[Reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology1 and Scientific Methods, vol II, No. 2, January 19, 1905. Reprinted also as Appendix A in A Pluralistic Universe, pp. 347–369. The authors corrections have been adopted in the present text. ED.]
EXPERIENCE in its immediacy seems perfectly2 fluent. The active sense of living which we all enjoy, before reflection shatters our instinctive3 world for us, is self-luminous and suggests no paradoxes4. Its difficulties are disappointments and uncertainties6. They are not intellectual contradictions.
When the reflective intellect gets at work, however, it discovers incomprehensibilities in the flowing process. Distinguishing its elements and parts, it gives them separate names, and what it thus disjoins it can not easily put together. Pyrrhonism accepts the irrationality9 and revels10 in its dialectic elaboration. Other philosophies try, some by ignoring, some by resisting, and some by turning the dialectic procedure against itself, negating11 its first negations, to restore the fluent sense of life again, and let redemption take the place of innocence12. The perfection with which any philosophy may do this is the measure of its human success and of its importance in philosophic13 history. In [the last essay], ‘A World of Pure Experience,’ I tried my own hand sketchily15 at the problem, resisting certain first steps of dialectics by insisting in a general way that the immediately experienced conjunctive relations are as real as anything else. If my sketch14 is not to appear to naif, I must come closer to details, and in the present essay I propose to do so.
I
‘Pure experience’ is the name which I gave to the immediate16 flux17 of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories. Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma from sleep, drugs, illnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an experience pure in the literal sense of a that which is not yet any definite what, tho’ ready to be all sorts of whats; full both of oneness and of manyness, but in respects that don’t appear; changing throughout, yet so confusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no points, either of distinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure experience in this state is but another name for feeling or sensation. But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed20 and abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with adjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is only a relative term, meaning to proportional amount of unverbalized sensation which it still embodies21.
Far back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that of things conjunct and separated. The great continua of time, space, and the self envelope everything, betwixt them, and flow together without interfering23. The things that they envelop22 come as separate in some ways and as continuous in others. Some sensations coalesce24 with some ideas, and others are irreconcilable25. Qualities compenetrate one space, or exclude each other from it. They cling together persistently26 in groups that move as units, or else they separate. Their changes are abrupt28 or discontinuous; and their kinds resemble or differ; and, as they do so, they fall into either even or irregular series.
In all this the continuities and the discontinuities are absolutely co-ordinate matters of immediate feeling. The conjunctions are as primordial29 elements of ‘fact’ as are the distinctions and disjunctions. In the same act by which I feel that this passing minute is a new pulse of my life, I feel that the old life continues into it, and the feeling of continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous feeling of a novelty. They, too, compenetrate harmoniously30. Prepositions, copulas, and conjunctions, ‘is,’ is n’t,’ ‘then,’ ‘before,’ ‘in,’ ‘on,’ ‘beside,’ ‘between,’ ‘next,’ ‘like,’ ‘unlike,’ ‘as,’ ‘but,’ flower out of the stream of pure experience, the stream of concretes or the sensational31 stream, as naturally as nouns and adjectives do, and they melt into it again as fluidly when we apply them to a new portion of the stream
II
If now we ask why we must thus translate experience from a more concrete or pure into a more intellectualized form, filling it with ever more abounding32 conceptual distinctions, rationalism and naturalism give different replies.
The rationalistic answer is that the theoretic life is absolute and its interests imperative33; that to understand is simply the duty of man; and that who questions this need must not be argued with, for by the fact of arguing he gives away his case.
