Cognition is a function of consciousness. The first factor it implies is therefore a state of consciousness wherein the cognition shall take place. Having elsewhere used the word ‘feeling’ to designate generically3 all states of consciousness considered subjectively5, or without respect to their possible function, I shall then say that, whatever elements an act of cognition may imply besides, it at least implies the existence of a FEELING. [If the reader share the current antipathy6 to the word ‘feeling,’ he may substitute for it, wherever I use it, the word ‘idea,’ taken in the old broad Lockian sense, or he may use the clumsy phrase ‘state of consciousness,’ or finally he may say ‘thought’ instead.]
Now it is to be observed that the common consent of mankind has agreed that some feelings are cognitive7 and some are simple facts having a subjective4, or, what one might almost call a physical, existence, but no such self-transcendent function as would be implied in their being pieces of knowledge. Our task is again limited here. We are not to ask, ‘How is self-transcendence possible?’ We are only to ask, ‘How comes it that common sense has assigned a number of cases in which it is assumed not only to be possible but actual? And what are the marks used by common sense to distinguish those cases from the rest?’ In short, our inquiry is a chapter in descriptive psychology8 — hardly anything more.
Condillac embarked9 on a quest similar to this by his famous hypothesis of a statue to which various feelings were successively imparted. Its first feeling was supposed to be one of fragrance10. But to avoid all possible complication with the question of genesis, let us not attribute even to a statue the possession of our imaginary feeling. Let us rather suppose it attached to no matter, nor localized at any point in space, but left swinging IN VACUO, as it were, by the direct creative FIAT11 of a god. And let us also, to escape entanglement12 with difficulties about the physical or psychical13 nature of its ‘object’ not call it a feeling of fragrance or of any other determinate sort, but limit ourselves to assuming that it is a feeling of Q. What is true of it under this abstract name will be no less true of it in any more particular shape (such as fragrance, pain, hardness) which the reader may suppose.
Now, if this feeling of Q be the only creation of the god, it will of course form the entire universe. And if, to escape the cavils14 of that large class of persons who believe that SEMPER IDEM SENTIRE AC NON SENTIRE are the same, 5 we allow the feeling to be of as short a duration as they like, that universe will only need to last an infinitesimal part of a second. The feeling in question will thus be reduced to its fighting weight, and all that befalls it in the way of a cognitive function must be held to befall in the brief instant of its quickly snuffed-out life — a life, it will also be noticed, that has no other moment of consciousness either preceding or following it.
Well now, can our little feeling, thus left alone in the universe — for the god and we psychological critics may be supposed left out of the account — can the feeling, I say, be said to have any sort of a cognitive function? For it to KNOW, there must be something to be known. What is there, on the present supposition? One may reply, ‘the feeling’s content q.’ But does it not seem more proper to call this the feeling’s QUALITY than its content? Does not the word ‘content’ suggest that the feeling has already dirempted itself as an act from its content as an object? And would it be quite safe to assume so promptly16 that the quality q of a feeling is one and the same thing with a feeling of the quality q? The quality q, so far, is an entirely17 subjective fact which the feeling carries so to speak endogenously, or in its pocket. If any one pleases to dignify18 so simple a fact as this by the name of knowledge, of course nothing can prevent him. But let us keep closer to the path of common usage, and reserve the name knowledge for the cognition of ‘realities,’ meaning by realities things that exist independently of the feeling through which their cognition occurs. If the content of the feeling occur nowhere in the universe outside of the feeling itself, and perish with the feeling, common usage refuses to call it a reality, and brands it as a subjective feature of the feeling’s constitution, or at the most as the feeling’s DREAM.
For the feeling to be cognitive in the specific sense, then, it must be self-transcendent; and we must prevail upon the god to CREATE A REALITY OUTSIDE OF IT to correspond to its intrinsic quality Q. Thus only can it be redeemed19 from the condition of being a solipsism. If now the new created reality RESEMBLE the feeling’s quality Q I say that the feeling may be held by us TO BE COGNIZANT OF THAT REALITY.
