The Religious Aspect of Philosophy/Chapter 9

by Josiah Royce

CHAPTER IX.

THE WORLD OF POSTULATES.

Das beständige Wetzen der Messer ist langweilig, wenn man Nichts zu schneiden vorhat. — Lotze, Metaphysik.

What’s so false as truth is
False to thee?

Browning.

If the reader has become thoroughly weary of the world of doubt, we are only glad of the fact. Armed with a gemiine philosophy, a man may indeed go back to that world, and find in it an expression of ideal truth in empirical form. We hope to have such a right ourselves in time; but, without a well thought out philosophy, a man venturing into the world of empirical facts to find there any religious significance actually discovers himself to be in a nest of hornets; and he deserves as much. We desired to bring the reader to feel this with us; else our own prudent flight from that world to another might seem to him unnecessary. Now we are ready to come nearer to our former question. What right has any one to assume that empirical external world at all as having any absolute truth? “O thou that hast troubled us,” we may say, “what art thou at bottom more than our own assumption?” What right has that external world to be the sole region where we could seek the religious truth, when perchance the external world, as we assumed it, is not a truth at all? Let us consider once more our steps. Perchance the religiously inspiring reality is in some higher world. If we are only skeptical enough, perchance we shall find that Reality. Then, indeed, the old assumption of an external world of empirical facts may remain a part of our future thought, but it will get a new sense, and occupy a new place.

The first answer that occurs to this our question about the meaning of the external world that has so far troubled us, is this: The assumed world is no fixed datum, to which we are bound to submit at all hazards, but a postulate, which is made to satisfy certain familiar human needs. If this postulate is found to have no religious significance, we may supplement the doubt thus arising by remembering that we who postulated once have the right to postulate again. Our religiously satisfactory truth may be reached, not by hypotheses about powers in the empirical world, but by a deeper faith in something that is eternal, and behind or above the world of the senses.

This view gives us a new world, the world of the Postulates. We cannot be content to remain in this world, but we must pass through it on our way upwards. Let us hear it described.

I.

The world of Doubt has passed before us, a huge mass of inexplicable facts. Here and there we find a connection; we hope that we shall soon find more connection; but still the vast plan, if indeed there be a plan, we search for in vain. But now, strangely enough, all this doubt affects in no wise the willing trustfulness of our devotion to the interests, not only of common life, but also of science. The doubt confuses us only when we talk of leligion. That the world as a whole is dark, nobody admits more cheerfully than does the modern scientific man, even when he looks to his science for all his religious consolation. For he seeks no consolation save what the phenomena as such furnish. But his philosophical doubt about the ultimate foundation of science is no check to his scientific ambition. He believes in science just as ardently as if he did not in the very first breath of each new philosophical dispute declare that the real world is unknowable. His faith in the methods of his specialty is as firm as his indifference to all extra-scientific speculation. His work is in fact done with a kind of instinctive confidence in himself and his fellows. The instinct is no doubt highly trained, but it remains an instinct, and a delightful one it is to him. The untrained instincts of the unscientific man must indeed be criticised and altered in many respects ere they can serve the purposes of science; but, after all the criticisms and alterations, the instinct remains with almost all men an instinct, — useful, pleasing, yes, indispensable; but its philosophical justification few people care to know, while its self-confidence every scientific essay, or lecture, or instructor will attest. Why now is it that, trusting as we all do this scientific instinct, we all feel it hard to give a like trust to the religious instinct, whose most general tendency is to have some sort of faith in the goodness of things? Why is it that the doubtfulness and the contradictions of the real world seem to everybody to throw a cloud upon religion, even when it is not supernatural religion, but to have no significance whatever for the bases of science? This scientific notion of a world of law, all of whose facts could conceivably be predicted by one formula, why does that remain in our minds untouched by the doubts of the skeptical philosophers, while the same skepticism at once seems to remove from us that trust in the moral goodness of things which religion has tried to establish in our hearts? Shall the world be indifferent to one set of our ideals, and not to another? Shall the moral value of things be dark, and not also their value for the purposes of science? Why is the one doctrine so different from the other? You are placed in a world of confusion, and you assert that in its ultimate and eternal nature it answers your moral needs. That seems presumptuous. You did not make that world. How do you know whether it cares for your moral ideals? Very well then, be impartial. You are placed in a world of confusion, and you assert that it answers your intellectual needs, namely, that it is a world of order, whose facts could be reduced to some rational and intelligible unity. What business have you to do that? In both cases you transcend experience. Nature gives you in experience partial evil that you cannot in all cases perceive to be universal good. Nature also gives you in experience partial chaos that you cannot in all cases perceive to be universal order. But unwaveringly you insist that nature is orderly, that the chaos is an illusion; and still you do not feel ready to insist that the partial evil is universal good. Why is this so? Is the ethical side of reality less important than the other? Or is it the very importance of the religious aspect of things that makes us more ready to doubt the truth of this aspect?

Such questions occur to us as suggesting a possible way out of our difficulties. It is not exactly our desired way, but is it not possibly a good way? Science, namely, uses a certain kind of faith, whenever such faith is practically necessary. This scientific faith is indeed no faith in particular uninvestigated facts, but it is a faith in general methods and principles. The creed of science knows of no dogmas about unexperienced single facts, as such; but it does know of dogmas about the general form of the laws that must be assumed to govern all experience. Now why may not religion be reduced to certain essential general and fundamental moral demands, that we must make in the presence of reality? Why are not these a legitimate, yes, a morally necessary object of faith? Why, as the scientific man postulates a theoretical rationality in the world, may not we postulate a moral rationality in the world? These questions stand in our path. Might not the answer to them transform our barren doubts into something less disheartening?

We see what all this supposed religious faith would mean. It would not be a faith in any particular facts of experience that might have for us personally a selfish value, whether greater or less. It would be, like the scientific faith, wholly general. It would demand that the world in its entirety should be regarded as in some higher sense morally rational. It would say: The real world must be, whatever its true nature, at least as high in the moral scale as my highest ideals of goodness. Have we a right to such a faith? Let us cautiously consider this point.

