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Originally published as:

John Dewey. "Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality", Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, First Series, Vol. 3, (1903): 115-139.

Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality1. The Use of the Term "Scientific"

THE familiar notion that science is a body of systematized knowledge will serve to introduce consideration of the term "scientific" as it is employed in this article. The phrase "body of systematized knowledge" may be taken in different senses. It may designate a property which resides inherently in arranged facts, apart from the ways in which the facts have been settled upon to be facts, and apart from the way in which their arrangement has been secured. Or, it may mean the intellectual activities of observing, describing, comparing, inferring, experimenting, and testing, which are necessary in obtaining facts and in putting them into coherent form. The term should include both of these meanings. But since the static property of arrangement is dependent upon antecedent dynamic processes, it is necessary to make explicit such dependence. We need to throw the emphasis in using the term "scientific" first upon method., and then upon results through reference to methods. As used in this article, "scientific" means regular methods of controlling the formation of judgments regarding some subject-matter.

The transition from an ordinary to a scientific attitude of mind coincides with ceasing to take certain things for granted and assuming a critical or inquiring and testing attitude. This transformation means that some belief and its accompanying statement are no, longer taken as self-sufficing and complete in themselves, but are regarded as conclusions. To regard a statement as a conclusion, means (1) that its basis and ground lie outside of itself. This reference beyond itself sets us upon the search for prior assertions which are needed in order to make this one, i. e., upon inquiry. (2) Such prior statements are considered with reference to their bearings or import in the determination of some further statement, i. e., a consequent. The meaning or significance of a given statement lies, logically, in other statements to which we are committed in making the one in question. Thus we are set upon reasoning, the development of the assertions to

which a particular assertion or view commits and entitles us. Our attitude becomes scientific in the degree in which we look in both directions with respect to every judgment passed; first, checking or testing its validity by reference to possibility of making finer and more certain judgments with which this one is bound up; secondly, fixing its meaning (or significance) by reference to its use in making other statements. The determination of validity by reference to possibility of making other judgments upon which the one in question depends, and the determination of meaning by reference to the necessity of making other statements to which the one in question entitles us, are the two marks of scientific procedure.

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So far as we engage in this procedure, we look at our respective acts of judging not as independent and detached, but as an interrelated system, within which every assertion entitles us to other assertions (which must be carefully deduced since they constitute its meaning) and to which we are entitled only through other assertions (so that they must be carefully searched for). "Scientific" as used in this article thus means the possibility of establishing an order of judgments such that each one when made is of use in determining other judgments, thereby securing control of their formation.

Such a conception of "scientific," throwing the emphasis upon the inherent logic of an inquiry rather than upon the particular form which the results of the inquiry assume, may serve to obviate some of the objections which at once suggest themselves when there is mention of a science of conduct. Unless this conception is emphasized, the term "science" is likely to suggest those bodies of knowledge which are most familiar to us in physical matters; and thus to give the impression that what is sought is reduction of matters of conduct to similarly physical or even quasi-mathematical form. It is, however, analogy with the method of inquiry, not with the final product, which is intended. Yet, while this explanation may preclude certain objections, it is far, in the present state of discussion, from removing all objections and thus securing a free and open field. The point of view expressly disclaims any effort to reduce the statement of matters of conduct to forms comparable with those of physical science. But it also expressly proclaims an identity of logical procedure in the two cases. This assertion will meet with sharp and fiat denial. Hence, before developing the logic of moral science, it is necessary to discuss the objections which affirm such an inherent disparity between moral judgments and physical judgments that there is no ground in the control of the judging activity in one case for inferring the possibility of like control in the other.

2. The Possibility of Logical Control of Moral Judgments

In considering this possibility, we are met, as just indicated, by an assertion that there is something in the very nature of conduct which prevents the use of logical methods in the way they are employed in already recognized spheres of scientific inquiry. The objection implies that moral judgment is of such character that nothing can be systematically extracted from any one which is of use in facilitating and guaranteeing the formation of others. It denies, from the logical side, the continuity of moral experience. If there were such continuity, any one judgment could be dealt with in such a way as to make of it a conscious tool for forming other judgments. The ground of

denial of continuity in moral experience rests upon the belief that the basis and justifying principle of the ethical judgment is found in transcendental conceptions, viz., considerations that do not flow from the course of experience as that is judged in terms of itself, but which have a significance independent of the course off experience as such.

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The assertion of such logical disparity assumes a variety of forms, all coming back to pretty much the same presupposition. One way of putting the matter is that ethical judgments are immediate and intuitive. If this be true, an ethical judgment cannot be considered a conclusion; and hence there can be no question of putting it into orderly intellectual (or logical) relations with other like judgments. A merely immediate judgment is, by the nature of the case, incapable of either intellectual rectification or of intellectual application. This view finds expression in popular consciousness in the notion that scientific judgments depend upon reason, while moral valuations proceed from a separate faculty, conscience, having its own criteria and methods not amenable to intellectual supervision.

Another way of affirming radical disparity is that scientific judgments depend upon the principle of causation, which of necessity carries with it the dependence of one phenomenon upon another, and thus the possibility of stating every fact in connection with the statement of some other fact; while moral judgments involve the principle of final cause, of end and ideal. Hence to endeavor to control the construction and affirmation of any content of moral judgment by reference to antecedent propositions is to destroy its peculiar moral quality. Or, as it is popularly expressed, ethical judgment is ethical just because it is not scientific; because it deals with norms, values,, ideals, not with given facts; with what ought to be, estimated through pure spiritual aspiration, not with what is, decided after investigation.

Pretty much the same point of view is expressed when it is said that scientific judgments, as such, state facts in terms of sequences in time and of co-existences in space. Wherever we are dealing with relations of this sort, it is apparent that a knowledge of one term or member serves as a guide and check in the assertion of the existence and character of the other term or member. But moral judgments, it is said, deal with actions which are still to be performed. Consequently in this case characteristic meaning is found only in the qualities which exist after and by means of the judgment. For this reason, moral judgment is thought essentially to transcend anything found in past experience; and so, once more, to try to control a moral judgment through the medium of other judgments is to eliminate its distinctive ethical quality. This notion finds its popular equivalent in the conviction that moral judgments relate to realities where freedom is implicated in such a way that no intellectual control is possible. The judgment is considered to be based, not upon objective facts, but upon arbitrary choice or volition expressed in a certain sort of approval or disapproval.

I have no intention of discussing these points in their full bearing. I shall reduce them to a single logical formulation, and then discuss the latter in its most general significance. The justification of the single statement as a formulation of the objections just set forth (and of other like ones) will not be attempted, for further discussion does not turn upon

that point. When generalized, the various statements of the logical gulf between the moral judgment and the scientific reduces itself to an assertion of two antinomies: one, the separation between the universal and the

(118) individual; the other, between the intellectual and the practical. And these two antinomies finally reduce themselves to one: Scientific statements refer to generic conditions and relations, which are therefore capable of complete and objective statement; ethical judgments refer to an individual act which by its very nature transcends objective statement. The ground of separation is that scientific judgment is universal, hence only hypothetical, and hence incapable of relating to acts, while moral judgment is categorical, and thus individualized, and hence refers to acts. The scientific judgment states that where some condition or set of conditions is found, there also is found a specified other condition or set of conditions. The moral judgment states that a certain end has categorical value, and is thus to be realized without any reference whatsoever to antecedent conditions or facts. The scientific judgment states a connection of conditions; the moral judgment states the unconditioned claim of an idea to be made real.

This formulation of the logic of the problem under consideration fixes attention upon the two points which are in need of discussion. First: Is it true that scientific judgment deals with contents which have, in and of themselves, a universal nature -- that its whole significance is exhausted in setting forth a certain connection of conditions ? Secondly: Is it true that the attempt to regulate, by means of an intellectual technique, moral judgments -- which, of course, are thoroughly individualized -- destroys or in any way lessens distinctively ethical value?

In discussing the two questions just propounded, I shall endeavor to show: First, that scientific judgments have all the logical characteristics of ethical judgments; since they refer (1) to individual cases, and (2) to acts. I shall endeavor to show that the scientific judgment, the formulation of a connection of condition, has its origin, and is developed and employed for the specific and sole purpose of freeing and reinforcing acts of judgment that apply to unique and individual cases. In other words, I shall try to show that there is no question of eliminating the distinctive quality of ethical judgments by assimilating them to a different logical type, found in so-called scientific judgments; precisely because the logical type found in recognized scientific judgments is one which already takes due account of individualization and activity. I shall, then, secondly, endeavor to show that individualized ethical judgments require for their control generic propositions, which state a connection of relevant conditions in universal (or objective) form; and that it is possible to direct inquiry so as to arrive at such universals. And finally, I shall briefly set forth the three typical lines along which the construction of such generic scientific propositions must proceed, if there is to be a scientific treatment of ethics.

3. Nature of Scientific Judgments

The proposition that scientific judgments are hypothetic because they are universal is almost commonplace in recent logical theory. There is no doubt that there is a sense in

which this proposition states an unquestioned truth. The aim of science is law. A law is adequate in the degree in which it takes the form, if not of an equation,

(119) at least of formulation of constancy, of relationship, or order. It is clear that any law, whether stated as formulation of order or as an equation, conveys, in and of itself, not an individualized reality, but a certain connection of conditions. Up to this point there is no dispute. When, however, it is argued that this direct and obvious concern of science with generic statements exhausts the logical significance of scientific method, certain fundamental presuppositions and certain fundamental bearings are ignored; and the, logical question at issue is begged. The real question is not whether science aims at statements which take the form of universals, or formula of connection of conditions., but how it comes to do so, and what it does with the universal statements after they have been secured.

In other words, we have, first, to ask for the logical import of generic judgments. Accordingly, not questioning the importance of general formulae as the objective content of the sciences, this section will endeavor to show that such importance lies in the development of "sciences" or bodies of generic formulae as instrumentalities and methods of controlling individualized judgments.

1. The boast and pride of modern science is its distinctly empirical and experimental character. The term "empirical" refers to origin and development of scientific statements out of concrete experiences; the term "experimental" refers to the testing and checking of the so-called laws and universals by reference to their application in further concrete experience. If this notion of science be correct, it shows, without further argument, that generic propositions occupy a purely intermediate position. They are neither initial nor final. They are the bridges by which we pass over from one particular experience to another; they are individual experiences put into such shape as to be available in regulating other experiences. Otherwise scientific laws would be only intellectual abstractions tested on the basis of their own reciprocal consistencies; and the trait which is supposed to demarcate science from mediaeval speculation would at once fade away.

Moreover, if the generic character of propositions of physical and biological sciences were ultimate, such propositions would be entirely useless from a practical point of view; they would be quite incapable of practical application because they would be isolated from intellectual continuity with the particular cases to which application is sought. No amount of purely deductive manipulation of abstractions brings a resulting conclusion any nearer a concrete fact than were the original premises. Deduction introduces in regular sequence new ideas, and thus complicates the universal content. But to suppose that by complicating the content of a universal we get nearer the individual of experience is the fallacy at once of mediaeval realism and of the ontological argument for the existence of God. No range of synthesis of universal propositions in chemistry, physics, and biology would (if such propositions were logically self-sufficing) assist us in building a bridge or in locating the source of an epidemic of typhoid fever. If, however, universal propositions and their deductive synthesis are to be interpreted in the sense of the manufacturing and employing of intellectual tools

(120) for the express purpose of facilitating our individual experiences, the outcome is quite other.

The empirical origin, the experimental test, and the practical use of the statements of science are enough of themselves to indicate the impossibility of holding to any fixed logical division of judgments into universal as scientific, and individual as practical. It suggests that what we term science is just the forging and arranging of instrumentalities for dealing with individual cases of experience -- cases which, if individual, are just as unique and irreplaceable as are those of moral life. We might even say that the very fact which leads us upon a superficial view into believing in the logical separation of the generic judgment from the individual, viz., the existence of a large and self-contained body of universal propositions, is proof that as to some individual experiences we have already worked out methods of regulating our reflective transactions with them, while for another phase of experience this work remains to be done; i. e., is the problem of current ethical science.

The consideration of the technique by which the desired end of control is accomplished does not belong here. It suffices to note that the hypothetic judgment is a most potent instrumentality. If we inhibit the tendency to say, "This, A, is B." and can (1) find ground for saying, "Wherever there is mn there is B." and can (2) show that wherever there is op there is mn, and (3) have a technique for discovering the presence of op in A, we shall have warrant for identifying This, A, as B. even if all the outward and customary traits are lacking, and even if This, A, presents certain traits which, without the mediation of a generic proposition would have inevitably led us to identify it as C. Identification, in other words, is secure only when it can be made through (1) breaking up the analyzed This of na�ve judgment into determinate traits, (2) breaking up the predicate into a similar combination of elements, and (3) establishing uniform connection between some of the elements in the subject and some in the predicate. All judgments of everyday life, and indeed all judgments in such sciences as geology, geography, history, zo�logy, and botany (all sciences that have to duo with historic narration or with description of space coexistences), come back ultimately to questions of identification. Even judgments in physics and chemistry, in their ultimate and concrete form, are concerned with individual cases. Of all the sciences, mathematics alone [1] is concerned with pure general propositions -- hence the indispensable significance of mathematics as a tool for all judgments of technology and of the other sciences. It also is true in all the arts, whether commercial, professional, or artistic, that judgments reduce themselves to matters of correct identification. Observation, diagnosis, interpretation, and expert skill all display themselves in transactions with individual cases as such.

2. Thus far we have seen that the importance of generic statements in science is no ground for assuming in their logic from that of a scientific treatment

(121) of conduct. Indeed, since we have found that generic propositions originate, develop, and find their test in control of individual cases, the presumption is of similarity rather than of dissimilarity. Can we extend the parallelism farther ? Does it

apply equally well to the other characteristic trait of ethical judgment, viz., its reference to an act ?

Just as modern logic has seized upon the hypothetic and universal character of scientific statements, their bearing upon individual judgments into the background (but in truth so relegating them only because that bearing is always taken for grassed), so modern logic has emphasized the aspect of content in judgment at the expense of the act of judging. I shall now try to show, however, that this emphasis also occurs because reference to act is so thoroughly taken for granted that it is possible to ignore it -- that is, fail to give it explicit statement. I shall try to show that every judgment must be regarded as an act; that, indeed, the individual character of judgment proper, which has just been brought out, means, in final analysis, that the judgment is a unique act for which there is no substitute.

Our fundamental point is the control of the content or meaning which is asserted in any given judgment. How can such control be obtained ? So far we have spoken as if the content of one judgment might be elaborated simply by reference to the content of another -- particularly as if the content of an individual judgment, a judgment of identification, might be secured by reference to the content of a universal or hypothetic proposition. In truth, there is no such thing as control of one content by, mere reference to another content as such. To recognize this impossibility is to recognize that the control of the formation of the judgment is always through the medium of an act by which the respective contents of both the individual judgment and of the universal proposition are selected and brought into relationship to each other. There is no road open from any generic formula to an individual judgment. The road leads through the habits and mental attitudes of the one concerned in judging. The universal gets logical force, as well as psychical reality, only in the acts by which it is invented and constructed as a tool and then is employed for the purpose for which it was intended.

I shall accordingly try to show that activity shows itself at every critical point in the ! formation of judgment: (a) that it shows itself in the genesis of the generic or universal employed; (b) that it shows itself in the selection of the particular subject-matter which is judged; and (c) that it shows itself in the way in which the validity of the hypothesis is tested and verified, and the significance of the particular subject-matter determined.

a) So far we have assumed the possibility of building up and selecting for use some generic principle which controls the identification reached in an individual case. We cannot, that is to say, regulate judgments of the type, "This is typhoid," or, "That is Bela's comet," unless we have certain generic concepts, which are defined as connection of particular conditions, and unless we know when and how to select frond the stock of such concepts at our disposal the particular one required. The entire science considered as a body of formulae having coherent relations to one

(122) another is just a system of possible predicates -- that is, of possible standpoints or methods to be employed in qualifying some particular experience whose nature or meaning is not clear to us. It furnishes us with a set of tools from which choice has to be made. The choice, of course, depends upon the needs of the particular facts which have to be discriminated and identified in the given case -- just as the carpenter decides, on

the basis of what he is going to do, whether he will a hammer, a saw, or a plane from his tool-chest. One might as well suppose that the existence of possible candidates for office, plus the mathematically possible combinations and permutations of them, constitutes an election of one of them to office, as to suppose that a specific judgment follows from even an ideally exhaustive system of general principles. The logical process includes, as an organic part of itself, the selection and reference of that particular one of the system which is relevant to the particular case. This individualized selection and adaptation is an integral portion of the logic of the situation. And such selection and adjustment is clearly in the nature of an act.

Nor must we fail to make clear that we are concerned, not with selecting and adapting a ready-made universal, but with the origin of the universal absolutely for the sake of just such adaptation. If individual cases in experience never gave us any difficulty in identification, if they never set any problem, universals would simply not exist, to say nothing of being used. The universal is precisely such a statement of experience as will facilitate and guarantee the valuation of individualized experiences. It has no existence, as it has no check of validity, outside of such a function. In some case where science has already made considerable headway, we may, without error, speak as if universals were already at hand, and as if the only question were which one of them to pick out and employ. But such a way of speaking must not blind us to the fact that it was only because of the need of some more objective way of determining a given case that a universal ever originated and took on form and character. Did not the universal develop as medium of conciliation in just the same sort of situation of conflict as that in which it finds its use, such use would be absolutely arbitrary, and consequently without logical limit. The activity which selects and employs is logical, not extra-logical, just because the tool selected and employed has been invented and developed precisely for the sake of just such future selection and use. [2]

b) The individualized act (or choice) in judgments of identification shows itself not only in selection from a body of possibilities of the specific predicate required, but in the determination of the "This," or subject, as well. Students of logic are

(123) familiar with the distinction between the fact of particularity and the qualifications or distinguishing traits of a particular -- a distinction which has been variously termed one between the " That" and the " What," or between "This" and "Thisness." [3] Thisness refers to a quality which, however sensuous it be (such as hot, red, loud), may yet in its own meaning belong equally well to a large number of particulars. It is something a presentation has, rather than what it just is. Such a variety of applications its involved in the very notion of quality. It makes all qualities capable of consideration as degrees. It is responsible for the ease with which names of qualities transform themselves into abstract terms, blue into blueness, loud into loudness, hot into heat, etc.

The particularity, or better, singularity, of the judgment is constituted by the immediate demonstrative reference of the " This." [4] This demonstrative character means a preferential selection; it is a matter of action. Or, from the psychological side, the sensory quality becomes specific only in motor response. Red, blue, hot, etc., as immediate experiences, always involve motor adjustments which determine them.

Change the kind of motor adjustment and the quality of the experience changes; diminish it and the quality relapses more and more into indefinite vagueness. The selection of any particular "This" as the immediate subject of judgment is not arbitrary, however, but is dependent upon the end involved in the interest which is uppermost. Theoretically, any object within the range of perception, or any quality or an, clement of any one object, may function as the "This," or the subject-matter to be determined in judgment. Purely objectively, there is no reason for choosing any one of the infinite possibilities rather than another. But the aim in view (which, of course, finds its expression in the predicate of the judgment) gives a basis for deciding what object or what element of any object is logically fit. The implication of selective activity is thus an organic part of the logical operation, and not an arbitrary practical addition clapped on after the logical activity as such is complete. The I very same interest which leads to the building up and selection of the universal leads to the constructive selection of the immediate data or material with reference to l which the universal is to be employed. [5]

c) The experimental character of all scientific identification is a commonplace. It is so commonplace that we are apt to overlook its tremendous import -- the unconditional necessity of overt activity to the integrity of the logical process as such. As we have just seen, an act is involved in the determination of both the predicate, or the interpreting meaning, and of the " This," or fact to be identified. Were not both of

(124) these acts correlatives in a larger scheme of change of value in experience, they would both be arbitrary; and their ultimate appropriateness or adaptation to each other would be a sheer miracle. If one arbitrary act of choice reached forth to lay hold of some predicate from out the whole system of possible qualifications, while another act of choice, entirely independent in origin, reached out to seize a given area from the whole possible region of sense-perceptions, it would be the sheerest accident if the two selections thus made should fit into each other, should play into each other's hands.

But if one and the same end or interest operates in regulating both selections, the case stands quite otherwise. In such case, the experimental activity of verification is the carrying on of precisely the same purpose which found expression in the choice of subject and predicate respectively. It is in no sense a third process, but is the entire activity which we have already considered in two partial but typical aspects. The choice of meaning or predicate is always made with reference to the individual case to be interpreted; and the constitution of the particular objective case is always colored throughout by the point of view or idea with reference to which it is to be utilized. This reciprocal reference is the check or test continuously employed; and any particular more obvious experimental activity of verification means simply that conditions are such that the checking process is rendered overt.

I have now endeavored to show that if we take scientific judgment in its only ultimate form, viz., that which identifies or discriminates an individualized portion of experience, judgment appears as an act of judging; the act showing itself both in the selection and determination of the subject and the predicate, and in the determination of their values with reference or in respect to each other, and hence in deciding as to truth and validity.

Since in the discussion I have used a terminology which is hardly self-explanatory, and have introduced a variety of statements which to many will appear, in the present state or condition of logical discussion, to need rather than to afford support, I may point out that the force of the argument resides in matters capable of complete empirical confirmation. The truth or falsity of the conclusion reached depends upon these two notions:

First, every judgment is in its concrete reality an act of attention, and, like all attention, involves the functioning of an interest or end and the deploying of habits and impulsive tendencies (which ultimately involve motor adjustments) in the service of that interest. Hence it involves selection as regards both the object of attention and the standpoint and mode of "apperceiving" or interpreting. Change the interest or end, and the selected material (the subject of the judgment) changes, and the point of view from which it is regarded (and consequently the kind of predication) changes also.

Second, the abstract generalizing propositions of science have developed out of the needs of such individualized judgments or acts of attention; they have assumed their present form -- that is, developed their characteristic structures or contents -- as instrumentalities for enabling an individual judgment to do its work most effectively;

(125) that is to say, to accomplish most surely and economically the end for which it is undertaken. Consequently the value or validity of such concepts is constantly checked through which, by its success and failure, passes upon the competency of general principles, etc., to serve the regulative function for which they are instituted. [6]

So far as the scientific judgment is identified as an act, all a priori reason disappears for- drawing a line between the logic of the material of the recognized sciences and that of conduct. We are thus free to proceed, if we can find any positive basis. The recognition that the activity of judging does not exist in general, but is of such a nature as to require reference to an initial point of departure and to a terminal fulfilment, supplies exactly this positive ground. The act of judging is not merely an active experience at large, but one which requires specific motivation. There must be some stimulus which moves to performing this particular sort of act rather than some other. Why engage in that particular kind of activity that we call judging? Conceivably some other activity might be going on -- the sawing of wood, the painting of a picture, the cornering of the wheat market, the administering of reproof. There must be something outside the most complete and correct collection of intellectual propositions which induces to engage in the occupation of judging rather than in some other active pursuit. Science furnishes conditions which are to be used in the most effective execution of the judging activity, if one means to judge at all. But it presupposes the If. No theoretical system can settle that the individual shall at a given moment judge rather than do something else. Only the whole scheme of conduct as focusing in the interests of an individual can afford that determining stimulus.

Not only must a practical motive be found for the use of the organized scientific system, but a similar motive must be found for its correct and adequate use. The logical value of any intellectual proposition, its distinctively logical significance as distinct from

existence as mere ens rationis, depends upon practical, and ultimately upon moral, considerations. The interest must be of a kind not only to move the individual to judge, but to induce him to judge critically, bringing into use all necessary precautions and all available resources which may insure the maximum probability of truth in the conclusion. The system of science (employing the term "science" to mean an organized intellectual content) is absolutely dependent for logical worth upon a moral interest: the sincere aim to judge truly. Remove such an interest, and the scientific system becomes a purely aesthetic object, which may awaken emotional response in virtue of its internal harmony and symmetry, but which has no logical import. If we suppose, once more, that it is a case of identification of typhoid fever, it is the professional, social, and scientific interests of the physician which lead him to take the trouble and pains to get all the data that bear upon the

(126) forming of judgment, and to consider with sufficient deliberateness as to bring to bear the necessary instrumentalities of interpretation. The intellectual contents get a logical function only through a specific motive which is outside of them barely as contents but which is absolutely bound up with them in logical function.

If the use made of scientific resources, of technique of observation and experiment, of systems of classification, etc., in directing the act of judging (and thereby fixing the content of the judgment) depends upon the interest and disposition of the judger, we have only to make such dependence explicit, and the so-called scientific judgment appears definitely as a moral judgment. If the physician is careless and arbitrary because of overanxiety to get his work done, or if he lets his pecuniary needs influence his manner of judgment, we may say that he has failed both logically and morally. Scientifically he has not employed the methods at command for directing his act of judging so as to give it maximum correctness. But the ground for such logical failure lies in his own motive or disposition. The generic propositions or universals of science can take effect, in & word, only through the medium of the habits and impulsive tendencies of the one who judges. They have no modus operandi of their own. [7]

The possibility of a distinctively moral quality attaching to an intellectual activity is due to the fact that there is no particular point at which one habit begs and others leave oaf. If a given habit could become entirely isolated and detached, we might have an act of judging dependent upon a purely intellectual technique, Upon a habit of using specialized skill in dealing with certain matters, irrespective of any ethical qualifications. But the principle of the continuum is absolute. Not only through habit does a given psychical attitude expand into a particular case, but every habit in its own operation may directly or indirectly call up any other habit. The term " character " denotes this complex continuum of interactions in- its office of influencing final judgment.

4. The Logical Character of Ethical Judgment

We now recur to our original proposition: Scientific treatment of any subject means command of an apparatus which may be used to control the formation of judgments in all matters appertaining to that subject. We have done away with the a priori objection that the subject-matter to which recognized scientific judgments apply is so unlike that

with which moral judgments are concerned that there is no common denominator. We are now free to revert to the original question: What are the differentiating logical conditions of a scientific treatment of conduct? Every sort of judgment has its own end to reach: and the instrumentalities (the categories and

(127) methods used) must vary as the end varies. If in general we conceive the logical nature of scientific technique, of formulae, universals, etc., to reside in their adaptation to guaranteeing the act of judging in accomplishing a purpose, we are thereby committed to the further proposition that the logical apparatus needed varies as the ends to be reached are diverse. If, then, there is anything typically distinctive in the end which the act of ethical judging has to subserve, there must be equally distinctive features in the logic of its scientific treatment.

The question thus recurs to the characteristic differential features of the ethical judgment as such. These features readily present themselves if we return to those cases of scientific identification in which ethical considerations become explicit. There are cases, we saw, in which the nature of the identification -- and its consequent truth or falsity -- is consciously dependent upon the attitude or disposition of the judger. The term "consciously" differentiates a peculiar type of judgment. In all cases of individual judgment there is an act; and in- all cases the act is an expression of motive, and thus of habit, and finally of the whole body of habit or character. But in many cases this implication of character remains a presupposition. It is not necessary to take notice of it. It is part of the practical conditions of making- a judgment; but is no part of the logical conditions, and hence is not called upon to enter into a content -- a conscious objectification in the judgment. To regard it as a practical instead of a logical condition means that while it is necessary to any judgment, the one act of judgment in question requires it no more than any other. It affects all alike; and this very impartiality of reference is equivalent to no reference at ad as regards the truth or falsity of the particular judgment. Judging in such cases is controlled by reference to conditions of another quality than those of character; its presented data are judged in terms of objects of the same order or quality as themselves. Not only is there no conscious inclusion of motive and disposition within the content judged, but there is express holding off, inhibition, of all elements proceeding from the judger. From the standpoint of judgments of this type, such elements are regarded as logically merely subjective, and hence as disturbing factors with respect to the attainment of truth. It is no paradox to say that the activity of the agent in the act of judging expresses itself in effort to prevent its activity from having any influence upon the material judged. Accordingly through such judgments " external" objects are determined, the activity of the judger being kept absolutely neutral or indifferent as to its reference. The same idea is expressed by saying that the operation of motive and character may be presupposed, and hence left out of account, when they are so uniform in their exercise that they make no difference with respect to the particular object or content judged.

But whenever the implication of character, the operation of habit and motive, is recognized as a factor affecting the quality of the specific object judged, the logical aim makes it necessary to take notice of this fact by making the relationship an explicit element of content in the subject-matter undergoing judgment. When character is

(128) not an indifferent or neutral factor, when it qualitatively colors the meaning of the situation which the judger presents to himself, a characteristic feature is introduced into the very object judged; one which is not a mere refinement, homogeneous in kind with facts already given, but one which transforms their significance, because introducing into the very content judged the standard of valuation. In other words, character as a practical condition becomes logical when its influence is preferential in effect -- when instead of being a uniform and impartial condition of any judgment it is, if left to-itself (or unstated), a determinant of this content-value of judgment rather than that. Put from the other side, in the "intellectual" judgment, it makes no difference to character what object is judged, so be it the one judged is judged accurately; while in the moral judgment the nub of the matter is the difference which the determination of the content as this or that effects in character as a necessary condition of judging qua judging.