This first instalment of my thesis is sure to be attacked. But one word before defending it ‘Reality’ has become our warrant for calling a feeling cognitive; but what becomes our warrant for calling anything reality? The only reply is — the faith of the present critic or inquirer. At every moment of his life he finds himself subject to a belief in SOME realities, even though his realities of this year should prove to be his illusions of the next. Whenever he finds that the feeling he is studying contemplates20 what he himself regards as a reality, he must of course admit the feeling itself to be truly cognitive. We are ourselves the critics here; and we shall find our burden much lightened by being allowed to take reality in this relative and provisional way. Every science must make some assumptions. Erkenntnisstheoretiker are but fallible mortals. When they study the function of cognition, they do it by means of the same function in themselves. And knowing that the fountain cannot go higher than its source, we should promptly confess that our results in this field are affected21 by our own liability to err22. THE MOST WE CAN CLAIM IS, THAT WHAT WE SAY ABOUT COGNITION MAY BE COUNTED AS TRUE AS WHAT WE SAY ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE. If our hearers agree with us about what are to be held ‘realities,’ they will perhaps also agree to the reality of our doctrine23 of the way in which they are known. We cannot ask for more.
Our terminology24 shall follow the spirit of these remarks. We will deny the function of knowledge to any feeling whose quality or content we do not ourselves believe to exist outside of that feeling as well as in it. We may call such a feeling a dream if we like; we shall have to see later whether we can call it a fiction or an error.
To revert25 now to our thesis. Some persons will immediately cry out, ‘How CAN a reality resemble a feeling?’ Here we find how wise we were to name the quality of the feeling by an algebraic letter Q. We flank the whole difficulty of resemblance between an inner state and an outward reality, by leaving it free to any one to postulate26 as the reality whatever sort of thing he thinks CAN resemble a feeling — if not an outward thing, then another feeling like the first one — the mere27 feeling Q in the critic’s mind for example. Evading28 thus this objection, we turn to another which is sure to be urged.
It will come from those philosophers to whom ‘thought,’ in the sense of a knowledge of relations, is the all in all of mental life; and who hold a merely feeling consciousness to be no better — one would sometimes say from their utterances29, a good deal worse — than no consciousness at all. Such phrases as these, for example, are common today in the mouths of those who claim to walk in the footprints of Kant and Hegel rather than in the ancestral English paths: ‘A perception detached from all others, “left out of the heap we call a mind,” being out of all relation, has no qualities — is simply nothing. We can no more consider it than we can see vacancy30.’ ‘It is simply in itself fleeting31, momentary32, unnameable (because while we name it it has become another), and for the very same reason unknowable, the very negation33 of knowability.’ ‘Exclude from what we have considered real all qualities constituted by relation, we find that none are left.’
Altho such citations34 as these from the writings of Professor Green might be multiplied almost indefinitely, they would hardly repay the pains of collection, so egregiously35 false is the doctrine they teach. Our little supposed feeling, whatever it may be, from the cognitive point of view, whether a bit of knowledge or a dream, is certainly no psychical zero. It is a most positively36 and definitely qualified37 inner fact, with a complexion38 all its own. Of course there are many mental facts which it is NOT. It knows Q, if Q be a reality, with a very minimum of knowledge. It neither dates nor locates it. It neither classes nor names it. And it neither knows itself as a feeling, nor contrasts itself with other feelings, nor estimates its own duration or intensity39. It is, in short, if there is no more of it than this, a most dumb and helpless and useless kind of thing.
But if we must describe it by so many negations, and if it can say nothing ABOUT itself or ABOUT anything else, by what right do we deny that it is a psychical zero? And may not the ‘relationists’ be right after all?
In the innocent looking word ‘about’ lies the solution of this riddle40; and a simple enough solution it is when frankly41 looked at. A quotation42 from a too seldom quoted book, the Exploratio Philosophica of John Grote (London, 1865), p. 60, will form the best introduction to it.
‘Our knowledge,’ writes Grote, ‘may be contemplated44 in either of two ways, or, to use other words, we may speak in a double manner of the “object” of knowledge. That is, we may either use language thus: we KNOW a thing, a man, etc.; or we may use it thus: we know such and such things ABOUT the thing, the man, etc. Language in general, following its true logical instinct, distinguishes between these two applications of the notion of knowledge, the one being yvwvai, noscere, kennen, connaitre, the other being eidevai, scire, wissen, savoir. In the origin, the former may be considered more what I have called phenomenal — it is the notion of knowledge as ACQUAINTANCE or familiarity with what is known; which notion is perhaps more akin45 to the phenomenal bodily communication, and is less purely46 intellectual than the other; it is the kind of knowledge which we have of a thing by the presentation to the senses or the representation of it in picture or type, a Vorstellung. The other, which is what we express in judgments47 or propositions, what is embodied49 in Begriffe or concepts without any necessary imaginative representation, is in its origin the more intellectual notion of knowledge. There is no reason, however, why we should not express our knowledge, whatever its kind, in either manner, provided only we do not confusedly express it, in the same proposition or piece of reasoning, in both.’