The naturalist34 answer is that the environment kills as well as sustains us, and that the tendency of raw experience to extinguish the experient himself is lessened35 just in the degree in which the elements in it that have a practical bearing upon life are analyzed36 out of the continuum and verbally fixed and coupled together, so that we may know what is in the wind for us and get ready to react in time. Had pure experience, the naturalist says, been always perfectly healthy, there would never have arisen the necessity of isolating37 or verbalizing any of its terms. We should just have experienced inarticulately and unintellectually enjoyed. This leaning on ‘reaction’ in the naturalist account implies that, whenever we intellectualize a relatively38 pure experience, we ought to do so for the sake of redescending to the purer or more concrete level again; and that if an intellect stays aloft among its abstract terms and generalized relations, and does not reinsert itself with its conclusions into some particular point of the immediate stream of life, it fails to finish out its function and leaves its normal race unrun.
Most rationalists nowadays will agree that naturalism gives a true enough account of the way in which our intellect arose at first, but they will deny these latter implications. The case, they will say, resembles that of sexual love. Originating in the animal need of getting another generation born, this passion has developed secondarily such imperious spiritual needs that, if you ask why another generation ought to be born at all, the answer is: ‘Chiefly that love may go on.’ Just so with our intellect: it originated as a practical means of serving life; but it has developed incidentally the function of understanding absolute truth; and life itself now seems to be given chiefly as a means by which that function may be prosecuted39. But truth and the understanding of it lie among the abstracts and universals, so the intellect now carries on its higher business wholly in this region, without any need of redescending into pure experience again.
If the contrasted tendencies which I thus designate as naturalistic and rationalistic are not recognized by the reader, perhaps an example will make them more concrete. Mr. Bradley, for instance, is an ultra-rationalist. He admits that our intellect is primarily practical, but says that, for philosophers,the practical need is simply Truth. Truth, moreover, must be assumed ‘consistent.’ Immediate experience has to be broken into subjects and qualities, terms and relations, to be understood as truth at all. Yet when so broken it is less consistent than ever. Taken raw, it is all undistinguished. Intellectualized, it is all distinction without oneness. ‘Such an arrangement may work, but the theoretic problem is not solved.’ The question is ‘how the diversity can exist in harmony with the oneness.’ To go back to pure experience is unavailing. ‘Mere40 feeling gives no answer to our riddle41.’ Even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an understanding. ‘It is a mere experience, and furnishes no consistent view.’ The experience offered as facts or truths ‘I find that my intellect rejects because they contradict themselves. They offer a complex of diversities conjoined in a way which it feels is not its way and which it can not repeat as its own. . . . For to be satisfied, my intellect must understand, and it can not understand by taking a congeries in the lump’26 So Mr. Bradley, in the sole interests of ‘understanding’ (as he conceives that function), turns his back on finite experience forever. Truth must lie in the opposite direction, the direction of the Absolute; and this kind of rationalism and naturalism, or (as I will now call it) pragmatism, walk thenceforward upon opposite paths. For the one, those intellectual products are most truth which, turning their face towards the Absolute, come nearest to symbolizing42 its ways of uniting the many and the one. For the other, those are most true which most successfully dip back into the finite stream of feeling and grow most easily confluent with some particular wave or wavelet. Such confluence43 not only proves the intellectual operation to have been true (as an addition may ‘prove’ that a subtraction44 is already rightly performed), but it constitutes, according to pragmatism, all that we mean by calling it true. Only in so far as they lead us, successfully or unsuccessfully, back into sensible experience again, are our abstracts and universals true or false at all.27
26 [F.H. Bradley: Appearance and Reality, second edition, pp. 152–153, 23, 118, 104, 108–109, 570.]
27 Compare Professor MacLennan’s admirable Auseinandersetzung with Mr. Bradley, in The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. I, [1904], pp. 403 ff., especially pp. 405–407.
III
In Section VI of [the last essay], I adopted in a general way the common-sense belief that one and the same world is cognized by our different minds; but I left undiscussed the dialectical arguments which maintain that this is logically absurd. The usual reason given for its being absurd is that it assumes one object (to wit, the world) to stand in two relations at once; to my mind, namely, and again to yours; whereas a term taken in a second relation can not logically be the same term which it was at first.
I have heard this reason urged so often in discussing with absolutists, and it would destroy my radical45 empiricism so utterly46, if it were valid47, that I am bound to give it an attentive48 ear, and seriously to search its strength.
