten the name of myth or the name of creed upon any religious utterance whatsoever, unless it be so regarded from the stand-point of the personal religion which it originally expressed, or unless one means by so doing to define it as an expression of his own religion. He who defines "the myth of creation," or "the poetical story of Samson," as parts of the pre-Christian Judaic religion, exhibits a total loss of historical sense. The distinction between cognition and fancy does not exist among objects, but only in theintendingexperience; hence, for me to attach my own distinction to any individual case of belief, viewed apart from the believer, is an utterly confusing projection of my own personality into the field of my study.

The Philosophy Implied in Religion and in Religions.

§38. Only after such considerations as these are we qualified to attack that much-vexed question as to whether religion deals invariably with a personal god. It is often assumed in discussion of this question that "personal god," as well as "god," is adistinct and familiar kind of entity, like a dragon or centaur; its existence alone being problematical. This is doubly false to the religious employment of such an object. If it be true that in religion we mean by God a practical interpretation of the world,whatsoever be its nature, then the personality of God must be a derivative of the attitude, and not of the nature of the world. Given the practical outlook upon life, there is no definable world that cannot be construed under the form of God. My god is my world practically recognized in respect of its fundamental or ultimate attitude to my ideals. In the sense, then, conveyed by this termattitudemy god will invariably possess the characters of personality. But the degree to which these characters will coincide with the characters which I assign to human persons, or the terms of any logical conception of personality, cannot be absolutely defined. Anthropomorphisms may be imagination or they may be literal conviction. This will depend, as above maintained, upon the degree to which they determine my expectations. Suppose the world to be theoretically conceived as governed by laws that are indifferent to all human interests. The practical expression of this conception appears in the naturalism of Lucretius, orDiogenes, or Omar Khayyam. Living in the vivid presence of an indifferent world, I may picture my gods as leading their own lives in some remote realm which is inaccessible to my petitions, or as regarding me with sinister and contemptuous cruelty. In the latter case I may shrink and cower, or return them contempt for contempt. I mean this literally only if I look for consequences following directly from the emotional coloring which I have bestowed upon them. It may well be that I mean merely to regard myselfsub specie eternitatis, in which case I ampersonifyingin the sense of free imagination. In the religion of enlightenment the divine attitude tends to belong to the poetry and eloquence of religion rather than to its cognitive intent. This is true even of optimistic and idealistic religion. The love and providence of God are less commonly supposed to warrant an expectation of special and arbitrary favors, and have come more and more to mean the play of my own feeling about the general central conviction of the favorableness of the cosmos to my deeper or moral concerns. But the factor of personality cannot possibly be entirely eliminated, for the religious consciousnesscreatesa social relationship between man and the universe. Such an interpretation oflife is not a case of the pathetic fallacy, unless it incorrectlyreckons withthe inner feeling which it attributes to the universe. It is an obvious practical truth that the total or residual environment is significant for life. Grant this and you make rational a recognition of that significance, or a more or less constant sense of coincidence or conflict with cosmical forces. Permit this consciousness to stand, and you make some expression of it inevitable. Such an expression may, furthermore, with perfect propriety and in fulfilment of human nature, set forth and transfigure this central belief until it may enter into the context of immediacy.

Thus any conception of the universe whatsoever may afford a basis for religion. But there is no religion that does not virtually make a more definite claim upon the nature of things, and this entirely independently of its theology, or explicit attempt to define itself. Every religion, even in the very living of it, is naturalistic, or dualistic, or pluralistic, or optimistic, or idealistic, or pessimistic. And there is in the realm of truth that which justifies or refutes these definite practical ways of construing the universe. But no historical religion is ever so vague even as this in its philosophical implications. Indeed, we shall alwaysbe brought eventually to the inner meaning of some individual religious experience, where no general criticism can be certainly valid.