Now obviously if our supposed feeling of Q is (if knowledge at all) only knowledge of the mere acquaintance-type, it is milking a he-goat, as the ancients would have said, to try to extract from it any deliverance ABOUT anything under the sun, even about itself. And it is as unjust, after our failure, to turn upon it and call it a psychical nothing, as it would be, after our fruitless attack upon the billy-goat, to proclaim the non-lactiferous character of the whole goat-tribe. But the entire industry of the Hegelian school in trying to shove simple sensation out of the pale of philosophic43 recognition is founded on this false issue. It is always the ‘speechlessness’ of sensation, its inability to make any ‘statement,’6 that is held to make the very notion of it meaningless, and to justify50 the student of knowledge in scouting51 it out of existence. ‘Significance,’ in the sense of standing52 as the sign of other mental states, is taken to be the sole function of what mental states we have; and from the perception that our little primitive53 sensation has as yet no significance in this literal sense, it is an easy step to call it first meaningless, next senseless, then vacuous54, and finally to brand it as absurd and inadmissible. But in this universal liquidation55, this everlasting56 slip, slip, slip, of direct acquaintance into knowledge-ABOUT, until at last nothing is left about which the knowledge can be supposed to obtain, does not all ‘significance’ depart from the situation? And when our knowledge about things has reached its never so complicated perfection, must there not needs abide57 alongside of it and inextricably mixed in with it some acquaintance with WHAT things all this knowledge is about?
Now, our supposed little feeling gives a WHAT; and if other feelings should succeed which remember the first, its WHAT may stand as subject or predicate of some piece of knowledge-about, of some judgment48, perceiving relations between it and other WHATS which the other feelings may know. The hitherto dumb Q will then receive a name and be no longer speechless. But every name, as students of logic15 know, has its ‘denotation58’; and the denotation always means some reality or content, relationless as extra or with its internal relations unanalyzed, like the Q which our primitive sensation is supposed to know. No relation-expressing proposition is possible except on the basis of a preliminary acquaintance with such ‘facts,’ with such contents, as this. Let the Q be fragrance, let it be toothache, or let it be a more complex kind of feeling, like that of the full-moon swimming in her blue abyss, it must first come in that simple shape, and be held fast in that first intention, before any knowledge ABOUT it can be attained60. The knowledge ABOUT it is IT with a context added. Undo61 IT, and what is added cannot be CONtext. 7
Let us say no more then about this objection, but enlarge our thesis, thus: If there be in the universe a Q other than the Q in the feeling, the latter may have acquaintance with an entity62 ejective to itself; an acquaintance moreover, which, as mere acquaintance, it would be hard to imagine susceptible63 either of improvement or increase, being in its way complete; and which would oblige us (so long as we refuse not to call acquaintance knowledge) to say not only that the feeling is cognitive, but that all qualities of feeling, SO LONG AS THERE IS ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF THEM WHICH THEY RESEMBLE, are feelings OF qualities of existence, and perceptions of outward fact.
The point of this vindication64 of the cognitive function of the first feeling lies, it will be noticed, in the discovery that q does exist elsewhere than in it. In case this discovery were not made, we could not be sure the feeling was cognitive; and in case there were nothing outside to be discovered, we should have to call the feeling a dream. But the feeling itself cannot make the discovery. Its own q is the only q it grasps; and its own nature is not a particle altered by having the self-transcendent function of cognition either added to it or taken away. The function is accidental; synthetic65, not analytic66; and falls outside and not inside its being. 8
A feeling feels as a gun shoots. If there be nothing to be felt or hit, they discharge themselves ins blaue hinein. If, however, something starts up opposite them, they no longer simply shoot or feel, they hit and know.
But with this arises a worse objection than any yet made. We the critics look on and see a real q and a feeling of q; and because the two resemble each other, we say the one knows the other. But what right have we to say this until we know that the feeling of q means to stand for or represent just that SAME other q? Suppose, instead of one q, a number of real q’s in the field. If the gun shoots and hits, we can easily see which one of them it hits. But how can we distinguish which one the feeling knows? It knows the one it stands for. But which one DOES it stand for? It declares no intention in this respect. It merely resembles; it resembles all indifferently; and resembling, per se, is not necessarily representing or standing-for at all. Eggs resemble each other, but do not on that account represent, stand for, or know each other. And if you say this is because neither of them is a FEELING, then imagine the world to consist of nothing but toothaches, which ARE feelings, feelings resembling each other exactly — would they know each other the better for all that?