The conscious reference to disposition makes the object an active object, viz., a process defined by certain limits -- given facts on one side and the same facts as transformed by agency of a given type on the other. The object judged is active, not 'external," because it requires an act of judging, not merely as antecedent, but as a necessary element in its own structure. In judgments of the distinctively intellectual type, the assumption is that such activity as is necessary to effect certain combinations and distinctions will keep itself outside the material judged, retiring as soon as it has done its work in bringing together the elements that belong together and removing those that have no business. But in the ethical judgment the assumption is in the contrary sense; viz., that the situation is made what it is through the attitude which finds expression in the very act of judging. From the strictly logical standpoint (without reference, that is, to overtly moral considerations) the ethical judgment thus has a distinctive aim of its own: it is engaged with judging a subject-matter, a definitive element in whose determination is the attitude or disposition which leads to the act of judging.

It follows immediately that the aim of the ethical judgment may be stated as follows: Its purpose is to construct the act of judgment as itself a complex objective content. It goes back of the judging act as that is employed in distinctively intellectual processes, and makes its quality and nature (as distinct from its form -- a question for psychology) an object of consideration. Just because character or disposition is involved in the material passed in review and organized in judgment, character is determined by the judgment. This is a fact of tremendous ethical significance; but here its import is not ethical, but logical. It shows that we are dealing, from the strictly logical point of view, with a characteristic type of judgment -- that in which the conditions of judging activity are themselves to be objectively determined. The judger is engaged in judging himself; and thereby in so far is fixing the conditions of all further judgments of any type whatsoever. Put in more psychological terms, we may say the judgment realizes, through conscious deliberation and choice, a certain motive hitherto more or less vague and impulsive; or it expresses a habit in such a way as not merely to strengthen it practically, but as to bring to consciousness both

(129) its emotional worth and its significance in terms of certain kinds of consequences. But from the logical standpoint we say that the judger is consciously engaged in constructing as an object (and thereby giving objective form and reality to) the controlling condition of every exercise of judgment.

5. The Categories of a Science of Ethics

The ethical judgment is one which effects an absolutely reciprocal determination of the situation judged, and of the character or disposition which is expressed in the act of judging. Any particular moral judgment must necessarily reflect within itself all the characteristics which are essential to moral judgment �berhaupt. No matter how striking or how unique the material of any particular ethical experience, it is at least an ethical experience; and as such its consideration or interpretation must conform to the conditions involved in the very act of judging. A judgment which institutes the reciprocal determination just described has its own characteristic structure or organization. The work that it has to do gives it certain limiting or defining elements and properties. These constitute the ultimate Terms or Categories of all ethical science. Moreover, since these terms are reflected in every moral experience that is in course of judgment, they do not remain formal or barren, but are instruments of analysis of any concrete situation that is subjected to scientific scrutiny.

The distinctively intellectual judgment, that of construing one object in terms of other similar objects, has necessarily its own inherent structure which supplies the ultimate categories of all physical science. Units of space, time, mass, energy, etc., define to us the limiting conditions under which judgments of this type do their work. Now, a type of judgment which determines a situation in terms of character, which is concerned with constructing what may be termed indifferently an active situation or a consciously active agency, has a like logical title to the standpoints and methods; the tools, which are necessary to its task. Ethical discussion is full of such terms: the natural and the spiritual, the sensuous and the ideal, the standard and the right, obligation and duty, freedom and responsibility, are samples. The discussion and use of these terms suffer, however, from a fundamental difficulty. The terms are generally taken as somehow given ready-made and hence as independent and isolated things. Then theory concerns itself, first, with debating as to whether the categories have validity or not; and, secondly, as to what their specific significance is. The discussion is arbitrary precisely because the categories are not taken as limiting terms; as constituent elements in a logical operation which, having its own task to perform, must have the means or tools necessary for its successful accomplishing. Consequently the primary condition of a scientific treatment of ethics is that the fundamental terms, the intellectual standpoints and instrumentalities, used, be discussed with reference to the position they occupy and the part they play in a judgment of a peculiar type, viz., one which brings about the reciprocal objective determination of an active situation and a psychical disposition.

(130) When the categories receive the fate which is meted out to them in current discussion, when they are taken up in accidental because isolated ways, there is no method of controlling formation of judgment regarding them. Consequently other judgments which depend upon their use are in an increasing measure uncontrolled. The very tools

which are necessary in order that more specific judgments may work economically and effectively are only vaguely known as to their own structure and modes of operation. Naturally they are bungled in employ. Because categories are discussed as if they had some ready-made independent meaning, each of its own, there is no check upon the meaning which is assigned to any one of them, and no recognized standard for judging the validity of any. Only reference to a situation within which the categories emerge and function can furnish the basis for estimation of their value and import. Otherwise the definition of ultimate ethical terms is left to argumentation based upon opinion, an opinion which snatches at some of the snore obvious features of the situation (and thereby may always possess some measure of truth), and which, failing to grasp the situation as a whole, fails to grasp the exact significance of its characteristic terms. Discussion, for instance, about what constitutes the ethical standard -- whether conduciveness to happiness, or approximation to perfection of being -- must be relatively futile, until there is some method of determining by reference to the logical necessity of the case what anything must be and mean in order to be a standard at all. We lack a definition of standard in terms of the essential conditions of the ethical judgment and situation. Such a definition of standard would mot indeed give us an off-hand view of the make-up of moral value such as might be utilized for forming moral precepts, but it will set before us certain conditions which any candidate for the office of moral standard must be capable of fulfilling; and will [thereby serve as an instrument in criticising the various claimants for the position of standard, whether these offer themselves in generic theory or in the affairs of concrete conduct. Similarly, theorists have been attempting to tell what the ideal of man is, what is summum bonum, what is man's duty, what are his responsibilities, to prove that he is possessed or not possessed of freedom, without any regulated way of defining the content of the terms "ideal," "good," "duty," etc. If these terms have any verifiable proper meaning of their own, it is as limiting traits of that type of judgment which institutes the reciprocal identification of psychical attitude in judging and subject-matter judged. An analysis of the make-up of judgment of this type must reveal all the distinctions which have claim to the title of fundamental ethical categories. Whatever element of meaning reveals itself as a constituent part of such a judgment has all the claim to validity which moral experience itself possesses; a term which is not exhibited within such an analysis has no title to validity. The differential meaning of any one of the terms is dependent upon the particular part it plays in the development and termination of judgments of this sort.

(131) 6. Psychological Analysis as a Condition of Controlling Ethical Judgements

If it be true that a moral judgment is one in which the content finally affirmed is affected at every point by the disposition of the judger (since he interprets the situation that confronts him in terms of his own attitude), it follows at once that one portion of the generic theory necessary for adequate control of individual moral judgments will consist in an objective analysis of disposition as affecting action through the medium of judgment. Everyone knows, as simple matter of fact, that a large part of existing treatises on morals are filled with discussions concerning desirable and undesirable traits of character C virtues and vices; with conscience as a function of character; with discussions of intention, motive, choice, as expressions of, and as ways of forming, character. Moreover, a concrete discussion of freedom, responsibility, etc., is carried on

as a problem of the relationship of character to the media of action. The reciprocal determination, already set forth, of character and the content judged shows that such discussions are not mere practical desiderata, nor yet a mere clearing up of incidental points, but integral portions of any adequate ethical theory.

If character or disposition reflects itself at every point in the constitution of the content finally set forth in judgment, it is clear that control of such judgment depends upon ability to state, in universalized form, the related elements constituting character an objective facts Our particular judgments regarding physical things are controlled only in so far as we have, independent of and prior to any particular emergency in experience a knowledge of certain conditions to be observed in judging every physical object as physical. It is through reference to such laws, or statements of connected conditions, that we get the impartiality or objectivity which enables us to judge in a particular crisis unswerved by purely immediate considerations. We get away from the coercive immediacy of the experience, and into a position to look at it clearly and thoroughly. Since character is a feet entering into any moral judgment passed, ability of control depends upon our power to state character in terms of generic relation of conditions, which conditions are detachable from the pressure of circumstance in the particular case. Psychological analysis is the instrument by which character is transformed from its absorption in the values of immediate experience into an objective, scientific, fact. It is indeed, a statement of experience in terms of its modes of control of its own evolving.

Even popular consciousness is aware of many ways in which psychical dispositions modify judgment in a moral sense; and is accustomed to take advantage of its knowledge to regulate moral judgment in a moral sense; and is accustomed to take advantage of its knowledge to regulate moral judgments. A score of proverbs could be collected expressing ways in which psychological attitudes affect moral valuation. The ideas in

(132) such statements as the following, are commonplaces to the plain man: Habit, wont, and use lull the power of observation; passion blinds and confuses the power of reflection; self-interest makes the judger alert to certain aspects of the situation judged; impulse hurries the mind on uncritically to a conclusion; ends, ideals, arouse, when contemplated, emotions that tend to fill consciousness, and which, as they swell, first restrict and then eliminate power of judgment. Such statements, which might be indefinitely increased, are not only popularly known, but are commonly used in formation of a kind of hygiene of moral action.

Psychology proper differs from the aggregate of such statements through setting forth how various dispositions operate in bringing about the effects attributed to them. Just what are the various distinguishable psychical attitudes and tendencies? How do they hang together? How does one call forth or preclude another? We need an inventory of the different characteristic dispositions; and an account of how each is connected, both in the way of stimulation and inhibition, with every other. Psychological analysis answers this need. While it can answer this need only through development of scientific constructs which present themselves in experience only as results of the psychological examination, yet it is true that the typical attitudes and dispositions are familiar as functions of every-day experience. It is equally true that even the most atomic

psychology employs generalized statements about the ways in which certain " states of consciousness " or elements (the constructs referred to) regularly introduce certain other " states." The theory of association is, indeed, just a generalization concerning an objective sequence of elements which reflects to the psychologist the sequence of attitudes or dispositions which are found in the immediate course of experience. In particular the sensationalists not only admit but claim that the association of other states of consciousness with states of pleasure and pain have uniform tendencies which may be reduced to universal propositions; and which may be employed to formulate principles exhibited in all conduct. If such is the case with psychological atomism, every step toward recognition of a more organized, or inherently complex, mental structure multiplies the number and range of possible propositions relating to connection of conditions among psychic states -- statements which, if true at all, have exactly the same logical validity that is possessed by any "physical law." And in so far as these " states " are symbols of the attitudes and habits which operate in our immediate experience, every such proposition is at once translatable into one regarding the way in which character is constituted -- just the type of generic statement required by a scientific ethics.

Psychology of course does not aim at reinstating the immediate experience of the individual; nor does it aim at describing that experience in its immediate values, whether aesthetic, social, or ethical. It reduces the immediate experience to a series of dispositions, attitudes, or states which are taken as either conditions or signatures of life-experience. It is not the full experience-of-seeing-a-tree it is concerned with, but the experience reduced by abstraction to an attitude or state of perception; it is not the concrete getting angry, with all its personal and social implications, but anger

(133) as one species of a generic psychic disposition known as emotion. It is not concerned with a concrete judgment as such -- to say nothing of moral judgment. But psychological analysis finds in experience the typical attitudes it deals with, and only abstracts them so that they may be objectively stated.

Every statement of moral theory which purports to relate to our moral consciousness sees forth relations whose truth must ultimately be tested through psychological analysis -- just as every judgment regarding a specific physical phenomenon must finally satisfy certain generic conditions of physical reality set forth in physical analysis.

Psychological analysis does not, for example, set before us an end or ideal actually experienced, whether moral or otherwise. It does not purport to tell us what the end or ideal is. But psychological analysis shows us just what forming and entertaining an end means. Psychological analysis abstracts from the concrete make-up of an end, as that is found as matter of direct experience, and because of (not in spite of) that abstraction sets before us having-an-end in terms of its conditions and its effects, that is, in terms of taking other characteristic attitudes which are present in other experiences.

Hence purely psychologic propositions are indispensable to any concrete moral theory. The logical analysis of the process of moral judgment, setting forth its inherent organization or structure with reference to the peculiar logical function it has to accomplish, furnishes the categories or limiting terms of ethical science, and supplies

their formal meaning, their definition. But the logical category, say, of end or ideal becomes concrete only as some individual has actually experience of and with ends -- and this involves the act or attitude of forming and entertaining them. So the category of standard becomes more than a possible intellectual tool only as some individual actually engages in an experience concerned with right and wrong, and which, when viewed objectively, is regarded as a judgment. The entertaining of ends, the adjudging of values -- such acts are character-phenomena. Considered in abstraction from their immediate matter in experience, viz., just as acts, states, or dispositions, they are character-phenomena as these present themselves to psychological analysis. Even to consider any experience, or any phase of an experience, an ideal is to reflect upon that experience; it is to abstract and to classify. It involves passing judgment upon an experience; something beyond the concrete experiencing. It is, as far as it goes, psychological analysis -- that is, it is a process of exactly the same order and implying just the same distinctions and terms as are found in psychological science. But the latter, in making abstraction and classification conscious processes, enables us to control them, instead of merely indulging in them.

Hence it is futile to insist that psychology cannot " give" the moral ideal, and that consequently there must be recourse to transcendental considerations -- to metaphysics. Metaphysics, in the sense of a logical analysis of that type of judgment which determines the agent and the content of judgment in complete reciprocity to each other, may

(134) " give" the ideal -- that is, it may show how the form or category of ideal is a constitutive element in this type of judgment, and hence has whatever of validity attaches to this mode of judging. But such a logical analysis is far from transcendental metaphysics; and in any case we thus obtain only the category of ideal as a standpoint or terminus of a possible moral judgment. There is no question here of ideal as immediately experienced. Only living, not metaphysics any more than psychology, can "give" an ideal in this sense. But when ethical theory makes statements regarding the importance of ideals for character and conduct, when it lays stress upon the significance of this, rather than that, kind of ideal, it is engaged in setting forth universal relations of conditions; and there is absolutely no way of testing the validity of such statements with respect to their claim of generality or objectivity save by an analysis of psychic dispositions which shows what is meant by having-an-ideal in terms of its antecedents and consequences. If any general statement whatsoever can be made about ideals, it is because the psychic attitude corresponding to conceiving an ideal can be abstracted, and placed in a certain connection with attitudes which represent abstracts of other experiences. To have an ideal, to form and entertain one, must be a fact, or else ideals are absolute non-existence and non-sense. To discuss what it is to have an ideal is to engage in psychological analysis. If the having-an-ideal can be stated in terms of sequence with other similar attitudes, then we have a psychological generic statement (or law) which can be employed as a tool of analysis in reflecting upon concrete moral experiences, just as the "law" of falling bodies is of use in controlling our judgment of pile-drivers, the trajectory of shells, etc. The possibility of generalized propositions regarding any character-phenomenon stands and falls with the possibility of psychological analysis revealing regular association or co-ordination of certain tendencies, habits, or dispositions with one another. Hence the continued reiteration that

psychology as a natural science deals only with facts, while ethics is concerned with values, norms, ideals which ought to be whether they exist or no, is either aside from the point, or else proves the impossibility of making any general statements, metaphysical as well as practical and scientific, about such matters.

7. Sociological Analysis As a Condition of Controlling Ethical Judgments

We revert once more to our fundamental consideration: the reciprocal determination in moral judgment of the act of judging and the content judged. As we have just seen, adequate control of an act as determining a content involves the possibility of making character an object of scientific analysis -- of stating it as a system of related conditions or an object complete in itself -- a universal. We have now to recognize the converse, viz., that we can control the judgment of the act, hence of character as expressed in act, only as we have a method of analyzing the content in itself-- that is. in abstraction from its bearings upon action.

(135) The ethical problem needs to be approached from the point of view of the act as modifying the content, and of the content as modifying the act; so that, on one hand, we require, prior to a particular moral crisis, a statement in universal terms of the mechanism of the attitudes and dispositions which determine judgment about action; while, on the other hand, we need a similar prior analysis and classification of the situations which call forth such judgment. Which portion of the scientific apparatus we bring most prominently into play in any given case depends upon the circumstances of that caste as influencing the probable source of error. If the situation or scene of action (by which we mean the conditions which provoke or stimulate the act of moral judging) is fairly familiar, we may assume that the source of error in judgment lies in the disposition which is back of the experience -- that if we can only secure the right motive on the part of the judger, the judgment itself will be correct. In other cases circumstances are reversed. We can fairly presuppose or take for granted a right attitude on the part of the judger; the problematic factor has to do with the interpretation of the situation. In this case what is needed for right judgment is a satisfactory knowledge of the "facts of the case." Given that, the existing motive will take care of the rest. It is this latter aspect of the matter that we now have to discuss.

The only way in which the agent can judge himself as an agent, and thereby control his act -- that is, conceive of himself as the one who is to do a certain thing-- is by finding out the situation which puts upon him the necessity of judging it in order that he may decide upon a certain course of action. As soon as a conclusion is reached as to the nature of the scene of action, a conclusion is also reached as to what the agent is to do, and this decides in turn what sort of an agent he is to be. The merely intellectual judgment may be marked off as one in which a content or object is fixed in terms of some other object or content, homogeneous in worth, and where accordingly it is a necessary part of the procedure to suppress participation in judging of traits which proceed from, or refer to, the disposition of the judger. But judgments which are ethical (not merely intellectual) make no such abstraction. They expressly and positively include the participation of the judger in the content judged, and of the object judged in the determination of the judger. In other words, the object judged or situation

constructed in moral judgment is not an external object, cold, remote, and indifferent, but is most uniquely, intimately, and completely the agent's own object, or is the agent as object.

Such being the case, what is required in order to form such a judgment of the scene or conditions of action as will facilitate the most adequate possible construing of the agent? I reply: A social science which will analyze a content as a combination of elements in the same way that psychological analysis determines an act as a set of attitudes. It is assumed that the situation which calls forth distinctively moral judgment is a social situation, which accordingly can be adequately described only through methods of sociological analysis. I am aware that (even admitting the neces-

(136)-sity of some sort of scientific interpretation of the scene of action) it is something of a jump to say that such science must be sociological in character. The logical gap could be covered only by carrying the discussion of the categories of moral judgment to the point where their social value would explicitly show itself. Such analysis is apart from my present purpose. Here I need only recur to the proposition of the reciprocal determination, in the ethical judgment, of the judger and the content judged, and suggest that this idea requires in its logical development the conclusion shalt, since the judger is personal, the content judged must ultimately be personal too -- so that the moral judgment really institutes a relationship between persons, relationship between persons being what we mean by " social."

But in any case, some way of getting an objective statement of the situation, a statement in terms of connection of conditions, is necessary. Certain descriptive sciences are necessary and in many cases no one would deny that elements of associated life enter into the facts to be described. But even if it be admitted that the scene is social, this characterization does not exhaust the description. Any scene of action which is social is also cosmic or physical. It is also biological. Hence the absolute impossibility of ruling out the physical and biological sciences from bearing upon ethical science. If ethical theory require, as one of its necessary conditions, ability to describe in terms of itself the situation which demands moral judgment, any proposition, whether of mechanics, chemistry, geography, physiology, or history, which facilitates and guarantees the adequacy and truth of the description, becomes in virtue of that fact an important auxiliary of ethical science.

In other words, the postulate of moral science is the continuity of scientific judgment. This proposition is denied by both the materialistic and transcendental schools of metaphysics. The transcendental school draws such a fixed line between the region of -moral and of cosmic values that by no possibility can propositions which refer to the latter become auxiliary or instrumental with respect to the former. The fact that advance of physical and biological science so profoundly modifies moral problems, and hence moral judgments, and hence once more moral values, may serve as an argument against transcendental ethics -- since, according to the latter, such obvious facts would be impossibilities. Materialism denies equally the principle of continuity of judgment; It confuses continuity of method, the possibility of using a general statement regarding one object as a tool in the determination of some other, with immediate identity of subject-matter. Instead of recognizing the continuity of ethical with other forms of

experience, it wipes out ethical experience by assimilating it not simply with reference to logical method, but in its own ontological structure, to another form of objects defined in judgment -- that is, the physical form. If it is once recognized that all scientific judgments, physical as well as ethical, are ultimately concerned with getting experience stated in objective (that is, universal) terms for the sake of the direction of further experience, there will, on the one hand, be no hesitation in using any sort of statement that can be of use in the formation of other judg-

(137)-ments, whatever be their topic or reference; and, on the other hand, there will be no thought of trying to explain away the distinctive traits of any type of experience. Since conscious life is continuous, the possibility of using any one mode of experience to assist in the formation of any other is the ultimate postulate of all science -- nonethical and ethical alike. And this possibility of use, of application, of instrumental services makes it possible and necessary to employ materialistic science in the construction of ethical theory, and also protects in this application ethical values from deterioration and dissolution.

In conclusion, it may avoid misapprehension if I say that the considerations set forth in this paper do not involve any pedantic assumption regarding the necessity of using science, or logical control, in any particular instance of moral experience. The larger part, infinitely the larger part, of our concrete contact with physical nature takes place without conscious reference to the methods, or even the results, of physical science. Yet no one questions the fundamental importance of physical science. This importance discovers itself in two ways:

First, when we come to peculiarly difficult problems (whether of interpretation or of inventive construction), physical science puts us in possession of tools of conscious analysis and of synthesis. It enables us to economize our time and effort, and to proceed with the maximum probability of success to solution of the problem which confronts us. This use is conscious and deliberate. It involves the critical application of the technique and already established conclusions of science to cases of such complexity and perplexity that they would remain unsolved and undealt with, were it not for scientific resources.

In the second place, physical science has a wide sphere of application which involves no conscious reference whatsoever. Previous scientific methods and investigations have taken effect in our own mental habits and in the material dealt with. Our unconscious ways of apprehending, of interpreting, of deliberating, are saturated with products of prior conscious critical science. We thus get the benefit, in our intellectual commerce with particular situations, of scientific operations which we have forgotten, and even of those which we individually have never performed. Science has become incarnate in our immediate attitude toward the world about us, and is embodied in that world itself. Every time that we solve a difficulty by sending a telegram, crossing a bridge, lighting the gas, boarding a railroad train, consulting a thermometer, we are controlling the formation of a judgment by use of so much precipitated and condensed science. Science has pre-formed, in many of its features, the situation with reference to which we have to judge; and it is this objective delimitation and structural reinforcement which,

answering at every point to the conformation of habit, most assists intelligence in the details of its behavior.

There is every reason to suppose that the analogy holds with reference to a science of conduct. Such a science can be built up only through reference to cases which at the outset need conscious critical direction in judgment. We need to know the

(138) social situation is in which we find ourselves required to act, so that we may know what it is right to do. We need to know what is the effect of some psychical disposition upon our way of looking at life and thereby upon our conduct. Through clearing up the social situation, through making objective to ourselves our own motives-and their consequences, we build up generic propositions: statements of experience as a connection of conditions, that is, in the form of objects. Such statements are used and applied in dealing with further problems. Gradually their use becomes more and more habitual. The "theory" becomes a part of our psychical apparatus. The social situation takes on a certain form or organization. It is pre-classified as of a certain sort, as of a certain genus and even species of this sort; the only question which remains is discrimination of the particular variety. Again, we get into the habit of taking into account certain sources of error in our own disposition as these affect our judgments of behavior, and thereby bring them sufficiently under control so that the need of conscious reference to their intellectual formulation diminishes. As physical science has brought about an organization of the physical world along with an organization of practical habits of dealing with that world, so ethical science will effect an organization of the social world and a corresponding organization of the psychical habits through which the individual relates himself to it. With this clearing up of the field and organs of moral action, conscious recourse to theory will, as in physical cases, limit itself to problems of unusual perplexity and to constructions of a large degree of novelty.

Summary

1. By "scientific", is meant methods of control of formation of judgments.

2. Such control is obtained only by ability to abstract certain elements in the experience judged, and to state them as connections of conditions, i. e., as "objects," or universals.

3. Such statements constitute the bulk of the recognized sciences. They are generic propositions, or laws, put, as a rule, in the hypothetic form if M then N. But such generic propositions are the instruments of science, not science itself. Science has its life in judgments of identification, and it is for their sake that generic propositions (or universals, or laws) are constructed and tested or verified.

4. Such judgments of concrete identification are individualized, and are also acts. The presence of action as a logical element appears indirectly in (a) the selection of the subject, (I) the determination of the predicate, and (c) most directly in the copula -- the entire process of the reciprocal forming and testing of tentative subjects and predicates.

5. Judgments are "intellectual" in logical type so far as this reference to activity may be presupposed, and thereby not require to be consciously set forth or exposed. This

happens whenever the action involved is impartial in its influence upon the quality of the content judged. Judgments are "moral" in logical type so far as the presence of activity in affecting the content of judgment is seen consciously to affect

(139) itself -- or whenever the reciprocal determination of activity and content becomes itself an object of judgment whose determination is a prerequisite for further successful judgments.

6. Control of moral judgment requires ability to constitute the reciprocal determination of activity and content into an object. This has three phases: First, a statement of the limiting forms of that type of judgment which is concerned with construing an activity and a content in terms of each other. The limiting terms of such a type of judgment constitute the characteristic features, or categories, of the object of ethical science, just as the limiting terms of the judgment which construes one object in terms of another object constitute the categories of physical science, discussion of moral judgment from this point of view may be termed "The Logic of Conduct." Second, an abstraction of the activity, which views it as a system of attitudes or dispositions involved in having experiences, and states it (since a system) as an object constituted by definite connections of diverse attitudes with the attitude of judging -- viz., the science of psychology. Third, a similar abstraction of the "content," which views it as a system of social elements which form the scene or situation in which action is to occur and with reference to which, therefore, the actor is to be formed -- viz., sociological science.

7. The whole discussion implies that the determination of objects as objects, even when involving no conscious reference whatever to conduct, is, after all, for the sake of the development of further experience. This further development is change, transformation of existing experience, and thus is active. So far as this development is intentionally directed through the construction of objects as objects, there is not only active experience, but regulated activity, i. e., conduct, behavior, practice. Therefore, all determination of objects as objects (including the sciences which construct physical objects) has reference to change of experience, or experience as activity; and, when this reference passes from abstraction to application (from negative to positive), has reference to conscious control of the nature of the change (i. e., conscious change), and thereby gets ethical significance. This principle may be termed the postulate of continuity of experience. This principle on the one hand protects the integrity of the moral judgment, revealing its supremacy and the corresponding instrumental or auxiliary character of the intellectual judgment (whether physical, psychological, or social); and, upon the other, protects the moral judgment from isolation (i. e., from transcendentalism), bringing it into working relations of reciprocal assistance with all judgments about the subject-matter of experience, even those of the most markedly mechanical and physiological sort.

Notes

1. If it were necessary for the purpose of this argument, it could of course be shown that reference to individual cases is involved in all mathematics. Within mathematical science, symbols (and diagrams are symbols) are individual

objects of just the same logical nature as are metals and acids in chemistry and as are rocks and fossils in geology.

2. The point of view which is here presented is, of course, distinctly pragmatic. I am not quite sure, however, of the implications of certain forms of pragmatism. They some. times seem to imply that a rational or logical statement is all right up to a certain point, but has fixed external limits, so that at critical points recourse must be had to considerations which are distinctly of an irrational or extra-logical order, and this recourse is identified with choice and " activity." The practical and the logical are thus opposed to each other. It is just the opposite which I am endeavoring to sustain viz. that the logical is an inherent or organic expression of the practical and hence is fulfilling its own logical basis and aim when it functions practically. I have no desire to show that what we term 'science " is arbitrarily limited by outside ethical considerations; and that consequently science cannot intrude itself into the ethical sphere; but precisely the contrary, viz., that just because science is a mode of controlling our active relations with the world of experienced things, ethical experience is supremely in need of such regulation. And by "practical " I mean only regulated change in experienced values.

3. This distinction in recent logic has been brought out with great force and clearness by Bradley, Principles of Logic (London, 1883), pp. 63-7.

4. It is hardly necessary to point out that the article "the" is a weakened demonstrative, and that the pronouns. including "it," all have demonstrative reference

5. Hence in accepting Bradley's distinction between "This." and" Thisness" we cannot accept the peculiar interpretation which he gives it. According to his way of looking at it, no strictly logical connection is possible between "This" and "Thisness." "Thisness" alone has logical significance; the " This " is determined by considerations entirely beyond intellectual control; indeed, it marks the fact that a reality lying outside of the act of judging has broken in upon, or forced itself into. a region of logical ideas or meanings, this peculiar and coercive irruption being an essential attendant of the finite extremely limited character of our experience.

6. It might check the prevalent tendency to draw sharp lines between philosophy as merely normative and the sciences as merely descriptive to realize that all generic scientific propositions, all statements of laws, all equations and formulae, are strictly normative in character, having as their sole excuse for being, and their sole test of worth, their capacity to regulate descriptions of individual cases. And the view that they are shorthand registers, or abstract descriptions, confirms instead of refuting this view. Why make a shorthand and unreal statement if it does not operate instrumentally in first hand dealings with reality?

7. So far as I know MR. Charles S. Peirce was the first to call attention to this principle. and to insist upon its fundamental logical import (see Monist, Vol. II, pp. 534-6, 549-51;). Mr. Peirce states it as the principle of continuity: A past idea can operate only so far as it is psychically continuous with that upon which it operates. A general idea is simply a living and expanding feeling, and habit is a statement of the specific mode of operation of a given psychical continuum. I have reached the above conclusion along such diverse lines that, without in any way minimizing the priority of Mr. Peirce's statement, or its more generalized

logical character, I feel that my own statement has something of the value of an independent confirmation.

