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(2) Or he may conclude that it is futile to search for substances or
realities of any sort _behind_ phenomena, arguing that such realities
are never revealed in experience, and that no sound reason for their
assumption can be adduced. In this case, he may try to make plain what
mind and matter are, by simply analyzing our experiences of mind and
matter and coming to a clearer comprehension of their nature.

As the reader has probably remarked, the philosophy presented in the
earlier chapters of this book (Chapters III to XI) is _dualistic_ as
well as _realistic_. That is to say, it refuses to rub out the
distinction between physical phenomena and mental phenomena, either by
dissolving the material world into ideas; by calling ideas secretions
or functions of the brain; or by declaring them one in a fictitious
entity behind the veil and not supposed to be exactly identical with
either. And as it teaches that the only reality that it means anything
to talk about must be found in experience, it is a dualism of the type
described in the paragraph which immediately precedes.

Such a philosophy does not seem to do violence to the common experience
of minds and of physical things shared by us all, whether we are
philosophers or are not. It only tries to make clear what we all know
dimly and vaguely. This is, I think, a point in its favor. However,
men of great ability and of much learning have inclined to doctrines
very different; and we have no right to make up our minds on such a
subject as this without trying to give them an attentive and an
impartial hearing.

59. SINGULARISM AND PLURALISM.--There are those who apply to the
various forms of monism the title _Singularism_, and who contrast with
this _Pluralism_, a word which is meant to cover the various doctrines
which maintain that there is more than one ultimate principle or being
in the universe.

It is argued that we should have some word under which we may bring
such a doctrine, for example, as that of the Greek philosopher
Empedocles (born about 490 B.C.). This thinker made earth, water,
fire, and air the four material principles or "roots" of things. He
was not a monist, and we can certainly not call him a dualist.

Again. The term pluralism has been used to indicate the doctrine that
individual finite minds are not parts or manifestations of one
all-embracing Mind,--of God or the Absolute,--but are relatively
independent beings. This doctrine has been urged in our own time, with
eloquence and feeling, by Professor Howison.[2] Here we have a
pluralism which is idealistic, for it admits in the universe but one
_kind_ of thing, minds; and yet refuses to call itself monistic. It
will readily be seen that in this paragraph and in the one preceding
the word is used in different senses.

I have added the above sentences to this chapter that the reader may
have an explanation of the meaning of a word sometimes met with. But
the title of the chapter is "Monism and Dualism," and it is of this
contrast that it is especially important to grasp the significance.


[1] "Outlines of Psychology," pp. 64-65, English translation, 1891.

[2] "The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays," revised edition. New
York, 1905.




CHAPTER XV

RATIONALISM, EMPIRICISM, CRITICISM, AND CRITICAL EMPIRICISM

60. RATIONALISM.--As the content of a philosophical doctrine must be
determined by the _initial assumptions_ which a philosopher makes and
by the _method_ which he adopts in his reasonings, it is well to
examine with some care certain broad differences in this respect which
characterize different philosophers, and which help to explain how it
is that the results of their reflections are so startlingly different.

I shall first speak of _Rationalism_, which I may somewhat loosely
define as the doctrine that the reason can attain truths independently
of observation--can go beyond experienced fact and the deductions which
experience seems to justify us in making from experienced fact. The
definition cannot mean much to us until it is interpreted by a concrete
example, and I shall turn to such. It must, however, be borne in mind
that the word "rationalism" is meant to cover a great variety of
opinions, and we have said comparatively little about him when we have
called a man a rationalist in philosophy. Men may agree in believing
that the reason can go beyond experienced fact, and yet may differ
regarding the particular truths which may be thus attained.

Now, when Descartes found himself discontented with the philosophy that
he and others had inherited from the Middle Ages, and undertook a
reconstruction, he found it necessary to throw over a vast amount of
what had passed as truth, if only with a view to building up again upon
a firmer foundation. It appeared to him that much was uncritically
accepted as true in philosophy and in the sciences which a little
reflection revealed to be either false or highly doubtful.
Accordingly, he decided to clear the ground by a sweeping doubt, and to
begin his task quite independently.

In accordance with this principle, he rejected the testimony of the
senses touching the existence of a world of external things. Do not
the senses sometimes deceive us? And, since men seem to be liable to
error in their reasonings, even in a field so secure as that of
mathematical demonstration, he resolved further to repudiate all the
reasonings he had heretofore accepted. He would not even assume
himself to be in his right mind and awake; might he not be the victim
of a diseased fancy, or a man deluded by dreams?

Could anything whatever escape this all-devouring doubt? One truth
seemed unshakable: his own existence, at least, emerged from this sea
of uncertainties. I may be deceived in thinking that there is an
external world, and that I am awake and really perceive things; but I
surely cannot be deceived unless I exist. _Cogito, ergo sum_--I think,
hence I exist; this truth Descartes accepted as the first principle of
the new and sounder philosophy which he sought.