The case of q being a bare quality like that of toothache-pain is quite different from that of its being a concrete individual thing. There is practically no test for deciding whether the feeling of a bare quality means to represent it or not. It can DO nothing to the quality beyond resembling it, simply because an abstract quality is a thing to which nothing can be done. Being without context or environment or principium individuationis, a quiddity with no haecceity, a platonic67 idea, even duplicate editions of such a quality (were they possible), would be indiscernible, and no sign could be given, no result altered, whether the feeling I meant to stand for this edition or for that, or whether it simply resembled the quality without meaning to stand for it at all.
If now we grant a genuine pluralism of editions to the quality q, by assigning to each a CONTEXT which shall distinguish it from its mates, we may proceed to explain which edition of it the feeling knows, by extending our principle of resemblance to the context too, and saying the feeling knows the particular q whose context it most exactly duplicates. But here again the theoretic doubt recurs68: duplication and coincidence, are they knowledge? The gun shows which q it points to and hits, by BREAKING it. Until the feeling can show us which q it points to and knows, by some equally flagrant token, why are we not free to deny that it either points to or knows any one of the REAL q’s at all, and to affirm that the word ‘resemblance’ exhaustively describes its relation to the reality?
Well, as a matter of fact, every actual feeling DOES show us, quite as flagrantly as the gun, which q it points to; and practically in concrete cases the matter is decided69 by an element we have hitherto left out. Let us pass from abstractions to possible instances, and ask our obliging deus ex machina to frame for us a richer world. Let him send me, for example, a dream of the death of a certain man, and let him simultaneously70 cause the man to die. How would our practical instinct spontaneously decide whether this were a case of cognition of the reality, or only a sort of marvellous coincidence of a resembling reality with my dream? Just such puzzling cases as this are what the ‘society for psychical research’ is busily collecting and trying to interpret in the most reasonable way.
If my dream were the only one of the kind I ever had in my life, if the context of the death in the dream differed in many particulars from the real death’s context, and if my dream led me to no action about the death, unquestionably we should all call it a strange coincidence, and naught71 besides. But if the death in the dream had a long context, agreeing point for point with every feature that attended the real death; if I were constantly having such dreams, all equally perfect, and if on awaking I had a habit of ACTING72 immediately as if they were true and so getting ‘the start’ of my more tardily73 instructed neighbors — we should in all probability have to admit that I had some mysterious kind of clairvoyant74 power, that my dreams in an inscrutable way meant just those realities they figured, and that the word ‘coincidence’ failed to touch the root of the matter. And whatever doubts any one preserved would completely vanish, if it should appear that from the midst of my dream I had the power of INTERFERING75 with the course of the reality, and making the events in it turn this way or that, according as I dreamed they should. Then at least it would be certain that my waking critics and my dreaming self were dealing76 with the SAME.
And thus do men invariably decide such a question. THE FALLING OF THE DREAM’S PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES into the real world, and the EXTENT of the resemblance between the two worlds are the criteria77 they instinctively78 use. 9 All feeling is for the sake of action, all feeling results in action — today no argument is needed to prove these truths. But by a most singular disposition79 of nature which we may conceive to have been different, MY FEELINGS ACT UPON THE REALITIES WITHIN MY CRITIC’S WORLD. Unless, then, my critic can prove that my feeling does not ‘point to’ those realities which it acts upon, how can he continue to doubt that he and I are alike cognizant of one and the same real world? If the action is performed in one world, that must be the world the feeling intends; if in another world, THAT is the world the feeling has in mind. If your feeling bear no fruits in my world, I call it utterly80 detached from my world; I call it a solipsism, and call its world a dream-world. If your toothache do not prompt you to ACT as if I had a toothache, nor even as if I had a separate existence; if you neither say to me, ‘I know now how you must suffer!’ nor tell me of a remedy, I deny that your feeling, however it may resemble mine, is really cognizant of mine. It gives no SIGN of being cognizant, and such a sign is absolutely necessary to my admission that it is.
Before I can think you to mean my world, you must affect my world; before I can think you to mean much of it, you must affect much of it; and before I can be sure you mean it AS I DO, you must affect it JUST AS I SHOULD if I were in your place. Then I, your critic, will gladly believe that we are thinking, not only of the same reality, but that we are thinking it ALIKE, and thinking of much of its extent.