8. Of course, the terms "object " and "objective " are used in logical sense, not as equivalent to "physical," which denotes simply one form which the logical object may take. Dr. Stuart's article on " Valuation as a Logical Process " in Studies in Logical Theory (The University of Chicago Press, 1903) may be referred to for a discussion of the study of the logical significance of the term "object" and its bearing upon the objectivity of economic and ethical judgments.

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[Bajado el 23 de agosto de 2011]

Originally published as:

John Dewey. "The Evolutionary Method As Applied to Morality: 1. Its Scientific Necessity", Philosophical Review 11, (1902): 107-124

The Evolutionary Method As Applied To Morality:I. Its Scientific NecessityI PROPOSE in the following papers to deal with the problem of the application of historical method, the group of ideas centering in the term Evolution, to the problem of Morality. A direct study of the development of moral customs or moral theories is not intended. There are questions of method which (in the present. state of discussion) seem to be inevitable antecedents to the ultimately more interesting and more important treatment of the actual and concrete moral facts. Difficult as it is to draw any line in the discussion of such a comprehensive matter as evolution, I shall endeavor to steer clear of purely metaphysical problems, however significant they may be in themselves, and confine myself to those aspects of evolutionary theory which have a direct bearing upon the problem of method.

While I shall be compelled to begin with certain very general features of the idea of evolution, I shall attempt to observe the limit just laid down: not carrying the analysis any further than is needful to get surety and clearness in dealing with the method' of interpreting morality. The more general discussion is rendered indispensable because -we are met at the outset with a caveat We are warned off before we begin. We are told that the nature of moral facts and of evolution is such as to make it impossible to get help from this source

The argument runs as follows: Facts of morality are of a spiritual nature. The phenomena of conscience are data of

(108) value, not of history. To them applies the distinction of degree, higher and lower, not of time, earlier and later. What they are and mean in themselves, not their temporal setting, is the problem. To confound such distinctions is not only to get no help in understanding morality, but to go positively astray ; it is to obscure that difference of value which is the unique factor in the case ; and to explain away, not to explain, the essential reality. That an historical statement of any spiritual, value is a hysteron proteron; that analysis of quality or intrinsic character, and tracing of genesis are distinct processes, have become fixed articles in the creed of the contemporary idealist. And no opportunity is lost to rehearse the creed. Many writers would have it that to discuss mind or morality in terms of the historical series, is to evidence such ignorance of rudimentary philosophical distinctions as to argue total unfitness for the task undertaken.

It is this wholesale denial of the possibility of using a given method with any fruitful and positive result, that makes it necessary to ask: What do we intend in science by inquiry into origins ? and what do we secure for science by stating any matter in genetic terms ? Is any purpose fulfilled by this mode of attack which is not within the competent jurisdiction of other methods? Possibly the method is abused in practice by its opponents because it is abused in theory by its upholders. The latter may, think that through the use of the evolutionary method something is done which is not done, and which cannot be done; and fail to bring out the deep and large service that as matter of fact is rendered. Anyway, before we either abuse or recommend genetic method we ought to have some answers to these questions : Just what is it ? Just what is to come of it and how ?

An apparently circuitous mode of approach to these questions may be found most direct in the end. I see no way to get an adequate answer without taking up the nature of experimental method in science, and pointing out in what sense also is a genetic method.

The essence of the experimental method I take to control of the analysis or interpretation of any phenomenon by bringing to light the exact conditions, and the only conditions, which are

(109) involved in its coming into being. Suppose the problem to be the nature of water. By 'nature' we mean no inner metaphysical essence; its 'nature' is found only by experiencing it. By nature, in science, we mean a knowledge for purposes of intellectual and practical control. Now, -water simply as a given fact resists indefinitely and obstinately any direct mode of approach. No amount of scrutiny, no amount of observation of it as given, yields analytic comprehension. Observation but complicates the problem by revealing unsuspected qualities that require additional explanation.

What experimentation does is to let us see into water in the process of making. Through generating water we single out the precise and sole conditions which have to be fulfilled that water may present itself as an experienced fact. If this case be typical, then the experimental method is entitled to rank as genetic method; it is concerned with the manner or process by which anything comes into experienced existence.

Even those willing to admit this, would probably refuse to go further, and hold that the experimental method is in a true sense an historical or evolutionary method. A consideration of the reasons for refusing to take this step will throw light upon the problem. A strictly historical series is unique, not only in any one of its constituent members, but in the particular place it occupies in the series. Its own context is indispensable to its historic character. Now, in the physical world, with which the experimental sciences deal, sets or pairs of terms are not thus limited to any particular temporal part of the series. They occur and recur; and suffer no change of quality by reason of dislocation from a given context. Water is made over and over again, and, so to speak, at any date in the cosmic series. This deprives any account of it of genuinely historic quality.

Another consideration which gives us pause is that the main interest in physical science does not concern the individual case, but certain further and more general results which at once emerge and absorb attention. We have the common saying that the physical sciences are not interested in individual cases as such, but only in general laws. The particular case is taken simply as

(110) a sample, or specimen or instance. It has no worth in itself, but only as a sample. It is only, a more or less imperfect illustration of the general relation which is the true object of regard.

An examination of these reasons will, however, lead us to the conclusion that while in the end we shall still have ground to consider the value of experiment as applied to the physical world to be genetic rather than strictly historical, yet this is due to an abstraction which we have introduced for our own purpose -- that of more adequate control. The serial order, taken in itself or as reality, is strictly historical, and it is only by an intellectual abstraction (justified from the end it subserves), that we get pairs of facts which may show up at any point in the series ; and thus get ground for attributing to them generalized or non-historic meaning. Their existence, though not their working value, remains historic.

The problem of origins is, even in the case of the physical world, a strictly specific or individualized matter. We have no way of getting at the origin of water in general. Experiment has to do with the conditions of production of a specific amount of water, at a specific time and place, under specific circumstances : in a word, it must deal with just this water. The conditions which define its origin must be stated with equal definiteness and circumstantiality. We have a specific situation in which at a given point in time a particular fact does not present itself, and then another point at which it is found. The problem is just the discovery of the individual conditions which have made the difference at the two historical periods. It is these conditions which define to us the emerging or manifestation of the new fact, and which constitute its ' origin.' The question is a perfectly determinate, that is, individualized, one. What facts must be present in order that another fact may show itself? Any scientist can easily say to-day that by causation he means simply a relation of definite antecedence and consequence. Not every scientist, however, seems to have learned the full meaning of the proposition; viz., that the value of the conception is historical, a question of defining the conditions under which a given phenomenon develops.

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Moreover, the particular water with which the experimenter actually deals never, as matter of fact, shows itself twice ; it never recurs. It has just as much exclusive uniqueness as is possessed by the career of Julius Caesar or Abraham Lincoln. That particular portion of water could never have presented itself at any other portion of the world's history, any more than the life of one of the individuals named could have been lived in exactly the same way at any other epoch. To deny this is simply to fall into the error of the mediaeval realist whom the average scientist is so fond of ridiculing. It is to admit the existence of some generic water which is no water in particular, and yet all waters in general.

Yet, you say, there is a difference. Certainly ; but it is a difference of interest, or purpose, not of existence, physical or metaphysical. Julius Caesar served a purpose which no other individual, at any other time, could have served. There is a peculiar flavor of human meaning and accomplishment about him which has no substitute or equivalent. Not so with water. While each portion is absolutely unique in its occurrence, yet one lot will serve our intellectual or practical needs just as well as any other. We can have substitution without loss. Water from the nearest faucet may slake thirst as well as that from the Pierian spring. And what is of more importance to our immediate problem, any one case serves just as well as any other to demonstrate that which is of scientific interest: the process by which water is made, and by which a great body of other and quite dissimilar substances are called into being.. We do not care scientifically for the historical genesis of this portion of water : while we care greatly for the insight secured through the particular case into the process of making any and every portion of water. It is this knowledge of process of generation that constitutes the controlled interpretation which is the aim of science.

Hence our final scientific statement assumes the generalized form we are familiar with in physical science, instead of the individualized form we demand of historical science. Hence also the apparent disruption and dislocation from context in the stream of serial reality. The modern logician has correctly apprehended

(112) the abstract character of this disjointed result when he says that all universal statements are hypothetical : announcing that when or if certain conditions are given, then certain consequences result, but not categorically asserting the actual existence of the fact as to either antecedent or consequent. When the logician recognizes the full significance of this statement, and of its counterpart that every categorical proposition is enunciated of an individual, he will be ready to admit that statements arrived at by experimental science are of an historical order. They take their rise in, and they find their application to, a world of unique and changing things : an evolutionary universe.

This abstract or hypothetical character should not disguise from us, however, the supreme value of the genetic statement arrived at by experimental science. It reveals to us a process which is operating continuously. Through knowledge of this process, we are enabled to get both intellectual and practical, control of great bodies of fact which

otherwise would be opaque and recalcitrant. Knowing the process, we can analyze, we can understand, the phenomena of water whenever and however they present themselves. The control, moreover, extends beyond just the water itself. Knowledge of process of genesis becomes an instrument of investigation into, and control over, impure waters so that we can measure the amount and nature of deviation from the standard. It becomes an active factor, a useful tool in investigating fluids which are not water, and chemical compounds which are not even fluid. There is no putting a limit to the ramifications and applications of the theoretical and technological control afforded us by laying hold of an operative process. It applies not only to what the empirical logician is fond of calling 'common' elements and 'resembling' cases; but aids us equally in dealing with apparent divergences and discrepancies. Holding the process in its more generic features, we can follow it 'into its refinements and modifications. By the cumulative method, by bringing together our knowledge of varying processes, and of the particular sequence or course of events in each, entire regions otherwise utterly unexplorable are interpreted, and made amenable.

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Lest the reader begin to suspect that we have left the matter of the value of evolutionary ideas comprehending morality, let us turn abruptly to that field. I shall endeavor to point out that there is more than analogy, there is an exact identity, between what the experimental method does for our physical knowledge, and what the historical method in a narrower sense may do for the spiritual region : the region of conscious values. My aim is to show that the historical method reveals to us a process of becoming, and thereby brings under intellectual and practical control facts which utterly resist general speculation or mere introspective observation.

History, as viewed from the evolutionary standpoint, is not a mere collection of incidents or external changes, which something fixed (whether spiritual or physical) has passed through, but is a process that reveals to us the conditions under which moral practices and ideas have originated. This enables us to place, to relate them. In seeing where they came from, in what situations they arose, we see their significance. Moreover, by tracing the historical sequence we are enabled to substitute a view of the whole in its concrete reality for a sketchy view of isolated fragments. History is for the individual and for the unending procession of the universe, what experiment is to the detached field of physics. We cannot apply artificial isolation and artificial recombination to those facts with which ethical science is concerned. We cannot take a present case of parental care, or of a child's untruthfulness, and cut it into sections, or tear it into physical pieces, or subject it to chemical analysis. Only through history, through a consideration of how it came to be what it is, can we unravel it and trace the interweaving of its constituent parts. History offers to us the only available substitute for the isolation and for the cumulative recombination of experiment. The early periods present us in their relative crudeness and simplicity with a substitute for the artificial operation of an experiment: following the phenomenon into the more complicated and refined form which it assumes later, is a substitute for the synthesis of the experiment.

The value of the earlier stages of any historic evolution is,

(114) I repeat, like that of the artificial isolation of a physical fact from its usual context. The transformation of this logical advantage into a matter of superior excellence in the order of existence, is the root of the materialistic fallacy. It is this unjustifiable transference which calls out those protests referred to early in this paper; which have led the idealists to protest against the industry of explaining conscious facts in evolutionary terms. It is assumed that the earlier fact somehow sets the standard of reality and of worth for the entire series. In practice, though not in express formulation, it is assumed that the earlier stages, being 'causal,' somehow are an exhaustive and adequate index of reality, and that consequently all later terms can be understood only when reduced to equivalent terms. It is this supposed reduction of the later into the earlier, that the idealist rightly holds is not to explain but to explain away; not to analyze but to ignore and deny.

The procedure is the counterpart of the Greek and mediaeval theories of the universe, in assigning differences of value to different parts of space. We have ceased regarding the celestial universe as of higher rank in the hierarchy of being than the terrestrial. Homogeneity of existence in space has become such an integral part of the working apparatus of the modern scientist that he can hardly put himself into the older attitude. Nevertheless, lie is quite likely to fall into exactly the same sort of fallacy, when it comes to time instead of space. The earlier is regarded as somehow more 'real' than the later, or as furnishing the quality in terms of which the reality of all the later must be stated.

There is, indeed, a point of view from which the earlier in time is of greater value ; but it is that of method, not of existence. That which is presented to us in the later terms of the series in too complicated and confused a form to be unravelled, shows itself in a relatively simple and transparent mode in the earlier members. Their relative fewness and superficiality makes it much easier to secure the mental isolation needful.

The fallacy of the standard character of the earlier is so intrenched and widespread that it can hardly be dismissed with

(115) brief mention. The simple fact of the case is that the genetic method, whether used in experimental or historical science, does not 'derive ' or 'deduce ' a consequent from an antecedent, in the sense of resolving it or dissolving it, into what has gone before. The later fact in its experienced quality is unique, irresolvable, and underived. Water is water with all its peculiar characteristics, after the presence of oxygen and hydrogen gas has been shown to be a necessary condition of its generation as much as before. A statement of the conditions under which a given thing shows itself in existence, does not detract one iota from the individual properties of that thing ; it does not alter them. This is as true of water or any physical product as it is of the sense of obligation or of any spiritual product. It is not the quality, but the coming into existence with which science deals directly. What is derived' is just the appearance of the quality, its emerging into experience. The value of apprehending it in terms of its antecedent conditions is, as repeatedly stated, that of control : intellectual control-the ability to interpret both obviously allied facts and divergent facts, showing the same modus operating under

different conditions ; and practical control, ability to get or to avoid an experience of a given sort when we desire.

The fallacy assumes that the earlier datum has some sort of fixity and finality of its own. Even those who assert most positively that causation is a simple matter of antecedent and consequent, are still given to speaking -as if the antecedent supplied the sole stamp of meaning and reality to the consequent. If, for example, the earlier stage shows only social instincts on the part of the animal, then, somehow or other, the later manifestations of human conscience are only animal instincts disguised and overlaid. To attribute any additional meaning to them, is an illusion to be banished by a proper scientific view. Now, the earlier fact is no more a finished thing, or completely given reality, than is the later. Indeed, the entire significance of the experimental method is that attention centers upon either antecedent or consequent simply because of interest in a process. The antecedent is of worth because it defines one term of the process of becoming; the consequent because it defines the other term. Both are

(116) strictly subordinated to the process to which they gave terms, limits.

The analogy with the terms of an algebraic series is more than a metaphor. The earlier terms do not develop the later ones. The earlier term is just as incomprehensible in itself as is the later one. Taken together, they constitute elements in problem which is solved by discovering a continuous process or course which, individualized by the limiting terms, shows itself first in one form and then in the other. The interest in the generation of water does not terminate with the discovery of H 2 and O. We have also gained significant facts with reference to the H and the O in knowing that when they come together they give water. To know that about them is to know them through and in a process, exactly as analyzing water into them explains water in genetic terms. Excepting as H and O are known in this 'effect' (and, of course, in other similar ones), they are absolutely unknown, -- they are an algebraic X and Y.

The reason this matter is not clear to the popular consciousness, as well as to the expert writer, is because an older, purely metaphysical conception of causation survives, according to which the cause is somehow superior in rank and excellence to the effect. The effects are regarded as somehow all inside the womb of cause, only awaiting their proper time to be delivered. They are considered as derived and secondary, not simply in the order of time, but in the order of existence. Materialism arises just out of this fetichlike worship of the antecedent. Writers who ought to know better tell us that if we only had an adequate knowledge of the 'primitive' time of the world, if we only had some general formula by which to circumscribe it, we could deduce down to its last detail the entire existing constitution of the world, life, and society. It is pretty clear, however, that in order to have this adequate knowledge of primitive phenomena as 'cause,' we should have to know everything that has come after as , 'effect.' We do not know what it is as 'cause' (that is we do not know it at all), excepting as we know it through its 'effects. The entire novel of a penny-a-liner may possibly be deduced from its first chapter,

(117) but hardly that of an artist. Our adequate knowledge of the earlier constitution of the stellar universe depends upon the degree in which we are familiar with what as a matter of fact has come since. So the comprehensive world-formula about the operation of certain forces depends absolutely upon the empirical knowledge that as matter of fact certain results take place when certain conditions are present. The formula is a mere summary or shorthand record of the entire historical series-so much for its magic power in deduction and derivation. The mode of reasoning is tautological. Since we know the nature of the antecedent only through the specific consequence, adequate knowledge of primitive conditions can mean nothing else but a complete knowledge of the whole thing from beginning to end. It is surprising how a priori the average empiricist becomes the moment he takes himself to the adoration of causes. He surrenders his belief in a reality apprehended through, experience, in behalf of a notion of the superior metaphysical excellence of what he mentally constructs as a bygone existence'. He regards the later terms of experience not as real in their experienced character, but as something to be deduced or derived from a reality adequately given in what he is pleased to denominate cause.

So much time has been spent upon the fallacy involved in supposing that the early forms of an historical series are superior to the later, that before passing on I must recur, to the proposition on its positive side. It still remains true that the statement of any event or historical series, in terms of its earlier members, has an advantage for science : its logical superiority consists in presenting the matter in so simplified a form that we can detach and grasp separately elements which are wholly lost in the confused complexity of the mature phases. We can single out a particular fact from its company of associates, and give it more exact and more exclusive attention. This is what is meant by saying that history does for moral matters, for matters of conscious value, what experimentation does for physical things: it gives control by furnishing relative isolation.

This also establishes the significance of the later members of the series. Starting with the earlier ones as our clue, we can

(118) trace each successive degree of complication as it introduces itself. Having found conditions operating, historically by themselves, we can see what happens when these conditions come together. We can refer the more complicated fact to the combination. of conditions. Here we have the counterpart of the synthetic recombination, or cumulative method of experiment. We put together the separate threads coming from different sources, and see how they are woven into a pattern so extensive and minute as to defy the analysis of direct inspection.

We should be prepared, from our foregoing discussion to see how this superiority and logical value is also given ontological significance just as the materialist isolates and deifies, the earlier term as an exponent of reality, so the idealist deals with the later term. To him it is the reality of which the first form is simply the appearance. He contrasts the various members of the series as possessing different degrees of reality, the more primitive being nearest zero. To him the reality is somehow 'latent' or 'potential ' in the earlier forms, and, gradually working from within, transforms them until it finds for itself a fairly adequate expression. It is an axiom with him that what is evolved in the

latest form is involved in the earliest. The later reality is, therefore, to him the persistent reality in contrast with which the first forms are, if not illusions, at least poor excuses for being. We are all familiar with these applications of the Aristotelian metaphysics to the evolutionary process. We are not concerned here with the metaphysical problems involved, though they are serious enough : as the notion that the real somehow chooses an imperfect mode or vehicle of expression for itself, and only after a long series of more or less abortive attempts succeeds in showing itself as the reality. It is enough for present purposes to note that we have here simply a particular case of the general fallacy just discussed-the emphasis of a particular term of the series at the expense of the process operative in reference to all terms.

Both the earlier and the later are simply limits which define the process in question. They are the framework which gives it outline ; they are the terms which characterize the problem to be

(119) attacked. The introduction of more detailed intermediate terms, together with a statement of their exact temporal and quantitative relations to each other, fill out the outline. They give us finally a complete whole, constituted by members standing in orderly and consecutive relations to each other.

Just as experiment transforms a brute physical fact into a relatively luminous series of changes, so evolutionary method applied to a moral fact does not leave us either with a mere animal instinct on one side, or with the spiritual categoric imperative on the other. It reveals to us a single continuing process in which both animal instinct and the sense of duty have their place. It puts us in possession of a concrete whole.

The analogy with modern biological interests is significant. There was a time when units of fixed structure seemed alone to have importance. They, by simple physical juxtaposition and combination, were supposed to account for all more complex forms and functions. For logical purposes it makes no difference whether these units are ' cells ' with relation to the organism as a whole, or brain 'centers ' with reference to certain neural functions. Some peculiar property was supposed to be resident in these units, which somehow controlled or explained other activities and structures. Now, morphology is ceasing, to lord it over physiology ; and physiology is ceasing to be a mere matter of certain functions. It is a chemico-physical process operating wherever we have organized structure and the performance of function that is the subject of scientific attention. The problem is to discover and analyze this process, and then trace its different modes of operation as it presents itself under a variety of conditions ; these conditions being stated definitely through experimental control. just as the biologist is surrendering the attempt to locate his reality in one spot rather than another, in the cell as such, or the brain center as such, so the moralist must cease trying to find the key to his problem in the animal instinct as such ; and as the biologist has ceased taking a function as ultimate and self-explanatory, so the moralist must cease discussing the refined moral consciousness of civilization as final. He must turn to the moralizing process which operates con-

(120)-tinuously, and endeavor to account for its different manifestations under differentials of condition historically presented.

This whole matter may indeed be summed up in terms of the conception of causation. If we assume the meaning of his notion to be a relation of antecedent and consequent, we cannot play fast and loose with it. The cause is not merely antecedent ; it is what it is as antecedent, and cannot be regarded as real when severed from that which succeeds it. The same holds of the consequent --it is what it is only as a term in the series. But we do more than place the antecedent and consequent. We get the continuous reality. And then the entire series, the defined and historic event, is itself employed to interpret and construct a larger realm of experience. Through the series we better apprehend the universe. It is that which is characterized by and through such a history. The historic consequence is a predicate of a new subject.

We get a more thorough and adequate experience the antecedents, H and O, and of the consequent, water, in finding out how water is generated. But we do not stop at this point. The entire sequence to which both antecedence and consequence belong, becomes an important factor in realizing the nature of the world in which such an event takes place. Our drama becomes in turn a significant episode in a larger drama. So in moral matters we comprehend both the animal instinct and the human categorical imperative when we place them as limiting terms of a single continuous history. But over and above this, we understand better the universe, knowing that it is of a kind to be marked by such a history. It is in the light of such a more ultimate judgment, made possible by the evolutionary method, that we see how limited is the view that tells us that history can only speak of certain external things that have happened to morality; can trace its outward fortunes, but reveal nothing of its nature. It shows us morality in the position which it occupies in the universe ; in the situations that demand it.

Having found in the apprehension of process, the reality which eludes us when we look for it either in earlier or later terms we have to be careful to avoid a further error, viz : the confusion of

(121) continuity of process with identity of content. The following quotation illustrates the error to which I refer: " We may raise the single inductive inquiry, What acts have men everywhere and at all times considered right or wrong respectively, and what acts have some considered right or indifferent and others wrong ? Tables of agreement and difference can be drawn up to show what mankind at least has regarded as the essential content of the moral law. . . . For the rich harvest which this treatment of the moral field is sure to yield, we shall have to wait until the spirit of science has exorcised the spirit of speculation from our contending schools of ethics (Schurman, The Ethical Import of Darwinism, pp. 205, 206). "The science of historical ethics is still too young to have established what moral principles are ultimate and fundamental -- that is, what principles man everywhere and at all times has considered binding" (Ibid., P. 255).

The implication of the quotations is that the scientific method is concerned with the abstraction of a certain common and unchanging content-that it is on the lookout for some duty or duties that have been regarded at all times and in all places as equally binding. I seize upon this conception because it is sufficiently near the proposition just

presented to make it worth while to indicate the difference between them. I have insisted that the scientific method is concerned with the discovery of a common and continuous process, and that this can be determined only historically. The notion now propounded is that science is concerned with a common content or structure of beliefs, and this can be apprehended historically. I do not find, however, that it is identity of content which is important, either theoretically or practically. On the contrary, the method of comparison and abstraction which leaves us with simply a fixed common element apart from all diversity and variety, gives a mere caput mortuum rigidly static, arbitrary, a residuum without explanation. Practically, it gives us no leverage for what is the most important thing --- control.

Doubtless it is true that other historical sciences have passed through a " comparative' period in which the discovery of a common element of structure was taken to be the object of search;

(122) but the other sciences have left that point of view far behind. The comparative anatomist knows very well that external similarity is no guarantee of identity of function, or of homologous organs ; and that like functions may be exercised through modes of structure which externally are characterized by the most profound and extensive differences. The same is true of the comparative philologist. It is only in the region of consciousness, in discussing myths, rites, institutions, and moral practices, that the idea persists that the important thing is to hit upon some structure which is everywhere alike. The advance, which has taken place in the biological and quasi -biological sciences is sure to take place in the social sciences as well. What the biologist instinctively searches for (given as data a variety of different forms or species, with the problem of tracing their relationship) is first a common ancestor. This furnishes a point of departure and supplies one limiting term of the series under consideration. The present differentiated forms furnish the other limiting term. The problem is to discover the single process which, operating under definitely different conditions, has manifested itself in these specifically different outward forms. Knowledge of differences is just as important as that of the generic identity of the process. The function of locomotion is a mere abstraction, excepting, as we can trace and define its performance through environmental conditions that give rise equally to the legless snake, the fins of the fish, the wings of the bird, and the legs of the quadruped. It is only through insight into diversification that the hold upon the process becomes vital. and concrete. Similarly in morals. Supposing (which does not seem to be the case) that an identical belief regarding the duty of parental care, or of conjugal fidelity, could be discover in human societies at all times and places. This would throw no light whatsoever upon the scientific significance of that phenomenon. On the other hand, an adequate knowledge of historical facts might throw great light upon the ethics of family relations, exhibited in complete neglect of children as well as in self-sacrificing devotion to their welfare, and in all stages of regard and disregard of personal faithfulness as between husband and wife.

(123) The very differences of belief become significant when they can be referred to varying conditions which have brought them about.

Just one word on the practical side. The common and rigidly fixed content gives no help regarding the future. It gives no indication of the method of progress in any desired direction. There is no way of turning it over into a mode of control of future experience, either in corporate action or individual education. It is just a bare isolated final fact. If any use at all could be made of it, the tendency would be to lower the working standard of moral action in all more advanced societies. By hypothesis, it furnishes only the duty which is common to the lowest with the highest. The essence of moral struggle and of moral progress lies, however, precisely in that region where sections of society, or groups of individuals, are becoming conscious of the necessity of ideals of a higher and more generalized order than those recognized in the past. To fix upon that which has been believed everywhere, and at all times " as the essential content of the moral law," would give practical morality a tremendous set-back.

The previous discussion may be summarized as follows : The object of science is primarily to give intellectual control -- that is, ability to interpret phenomena-- and secondarily, practical control -- that is, ability to secure desirable and avoid undesirable future experiences. Second, experiment accomplishes this in physical sciences. It takes an unanalyzed total fact which in its totality must simply be accepted at its face value, and shows the exact and exclusive conditions of its origin. By this means it takes it out of its opaque isolation and gives it meaning by presenting it as a distinct and yet related part of a larger historic continuum. Third, the discovery of the process becomes at once an instrument for the interpretation of other facts which are explainable by reference to the process operating under somewhat different conditions. Fourth, the significance of conscious or spiritual values cannot be made out by direct inspection, nor yet by direct physical dissection and recomposition. They are, therefore, outside the scope of science except so far as amenable to historic method. Fifth, history gives us these facts in process of becoming or

(124) generation ; the earlier terms of the series provide us with a simplification which is the counterpart of isolation in physical experiment; each successive later term answers the purpose of

synthetic recombination under increasingly complex conditions. Sixth, a complete historical account of the development of any ethical idea or practice would not only enable us to interpret both its cruder and more mature forms, but --what is even more important-- would give us insight into the operation and conditions which make for morality, and thus afford us intellectual tools for attacking other moral facts. Seventh, in analogy- with the results flowing in physical sciences from intellectual control, we have every reason to suppose that the successful execution of this mode of approach would yield also fruit in practical control that is, knowledge of means by which individual , and corporate conduct might be modified in desirable directions. If we get knowledge of a process of generation, we get knowledge of how to proceed in getting a desired result.

I have endeavored in this paper simply to show that either morality must remain outside the sphere of science, or be approached and attacked by the historical method. This is what I mean by the 'necessity' of this method. It till remains open to an objector to take the first of the alternatives, and hold that morality is not open to any sort of scientific treatment, and that it is essential to its existence as morality that it should not be so

treated. In other words, I have not as yet discussed directly the question of what the bearing of the application of the historical method, as scientific mode of approach, is upon the value or validity of distinctively moral phenomenon. To that problem, accordingly, my next article will be devoted. What does this method do for morality as morality, and how? I shall endeavor to show that the method not only does not destroy distinctively ethical values, but that it supplies them , with an added sanction.

John DeweyTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

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[Bajado el 23 de agosto de 2011]

Originally published as:

John Dewey. "The Evolutionary Method As Applied To Morality: II Its Significance for Conduct", Philosophical Review 11, (1902): 353-371.

The Evolutionary Method As Applied To Morality: II. Its Significance for ConductIN a preceding paper,[1] I attempted to show that only by the use of evolutionary ideas, that is, the historical method, can morality be brought within the domain of science. That discussion, however, did not develop the implied bearings of the presented theory upon distinctively moral values and validities. If we suppose for the moment that scientific treatment would follow the general lines indicated, what would be the influence of such a treatment upon morality as such? Would it leave moral quality unaffected -- just where it was ? Would it lessen or destroy the moral meaning as such ? Or would it intensify and expand ethical significance, giving an added meaning and an added sanction ?