As we read farther in Descartes we discover that he takes back again a
great many of those things that he had at the outset rejected as
uncertain. Thus, he accepts an external world of material things. How
does he establish its existence? He cannot do it as the empiricist
does it, by a reference to experienced fact, for he does not believe
that the external world is directly given in our experience. He thinks
we are directly conscious only of our _ideas_ of it, and must somehow
prove that it exists over against our ideas.

By his principles, Descartes is compelled to fall back upon a curious
roundabout argument to prove that there is a world. He must first
prove that God exists, and then argue that God would not deceive us
into thinking that it exists when it does not.

Now, when we come to examine Descartes' reasonings in detail we find
what appear to us some very uncritical assumptions. Thus, he proves
the existence of God by the following argument:--

I exist, and I find in me the idea of God; of this idea I cannot be the
author, for it represents something much greater than I, and its cause
must be as great as the reality it represents. In other words, nothing
less than God can be the cause of the idea of God which I find in me,
and, hence, I may infer that God exists.

Where did Descartes get this notion that every idea must have a cause
which contains as much external reality as the idea does represented
reality? How does he prove his assumption? He simply appeals to what
he calls "the natural light," which is for him a source of all sorts of
information which cannot be derived from experience. This "natural
light" furnishes him with a vast number of "eternal truths", these he
has not brought under the sickle of his sweeping doubt, and these help
him to build up again the world he has overthrown, beginning with the
one indubitable fact discussed above.

To the men of a later time many of Descartes' eternal truths are simply
inherited philosophical prejudices, the results of the reflections of
earlier thinkers, and in sad need of revision. I shall not criticise
them in detail. The important point for us to notice is that we have
here a type of philosophy which depends upon truths revealed by the
reason, independently of experience, to carry one beyond the sphere of
experience.

I again remind the reader that there are all sorts of rationalists, in
the philosophical sense of the word. Some trust the power of the
unaided reason without reserve. Thus Spinoza, the pantheist, made the
magnificent but misguided attempt to deduce the whole system of things
physical and things mental from what he called the attributes of God,
Extension and Thought.

On the other hand, one may be a good deal of an empiricist, and yet
something of a rationalist, too. Thus Professor Strong, in his recent
brilliant book, "Why the Mind has a Body," maintains that we know
intuitively that other minds than our own exist; know it without
gathering our information from experience, and without having to
establish the fact in any way. This seems, at least, akin to the
doctrine of the "natural light," and yet no one can say that Professor
Strong does not, in general, believe in a philosophy of observation and
experiment.

61. EMPIRICISM.--I suppose every one who has done some reading in the
history of philosophy will, if his mother tongue be English, think of
the name of John Locke when empiricism is mentioned.

Locke, in his "Essay concerning Human Understanding," undertakes "to
inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge,
together with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent."
His sober and cautious work, which was first published in 1690, was
peculiarly English in character; and the spirit which it exemplifies
animates also Locke's famous successors, George Berkeley (1684-1753),
David Hume (1711-1776), and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Although
Locke was a realist, Berkeley an idealist, Hume a skeptic, and Mill
what has been called a sensationalist; yet all were empiricists of a
sort, and emphasized the necessity of founding our knowledge upon
experience.

Now, Locke was familiar with the writings of Descartes, whose work he
admired, but whose rationalism offended him. The first book of the
"Essay" is devoted to the proof that there are in the mind of man no
"innate ideas" and no "innate principles." That is to say, Locke tries
to show that one must not seek, in the "natural light" to which
Descartes turned, a distinct and independent source of information,

"Let us, then," he continues, "suppose the mind to be, as we say, white
paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be
furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and
boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless
variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To
this I answer in one word, from experience; in that all our knowledge
is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our
observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about
the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by
ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the
materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge, from
whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring." [1]

Thus, all we know and all we ever shall know of the world of matter and
of minds must rest ultimately upon observation,--observation of
external things and of our own mind. We must clip the erratic wing of
a "reason" which seeks to soar beyond such knowledge; which leaves the
solid earth, and hangs suspended in the void.

"But hold," exclaims the critical reader; "have we not seen that Locke,
as well as Descartes (section 48), claims to know what he cannot prove
by direct observation or even by a legitimate inference from what has
been directly observed? Does he not maintain that the mind has an
immediate knowledge or experience only of its own ideas? How can he
prove that there are material extended things outside causing these
ideas? And if he cannot prove it by an appeal to experience, to direct
observation, is he not, in accepting the existence of the external
world at all, just as truly as Descartes, a rationalist?"