Without the practical effects of our neighbor’s feelings on our own world, we should never suspect the existence of our neighbor’s feelings at all, and of course should never find ourselves playing the critic as we do in this article. The constitution of nature is very peculiar81. In the world of each of us are certain objects called human bodies, which move about and act on all the other objects there, and the occasions of their action are in the main what the occasions of our action would be, were they our bodies. They use words and gestures, which, if we used them, would have thoughts behind them — no mere thoughts uberhaupt, however, but strictly82 determinate thoughts. I think you have the notion of fire in general, because I see you act towards this fire in my room just as I act towards it — poke83 it and present your person towards it, and so forth84. But that binds85 me to believe that if you feel ‘fire’ at all, THIS is the fire you feel. As a matter of fact, whenever we constitute ourselves into psychological critics, it is not by dint86 of discovering which reality a feeling ‘resembles’ that we find out which reality it means. We become first aware of which one it means, and then we suppose that to be the one it resembles. We see each other looking at the same objects, pointing to them and turning them over in various ways, and thereupon we hope and trust that all of our several feelings resemble the reality and each other. But this is a thing of which we are never theoretically sure. Still, it would practically be a case of grubelsucht, if a ruffian were assaulting and drubbing my body, to spend much time in subtle speculation87 either as to whether his vision of my body resembled mine, or as to whether the body he really MEANT to insult were not some body in his mind’s eye, altogether other from my own. The practical point of view brushes such metaphysical cobwebs away. If what he have in mind be not MY body, why call we it a body at all? His mind is inferred by me as a term, to whose existence we trace the things that happen. The inference is quite void if the term, once inferred, be separated from its connection with the body that made me infer it, and connected with another that is not mine at all. No matter for the metaphysical puzzle of how our two minds, the ruffian’s and mine, can mean the same body. Men who see each other’s bodies sharing the same space, treading the same earth, splashing the same water, making the same air resonant88, and pursuing the same game and eating out of the same dish, will never practically believe in a pluralism of solipsistic worlds.
Where, however, the actions of one mind seem to take no effect in the world of the other, the case is different. This is what happens in poetry and fiction. Every one knows Ivanhoe, for example; but so long as we stick to the story pure and simple without regard to the facts of its production, few would hesitate to admit that there are as many different Ivanhoes as there are different minds cognizant of the story. 10 The fact that all these Ivanhoes RESEMBLE each other does not prove the contrary. But if an alteration89 invented by one man in his version were to reverberate90 immediately through all the other versions, and produce changes therein, we should then easily agree that all these thinkers were thinking the SAME Ivanhoe, and that, fiction or no fiction, it formed a little world common to them all.
Having reached this point, we may take up our thesis and improve it again. Still calling the reality by the name of q and letting the critic’s feeling vouch91 for it, we can say that any other feeling will be held cognizant of q, provided it both resemble q, and refer to q, as shown by its either modifying q directly, or modifying some other reality, p or r, which the critic knows to be continuous with q. Or more shortly, thus: THE FEELING OF q KNOWS WHATEVER REALITY IT RESEMBLES, AND EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY92 OPERATES ON. If it resemble without operating, it is a dream; if it operate without resembling, it is an error. 11 It is to be feared that the reader may consider this formula rather insignificant93 and obvious, and hardly worth the labor94 of so many pages, especially when he considers that the only cases to which it applies are percepts, and that the whole field of symbolic95 or conceptual thinking seems to elude96 its grasp. Where the reality is either a material thing or act, or a state of the critic’s consciousness, I may both mirror it in my mind and operate upon it — in the latter case indirectly, of course — as soon as I perceive it. But there are many cognitions, universally allowed to be such, which neither mirror nor operate on their realities.
In the whole field of symbolic thought we are universally held both to intend, to speak of, and to reach conclusions about — to know in short — particular realities, without having in our subjective consciousness any mind-stuff that resembles them even in a remote degree. We are instructed about them by language which awakens97 no consciousness beyond its sound; and we know WHICH realities they are by the faintest and most fragmentary glimpse of some remote context they may have and by no direct imagination of themselves. As minds may differ here, let me speak in the first person. I am sure that my own current thinking has WORDS for its almost exclusive subjective material, words which are made intelligible98 by being referred to some reality that lies beyond the horizon of direct consciousness, and of which I am only aware as of a terminal MORE existing in a certain direction, to which the words might lead but do not lead yet. The SUBJECT, or TOPIC, of the words is usually something towards which I mentally seem to pitch them in a backward way, almost as I might jerk my thumb over my shoulder to point at something, without looking round, if I were only entirely sure that it was there. The UPSHOT, or CONCLUSION, of the words is something towards which I seem to incline my head forwards, as if giving assent99 to its existence, tho all my mind’s eye catches sight of may be some tatter of an image connected with it, which tatter, however, if only endued100 with the feeling of familiarity and reality, makes me feel that the whole to which it belongs is rational and real, and fit to be let pass.