Before directly taking up these questions, it is necessary to dispose of a certain ambiguity and confusion. I am convinced that in much recent discussion about validity or objective value, writers have taken up indiscriminately two different standpoints, and passed unwittingly from one problem to another and quite different matter. One question is this : What is the validity of the moral point of view as such? Or, in the form which contemporary thought makes most urgent: How is the validity of the moral point of view, with its insistence upon standards, ideals, responsibilities, to be reconciled with the validity of the scientific point of view and its insistence upon the presented, upon facts, upon the causal ? A distinct question is the following: How is the validity of a given moral point of view or judgment determined? This judgment about capital punishment is morally valid; that one is ethically incompetent. This point of view

regarding temperance, expansion, the silver question, Organized charity, etc., is true-that is, has superior objective value-- compared with some other point of view. Or, the judgment "I

(354) should follow my artistic bent, even if it interferes with existing filial relations," is correct.

Now, ethical science is primarily concerned with problems of validity in the latter sense. It belongs to logic, to the theory of points of view, the categories, and of the methods that develop these points of view, to discuss the validity of morality uberhaupt. The scientist as such is not directly concerned with matters of ultimate validity; neither, however, is he taken up with mere presented facts. His fundamental and interesting problem is that of ways of passing upon questions of specific validity; ways of determining the respective values this or that particular judgment. The extent to which philosophical writers adopt and repeat the propositions of empirical writers, developed before objective science had made much headway, is surprising. It is not bare description of given facts that constitutes the work of the scientist ; but discovering, testing, and elaborating adequate modes of finding out what is really given; adequate modes of describing and defining what is thus laid bare. This ought to be too trivial, too commonplace to mention, but current arguments against the use of historical methods in ethics indicate the need not only of mention but of stress. The opponent argues thus : It is of course true that morality has a history; that is, we can trace different moral practices, beliefs, customs, demands, opinions, in various forms of outward manifestation. We can say that here such and such moral practices obtained, and then gave way in this point or that. This indeed is a branch of history, and an interesting one. As history it is mere truism to say that it will receive scientific treatment just in the degree in which all the resources of historic method are called into action. But when this is said and done the result remains history, not ethics. What ethics deals with is the moral worth of these various practices, beliefs, etc.; and this question of worth is a totally different matter from existence in a temporal series, and from the accurate description of serial order. The historian of ethics can at most supply only data; the distinctive work of the ethical writer is still all to be done. And we may imagine the objector going on to add the stock phrases . History

(355) is descriptive, it deals with the given, the actual, the phenomenal. Ethics is normative, it wants to know about the standard, the ideal, that which ought to be, whether or no it is or ever has been.

In my judgment the objector is here entangled in the looseness and vagueness of his own analysis. He has not discriminated the two meanings of validity. He is arguing that because a genetic or historic account does not determine ab initio the moral point of view as such, therefore it is not necessary to the right determination of questions of specific value -- an obvious mutatio conclusionis.[2]

Because history does not create off-hand, so to speak, moral validity, it hardly follows that an adequate knowledge of historical development is not quite indispensable to the

successful pursuit of the task of deciding upon validity in this and that special case. At times it would seem as if the objector went even further in his confusion ; it would almost appear that he confounds history as an objective succession of events 'with history as the rational account and interpretation of these events ; history as bare fact and history as method. It might be true that objective history does not create moral values., as such, and yet be true that there is no way of settling questions of valid ethical significance in detail apart from historical consideration. In any case, whatever deserves the name of history is more than an inventory of practices, beliefs, and opinions. It is concerned with the origin and development of these customs and ideas ; and with the question of their mode of operation after they have arisen. The described facts-yes ; but among the facts described is precisely certain conditions under which various norms, ideals, and rules of action have originated and functioned. A continual pigeon-

(356) -holing of such consideration as mere 'description' becomes lies irritating when it assumes that the description cannot go beyond the prima facie and obvious appearance of the material dealt with; that it just goes heaping up more and more such unexplained Lnd uninterpreted data. This no more supplies the general content of historic science than the first appearance of the world to our senses is the significant content of physical science. this is only material to be described ; not the described material. Its worth is to furnish data and present problems, suggest working hypotheses, and supply the material through which the: may be tested.

The historic method is a method, first, for determining how specific moral values (whether in the way of customs, expectations, conceived ends, or rules) came to be ; and second, for determining their significance as indicated in their career. Its assumptions are that norms and ideals, as well as unreflective customs, arose out of certain situations, in response to the demands of those situations ; and that once in existence they operated with a less or greater need of success (to be determined by study of the concrete case). We are still engaged in forming norms, in setting up ends, in conceiving obligations. If moral science has any constructive value, it must provide standpoints and working instrumentalities for the more adequate performance these tasks. Are we to say that the urgent problem of the present right determination of standards and aims can be solved when we cut loose from a consideration of the past? Shall we say that a defined and critical knowledge of the origin, history, and destiny of such matters in the past life of humanity is aside from the mark in our present situation ?

To adopt such a standpoint, even by implication, is to commit ourselves to two assumptions : first, that while there may have been rationality in past moral beliefs and practices, there is no such rationality as to the present and the future. In other words, it is assumed that while moral attitudes manking have hitherto arisen in relation to a definite situation, the present is quite in the air, and hence judgment of it cannot be directed. Secondly, it is assumed that a knowledge of how norms and

(357) moral endeavors have been brought about in the past throws no light upon the intrinsic process of moralization. For my part, I am not presumptuous enough to venture upon such notions ; I would have those who deny moral significance to the historical

method show how we may guide and control the formation of our further moral judgments if we forego inquiry into the process of their formation as historically set before us.

In these introductory words, I do not suppose myself to have shown that the historic method has a settled moral significance that at once facilitates conduct and gives it an added sanction by introducing more rationality; but I hope at least to have cleared up somewhat the real point at issue, and to have shown the irrelevancy of some of the current, rather peremptory, modes of disposing of the genetic standpoint in morals.

The problem of the best method of arriving at correct judgments on points of moral worth, necessarily traverses ground covered by the time-honored and time-worn theories of intuitionalism, and empiricism. Even at the risk of threshing old straw, it will be advisable to compare the evolutionary method with these other points of view, In such a comparison, however, it is to be borne in mind that the sole point under review is that of the logical relationship of the theory examined to the meaning and sanction of our moral judgments. The question is not whether or no there are intuitions ; whether or no they can be utilized in special cases, or whether or no all supposed intuitions can be accounted for as products of associative memory. The problem is not one of fact but of value. It is a logical problem. If we suppose such necessary and universal beliefs as go by the name of 'intuition' to exist, does such existence settle anything regarding the validity of what is believed, either in general or in part ? It is a question of the relation of the intuition to fact -- to the moral order in reality. Under what conditions alone, and in what measure or degree, are we justified in arguing from the existence of mora1 intuitions as mental states and acts to facts taken to correspond to them ?

The reply already hinted at is that the mere existence of a belief, even admitting that as a belief it cannot in any way be

(358) got rid of, determines absolutely nothing regarding the objectivity of its own content. The worth of the intuition depends upon genetic considerations. In so far as we can state the intuition in terms of the conditions of its origin, development, and later career, in so far we have some criterion for passing judgment upon its pretentions to validity. If we can find that ie intuition is a legitimate response to enduring and deep-seated conditions, we have some reason to attribute worth to it. If we find that historically the belief has played a part in maintaining the integrity of social life, and in bringing new values into our belief in its worth is additionally guaranteed. But if we cannot find such historic origin and functioning, the intuition remains a mere state of consciousness, a hallucination, an illusion, which is not made more worthy by simply multiplying the number of people who have participated in it.

Put roughly we may say that intuitionalism, as ordinarily conceived, makes the ethical belief a brute fact, because unrelated. Its very lack of genetic relationship to the situation in which it appears condemns it to isolation. This isolation logically makes it impossible to credit it with objective validity. The intuitionalist, in proclaiming the necessity of his content, proclaims -is thereby its objective reference ; but in asserting its non-, genetic character he denies any reference whatsoever. The gene tic theory holds that the content embodied in any so-called int uition is a response to a given active

situation : that it arises, develops, and operates somehow in reference to this situation. The functional reference establishes in advance some kind of relationship to objective conditions, and hence some presumption of validity. If the 'intuition' persists, it is within certain limits because the situation persists. If the particular moral belief is really inexpugnable, it is just because the conditions which require it are so enduring as to persistently call out an attitude which is relevant to them. The probability is that it continues in exist,-- ice simply because it continues to be necessary in function.

The presumption or probability, however, must not be pushed too far. It is a well-known fact that habits endure and project themselves after the conditions which originally generated them

(359) pass over, and that under such circumstances the habits become sources of error and even of hallucination. Indeed the most generic psychological statement that we have of illusions is that a psych o -physical disposition in conformity with the state of the case in the great majority of instances asserts itself by the principle of habit, when some of the conditions are radically different, and thus produces a judgment whose content does violence to the facts of the particular case.

The point of the genetic method is then that it shows relationships, and thereby at once guarantees and defines meaning. We must take the history of any intuition or attitude of moral consciousness in both directions: both ex parte ante and ex parte post. We must consider it with reference to the antecedents which evoked it, and with reference to its later career and fate. It arises in a certain context, and as a reaction to certain circumstances ; it has a subsequent history which can be traced. It maintains and reinforces certain conditions, and modifies others. It becomes a stimulus which provokes new modes of action. Now when we see how and why the belief came about, and also know what else came about because of it, we have a hold upon the worth of the belief which is entirely wanting when we set it up as an isolated intuition. Pure intuitionalism. is often indeed undistinguishable from the crassest empiricism. The ' intuition' is declared to be a content of 'reason,' but reason is a mere label. The ordinary relation and criteria of rationality are expressly eliminated. Quite likely we have deified the results of a merely accidental history or series of circumstances. The only way to introduce reasonableness is to analyze in detail the course of events from which the intuition results, and to trace in further detail the influences that radiate from it. There is much ground for John Stuart Mill's basis of opposition to intuitionalism -- it tends to perpetuate prejudice and sanctify conservatism by calling them eternal truths of reason, and thus to erect barriers in the way of moral progress.

A given belief or intuition represents, as regards its content, a cross-section of an historic process. No wonder it becomes meaningless and obstructive when the static section is taken as if it were a complete and individualized reality. Any morpho-

(360) -logical section becomes significant in itself, and heuristic with reference to further scientific activity, just in the degree in which it is employed along with other cross-sections, before and, after, in constructing a continuous process or life history.

Every intuitionalist admits that as matter of fact the supposed content of the intuitions has in some cases at least varied from time to time. This point is familiar as an objection of fact against intuitionalism. Its logical significance is however even more important.

This admission condemns, as a nugatory pretense, the claim to objective validity on the part of every intuition. If we are mistaken in one case, we may be in others, since by definition any standard outside the intuition as such is excluded. Either everything that appears to the individual as final and authoritative is such, or else such appearance lacks competency in any case. Intuitionalism is Protagorean in its belief that man's ideas are the measure of moral realities. If the intuitionalist falls back upon the notion of the inexpugnable, he falls back simply upon a question of bare fact. How much time is to be allowed ? Certainly the life of the individual occupies but a brief span in the continuity of conscious social life in which it is imbedded. Beliefs that are inexpugnable for a given individual, or for a series of generations, or even for an entire nationality, finally fade away. According to the test of inexpugnableness this would show that they were never intuitions, and hence never objectively valid-- ex hypothesi. Viewed in this way, the contents of our present moral beliefs become of suspicion. Intuitionalism, at one stroke transforms itself into scepticism. What guarantee have we that our present 'intuitions' have more validity than hundreds of past ideas that have shown themselves by passing away to be empty opinion or indurated prejudice? In denying genesis and history to have objective worth, we make the whole history of moral belief an illusion -a vain shew. The same logic that makes necessary the rejection of former moral ideas as not really intuitions, and hence of no moral worth at all, cuts the ground out from under any and every moral belief.

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On the other hand, the genetic theory ascribes a certain positive moral validity to any belief, that has arisen as a persistent response to a situation, while at the same time it enables us to measure, through tracing its later career and destiny, the range of worth attaching to it. The genetic method grades worth, instead of compelling us either to consecrate or damn it in toto. Take as a special and test case the matter of the value of human life. Savage tribes almost universally practice infanticide. They do so not only without a thought of its immorality, but in many cases, and up to a certain extent, in recognition of a supposed obligation. Their moral 'intuitions' inform them that the welfare of the older and vigorous members of a group is to be preferred to that of the decrepit and feeble-that the latter are a burden to the well-being of the community, and hence to be eliminated. Now the theory which denies a certain positive value genetically measured to this belief, by its own dialectic also deprives us of any reason for attributing positive ethical significance to the moral aspirations of to-day. A theory which regards infanticide in the light of a reaction to its own set of historic conditions may, by investigating these conditions, give a relative justification to the idea. It may also, by tracing its later and continuing effects, finally condemn it. It may see how its persistence left a group stranded on a lower level , and how its passing away coincided with and conditioned a more complex and richer social order. The investigation may, indeed it should, reveal principles of the moralizing process which give better control of the moral beliefs and practices of to-day.

Infanticide arises in nomadic peoples ; the tribes are nomadic just because the necessity of getting food keeps them on the move from place to place. This very necessity makes impossible the settled abode with the ties and attachments which spring up about it. It keeps all the institutional relations of life loose and superficial. Moreover, to a nomadic people everything that has to be carried about is a burden Every infant is not only such a burden, but is an additional drain upon the scanty food resources of his community. Moreover, the burden of transportation falls upon the woman, and the woman is already laden with all the

(362) camp equipment and utensils. The food supply is so precarious that the older babies, in order to make sure of life, are long suckled at the breast, frequently for four or five years. To try and feed the new baby is possibly to starve the old. Moreover, in the encampment the woman has many duties put upon her in order that the man may be free to hunt. These duties can hardly be adequately performed if many little children are demanding attention.

Needless to say, the question is not one of justifying infanticide. The genetic or historic consideration reveals, however, that in the rough the same sort of moral process is at work in the savage society as in the civilized. The fundamental question in any case is the paramount conditions of social existence. Let the social situation be such that more value comes to life from preserving and caring for the tender, helpless, and feeble than from ignoring them, and their nurture will be a moral duty. Let this preservation become a tax, and even a threat against the integrity of the community life, and an opposite belief and practice are set up.

The same method which gives a relative justification to the intuition, also forbids its continuance. Such justification, as it gets is in its relativity to a given type of social life. That type, however, is so crude and undeveloped as compared with other forms we are familiar with, that it cannot be tolerated. The demand for doing away with infanticide is just the same as its justification : that it is consistent with a certain type of life. It not only arises within it, but tends to perpetuate it.

Now if we turn our gaze to the present social life we find precisely the same situation. Our moral code does not permit us intentionally to expose, nor wilfully to destroy, the infant and the aged. It does permit us, however, to condemn hundreds and thousands of little children, as well as grown people, to sickly, stunted, and defective lives, physical as well as mental. To be sure this state of things is attacked as immoral by many social reformers, but the general attitude is one of comparative indifference, sometimes indeed of irritation with the visionaries who endeavor to stir up dissatisfaction, or even of indignation with them

(363) as imperiling the foundations of society. Not that the condemnation of children to a partial life is in and of itself a necessary pillar of society, but that it is a necessary incident of a whole industrial order which cannot be attacked without shaking society. In other words, there is at bottom a belief simply in the necessity of these things to the conservation and maintenance of the established social type. And this is precisely the

reason the savage would appeal to in defense of his infanticide if he were capable of reflective thought. Very much the same thing can be said about our practice of war, and the necessity that war implies the offering up a sacrifice of so many thousands of human lives every year. Such things are simply 'necessary'; and hence our impatience with or contempt, for those who proclaim their radical immorality. Hence our zeal in idealizing, and in imputing moral qualities of patriotism, bravery, etc.

The point here, as in the case of infanticide, is neither merely to glorify nor condemn the thing in and of itself, but rather to get back to the general movement of society which produces these particular ethical symptoms; and in turn to trace in more detail their historic consequences, realizing in detail to what extent they tend to perpetuate undeveloped and inadequate social forms.

The illustration suggests that the import of the argument is wider than just the question of intuitionalism. The problem is the criterion for the validity of any moral idea prevalent in society at a given time. The conclusion is that a genetic treatment places any such belief in relation both to the circumstances which generate it, and the effects which it produces, and thereby gets us out of the region of mere opinion, sentimentality, and prejudice. This possibility of objective judgment is the scientific phase of the matter. But the fact, that this control of judgment of the worth or lack of worth in current moral beliefs at once modifies the beliefs and determines the development of new ones, shows that the scientific method has of itself a moral value it determines and enforces fundamental moral motives and sanctions. it is an intrinsic factor in controlling the formation of moral judgments, and this is a part of the evolution of moral ideals and standards.

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The relation of the genetic method to empiricism, so far as the matter of moral validity is concerned, requires attention. Fortunately, the notion that intuitionalism and empiricism exhaust the alternatives no longer universally obtains. We are getting aware that it is quite possible, to conceive ideas and values as arising in and with reference to experience ; and yet hold that empiricism, being just one mode of logical interpretation, gives a faulty and distorted account of them. Fortunately moerover, (for our argument is already getting too long) it is no necessary to examine the whole scope of empirical method. Only two points concern us here one, the relation of the empirical method to the genetic method the second, a comparison of bearings upon the question of determining worth in our ethical judgments.

Empiricism is no more historic in character than intuitionalism. Empiricism is concerned with the moral idea or belief as a grouping or association of various elementary feelings. It regards the idea simply as a complex state which is to be explained by resolving it into its elementary constituents. By its both the complex and the elements are isolated from an historic context. The genetic method determines the worth or significance of the belief by considering the place that it occupied in a developing series; the empirical method by referring it to its components. Elementary feelings or sensations, as the empiricist deals with them, have no inherent or intrinsic time reference at all. Such reference is a purely external matter that attaches to the

accidental way in which one of these elements happens to fall in with others ; accidental because its position of antecedence or consequence is something lying wholly outside of the element itself. While the genetic method finds quality or meaning to be essentially a function of position in the historic series, the empirical method holds that reality and hence validity can be got at only by dissolving the bonds of temporal connection, and ,fct-ting to a residual experience which is self existent and self-sufficing.

The empirical and the genetic methods thus imply a very different relationship between the moral state, idea, or belief, and objective reality. From the genetic standpoint, the moral idea is essen-

(365)-tially an attitude that arises in the individual in response to the practical situation in which he is involved. It is the estimate the individual puts upon that situation. It is a certain way of conceiving it or interpreting it with reference to the exigencies of action. Accordingly, it operates as a method of reconstructing the situation through the act indicated. It arises as a response to a stimulus, and its worth is found in its success, as response, in doing the particular work demanded of it, not in the extent to which it parallels or reproduces the precise conditions which evoke it. The idea of withdrawing the hand may be an adequate response to the perception of a flame. The idea, however, is not an impression of the object. In like manner the notion of giving an accused man a chance to justify himself may be an adequate response to the stimulus of capture and presumed guilt. And yet it in no way depends for its reality upon being a mere impress of the existing state of affairs. The test of its worth is its capacity to regulate the various factors entering into the situation. The empirical theory holds that the idea arises as a reflex of some existing object or fact. Hence the test of its objectivity is the faithfulness with which it reproduces that object as copy. The genetic theory holds that the idea arises as a response, and that the test of its validity is found in its later career as manifested with reference to the needs of the situation that evoked it.

The difference again maybe stated as follows: The empirical method holds that the belief or idea is generated by a process of repetition or cumulation; the genetic method by a process of adjustment. We need only refer to Spencer's account of the way in which various impressions consolidate themselves into moral beliefs or intuitions to see how completely the process is conceived as one of sheer accumulation. This, moreover, lies not in Spencer's personal wish to conceive it that way, but rather in the logic of empiricism itself. Each experience being separate and isolated, due to an impression received from an existent thing, all that remains, is for the various images, of these experiences to pile up on each other in such a way that the like elements continually reinforce one another, while the unlike ones fade, blur, and are finally effaced. Empiricism can conceive a given

(366) experience only as a summation of elements. Here is where its weakness lies, as its intuitional opponents have always felt practically, though they have not always seized the logical point. If a moral belief is simply an accumulation through repeated associations of previously given elements of experience without any essential modification or reconstruction of them, then one of two things is certain : either the

original state was inherently ethical in quality -- and thus the contention of the intuitionalist is virtually admitted -- or else the empiricist is trying to generate the ethical by telescoping into one another purely non-ethical elements. Here is the vulnerable point in empiricism -- by its logic change of quality in passage from generating elements to final product must be explained away. It is illusion. But the essence of an historic process is precisely qualitative change in process, that, as process, is continuous.

The empiricist is compelled to regard an idea as simply an accumulation of particular experiences, because he regards the original experience as an impression whose worth lies in its pictorial accuracy. If we regard the 'first' term as reaction or response, while it is thoroughly and genuinely empirical in character (in the sense of arising wholly within and because of experience and not from any extraneous a priori source), yet its business as response is to transcend, not barely to repeat, the quality of experience as previously given or constituted. Its further development consists in such elaborating and transforming of the response as makes it more adequate. Instead of bare consolidation of ready-made elements, there is a series of tentative adjustments which gradually perfect an adaptation.

The logic of the moral idea is like the logic of an invention, say a telephone. Certain positive elements or qualities are present ; but there are also certain ends which, not being adequately served by the qualities existent, are felt as needs. Facts as given and needs as demands are viewed in relation to each other because of their common relationship to some process of experience. Tentative reactions are tried. The old 'fact' or quality is viewed in a new light-the light of a need-hence is treated in a new way and thereby transformed. The operative factor is the

(367) reaction that, while called out in and by experience, transcends by modifying what is already given, instead of simply repeating it and accumulating more qualities of the same sort.

This logical objection can be brought into closer connection with facts by considering the relation of a moral belief to a biological instinct, or a well-formed social custom, which has not yet been brought into the ethical sphere ; the empiricist who turns evolutionist without appreciation of the inherent disparity of his logic and the realities of a historic process, holds that conscious customs are generated by the persistence of biological habits, and that moral practices form the cumulative effect of the customs. But more instinctive acts simply make instinct more instinctive; more acts of habit just harden an original custom. It is only through failure in the adequate working of the instinct or habit -- failure from the standpoint of adjustment-- that history, change in quality or values, is made. Simple repetition of acts of caring for the young, however long continued, would not awaken a consciousness of obligation, or of virtue, or of any moral value, as long as the acts were habitually performed-just because there would be no need for a transformation. In so far as definite acts are repeated and consolidated, the original habit or instinct of doing certain things in a certain way is just strengthened. We do not think we 'ought' to breathe, though the habit offers a typical instinct of an accumulatively consolidated act. Not by repetition, but by the failure of the purely biological methods of caring for the young, did any new or different attitude need to

arise. Some failure of instinct created the demand for a conscious attention to the nurture of the young. Only through this conscious attitude and its tension against some instinct could an ethical adaptation arise out of a physiological adaptation. Experience as it has been, experience in its given or constituted form, as such, is absolutely insufficient, in generating any moral belief. Either it is so coherent that the moral attitude is unnecessary, or it is so incoherent as to require the moral attitude as something different, and because different from itself. It is precisely the breakdown which serves as stimulus for qualitatively unlike modes of response, which, in so far as it is maintained in the medium of

(368) conscious attention, may be called ethical. The fundamental fallacy of empiricism is found in its failure to recognize negative elements in experience as a stimulus to building up a new experience which transcends the old, because involving its revision in such a way as to make good its needs and lacks. But it is just such change that the historic or genetic method is concerned with.

From this point of view, Huxley's contention of the essential difference and even opposition between the moral and natural gets an intelligible meaning. As I have endeavoured to show elsewhere,[3] his claim is not true in the sense that the moral process is to be opposed to the natural process as such. It is valid in that the mere presentation, repetition, or accumulation. of the natural just as it is or has been (as a given state, the only way in which the empiricist recognizes it) cannot generate anything approximating a moral attitude. It is the lack of adequate functioning in the given adjustments that supplies the conditions which call out a different mode of action ; and it is in so far as this is new and different that it gets its standing by transforming or reconstructing the previously existing elements. It is this need and effort of reconstruction which creates the feeling of antagonism or opposition between the old, the natural order, and the new or ethical order -- the order which demands that a way of conceiving or interpreting the situation cease to be mere idea, and become a practical construction.

The relevancy of this radical incapacity of the empirical method to deal with historic change, to the question of our grounds for accepting or criticising moral judgments obvious -- to empiricism the given is the real, and the given is that which resists further analysis. Undoubtedly ethical empiricism has been of great value in the actual development of morality in the last century. It has resolved into 'elements' many habits and beliefs around which was gathered an emotional sanctification in such a way as greatly to facilitate their practical breaking-up. It has shown mere custom, prejudice, factitious association, class-interest to be operative in institutions, laws, ways of acting,

(369) that claimed moral worth, and has thus been a potent, perhaps the most potent force, in releasing certain tied-up impulses and rendering them available for future organization.

But even this service has had three marked restrictions. Empiricism has had no particular direction to give in furthering the positive organization. It has set free certain

tendencies, but the consequent movement of these tendencies has been left again to circumstance and dominant interest. Potent in criticism, empiricism is helpless in construction. In the second place, it has no way of discriminating in its reduction of complete states, practices and ideas into 'elements.' All ideas and ideals alike give way to its dissolving touch. It is no accident that John Stuart Mill, whose mind was inherently organic and constructive, felt his habit of "inveterate analysis " as a skeptical and destructive influence, and sought to counteract its baneful influence by finding "indissoluble associations," by falling back upon certain 'natural' social feelings of an organizing sort, and by nourishing his ideals upon the historic interpretations of Comte and the 'German School.' It was always open to any writer of less positive and serious moral consciousness, to subject the best working ideas of humanity to the same treatment that, in the hands of James Mill and Jeremy Bentham, was so effective against engrained moral prejudice and class interests masquerading as natural morality and eternal intuitions. And thirdly, thereby, empiricism always and inevitably generates intuitionalism. Someone must come to the rescue of the threatened ideals ; and so they are vehemently reasserted as inherently and unrelatedly valid. When dogmatism is necessary in order to protect from dissolution ideas that appear requisite to the better life of humanity, dogmatism may be accounted due; and it arrives with an impetus derived from shock with the theory it opposes. Thus arbitrary reactions and oscillations are substituted for a gradual and controlled development of moral opinion and practice.

Empiricism is thus as absolutistic in its logic as is intuitionalism. Complex ideas, beliefs, practices, are indeed relative, made through associations of elements. But the elements are just given, they are fixed, absolute; they are objective determinations,

(370) not critical points of a process. And the associations which yoke them are all externally determined also ; they are not continuities of an historic growth. The contrast comes out strong when we compare the typical empiricist's mode of dealing with some apparently absurd custom of a remote people, enforced by that people as sacred obligation, with the historian's treatment of it. The empiricist makes of it a freak, an excrescence from external chance combinations ; the historian sees it embedded in the life of the people, historically knit together with its whole body of memories and traditions ; carrying, as well as carried by customs which are involved in the whole scheme of social life. It is not an accident, but a logical necessity, that the historic method arose partly at least in reaction from the arbitrary absolutism of empiricism which made a tabula rasa of institutions, customs, organized beliefs, and left in their place untimed, unrelated elements, open to any possible conjunction but demanding none. The historic method is as critical as empiricism ; it destroys by explaining, by laying bare, by setting the fact dealt with in its whole context; and mayhap condemning it by showing how obsolete is that situation. But, at the same time, it justifies -- relatively. The situation was a reality, it existed in its own time and lace, and the fact in question was an integral part of it.

This then is the case for the moral significance of the genetic method : it unites the present situation with its accepted customs, beliefs, moral ideals, hopes, and aspirations, with the past. It sees the moral process as a whole, and yet in presective. Whatever then can be learned from a study of the past, is at once available in the analysis of the present. It be comes an instrument of inquiry, of interpretation, of criticism as regards

our present assumptions and aspirations. Thereby it brings their constitution and formation out into the light as far as may be. It eliminates surds, mere survivals, emotional reactions, and rationalizes, so far as that is possible at any given time, the attitudes we take, the ideals we form. Both empiricism and intuitionalism, though in very different ways, deny the continuity of the moralizing process. They set up timeless, and hence absolute and disconnected, ultimates ; thereby they sever the problems and move-

(371) -ments of the present from the past, rob the past, the sole object of calm, impartial, and genuinely objective study, of all instructing power, and leave our experience to form undirected, at the mercy of circumstance and arbitrariness, whether that of dogmatism or scepticism. To help us see the present situation comprehensively, analytically, to put in our hands a grasp of the factors that have counted, this way or that, in the moralizing of man, that is what the historic method does for us. If our moral judgments were just judgments about morality, this might be of scientific worth, but would lack moral significance, moral helpfulness. But moral judgments are judgments of ways to act, of deeds to do, of habits to form, of ends to cultivate. Whatever modifies the judgment, the conviction, the interpretation, the criterion, modifies conduct. To control our judgments of conduct, our estimates of habit, deed, and purpose, is in so far forth to direct conduct itself.

Thus the contention of the previous paper as to the scientific necessity of the genetic or evolutionary method, and of the present paper as to its practical moral significance turn out to be one. Whatever gives scientific control gives of necessity also practical assistance; just because the standpoint is one of continuity of process that knows no separation of past from present.