For instance, let the matter in dispute be term M, asserted to be on the one hand related to L, and on the other to N; and let the two cases of relation be symbolized49 by L-M and M-N respectively. When, now, I assume that the experience may immediately come and be given in the shape L-M-N, with no trace of doubling or internal fission50 in the M, I am told that this is all a popular delusion51; that L-M-N logically means two different experiences, L-M and M-N, namely; and that although the Absolute may, and indeed must, from its superior point of view, read its own kind of unity52 into M’s two editions, yet as elements in finite experience the two M’s lie irretrievably asunder53, and the world between them is broken and unbridged.
In arguing this dialectic thesis, one must avoid slipping from the logical into the physical point of view. It would be easy, in taking a concrete example to fix one’s ideas by, to choose one in which the letter M should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which noun, being related to L by one of its parts and to N by another, would inwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both relations. Thus, one might say: ‘David Hume, who weighed so many stone by his body, influences posterity54 by his doctrine55.’ The body and the doctrine are two things, between which our finite minds can discover no real sameness, though the same never covers both of them. And then, one might continue: ‘Only an Absolute is capable of uniting such a non-identity.’ We must, I say, avoid this sort of example, for the dialectic insight, if true at all, must apply to terms and relations universally. It must be true of abstract units as well as of nouns collective; and if we prove it by concrete examples we must take the simplest, so as to avoid irrelevant56 material suggestions.
Taken thus in all its generality, the absolutist contention57 seems to use as its major premise58 Hume’s notion ‘that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences.’28 Undoubtedly59, since we use two phrases in talking first about ‘M’s relation to L’ and then about ‘M’s relation to N,’ we must be having, or must have had, two distinct perceptions; — and the rest would then seem to follow duly. But the starting-point of the reasoning here seems to be the fact of the two phrases; and this suggests that the argument may be merely verbal. Can it be that the whole dialectic consists in attributing to the experience talked-about a constitution similar to that of the language in which we describe it? Must we assert the objective doubleness of the M merely because we have to name it twice over when we name its two relations?
28 [Hume: Treatise60 of Human Nature, Appendix, Selby–Bigge’s edition, p. 636.]
Candidly61, I can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic conclusion;29 for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple concrete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience itself belies62 the paradox5 asserted. We use indeed two separate concepts in analyzing63 our object, but we know them all the while to be but substitutional, and that the M in L-M and the M in M-N mean (i.e., are capable of leading to and terminating in) one self-same piece, M, of sensible experience. This persistent27 identity of certain units (or emphases, or points, or objects, or members — call them what you will) of the experience-continuum, is just one of those conjunctive features of it, on which I am obliged to insist so emphatically.30 For samenesses are parts of experience’s indefeasible structure. When I hear a bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its after image dies away, I still hark back to it as ‘that same bell-stroke.’ When I see a thing M, with L to the left of it and N to the right of it, I see it as one M; and if you tell me I have had to ‘take’ it twice, I reply that if I ‘took’ it a thousand times I should still see it as a unity.31 Its unity is aboriginal64, just as the multiplicity of my successive takings is aboriginal. It comes unbroken as that M, as a singular which I encounter; they come broken, as those takings, as my plurality of operations. The unity and the separateness are strictly65 co-ordinate. I do not easily fathom66 why my opponents should find the separateness so much more easily understandable that they must needs infect the whole of finite experience with it, and relegate67 the unity (now taken as a bare postulate68 and no longer as a thing positively69 perceivable) to the region of the Absolute’s mysteries. I do not easily fathom this, I say, for the said opponents are above mere verbal quibbling; yet all that I can catch in their talk is the substitution of what is true of certain words for what is true of what they signify. They stay with the words, — not returning to the stream of life whence all the meaning of them came, and which is always ready to reabsorb them.
29 Technically70, it seems classable as a ‘fallacy of composition.’ A duality, predicable of the two wholes, L-M and M-N, is forthwith predicated of one of their parts, M.