There is, then, a place in religion for that which is not directly answerable to philosophical or scientific standards. But there is always, on the other hand, an element of hope which conceives the nature of the world, and means to be grounded in reality. In respect of that element, philosophy is indispensable to religion. The meaning of religion is, in fact, the central problem of philosophy. There is a virtue in religion like that which Emerson ascribes to poetry. "The poet is in the right attitude; he is believing; the philosopher, after some struggle, having only reasons for believing." But whatever may be said to the disparagement of its dialectic, philosophy is the justification of religion, and the criticism of religions. To it must be assigned the task of so refining positive religion as to contribute to the perpetual establishment of true religion. And to philosophy, with religion, belongs the task of holding fast to the idea of the universe. There is no religion except before you begin, or after you have rested from, your philosophical speculation. But in the universe these interests have a common object. Asphilosophy is the articulation and vindication of religion, so is religion the realization of philosophy. In philosophy thought is brought up to the elevation of life, and in religion philosophy, as the sum of wisdom, enters into life.

[83:1]As Plato interprets the scepticism of Protagoras to mean that one state of mind cannot be moretruethan another, but onlybetteror worse. Cf.Theætetus, 167.

[88:2]Quoted with some omissions fromI Kings, 18:21-29. The Hebrew termYahweh, the name of the national deity, has been substituted for the English translation, "the Lord."

[90:3]Iliad, Book IX, lines 467sq.Translation by Chapman.

[91:4]The supposed abode of departed spirits.

[91:5]Lucretius:De Rerum Natura, Book III, lines 1sq.Translated by Munro.

[91:6]Ibid., Book II, lines 644sq.

[92:7]It would be interesting to compare the equally famous criticism of Greek religion in Plato'sRepublic, Book II, 377sq.

[92:8]Cf. W. Robertson Smith's admirable account of the Semitic religions:"What is requisite to religion is a practical acquaintance with the rules on which the deity acts and on which he expects his worshippers to frame their conduct—what in II Kings, 17:26 is called the 'manner,' or rather the 'customary law' (mishpat), of the god of the land. This is true even of the religion of Israel. When the prophets speak of the knowledge of God, they always mean a practical knowledge of the laws and principles of His government in Israel, and a summary expression for religion as a whole is 'the knowledge and fear of Jehovah,'i. e., the knowledge of what Jehovah prescribes, combined with a reverent obedience."The Religion of the Semites, p. 23.

[92:8]Cf. W. Robertson Smith's admirable account of the Semitic religions:

"What is requisite to religion is a practical acquaintance with the rules on which the deity acts and on which he expects his worshippers to frame their conduct—what in II Kings, 17:26 is called the 'manner,' or rather the 'customary law' (mishpat), of the god of the land. This is true even of the religion of Israel. When the prophets speak of the knowledge of God, they always mean a practical knowledge of the laws and principles of His government in Israel, and a summary expression for religion as a whole is 'the knowledge and fear of Jehovah,'i. e., the knowledge of what Jehovah prescribes, combined with a reverent obedience."The Religion of the Semites, p. 23.

[93:9]Proverbs, 18:10; 11:19; 21:3.

[93:10]Ecclesiastes, 2:13sq.

[94:11]Psalms, 51:17;Isaiah, 57:15.

[94:12]In this discussion of Judaism I am much indebted to Matthew Arnold'sLiterature and Dogma, especially Chapters I and II.

[104:13]James Thomson:The City of Dreadful Night. Quoted by James, inThe Will to Believe, etc., p. 45.

[106:14]Revelation, 19:11-13.

The True Relations of Philosophy and Science. Misconceptions and Antagonisms.

§39. In the case of natural science we meet not only with a special human interest, but with a theoretical discipline. We are confronted, therefore, with a new question: that of the relation within the body of human knowledge of two of its constituent members. Owing to the militant temper of the representatives of both science and philosophy, this has long since ceased to be an academic question, and has frequently been met in the spirit of rivalry and partisanship. But the true order of knowledge is only temporarily distorted by the brilliant success of a special type of investigation; and the conquests of science are now so old a story that critical thought shows a disposition to judge of the issue with sobriety and logical highmindedness.

