George Stuart Fullerton - An Introduction to Philosophy

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Moreover, as we read thus with discrimination, we begin to see that the
great men of the past have not spoken without appearing to have
sufficient reason for their utterances in the light of the times in
which they lived. We may make it a rule that, when they seem to be
speaking arbitrarily, to be laying before us reasonings that are not
reasonings, dogmas for which no excuse seems to be offered, the fault
lies in our lack of comprehension. Until we can understand how a man,
living in a certain century, and breathing a certain moral and
intellectual atmosphere, could have said what he did, we should assume
that we have read his words, but not his real thought. For the latter
there is always a psychological, if not a logical, justification.

And this brings me to the question of the language in which the
philosophers have expressed their thoughts. The more attentively one
reads the history of philosophy, the clearer it becomes that the number
of problems with which the philosophers have occupied themselves is not
overwhelmingly great. If each philosophy which confronts us seems to
us quite new and strange, it is because we have not arrived at the
stage at which it is possible for us to recognize old friends with new
faces. The same old problems, the problems which must ever present
themselves to reflective thought, recur again and again. The form is
more or less changed, and the answers which are given to them are not,
of course, always the same. Each age expresses itself in a somewhat
different way. But sometimes the solution proposed for a given problem
is almost the same in substance, even when the two thinkers we are
contrasting belong to centuries which lie far apart. In this case,
only our own inability to strip off the husk and reach the fruit itself
prevents us from seeing that we have before us nothing really new.

Thus, if we read the history of philosophy with patience and with
discrimination, it grows luminous. We come to feel nearer to the men
of the past. We see that we may learn from their successes and from
their failures; and if we are capable of drawing a moral at all, we
apply the lesson to ourselves.

CHAPTER XXIV

SOME PRACTICAL ADMONITIONS

88. BE PREPARED TO ENTER UPON A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS.--We have
seen that reflective thought tries to analyze experience and to attain
to a clear view of the elements that make it up--to realize vividly
what is the very texture of the known world, and what is the nature of
knowledge. It is possible to live to old age, as many do, without even
a suspicion that there may be such a knowledge as this, and
nevertheless to possess a large measure of rather vague but very
serviceable information about both minds and bodies.

It is something of a shock to learn that a multitude of questions may
be asked touching the most familiar things in our experience, and that
our comprehension of those things may be so vague that we grope in vain
for an answer. Space, time, matter, minds, realities,--with these
things we have to do every day. Can it be that we do not know what
they are? Then we must be blind, indeed. How shall we set about
enlightening our ignorance?

Not as we have enlightened our ignorance heretofore. We have added
fact to fact; but our task now is to gain a new light on all facts, to
see them from a different point of view; not so much to extend our
knowledge as to deepen it.

It seems scarcely necessary to point out that our world, when looked at
for the first time in this new way, may seem to be a new and strange
world. The real things of our experience may appear to melt away, to
be dissolved by reflection into mere shadows and unrealities. Well do
I remember the consternation with which, when almost a schoolboy, I
first made my acquaintance with John Stuart Mill's doctrine that the
things about us are "permanent possibilities of sensation." To Mill,
of course, chairs and tables were still chairs and tables, but to me
they became ghosts, inhabitants of a phantom world, to find oneself in
which was a matter of the gravest concern.

I suspect that this sense of the unreality of things comes often to
those who have entered upon the path of reflection, It may be a comfort
to such to realize that it is rather a thing to be expected. How can
one feel at home in a world which one has entered for the first time?
One cannot become a philosopher and remain exactly the man that one was
before. Men have tried to do it,--Thomas Reid is a notable instance
(section 50); but the result is that one simply does not become a
philosopher. It is not possible to gain a new and a deeper insight
into the nature of things, and yet to see things just as one saw them
before one attained to this.

If, then, we are willing to study philosophy at all, we must be willing
to embrace new views of the world, if there seem to be good reasons for
so doing. And if at first we suffer from a sense of bewilderment, we
must have patience, and must wait to see whether time and practice may
not do something toward removing our distress. It may be that we have
only half understood what has been revealed to us.