JOHN DEWEY.THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.

Notes

1. PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW, March, 1902.2. There is of course a more fundamental problem: whether the validity of the

moral categories as such can be adequately treated apart from that of specific validities. There is at least a working presumption that the logic which deals with the question of validity and truth in general must get its material by considering the specific criteria and modes of verification used in settling matters of truth in particular instances. It is difficult to see, for example, just how the logic of the theoretic sciences can discuss the possibility of the intellect reaching truth at large, severed from the problem of the methods which the special sciences use in discriminating truth from error in their own special provinces.

3. Monist, Vol. VIII, P. 321, 'Evolution and Ethic'

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[Bajado el 23 de agosto de 2011]

Originally published as:

John Dewey. "The Problems of Value." Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 10 (1913): 268-269.

Editors' notes

This brief letter to the editor is included as part of the history of attitude scaling. The paper is Dewey's response to the publication of the questions chosen to focus discussions at the December 1913 meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Those discussions would contribute to the basic notions underlying the methods of attitude measurement.

The Problem of ValuesALL members of the Philosophical Association owe a debt of gratitude to the executive committee for formulating the question to be discussed at the next meeting. I am aware of no better way of expressing my own gratitude than to comply promptly with the request of the committee for submission of additional formulations of the question.

I shall first make a few remarks upon the formulation by four members of the committee.[2] I assume that in the question, "Is value something which is ultimate and which attaches itself to 'things' independently of consciousness, or of an organic being with desires and aversions? " the "or" is to be understood as marking a genuine alternative between "consciousness" and an "organic being with desires and aversions," not as indicating that the latter clause is in apposition with consciousness or explanatory of it. The alternative is genuine and important : for some may be inclined to connect the existence of values with organic behavior and yet not be willing to equate desires and aversions with "consciousness" — in fact, they may go so far as to hold that "consciousness" (in whatever sense the term is here used) is itself dependent upon matters connected with the desires and aversions of an organic being. Since, however, unconscious desires and aversions may appear to some to involve a contradiction in language, it would seem better to substitute a more objective term, such as selections and rejections; or better yet, to generalize the matter and make the alternative in question to be simply that of connection with the behavior of organic beings.

When the question is thus understood, some doubt arises as to the force of the term "ultimate" in the first alternative. Are values if regarded as variables of organic behavior less ultimate than if regarded as things irrespective of connection with organic behavior? And if the answer should be in the affirmative, what is the ground upon which this answer rests?

I have no doubt a successful discussion may be had on the basis of the formulation already presented. In some respects, however, the formulation seems unnecessarily tied

up with the idealistic-realistic controversy. I recognize that this complication has the advantage of preserving continuity in the discussions from year to

( 269) year; yet it is possible that the questions at issue might, in the present juncture, be dealt with in the end more effectively if approached by a flank movement. At all events, I venture to submit the following list of questions :

1. Can the question of the status of values in philosophic discussion be approached apart from the question of the status of qualities?

2. Can values be separated from traits of organic behavior? If organic behavior has its own distinguishing traits, does the affirmation that values are traits of organic behavior imply their "subjectivity" ? If so, in what sense? Does connection with organic behavior imply their dependence upon awareness?

3. Do values antecede, or do they depend upon valuation-understanding by valuation a process of reflective estimation or judgment?

4. If they antecede, does valuation merely bring them to light without change, or does it modify antecedent values? Does it produce new values? If the latter occur, are the modification and production merely incidental or are they essential?

5. Can the place of intelligence in behavior in general (and in moral conduct in particular) be understood without implying that reflection reorganizes antecedent natural values?

6. What is the meaning of appreciation? Is it a particular mode of apprehending (knowing) values, or is it a name for the direct presence of values in experience? How is it related to valuation and criticism?

7. Does the presence of values in experience in general (or say religious values in particular) have an evidential import? That is to say, does the existence of religious values, for example, prove the existence of any class of objects beyond the values themselves? Or, again, does the presence in experience of any type of values purport to make the mind aware of something in the environment, taking that word in its widest possible sense? [This question may profitably be considered in connection with the first question, regarding qualities.]

8. If the answers to these questions should be in the negative, is the significance of such values for experience and for philosophy thereby determined to be null or illusory ? Can an affirmative answer to this question be maintained except on the assumption that all experience is, ipso facto, intended to be an awareness of objects?

JOHN DEWEY.COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

Notes

1. This paper is presented in response to the request of the committee that further formulations of this problem be submitted for publication.

2. This Journal, Vol. X., page 165.

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[Bajado el 23 de agosto de 2011]

Originally published as:

John Dewey. "Evolution and Ethics" Pages 34-54 in The Early Works of John Dewey 1882 - 1898, Vol. 5 (1895-1898) edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press (1972).  Originally published in The Monist VIII, (1898): 321-341.

Editors' notes

Because we have been unable to access copies of The Monist, we have been unable to follow our preferred practice of presenting this document with its original pagination. We have relied on the extraordinary work of the Dewey Edition project at Southern Illinois University: Carbondale for the text and pagination presented here.

Evolution and EthicsTo a strictly logical mind the method of the development of thought must be a perplexing, even irritating matter. Its course is not so much like the simple curve described by a bullet as it speeds its way to a mark, as it is like the devious tacking of a sail boat upon a heavy sea with changeable winds. It would be difficult to find a single problem during the whole record of reflective thought which has been pursued consistently until some definite result was reached. It generally happens that just as the problem becomes defined, and the order of battle is drawn, with contestants determined on each side, the whole scene changes; interest is transferred to another phase of the question, and the old problem is left apparently suspended in mid-air. It is left, not because any satisfactory solution has been reached; but interest is exhausted. Another question which seems more important has claimed attention. If one, after a generation or a century, reviews the controversy and finds that some consensus of judgment has finally been reached, he discovers that this has come about, not so much through exhaustive logical discussion, as through a change in men's points of view. The solution is psychologically, rather than logically, justified.

This general reflection is called to mind as I undertake the discussion of the question of the relation of evolution and ethics. A generation ago the entire interest was in the exact relation between man and the lower animals. We had one

( 35) school concerned with reducing this difference to the lowest possible limits and urging that the consciousness of man, intellectual and moral, as well as his physical nature, might be considered a direct inheritance through easy gradations from some form of the anthropoid ape. We had another school equally concerned with magnifying the difference, making it, if possible, an unbridgeable chasm. It would be a bold man who would say that this controversy has been settled by the actual weight of concrete detailed evidence, or even that it has been very far advanced. The writings which really throw light on the question, in either direction (so far as the facts are concerned and not merely general considerations), can probably be easily numbered on the fingers of the two hands. Yet suddenly we find that discussion of this question has practically ceased, and that what engages controversy is the relation of what I may call the evolutionary concepts in general to the ethical concepts. Points of agreement and disagreement between the ideas involved in the notion of evolution and those involved in the notion of moral conduct are searched for. It is the state of the imagination and the direction of interest which have changed.

It is the latter question which I purpose to discuss to-day. This particular phase of the problem was precipitated, if not initiated, by the late Professor Huxley in his Romanes Lecture for 1893 on "Evolution and Ethics." It is some points in that address which I shall take as my text,—not for the sake of directly controverting them, but as convenient points of departure for raising the questions which seem to me fundamental. In that lecture, as you will all remember, Mr. Huxley points out in his incisive and sweeping language certain differences between what he terms the cosmic and the ethical processes. Those who recall the discussion following the lecture will remember that many felt as if they had received a blow knocking the breath out of their bodies. To some it appeared that Mr. Huxley had executed a sudden volte-face and had given up his belief in the unity of the evolutionary process, accepting the very dualistic idea of the separation between the animal and the human, against which lie had previously directed so many hard blows. To some conservative thinkers it appeared that Saul had finally shown

( 36) himself among the prophets. The lecture was deplored or welcomed according to the way one interpreted it with reference to his own prepossessions.

The position taken by Huxley, so far as it concerns us here, may be summed up as follows: The rule of the cosmic process is struggle and strife. The rule of the ethical process is sympathy and co-operation. The end of the cosmic process is the survival of the fittest; that of the ethical, the fitting of as many as possible to survive. Before the ethical tribunal the cosmic process stands condemned. The two processes are not only incompatible but even opposed to each other. "Social progress means the checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who happen to be the fittest in respect of the whole of the conditions which exist, but of those who are ethically the best. The practice of that which is ethically best —which we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which in all respects is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. . . . The cosmic process has no sort

of relation to moral ends. The imitation by man is inconsistent with the first principles of ethics. Let us understand once for all that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it" (Ethics and Evolution, pp. 81-83, et passim) .

Even in the lecture, however, Mr. Huxley used certain expressions which show that he did not hold to this opposition in a sense which meant the surrender of his previous evolutionary convictions. Thus he says that the ethical process, "strictly speaking, is part of the general cosmic process, just as the governor in a steam engine is part of the mechanism of the engine" (note 20, p. 115). In a later essay (published as "Prolegomena"), aroused somewhat by the clamour which the lecture had called forth, he makes his position even clearer. Here he illustrates his meaning by referring to the two hands as used in stretching or pulling. Each is opposed to the other, and yet both are manifestations of the same original force (p. 13). It is not that the ethical process is opposed to the entire cosmic process, but

( 37) that part of the cosmic process which is maintained in the conduct of men in society, is radically opposed both in its methods and its aims to that part of the cosmic process which is exhibited in the stages of evolution prior to the appearance of socialized man upon the scene.

He makes this point clearer by reference to the analogy of a garden (pp. 9-11). Through the cosmic process, independent of man, certain plants have taken possession of a piece of soil because they are adapted to that particular environment. Man enters and roots out these plants as noxious weeds, or at least as useless for his purposes. He introduces other plants agreeable to his own wants and aims, and proceeds at once to modify the environment; if necessary, changing the soil by fertilization, building walls, altering conditions of sunlight and moisture so as to maintain his garden as a work of art—an artifice. This artificial structure, the one mediated by man's aims and efforts, is so opposed to the natural state of things that if man lets up in the ardor, the continuity, of his labors, the natural forces and conditions reassert themselves, the wall crumbles, the soil deteriorates, and the garden is finally once more over-grown with weeds.

Mr. Huxley is a trenchant writer, and his illustrations hold the mind captive. But possibly further consideration of this very illustration will point to a different conclusion. Illustrations are two-edged swords. There is no doubt in my mind of the justness of the analogy. The ethical process, like the activity of the gardener, is one of constant struggle. We an never allow things simply to go on of themselves. If we do, the result is retrogression. Over-sight, vigilance, constant interference with conditions as they are, are necessary to maintain the ethical order, as they are to keep up the garden. The problem, however, is to locate this opposition and interference,—to interpret it, to say what it means in the light of lair idea of the evolutionary process as a whole.

Thus considering the illustration, the thought suggests itself that we do not have here in reality a conflict of man as man with his entire natural environment. We have rather the modification by man of one part of the environment with reference to another part. Man does not set himself against

( 38) the state of nature. He utilizes one part of this state in order to control another part. It still holds that "nature is made better by no mean, but nature makes that mean" The plants which the gardener introduces, the vegetables and fruits he wishes to cultivate, may indeed be foreign to this particular environment; but they are not alien to man's environment as a whole. He introduces and maintains by art conditions of sunlight and moisture to which this particular plot of ground is unaccustomed; but these conditions fall within the wont and use of nature as a whole.

These may appear as too obvious considerations to be worth mentioning. Surely they could not have escaped Mr. Huxley for a moment. Yet it is possible that their bearing escaped him; for, if I mistake not, when we allow our mind to dwell upon such considerations as these, the entire import of the illustration changes. We are led to conceive, not of the conflict between the garden and the gardener; between the natural process and the process of art dependent upon human consciousness and effort. Our attention is directed to the possibility of interpreting a narrow and limited environment in the light of a wider and more complete one,—of reading the possibilities of a part through its place in the whole. Human intelligence and effort intervene, not as opposing forces but as making this connection. When Huxley says that "the macrocosm is pitted against the microcosm; that man is subduing nature to his higher ends; that the history of civilization details the steps by which we have succeeded in building up an artificial world within the cosmos; that there lies within man a fund of energy operating intelligently and so far akin to that which pervades the universe that it is competent to influence and modify the cosmic process,"—he says to my mind that man is an organ of the cosmic process in effecting its own progress. This progress consists essentially in making over a part of the environment by relating it more intimately to the environment as a whole; not, once more, in man setting himself against that environment.

Huxley himself defines the issue in words already quoted in which he contrasts the survival of those who "may happen to be the fittest in respect of the whole of the condi-

( 39) tions which exist, to the survival of those who are ethically the best." The clause italicized sums up the whole problem. It is granted without argument that the fittest with respect to a limited part of the environment are not identical with the ethically best. Can we make this concession, however, when we have in mind the whole of the existing conditions? Is not the extent to which Mr. Huxley pushes his dualistic opposition, are not many of the popular contrasts between the natural and the ethical, results of taking a limited view of the conditions with respect to which the term "fit" is used? I n cosmic nature, as Mr. Huxley says, what is fittest depends upon the conditions. If our hemisphere were to cool again, the "survival of the fittest might leave us with nothing but lichens, diatomes, and such microscopic organisms as that which gives red snow its color." We cannot work this idea one way without being willing to work it in the other. The conditions with respect to which the term "fit" must now be used include the existing social structure with all the habits, demands, and ideals which are found in it. If so, we have reason to conclude that the "fittest with respect to the whole of the conditions" is the best; that, indeed, the only standard we have of the best is the

discovery of that which maintains these conditions in their integrity. The unfit is practically the anti-social.

Loose popular argument—Mr. Huxley himself hardly [:ills into the pit—is accustomed to suppose that if the principle of the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest were rigorously carried out, it would result in the destruction of the weak, the sickly, the defective, and the insane. An examination of this popular assumption may serve to illuminate the point just made. We are all familiar with Fiske's generalization that civilization is a product of the prolongation of the period of infancy; that the necessity of caring for offspring not able to take care of themselves, Tiring a continually lengthening period, stimulated the affection and care, the moral germs of social life, and required the foresight and providence that were the germs of the industrial arts upon which society depends. Mr. Fiske's contention, whether true or false, is worth putting over against the popular assumption. How far are we to go in the destruc-

(40) -tion of the helpless and dependent in order that the "fit" may survive? Clearly in this case the infant was one who was "fit," not only in ethical terms but in terms of furthering the evolutionary process. Is there any reason to suppose that the dependent classes are not equally "fit" at present, when measured by the whole of the conditions as a standard?

We may imagine a leader in an early social group, when the question had arisen of putting to death the feeble, the sickly, and the aged, in order to give that group an advantage in the struggle for existence with other groups;—we may imagine him, I say, speaking as follows: "No. In order that we may secure this advantage, let us preserve these classes. It is true for the moment that they make an additional drain upon our resources, and an additional tax upon the energies which might otherwise be engaged in fighting our foes. But in looking after these helpless we shall develop habits of foresight and forethought, powers of looking before and after, tendencies to husband our means, which shall ultimately make us the most skilled in warfare. We shall foster habits of group loyalty, feelings of solidarity, which shall bind us together by such close ties that no social group which has not cultivated like feelings through caring for all its members, will be able to withstand us." In a word, such conduct would pay in the struggle for existence as well as be morally commendable.

If the group to which he spoke saw any way to tide over the immediate emergency, no one can gainsay the logic of this speech. Not only the prolongation of the period of dependence, but the multiplication of its forms, has meant historically increase of intelligent foresight and planning, and increase of the bonds of social unity. Who shall say that such qualities are not positive instruments in the struggle for existence, and that those who stimulate and call out such powers are not among those "fit to survive"? If the deer had never developed his timidity and his skill in running away, the tiger and the wolf had never shown their full resources in the way of courage and power of attack. Again, prevention is better than cure, but it has been through trying to cure the sick that we have learned how to protect the well.

I have discussed this particular case in the hope of en-

(41) -larging somewhat our conception of what is meant by the term "fit"; to suggest that we are in the habit of interpreting it with reference to an environment which long ago ceased to be. That which was fit among the animals is not fit among human beings, not merely because the animals were non-moral and man is moral; but because the conditions of life have changed, and because there is no way to define the term "fit" excepting through these conditions. The environment is now distinctly a social one, and the content of the term "fit" has to be made with reference to social adaptation. Moreover, the environment in which we now live is a changing and progressive one. Every one must have his fitness judged by the whole, including the anticipated change; not merely by reference to the conditions of today, because these may be gone tomorrow. If one is fitted simply to the present, he is not fitted to survive. He is sure to go under. A part of his fitness will consist in that very flexibility which enables him to adjust himself without too much loss to sudden and unexpected changes in his surroundings. We have then no reason here to oppose the ethical process to the natural process. The demand is for those who are fit for the conditions of existence in one case as well as in the other. It is the conditions which have changed.[2]

Let us turn our attention from the idea of "fitness" to that of the process or method—the "struggle for existence." Is it true that in the moral sphere the struggle must cease, or I hat we must turn ourselves resolutely upon it, branding it as immoral? Or, as in the case of the idea of fitness, is this struggle as necessary to the ethical as it is to the biological? In reality, the idea of struggle for existence is controlled by the environment in which that struggle is put forth. That which is struggle for life, and successful struggle, at one time, would be inert supineness or suicidal mania at another. This is as true of varying periods in animal development as

( 42) it is of the human contrasted with the animal. The nature of the struggle for existence is constantly modifying itself, not because something else is substituted for it, much less opposed to it; but because as the conditions of life change, the modes of living must change also. That which would count in the Carboniferous period will not count in the Neozoic. 'Why should we expect that which counts among the carnivora to count with man,—a social animal? If we do not find the same qualities effective (and hence to be maintained) in both cases; or if we find that opposed qualities are called for, what right have we to assume that what was once effected by the struggle for existence has now to be accomplished by another and opposed force?

The term "struggle for existence" seems to be used in two quite different senses by Mr. Huxley. In one case it means practically simply self-assertion. I do not see that the struggle for existence is anything more than living existence itself. Life tends to maintain itself because it is life. The particular acts which are put forth are the outcome of the life that is there; they are its expression, its manifestation.

Self-assertion in this sense carries with it no immoral connotation, unless life by its very nature is immoral. But Huxley also uses "struggle for existence" with a distinctly selfish meaning. He speaks of the "ape and tiger promptings" as branded with the name of sins (p. 52) . He identifies self-assertion with "the unscrupulous seizing upon all that can be

grasped; the tenacious holding of all that can be kept (p. 51) . It is "ruthless." It "thrusts aside or treads down all competitors." It "involves the gladiatorial theory of existence" (p. 82). Hence it is a "powerful and tenacious enemy to the ethical" (p. 85).

Surely, all this is rhetoric rather than philosophy of science. We inherit our impulses and our tendencies from, our ancestors. These impulses and tendencies need to be modified. They need to be curbed and restrained. So much goes without saying. The question is regarding the nature of the modification; the nature of the restraint, and its relation to the original impulses of self-assertion. Surely, w do not want to suppress our animal inheritance; nor do w wish to restrain it absolutely,—that is, for the mere sake of

( 43) restraint. It is not an enemy to the moral life, simply because without it no life is possible. 'Whatever is necessary to life we may fairly assume to have some relevancy to moral living. More than this is true. That self-assertion which we may call life is not only negatively, but positively a factor in the ethical process. What are courage, persistence, patience, enterprise, initiative, but forms of the self-assertion of those impulses which make up the life process? So much, I suppose, all would grant; but are temperance, chastity, benevolence, self-sacrifice itself, any less forms of self-assertion? Is not more, rather than less strength, involved in their exercise? Does the man who definitely and resolutely sets about obtaining some needed reform and with reference to that need sacrifices all the common comforts and luxuries of life, even for the time being social approval and reputation, fail in the exercise of self-assertion?

The simple fact of the case is of course that these promptings, even the promptings of the "tiger and the ape," are, simply as promptings, neither moral nor immoral; no more sins than they are saintly attributes. They are the basis and material of all acts whatsoever, good and bad. They become good when trained in a certain way, just as they become bad when trained in another way. The man who regards his animal inheritance as evil in and of itself apart from its relation to aims proposed by his intelligence, has logically but one recourse,—to seek Nirvana.[3] With him the principle of self-negation becomes absolute. But with all others, the men and women whom Mr. Huxley is presumably addressing, self-restraint is simply a factor within self-assertion. It relates to the particular ways in which self-assertion is made.

I may appear here to have ignored Huxley's distinction between the struggle for existence and the struggle for happiness (p. 40). The former it will be said, he uses in a definite technical sense as meaning simply the struggle for the perpetuation of life, apart from the kind of life led, and

( 44) as exhibiting itself in direct conflict with others, leading to the elimination of some. That struggle for existence it may be surely said, is not to be continued within the ethical process. The struggle for existence relates, he says, simply to the "means of living." Besides that we have the struggle for happiness, having to do with the uses to which these means are put, —the values which are got out of them, the ends.

I reply in the first place, that Mr. Huxley contradicts himself on this point in such a way that one would be quite justified in ignoring the distinction; and in the second place, that I am not able to see the validity of the distinction.

As to Mr. Huxley's self-contradiction, he asserts in a number of places that the struggle for existence as such (as distinct from the struggle for happiness) has now come to an end. It held only in the lower social forms when living was so precarious that people actually killed each other, if not for food, at least to secure the scanty store of food available. If it holds now at all it is simply among the small criminal class in society (p. 41). Now Mr. Huxley not only takes this position, but from a certain point of view is bound to take it. If the struggle is still going on, selection is still occurring, and there is every reason to suppose that as heretofore, it is a distinct agent in social progress; and Mr. Huxley is bound to hold that natural selection no longer operates in social progress and that therefore we must have recourse to other means. But if the struggle for existence has thus ceased of itself within any given human society, what sense is there in saying that it is now "a tenacious and powerful enemy with which ethical nature has to reckon"? If it has died out because of the change of conditions, why should the ethical process have to spend all its energy in combating it? "Let the dead bury their dead."'

In other words, Mr. Huxley himself is practically unable to limit the meaning of the phrase "struggle for existence" to this narrow import. He has himself to widen it so as to include not only the struggle for mere continuance of

( 45) physical existence, but also whatever makes that life what it is. The distinction between the struggle for existence and the struggle for happiness breaks down. It breaks down, I take it, none the less in animal life itself than it does in social life. If the struggle for existence on the part of the wolf meant simply the struggle on his part to keep from dying, I do not doubt that the sheep would gladly have compromised at any time upon the basis of furnishing him with the necessary food—including even an occasional bowl of mutton broth. The fact is the wolf asserted himself as a wolf. It was not mere life he wished, but the life of the wolf. No agent can draw this distinction between desire for mere life and desire for happy life for himself; and no more can the spectator intelligently draw it for another.

What then is the conflict, the tension, which is a necessary factor in the moral life—for be it remembered there is no difference of opinion with Mr. Huxley upon this point? The sole question is whether the combat is between the ethical process as such, and the cosmic, natural, process as such. The outcome of our previous discussion is that it cannot be the latter because the natural process, the so-called inherited animal instincts and promptings, are not only the stimuli, but also the materials, of moral conduct. To weaken them absolutely, as distinct from giving them a definite turn or direction, is to lessen the efficiency of moral conduct. Where then does the struggle come in? Evidently in the particular turn or direction which is given to the powers of the animal nature making up the immediate content of self-assertion. But once more, what does this turn or direction mean? Simply, I take it, that an act which was once adapted to given conditions must now be adapted to other conditions. The effort, the struggle, is a name for the necessity of this re-adaptation.[5] The conditions which originally called the

power forth, which led to its "selection," under which it got its origin, and formation, have ceased to exist, not indeed, wholly, but in such part that the power is now more or less irrelevant. Indeed, it is not now a "power" in the sense of

(46) being a function which can without transformation operate successfully with reference to the whole set of existing conditions. Mr. Huxley states the whole case when he says that "in extreme cases man does his best to put an end to the survival of the fittest of former days by the axe and rope." The phrase, "the fittest of former days" contains the matter in a nut-shell. Just because the acts of which the promptings and impulses are the survival, were the fittest for by-gone days they are not the fittest now. The struggle comes, not in suppressing them nor in substituting something else for them; but in reconstituting them, in adapting them, so that they will function with reference to the existing situation.

This, I take it, is the truth, and the whole truth, contained in Mr. Huxley's opposition of the moral and the natural order. The tension is between an organ adjusted to a past state and the functioning required by present conditions. And this tension demands reconstruction. This opposition of the structure of the past and the deeds of the present is precisely that suggested in the discussion of the illustrative garden. The past environment is related to the present as a part to a whole. When animal life began on land, water became only one factor in the conditions of life, and the animal attitude towards it was changed. It certainly could not now get along without a water-environment, much less could it turn against it; but its relations to moisture as a condition of life were profoundly modified. An embryonic Huxley might then have argued that the future success of animal life depended upon combating the natural process which had previously maintained and furthered it. In reality the demand was, that which was only a part should be treated as such, and thus subordinated to the whole set of conditions.

Thus when Mr. Huxley says (p. 12) that "nature is always tending to reclaim that which her child, man, has borrowed from her and has arranged in combinations which are not those favored by the general cosmic process," this only means that the environment minus man is not the same environment as the one that includes man. In any other sense these "combinations" are favored by the general cosmic process,—in witness whereof man through whom that process works has set his sign and seal. That if you took man out

( 47) of this process things would change, is much like saying that if they were different they would not be the same; or, that a part is not its own whole.

There are many signs that Mr. Huxley had Mr. Spencer in mind in many of his contentions; that what he is really aiming at is the supposition on the part of Mr. Spencer that the goal of evolution is a complete state of final adaptation in which all is peace and bliss and in which the pains of effort and of reconstruction are known no more. As against this insipid millennium, Mr. Huxley is certainly right in calling attention to the fact that the ethical process implies continual struggle, conquest, and the

defeats that go with conquest. But when Mr. Huxley asserts that the struggle is between the natural process and the ethical, we must part company with him. He seems to assert that in some far century it may be possible for the ape and the tiger to be so thoroughly subjugated by man that the "inveterate enemy of the moral process" shall finally be put under foot. Then the struggle will occur against the environment because of a shortage of food. But we must insist that Mr. Huxley is here falling into the very charges which he has brought against Mr. Spencer's school. The very highest habits and ideals which are organizing today with reference to existing conditions will be just as much, and just as little, an obstacle to the moral conduct of man millions of years from now, as those of the ape and the tiger are to us. So far as they represent the survival of outworn conditions, they will demand re-constitution and re-adaptation, and that modification will be accompanied by pain. Growth always costs something. It costs the making over of the old in order to meet the demands of the new.

This struggle, then, is not more characteristic of the ethical process than it is of the biological. Long before man came upon the earth, long before any talk was heard of right and wrong, it happened that those who clung persistently to modes of action which were adapted to an environment that had passed away, were at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence, and tended to die out. The factors of the conflict upon which Mr. Huxley lays so much stress have been present ever since the beginning of life and will

( 48) continue to be present as long as we live in a moving, and not a static world. What he insists upon is reconstruction and readaptation,—modification of the present with reference to the conditions of the future.

With the animal it was simply the happy guess,—the chance. In society there is anticipation; with man it is the intelligent and controlled foresight, the necessity of maintaining the institutions which have come down to us, while we make over these institutions so that they serve under changing conditions. To give up the institutions is chaos and anarchy; to maintain the institutions unchanged is death and fossilization. The problem is the reconciliation of unbridled radicalism and inert conservatism, in a movement of reasonable reform. Psychologically the tension manifests itself as the conflict between habits and aims: a conflict necessary, so far as we can see, to the maintenance of conscious life. Without habits we can do nothing. Yet if habits become so fixed that they cannot be adapted to the ends suggested by new situations, they are barriers to conduct and enemies to life. It is conflict with the end or ideal which keeps the habit working, a flexible and efficient instrument of action. Without this conflict with habits, the end becomes vague, empty, and sentimental. Defining it so that the habits may be utilized in realizing it makes it of practical value. This definition would never occur were it not that habits resist it.

Just as habits and aims are co-operating factors in the maintenance of conscious experience, just as institutions and plans of reform are co-workers in our social life, just as the relative antagonism between the two is necessary to their valuable final co-adaptation; so impulse, call it animal if we will, and ideal, call it holy though we may, are mutually necessary in themselves and in their mutual opposition for the ethical process. It is well for the ideal that it meet the opposition of the impulse, as it is for the animal prompting to be held to the function suggested by the ideal.

In locating and interpreting this tension, this opposition between the natural and the moral, I have done what I set out to do. There is one other point which it seems worth while to touch upon before leaving the matter. Three terms are always found together in all discussions of evolution,—natural selection, struggle for existence, and the fit. The

( 49) latter two of these ideas we have discussed in their bearings upon moral life. It remains to say a word or two upon natural selection. Mr. Huxley's position on this point is not quite clear. As has been already suggested, it seems to be varying, if not actually self-contradictory. At times he seems to hold that since the struggle for existence has ceased in the social sphere, selection has ceased also to act, and therefore the work formerly done by it (if we may for the moment personify it as an agent) now has to be done in other ways (see the passages referred to on pp. 43-44). At other times he seems to hold that it is still going on but that its tendency upon the whole is bad, judged from the ethical standpoint, and therefore requires to be consciously counteracted.