In the seventeenth century a newly emancipated and too sanguine reason proposed to know the whole of nature at once in terms of mathematicsand mechanics. Thus the system of the Englishman Hobbes was science swelled to world-proportions, simple, compact, conclusive, and all-comprehensive. Philosophy proposed to do the work of science, but in its own grand manner. The last twenty years of Hobbes's life, spent in repeated discomfiture at the hands of Seth Ward, Wallis, Boyle, and other scientific experts of the new Royal Society, certified conclusively to the failure of this enterprise, and the experimental specialist thereupon took exclusive possession of the field of natural law. But the idealist, on the other hand, reconstructed nature to meet the demands of philosophical knowledge and religious faith. There issued, together with little mutual understanding and less sympathy, on the one handpositivism, or exclusive experimentalism, and on the other hand a rabid and unsympathetic transcendentalism. Hume, who consigned to the flames all thought save "abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number," and "experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence"; Comte, who assigned metaphysics to an immature stage in the development of human intelligence; and Tyndall, who reduced the religious consciousness to an emotional experience of mystery, are typical of the oneattitude. The other is well exhibited in Schelling's reference to "the blind and thoughtless mode of investigating nature which has become generally established since the corruption of philosophy by Bacon, and of physics by Boyle." Dogmatic experimentalism and dogmatic idealism signify more or less consistently the abstract isolation of the scientific and philosophical motives.

There is already a touch of quaintness in both of these attitudes. We of the present are in the habit of acknowledging the autonomy of science, and the unimpeachable validity of the results of experimental research in so far as they are sanctioned by the consensus of experts. But at the same time we recognize the definiteness of the task of science, and the validity of such reservations as may be made from a higher critical point of view. Science is to be transcended in so far as it is understood as a whole. Philosophy is critically empirical; empirical, because it regards allbona fidedescriptions of experience as knowledge; critical, because attentive to the conditions of both general and special knowledge. And in terms of a critical empiricism so defined, it is one of the problems of philosophyto define and appraise the generating problem of science, and so to determine the valueassignable to natural laws in the whole system of knowledge.

The Spheres of Philosophy and Science.

§40. If this be the true function of philosophy with reference to science, several current notions of the relations of the spheres of these disciplines may be disproved. In the first place, philosophy will not be all the sciences regarded as one science. Science tends to unify without any higher criticism. The various sciences already regard the one nature as their common object, and the one system of interdependent laws as their common achievement. The philosopher who tries to be all science at once fails ignominiously because he tries to replace the work of a specialist with the work of a dilettante; and if philosophy be identical with that body of truth accumulated and organized by the coöperative activity of scientific men, then philosophy is a name and there is no occasion for the existence of the philosopher as such. Secondly, philosophy will not be the assembling of the sciences; for such would be a merely clerical work, and the philosopher would much better be regarded as non-existent than as a book-keeper. Nor, thirdly, is philosophy an auxiliary discipline that may be called upon in emergencies for the solution of some baffling problemof science. A problem defined by science must be solved in the scientific manner. Science will accept no aid from the gods when engaged in her own campaign, but will fight it out according to her own principles of warfare. And as long as science moves in her own plane, she can acknowledge no permanent barriers. There is then no need of any superscientific research that shall replace, or piece together, or extend the work of science. But the savant is not on this account in possession of the entire field of knowledge. It is true that he is not infrequently moved to such a conviction when he takes us about to view his estates. Together we ascend up into heaven, or make our beds in sheol, or take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea—and look in vain for anything that is not work done, or work projected, by natural science. Persuade him, however, todefinehis estates, and he has circumscribed them. In his definition he must employ conceptions more fundamental than the working conceptions that he employs within his field of study. Indeed, in viewing his task as definite and specific he has undertaken the solution of the problem of philosophy. The logical self-consciousness has been awakened, and there is no honorableway of putting it to sleep again. This is precisely what takes place in any account of the generating problem of science. To define science is to define at least one realm that is other than science, the realm of active intellectual endeavor with its own proper categories. One cannot reflect upon science and assign it an end, and a method proper to that end, without bringing into the field of knowledge a broader field of experience than the field proper to science, broader at any rate by the presence in it of the scientific activity itself.