But at once we must distinguish the proposed religious faith from what we should call mere blind faith. Blind faith in what we cannot establish is indeed inadmissible. But then, is there not another kind of faith, the kind that Kant used in his practical philosophy? To this may we not now turn? Perhaps the world of the powers, approached in the usual way, is dark, but the world for the practical reason may be opened in another way. Kant said, in effect: “Such and such supersensual realities, of religious significance, cannot be theoretically proven; but we can see why we ought to postulate their existence, that is, we can see why we ought to act as if they existed. Behind the veil of sense, we must postulate that there is an intelligible world, in which all is harmony, and in which the highest good is realized.” May we not also try with Kant to do this?

We shall in any case find this effort, an effort that has been so often made since Kant, a subject well worth our study and careful examination. In truth it is not by itself satisfactory; but we shall see that it enters as one moment into the higher view that we shall hereafter reach. So, in our own way, we shall now try to answer the question suggested to us by Kant’s method. Does not then the religious aspect of the world lie in the fact that, despite the contradictions of the world of sense, we may, and indeed, morally speaking, must postulate, that the Eternal, of which this world is the mere show, is in itself absolutely righteous? We shall not be able to answer this question with a simple affirmative; but still, postulates must enter in some wise into every moment of our lives, and must therefore have some value in religion.

II.

In the last chapter we sought for a demonstration of religious truth, and found none. But perhaps it was not demonstration that we should have sought. Possibly religion may be content to rest on postulates.

A postulate is a mental way of behavior. In so far it is like all other thought. In general, to believe that a thing exists is to act as if it existed. But the act may be forced upon one, or it may be freely chosen. One cannot fail to act upon the principle that 2 + 2 = 4, so soon as he perceives it. But one may voluntarily determine to act in a given way, not being rationally forced so to do, and well knowing the risk. In such cases one voluntarily takes to himself the form of belief called a postulate. Thus, apart from any philosophic theory, we all postulate a certain kind of uniformity in nature. We do so, whenever we reflect upon the matter, voluntarily. For we then say that surprises are always possible, and that any law may have exceptions, but that we must act as if we knew certain laws to have no possible exceptions. Postulates, however, are not blind faith. Postulates are voluntary assumptions of a risk, for the sake of a higher end. Passive faith dares not face doubt. The postulate faces doubt, and says: “So long as thou canst not make thyself an absolute and certain negative, I propose to act as if thou wert worthless, although I do well see thy force.” Blind faith is emotion, and often cowardly emotion. The postulate is deliberate and courageous volition. Blind faith says: “I dare not question.” The postulate says: “I dare be responsible for assuming.” Examples of both are very common. Blind faith the fond parent has, who says of bis wicked son: “I know that he must be good, hence I will not suspect him, nor train him; I will not watch him, nor warn others against him.” A postulate the wise parent makes, who sends his full-grown son boldly out into the world, with the best attainable safeguards, saying: “It is useless to keep him longer in leading-strings, or to protect him from the world. It is now his place to fight his own battles, since I have done what I could to get him ready. I postulate that he will win the fight; I treat him, and must treat him, as if he were sure to win, although I well know the risks.” The sea-captain beginning his voyage postulates that he can get through. The general postulates that he will be victorious. The Prime Minister of a country postulates that he can do his country better service than could the Opposition. We all postulate that our lives are worth the trouble. Yet we all know perfectly well that many just such postulates must in the nature of things be blunders. But they imply not blind faith, but active faith. With blind faith little good is done in the world; without active faith, expressed in postulates, very little practical good can be done from day to day. Blind faith is the ostrich behind the bush. The postulate stands out like the lion against the hunters. The wise shall live by postulates.

III.

But how is this postulating activity actually related to our knowledge of reality? Much more closely than one might suppose. Very much of our thought naturally rests upon a blind faith, or upon what many take to be a blind faith; but this, when we reflect upon it with due attention to the office it fills, is transformed before our eyes into practically unavoidable postulates. Such are the assumptions upon which our science rests in forming its ideal of an “universal formula.” There may indeed be some deeper basis for these postidates of science. But most men know nothing of this basis. And so, when we accepted in our last chapter these postulates, we had to admit that they are a kind of faith. If we then nevertheless objected to certain religious doctrines that they rest on insufficient evidence, we did this because they set themselves up as dogmas. With further consideration, we might come to accept some one of them again in the form, not of a demonstrable dogma, but of a practically unavoidable postulate, uncertain of course, but taken and to be taken on risk; just as every one of us goes through the world taking all sorts of risks day by day. Anything not contradictory may be a possible object of postulates ; although, again, every postulate is to be assumed only after careful criticism, and only because we cannot do better.

To do justice then to the proper office of postulates in our religious theory, we must sooner or later consider in what cases they naturally arise, what is the proper extent of their use, what is the basis upon which they can be made, in any special case, to rest; and, finally, whether, in view of all this, we can give them any important place in our religious doctrine. We confess at once that we want something much better than a postulate as the basis of our religion, in case we can get it. If postulates are to have any part in our religion, we want them to be justified by some ultimate religious certainty that is more than a postulate. We shall investigate all that in time. We shall see what we shall see. Meanwhile, what is the work of postulates in the actual daily life of human thought?