89. BE WILLING TO CONSIDER POSSIBILITIES WHICH AT FIRST STRIKE ONE AS
ABSURD.--It must be confessed that the philosophers have sometimes
brought forward doctrines which seem repellent to good sense, and
little in harmony with the experience of the world which we have all
our lives enjoyed. Shall we on this account turn our backs upon them
and refuse them an impartial hearing?

Thus, the idealist maintains that there is no existence save psychical
existence; that the material things about us are really mental things.
One of the forms taken by this doctrine is that alluded to above, that
things are permanent possibilities of sensation.

I think it can hardly be denied that this sounds out of harmony with
the common opinion of mankind. Men do not hesitate to distinguish
between minds and material things, nor do they believe that material
things exist only in minds. That dreams and hallucinations exist only
in minds they are very willing to admit; but they will not admit that
this is true of such things as real chairs and tables. And if we ask
them why they take such a position, they fall back upon what seems
given in experience.

Now, as the reader of the earlier chapters has seen, I think that the
plain man is more nearly right in his opinion touching the existence of
a world of non-mental things than is the idealistic philosopher. The
latter has seen a truth and misconceived it, thus losing some truth
that he had before he began to reflect. The former has not seen the
truth which has impressed the idealist, and he has held on to that
vague recognition that there are two orders of things given in our
experience, the physical and the mental, which seems to us so
unmistakable a fact until we fall into the hands of the philosophers.

But all this does not prove that we have a right simply to fall back
upon "common sense," and refuse to listen to the idealist. The
deliverances of unreflective common sense are vague in the extreme; and
though it may seem to assure us that there is a world of things
non-mental, its account of that world is confused and incoherent. He
who must depend on common sense alone can find no answer to the
idealists; he refuses to follow them, but he cannot refute them. He is
reduced to dogmatic denial.

This is in itself an uncomfortable position. And when we add to this
the reflection that such a man loses the truth which the idealist
emphasizes, the truth that the external world of which we speak must
be, if we are to know it at all, a world revealed to our senses, a
world given in our experience, we see that he who stops his ears
remains in ignorance. The fact is that the man who has never weighed
the evidence that impresses the idealist is not able to see clearly
what is meant by that external world in which we all incline to put
such faith. We may say that he _feels_ a truth blindly, but does not
see it.

Let us take another illustration. If there is one thing that we feel
to be as sure as the existence of the external world, it is that there
are other minds more or less resembling our own. The solipsist may try
to persuade us that the evidence for such minds is untrustworthy. We
may see no flaw in his argument, but he cannot convince us. May we
ignore him, and refuse to consider the matter at all?

Surely not, if we wish to substitute clear thinking for vague and
indefinite opinion. We should listen with attention, strive to
understand all the reasonings laid before us, and then, if they seem to
lead to conclusions really not in harmony with our experience, go
carefully over the ground and try to discover the flaw in them. It is
only by doing something like this that we can come to see clearly what
is meant when we speak of two or more minds and the relation between
them. The solipsist can help us, and we should let him do it.

We should, therefore, be willing to consider seriously all sorts of
doctrines which may at first strike us as unreasonable. I have chosen
two which I believe to contain error. But the man who approaches a
doctrine which impresses him as strange has no right to assume at the
outset that it contains error. We have seen again and again how easy
it is to misapprehend what is given in experience. The philosopher may
be in the right, and what he says may repel us because we have become
accustomed to certain erroneous notions, and they have come to seem
self-evident truths.

90. DO NOT HAVE TOO MUCH RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY.--But if it is an error
to refuse to listen to the philosopher, it is surely no less an error
to accord him an authority above what he has a right to demand. Bear
in mind what was said in the last chapter about the difference between
the special sciences and philosophy. There is in the latter field no
body of doctrine that we may justly regard as authoritative. There are
"schools" of philosophy, and their adherents fall into the very human
error of feeling very sure that they and those who agree with them are
right; and the emphasis with which they speak is apt to mislead those
who are not well informed. I shall say a few words about the dangers
of the "school."