Here, then, is the field proper to philosophy. The scientistquascientist is intent upon his own determinate enterprise. The philosopher comes into being as one who is interested in observing what it is that the scientist is so intently doing. In taking this interest he has accepted as a field for investigation that which he would designate as the totality of interests or the inclusive experience. He can carry out his intention of defining the scientific attitude only by standing outside it, and determining it by means of nothing less than an exhaustive searching out of all attitudes. Philosophy is, to be sure, itself a definite activity and an attitude, but an attitude required by definition to be conscious of itself, and, if you please,conscious of its own consciousness, until its attitude shall have embraced in its object the very principle of attitudes. Philosophy defines itself and all other human tasks and interests. None have furnished a clearer justification of philosophy than those men of scientific predilections who have claimed the title of agnostics. A good instance is furnished by a contemporary physicist, who has chosen to call his reflections "antimetaphysical."

"Physical science does not pretend to be acompleteview of the world; it simply claims that it is working toward such a complete view in the future. The highest philosophy of the scientific investigator is precisely thistolerationof an incomplete conception of the world and the preference for it, rather than an apparently perfect, but inadequate conception."[120:1]

It is apparent that if one were to challenge such a statement, the issue raised would at once be philosophical and not scientific. The problem here stated and answered, requires for its solution the widest inclusiveness of view, and a peculiar interest in critical reflection and logical coördination.

The Procedure of a Philosophy of Science.

§41. One may be prepared for a knowledge ofthe economic and social significance of the railway even if one does not know a throttle from a piston-rod, provided one has broad and well-balanced knowledge of the interplay of human social interests. One's proficiency here requires one to stand off from society, and to obtain a perspective that shall be as little distorted as possible. The reflection of the philosopher of science requires a similar quality of perspective. All knowledges, together with the knowing of them, must be his object yonder, standing apart in its wholeness and symmetry. Philosophy is the least dogmatic, the most empirical, of all disciplines, since it is the only investigation that can permit itself to be forgetful of nothing.

But the most comprehensive view may be the most distorted and false. The true order of knowledge is the difficult task of logical analysis, requiring as its chief essential some determination of the scope of the working conceptions of the different independent branches of knowledge. In the case of natural science this would mean an examination of the method and results characteristic of this field, for the sake of defining the kind of truth which attaches to the laws which are being gradually formulated. But one must immediatelyreach either the one or the other of two very general conclusions. If the laws of natural science cover all possible knowledge of reality, then there is left to philosophy only the logical function of justifying this statement. Logic and natural science will then constitute the sum of knowledge. If, on the other hand, it be found that the aim of natural science is such as to exclude certain aspects of reality, then philosophy will not be restricted to logical criticism, but will have a cognitive field of its own. The great majority of philosophers have assumed the latter of these alternatives to be true, while most aggressive scientists have intended the former in their somewhat blind attacks upon "metaphysics." Although the selection of either of these alternatives involves us in the defence of a specific answer to a philosophical question, the issue is inevitable in any introduction to philosophy because of its bearing upon the extent of the field of that study. Furthermore there can be no better exposition of the meaning of philosophy of science than an illustration of its exercise. The following, then, is to be regarded as on the one hand a tentative refutation ofpositivism, or theclaim of natural science to be coextensive with knowable reality; and on theother hand a programme for the procedure of philosophy with reference to natural science.

The Origin of the Scientific Interest.