Popular belief about an external world is for the first an active assumption or acknowledgment of something: more than the data of consciousness. What is directly given in our minds is not external. All direct data are internal facts; and in the strictest sense all data are direct. Suppose a merely passive acceptance of what is in consciousness, and you have no belief in an external world. An addition to the data of consciousness, a more or less clearly voluntary reaction, is involved in your idea of external reality. The truth of this principle appears when your belief in any particular object is called in question. You hold that you see yonder a snowy mountain. Your companion insists that beyond the wide misty valley there is to be seen only a gray cloud. You reassert your belief, and in the reassertion feel more definitely than at first the active addition of your own belief to the meagre data of sense. The addition existed, however, in your first assertion. Or again, one man is trying, perchance in sport, to make another doubt the existence of material objects. “There is no external matter,” says the first. “There are but these states of consciousness in our minds. Nothing beyond them corresponds to them.” The second, maintaining the position of the man of common sense, retorts sharply: “Doubtless I cannot refute altogether your fine-spun arguments; but they are nevertheless nonsense. For I persist in believing in this world of sense. I live in it, I work for it, my fellows believe in it, our hearts are bound up in it, our success depends upon our faith. Only dreamers doubt it. I am not a dreamer. Here is a stone; I hit it. Here is a precipice; I fear and shun it. My strongest conviction is concerned with the existence of this world of sense. Do your worst; I am not afraid of talk.” Thus then by every device of the active spirit, by reminding himself of his most cherished interests, of his affections and hatreds, by arousing liis social sentiments, by bodily acts, the practical man preserves himself from fantastical speculation. When better-trained thinkers call the belief in an external reality “a natural conviction, to be retained until we are compelled to abandon it,” or “a convenient working hypothesis, to be received on the testimony of consciousness, testimony assumed to be trustworthy until the opposite is proven,” what are these but similar practical considerations, appeals to the will? Concerning data of immediate consciousness such remarks would be wholly out of place. That I see a certain color at this moment is not a “convenient working hypothesis.” Is consciousness merely a “presumably trustworthy witness” when it testifies to the pangs of toothache? Nobody could balance evidence as to the reality of his sensation quâ sensation when consciousness is filled with the sound of a street-organ. Sound, color, pang, these are data, not merely things believed in. But the external world — that is actively accepted as being symbolized or indicated by the present consciousness, not as being given in the present consciousness.

In short, the popular assertion of an external world, being an assertion of something beyond the data of consciousness, must begin in an activity of judgment that does more than merely reduce present data to order. Such an assertion must be an active construction of non-data. We do not receive in our senses, but we posit through our judgment, whatever external world there may for us be. If there is really a deeper basis for this postulate of ours, still, at the outset, it is just a postulate.

All theories, all hypotheses as to the external world, ought to face this fact of thought. If the history of popular speculation on these topics could be written, how much of cowardice and shuffling would be found in the behavior of the natural mind before the question: “How dost thou know of an external reality?” Instead of simply and plainly answering: “I mean by the external world in the first place something that I accept or demand, that I posit, postulate, actively construct on the basis of sense-data,” the natural man gives us all kinds of vague compromise answers: “I believe in the external reality with a reasonable degree of confidence; the experience of mankind renders the existence of external reality ever more and more probable; the Creator cannot have intended to deceive us; it is unnatural to doubt as to external reality; only young people and fantastic persons doubt the existence of the external world; no man in his senses doubts the external reality of the world; science would be impossible were there no external world; morality is undermined by doubts as to the external world; the immovable confidence that we all have in the principle of causality implies the fixity of our belief in an external cause of our sensations.” Where shall these endless turnings and twistings have an end? The habits of the law-courts as condensed into “rules of evidence,” the traditional rules of debate, the fashion of appealing to the “good sense” of honorable gentlemen opposite, the motives of shame and fear, the dread of being called “fantastical,” Philistine desire to think with the majority, Philistine terror of all revolutionary suggestions, the fright or the anger of a man at finding some metaphysician trying to question what seem to be the foundations upon which one’s bread winning depends, — all these lesser motives are appealed to, and the one ultimate motive is neglected. The ultimate motive with the man of every-day life is the will to have an external world. Whatever consciousness contains, reason will persist in spontaneously adding the thought: “But there shall ba something beyond this.” The external reality as such (e.g. the space beyond the farthest star, any space not accessible, even whatever is not at any moment given in so far as it is viewed from that moment, in particular every past event) is never a datum. We construct but do not receive the external reality. The “immovable certainty” is not such a dead passive certainty as that with which we receive a pain or an electric shock. The popular assurance of an external world is the fixed determination to make one, now and henceforth.

In the general popular conceptions of reality we find then the first use of postulates. We have as yet no justification for them. But even thus we get no adequate idea of their use and of their number. We must look at the facts of every-day mental life a little more closely. For there is a curious tendency of many to make these postulates appear something else than what they are. Often they are interpreted as if they were no postulates at all, but data of sense. Often, again, their active nature is disregarded in yet another way, and they appear as blind passive faith. Such in fact they must appear if we reflect upon their mere content, and not upon the processes by which we get them. But if we interpret them rightly, we shall see that they ought to be regarded as beliefs, taken for the first on risk, and because the risk is worth taking.

IV.

Sometimes we hear men asserting that their beliefs are independent of their will. Such a man will express himself in some such way as the following: —

“I try to conquer prejudice; but having done this, I can do no more. My belief, whatever it is, forms itself in me. I look on. My will has nothing to do with the matter. I can will to walk or eat; but I cannot will to believe. I might as well will that my blood should circulate.”

But is this expression a fair one? Does such a man really remain passive in the struggle that goes on within him? We think not. These beliefs in such a man have resulted, we hold, from a sort of struggle between him and the surrounding world. The world has tried sometimes to check his thought, and to confine it to one channel; sometimes to confuse his thought, and to scatter it into spray before the quick, heavy blows of innumerable, disconnected sense apparitions. But the man, if he is a man of energy, has controlled the current of his thought. He has fought hard, now for freedom from oppressive narrowness of thought, now for wholeness and unity of thought; and perhaps he has in so far conquered as to be the master of a manly and many-sided system of doctrine. We think him responsible for this system; and we hold that any such man ought to admit the responsibility.

To study briefly the nature of the process involved in all such cases will be important for our whole doctrine. We shall see thereby how much our theory of the world must itself tend to fall under the head of the purely practical. We shall appreciate also the limitations of ordinary thought, and the need of some higher ideal standard to rescue us from the pure subjectivity of mere postulates. And we shall be contributing by the way to a question of applied ethics, the question of the morality of belief.

Every one recognizes that at least our more abstract knowledge depends largely upon our own mental activity. Knowing is not mere passive reception of facts or of truths. Learning is not solely an affair of the memory. The man that without reflection commits things to memory is justly compared to a parrot, and might yet more justly be compared to the sponge of Hamlet’s figure: “It is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again.” No knowledge, then, without active hospitality in the mind that receives the knowledge. But as soon as we recognize in mental life this our power to modify our knowledge by means of our own activity, just so soon do all the old comparisons of the mind to a wax tablet, to a sheet of paper, or to other like passive subjects of impression, lose for us their meaning. Mental life becomes for us, in view of these facts, a field of constant activity. The commonest processes of knowledge acquire a new significance.