30 See above, pp. 42 ff.
31 I may perhaps refer here to my Principles of Psychology, vol. I, pp. 459 ff. It really seems ‘weird’ to have to argue (as I am forced now to do) for the notion that it is one sheet of paper (with its two surfaces and all that lies between) which is both under my pen and on the table while I write — the ‘claim’ that it is two sheets seems so brazen71. Yet I sometimes suspect the absolutists of sincerity72!
IV
For aught this argument proves, then, we may continue to believe that one thing can be known by many knowers. But the denial of one thing in many relations is but one application of a still profounder dialectic difficulty. Man can’t be good, said the sophist, for man is man and good is good; and Hegel32 and Herbart in their day, more recently A. Spir,33 and most recently and elaborately of all, Mr. Bradley, informs us that a term can logically only be a punctiform unit, and that not one of the conjunctive relations between things, which experience seems to yield, is rationally possible.
32 [For the author’s criticism of Hegel’s view of relations, cf. Will to Believe, pp. 278–279, ED.]
33 [Cf. A. Spir: Denken und Wirklichkeit, part I, bk. III, ch. IV (containing also account of Herbart). ED.]
Of course, if true, this cuts off radical empiricism without even a shilling. Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their face value, holding them to be as real as the terms united by them.34 The world it represents as a collection, some parts of which are conjunctively and others disjunctively related. Two parts, themselves disjoined, may nevertheless hang together by intermediaries with which they are severally connected, and the whole world eventually may hang together similarly, inasmuch as some path of conjunctive transition by which to pass from one of its parts to another may always be discernible. Such determinately various hanging-together may be called concatenated73 union, to distinguish it from the ‘through-and-through’ type of union, ‘each in all and all in each’ (union of total conflux, as one might call it), which monistic systems hold to obtain when things are taken in their absolute reality. In a concatenated world a partial conflux often is experienced. Our concepts and our sensations are confluent; successive states of the same ego18, and feelings of the same body are confluent. Where the experience is not of conflux, it may be of conterminousness (things with but one thing between); or of contiguousness (nothing between); or of likeness74; or of nearness; or of simultaneousness; or of inness; or of onness; or of forness; or of simple withness; or even of mere andness, which last relation would make of however disjointed a world otherwise, at any rate for that occasion a universe ‘of discourse75.’ Now Mr. Bradley tells us that none of these relations, as we actually experience them, can possibly be real.35 My next duty, accordingly, must be to rescue radical empiricism from Mr. Bradley. Fortunately, as it seems to me, his general contention, that the very notion of relation is unthinkable clearly, has been successfully met by many critics.36
34 [See above, pp. 42, 49.]
35 Here again the reader must beware of slipping from logical into phenomenal considerations. It may well be that we attribute a certain relation falsely, because the circumstances of the case, being complex, have deceived us. At a railway station we may take our own train, and not the one that fills our window, to be moving. We here put motion in the wrong place in the world, but in its original place the motion is a part of reality. What Mr. Bradley means is nothing like this, but rather that such things as motion are nowhere real, and that, even in their aboriginal and empirically incorrigible77 seats, relations are impossible of comprehension.
36 Particularly so by Andrew Seth Pringle–Pattison, in his Man and the Cosmos78; by L.T. Hobhouse, in chapter XII (“The Validity of Judgement”) of his Theory of Knowledge; and by F.C.S. Schiller, in his Humanism, essay XI. Other fatal reviews (in my opinion) are Hodder’s, in the Psychological Review, vol. I [1894], p. 307; Stout’s in the Proceedings79 of the Aristotelian Society, 1901–2, p.1; and MacLennan’s in [The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. I, 1904, p. 403].
It is a burden to the flesh, and an injustice80 both to readers and to the previous writers, to repeat good arguments already printed. So, in noticing Mr. Bradley, I will confine myself to the interests of radical empiricism solely81.