If we look about us, we are impressed by the fact that there are
"schools" of philosophy, somewhat as there are religious sects and
political parties. An impressive teacher sets the mark of his
personality and of his preferences upon those who come under his
influence. They are not at an age to be very critical, and, indeed,
they have not as yet the requisite learning to enable them to be
critical. They keep the trend which has been given them early in life,
and, when they become teachers, they pass on the type of thought with
which they have been inoculated, and the circle widens. "Schools" may
arise, of course, in a different way. An epoch-making book may sweep
men off of their feet and make of them passionate adherents. But he
who has watched the development of the American universities during the
last twenty-five years must be impressed with the enormous influence
which certain teachers have had in giving a direction to the
philosophic thought of those who have come in contact with them. We
expect the pupils of a given master to have a given shade of opinion,
and very often we are not disappointed in our guess.

It is entirely natural that this should be so. Those who betake
themselves to the study of philosophy are men like other men. They
have the same feelings, and the bending of the twig has the same
significance in their case that it has in that of others. It is no
small compliment to a teacher that he can thus spread his influence,
and leave his proxies even when he passes away.

But, when we strive to "put off humanity" and to look at the whole
matter under the cold light of reason, we may well ask ourselves,
whether he who unconsciously accepts his philosophy, in whole or in
part, because it has been the philosophy of his teacher, is not doing
what is done by those persons whose politics and whose religion take
their color from such accidental circumstances as birth in a given
class or family traditions?

I am far from saying that it is, in general, a bad thing for the world
that men should be influenced in this way by one another. I say only
that, when we look at the facts of the case, we must admit that even
our teachers of philosophy do not always become representatives of the
peculiar type of thought for which they stand, merely through a
deliberate choice from the wealth of material which the history of
speculative thought lays before them. They are influenced by others to
take what they do take, and the traces of this influence are apt to
remain with them through life. He who wishes to be entirely impartial
must be on his guard against such influences as these, and must
distrust prejudices for or against certain doctrines, when he finds
that he imbibed them at an uncritical age and has remained under their
influence ever since. Some do appear to be able to emancipate
themselves, and to outgrow what they first learned.

It is, as I have said, natural that there should be a tendency to form
"schools" in philosophy. And there are certain things that make this
somewhat uncritical acceptance of a doctrine very attractive.

In the first place, if we are willing to take a system of any sort as a
whole, it saves us a vast amount of trouble. We seem to have a
citadel, a point of vantage from which we can look out upon life and
interpret it. If the house we live in is not in all respects ideal, at
least it is a house, and we are not homeless. There is nothing more
intolerable to most men than the having of no opinions. They will
change one opinion for another, but they will rarely consent to do
without altogether. It is something to have an answer to offer to
those who persist in asking questions; and it is something to have some
sort of ground under one's feet, even if it be not very solid ground.

Again. Man is a social creature, and he is greatly fortified in his
opinions by the consciousness that others share them with him. If we
become adherents of a "school," we have the agreeable consciousness
that we are not walking alone through the maze of speculations that
confronts those who reflect. There appears to be a traveled way in
which we may have some confidence. Are we not following the crowd, or,
at least, a goodly number of the pilgrims who are seeking the same goal
with ourselves? Under such circumstances we are not so often impelled
to inquire anxiously whether we are after all upon the right road. We
assume that we have made no mistake.

Under such circumstances we are apt to forget that there are many such
roads, and that these have been traveled in ages past by troops very
much like our own, who also cherished the hope that they were upon the
one and only highway. In other words, we are apt to forget the lesson
of the history of philosophy. This is a serious mistake.