Two kinds of activity are concerned in the attainment of knowledge. One kind consists in simply receiving impressions from without, such as sensations, or, on a higher plane, statements of truth; the other consists in modifying and in organizing these impressions. The receptive activity is partly a physical activity, since the one who receives information must use his eyes and ears, must keep awake, must at times move about; and this receptive activity is also partly made up of the mechanical processes of the memory. Association by contiguity, or learning by rote, is in the main a receptive process, though this process of reception requires some active effort on the part of the receiver. Committing words and sentences to memory is often hard labor, as we all of us learned when we first were tortured with ill-wrought geographies and grammars, or with merciless Latin declensions and conjugations. But of the whole of this receptive activity we shall make no further mention in this connection. Simply receiving, keeping your mind in a submissive attitude, turning your eyes in the proper direction, using your ears, writing down your notes, memorizing whatever needs memorizing — all this is essential to knowledge, but has no reactive effect, does not modify the form or the matter of your knowledge. Secondly, however, knowledge is determined for each of us by his own reaction upon what he receives; and this second mentioned kind of mental activity, that which forms our topic at present, consists in a modification as well as in an organization of what we have received from without. All processes of reasoning, and so all original discoveries in science and in philosophy, all speculations, theories, dogmas, controversies, and not only these complex processes, but, as we shall see, even simple judgments, commonplace beliefs, momentary acts of attention, involve such independent reaction upon the material furnished to us from without. The nature of this reaction we are further to examine.

Let us consider simpler forms of knowledge. Sense-impressions constantly suggest to us thoughts; in fact, we have few thoughts that are not either immediately suggested by sense-impressions, or else sustained in their course by a continuous stream of suitable sense-impressions. To carry on even a train of abstract reasoning, sense-impressions either present or repeated seem necessary as supports. But when sense-impressions come to us, what transforms them into thought?

The answer is, First of all, attention, an active mental process. The sense-impression is itself not yet knowledge. A sense-impression to which we give no attention slips through consciousness as a man’s hand through water. Nothing grasps and retains it. Little effect is produced by it. It is unknown. You cannot even tell what it is. For to know what such an unnoticed impression is would be to pay attention to it. But let us now consider some familiar examples of the working of attention. A simple instance will bring home to us how the boundaries of our consciousness are crowded with unknown impressions — unknown, because not attended to; but yet in some inexplicable way a part of our consciousness, since an effort of attention serves to bring them, any one of them, clearly into mental vision. At this instant you are looking at something. Now, without moving your eyes, try, by merely attending to your visual impressions, to say what is now in the field of vision, and where is the boundary line of the field of vision. The experiment is a little hard, because our eyes, condensed embodiments as they are of tireless curiosity, are always restless, and rebel when you try to hold them fast. But conquer them for an instant, and watch the result. As your attention roams about the artificially fixed visual field, you will at first, indeed, be confused by the vagueness of all but the centre; but soon you will find, to your surprise, that there are more different impressions in the field than you at first can distinguish. One after another, many various impressions will appear. But notice: you can keep your attention fixed on only a portion of the field at a time. The rest of the field is always lost in a dim haze. You must be receiving impressions all the time from all points of the field. But all of these, except the few to which you pay attention, nearly or quite disappear in the dim thickets that seem to surround the little forest-clearing made by our attentive consciousness. A like experiment can be tried with the sense of hearing, when you are in a large room full of people who are talking all around you in many independent groups. A mass of sound comes to your ear. Consciousness interferes to make you pick out one or another of the series of sounds, an act which is indeed made possible by the natural analytic tendency of the human auditory sense, but which does not take place without a noticeable effort of attention. When you are learning a foreign language, and are for a while much among those who speak it, there comes a time when your ear and mind are well enough trained to follow and understand ordinary speakers with only a little effort of attention; but yet, at this stage, you are able, by simply withdrawing your attention a mere trifle, to let very common phrases run through your sense without your understanding them one whit. You can thus, by a slight change of attention, convert the foreign language from a jargon into a familiar speech, and back again into a jargon, just as, in the fixed visual field, you can make yourself see an object pretty plainly, or lose it altogether, by ceasing to give attention.

All these instances, which could be indefinitely multiplied, prove, first, that what we call attention modifies the knowledge that we at any moment get; and secondly, that this modification, through attention, may take place without any change in the impressions that at any moment come from without. The first stage in getting knowledge from bare sense-impressions is therefore the modification of sense by attention — a process belonging wholly to the subjective side; i.e. to our own minds.

