The supposition is, however, untrue. We relate percepts to ourselves not merely ideally, through concepts, but also, as we have already [139]seen, through feeling. In short, the content of our lives is not merely conceptual. The Na?ve Realist holds that the personality actually lives more genuinely in the life of feeling than in the purely ideal activity of knowledge. From his point of view he is quite right in interpreting the matter in this way. Feeling plays on the subjective side exactly the part which percepts play on the objective side. From the principle of Na?ve Realism, that everything is real which can be perceived, it follows that feeling is the guarantee of the reality of one’s own personality. Monism, however, must bestow10 on feeling the same supplementation which it considers necessary for percepts, if these are to stand to us for reality in its full nature. For Monism, feeling is an incomplete reality, which, in the form in which it first appears to us, lacks as yet its second factor, the concept or idea. This is why, in actual life, feelings, like percepts, appear prior to knowledge. At first, we have merely a feeling of existence; and it is only in the course of our gradual development, that we attain11 to the point at which the concept of Self emerges from within the blind mass of feelings which fills our existence. However, what for us does not appear until later, is from the first indissolubly bound up with our feelings. This is how the na?ve man comes to believe that in feeling he grasps existence immediately, in knowledge only mediately14. The development of the affective life, therefore, appears [140]to him more important than anything else. Not until he has grasped the unity15 of the world through feeling will he believe that he has comprehended it. He attempts to make feeling rather than thought the instrument of knowledge. Now a feeling is entirely16 individual, something equivalent to a percept. Hence a philosophy of feeling makes a cosmic principle out of something which has significance only within my own personality. Anyone who holds this view attempts to infuse his own self into the whole world. What the Monist strives to grasp by means of concepts the philosopher of feeling tries to attain through feeling, and he looks on his own felt union with objects as more immediate12 than knowledge.
The tendency just described, the philosophy of feeling, is Mysticism. The error in this view is that it seeks to possess by immediate experience what must be known, that it seeks to develop feeling, which is individual, into a universal principle.
A feeling is a purely individual activity. It is the relation of the external world to the subject, in so far as this relation finds expression in a purely subjective experience.
There is yet another expression of human personality. The Self, through thought, takes part in the universal world-life. Through thought it establishes purely ideal (conceptual) relations between percepts and itself, and between itself and percepts. In feeling, it has [141]immediate experience of the relation of objects to itself as subject. In will, the opposite is the case. In volition17, we are concerned once more with a percept, viz., that of the individual relation of the self to what is objective. Whatever in the act of will is not an ideal factor, is just as much mere object of perception as is any object in the external world.
Nevertheless, the Na?ve Realist believes here again that he has before him something far more real than can ever be attained18 by thought. He sees in the will an element in which he is immediately aware of an activity, a causation, in contrast with thought which afterwards grasps this activity in conceptual form. On this view, the realisation by the Self of its will is a process which is experienced immediately. The adherent19 of this philosophy believes that in the will he has really got hold of one end of reality. Whereas he can follow other occurrences only from the outside by means of perception, he is confident that in his will he experiences a real process quite immediately. The mode of existence presented to him by the will within himself becomes for him the fundamental reality of the universe. His own will appears to him as a special case of the general world-process; hence the latter is conceived as a universal will. The will becomes the principle of reality just as, in Mysticism, feeling becomes the principle of knowledge. This kind of theory is called Voluntarism (Thelism). It [142]makes something which can be experienced only individually the dominant20 factor of the world.
Voluntarism can as little be called scientific as can Mysticism. For both assert that the conceptual interpretation21 of the world is inadequate22. Both demand, in addition to a principle of being which is ideal, also a principle which is real. But as perception is our only means of apprehending23 these so-called real principles, the assertion of Mysticism and Voluntarism coincides with the view that we have two sources of knowledge, viz., thought and perception, the latter finding individual expression as will and feeling. Since the immediate experiences which flow from the one source cannot be directly absorbed into the thoughts which flow from the other, perception (immediate experience) and thought remain side by side, without any higher form of experience to mediate13 between them. Beside the conceptual principle to which we attain by means of knowledge, there is also a real principle which must be immediately experienced. In other words, Mysticism and Voluntarism are both forms of Na?ve Realism, because they subscribe24 to the doctrine25 that the immediately perceived (experienced) is real. Compared with Na?ve Realism in its primitive26 form, they are guilty of the yet further inconsistency of accepting one definite form of perception (feeling, respectively will) as the exclusive means of knowing reality. [143]Yet they can do this only so long as they cling to the general principle that everything that is perceived is real. They ought, therefore, to attach an equal value to external perception for purposes of knowledge.