V
The first duty of radical empiricism, taking given conjunctions at their face-value, is to class some of them as more intimate and some as more external. When two terms are similar, their very natures enter into the relation. Being what they are, no matter where or when, the likeness never can be denied, if asserted. It continues predictable as long as the terms continue. Other relations, the where and the when, for example, seems adventitious82. The sheet of paper may be ‘off’ or ‘on’ the table, for example; and in either case the relation involves only the outside of its terms. Having an outside, both of them, they contribute by it to the relation. It is external: the term’s inner nature is irrelevant to it. Any book, any table, may fall into the relation, which is created pro7 hac vice83, not by their existence, but by their causal situation. It is just because so many of the conjunctions of experience seem so external that a philosophy of pure experience must tend to pluralism in its ontology. So far as things have space-relations, for example, we are free to imagine them with different origins even. If they could get to be, and get into space at all, then they may have done so separately. Once there, however, they are additives84 to one another, and, with no prejudice to their natures, all sorts of space-relations may supervene between them. The question of how things could come to be anyhow, is wholly different from the question what their relations, once the being accomplished85, may consist in.
Mr. Bradley now affirms that such external relations as the space-relations which we here talk of must hold of entirely86 different subjects from those of which the absence of such relations might a moment previously87 have been plausibly88 asserted. Not only is the situation different when the book is on the table, but the book itself is different as a book, from what it was when it was off the table.37 He admits that “such external relations seem possible and even existing. . . . That you do not alter what you compare or rearrange in space seems to common sense quite obvious, and that on the other side there are as obvious difficulties does not occur to common sense at all. And I will begin by pointing out these difficulties. . . . There is a relation in the result, and this relation, we hear, is to make no difference in its terms. But, if so, to what does it make a difference? [Does n’t it make a difference to us on-lookers, at least?] and what is the meaning and sense of qualifying the terms by it? [Surely the meaning is to tell the truth about their relative position.] If, in short, it is external to the terms, how can it possibly be true of them? [Is it the ‘intimacy’ suggested by the little word ‘of,’ here, which I have understood, that is the root of Mr. Bradley’s trouble?] . . . If the terms from their inner nature do not enter into the relation, then, so far as they are concerned, they seem related for no reason at all. . . . Things are spatially89 related, first in one way, and then become related in another way, and yet in no way themselves are altered; for the relations, it is said, are but external. But I reply that, if so, I can not understand the leaving by the terms of one set of relations and their adoption91 of another fresh set. The process and its result to the terms, if they contribute nothing to it [Surely they contribute to it all there is ‘of’it!] seem irrational8 throughout. [If ‘irrational’ here means simply ‘non-rational,’ or non-deducible from the essence of either term singly, it is no reproach; if it means ‘contradicting’ such essence, Mr. Bradley should show wherein and how.] But, if they contribute anything, they must surely be affected92 internally. [Why so, if they contribute only their surface? In such relations as ‘on,’ ‘a foot away,’ ‘between,’ ‘next,’ etc., only surfaces are in question.] . . . If the terms contribute anything whatever, then the terms are affected [inwardly altered?] by the arrangement. . . . That for working purposes we treat, and do well to treat, some relations as external merely I do not deny, and that of course is not the question at issue here. That question is . . . whether in the end and in principle a mere external relation — i.e., a relation which can change without forcing its terms to change their nature simultaneously] is possible and forced on us by the facts.”38
37 Once more, don’t slip from logical into physical situations. Of course, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, or if it be slight enough and the book be heavy enough, the book will break it down. But such collateral93 phenomena76 are not the point at issue. The point is whether the successive relations ‘on’ and ‘not-on’ can rationally (not physically94) hold of the same constant terms, abstractly taken. Professor A.E. Taylor drops from logical into material considerations when he instances color-contrast as a proof that A, ‘as contra-distinguished from B, is not the same thing as mere A not in any way affected’ (Elements of Metaphysics, p. 145). Note the substitution, for ‘related’ of the word ‘affected,’ which begs the whole question.