But what is attention? and how does it modify sensation? Apparently, attention in the previous instances has been merely a power to increase or to diminish the intensity of impressions. But is this all that attention does? No: there are many cases in which attention directly affects the quality, at least of our complex impressions. This direct modification is commonly attended by some alteration of our emotional state. It is a familiar fact, that in listening to a series of regular and even beats, such as the strokes of an engine, or of a pendulum, or the ticking of a watch, we have a tendency to modify the impressions by introducing into their series the more elaborate regularity of rhythm. In paying attention to them, we increase, at our pleasure, the intensity of every third or fourth beat as heard, and so make a rhythm, or series of measures, out of the actually monotonous impressions. Now attention, which here first acts by modifying the intensity of impressions, soon produces the effect of qualitatively modifying our total impression of the whole series. If I have taken the fancy to listen to the even strokes in quadruple time, intensifying by my own act every fourth stroke, the character of the series is changed for me. The impressions are less monotonous, and they arouse new associations. They seem to be caused by some force that rhythmically increases and decreases. Perhaps a melody, or some phrase of a few words, arises in my mind, and persists in associating itself with the strokes. Probably some vague feeling, as of rhythmic motion through the air, or of pleasure or of displeasure in the presence of some rhythmically moving living being, is awakened. Qualitatively, my consciousness is thus altered through my attention. I seem to be experiencing something that, as an objective reality, I do not experience. More striking becomes this qualitative alteration of experience through attention, in case you bring two watches of different beat, or a watch and a clock, and listen to both at once at the distance of a few inches, first, perhaps, stopping one ear to avoid confusion. Here, by attention, you make or try to make a compound rhythm, and this effort alters a good deal the total impression that you derive from the sound. If the two series are such that a simple small multiple of the interval of one gives you a simple small multiple of the other’s interval, you can combine the two series into one rhythm, and then there is an immediate impression as if the two series were really but the complex ticking of one source of sound. But if the series will not agree, there is an odd sense of something wrong, a disappointed effort to combine, joined, perhaps, with a tendency to hasten one of the series, so as to make it agree with the other. Another case where attention alters the quality of total impressions, and not merely the intensity of any part, appears in certain psychological laboratory experiments, described by Wundt in his “Physiologische Psychologie.” Here, for the sake of determining the actual time taken by an act of attention, an observer is to make an electric signal as soon as he becomes conscious of a certain impression, while the impression itself is produced by an assistant at a time exactly determined. The source of the impression is the ringing of a bell, the flash of an electric spark, or something of the kind agreed upon at the outset. To distinguish from one another the various causes of the delay of the signal, the conditions of experiment are variously modified. In one set of experiments, the observer does not know beforehand whether he is to experience a flash of light, or a sound, or some sensation of touch, nor how intense the sensation will be, nor when it will come; but he knows that he is to be on the lookout for one of the three kinds of sensation. He waits, with attention all aroused. In this case, it always takes him longer to signal than if he knew beforehand the kind and the strength of the coming sensation. Moreover, his attention now makes him uneasy; the coming sensation is expected, with signs of excitement, and is often received with a start. Here the feeling of effort that accompanies attention affects by its strength the character of the impression received. Moreover, in many of these experiments there appear phenomena that show that attention alters our perception of time, not merely as to length, but also as to sequence; so that under circumstances, an impression that really precedes another can appear in consciousness as succeeding it. Yet more: attention sometimes serves to combine two sets of simultaneous impressions, and to make them seem as if proceeding from one source.

So much for the influence of attention alone. But what is attention? We reply, evidently an active process. When impressions are modified by attention, they are actively modified. And if you ask about the nature of this active process, the reply is, attention, in its most elementary forms, is the same activity that in a more developed shape we commonly call will. We attend to one thing rather than to another, because we will to do so, and our will is here the elementary impulse to know. Our attention leads us at times into error. But this error is merely an accompaniment, the result of our will activity. We want to intensify an impression, to bring it within the sphere of knowledge. But in carrying out our impulse, we do more than we meant. We not only bring something into clearer consciousness that was before out of clear consciousness, but we qualitatively modify this thing in attending to it. I want to observe a series of beats, and in observing it, I make one beat in three or four seem heavier than the others, or I even alter the apparent length of one interval in three or four, by making it seem longer than the others. I observe a series of visual impressions, and at the same time a series of auditory impressions; if there is a certain agreement between them, I irresistibly unite these two series by my act of attention into one series, and refer them to a common cause. And so in the other cases. Attention seems to defeat, in part, its own object. Bringing something into the field of knowledge seems to be a modifying, if not a transforming, process.

We all know how this same law works on a higher plane. Giving our whole attention for a time to a particular subject seems necessary for the growth of our knowledge. Yet such attention, if long kept up, always modifies our power to know, affects our whole mental condition, and thus injures our power to appreciate the relations between the subject of our study and the other things in the world. Constant attention to one thing narrows our minds, until we fail to see the very thing we are looking at. Our lives are thus really passed in a constant flitting from one more or less partial and distorted view of things to another, from this one-sided judgment to that. Change the book you are reading, and your whole notion of the universe suffers some momentary change also. Think this week in the fashion of Carlyle, attending to things as he brings them to your attention, and human life — in fact, the whole world of being as you thought of it last week, when you were following some other guide — becomes momentarily clouded. This truth seems out of relation to that. Your change of attention qualitatively alters your apprehension of truth. Attending now even to the same things, you view them in new lights. The alteration of mental attitude becomes confusing to yourself. But refuse to make any such changes, settle down steadfastly to some one way of regarding all things, and your world becomes yet more misty. You see only a few things, and those in such a bad light that you are in danger of utter darkness. Frequent change of mental view (we of course do not mean constant change of creed or of occupation, but only frequent alteration of the direction of our thought) is essential to mental health. Yet this alteration implies at least some temporary change in our knowing powers, and so some change in our appreciation of truth.

Before going on to speak of the effect of our own activity upon our knowledge, when attention is combined with active recognition of impressions, we want to formulate the law that governs the action of attention upon sense-impressions apart from recognition. This law seems pretty well established by experience, and is, at all events, quite simple. It is this: Any act of attention tends, first, to strengthen the particular set of impressions to which it is at the moment adapted; and secondly, to modify those impressions in such a way as shall make the total impression derived from them all as simple an impression as possible. These two statements could be reduced to one, thus: Attention constantly tends to make our consciousness more definite and less complex; that is, less confused and more united. More definite, less confused attention tends to make consciousness; since, out of many vague impressions, attention fixes upon one or a few, and helps them to crowd out the others. Less complex and more united or integrated attention makes the impressions attended to; as when, for the indefinite multiplicity of the successive even beats of a watch or of an engine, attention substitutes the simpler form of a rising and falling rhythm of more and less emphatic beats, or as when two parallel series of impressions are reduced to one, by combination. If impressions are so complex and so imperative in their demands as to impede greatly the simplifying and clarifying efforts of attention, the result is a disagreeable feeling of confusion, that may increase to violent pain.