Here then is cognitive consciousness on a large scale, and yet what it knows, it hardly resembles in the least degree. The formula last laid down for our thesis must therefore be made more complete. We may now express it thus: A PERCEPT KNOWS WHATEVER REALITY IT DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY OPERATES ON AND RESEMBLES; ACONCEPTUAL FEELING, OR THOUGHT KNOWS A REALITY, WHENEVER IT ACTUALLY OR POTENTIALLY TERMINATES IN A PERCEPT THAT OPERATES ON, OR RESEMBLES THAT REALITY, OR IS OTHERWISE CONNECTED WITH IT OR WITH ITS CONTEXT. The latter percept may be either sensation or sensorial idea; and when I say the thought must TERMINATE in such a percept, I mean that it must ultimately be capable of leading up thereto — by the way of practical
Is an incomplete ‘thought about’ that reality, that reality is its ‘topic,’ etc. experience, if the terminal feeling be a sensation; by the way of logical or habitual101 suggestion, if it be only an image in the mind.
Let an illustration make this plainer. I open the first book I take up, and read the first sentence that meets my eye: ‘Newton saw the handiwork of God in the heavens as plainly as Paley in the animal kingdom.’ I immediately look back and try to analyze59 the subjective state in which I rapidly apprehended102 this sentence as I read it. In the first place there was an obvious feeling that the sentence was intelligible and rational and related to the world of realities. There was also a sense of agreement or harmony between ‘Newton,’ ‘Paley,’ and ‘God.’ There was no apparent image connected with the words ‘heavens,’ or ‘handiwork,’ or ‘God’; they were words merely. With ‘animal kingdom’ I think there was the faintest consciousness (it may possibly have been an image of the steps) of the Museum of Zoology103 in the town of Cambridge where I write. With ‘Paley’ there was an equally faint consciousness of a small dark leather book; and with ‘Newton’ a pretty distinct vision of the right-hand lower corner of curling periwig. This is all the mind-stuff I can discover in my first consciousness of the meaning of this sentence, and I am afraid that even not all of this would have been present had I come upon the sentence in a genuine reading of the book, and not picked it out for an experiment. And yet my consciousness was truly cognitive. The sentence is ‘about realities’ which my psychological critic — for we must not forget him — acknowledges to be such, even as he acknowledges my distinct feeling that they ARE realities, and my acquiescence105 in the general rightness of what I read of them, to be true knowledge on my part.
Now what justifies106 my critic in being as lenient107 as this? This singularly inadequate108 consciousness of mine, made up of symbols that neither resemble nor affect the realities they stand for — how can he be sure it is cognizant of the very realities he has himself in mind?
He is sure because in countless109 like cases he has seen such inadequate and symbolic thoughts, by developing themselves, terminate in percepts that practically modified and presumably resembled his own. By ‘developing’ themselves is meant obeying their tendencies, following up the suggestions nascently present in them, working in the direction in which they seem to point, clearing up the penumbra110, making distinct the halo, unravelling111 the fringe, which is part of their composition, and in the midst of which their more substantive112 kernel113 of subjective content seems consciously to lie. Thus I may develop my thought in the Paley direction by procuring114 the brown leather volume and bringing the passages about the animal kingdom before the critic’s eyes. I may satisfy him that the words mean for me just what they mean for him, by showing him IN CONCRETO the very animals and their arrangements, of which the pages treat. I may get Newton’s works and portraits; or if I follow the line of suggestion of the wig104, I may smother115 my critic in seventeenth-century matters pertaining116 to Newton’s environment, to show that the word ‘Newton’ has the same LOCUS117 and relations in both our minds. Finally I may, by act and word, persuade him that what I mean by God and the heavens and the analogy of the handiworks, is just what he means also.
My demonstration118 in the last resort is to his SENSES. My thought makes me act on his senses much as he might himself act on them, were he pursuing the consequences of a perception of his own. Practically then MY thought terminates in HIS realities. He willingly supposes it, therefore, to be OF them, and inwardly to RESEMBLE what his own thought would be, were it of the same symbolic sort as mine. And the pivot119 and fulcrum120 and support of his mental persuasion121, is the sensible operation which my thought leads me, or may lead, to effect — the bringing of Paley’s book, of Newton’s portrait, etc., before his very eyes.