38 But “is there any sense,” asks Mr. Bradley, peevishly95, on p. 579, “and if so, what sense in truth that is only outside and ‘about’ things?” Surely such a question may be left unanswered.
Mr. Bradley next reverts96 to the antinomies of space, which, according to him, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so prolific97 a medium of external relations; and he then concludes that “Irrationality and externality can not be the last truth about things. Somewhere there must be a reason why this and that appear together. And this reason and reality must reside in the whole from which terms and relations are abstractions, a whole in which their internal connection must lie, and out of which from the background appear those fresh results which never could have come from the premises98.” And he adds that “Where the whole is different, the terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be different. . . . They are altered so far only [How far? farther than externally, yet not through and through?] but still they are altered. . . . I must insist that in each case the terms are qualified99 by their whole [Qualified how?— Do their external relations, situations, dates, etc., changed as these are in the new whole, fail to qualify them ‘far’ enough?], and that in the second case there is a whole which differs both logically and psychologically from the first whole; and I urge that in contributing to the change the terms so far are altered.”
Not merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: Und zwar ‘so far.’ But just how far is the whole problem; and ‘through-and-through’ would seem (in spite of Mr. Bradley’s somewhat undecided utterances39) to be the full Bradleyan answer. The ‘whole’ which he here treats as primary and determinative of each part’s manner of ‘contributing,’ simply must, when it alters, alter in its entirety. There must be total conflux of its parts, each into and through each other. The ‘must’ appears here as a Machtspruch, as an ipse dixit of Mr. Bradley’s absolutistically tempered ‘understanding,’ for he candidly confesses that how the parts do differ as they contribute to different wholes, is unknown to him.40
39 I say ‘undecided,’ because, apart from the ‘so far,’ what sounds terribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very pages in which Mr. Bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for example, what he says, on p. 578, of a billiard ball keeping its ‘character’ unchanged, though, in its change of place, its ‘existence’ gets altered; or what he says, on p. 579, of the possibility that an abstract quality A, B, or C, in a thing, ‘may throughout remain unchanged’ although the thing be altered; or his admission that red-hairedness, both as analyzed out of a man and when given with the rest of him, there may be ‘no change’ p. 580). Why does he immediately add that for the pluralist to plead the non-mutation of such abstractions would be an ignoratio elenchi? It is impossible to admit it to be such. The entire elenchus and inquest is just as to whether parts which you can abstract from their inner nature. If they can thus mould various wholes into new gestalqualitaten, then it follows that the same elements are logically able to exist in different wholes [whether physically able would depend on additional hypotheses]; that partial changes are thinkable, and through-and-through change not a dialectic necessity; that monism is only an hypothesis; and that an additively constituted universe is a rationally respectable hypothesis also. All theses of radical empiricism, in short, follow.
40 Op. cit., pp. 577–579.
Although I have every wish to comprehend the authority by which Mr. Bradley’s understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly unconverted. ‘External relations’ stand with their withers100 all unwrung, and remain, for aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable, but also perfectly intelligible101 factors of reality.