The objection is well taken. On his own principles, Locke had no right
to believe in an external world. He has stolen his world, so to speak;
he has taken it by violence. Nevertheless, as I pointed out in the
section above referred to, Locke is not a rationalist of _malice
prepense_. He _tries_ to be an empiricist. He believes in the
external world because he thinks it is directly revealed to the
senses--he inconsistently refers to experience as evidence of its
existence.

It has often been claimed by those who do not sympathize with
empiricism that the empiricists make assumptions much as others do, but
have not the grace to admit it. I think we must frankly confess that a
man may try hard to be an empiricist and may not be wholly successful.
Moreover, reflection forces us to the conclusion that when we have
defined empiricism as a doctrine which rests throughout upon an appeal
to "experience" we have not said anything very definite.

What is _experience_? What may we accept as directly revealed fact?
The answer to such questions is far from an easy one to give. It is a
harder matter to discuss intelligently than any one can at all realize
until he has spent some years in following the efforts of the
philosophers to determine what is "revealed fact." We are supposed to
have experience of our own minds, of space, of time, of matter. What
are these things as revealed in our experience? We have seen in the
earlier chapters of this book that one cannot answer such questions
off-hand.

62. CRITICISM.--I have in another chapter (section 51) given a brief
account of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. He called his doctrine
"Criticism," and he distinguished it from "Dogmatism" and "Empiricism."

Every philosophy that transcends experience, without first critically
examining our faculty of knowledge and determining its right to spread
its wings in this way, Kant calls "dogmatism." The word seems rather
an offensive one, in its usual signification, at least; and it is as
well not to use it. As Kant used the word, Descartes was a dogmatist;
but let us rather call him a rationalist. He certainly had no
intention of proceeding uncritically, as we shall see a little later.
If we call him a dogmatist we seem to condemn him in advance, by
applying to him an abusive epithet.

Empiricism, according to Kant, confines human knowledge to experience,
and thus avoids the errors which beset the dogmatist. But then, as
Hume seemed to have shown, empiricism must run out into skepticism. If
all our knowledge has its foundations in experience, how can we expect
to find in our possession any universal or necessary truths? May not a
later experience contradict an earlier? How can we be sure that what
has been will be? Can we _know_ that there is anything fixed and
certain in our world?

Skepticism seemed a forlorn doctrine, and, casting about for a way of
escape from it, Kant hit upon the expedient which I have described. So
long as we maintain that our knowledge has no other source than the
experiences which the world imprints upon us, so to speak, from
without, we are without the power of prediction, for new experiences
may annihilate any generalizations we have founded upon those already
vouchsafed us; but if we assume that the world upon which we gaze, the
world of phenomena, is made what it is by the mind that perceives it,
are we not in a different position?

Suppose, for example, we take the statement that there must be an
adequate cause of all the changes that take place in the world. Can a
mere experience of what has been in the past guarantee that this law
will hold good in the future? But, when we realize that the world of
which we are speaking is nothing more than a world of phenomena, of
experiences, and realize further that this whole world is constructed
by the mind out of the raw materials furnished by the senses, may we
not have a greater confidence in our law? If it is the nature of the
mind to connect the phenomena presented to it with one another as cause
and effect, may we not maintain that no phenomenon can possibly make
its appearance that defies the law in question? How could it appear
except under the conditions laid upon all phenomena? If it is our
nature to think the world as an orderly one, and if we can know no
world save the one we construct ourselves, the orderliness of all the
things we can know seems to be guaranteed to us.

It will be noticed that Kant's doctrine has a negative side. He limits
our knowledge to phenomena, to experiences, and he is himself, in so
far, an empiricist. But in that he finds in experience an order, an
arrangement of things, not derived from experience in the usual sense
of the word, he is not an empiricist. He has paid his own doctrine the
compliment of calling it "criticism," as I have said.

Now, I beg the reader to be here, as elsewhere, on his guard against
the associations which attach to words. In calling Kant's doctrine
"the critical philosophy," we are in some danger of uncritically
assuming and leading others to believe uncritically that it is free
from such defects as may be expected to attach to "dogmatism" and to
empiricism. Such a position should not be taken until one has made a
most careful examination of each of the three types of doctrine, of the
assumptions which it makes, and of the rigor with which it draws
inferences upon the basis of such assumptions. That we may be the
better able to withstand "undue influence," I call attention to the
following points:--

(1) We must bear in mind that the attempt to make a critical
examination into the foundations of our knowledge, and to determine its
scope, is by no means a new thing. Among the Greeks, Plato, Aristotle,
the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptics, all attacked the problem.
It did not, of course, present itself to these men in the precise form
in which it presented itself to Kant, but each and all were concerned
to find an answer to the question: Can we know anything with certainty;
and, if so, what? They may have failed to be thoroughly critical, but
they certainly made the attempt.