Voluntarism turns into Metaphysical Realism, when it asserts the existence of will also in those spheres of reality in which will can no longer, as in the individual subject, be immediately experienced. It assumes hypothetically that a principle holds outside subjective experience, for the existence of which, nevertheless, subjective experience is the sole criterion. As a form of Metaphysical Realism, Voluntarism is open to the criticism developed in the preceding chapter, a criticism which makes it necessary to overcome the contradictory27 element in every form of Metaphysical Realism, and to recognise that the will is a universal world-process only in so far as it is ideally related to the rest of the world.
[Contents]
Addition to the Revised Edition (1918).
The difficulty of seizing the essential nature of thinking by observation lies in this, that it has generally eluded28 the introspecting mind all too easily by the time that the mind tries to bring it into the focus of attention. Nothing but the lifeless abstract, the corpse29 of living thought, then remains30 for inspection31. When we consider only this abstract, we find it hard, by contrast, to resist yielding to the mysticism [144]of feeling, or, again, to the metaphysics of will, both of which are “full of life.” We are tempted32 to regard it as odd that anyone should want to seize the essence of reality in “mere thoughts.” But if we once succeed in really holding fast the living essence of thinking, we learn to understand that the self-abandonment to feelings, or the intuiting of the will, cannot even be compared with the inward wealth of this life of thinking, which we experience as within itself ever at rest, yet at the same time ever in movement. Still less is it possible to rank will and feeling above thinking. It is owing precisely33 to this wealth, to this inward abundance of experience, that the image of thinking which presents itself to our ordinary attitude of mind, should appear lifeless and abstract. No other activity of the human mind is so easily misapprehended as thinking. Will and feeling still fill the mind with warmth even when we live through them again in memory. Thinking all too readily leaves us cold in recollection; it is as if the life of the mind had dried out. But this is really nothing but the strongly marked shadow thrown by its luminous34, warm nature penetrating35 deeply into the phenomena36 of the world. This penetration37 is effected by the activity of thinking with a spontaneous outpouring of power—a power of spiritual love. There is no room here for the objection that thus to perceive love in the activity of thinking is to endow thinking with a feeling and a love [145]which are not part of it. This objection is, in truth, a confirmation38 of the view here advocated. If we turn towards the essential nature of thinking, we find in it both feeling and will, and both these in their most profoundly real forms. If we turn away from thinking and towards “mere” feeling and will, these lose for us their genuine reality. If we are willing to make of thinking an intuitive experience, we can do justice, also, to experiences of the type of feeling and will. But the mysticism of feeling and the metaphysics of will do not know how to do justice to the penetration of reality which partakes at once of intuition and of thought. They conclude but too readily that they themselves are rooted in reality, but that the intuitive thinker, untouched by feeling, blind to reality, forms out of “abstract thoughts” a shadowy, chilly39 picture of the world.
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recapitulate
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| v.节述要旨，择要说明 | |
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aggregate
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| adj.总计的，集合的；n.总数；v.合计；集合 | |
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entities
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| 实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 ) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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transcends
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| 超出或超越（经验、信念、描写能力等）的范围( transcend的第三人称单数 )； 优于或胜过… | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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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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mediate
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| vi.调解，斡旋；vt.经调解解决；经斡旋促成 | |
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mediately
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| 在中间，间接 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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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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volition
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| n.意志；决意 | |
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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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adherent
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| n.信徒，追随者，拥护者 | |
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dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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apprehending
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的现在分词 )； 理解 | |
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subscribe
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| vi.(to)订阅，订购；同意；vt.捐助，赞助 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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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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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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eluded
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| v.（尤指机敏地）避开( elude的过去式和过去分词 )；逃避；躲避；使达不到 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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penetration
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| n.穿透，穿人，渗透 | |
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confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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