VI
Mr. Bradley’s understanding shows the most extraordinary power of perceiving separations and the most extraordinary impotence in comprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say ‘neither or both,’ but not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man analyzes102 certain whats from out the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness as thus isolated103. But this does not prevent him from equally well understanding their combination with each other as originally experienced in the concrete, or their confluence with new sensible experiences in which they recur104 as ‘the same.’ Returning into the stream of sensible presentation, nouns and adjectives, and thats and abstract whats, grow confluent again, and the word ‘is’ names all these experiences of conjunction. Mr. Bradley understands the isolation105 of the abstracts, but to understand the combination is to him impossible.41 “To understand a complex AB,” he says, “I must begin with A or B. And beginning, say with A, if I then merely find B, I have either lost A, or I have got beside A, [the word ‘beside’ seems here vital, as meaning a conjunction ‘external’ and therefore unintelligible] something else, and in neither case have I understood.42 For my intellect can not simply unite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of togetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside A and B, you offer me their conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more than another external element. And ‘facts,’ once for all, are for my intellect not true unless they satisfy it. . . . The intellect has in its nature no principle of mere togetherness.” 43
41 So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like this: ‘Book,’ ‘table,’ ‘on’ — how does the existence of these three abstract elements result in this book being livingly on this table. Why is n’t the table on the book? Or why does n’t the ‘on’ connect itself with another book, or something that is not a table? Must n’t something in each of the three elements already determine the two others to it, so that they do not settle elsewhere or float vaguely106? Must n’t the whole fact be prefigured in each part, and exist de jure before it can exist de fact? But, if so, in what can the jural existence consist, if not in a spiritual miniature of the whole fact’s constitution actuating every partial factor as its purpose? But is this anything but the old metaphysical fallacy of looking behind a fact in esse for the ground of the fact, and finding it in the shape of the very same fact in posse? Somewhere we must leave off with a constitution behind which there is nothing.
42 Apply this to the case of ‘book-on-table’! W.J.
43 Op. cit., pp. 570, 572.
Of course Mr. Bradley has a right to define ‘intellect’ as the power by which we perceive separations but not unions — provided he give due notice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and amputated power must reign107 supreme108 in philosophy, and accuse on its behoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? It is true that he elsewhere attributes to the intellect a proprius motus of transition, but says that when he looks for these transitions in the detail of living experience, he ‘is unable to verify such a solution.’44
44 Op. cit., pp. 568, 569.
Yet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would be like in case we had them. He only defines them negatively — they are not spatial90, temporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively109 or otherwise serial110; or in any way relational as we naively111 trace relations, for relations separate terms, and need themselves to be hooked on ad infinitum. The nearest approach he makes to describing a truly intellectual transition is where he speaks of A and B as being ‘united, each from its own nature, in a whole which is the nature of both alike.’45 But this (which, pace Mr. Bradley, seems exquisitely112 analogous113 to ‘taking’ a congeries in a ‘lump,’ if not to ‘swamping’) suggests nothing but that conflux which pure experience so abundantly offers, as when ‘space,’ ‘white’ and ‘sweet’ are confluent in a ‘lump of sugar,’ or kinesthetic, dermal114, and optical sensations confluent in ‘my hand.’46 All that I can verify in the transitions which Mr. Bradley’s intellect desiderates as its proprius motus is a reminiscence of these and other sensible conjunctions (especially space-conjunctions), but a reminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized. Bradley in short repeats the fable115 of the dog, the bone, and its image in the water. With a world of particulars, given in loveliest union, in conjunction definitely various, and variously definite, the ‘how’ of which you ‘understand’ as soon as you see the fact of them,47 for there is no ‘how’ except the constitution of the fact as given; with all this given him, I say, in pure experience, he asks for some ineffable116 union in the abstract instead, which, if he gained it, would only be a duplicate of what he has already in his full possession. Surely he abuses the privilege which society grants to all us philosophers, of being puzzle-headed.
45 Op. cit., p. 570.
46 How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes (or in ‘book-on-table,’ ‘watch-inpocket,’ etc) the relation is an additional entity19 between the terms, needing itself to be related again to each! Both Bradley (op. cit., pp. 32–33) and Royce (The World and the Individual, vol. I, p. 128) lovingly repeat this piece of profundity117.
47
Polemic118 writing like this is odious119; but with absolutism in possession in so many quarters, omission120 to defend my radical empiricism against its best known champion would count as either superficiality or inability. I have to conclude that its dialectic has not invalidated in the least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as experienced, hangs so variously together. In particular it leaves an empirical theory of knowledge48 intact, and lets us continue to believe with common sense that one object may be known, if we have any ground for thinking that it is known, to many knowers.
48
In [the next essay] I shall return to this last supposition, which seems to me to offer other difficulties much harder for a philosophy of pure experience to deal with than any of absolutism’s dialectic objections.