In the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about and talk about the same world, because WE BELIEVE OUR PERCEPTS ARE POSSESSED122 BY US IN COMMON. And we believe this because the percepts of each one of us seem to be changed in consequence of changes in the percepts of someone else. What I am for you is in the first instance a percept of your own. Unexpectedly, however, I open and show you a book, uttering certain sounds the while. These acts are also your percepts, but they so resemble acts of yours with feelings prompting them, that you cannot doubt I have the feelings too, or that the book is one book felt in both our worlds. That it is felt in the same way, that my feelings of it resemble yours, is something of which we never can be sure, but which we assume as the simplest hypothesis that meets the case. As a matter of fact, we never ARE sure of it, and, as ERKENNTNISSTHEORETIKER, we can only say that of feelings that should NOT resemble each other, both could not know the same thing at the same time in the same way. 12 If each holds to its own percept as the reality, it is bound to say of the other percept, that, though it may INTEND that reality, and prove this by working change upon it, yet, if it do not resemble it, it is all false and wrong. 13
If this be so of percepts, how much more so of higher modes of thought! Even in the sphere of sensation individuals are probably different enough. Comparative study of the simplest conceptual elements seems to show a wider divergence123 still. And when it comes to general theories and emotional attitudes towards life, it is indeed time to say with Thackeray, ‘My friend, two different universes walk about under your hat and under mine.’
What can save us at all and prevent us from flying asunder124 into a chaos125 of mutually repellent solipsisms? Through what can our several minds commune? Through nothing but the mutual126 resemblance of those of our perceptual feelings which have this power of modifying one another, WHICH ARE MERE DUMB KNOWLEDGES-OF-ACQUAINTANCE, and which must also resemble their realities or not know them aright at all. In such pieces of knowledge-of-acquaintance all our knowledge-about must end, and carry a sense of this possible termination as part of its content. These percepts, these termini, these sensible things, these mere matters-of-acquaintance, are the only realities we ever directly know, and the whole history of our thought is the history of our substitution of one of them for another, and the reduction of the substitute to the status of a conceptual sign. Contemned127 though they be by some thinkers, these sensations are the mother-earth, the anchorage, the stable rock, the first and last limits, the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem of the mind. to find such sensational128 termini should be our aim with all our higher thought. They end discussion; they destroy the false conceit129 of knowledge; and without them we are all at sea with each other’s meaning. If two men act alike on a percept, they believe themselves to feel alike about it; if not, they may suspect they know it in differing ways. We can never be sure we understand each other till we are able to bring the matter to this test. 14 This is why metaphysical discussions are so much like fighting with the air; they have no practical issue of a sensational kind. ‘Scientific’ theories, on the other hand, always terminate in definite percepts. You can deduce a possible sensation from your theory and, taking me into your laboratory, prove that your theory is true of my world by giving me the sensation then and there. Beautiful is the flight of conceptual reason through the upper air of truth. No wonder philosophers are dazzled by it still, and no wonder they look with some disdain130 at the low earth of feeling from which the goddess launched herself aloft. But woe131 to her if she return not home to its acquaintance; Nirgends haften dann die unsicheren Sohlen — every crazy wind will take her, and, like a fire-balloon at night, she will go out among the stars.
NOTE. — The reader will easily see how much of the account of the truth-function developed later in Pragmatism was already explicit132 in this earlier article, and how much came to be defined later. In this earlier article we find distinctly asserted:—
1. The reality, external to the true idea;
2. The critic, reader, or epistemologist, with his own belief, as warrant for this reality’s existence;
3. The experienceable environment, as the vehicle or medium connecting knower with known, and yielding the cognitive RELATION;
4. The notion of POINTING, through this medium, to the reality, as one condition of our being said to know it;
5. That of RESEMBLING it, and eventually AFFECTING it, as determining the pointing to IT and not to something else.
6. The elimination133 of the ‘epistemological gulf,’ so that the whole truth-relation falls inside of the continuities of concrete experience, and is constituted of particular processes, varying with every object and subject, and susceptible of being described in detail.
The defects in this earlier account are:—
1. The possibly undue134 prominence135 given to resembling, which altho a fundamental function in knowing truly, is so often dispensed136 with;
2. The undue emphasis laid upon operating on the object itself, which in many cases is indeed decisive of that being what we refer to, but which is often lacking, or replaced by operations on other things related to the object.
3. The imperfect development of the generalized notion of the WORKABILITY of the feeling or idea as equivalent to that SATISFACTORY ADAPTATION to the particular reality, which constitutes the truth of the idea. It is this more generalized notion, as covering all such specifications137 as pointing, fitting, operating or resembling, that distinguishes the developed view of Dewey, Schiller, and myself.