This law, that our consciousness constantly tends to the minimum of complexity and to the maximum of definiteness, is of great importance for all our knowledge. Here we have a limitation that cannot be overleaped. Whatever we come to know, whatever opinions we come to hold, our attention it is that makes all our knowing and all our believing possible; and the laws followed by this, our own activity of attention will thus determine what we are to know and what we are to believe. If things have more than a certain complexity, not only will our limited powers of attention forbid us to unravel this complexity, but we shall strongly desire to believe the things actually much simpler than they are. For our thoughts about them will have a constant tendency to become as simple and definite as possible. Put a man into a perfect chaos of phenomena, sights, sounds, feelings; and if the man continued to exist, and to be rational at all, his attention would doubtless soon find for him a way to make up some kind of rhythmic regularity, which he would impute to the things about him, so as to imagine that he had discovered some law of sequence in this mad new world. And thus, in every case where we fancy ourselves sure of a simple law of Nature, we must remember that a good deal of the fancied simplicity may be due in the given case not to Nature, but to the ineradicable prejudice of our own minds in favor of regularity and simplicity. All our thought is determined, in great measure, by this law of least effort, as it is found exemplified in our activity of attention.

But attention is not the only influence tbat goes to transform sense-impressions into knowledge. Attention never works alone, but always in company with the active process of recognizing the present as in some way familiar, and of constructing in the present ideas of what is not present. At these two other active processes we must very briefly glance.

Recognition is involved in all knowledge. Recognition does not always mean a definite memory of a particular past experience that resembles a present one. On the contrary, recognition is frequently only a sense of familiarity with something now present, coupled with a more or less distinct applying of some predicate to this present thing. I recognize a horse, a landscape, a star, a friend, a piece of music, a book, when I feel more or less familiar with the impression of the object in question, and when, at the same time, I predicate more or less distinctly something of it. This, I say, is my friend, or the north star, or Webster’s Dictionary, or Smith’s horse. Or, perhaps, in recognizing, I recognize, not merely the whole object, but one of its qualities, or of its relation to other things. Then I say, this is large or small, good or bad, equal or unequal to another thing, and so on. In all these cases, recognition involves a lively reaction of my mind upon external impressions. Recognition is not found apart from attention, though attention may exist more or less completely without recognition. Recognition completes what attention begins. The attentive man wants to know, the recognizing man knows, or thinks that he knows. Recognition implies accompanying attention. Attention without recognition implies wonder, curiosity, perplexity, perhaps terror. But what is the law of this process of recognition? Does the process affect the impressions themselves that are the basis of the recognition? The answer is: Very distinctly, recognition does affect the impressions. The activity involved in recognition alters the data of sense, and that in almost every case. Two of the ways in which this alteration occurs are these: (1.) In recognizing, we complete present data by remembered past data, and so seem to experience more than is actually given to our senses. Thus, then, in reading, we read over misprints (even against our own will), thinking that we see words when we do not see them, or when we see only parts of them. Again: in listening to an indistinct speaker we often supply what is lacking in the sounds he makes, and seem to hear whole words when we really hear but fragments of words. Or, merely whistling a few notes, we recall to ourselves, and seem to have present, the complex instrumental harmony of some music that we have heard played. Or, in dim twilight, we imagine the form of a man, and seem to see it plainly in detail, when, in fact, a mass of shrubbery, or a coat on a chair, is the one source of our impressions. In all these cases, the activity of recognition alters the data of sense, by adding to them, by fiUing out the sketch made by them. (2.) However, even the qualities of sense-impressions are altered according to the way in which we recognize their objects. The colors of a landscape are dimmer, and less significant as colors, so long as we recognize the objects in the landscape. Look under your arm, with head inverted, and the colors flash out with unwonted brilliancy. For when you so look, you lose sight of the objects as such, and give your attention solely to the colors. Mistake a few brown leaves in some dark corner of a garden for some little animal, and the leaves take on for the moment the distinctive familiar color of the animal; and when you discover your blunder, you can catch the colors in the very act of fading into their dull, dry-leaf insignificance. Many facts of this sort are recorded by psychologists and by artists, and can be observed by any of us if we choose. To separate a sensation from its modifications that are produced by recognition is not a little difficult.

Now, in both these kinds of alteration a law is observed, very similar to the one previously noted. The alterations of the data of sense in the moment of recognition are alterations in the direction of simplicity and definiteness of consciousness. The present is assimilated to the past; the new is made to seem as familiar as possible. This reaction of the mind upon new impressions is easily seen in our thoughts and words in the first moment of great surprise or fright. When Macbeth turns from his door to the table, and sees the ghost of Banquo in his chair, his first words are not the “Avaunt, and quit my sight!” wherewith he greets the second appearance of the ghost, nor yet even the “Which of you have done this?” that he utters as soon as he recovers himself. No: his first conscious reaction, in presence of the horrible impression, is a quiet remark, “The table’s full.” And when they tell him that there is a place reserved, he persists with a “Where?” In this scene, Shakespeare’s instinct is perfectly accurate. Our effort always is to make the new as familiar as possible, even when this new is inconceivably strange. It takes us some time to realize, as we say, a great change of any sort. Recognition, however, is yet further modified by the interest with which we at any moment attend to things. But when we speak of interest, we are led to the third kind of active modification by which our minds determine for us what we know.

At every moment we are not merely receiving, attending, and recognizing, but we are constructing. Out of what from moment to moment comes to us, we are building up our ideas of past and future, and of the world of reality. Mere dead impressions are given. We turn them by our own act into symbols of a real universe. We thus constantly react upon what is given, and not only modify it, but even give it whatever significance it comes to possess. Now this reaction takes a multitude of forms, and cannot be fully discussed without far more than our present space. But we can name one or two prominent modes of reaction of mind upon sense-data in this province of mental life.

1. Definite memory is possible only through present active construction from the data of feeling. Nothing can come to us certifying for itself that it formed a part of our previous experience. When we know a thing as past, we actively project our idea of it into a conceived past time. Without this active interference of our own minds, everything would be but a present, and there would be no time for us, only fleeting life from moment to moment.

2. Definite belief in external reality is possible only through this active addition of something of our own to the impressions that are actually given to us. No external reality is given to us in the mere sense-impressions. What is outside of us cannot be at the same time within us. But out of what is in us, we construct an idea of an external world. To be sure this belief needs higher justification, like all other beliefs. But at the outset it is just an activity of ours.

3. All abstract ideas, all general truths, all knowledge of necessary laws, all acceptance of doctrines, begin in like fashion, through an active process coming from within. Change the fashions of our mental activity, and nobody can tell how radically you would change our whole conception of the universe.