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1
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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paradoxes
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| n.似非而是的隽语，看似矛盾而实际却可能正确的说法( paradox的名词复数 )；用于语言文学中的上述隽语；有矛盾特点的人[事物，情况] | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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uncertainties
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| 无把握( uncertainty的名词复数 )； 不确定； 变化不定； 无把握、不确定的事物 | |
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pro
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| n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者 | |
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irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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irrationality
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| n. 不合理，无理性 | |
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revels
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| n.作乐( revel的名词复数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉v.作乐( revel的第三人称单数 )；狂欢；着迷；陶醉 | |
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11
negating
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| v.取消( negate的现在分词 )；使无效；否定；否认 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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sketchily
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| adv.写生风格地，大略地 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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flux
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| n.流动；不断的改变 | |
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ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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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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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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embodies
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| v.表现( embody的第三人称单数 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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envelop
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| vt.包，封，遮盖；包围 | |
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23
interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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coalesce
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| v.联合，结合，合并 | |
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irreconcilable
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| adj.（指人）难和解的，势不两立的 | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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29
primordial
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| adj.原始的；最初的 | |
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harmoniously
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| 和谐地，调和地 | |
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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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32
abounding
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| adj.丰富的，大量的v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的现在分词 ) | |
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33
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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34
naturalist
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| n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者) | |
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35
lessened
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| 减少的，减弱的 | |
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36
analyzed
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| v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析 | |
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37
isolating
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| adj.孤立的，绝缘的v.使隔离( isolate的现在分词 )；将…剔出（以便看清和单独处理）；使（某物质、细胞等）分离；使离析 | |
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38
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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39
prosecuted
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| a.被起诉的 | |
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40
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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41
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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42
symbolizing
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| v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的现在分词 ) | |
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43
confluence
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| n.汇合，聚集 | |
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44
subtraction
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| n.减法，减去 | |
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45
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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46
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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47
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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48
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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49
symbolized
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| v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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50
fission
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| n.裂开；分裂生殖 | |
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51
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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52
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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53
asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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54
posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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55
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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56
irrelevant
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| adj.不恰当的，无关系的，不相干的 | |
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57
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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58
premise
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| n.前提；v.提论，预述 | |
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59
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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60
treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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61
candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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62
belies
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| v.掩饰( belie的第三人称单数 )；证明（或显示）…为虚假；辜负；就…扯谎 | |
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63
analyzing
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| v.分析；分析( analyze的现在分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析n.分析 | |
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64
aboriginal
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| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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66
fathom
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| v.领悟，彻底了解 | |
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67
relegate
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| v.使降级，流放，移交，委任 | |
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68
postulate
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| n.假定，基本条件；vt.要求，假定 | |
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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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technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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73
concatenated
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| v.把 （一系列事件、事情等）联系起来( concatenate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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74
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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incorrigible
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| adj.难以纠正的，屡教不改的 | |
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cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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adventitious
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| adj.偶然的 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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84
additives
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| n.添加剂( additive的名词复数 ) | |
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85
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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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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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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plausibly
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| 似真地 | |
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spatially
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| 空间地，存在于空间地 | |
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spatial
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| adj.空间的，占据空间的 | |
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adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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collateral
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| adj.平行的；旁系的；n.担保品 | |
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physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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peevishly
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| adv．暴躁地 | |
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reverts
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| 恢复( revert的第三人称单数 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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prolific
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| adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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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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withers
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| 马肩隆 | |
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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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analyzes
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| v.分析( analyze的第三人称单数 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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recur
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| vi.复发，重现，再发生 | |
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isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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qualitatively
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| 质量上 | |
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serial
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| n.连本影片，连本电视节目；adj.连续的 | |
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naively
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| adv. 天真地 | |
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exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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dermal
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| adj.皮肤的，真皮的 | |
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fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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117
profundity
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| n.渊博；深奥，深刻 | |
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118
polemic
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| n.争论，论战 | |
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odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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