4. The treatment, [earlier], of percepts as the only realm of reality. I now treat concepts as a co-ordinate realm.
The next paper represents a somewhat broader grasp of the topic on the writer’s part.
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1
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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transact
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| v.处理；做交易；谈判 | |
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generically
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| adv.一般地 | |
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subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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subjectively
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| 主观地； 臆 | |
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antipathy
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| n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物 | |
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cognitive
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| adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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fiat
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| n.命令，法令，批准；vt.批准，颁布 | |
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entanglement
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| n.纠缠，牵累 | |
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psychical
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| adj.有关特异功能现象的；有关特异功能官能的；灵魂的；心灵的 | |
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cavils
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| v.挑剔，吹毛求疵( cavil的第三人称单数 ) | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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dignify
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| vt.使有尊严；使崇高；给增光 | |
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redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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contemplates
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| 深思，细想，仔细考虑( contemplate的第三人称单数 )； 注视，凝视； 考虑接受（发生某事的可能性）； 深思熟虑，沉思，苦思冥想 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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terminology
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| n.术语；专有名词 | |
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revert
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| v.恢复，复归，回到 | |
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postulate
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| n.假定，基本条件；vt.要求，假定 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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evading
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| 逃避( evade的现在分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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utterances
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| n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论 | |
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vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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negation
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| n.否定；否认 | |
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citations
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| n.引用( citation的名词复数 )；引证；引文；表扬 | |
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egregiously
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| adv.过份地，卓越地 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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scouting
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| 守候活动，童子军的活动 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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vacuous
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| adj.空的，漫散的，无聊的，愚蠢的 | |
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liquidation
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| n.清算，停止营业 | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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abide
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| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
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denotation
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| n.（明示的）意义；指示 | |
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analyze
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| vt.分析，解析 (=analyse) | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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undo
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| vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销 | |
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entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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vindication
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| n.洗冤，证实 | |
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synthetic
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| adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品 | |
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analytic
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| adj.分析的，用分析方法的 | |
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platonic
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| adj.精神的；柏拉图（哲学）的 | |
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recurs
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| 再发生，复发( recur的第三人称单数 ) | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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tardily
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| adv.缓慢 | |
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clairvoyant
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| adj.有预见的；n.有预见的人 | |
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interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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criteria
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| n.标准 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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poke
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| n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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binds
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| v.约束( bind的第三人称单数 )；装订；捆绑；（用长布条）缠绕 | |
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dint
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| n.由于，靠；凹坑 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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resonant
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| adj.(声音)洪亮的，共鸣的 | |
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alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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reverberate
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| v.使回响，使反响 | |
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vouch
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| v.担保；断定；n.被担保者 | |
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indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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elude
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| v.躲避，困惑 | |
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awakens
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的第三人称单数 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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endued
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| v.授予，赋予（特性、才能等）( endue的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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zoology
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| n.动物学，生态 | |
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wig
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| n.假发 | |
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acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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justifies
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| 证明…有理( justify的第三人称单数 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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lenient
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| adj.宽大的，仁慈的 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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penumbra
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| n.（日蚀）半影部 | |
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unravelling
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| 解开，拆散，散开( unravel的现在分词 )； 阐明； 澄清； 弄清楚 | |
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substantive
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| adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体 | |
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113
kernel
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| n.(果实的)核，仁；(问题)的中心，核心 | |
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114
procuring
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| v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的现在分词 )；拉皮条 | |
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115
smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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116
pertaining
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| 与…有关系的，附属…的，为…固有的(to) | |
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117
locus
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| n.中心 | |
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118
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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119
pivot
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| v.在枢轴上转动；装枢轴，枢轴；adj.枢轴的 | |
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120
fulcrum
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| n.杠杆支点 | |
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121
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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122
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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123
divergence
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| n.分歧，岔开 | |
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124
asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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125
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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126
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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127
contemned
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| v.侮辱，蔑视( contemn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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128
sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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129
conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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130
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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131
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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132
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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133
elimination
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| n.排除，消除，消灭 | |
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134
undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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135
prominence
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| n.突出；显著；杰出；重要 | |
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136
dispensed
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| v.分配( dispense的过去式和过去分词 )；施与；配（药） | |
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137
specifications
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| n.规格；载明；详述；（产品等的）说明书；说明书( specification的名词复数 )；详细的计划书；载明；详述 | |
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