And what intensifies our danger, if we belong to a school which happens
to be dominant and to have active representatives, is that we get very
little real criticism. The books that we write are usually criticised
by those who view our positions sympathetically, and who are more
inclined to praise than to blame. He who looks back upon the past is
struck with the fact that books which have been lauded to the skies in
one age have often been subjected to searching criticism and to a good
deal of condemnation in the next. Something very like this is to be
expected of books written in our own time. It is, however, a pity that
we should have to wait so long for impartial criticism.

This leads me to say a word of the reviews which fill our philosophical
journals, and which we must read, for it is impossible to read all the
books that come out, and yet we wish to know something about them.

To the novice it is something of a surprise to find that books by men
whom he knows to be eminent for their ingenuity and their learning are
condemned in very offhand fashion by quite young men, who as yet have
attained to little learning and to no eminence at all. One sometimes
is tempted to wonder that men admittedly remarkable should have
fathered such poor productions as we are given to understand them to
be, and should have offered them to a public that has a right to be
indignant.

Now, there can be no doubt that, in philosophy, a cat has the right to
look at a king, and has also a right to point out his misdoings, if
such there be. But it seems just to indicate that, in this matter,
certain cautions should be observed.

If a great man has been guilty of an error in reasoning, there is no
reason why it should not be pointed out by any one who is capable of
detecting it. The authority of the critic is a matter of no moment
where the evidence is given. In such a case, we take a suggestion and
we do the criticising for ourselves. But where the evidence is not
given, where the justice of the criticism is not proved, the case is
different. Here we must take into consideration the authority of the
critic, and, if we follow him at all, we must follow him blindly. Is
it safe to do this?

It is never safe in philosophy, or, at any rate, it is safe so seldom
that the exceptions are not worth taking into account. Men write from
the standpoint of some school of opinion; and, until we know their
prepossessions, their statements that this is good, that is bad, the
third thing is profound, are of no significance whatever. We should
simply set them aside, and try to find out from our reviewer what is
contained in the book under criticism.

One of the evils arising out of the bias I am discussing is, that books
and authors are praised or condemned indiscriminately because of their
point of view, and little discrimination is made between good books and
poor books. There is all the difference in the world between a work
which can be condemned only on the ground that it is realistic or
idealistic in its standpoint, and those feeble productions which are to
be condemned from every point of view. If we consistently carry out
the principle that we may condemn all those who are not of our party,
we must give short shrift to a majority of the great men of the past.

So I say, beware of authority in philosophy, and, above all, beware of
that most insidious form of authority, the spirit of the "school." It
cannot but narrow our sympathies and restrict our outlook.

91. REMEMBER THAT ORDINARY RULES OF EVIDENCE APPLY.--What I am going to
say in this section is closely related to what has been said just
above. To the disinterested observer it may seem rather amusing that
one should think it worth while to try to show that we have not the
right to use a special set of weights and measures when we are dealing
with things philosophical. There was a time when men held that a given
doctrine could be philosophically false, and, at the same time,
theologically true; but surely the day of such twists and turnings is
past!

I am by no means sure that it is past. With the lapse of time, old
doctrines take on new aspects, and come to be couched in a language
that suits the temper of the later age. Sometimes the doctrine is
veiled and rendered less startling, but remains essentially what it was
before, and may be criticised in much the same way.

I suppose we may say that every one who is animated by the party spirit
discussed above, and who holds to a group of philosophical tenets with
a warmth of conviction out of proportion to the authority of the actual
evidence which may be claimed for them, is tacitly assuming that the
truth or falsity of philosophical dogmas is not wholly a matter of
evidence, but that the desires of the philosopher may also be taken
into account.

This position is often taken unconsciously. Thus, when, instead of
proving to others that a given doctrine is false, we try to show them
that it is a dangerous doctrine, and leads to unpalatable consequences,
we assume that what seems distasteful cannot be true, and we count on
the fact that men incline to believe what they like to believe.

May we give this position the dignity of a philosophical doctrine and
hold that, in the somewhat nebulous realm inhabited by the philosopher,
men are not bound by the same rules of evidence that obtain elsewhere?
That this is actually done, those who read much in the field of modern
philosophy are well aware. Several excellent writers have maintained
that we need not, even if there seems to be evidence for them, accept
views of the universe which do not satisfy "our whole nature."