Certainly the question of the scope of selection in the sphere of social life is confused. Does it still continue or does it not? If it does operate what are its modes of working? Many seem to suppose that we do not have it excepting where we intentionally isolate those whom we consider unfit, and prevent them from reproducing offspring; or that it is found only if we artificially regulate marriage in such a way as to attempt to select social and animal types considered higher at the expense of the lower. Mr. Huxley naturally considers selection in this sense, not only practically impossible, but intrinsically undesirable. But is this the only or the chief meaning of natural selection? Does it follow that social selection, to use a term employed by late writers, is something radically different from natural selection?

The belief that natural selection has ceased to operate rests upon the assumption that there is only one form of such selection: that where improvement is indirectly effected by the failure of species of a certain type to continue to reproduce; carrying with it as its correlative that certain variations continue to multiply, and finally come to possess the land. This ordeal by death is an extremely important phase of natural selection, so-called. That it has been the chief form in pre-human life will be here admitted without discussion; though doubtless those having competent knowledge of details have good reason for qualifying this admission. However, to identify this procedure absolutely with selection, seems to me to indicate a somewhat gross and narrow vision. Not only is one form of life as a whole se-

( 50) -lected at the expense of other forms, but one mode of action in the same individual is constantly selected at the expense of others. There is not only the trial by death, but there is the trial by the success or failure of special acts—the counterpart, I suppose, of physiological selection so-called. We do not need to go here into the vexed question of the inheritance of acquired characters. We know that through what we call public opinion and education certain forms of action are constantly stimulated and encouraged, while other types are as constantly objected to, repressed, and punished. What difference in principle exists between this mediation of the acts of the individual by society and what is ordinarily called natural selection, I am unable to see. In each

case there is the reaction of the conditions of life back into the agents in such a way as to modify the function of living. That in one case this modification takes place through changes in the structure of the organ, say the eye, requiring many generations to become active; while in the other case it operates within the life of one and the same individual, and affects the uses to which the eye is put rather than (so far as we can tell) the structure of the eye itself, is not a reason for re-fusing to use the term "natural selection." Or if we have limited that term to a narrower technical meaning, it is certainly no reason for refusing to say that the same kind of forces are at work bringing about the same sort of results. If we personify Nature, we may say that the influences of education and social approval and disapproval in modifying the behavior of the agent, mark simply the discovery on the part of Nature of a shorter and more economical form of selection than she had previously known. The modification of structure is certainly not an end in itself. It is simply one device for changing function. If other means can be devised which do the work more efficiently, then so much the better. Certainly it marks a distinct gain to accomplish this modification in one and the same generation rather than to have to trust to the dying out of the series of forms through a sequence of generations. It is certainly implied in the idea of natural selection that the most effective modes of variation should themselves be finally selected.

But Mr. Huxley insists upon another distinction. Stated

( 51) in terms of the garden illustration, it is that: "The tendency of the cosmic process is to bring about the adjustment of the forms of plant life to the current conditions; the tendency of the horticultural process is the adjustment of the needs of the forms of plant life which the gardener desires to raise." This is a very common antithesis. But is it as absolute and sweeping as we generally affect to believe? Every living form is dynamically, not simply statically, adapted to its environment. I mean by this it subjects conditions about it to its own needs. This is the very meaning of "adjustment"; it does not mean that the life-form passively accepts or submits to the conditions just as they are, but that it functionally subordinates these natural circumstances to its own food needs.

But this principle is of especial importance with reference to the forms in which are found the lines of progressive variation. It is, relatively speaking, true of the weeds and gorse of the patch of soil from which Mr. Huxley draws his illustration, that they are adjusted to current conditions. But that is simply because they mark the result, the relatively finished outcome of a given process of selection. They are arrested forms. Just because the patch has got into equilibrium with surrounding conditions progressive variation along that line has ceased. If this were all the life in existence, there would be no more evolution. Something, in other words, did not adapt itself to "current conditions," and so development continued.

It would be ungrateful in any discussion of this subject not to refer to Malthus's classic illustration of the feast spread by Nature—not big enough for the invited guests. It is supposed, in its application to struggle for existence and selection, that this means that the life-forms present struggle just to get a share of the food that is already there. Such a struggle for a quota of food already in existence, might result, through selection, in perfecting a species already in existence, and thus in fixing it. It could not give rise to a

new species. The selection which marks progress is that of a variation which creates a new food supply or amplifies an old one. The advantage which the variation gives, if it tends towards a new species, is an organ which opens up a wider

( 52) food environment, detects new supplies within the old, or which makes it possible to utilize as food something hitherto indifferent or alien. The greater the number of varieties on a given piece of soil, the more individuals that can maintain a vigorous life. The new species means a new environment to which it adjusts itself without interfering with others. So far as the progressive varieties are concerned, it is not in the least true that they simply adapt themselves to current conditions; evolution is a continued development of new conditions which are better suited to the needs of organisms than the old. The unwritten chapter in natural selection is that of the evolution of environments.

Now, in man we have this power of variation and consequent discovery and constitution of new environments set free. All biological process has been effected through this, and so every tendency which forms this power is selected; in man it reaches its climax. So far as the individual is concerned, the environment (the specific conditions which relate to his life) is highly variable at present. The growth of science, its application in invention to industrial life, the multiplication and acceleration of means of transportation and intercommunication, have created a peculiarly unstable environment. It shifts constantly within itself, or qualitatively, and as to its range, or quantitatively. Simply as an affair of Nature, not of art (using these terms in Mr. Huxley's sense) it is a profitable, an advantageous thing that structural changes, if any occur, should not get too set. They would limit unduly the possibility of change in adaptation. In the present environment, flexibility of function, the enlargement of the range of uses to which one and the same organ, grossly considered, may be put, is a great, almost the supreme, condition of success. As such, any change in that direction is a favorable variation which must be selected. In a word, the difference between man and animal is not that selection has ceased, but that selection along the line of variations which enlarge and intensify the environment is active as never before.

We reach precisely the same conclusion with respect to "selection" that we have reached with reference to the cognate ideas—"fit" and "struggle for existence." It is found in

( 53) the ethical process as it is in the cosmic, and it operates in the same way. So far as conditions have changed, so far as the environment is indefinitely more complex, wider, and more variable, so far of necessity and as a biological and cosmic matter, not merely an ethical one, the functions selected differ.

There are no doubt sufficiently profound distinctions between the ethical process and the cosmic process as it existed prior to man and to the formation of human society. So far as I know, however, all of these differences are summed up in the fact that the process and the forces bound up with the cosmic have come to consciousness in man. That which was instinct in the animal is conscious impulse in man. That which was

"tendency to vary" in the animal is conscious foresight in man. That which was unconscious adaptation and survival in the animal, taking place by the "cut and try" method until it worked itself out, is with man conscious deliberation and experimentation. That this transfer from unconsciousness to consciousness has immense importance, need hardly be argued. It is enough to say that it means the whole distinction of the moral from the unmoral. We have, however, no reason to suppose that the cosmic process has become arrested or that some new force has supervened to struggle against the cosmic. Some theologians and moralists, to be sure, welcomed Huxley's apparent return to the idea of a dualism between the cosmic and the ethical as likely to inure favorably to the spiritual life. But I question whether the spiritual life does not get its surest and most ample guarantees when it is learned that the laws and conditions of righteousness are implicated in the working processes of the universe; when it is found that man in his conscious struggles, in his doubts, temptations, and defeats, in his aspirations and successes, is moved on and buoyed up by the forces which have developed nature; and that in this moral struggle he acts not as a mere individual but as an organ in maintaining and carrying forward the universal process.

Notes

1. This paper was delivered as a public lecture during the Summer Quarter's work of the University of Chicago. This will account for the lack of reference to other articles bearing on the subject. I would call special attention, however, to Mr. Leslie Stephen on Natural Selection and Ethics, in the Contemporary Review, and the article by Dr. Carus in The Monist, Vol. IV, No. 3, on "Ethics and the Cosmic Order."

2. Precisely it may be said, and that is just the reason that Mr. Huxley insists upon the opposition of the natural and the ethical. I cannot avoid believing that this is what Mr. Huxley really had in mind at the bottom of his consciousness. But what he says is not that the form and content of fitness, of struggle for existence, and of selection, change with the change of conditions, but that these concepts lose all applicability. And this is just the point under discussion.

3. It is passing strange that Mr. Huxley should not have seen that the logical conclusion from his premises of this extreme opposition are just those which he has himself set forth with such literary power earlier in his essay (pp. 63-68). That he did not shows, to my mind, how much he takes the opposition in a rhetorical, not a practical, sense.

4. Here is his flat contradiction: "Men in society are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic process. The struggle for existence tends to eliminate those less fitted to adapt themselves to the circumstances of their, existence" (p. 81).Compare this with pp. 15, 36, 38, and the other passages referred to above.

5. I have developed this conception psychologically in the Philosophical Review for Jan. 1897, in an article upon "The Psychology of Effort" [The Early Works of John Dewey, v, 151-63].

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[Bajado el 23 de agosto de 2011]

A John Dewey source pageOriginally published as:

John Dewey. "Intelligence of Morals", Chapter 3 in The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays. New York: Henry Holt and Company (1910) : 46 - 76.

The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other EssaysChapter 3: Intelligence and Morals[1]

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"EXCEPT the blind forces of nature," said Sir Henry Maine, " nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." And if we ask why this is so, the response comes that the Greek discovered the business of man to be pursuit of good, and intelligence to be central in this quest. The utmost to be said in praise of Plato and Aristotle is not that they invented excellent moral theories, but that they rose to the opportunity which the spectacle of Greek life afforded. For Athens presented an all but complete microcosm for the study of the interaction of social organization and individual character. A public life of rich diversity in concentrated and intense splendor trained the civic sense. Strife of faction and the rapid oscillations of types of polity provided the occasion for intellectual inquiry and analysis. The careers of dramatic personalities, habits of discussion, ease of legislative change, facilities for personal ambi-

(47) -tions, distraction by personal rivalries, fixed attention upon the elements of character, and upon consideration of the effect of individual character on social vitality and stability. Happy exemption from ecclesiastic preoccupations, susceptibility to natural harmony, and natural piety conspired with frank and open observation to acknowledgment of the role played by natural conditions. Social instability and shock made equally pertinent and obvious the remark that only intelligence can confirm the values that natural conditions generate, and that intelligence is itself nurtured and matured only in a free and stable society.

In Plato the resultant analysis of the mutual implications of the individual, the social and the natural, converged in the ideas that morals and philosophy are one: namely, a love of that wisdom which is the source of secure and social good; that mathematics and the natural sciences focused upon the problem of the perception of the good furnish the materials of moral science; that logic is the method of the pregnant organization of social conditions with respect to good; that politics and psychology are sciences of one and the same human nature, taken first in the large and then in the little. So far that large and expansive vision of Plato.

But projection of a better life must be based upon reflection of the life already lived. The in

( 48) evitable limitations of the Greek city-state were inevitably wrought into the texture of moral theory.

The business of thought was to furnish a substitute for customs which were then relaxing from the pressure of contact and intercourse without and the friction of strife within. Reason was to take the place of custom as a guide of life; but it was to furnish rules as final, as unalterable as those of custom. In short, the thinkers were fascinated by the afterglow of custom. They took for their own ideal the distillation from custom of its essence -ends and laws which should be rigid and invariable. Thus Morals was set upon the track which it dared not leave for nigh twenty-five hundred years: search for the final good, and for the single moral force.

Aristotle's assertions that the state exists by nature, and that in the state alone does the individual achieve independence and completeness of life, are indeed pregnant sayings. But as uttered by Aristotle they meant that, in an isolated state, the Greek city-state, set a garlanded island in the waste sea of barbaroi, a community indifferent when not hostile to all other social groupings, individuals attain their full end. In a social unity which signified social contraction, contempt, and antagonism, in a social order which despised intercourse and glorified war, is realized the life of excellence!

(49) There is likewise a profound saying of Aristotle's that the individual who otherwise than by accident is not a member of a state is either a brute or a god. But it is generally forgotten that elsewhere Aristotle identified the highest excellence, the chief virtue, with pure thought, and identifying this with the divine, isolated it in lonely grandeur from the life of society. That man, so far as in him lay, should be godlike, meant that he should be nonsocial, because supra-civic. Plato the idealist had shared the belief that reason is the divine; but he was also a reformer and a radical and he would have those who attained rational insight descend again into the civic cave, and in its obscurity labor patiently for the enlightenment of its blear-eyed inhabitants. Aristotle, the conservative and the definer of what is, gloried in the exaltation of intelligence in man above civic excellence and social need; and thereby isolated the life of truest knowledge from contact with social experience and from responsibility for discrimination of values in the course of life.

Moral theory, however, accepted from social custom more than its cataleptic rigidity, its exclusive area of common good, and its unfructified and irresponsible reason. The city-state was a superficial layer of cultured citizens, cultured through a participation in affairs made possible by relief from economic pursuits, superimposed upon the dense

( 50) mass of serfs, artisans, and laborers. For this division, moral philosophy made itself spiritual sponsor, and thus took it up into its own being. Plato wrestled valiantly

with the class problem; but his outcome was the necessity of decisive demarcation, after education, of the masses in whom reason was asleep and appetite much awake, from the few who were fit to rule because alertly wise. The most generously imaginative soul of all philosophy could not far outrun the institutional practices of his people and his times. This might have warned his successors of the danger of deserting the sober path of a critical discernment of the better and the worse within contemporary life for the more exciting adventure of a final determination of absolute good and evil. It might have taught the probability that some brute residuum or unrationalized social habit would be erected into an apotheosis of pure reason. But the lesson was not learned. Aristotle promptly yielded to the besetting sin of all philosophers, the idealization of the existent: he declared that the class distinctions of superiority and inferiority as between man and woman, master and slave, liberal-minded and base mechanic, exist and are justified by nature-a nature which aims at embodied reason.

What, finally, is this Nature to which the philosophy of society and the individual so bound itself? It is the nature which figures in Greek customs

(51) and myth; the nature resplendent and adorned which confronts us in Greek poetry and art: the animism of savage man purged of grossness and generalized by unerring esthetic taste into beauty and system. The myths had told of the loves and hates, the caprices and desertions of the gods, and behind them all, inevitable Fate. Philosophy translated these tales into formulae of the brute fluctuation of rapacious change held in bounds by the final and supreme end: the rational good. The animism of the popular mind died to reappear as cosmology.

Repeatedly in this course we have heard of sciences which began as parts of philosophy and which gradually won their independence. Another statement of the same history is that both science and philosophy began in subjection to mythological animism. Both began with acceptance of a nature whose irregularities displayed the meaningless variability of foolish wants held within the limits of order and uniformity by an underlying movement toward a final and stable purpose. And when the sciences gradually assumed the task of reducing irregular caprice to regular conjunction, philosophy bravely took upon itself the task of substantiating, under the caption of a spiritual view of the universe, the animistic survival. Doubtless Socrates brought philosophy to earth; but his injunction to man to know himself was incredibly

(52) compromised in its execution by the fact that later philosophers submerged man in the world to which philosophy was brought: a world which was the heavy and sunken center of hierarchic heavens located in their purity and refinement as remotely as possible from the gross and muddy vesture of earth.

The various limitations of Greek custom, its hostile indifference to all outside the narrow city-state, its assumption of fixed divisions of wise and blind among men, its inability socially to utilize science, its subordination of human intention to cosmic aim-all of these things were worked into moral theory. Philosophy had no active hand in producing the condition of barbarism in Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries.

By an unwitting irony which would have shocked none so much as the lucid moralists of Athens, their philosophic idealization, under captions of Nature and Reason, of the inherent limitations of Athenian society and Greek science, furnished the intellectual tools for defining, standardizing, and justifying all the fundamental clefts and antagonisms of feudalism. When practical conditions are not frozen in men's imagination into crystalline truths, they are naturally fluid. They come and go. But when intelligence fixes fluctuating circumstances into final ideals, petrifaction is likely to occur; and philosophy gratuitously took upon itself the re-

( 53) -sponsibility for justifying the worst defects of barbarian Europe by showing their necessary connection with divine reason.

The division of mankind into the two camps of the redeemed and the condemned had not needed philosophy to produce it. But the Greek cleavage of men into separate kinds on the basis of their position within or without the city-state was used to rationalize this harsh intolerance. The hierarchic organization of feudalism, within church and state, of those possessed of sacred rule and those whose sole excellence was obedience, did not require moral theory to generate or explain it. But it took philosophy to furnish the intellectual tools by which such chance episodes were emblazoned upon the cosmic heavens as a grandiose spiritual achievement. No; it is all too easy to explain bitter intolerance and desire for domination. Stubborn as they are, it was only when Greek moral theory had put underneath them the distinction between the irrational and the rational, between divine truth and good and corrupt and weak human appetite, that intolerance on system and earthly domination for the sake of eternal excellence were philosophically sanctioned. The health and welfare of the body and the securing for all of a sure and a prosperous livelihood were not matters for which medieval conditions fostered care in any case. But moral philosophy

( 54) was prevailed upon to damn the body on principle, and to relegate to insignificance as merely mundane and temporal the problem of a just industrial order. Circumstances of the times bore with sufficient hardness upon successful scientific investigation; but philosophy added the conviction that in any case truth is so supernal that it must be supernaturally revealed, and so important that it must be authoritatively imparted and enforced. Intelligence was diverted from the critical consideration of the natural sources and social consequences of better and worse into the channel of metaphysical subtleties and systems, acceptance of which was made essential to participation in the social order and in rational excellence. Philosophy bound the once erect form of human endeavor and progress to the chariot wheels of cosmology and theology.

Since the Renaissance, moral philosophy has repeatedly reverted to the Greek ideal of natural excellence realized in social life, under the fostering care of intelligence in action. The return, however, has taken place under the influence of democratic polity, commercial expansion, and scientific reorganization. It has been a liberation more than a reversion. This combined return and emancipation, having transformed our practice of

life in the last four centuries, will not be content till it has written itself clear in our theory of that practice.

(55) Whether the consequent revolution in moral philosophy be termed pragmatism or be given the happier title of the applied and experimental habit of mind is of little account. What is of moment is that intelligence has descended from its lonely isolation at the remote edge of things, whence it operated as unmoved mover and ultimate good, to take its seat in the moving affairs of men. Theory may therefore become responsible to the practices that have generated it; the good be connected with nature, but with nature naturally, not metaphysically, conceived, and social life be cherished in behalf of its own immediate possibilities, not on the ground of its remote connections with a cosmic reason and an absolute end.

There is a notion, more familiar than correct, that Greek thought sacrificed the individual to the state. None has ever known better than the Greek that the individual comes to himself and to his own only in association with others. But Greek thought subjected, as we have seen, both state and individual to an external cosmic order; and thereby it inevitably restricted the free use in doubt, inquiry, and experimentation, of the human intelligence. The anima libera, the free mind of the sixteenth century, of Galileo and his successors, was the counterpart of the disintegration of cosmology and its animistic teleology. The lecturer on political economy reminded us that his subject

(56) began, in the Middle Ages, as a branch of ethics, though, as he hastened to show, it soon got into better association. Well, the same company was once kept by all the sciences, mathematical and physical as well as social. According to all accounts it was the integrity of the number one and the rectitude of the square that attracted the attention of Pythagoras to arithmetic and geometry as promising fields of study. Astronomy was the projected picture book of a cosmic object lesson in morals, Dante's transcript of which is none the less literal because poetic. If physics alone remained outside the moral fold, while noble essences redeemed chemistry, occult forces blessed physiology, and the immaterial soul exalted psychology, physics is the exception that proves the rule: matter was so inherently immoral that no high-minded science would demean itself by contact with it.

If we do not join with many in lamenting the stripping from nature of those idealistic properties in which animism survived, if we do not mourn the secession of the sciences from ethics, it is because the abandonment by intelligence of a fixed and static moral end was the necessary precondition of a free and progressive science of both things and morals; because the emancipation of the sciences from ready made, remote, and abstract values was necessary to make the sciences available for creating and maintaining more and specific values here

( 57) and now. The divine comedy of modern medicine and hygiene is one of the human epics yet to be written; but when composed it may prove no unworthy companion of the

medieval epic of other worldly beatific visions. The great ideas of the eighteenth century, that expansive epoch of moral perception which ranks in illumination and fervor along with classic Greek thought, the great ideas of the indefinitely continuous progress of humanity and of the power and significance of freed intelligence, were borne by a single mother-experimental inquiry.

The growth of industry and commerce is at once cause and effect of the growth in science. Democritus and other ancients conceived the mechanical theory of the universe. The notion was not only blank and repellent, because it ignored the rich social material which Plato and Aristotle had organized into their rival idealistic views; but it was scientifically sterile, a piece of dialectics. Contempt for machines as the accouterments of despised mechanics kept the mechanical conception aloof from these specific and controllable experiences which alone could fructify it. This conception, then, like the idealistic, was translated into a speculative cosmology and thrown like a vast net around the universe at large, as if to keep it from coming to pieces. It is from respect for the lever, the pulley, and the screw that modern experimental

(58) and mathematical mechanics derives itself. Motion, traced through the workings of a machine, was followed out into natural events and studied just as motion, not as a poor yet necessary device for realizing final causes. So studied, it was found to be available for new machines and new applications, which in creating new ends also promoted new wants, and thereby stimulated new activities, new discoveries, and new inventions. The recognition that natural energy can be systematically applied, through experimental observation, to the satisfaction and multiplication of concrete wants is doubtless the greatest single discovery ever imported into the life of man-save perhaps the discovery of language. Science, borrowing from industry, repaid the debt with interest, and has made the control of natural forces for the aims of life so inevitable that for the first time man is relieved from overhanging fear, with its wolflike scramble to possess and accumulate, and is freed to consider the more gracious question of securing to all an ample and liberal life. The industrial life had been condemned by Greek exaltation of abstract thought and by Greek contempt for labor, as representing the brute struggle of carnal appetite for its own satiety. The industrial movement, offspring of science, restored it to its central position in morals. When Adam Smith made economic activity the moving spring of man's unremitting effort, from

(59) the cradle to the grave, to better his own lot, he recorded this change. And when he made sympathy the central spring in man's conscious moral endeavor, he reported the effect which the increasing intercourse of men, due primarily to commerce, had in breaking down suspicion and jealousy and in liberating man's kindlier impulses.

Democracy, the crucial expression of modern life, is not so much an addition to the scientific and industrial tendencies as it is the perception of their social or spiritual meaning. Democracy is an absurdity where faith in the individual as individual is impossible; and this faith is impossible when intelligence is regarded as a cosmic power, not an adjustment and application of individual tendencies. It is also impossible when appetites and desires are conceived to be the dominant factor in the constitution of most

men's characters, and when appetite and desire are conceived to be manifestations of the disorderly and unruly principle of nature. To put the intellectual center of gravity in the objective cosmos, outside of men's own experiments and tests, and then to invite the application of individual intelligence to the determination of society, is to invite chaos. To hold that want is mere negative flux and hence requires external fixation by reason, and then to invite the wants to give free play to themselves in social construction and intercourse, is to call down anarchy. Democ

( 60) -racy is estimable only through the changed conception of intelligence, that forms modern science, and of want, that forms modern industry. It is essentially a changed psychology. The substitution, for a priori truth and deduction, of fluent doubt and inquiry meant trust in human nature in the concrete; in individual honesty, curiosity, and sympathy. The substitution of moving commerce for fixed custom meant a view of wants as the dynamics of social progress, not as the pathology of private greed. The nineteenth century indeed turned sour on that somewhat complacent optimism in which the eighteenth century rested: the ideas that the intelligent self-love of individuals would conduce to social cohesion, and competition among individuals usher in the kingdom of social welfare. But the conception of a social harmony of interests in which the achievement by each individual of his own freedom should contribute to a like perfecting of the powers of all, through a fraternally organized society, is the permanent contribution of the industrial movement to morals -even though so far it be but the contribution of a problem.

Intellectually speaking, the centuries since the fourteenth are the true middle ages. They mark the transitional period of mental habit, as the so-called medieval period represents the petrifaction, under changed outward conditions, of Greek ideas.

( 61) The conscious articulation of genuinely modern tendencies has yet to come, and till it comes the ethic of our own life must remain undescribed. But the system of morals which has come nearest to the reflection of the movements of science, democracy, and commerce, is doubtless the utilitarian. Scientific, after the modern mode, it certainly would be. Newton's influence dyes deep the moral thought of the eighteenth century. The arrangements of the solar system had been described in terms of a homogeneous matter and motion, worked by two opposed and compensating forces: all because a method of analysis, of generalization by analogy, and of mathematical deduction back to new empirical details had been followed. The imagination of the eighteenth century was a Newtonian imagination; and this no less in social than in physical matters. Hume proclaims that morals is about to become an experimental science. Just as, almost in our own day, Mill's interest in a method for social science led him to reformulate the logic of experimental inquiry, so all the great men of the Enlightenment were in search for the organon of morals which should repeat the physical triumphs of Newton. Bentham notes that physics has had its Bacon and Newton; that morals has had its Bacon in Helv�tius, but still awaits its Newton; and he leaves us in no doubt that at the moment of writing he was ready, modestly but

(62) firmly, to fill the waiting niche with its missing figure.

The industrial movement furnished the concrete imagery for this ethical renovation. The utilitarians borrowed from Adam Smith the notion that through industrial exchange in a free society the individual pursuing his own good is led, under the guidance of the " invisible hand," to promote the general good more effectually than if he had set out to do it. This idea was dressed out in the atomistic psychology which Hartley built out from Locke-and was returned at usurious rates to later economists.

From the great French writers who had sought to justify and promote democratic individualism, .came the conception that, since it is perverted political institutions which deprave individuals and bring them into hostility, nation against nation, class against class, individual against individual, the great political problem is such a reform of law and legislation, civil and criminal, of administration, and of education as will force the individual to find his own interests in pursuits conducing to the welfare of others.

Tremendously effective as a tool of criticism, operative in abolition and elimination, utilitarianism failed to measure up to the constructive needs of the time. Its theoretical equalization of the good of each with that of every other was practically

( 63) perverted by its excessive interest in the middle and manufacturing classes. Its speculative defect of an atomistic psychology combined with this narrowness of vision to make light of the constructive work that needs to be done by the state, before all can have, otherwise than in name, an equal chance to count in the common good. Thus the age-long subordination of economics to politics was revenged in the submerging of both politics and ethics in a narrow theory of economic profit; and utilitarianism, in its orthodox descendants, proffered the disjointed pieces of a mechanism, with a monotonous reiteration that looked at aright they form a beautifully harmonious organism.

Prevision, and to some extent experience, of this failure, conjoined with differing social traditions and ambitions, evoked German idealism, the transcendental morals of Kant and his successors. German thought strove to preserve the traditions which bound culture to the past, while revising these traditions to render them capable of meeting novel conditions. It found weapons at hand in the conceptions borrowed by Roman law from Stoic philosophy, and in the conceptions by which Protestant humanism had re-edited scholastic Catholicism. Grotius had made the idea of natural law, natural right and obligation, the central idea of German morals, as thoroughly as Locke had made the individual desire for liberty and happiness the

( 64) focus of English and then of French speculation. Materialized idealism is the happy monstrosity in which the popular demand for vivid imagery is most easily reconciled with the equally strong demand for supremacy of moral values; and the complete idealistic materialism of Stoicism has always given its ideas a practical influence out of all proportion to their theoretical vogue as a system. To the Protestant, that is the German, humanist, Natural Law, the bond of harmonious reason in nature,

the spring of social intercourse among men, the inward light of individual conscience, united Cicero, St. Paul, and Luther in blessed union; gave a rational, not superrational basis for morals, and provided room for social legislation which at the same time could easily be held back from too ruthless application to dominant class interests.

Kant saw the mass of empirical and hence irrelevant detail that had found refuge within this liberal and diffusive reason. He saw that the idea of reason could be made self-consistent only by stripping it naked of these empirical accretions. He then provided, in his critiques, a somewhat cumbrous moving van for transferring the resultant pure or naked reason out of nature and the objective world, and for locating it in new quarters, with a new stock of goods and new customers. The new quarters were particular subjects, individuals;

(65) the stock of goods were the forms of perception and the functions of thought by which empirical flux is woven into durable fabrics; the new customers were a society of individuals in which all are ends in themselves. There ought to be an injunction issued that Kant's saying about Humes awakening of him should not be quoted save in connection with his other saying that Rousseau brought him to himself, in teaching him that the philosopher is of less account than the laborer in the fields unless he contributes to human freedom. But none the less, the new tenant, the universal reason, and the old homestead, the empirical tumultuous individual, could not get on together. Reason became a mere voice which, having nothing in particular to say, said Law, Duty, in general, leaving to the existing social order of the Prussia of Frederick the Great the congenial task of declaring just what was obligatory in the concrete. The marriage of freedom and authority was thus celebrated with the understanding that sentimental primacy went to the former and practical control to the latter.

The effort to force a universal reason that had been used to the broad domains of the cosmos into the cramped confines of individuality conceived as merely " empirical," a highly particularized creature of sense, could have but one result: an explosion. The products of that explosion constitute the Post-Kantian philosophies. It was the work of

(66) Hegel to attempt to fill in the empty reason of Kant with the concrete contents of history. The voice sounded like the voice of Aristotle, Thomas of Aquino, and Spinoza translated into Swabian German; but the hands were as the hands of Montesquieu, Herder, Condorcet, and the rising historical school. The outcome was the assertion that history is reason, and reason is history: the actual is rational, the rational is the actual. It gave the pleasant appearance (which Hegel did not strenuously discourage) of being specifically an idealization of the Prussian nation, and incidentally a systematized apologetic for the universe at large,. But in intellectual and practical effect, it lifted the idea of process above that of fixed origins and fixed ends, and presented the social and moral order, as well as the intellectual, as a scene of becoming, and it located reason somewhere within the struggles of life.