§42. Science issues through imperceptible stages from organic habits and instincts which signify the possession by living creatures of a power to meet the environment on its own terms. Every organism possesses such a working knowledge of nature, and among men the first science consists in those habitual adjustments common to men and infra-human organisms. Man is already practising science before he recognizes it. Asskillit distinguishes itself early in his history from lore, or untested tradition. Skill is familiarity with general kinds of events, together with ability to identify an individual with reference to a kind, and so be prepared for the outcome. Thus man is inwardly prepared for the alternation of day and night, and the periods of the seasons. He practically anticipates the procession of natural events in the countless emergencies of his daily life. But science in the stricter sense begins when skill becomesfreeandsocial.

Skill as Free.

§43. Skill may be said to befreewhen the essential terms of the action have been abstracted from the circumstances attending them in individualexperiences, and are retained as ideal plans applicable to any practical occasion. The monkey who swings with a trapeze from his perch on the side of the cage, counts upon swinging back again without any further effort on his own part. His act and its successful issue signify his practical familiarity with the natural motions of bodies. We can conceive such a performance to be accompanied by an almost entire failure to grasp its essentials. It would then be necessary for nearly the whole situation to be repeated in order to induce in the monkey the same action and expectation. He would require a similar form, color, and distance. But he might, on the other hand, regard as practically identical all suspended and freely swinging bodies capable of affording him support, and quite independently of their shape, size, time, or place. In this latter case his skill would be applicable to the widest possible number of cases that could present themselves. Having a discerning eye for essentials, he would lose no chance of a swing through looking for more than the bare necessities. When the physicist describes the pendulum in terms of a formula such as t = 2π√l/g he exhibits a similar discernment. He has found that the time occupied by an oscillation of anypendulum may be calculated exclusively in terms of its length and the acceleration due to gravity. The monkey's higher proficiency and the formula alike represent a knowledge that is free in the sense that it is contained in terms that require no single fixed context in immediacy. The knowledge is valid wherever these essential terms are present; and calculations may be based upon these essential terms, while attendant circumstances varyad infinitum. Such knowledge is said to begeneraloruniversal.

There is another element of freedom, however, which so far has not been attributed to the monkey's knowledge, but which is evidently present in that of the physicist. The former has a practical ability to deal with a pendulum when he sees it. The latter, on the other hand, knows about a pendulum whether one be present or not. His knowledge is so retained as always to be available, even though it be not always applicable. His knowledge is not merely skill in treating a situation, but the possession of resources which he may employ at whatever time, and in whatever manner, may suit his interests. Knowing what he does about the pendulum, he may act from the idea of such a contrivance, and with the aid of it constructsome more complex mechanism. His formulas are his instruments, which he may use on any occasion. Suppose that a situation with factorsa,b, andcrequires factordin order to becomeM, as desired. Such a situation might easily be hopeless for an organism reacting directly to the stimulusabc, and yet be easily met by a free knowledge ofd. One who knows thatl,m, andnwill produced, may by these means provide the missing factor, complete the sum of required conditions,abcd, and so obtain the endM. Such indirection might be used to obtain any required factor of the end, or of any near or remote means to the end. There is, in fact, no limit to the complexity of action made possible upon this basis; for since it is available in idea, the whole range of such knowledge may be brought to bear upon any individual problem.

Skill as Social.

§44. But knowledge of this free type becomes at the same timesocialorinstitutional. It consists no longer in a skilful adaptation of the individual organism, but in a system of terms common to all intelligence, and preserved in those books and other monuments which serve as the articulate memory of the race. A knowledge that is social must be composed of unequivocal conceptions and fixed symbols. Themathematical laws of the exact sciences represent the most successful attainment of this end so far as form is concerned. Furthermore, the amount of knowledge may now be increased from generation to generation through the service of those who make a vocation of its pursuit. Natural science is thus a cumulative racial proficiency, which any individual may bring to bear upon any emergency of his life.

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