We should not confuse with this position the very different one which
maintains that we have a right to hold tentatively, and with a
willingness to abandon them should evidence against them be
forthcoming, views which we are not able completely to establish, but
which seem reasonable. One may do this with perfect sincerity, and
without holding that philosophical truth is in any way different from
scientific truth. But the other position goes beyond this; it assumes
that man must be satisfied, and that only that can be true which
satisfies him.

I ask, is it not significant that such an assumption should be made
only in the realm of the unverifiable? No man dreams of maintaining
that the rise and fall of stocks will be such as to satisfy the whole
nature even of the elect, or that the future history of man on this
planet is a thing to be determined by some philosopher who decides for
us what would or would not be desirable.

Surely all truths of election--those truths that we simply choose to
have true--are something much less august than that Truth of Evidence
which sometimes seems little to fall in with our desires, and in the
face of which we are humble listeners, not dictators. Before the
latter we are modest; we obey, lest we be confounded. And if, in the
philosophic realm, we believe that we may order Truth about, and make
her our slave, is it not because we have a secret consciousness that we
are not dealing with Truth at all, but with Opinion, and with Opinion
that has grown insolent because she cannot be drawn from her obscurity
and be shown to be what she is?

Sometimes it is suddenly revealed to a man that he has been accepting
two orders of truth. I once walked and talked with a good scholar who
discoursed of high themes and defended warmly certain theses. I said
to him: If you could go into the house opposite, and discover
unmistakably whether you are in the right or in the wrong,--discover it
as unmistakably as you can discover whether there is or is not
furniture in the drawing-room,--would you go? He thought over the
matter for a while, and then answered frankly; No! I should not go; I
should stay out here and argue it out.

92. AIM AT CLEARNESS AND SIMPLICITY.--There is no department of
investigation in which it is not desirable to cultivate clearness and
simplicity in thinking, speaking, and writing. But there are certain
reasons why we should be especially on our guard in philosophy against
the danger of employing a tongue "not understanded of the people."
There are dangerous pitfalls concealed under the use of technical words
and phrases.

The value of technical expressions in the special sciences must be
conceded. They are supposed to be more exact and less ambiguous than
terms in ordinary use, and they mark an advance in our knowledge of the
subject. The distinctions which they indicate have been carefully
drawn, and appear to be of such authority that they should be generally
accepted. Sometimes, as, for example, in mathematics, a conventional
set of symbols may quite usurp the function of ordinary language, and
may enormously curtail the labor of setting forth the processes and
results of investigation.

But we must never forget that we have not in philosophy an
authoritative body of truth which we have the right to impose upon all
who enter that field. A multitude of distinctions have been made and
are made; but the representatives of different schools of thought are
not at one touching the value and significance of these distinctions.
If we coin a word or a phrase to mark such, there is some danger that
we fall into the habit of using such words or phrases, as we use the
coins in our purse, without closely examining them, and with the ready
assumption that they must pass current everywhere.

Thus, there is always a possibility that our technical expressions may
be nothing less than crystallized error. Against this we should surely
be on our guard.

Again. When we translate the language of common life into the dialect
of the learned, there is danger that we may fall into the error of
supposing that we are adding to our knowledge, even though we are doing
nothing save to exchange one set of words for another. Thus, we all
know very well that one mind can communicate with another. One does
not have to be a scholar to be aware of this. If we choose to call
this "intersubjective intercourse," we have given the thing a sounding
name; but we know no more about it than we did before. The problem of
the relation between minds, and the way in which they are to be
conceived as influencing each other, remains just what it was. So,
also, we recognize the everyday fact that we know both ourselves and
what is not ourselves. Shall we call this knowledge of something not
ourselves "self-transcendence"? We may do so if we wish, but we ought
to realize that this bestowal of a title makes no whit clearer what is
meant by knowledge.

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