4. All this active construction from sense-impressions expresses certain fundamental interests that our human spirit takes in reality. We want to have a world of a particular character; and so, from sense-impressions, we are constantly trying to build up such a world. We are prejudiced in favor of regularity, necessity, and simplicity in the world; and so we continually manipulate the data of sense for the sake of building up a notion of a regular, necessary, and simple universe. And so, though it is true that our knowledge of the world is determined by what is given to our senses, it is equally true that our idea of the world is determined quite as much by our own active combination, completion, anticipation of sense experience. Thus all knowing is, in a very deep sense, acting; it is, in fact, reacting and creation. The most insignificant knowledge is in some sense an original product of the man who knows. In it is expressed his disposition, his power of attention, his skill in recognition, his interest in reality, his creative might. Exact knowledge is, in fact, best illustrated by cases where we ourselves make what we know. So only is mathematical knowledge possible; mathematical ideas are all products of a constructive imagination. And so it is in all other thought-life. Mentally produce, and thou shalt know thy product. But we must remember, for what we produce we are in some sense morally responsible ; and thus, in discussing the nature of knowledge, we are trespassing on the border-land of ethics.

To sum up all in a few words: Plainly, since active inner processes are forever modifpng and building our ideas; since our interest in what we wish to find does so much to determine what we do find; since we could not if we would reduce ourselves to mere registering machines, but remain always builders of our own little worlds, — it becomes us to consider well, and to choose the spirit in which we shall examine our experience. Every one is certain to be prejudiced, simply because he does not merely receive experience, but himself acts, himself makes experience. One great question for every truth-seeker is: In what sense, to what degree, with what motive, for what end, may I and should I be prejudiced? Most of us get our prejudices wholly from the fashions of other men. This is cowardly. We are responsible for our own creed, and must make it by our own hard work. Therefore, the deepest and most important of all questions is the one, “For what art thou at work?” It is useless to reply, “I am merely noting down what I find in the world. I am not responsible for the facts.” The answer is, “A mere note-book tliou art not, but a man. These are never simply notes; thy thoughts are always transformed reality, never mere copies of reality. For thy transforming activity, as well as for thy skill in copying, thou art answerable.”

V.

It is not then that postulates occur here and there in our thoughts, but that, without postulates, both practical life and the commonest results of theory, from the simplest impressions to the most valuable beliefs, would be for most if not all of us utterly impossible; this it is which makes active faith so prominent a subject for philosophical consideration. An imperfect reflection makes that appear as blind faith which ought to appear as postulate. Instead of saying that he takes all these things on risk, and because they are worth the risk, the natural man is persuaded by such imperfect reflection to say that he trusts very ardently that he is running no risk at all. Or again: the natural man is moved to fear any examination into the bases of his thought, because he does not wish to discover that there is any risk there. And so we live dishonestly with our thoughts. Where there is a deeper basis, that involves more than mere risk, let us find it if we can. But where we have nothing better than active faith, let us discover the fact, and see clearly just why it is worth while to act in this way.

To speak more particularly of the postulates of developed science. The ancient discussions about the basis of physical knowledge of all sorts have had at least this as outcome, that it is useless to pretend to make science of any sort do without assumptions, and equally useless to undertake the demonstration of these assumptions by experience alone. No one has ever succeeded in accomplishing such a thing, and the only difference among thinkers about these assumptions is that some think it worth while to seek a transcendental basis for them all, while others insist that a transcendental basis is as impossible as a purely experimental basis is inadequate, and that in consequence we can only use the form of threat and say: Unless you make these assumptions, the spirit of science is not in you. As for the exact form that in more elaborate scientific work ought to be taken by these postulates, opinion differs very much, but an approximation to their sense may be attempted very briefly as follows.

In addition to those postulates that, as we have seen, accompany and condition all thinking alike, science may be considered as making a more special assumption. This assumption has been well defined by Professor Avenarius, in his well-known essay on “Die Philosophie als Denken der Welt Gemäss dem Princip des kleinsten Kraftmasses.” He regards it as an outcome of the general law of parsimony that governs all mental work. The world of phenomena is conceived at any stage in the simplest form, and the reality that we accept is for us at any time the simplest description of the phenomena as known to us. To put this view in our own way, we might say that the world is scientifically viewed as a perfectly united whole, which would, if fully known, fully satisfy our highest mental desire for continuity and perfect regularity of conception. Therefore it is that the “universal formula” of the last chapter is a conception that expresses the scientific ideal. With less perfection, harmony, and unity of thought about the world, science will never rest content so long as she continues to be science. But for this very reason science postulates that this perfect order must be already realized in the world. It is not merely that this order is the practically unattainable but still necessary ideal for our reason; but we must postulate that this order is already present in things, far off as our thought is from it. This postulate gives life to our scientific thought. Without it our search for an order that need not exist is meaningless play.

This postulated order, however, if found, would mean for us relative simplicity and economy of conception. The infinite mass of phenomena would be conceived as one whole. The maximum of wealth of facts would be grasped with the minimum of mental effort. We postulate after this fashion that the world loves parsimony, even as we do.

To illustrate by the case of one science. A great master of mechanical science has called it the science which gives the simplest possible description of the motions in the world. If we accept this account of mechanics, we are at once puzzled by the fact that most mechanical theories make assumptions about the forces at work in the world, and that all of them predict coming facts. But forces form no part of the experience or of the mere description of motion. And the future is not yet given to be described. How then does all this agree with the definition in question? Very well indeed. For those who assume forces to explain given motions, always assume just those forces that will directly explain, not any description at random of the motions given in experience, but the simplest possible description. Any motion being relative, never for our experience absolute, we can assume at pleasure any point in the world as the origin or point of reference that shall be regarded as at rest, and so we can get an infinite number of descriptions of any given motions. We can make any object in the world move at any desired speed or in any desired direction, simply by altering the origin to which we shall choose to refer its motion in our description thereof. But all these possible descriptions are not equally useful for the purposes of the science. Some one of them is the simplest for all the motions of the system in question; and this we regard as best expressing the actual natural truth in the matter. The assumption of just such forces as woidd explain this simplest system of motions as described, satisfies us. We say, these forces are the real ones at work. But still we know that the forces assumed only express in another form the fact that the description in question is the simplest. Is this, however, really all that the science does with the given motions? No, one thing more the science assumes, namely, that if the system of motions in question is not subject to any external influence, it will remain fundamentally and in deepest truth the same in future, that is: The simplest description of the given motions in a system of bodies that is wholly independent of the action of bodies without the system, this description is permanent for all states of the system. This assumption is needed before mechanical science can venture on any prediction, or beyond mere descrip- tion of past and present motions. This is the pos- tulate of the uniformity of nature in its mechanical shape. The complete present description of the world would reveal the whole future of the world.^[1]