Unstable equilibrium, rapid fermentation, and a succession of explosive reports are thus the chief notes of modern ethics. Scepticism and traditionalism, empiricism and

rationalism, crude naturalisms and all-embracing idealisms, flourish side by side all the more flourish, one suspects, because side by side. Spencer exults because natural science reveals that a rapid transit system of evolution is carrying us automatically to the goal of perfect man in perfect society; and his English idealistic

( 67) contemporary, Green, is so disturbed by the removal from nature of its moral qualities, that he tries to show that this makes no difference, since nature in any case is constituted and known through a spiritual principle which is as permanent as nature is changing. An Amiel genteelly laments the decadence of the inner life, while his neighbor Nietzsche brandishes in rude ecstasy the banner of brute survival as a happy omen of the final victory of nobility of mind. The reasonable conclusion from such a scene is that there is taking place a transformation of attitude towards moral theory rather than mere propagation of varieties among theories. The classic theories all agreed in one regard. They all alike assumed the existence of the end, the summum bonum, the final goal; and of the separate moral force that moves to that goal. Moralists have disputed as to whether the end is an aggregate of pleasurable state of consciousness, enjoyment of the divine essence, acknowledgment of the law of duty, or conformity to environment. So they have disputed as to the path by which the final goal is to be reached: fear or benevolence? reverence for pure law or pity for others? self-love or altruism? But these very controversies implied that there was but the one end and the one means.

The transformation in attitude, to which I referred, is the growing belief that the proper busi-

( 68) -ness of intelligence is discrimination of multiple and present goods and of the varied immediate means of their realization; not search for the one remote aim. The progress of biology has accustomed our minds to the notion that intelligence is not an outside power presiding supremely but statically over the desires and efforts of man, but is a method of adjustment of capacities and conditions within specific situations. History, as the lecturer on that subject told us, has discovered itself in the idea of process. The genetic standpoint makes us aware that the systems of the past are neither fraudulent impostures nor absolute revelations; but are the products of political, economic, and scientific conditions whose change carries with it change of theoretical formulations. The recognition that intelligence is properly an organ of adjustment in difficult situations makes us aware that past theories were of value so far as they helped carry to an issue the social perplexities from which they emerged. But the chief impact of the evolutionary method is upon the present. Theory having learned what it cannot do, is made responsible for the better performance of what needs to be done, and what only a broadly equipped intelligence can undertake: study of the conditions out of which come the obstacles and the resources of adequate life, and developing and testing the ideas that, as working hypotheses, may be used to dimin-

(69) -ish the causes of evil and to buttress and expand the sources of good. This program is indeed vague, but only unfamiliarity with it could lead one to the conclusion that it is less vague than the idea that there is a single moral ideal and a single moral motive force.

From this point of view there is no separate body of moral rules; no separate system of motive powers; no separate subject-matter of moral knowledge, and hence no such thing as an isolated ethical science. If the business of morals is not to speculate upon man's final end and upon an ultimate standard of right, it is to utilize physiology, anthropology, and psychology to discover all that can be discovered of man, his organic powers and propensities. If its business is not to search for the one separate moral motive, it is to converge all the instrumentalities of the social arts, of law, education, economics, and political science upon the construction of intelligent methods of improving the common lot.

If we still wish to make our peace with the past, and to sum up the plural and changing goods of life in a single word, doubtless the term happiness is the one most apt. But we should again exchange free morals for sterile metaphysics, if we imagine that " happiness " is any less unique than the individuals who experience it; any less complex than the constitution of their capacities, or any less

( 70) variable than the objects upon which their capacities are directed.

To many timid, albeit sincere, souls of an earlier century, the ' decay of the doctrine that all true and worthful science is knowledge of final causes seemed fraught with danger to science and to morals. The rival conception of a wide open universe, a universe without bounds in time or space, without final limits of origin or destiny, a universe with the lid off, was a menace. We now face in moral science a similar crisis and like opportunity, as well as share in a like dreadful suspense. 'The abolition of a fixed and final goal and causal force in nature did not, as matter of fact, render rational conviction less important or less attainable. It was accompanied by the provision of a technique of persistent and detailed inquiry in all special fields of fact, a technique which led to the detection of unsuspected forces and the revelation of undreamed of uses. In like fashion we may anticipate that the abolition of the final goal and the single motive power and the separate and infallible faculty in morals, will quicken inquiry into the diversity of specific goods of experience, fix attention upon their conditions, and bring to light values now dim and obscure. The change may relieve men from responsibility for what they cannot do, but it will promote thoughtful consideration of what they may do and the definition of responsibility for what

(71) they do amiss because of failure to think straight and carefully. Absolute goods will fall into the background, but the question of making more sure and extensive the share of all men in natural and social goods will be urgent, a problem not to be escaped nor evaded.

Morals, philosophy, returns to its first love; love of the wisdom that is nurse, as nature is mother, of good. But it returns to the Socratic principle equipped with a multitude of special methods of inquiry and testing; with an organized mass of knowledge, and with control of the arrangements by which industry, law, and education may concentrate upon the problem of the participation by all men and women, up to their capacity of absorption, in all attained values. Morals may then well leave to poetry and to art, the task (so unartistically performed by philosophy since Plato) of gathering together and rounding out, into one abiding picture, the separate and special goods of life. It may leave this task with the assurance that the resultant synthesis will not depict any final and all-inclusive good, but will add just one more specific good to the enjoyable excellencies of life.

Humorous irony shines through most of the harsh glances turned towards the idea of an experimental basis and career for morals. Some shiver in the fear that morals will be plunged into anarchic confusion-a view well expressed by a

(72) recent writer in the saying that if the a priori and transcendental basis of morals be abandoned " we shall have merely the same certainty that now exists in physics and chemistry "! Elsewhere lurks the apprehension that the progress of scientific method will deliver the purposive freedom of man bound hand and foot to the fatal decrees of iron necessity, called natural law. The notion that laws govern and forces rule is an animistic survival. It is a product of reading nature in terms of politics in order to turn around and then read politics in the light of supposed sanctions of nature. This idea passed from medieval theology into the science of Newton, to whom the universe was the dominion of a sovereign whose laws were the laws of nature. From Newton it passed into the deism of the eighteenth century, whence it migrated into the philosophy of the Enlightenment, to make its last stand in' Spencer's philosophy of the fixed environment and the static goal.

No, nature is not an unchangeable order, unwinding itself majestically from the reel of law under the control of deified forces. It is an indefinite congeries of changes. Laws are not governmental regulations which limit change, but are convenient formulations of selected portions of change followed through a longer or shorter period of time, and then registered in statistical forms that are amenable to mathematical manipulation.

( 73) That this device of shorthand symbolization presages the subjection of man's intelligent effort to fixity of law and environment is interesting as a culture survival, but is not important for moral theory. Savage and child delight in creating bogeys from which, their origin and structure being conveniently concealed, interesting thrills and shudders may be had. Civilized man in the nineteenth century outdid these bugaboos in his image of a fixed universe hung on a cast-iron framework of fixed, necessary, and universal laws. Knowledge of nature does not mean subjection to predestination, but insight into courses of change; an insight which is formulated in " laws," that is, methods of subsequent procedure.

Knowledge of the process and conditions of physical and social change through experimental science and genetic history has one result with a double name: increase of control, and increase of responsibility; increase of power to direct natural change, and increase of responsibility for its equitable direction toward fuller good. Theory located within progressive practice instead of reigning statically supreme over it, means practice itself made responsible to intelligence; to intelligence which relentlessly scrutinizes the consequences of every practice, and which exacts liability by an equally relentless publicity. As long as morals occupies itself with mere ideals, forces and conditions as they

( 74) are will be good enough for " practical" men, since they are then left free to their own devices in turning these to their own account. As long as moralists plume themselves upon possession of the domain of the categorical imperative with its bare precepts, men of executive habits will always be at their elbows to regulate the concrete social conditions through which the form of law gets its actual filling of specific injunctions. When freedom is conceived to be transcendental, the coercive restraint of immediate necessity will lay its harsh hand upon the mass of men.

In the end, men do what they can do. They refrain from doing what they cannot do. they do what their own specific powers in conjunction with the limitations and resources of the environment permit. The effective control of their powers is not through precepts, but through the regulation of their conditions. If this regulation is to be not merely physical or coercive, but moral, it must consist of the intelligent selection and determination of the environments in which we act; and in an intelligent exaction of responsibility for the use of men's powers. Theorists inquire after the " motive " to morality, to virtue and the good, under such circumstances. What then, one wonders, is their conception of the make-up of human nature and of its relation to virtue and to goodness? The pessimism that dictates such a ques-

(75) -tion, if it be justified, precludes any consideration of morals.

The diversion of intelligence from discrimination of plural and concrete goods, from noting their conditions and obstacles, and from devising methods for holding men responsible for their concrete use of powers and conditions, has done more than brute love of power to establish inequality and injustice among men. It has done more, because it has confirmed with social sanctions the principle of feudal domination. All men require moral sanctions in their conduct: the consent of their kind Not getting it otherwise, they go insane to feign it. No man ever lived with the exclusive approval of his own conscience. Hence the vacuum left in practical matters by the remote irrelevancy of transcendental morals has to be filled in somehow. It is filled in. It is filled in with class-codes, class-standards, class-approvals -with codes which recommend the practices and habits already current in a given circle, set, calling, profession, trade, industry, club, or gang. These class-codes always lean back upon and support themselves by the professed ideal code. This latter meets them more than half-way. Being in its pretense a theory for regulating practice, it must demonstrate its

practicability. It is uneasy in isolation, and travels hastily to meet with compromise and accommodation the actual situation in all its brute

(76) unrationality. Where the pressure is greatest in the habitual practice of the political and economic chieftains-there it accommodates the most.

Class-codes of morals are sanctions, under the caption of ideals, of uncriticised customs; they are recommendations, under the head of duties, of what the members of the class are already most given to doing. If there are to obtain more equable and comprehensive principles of action, exacting a more impartial exercise of natural power and resource in the interests of a common good, members of a class must no longer rest content in responsibility to a class whose traditions constitute its conscience, but be made responsible to a society whose conscience is its free and effectively organized intelligence.

In such a conscience alone will the Socratic injunction to man to know himself be fulfilled.

Notes

1. A public lecture delivered at Columbia University in March, 1908, under the title of "Ethics," in a series of lectures on " Science, Philosophy, and Art." Reprinted from a monograph published by the Columbia University Press.

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[Bajado el 23 de agosto de 2011]

Originally published as:

John Dewey. "The Logic of Judgments of Practice" Chapter 14 in Essays in Experimental Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago (1916): 335-442.

Essays in Experimental LogicChapter 14: The Logic of Judgments of PracticeTable of Contents |   Previous

THEIR NATURE

In introducing the discussion, I shall first say a word to avoid possible misunderstandings. It may be objected that such a term as "practical judgment" is

misleading; that the term "practical judgment" is a misnomer, and a dangerous one, since all judgments by their very nature are intellectual or theoretical. Consequently, there is a danger that the term will lead us to treat as judgment and knowledge something which is not really knowledge at all and thus start us on the road which ends in mysticism or obscurantism. All this is admitted. I do not mean by practical judgment a type of judgment having a different organ and source from other judgments. I mean simply a kind of judgment having a specific type of subject-matter. Propositions exist relating to agenda —to things to do or be done, judgments of a situation demanding action. There are, for example, propositions of the form:  M. N. should do thus and so; it is better, wiser, more prudent, right, advisable, opportune, expedient, etc., to act thus and so. And this is the type of judgment I denote practical.

It may also be objected that this type of subject-matter is not distinctive; that there is no ground for

(336) marking it off from judgments of the form SP, or mRn. I am willing, again, to admit that such may turn out to be the fact. But meanwhile the prima facie difference is worth considering, if only for the sake of reaching a conclusion as to whether or no there is a kind of subject-matter so distinctive as to imply a distinctive logical form. To assume in advance that the subject-matter of practical judgments must be reducible to the form SP or mRn is assuredly as gratuitous as the contrary assumption. It begs one of the most important questions about the world which can be asked: the nature of time. Moreover, current discussion exhibits, if not a complete void, at least a decided lacuna as to propositions of this type. 'Mr. Russell has recently said that of the two parts of logic the first enumerates or inventories the different kinds or forms of propositions.[1] It is noticeable that he does not even mention this kind as a possible kind. Yet it is conceivable that this omission seriously compromises- the discussion of other kinds.

Additional specimens of practical judgments may be given: He had better consult a physician; it would not be advisable for you to invest in those bonds; the United States should either modify its Monroe Doctrine or else make more efficient military preparations; this is a good time to build a house; if I do that I shall be doing wrong, etc. It is silly to dwell upon the

(337) practical importance of judgments of this sort, but not wholly silly to say that their practical importance arouses suspicion as to the grounds of their neglect in discussion of logical forms in general. Regarding them, we may say:

1. Their subject-matter implies an incomplete situation. This incompleteness is not psychical. Something is "there," but what is there does not constitute the entire objective situation. As there, it requires something else. Only after this something else has been supplied will the given coincide with the full subject-matter. This consideration has an important bearing upon the conception of the indeterminate and contingent. It is sometimes assumed (both by adherents and by opponents) that the validity of these notions entails that the given is itself indeterminate-which appears to be nonsense. The logical implication is that of a subject-matter as yet unterminated, unfinished, or not

wholly given. The implication is of future things. Moreover, the incompleteness is not personal. I mean by this that the situation is not confined within the one making the judgment; the practical judgment is neither exclusively nor primarily about one's self. On the contrary, it is a judgment about one's self only as it is a judgment about the situation in which one is included, and in which a multitude of other factors external to self are included. The contrary assumption is so constantly made about moral judgments

( 338) that this statement must appear dogmatic. But surely the prima facie case is that when I judge that I should not give money to the street beggar I am judging the nature of an objective situation, and that the conclusion about myself is governed by the proposition about the situation in which I happen to be included. The full, complex proposition includes the beggar, social conditions and consequences, a charity organization society, etc., on exactly the same footing as it contains myself. Aside from the fact that it seems impossible to defend the "objectivity" of moral propositions on any other ground, we may at least point to the fact that judgments of policy, whether made about ourselves or some other agent, are certainly judgments of a situation which is temporarily unfinished. "Now is a good time for me to buy certain railway bonds" is a judgment about myself only because it is primarily a judgment about hundreds of factors wholly external to myself. If the genuine existence of such propositions be admitted, the only question about moral judgments is whether or no they are cases of practical judgments as the latter have been defined-a question of utmost importance for moral theory, but not of crucial import for our logical discussion.

2. Their subject-matter implies that the proposition is itself a factor in the completion of the situation, carrying it forward to its conclusion. According as the judgment is that this or that should be done, the

(339) situation will, when completed, have this or that subject-matter. The proposition that it is well to do this is a proposition to treat the given in a certain way. Since the way is established by the proposition, the proposition is a determining factor in the outcome. As a proposition about the supplementation of the given, it is a factor in the supplementation — and this not as an extraneous matter, something subsequent to the proposition, but in its own logical force. Here is found, prima facie at least, a marked distinction of the practical proposition from descriptive and narrative propositions, from the familiar SP propositions and from those of pure mathematics. The latter imply that the proposition does not enter into the constitution of the subject-matter of the proposition. There also is a distinction from another kind of contingent proposition, namely, that which has the form: "He has started for your house"; "The house is still burning"; "It will probably rain." The unfinishedness of the given is implied in these propositions, but it is not implied that the proposition is a factor in determining their completion.

3. The subject-matter implies that it makes a difference how the given is terminated: that one outcome is better than another, and that the proposition is to be a factor in securing (as far as may be) the better. In other words, there is something objectively at

stake in the forming of the proposition. A right or wrong descriptive judgment (a judgment confined

(340) to the given, whether temporal, spatial, or subsistent) does not affect its subject-matter; it does not help or hinder its development, for by hypothesis it has no development. But a practical proposition affects the subject-matter for better or worse, for it is a judgment as to the condition (the thing to be done) of the existence of the complete subject-matter.[2]

4. A practical proposition is binary. It is a judgment that the given is to be treated in a specified way; it is also a judgment that the given admits of such treatment, that it admits of a specified objective termination. It is a judgment, at the same stroke, of end — the result to be brought about — and of means. Ethical theories which disconnect the discussion of ends —as so many of them do— from determination of means, thereby take discussion of ends out of the region of judgment. If there be such ends, they have no intellectual status.

To judge that I should see a physician implies that the given elements of the situation should be completed in a specific way and also that they afford the conditions which make the proposed completion

(341) practicable. The proposition concerns both resources and obstacles —intellectual determination of elements lying in the way of, say, proper vigor, and of elements which can be utilized to get around or surmount these obstacles. The judgment regarding the need of a physician implies the existence of hindrances in the pursuit of the normal occupations of life, but it equally implies the existence of positive factors which may be set in motion to surmount the hindrances and reinstate normal pursuits.

It is worth while to call attention to the reciprocal character of the practical judgment in its bearing upon the statement of means. From the side of the end, the reciprocal nature locates and condemns utopianism and romanticism: what is sometimes called idealism. From the side of means, it locates and condemns materialism and predeterminism: what is sometimes called mechanism. By materialism I mean the conception that the given contains exhaustively the entire subject-matter of practical judgment: that the facts in their givenness are all "there is to it." The given is undoubtedly just what it is; it is determinate throughout. But it is the given of something to be done. The survey and inventory of present conditions (of facts) are not something complete in themselves; they exist for the sake of an intelligent determination of what is to be done, of what is required to complete the given. To conceive the given in any such way, then, as to imply

(342) that it negates in its given character the possibility of any doing, of any modification, is self-contradictory. As a part of a practical judgment, the discovery that a man is suffering from an illness is not a discovery that he must suffer, or that the

subsequent course of events is determined by his illness; it is the indication of a needed and a possible course by which to restore health. Even the discovery that the illness is hopeless falls within this principle. It is an indication not to waste time and money on certain fruitless endeavors, to prepare affairs with respect to death, etc. It is also an indication of search for conditions which will render in the future similar cases remediable, not hopeless. The whole case for the genuineness of practical judgments stands or falls with this principle. It is open to question. But decision as to its validity must rest upon empirical evidence. It cannot be ruled out of court by a dialectic development of the implications of propositions about what is already given or what has already happened. That is, its invalidity cannot be deduced from an assertion that the character of the scientific judgment as a discovery and statement of what is forbids it, much less from an analysis of mathematical propositions. For this method only- begs the question. Unless the facts are complicated by the surreptitious introduction of some preconception; the prima facie empirical case is that the scientific judgment —the determinate diagnosis— favors instead of

(343) forbidding the doctrine of a possibility of change of the given. To overthrow this presumption means, I repeat, to discover specific evidence which makes it impossible. And in view of the immense body of empirical evidence showing that we add to control of what is given (the subject-matter of scientific judgment) by means of scientific judgment, the likelihood of any such discovery seems slight.

These considerations throw light upon the proper meaning of (practical) idealism and of mechanism. Idealism in action does not seem to be anything except an explicit recognition of just the implications we have been considering. It signifies a recognition that the given is given as obstacles to one course of active development or completion and as resources for another course by which development of the situation directly blocked may be indirectly secured. It is not a blind instinct of hopefulness or that miscellaneous obscurantist emotionalism often called optimism, any more than it is utopianism. It is recognition of the increased liberation and redirection of the course of events achieved through accurate discovery. Or, more specifically, it is this recognition operating as a ruling motive in extending the work of discovery and utilizing its results.

"Mechanism" means the reciprocal recognition on the side of means. It is the recognition of the import within the practical judgment, of the given, of fact, in its determinate character. The facts in

(334) their isolation, taken as complete in themselves, are not mechanistic. At most, they just are, and that is the end of them. They are mechanistic as indicating the mechanism, the means, of accomplishing the possibilities which they indicate. Apart from a forward look (the anticipation of the future movement of affairs) mechanism is a meaningless conception. There is no sense in applying the conception to a finished world, to any scene which is simply and only done with. Propositions regarding a past world, just as past (not as furnishing the conditions of what is to be done), might be complete and accurate, but they would be of the nature of a complex catalogue. To

introduce, in addition, the conception of mechanism is to introduce the implication of possibilities of future accomplishment.[3]

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5. The judgment of what is to be done implies, as we have just seen, a statement of what the given facts of the situation are, taken as indications of the course to pursue and of the means to be employed in its pursuit. Such a statement demands accuracy. Completeness is not so much an additional requirement as it is a condition of accuracy. For accuracy depends fundamentally upon relevancy to the determination of what is to be done. Completeness does not mean exhaustiveness per se, but adequacy as respects end and its means. To include too much, or what is irrelevant, is a violation of the demand for accuracy quite as well as to leave out —to fail to discover— what is important.

Clear recognition of this fact will enable one to avoid certain dialectic confusions. It has been argued that a judgment of given existence, or fact, cannot be hypothetical; that factuality and hypothetical character are contradictions in terms. They would be if the two qualifications were used in the same respect. But they are not. The hypothesis is that the facts which constitute the terms of the proposition of the given are relevant and adequate for the purpose in hand —the determination of a possibility to be accomplished in action. The data may be as factual, as absolute as you please, and yet in no way guarantee that they are the data of this particular judgment. Suppose the thing to be done is the formation of a prediction regarding the return of a comet. The prime

(346) difficulty is not in making observations, or in the mathematical calculations based upon them —difficult as these things may be. It is making sure that we have taken as data the observations really implicated in the doing rightly of this particular thing: that we have not left out something Which is relevant, or included something which has nothing to do with the further movement of the comet. Darwin's hypothesis of natural selection does not stand or fall with the correctness of his propositions regarding breeding of animals in domestication. The facts of artificial selection may be as stated —in themselves there may be nothing hypothetical about them. But their bearing upon the origin of species is a hypothesis. Logically, any factual proposition is a hypothetical proposition when it is made the basis of any inference.

6. The bearing of this remark upon the nature of the truth of practical judgments (including the judgment of what is given) is obvious. Their truth or falsity is constituted by the issue. The determination of end-means (constituting the terms and relations of the practical proposition) is hypothetical until the course of action indicated has been tried. The event or issue of such action is the truth or falsity of the judgment. This is an immediate conclusion from the fact that only the issue gives the complete subject-matter. In this case, at least, verification and truth completely coincide —unless there is some serious error in the prior analysis.

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This completes the account, preliminary to a consideration of other matters. But the account suggests another and independent question with respect to which I shall make an excursus. How far is it possible and legitimate to extend or generalize the results reached to apply to all propositions of facts? That is to say, is it possible and legitimate to treat all scientific or descriptive statements of matters of fact as implying indirectly if not directly, something to be done, future possibilities to be realized in action ? The question as to legitimacy is too complicated to be discussed in an incidental way. But it cannot be denied that there is a possibility of such application, nor that the possibility is worth careful examination. We may frame at least a hypothesis that all judgments of fact have reference to a determination of courses of action to be tried and to the discovery of means for their realization. In the sense already explained all propositions which state discoveries or ascertainments, all categorical propositions, would be hypothetical, and their truth would coincide with their tested consequences effected by intelligent action.

This theory may be called pragmatism. But it is a type of pragmatism quite free from dependence upon a voluntaristic psychology. It is not complicated by reference to emotional satisfactions or the play of desires.

I am not arguing the point. But possibly critics of pragmatism would get a new light upon its meaning

(348) were they to set out with an analysis of ordinary practical judgments and then proceed to consider the bearing of its result upon judgments of facts and essences. Mr. Bertrand Russell has remarked[4] that pragmatism originated as a theory about the truth of theories, but ignored the "truths of fact" upon which theories rest and by which they are tested. I am not concerned to question this so far as the origin of pragmatism is concerned. Philosophy, at least, has been mainly a matter of theories; and Mr. James was conscientious enough to be troubled about the way in which the meaning of such theories is to be settled and the way in which they are to be tested. His pragmatism was in effect (as Mr. Russell recognizes) a statement of the need of applying to philosophic theories the same kinds of test as are used in the theories of the inductive sciences. But this does not preclude the application of a like method to dealing with so-called "truths of fact." Facts may be facts, and yet not be the facts of the inquiry in hand. In all scientific inquiry, however, to call them facts or data or truths of fact signifies that they are taken as the relevant facts of the inference to be made. If (as this would seem to indicate) they are then implicated however indirectly in a proposition about what is to be done, they are themselves theoretical in logical quality. Accuracy of statement and correctness of reasoning would then be factors in truth, but so also

(349) would be verification. Truth would be a triadic relation, but of a different sort from that expounded by Mr. Russell. For accuracy and correctness would both be functions of verifiability.

JUDGMENTS OF VALUE

It is my purpose to apply the conclusions previously drawn as to the implications of practical judgment to the subject of judgments of value. First, I shall try to clear away some sources of misunderstanding.

Unfortunately, however, there is a deep-seated ambiguity which makes it difficult to dismiss the matter of value summarily. The experience of a good and the judgment that something is a value of a certain kind and amount have been almost inextricably confused. The confusion has a long history. It is found in mediaeval thought; it is revived by Descartes; recent psychology has given it a new career. The senses were regarded as modes of knowledge of greater or less adequacy, and the feelings were regarded as modes of sense, and hence as modes of cognitive apprehension. Descartes was interested in showing, for scientific purposes, that the senses are not organs of apprehending the qualities of bodies as such, but only of apprehending their relation to the wellbeing of the sentient organism. Sensations of pleasure and pain, along with those of hunger, thirst, etc., most easily lent themselves to this treatment; colors,

(350) tones, etc., were them assimilated. Of them all he says: "These perceptions of sense have been placed within me by nature for the purpose of signifying what things are beneficial or harmful."[5] Thus it was possible to identify the real properties of bodies with their geometrical ones, without exposing himself to the conclusion that God (or nature) deceives us in the perception of color, sound, etc. These perceptions are only intended to teach us what things to pursue and avoid, and as such apprehensions they are adequate. His identification of any and every experience of good with a judgment or cognitive apprehension is clear in the following word: "When we are given news the mind first judges of it and if it is good it rejoices."[6]

This is a survival of the scholastic psychology of the vis aestimativa. Lotze's theory that the emotions, as involving pleasure and pain, are organs of value judgments, or in more recent terminology, that they are cognitive appreciations of worth (corresponding to immediate apprehensions of sensory qualities) presents the same tradition in a new terminology.

As against all this, the present paper takes its stand with the position stated by Hume, in the following words: "A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence; and contains not any representative quality, which renders it a copy of any

( 351) other existence or modification. When I am angry I am actually possest with the passion, and in that emotion have no more a reference to any other object, than when I am thirsty, or sick, or more than five feet high."[7] In so doing, I may seem to some to be begging the question at issue. But such is surely the prima facie fact of the matter. Only a prior dogma to the effect that every conscious experience is, ipso facto, a form of cognition leads to any obscuration of the fact, and the burden of proof is upon those who uphold the dogma.[8]

A further word upon "appreciation" seems specially called for in view of the currency of the doctrine that "appreciation" is a peculiar kind of knowledge, or cognitive revelation of reality: peculiar in having a distinct type of reality for its object and in having for its organ a peculiar mental condition differing from

( 352) the intelligence of everyday knowledge and of science. Actually, there do not seem to be any grounds for regarding appreciation as anything but an intentionally enhanced or intensified experience of an object. Its opposite is not descriptive or explanatory knowledge, but depreciation —a degraded realization of an object. A man may climb a mountain to get a better realization of a landscape; he may travel to Greece to get a realization of the Parthenon more full than that which he has had from pictures. Intelligence, knowledge, may be involved in the steps taken to get the enhanced experience, but that does not make the landscape or the Parthenon as fully savored a cognitive object. So the fulness of a musical experience may depend upon prior critical analysis, but that does not necessarily make the hearing of music a kind of non-analytic cognitive act. Either appreciation means just an intensified experience, or it means a kind of criticism, and then it falls within the sphere of ordinary judgment, differing in being applied to a work of art instead of to some other subject-matter. The same mode of analysis may be applied to the older but cognate term "intuition." The terms "acquaintance" and "familiarity" and "recognition" (acknowledgment) are full of like pitfalls of ambiguity.

In contemporary discussion of value-judgments, however, appreciation is a peculiarly treacherous term. It is first asserted (or assumed) that all experiences of good are modes of knowing: that good

(353) is a term of a proposition. Then when experience forces home the immense difference between evaluation as a critical process (a process of inquiry for the determination of a good precisely similar to that which is undertaken in science in the determination of the nature of an event) and ordinary experience of good and evil, appeal is made to the difference between direct apprehension and indirect or inferential knowledge, and "appreciation" is called in to play the convenient r�le of an immediate cognitive apprehension. Thus a second error is used to cover up and protect a primary one. To savor a thing fully —as Arnold Bennett's heroines are wont to do— is no more a knowing than is the chance savoring which arises when things smelled are found good, or than is being angry or thirsty or more than five feet high. All the language which we can employ is charged with a force acquired through reflection. Even when I speak of a direct experience of a good or bad, one is only too likely to read in traits characterizing a thing which is found in consequence of thinking, to be good; one has to use language simply to stimulate a recourse to a direct experiencing in which language is not depended upon. If one is willing to make such an imaginative excursion —no one can be compelled— he will note that finding a thing good apart from reflective judgment means simply treating the thing in a certain way, hanging on to it, dwelling upon it, welcoming it and acting to perpetuate its presence, taking delight in it.