I shall omit mention of the long series of others, who, since that
time, have carried on the tradition, and shall speak only of Descartes
and Locke, whom I have above brought forward as representatives of the
two types of doctrine that Kant contrasts with his own.

To see how strenuously Descartes endeavored to subject his knowledge to
a critical scrutiny and to avoid unjustifiable assumptions of any sort,
one has only to read that charming little work of genius, the
"Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason."

In his youth Descartes was, as he informs us, an eager student; but,
when he had finished the whole course of education usually prescribed,
he found himself so full of doubts and errors that he did not feel that
he had advanced in learning at all. Yet he had been well tutored, and
was considered as bright in mind as others. He was led to judge his
neighbor by himself, and to conclude that there existed no such certain
science as he had been taught to suppose.

Having ripened with years and experience, Descartes set about the task
of which I have spoken above, the task of sweeping away the whole body
of his opinions and of attempting a general and systematic
reconstruction. So important a work should be, he thought, approached
with circumspection; hence, he formulated certain Rules of Method.

"The first," he writes, "was never to accept anything for true which I
did not clearly know to be such; that is, carefully to avoid haste and
prejudice, and to include nothing more in my judgments than what was
presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all reason
for doubt."

Such was our philosopher's design, and such the spirit in which he set
about it. We have seen the result above. It is as if Descartes had
decided that a certain room full of people did not appear to be free
from suspicious characters, and had cleared out every one, afterwards
posting himself at the door to readmit only those who proved themselves
worthy. When we examine those who succeeded in passing muster, we
discover he has favored all his old friends. He simply _cannot_ doubt
them; are they not vouched for by the "natural light"? Nevertheless,
we must not forget that Descartes sifted his congregation with much
travail of spirit. He did try to be critical.

As for John Locke, he reveals in the "Epistle to the Reader," which
stands as a preface to the "Essay," the critical spirit in which his
work was taken up. "Were it fit to trouble thee," he writes, "with the
history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends
meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from
this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that
rose on every side. After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without
coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it
came into my thoughts, that we took a wrong course; and that before we
set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to
examine our own abilities, and to see what objects our understandings
were, or were not, fitted to deal with."

This problem, proposed by himself to his little circle of friends,
Locke attacked with earnestness, and as a result he brought out many
years later the work which has since become so famous. The book is
literally a critique of the reason, although a very different critique
from that worked out by Kant.

"If, by this inquiry into the nature of the understanding," says Locke,
"I can discover the powers thereof, how far they reach, to what things
they are in any degree proportionate, and where they fail us; I suppose
it may be of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more
cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop
when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a
quiet ignorance of those things which upon examination are found to be
beyond the reach of our capacities." [2]

To the difficulties of the task our author is fully alive: "The
understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all
other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains
to set it at a distance, and make it its own object. But whatever be
the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry, whatever it be
that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves, sure I am that all the
light we can let in upon our own minds, all the acquaintance we can
make with our own understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but
bring us great advantage, in directing our thoughts in the search, of
other things." [3]

(2) Thus, many men have attempted to produce a critical philosophy, and
in much the same sense as that in which Kant uses the words. Those who
have come after them have decided that they were not sufficiently
critical, that they have made unjustifiable assumptions. When we come
to read Kant, we will, if we have read the history of philosophy with
profit, not forget to ask ourselves if he has not sinned in the same
way.

For example, we will ask;--

(a) Was Kant right in maintaining that we find in experience synthetic
judgments (section 51) that are not founded upon experience, but yield
such information as is beyond the reach of the empiricist? There are
those who think that the judgments to which he alludes in evidence of
his contention--the mathematical, for instance--are not of this
character.

(b) Was he justified in assuming that all the ordering of our world is
due to the activity of mind, and that merely the raw material is
"given" us through the senses? There are many who demur against such a
statement, and hold that it is, if not in all senses untrue, at least
highly misleading, since it seems to argue that there is no really
external world at all. Moreover, they claim that the doctrine is
neither self-evident nor susceptible of proper proof.

(c) Was Kant justified in assuming that, even if we attribute the
"form" or arrangement of the world we know to the native activity of
the mind, the necessity and universality of our knowledge is assured?
Let us grant that the proposition, whatever happens must have an
adequate cause, is a "form of thought." What guarantee have we that
the "forms of thought" must ever remain changeless? If it is an
assumption for the empiricist to declare that what has been true in the
past will be true in the future, that earlier experiences of the world
will not be contradicted by later; what is it for the Kantian to
maintain that the order which he finds in his experience will
necessarily and always be the order of all future experiences?
Transferring an assumption to the field of mind does not make it less
of an assumption.

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