What, however, does this postulate of uniformity express for our thought? What is the philosophical outcome of it? It expresses for our thought the demand that nature shall answer our highest intellectual needs, namely, the need for simplicity and absolute unity of conception. Mechanical science can no more do without this assumption than can any other science.

The ground that we have here very briefly passed over is known to all readers of modern controversy. We can only add our conviction that, as far as it goes, the foregoing view is a perfectly fair one. Whether or no there be any deeper basis for this postulate, it is sure that science makes the postulate, and does not give any deeper basis for it. For natural science it is a faith.

Now this faith, not blind faith but postulate, not basely submitted to merely because we must submit to it, but boldly assumed because we think it worth the risk, wherein does it differ from what our fundamental religious faith would be if we made of that also no mere dogmatic creed, but a general assumption, no mere passive trust, but an active postulate? Beneath all the beliefs that we could not demonstrate in our last chapter, lay the determination not so much to prove one cast-iron system of dogmas, as to find some element of reality that shoidd have an infinite worth. The world should be at least as high as our highest conception of goodness. And to this end the partial evil should be in deepest reality universal good, even though our imperfect eyes could never show to us how this could be, — could never see through the illusion to the “imageless truth” beneath. Therefore, although we vainly sought among the Powers of the world for proof of all this, may we not still hope to approach the Eternal Reality with these postulates, and to say: “Though thou revealest to us nothing, yet we believe thee good. And we do so because this faith of ours is a worthy one.” Possibly then our Religion will be just the highest form of our conduct itself, our determination to make the world good for ourselves, whatever baseness experience shows us in it. Then we can say: Just as science is undaunted by the vision of the world of confusion, so shall our religious faith be undaunted by the vision of the evil of the world. We shall war against this evil in the trust that the highest reality is not against us, but with us, just as we try to comprehend the world with the faith that the highest reality is in conformity with our private reason. In both cases we take the risk, but we take the risk because it is worth taking, because to take it is the highest form of activity. As the faith of science helps to make life rational, so the religious faith helps to make life in the highest sense moral, by insisting that the ideal labors of our moral life are undertaken not alone, but in harmony with the world as known to the Infinite.

To make the parallel a little clearer, we may say that science postulates the truth of the description of the world that, among all the possible descriptions, at once includes the given phenomena and attains the greatest simplicity; while religion assumes the truth of the description of the world that, without falsifying the given facts, arouses the highest moral interest and satisfies the highest moral needs.

All this has often been said, but it has not always been clearly enough joined with the practical suggestion that if one gives up one of these two faiths, he ought consistently to give up the other. If one is weary of the religious postulates, let him by all means throw them aside. But if he does this, why does he not throw aside the scientific postulates, and give up insisting upon it that the world is and must be rational? Yea, let him be thorough-going, and, since the very perception of the walls of his room contains postulates, let him throw away all these postulates too, and dwell in the chaos of sensations unfriended. There is no reason why he should not do this unless he sees a deeper foundation for his postulates. We have no mere dogmas to urge here. Let one abandon all mere postulates if he has not the courage to make them, but then let one consistently give them all up. The religious postulates are not indeed particular creeds. One may abandon creeds of many sorts, and yet keep the fundamental postulate. But if he abandons the fundamental postulate of religion, namely, that universal goodness is somehow at the heart of things, then he ought consistently to cease from the fundamental postulate of science, namely, that universal, order-loving reason is somehow the truth of things. And to do both is to lack the courage of rational and of moral life.

Such is the way of the postulates. And yet we desire to find, if we can, a more excellent way. These postulates must be confirmed if possible, and then subordinated to higher results. It was the skeptical work of the last chapter to turn attention away from false or inconclusive methods of establishing religious faith. There we saw how much must seem, according to all the ordinary apologetic methods, theoretically doubtful. In this chapter we have seen how postulates, theoretically uncertain, but practically worth the risk, are at the foundation of our whole lives. Hereafter we shall seek to dig beneath these foundations to that other sort of theoretical certainty whereof we have made mention. If we get it, then all our work will have been worth while. Our skepticism will have saved us from antiquated methods, and from worn-out dogmas. Our faith will have been purified by being reduced to certain simple postulates that are not identical with the traditional creeds, although those creeds tried to express them. And both our skepticism and our faith will then finally become elements of a broader Religious Insight.

The dead external reality, into whose darkness we had to peer in vain for light, has indeed transformed itself. It is no more merely dead, or merely external. It is ours and for us. It was a world of doubt in the last chapter, just because we made it dead and external. Now that we have seen how it was the expression of postulates, it seems to have become plastic and ideal. Yet what it has gained in plasticity, it has lost in authority. After all, is not this business of postulating into the void a dangerous one? Is it not a hollow and empty activity this, if we really reflect upon it? Courage indeed we must have; but is religion no more than courage? Nay; we must have if possible some eternal Truth, that is not our postulate, to rest upon. Can we not get some such comfort? And may there not be some higher relation of our lives to that truth, — such a relation that the truth shall be neither the arbitrary product of our subjective postulates, nor a dead external reality such as was the world of doubt ? We are bound still to search.

Notes

1. Professor Clifford, in his essay on Theories of the Physical Forces, in his Lectures and Essays, vol. i., p. 109 sqq., has undertaken to reduce this postulate to the general one of Continuity. The philosophical outcome would be the same.