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It is a way of behaving toward it, a mode of organic reaction. A psychologist may, indeed, bring in the emotions, but if his contribution is relevant it will be because the emotions which figure in his account are just part of the primary organic reaction to the object. In contrary fashion, to find a thing bad (in a direct experience as distinct from the result of a reflective examination) is to be moved to reject it, to try to get away from it, to destroy or at least to displace it. It connotes not an act of apprehension but an act of repugning, of repelling. To term the thing good or evil is to state the fact (noted in recollection) that it was actually involved in a situation of organic acceptance or rejection, with whatever qualities specifically characterize the act.

All this is said because I am convinced that contemporary discussion of values and valuation suffers from confusion of the two radically different attitudes —that of direct, active, non-cognitive experience of goods and bads and that— of valuation, the latter being simply a mode of judgment like any other form of judgment, differing in that its subject-matter happens to be a good or a bad instead of a horse or planet or curve. But unfortunately for discussions, "to value" means two radically different things: to prize and appraise; to esteem and to estimate: to find good in the sense described above, and to judge it to be good, to know it as good. I call them radically different because to prize names a

(355) practical, non-intellectual attitude, and to appraise names a judgment. That men love and hold things dear, that they cherish and care for some things, and neglect and contemn other things, is an undoubted fact. To call these things values is just to repeat that they are loved and cherished; it is not to give a reason for their being loved and cherished. To call them values and then import into them the traits of objects of valuation; or to import into values, meaning valuated objects, the traits which things possess as held dear, is to confuse the theory of judgments of value past all remedy.

And before coming to the more technical discussion, the currency of the confusion and the bad result consequences may justify dwelling upon the matter. The distinction may be compared to that between eating something and investigating the food properties of the thing eaten. A man eats something; it may be said that his very eating implies that he took it to be food, that he judged it, or regarded it cognitively, and that the question is just whether he judged truly or made a false proposition. Now if anybody will condescend to a concrete experience he will perceive how often a man eats without thinking; that he puts into his mouth what is set before him from habit, as an infant does from instinct. An onlooker or anyone who reflects is justified in saying that he acts as if he judged the material to be food. He is not justified in saying that any judgment or

( 356) intellectual determination has entered in. He has acted; he has behaved toward something as food: that is only to say that he has put it in his mouth and swallowed it instead of spewing it forth. The object may then be called food. But this does not mean either that it is food (namely, digestible and nourishing material) or that the eater judged it to be food and so formed a proposition which is true or false. The proposition would

arise only in case he is in some doubt, or if he reflects that in spite of his immediate attitude of aversion the thing is wholesome and his system needs recuperation, etc. Or later, if the man is ill, a physician may inquire what he ate, and pronounce that something not food at all, but poison.

In the illustration employed, there is no danger of any harm arising from using the retroactive term "food"; there is no likelihood of confusing the two senses "actually eaten" and "nourishing article." But with the terms "value" and "good" there is a standing danger of just such a confusion. Overlooking the fact that good and bad as reasonable terms involve a relationship to other things (exactly similar to that implied in calling a particular article food or poison), we suppose that when we are reflecting upon or inquiring into the good or value of some act or object, we are dealing with something as simple, as self-inclosed, as the simple act of immediate prizing or welcoming or cherishing performed without rhyme or reason, from instinct or habit. In truth just as

(357) determining a thing to be food means considering its relations to digestive organs, to its distribution and ultimate destination in the system, so determining a thing found good (namely, treated in a certain way) to be good means precisely ceasing to look at it as a direct, self-sufficient thing and considering it in its consequences-that is, in its relations to a large set of other things. If the man in eating consciously implies that what he eats is food, he anticipates or predicts certain consequences, with more or less adequate grounds for so doing. He passes a judgment or apprehends or knows— truly or falsely. So a man may not only enjoy a thing, but he may judge the thing enjoyed to be good, to be a value. But in so doing he is going beyond the thing immediately present and making an inference to other things, which, he implies, are connected with it. The thing taken into the mouth and stomach has consequences whether a man thinks of them or not. But he does not know the thing he eats —he does not make it a term of a certain character— unless he thinks of the consequences and connects them with the thing he eats. If he just stops and says "Oh, how good this is," he is not saying anything about the object except the fact that he enjoys eating it. We may if we choose regard this exclamation as a reflection or judgment. But if it is intellectual, it is asserted for the sake of enhancing the enjoyment; it is a means to an end. A very hungry man will generally satisfy his appetite to some extent

(358) before he indulges in even such rudimentary propositions.[9]

II

But we must return to a placing of our problem in this context. :fly theme is that a judgment of value is simply a case of a practical judgment, a judgment about the doing of something. This conflicts with the assumption that it is a judgment about a particular kind of existence independent of action, concerning which the main problem is whether it is subjective or objective. It conflicts with every tendency to make the determination of the right or wrong course of action (whether in morals, technology, or scientific inquiry) dependent upon an independent determination of some ghostly things called

value-objects — whether their ghostly character is attributed to their existing in some transcendental eternal realm or in some realm called states of mind. It asserts that value-objects mean simply objects as judged to possess a certain force within a situation temporally

(359) developing toward a determinate result. To find a thing good is, I repeat, to attribute or impute nothing to it. It is just to do something to it. But to consider whether it is good and how good it is, is to ask how it, as if acted upon, will operate in promoting a course of action.

Hence the great contrast which may exist between a good or an immediate experience and an evaluated or judged good. The rain may be most uncomfortable (just be it, as a man is more than five feet tall) and yet be "good" for growing crops-that is, favor or promote their movement in a given direction. This does not mean that two contrasting judgments of value are passed. It means that no judgment has yet taken place. If, however, I am moved to pass a value-judgment I should probably say that in spite of the disagreeableness of getting wet, the shower is a good thing. I am now judging it as a means in two contrasting situations, as a means with respect to two ends. I compare my discomfort as a consequence of the rain with the prospective crops as another consequence, and say "let the latter consequence be." I identify myself as agent with it, rather than with the immediate discomfort of the wetting. It is quite true that in this case I cannot do anything about it; my identification is, so to speak, sentimental rather than practical so far as stopping the rain or growing the crops is concerned. But in effect it is an assertion that one would not on

( 360) account of the discomfort of the rain stop it; that one would, if one could, encourage its continuance. Go it, rain, one says.

The specific intervention of action is obvious enough in plenty of other cases. It occurs to me that this agreeable "food" which I am eating isn't a food for me; it brings on indigestion. It functions no longer as an immediate good; as something to be accepted. If I continue eating, it will be after I have deliberated. I have considered it as a means to two conflicting possible consequences, the present enjoyment of eating and the later state of health. One or other is possible, not both —though of course I may "solve" the problem by persuading myself that in this instance they are congruent. The value-object now means thing judged to be a means of procuring this or that end. As prizing, esteeming, holding dear denote ways of acting, so valuing denotes a passing judgment upon such acts with reference to their connection with other acts, or with respect to the continuum of behavior in which they fall. Valuation means change of mode of behavior from direct acceptance and welcoming to doubting and looking into —acts which involve postponement of direct (or so-called overt) action and which imply a future act having a different meaning from that just now occurring — for even if one decides to continue in the previous act its meaning-content is different when it is chosen after reflective examination.

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A practical judgment has been defined as a judgment of what to do, or what is to be done: a judgment respecting the future termination of an incomplete and in so far indeterminate situation. To say that judgments of value fall within this field is to say two things: one, that the judgment of value is never complete in itself, but always in behalf of determining what is to be done; the other, that judgments of value (as distinct from the direct experience of something as good) imply that value is not anything previously given, but is something to be given by future action, itself conditioned upon (varying with) the judgment. This statement may appear to contradict the recent assertion that a value-object for knowledge means one investigated as a means to competing ends. For such a means it already is; the lobster will give me present enjoyment and future indigestion if I eat it. But as long as I judge, value is indeterminate. The question is not what the thing will do —I may be quite clear about that: it is whether to perform the act which will actualize its potentiality. What will I have the situation become as between alternatives? And that means what force shall the thing as means be given? Shall I take it as means to present enjoyment, or as a (negative) condition of future health ? When its status in these respects is determined, its value is determined; judgment ceases, action goes on. Practical judgments do not therefore primarily concern themselves with the value of objects; but

(362) with the course of action demanded to carry an incomplete situation to its fulfilment. The adequate control of such judgments may, however, be facilitated by judgment of the worth of objects which enter as ends and means into the action contemplated. For example, my primary (and ultimate) judgment has to do, say, with buying a suit of clothes: whether to buy and, if so, what ? The question is of better and worse with respect to alternative courses of action, not with respect to various objects. But the judgment will be a judgment (and not a chance reaction) in the degree in which it takes for its intervening subject-matter the value-status of various objects. What are the prices of given suits ? What are their styles in respect to current fashion ? How do their patterns compare ? What about their durability ? How about their respective adaptability to the chief wearing use I have in mind ? Relative, or comparative, durability, cheapness, suitability, style, aesthetic attractiveness constitute value traits. They are traits of objects not per se, but as entering into a possible and foreseen completing of the situation. Their value is their force in precisely this function. The decision of better and worse is the determination of their respective capacities and intensities in this regard. Apart from their status in this office, they have no traits of value for knowledge. A determination of better value as found in some one suit is equivalent to (his the force of) i derision as to what it is better

(363) to do. It provided the lacking stimulus so that action occurs, or passes from its indeterminate-indecisive-state into decision.

Reference to the terms "subjective" and "objective" will, perhaps, raise a cloud of ambiguities. But for this very reason it may be worth while to point out the ambiguous nature of the term objective as applied to valuations. Objective may be identified, quite

erroneously, with qualities existing outside of and independently of the situation in which a decision as to a future course of action has to be reached. Or, objective may denote the status of qualities of an object in respect to the situation to be completed through judgment. Independently of the situation requiring practical judgment, clothes already have a given price, durability, pattern, etc. These traits are not affected by the judgment. They exist; they are given. But as given they are not determinate values. They are not objects of valuation; they are data for a valuation. We may have to take pains to discover that these given qualities are, but their discovery is in order that there may be a subsequent judgment of value. Were they already definite values, they would not be estimated; they would be stimuli to direct response. If a man had already decided that cheapness constituted value, he would simply take the cheapest suit offered. What he judges is the value of cheapness, and this depends upon its weight or importance in the situation requiring

( 364) action, as compared with durability, style, adaptability, etc. Discovery of shoddy would not affect the de facto durability of the goods, but it would affect the value of cheapness —that is, the weight assigned that trait in influencing judgment — which it would not do, if cheapness already had a definite value. A value, in short, means a consideration, and a consideration does not mean an existence merely, but an existence having a claim upon judgment. Value judged is not existential quality noted, but is the influence attached by judgment to a given existential quality in determining judgment.

The conclusion is not that value is subjective, but that it is practical. The situation in which judgment of value is required is not mental, much less fanciful. I can but think that much of the recent discussion of the objectivity of value and of value-judgments rests upon a false psychological theory. It rests upon giving certain terms meanings that flow from an introspective psychology which accepts a realm of purely private states of consciousness, private not in a social sense (a sense implying courtesy or mayhap secrecy toward others), but existential independence and separateness. To refer value to choice or desire, for example, is in that case to say that value is subjectively conditioned. Quite otherwise, if we have steered clear from such a psychology. Choice, decision, means primarily a certain act, a piece of behavior on the part of a particular thing. That

(365) a horse chooses to eat hay means only that it eats hay; that the man chooses to steal means (at least) that he tries to steal. This trial may come, however, after an intervening act of reflection. It then has a certain intellectual or cognitive quality. But it may mean simply the bare fact of an action which is retrospectively called a choice: as a man, in spite of all temptation to belong to another nation, chooses to be born an Englishman, which, if it has any sense at all, signifies a choice to continue in a line adopted without choice. Taken in this latter sense (in which case, terms like choice and desire refer to ways of behavior), their use is only a specification of the general doctrine that all valuation has to do with the determination of a course of action. Choice, preference, is originally only a bias in a given direction, a bias which is no more subjective or psychical than is the fact that a ball thrown is swerving in a particular direction rather than in some other curve. It is just a name for the differential character

of the action. But let continuance in a certain line of action become questionable, let, that is to say, it be regarded as a means to a future consequence, which consequence has alternatives, and then choice gets a logical or intellectual sense; a mental status if the term "mental" is reserved for acts having this intellectualized quality. Choice still means the fixing of a course of action; it means at least a set to be released as soon as physically possible. Otherwise

(366) man has not chosen, but has quieted himself into a belief that he has chosen in order to relieve himself of the strain of suspense.

Exactly the same analysis applies to desire. Diverse anticipated ends may provoke divided and competing present reactions; the organism may be torn between different courses, each interfering with the completion of the other. This intra-organic pulling and hauling, this strife of active tendencies, is a genuine phenomenon. The pull in a given direction measures the immediate hold of an anticipated termination or end upon us, as compared with that of some other. If one asked after the mechanism of the valuing process, I have no doubt that the answer would be in terms of desires thus conceived. But unless everything relating to the activity of a highly organized being is to be denominated subjective, I see no ground for calling it subjective. So far as I can make out, the emphasis upon a psychological treatment of value and valuation in a subjective sense is but a highly awkward and negative way of maintaining a positive truth: that value and valuation fall within the universe of action: that as welcoming, accepting, is an act, so valuation is a present act determining an act to be done, a present act taking place because the future act is uncertain and incomplete.

It does follow from this fact that valuation is not simply a recognition of the force or efficiency of a means

(367) with respect to continuing a process. For unless there is question about its continuation, about its termination, valuation will not occur. And there is no question save where activity is hesitant in direction because of conflict within it. Metaphorically we may say that rain is good to lay the dust, identifying force or efficiency with value. I do not believe that valuations occur and values are brought into being save in a continuing situation where things have potency for carrying forward processes. There is a close relationship between prevailing, valiancy, valency, and value. But the term "value" is not a mere reduplication of the term "efficiency": it adds something. When we are moving toward a result and at the same time are stimulated to move toward something else which is incompatible with it (as in the case of the lobster as a cause of both enjoyment and indigestion), a thing has a dual potency. Not until the end has been established is the value of the lobster settled, although there need be no doubt about its efficiencies. As was pointed out earlier, the practical judgment determines means and end at the same time. How then can value be given, as efficiency is given, until the end is chosen? The rain is (metaphorically) valuable for laying dust. Whether it is valuable for us to have the dust laid —and if so, how valuable— we shall never know until some activity of our own which is a factor in dust-laying comes into conflict with an incompatible activity. Its value is its force,

(368) indeed, but it is its force in moving us to one end rather than to another. Not every potency, in other words, but potency with the specific qualification of falling within judgment about future action; means value or valuable thing. Consequently there is no value save in situations where desires and the need of deliberation in order to choose are found, and yet this fact gives no excuse for regarding desire and deliberation and decision as subjective phenomena.

To use an Irish bull, as long as a man knows what he desires there is no desire; there is movement or endeavor in a given direction. Desire is desires, and simultaneous desires are incompatible; they mark, as we have noted, competing activities, movements in directions, which cannot both be extended. Reflection is a process of finding out what we want, what, as we say; we really want, and this means the formation of new desire, a new direction of action. In this process, things get values —something they did not possess before, although they had their efficiencies.

At whatever risk of shock, this doctrine should be exposed in all its nakedness. To judge value is to engage in instituting a determinate value where none is given. It is not necessary that antecedently given values should be the data of the valuation; and where they are given data they are only terms in the determination of a not yet existing value. When a man is ill and after deliberation concludes that it be well to see

(369) a doctor, the doctor doubtless exists antecedently. But it is not the doctor who is judged to be the good of the situation, but the seeing of the doctor: a thing which, by description, exists only because of an act dependent upon a judgment. Nor is the health the man antecedently possessed (or which somebody has) the thing which he judges to be a value; the thing judged to be a value is the restoring of health —something by description not yet existing. The results flowing from his past health will doubtless influence him in reaching his judgment that it will be a good to have restored health, but they do not constitute the good which forms his subject-matter and object of his judgment. He may judge that they were good without judging that they are now good, for to be judged now good means to be judged to be the object of a course of action still to be undertaken. And to judge that they were good (as distinct from merely recalling certain benefits which accrued from health) is to judge that if the situation had required a reflective determination of a course of action one would have judged health an existence to be attained or preserved by action. There are dialectic difficulties which may be raised about judgments of this sort. For they imply the seeming paradox of a judgment whose proper subject-matter is its own determinate formation. But nothing is gained by obscuring the fact that such is the nature of the practical judgment: it is a judgment of what and how to judge —of

(370) the weight to be assigned to various factors in the determination of judgment. It would be interesting to inquire into the question whether this peculiarity may not throw light upon the nature of "consciousness," but into that field we cannot now go.

III

From what has been said, it immediately follows, of course, that a determinate value is instituted as a decisive factor with respect to what is to be done. Wherever a determinate good exists, there is an adequate stimulus to action, and no judgment of what is to be done or of the value of an object is called for. It is frequently assumed, however, that valuation is a process of applying some fixed or determinate value to the various competing goods of a situation; that valuation implies a prior standard of value and consists in comparing various goods with the standard as the supreme value. This assumption requires examination. If it is sound it deprives -the position which has been taken of any validity. For it renders the judgment of what to do a matter of applying a value existing ready-made, instead of making —as we have done— the valuation a determination within the practical judgment. The argument would run this way: Every practical judgment depends upon a judgment of the value of the end to be attained; this end may be such only proximately, but that implies something else judged to be good, and so, logically,

(371) till we have arrived at the judgment of a supreme good, a final end or summum bonum. If this statement correctly describes the state of the case there can be no doubt that a practical judgment depends upon a prior recognition of value; consequently the hypothesis upon which we have been proceeding reverses the actual facts.

The first thing by way of critical comment is to point out the ambiguity in the term "end." I should like to fall back upon what was said earlier about the thoroughly reciprocal character of means and end in the practical judgment. If this be admitted it is also admitted that only by a judgment of means —things having value in the carrying of an indeterminate situation to a completion— is the end determinately made out in judgment. But I fear I cannot count upon this as granted. So I will point out that "end" may mean either the de facto limit to judgment, which by definition does not enter into judgment at all, or it may mean the last and completing object of judgment, the conception of that object in which a transitive incompletely given situation would come to rest. Of end in the first sense, it is to be said that it is not a value at all; of end in the second sense, that it is identical with a finale of the kind we have just been discussing or that it is determined in judgment, not a value given by which to control the judgment. It may be asserted that in the illustration used some typical suit of clothes is the value which affords the

(372) standard of valuation of all the suits which are offered to the buyer; that he passes judgment on their value as compared with the standard suit as an end and supreme value. This statement brings out the ambiguity just referred to. The need of something to wear is the stimulus to the judgment of the value of suits offered, and possession of a suit puts an end to judgment. It is an end of judgment in the objective, not in the possessive, sense of the preposition "of "; it is an end not in the sense of aim, but in the sense of a terminating limit. When possession begins, judgment has already ceased. And if argument ad verucundiam has any weight I may point out that this is the doctrine of Aristotle when he says we never deliberate about ends, but only about means. That is to

say, in all deliberation (or practical judgment or inquiry) there is always something outside of judgment which fixes its beginning and end or terminus. And I would add that, according to Aristotle, deliberation always ceases when we have come to the "first link in the chain of causes, which is last in the order of discovery," and this means "when we have traced back the chain of causes [means] to ourselves." In other words, the last end-in-view is always that which operates as the direct or immediate means of setting our own powers in operation. The end-in-view upon which judgment of action settles down is simply the adequate or complete means to the doing of something.

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We do deliberate, however, about aims, about ends-in-view — a fact which shows their radically different nature from ends as limits to deliberation. The aim in the present instance is not the suit of clothes, but the getting of a proper suit. That is what is precisely estimated or valuated; and I think I may claim to have shown that the determination of this aim is identical with the determination of the value of a suit through comparison of the values of cheapness, durability, style, pattern of different suits offered. Value is not determined by comparing various suits with an ideal model, but by comparing various suits with respect to cheapness, durability, adaptability with one another —involving, of course, reference also to length of purse, suits already possessed, etc., and other specific elements in the situation which demands that something be done. The purchaser may, of course, have settled upon something which serves as a model before he goes to buy; but that only means that his judging has been done beforehand; the model does not then function in judgment, but in his act as stimulus to immediate action. And there is a consideration here involved of the utmost importance as to practical judgments of the moral type: The more completely the notion of the model is formed outside and irrespective of the specific conditions which the situation of action presents, the less intelligent is the act. Most men might have their ideals of the model changed somewhat in the face of the actual offering,

(374) even in the case of buying clothes. The man who is not accessible to such change in the case of moral situations has ceased to be a moral agent and become a reacting machine. In short, the standard of valuation is formed in the process of practical judgment or valuation. It is not something taken from outside and applied within it — such application means there is no judgment.

IV

Nothing has been said thus far about a standard. Yet the conception of a standard, or a measure, is so closely connected with valuation that its consideration affords a test of the conclusions reached. It must be admitted that the concepts of the nature of a standard pointed to by the course of the prior discussion is not in conformity with current conceptions. For the argument points to a standard which is determined within the process of valuation, not outside of it, and hence not capable of being employed ready-made, therefore, to settle the valuing process. To many persons, this will seem absurd to the point of self-contradiction. The prevailing conception, however, has been

adopted without examination; it is a preconception. If accepted, it deprives judgment and knowledge of all significant import in connection with moral action. If the standard is already given, all that remains is its mechanical application to the case in hand —as one would apply a yard

(375) rule to dry-goods. Genuine moral uncertainty is then impossible; where it seems to exist, it is only a name for a moral unwillingness, due to inherent viciousness, to recognize and apply the rules already made and provided, or else for a moral corruption which has enfeebled man's power of moral apprehension. When the doctrine of standards prior to and independent of moral judgments is accompanied by these other doctrines of original sin and corruption, one must respect the thoroughgoing logic of the doctrine. Such is not, however, the case with the modern theories which make the same assumption of standards preceding instead of resulting from moral judgments, and which ignore the question of uncertainty and error in their apprehension. Such considerations do not, indeed, decide anything, but they may serve to get a more unprejudiced hearing for a hypothesis which runs counter to current theories, since it but formulates the trend of current practices in their increasing tendency to make the act of intelligence the central factor in morals.

Let us, accordingly, consider the alternatives to regarding the standard of value as something evolved in the process of reflective valuation. How can such a standard be known ? Either by an a priori method of intuition, or by abstraction from prior cases. The latter conception throws us into the arms of hedonism. For the hedonistic theory of the standard of value derives its logical efficiency

(376) from the consideration that the notion of a prior and fixed standard (one which is not determined within the situation by reflection) forces us back upon antecedent irreducible pleasures and pains which alone are values definite and certain enough to supply standards. They alone are simple enough to be independent and ultimate. The apparently commonsense alternative would be to take the "value" of prior situations in toto, say, the value of an act of kindness to a sufferer. But any such good is a function of the total unanalyzed situation; it has, consequently, no application to a new situation unless the new exactly repeats the old one. Only when the "good" is resolved into simple and unalterable units, in terms of which old situations can be equated to new ones on the basis of the number of units contained, can an unambiguous standard be found.

The logic is unimpeachable, and points to irreducible pleasures and pains as the standard of valuation. The difficulty is not in the logic but in empirical facts, facts which verify our prior contention. Conceding, for the sake of argument, that there are definite existences such as are called pleasures and pains, they are not value-objects, but are only things to be valued. Exactly the same pleasure or pain, as an existence, has different values at different times according to the way in which it is judged. What is the value of the pleasure of eating the lobster as compared with the pains of indigestion ? The ride tells its, of course,

( 377) to break up the pleasure and pain into elementary units and count.[10] Such ultimate simple units seem, however, to be about as much within the reach of ordinary knowledge as atoms or electrons are within the grasp of the man of the street. Their resemblance to the ultimate, neutral units which analytic psychologists have postulated as a methodological necessity is evident. Since the value of even such a definite entity as a toothache varies according to the organization constructed and presented in reflection, it is clear that ordinary empirical pleasures and pains are highly complex.

This difficulty, however, may be waived. We may even waive the fact that a theory which set out to be ultra-empirical is now enmeshed in the need for making empirical facts meet dialectical requirements. Another difficulty is too insuperable to be waived.

( 378) In any case the quantity of elementary existences which constitutes the criterion of measurement is dependent upon the very judgment which is assumed to be regulated by it. The standard of valuation is the units which will result from an act; they are future consequences. Now the character of the agent judging is one of the conditions of the production of these consequences. A callous person not only will not foresee certain consequences, and will not be able to give them proper weight, but he does not afford the same condition of their occurrence which is constituted by a sensitive man. It is quite possible to employ judgment so as to produce acts which will increase this organic callousness. The analytic conception of the moral criterion provides —logically— for deliberate blunting of susceptibilities. If the matter at issue is simply one of number of units of pleasure over pain, arrange matters so that certain pains will not, as matter of fact, be felt. While this result may be achieved by manipulation of extraorganic conditions, it may also be effected by rendering the organism insensitive. Persistence in a course which in the short run yields uneasiness and sympathetic pangs, will in the long run eliminate these pains and leave a net pleasure balance.

This is a time-honored criticism of hedonism. My present concern with it is purely logical. It shows that the attempt to bring over from past objects the elements of a standard for valuing future conse-

(379) -quences is a hopeless one. The express object of a valuation-judgment is to release factors which being new, cannot be measured on the basis of the past alone. This discussion of the analytic logic as applied in morals would, however, probably not be worth while did it not serve to throw into relief the significance of any appeal to fulfilment of a system or organization as the moral good —the standard. Such an appeal, if it is wary, is an appeal to the present situation as undergoing that reorganization that will confer upon it the unification which it lacks; to organization as something to be brought about, to be made. And it is clear that this appeal meets all the specifications of judgments of practice as they have been described. The organization which is to be fulfilled through action is an organization which, at the time of judging, is present in conception, in idea —in, that is, reflective inquiry as a phase of reorganizing activity. And since its presence in conception is both a condition of the organization aimed at

and a function of the adequacy of the reflective inquiry, it is evident that there is here a confirmation of our statement that the practical judgment is a judgment of what and how to judge as an integral part of the completion of an incomplete temporal situation. More specifically, it also appears that the standard is a rule for conducting inquiry to its completion: it is a counsel to make examination of the operative factors complete, a warning against suppressing recognition of any of

(380) them. However a man may impose upon himself or upon others, a man's real measure of value is exhibited in what he does, not in what he consciously thinks or says. For the doing is the actual choice. It is the completed reflection.

It is comparatively easy at the present time in moral theory to slam both hedonism and apriorism. It is not so easy to see the logical implications of the alternative to them. The conception of an organization of interests or tendencies is often treated as if it were a conception which is definite in subject-matter as well as clear-cut in form. It is taken not as a rule for procedure in inquiry, a direction and a warning (which it is), but as something all of whose constituents are already given for knowledge, even though not given in fact. The act of fulfilling or realizing must then be treated as devoid of intellectual import. It is a mere doing, not a learning and a testing. But how can a situation which is incomplete in fact be completely known until it is complete ? Short of the fulfilment of a conceived organization, how can the conception of the proposed organization be anything more than a working hypothesis, a method of treating the given elements in order to see what happens ? Does not every notion which implies the possibility of an apprehension of knowledge of the end to be reached[11] also imply either an a priori

( 381) revelation of the nature of that end, or else that organization is nothing but a whole composed of elementary parts already given-the logic of hedonism ?

The logic of subsumption in the physical sciences meant that a given state of things could be compared with a ready-made concept as a model —the phenomena of the heavens with the implications of, say, the circle. The methods of experimental science broke down this motion; they substituted for an alleged regulative model a formula which was the integrated function of the particular phenomena themselves, a formula to be used as a method of further observations and experiments and thereby tested and developed. The unwillingness to believe that, in a similar fashion, moral standards or models can be trusted to develop out of the specific situations of action shows how little the general logical force of the method of science has been grasped. Physical knowledge did not as matter of fact advance till the dogma of models or forms as standards of knowledge had been ousted. Yet we hang tenaciously to a like doctrine in morals for fear of moral chaos. It once seemed to be impossible that the disordered phenomena of perception could generate a knowledge of law and order; it was

( 382) supposed that independent principles of order must be supplied and the phenomena measured by approach to or deviation from the fixed models. The ordinary conception of a standard in practical affairs is a precise analogue. Physical knowledge started on a secure career when men had courage to start from the irregular scene and to treat the suggestions to which it gave rise as methods for instituting new observations and experiences. Acting upon the suggested conceptions analyzed, extended, and ordered phenomena and thus made improved conceptions —methods of inquiry— possible. It is reasonable to believe that what holds moral knowledge back is above all the conception that there are standards of good given to knowledge apart from the work of reflection in constructing methods of action. As the bringer of bad news gets a bad name, being made to share in the production of the evil which he reports, so honest acknowledgment of the uncertainty of the moral situation and of the hypothetical character of all rules of moral mensuration prior to acting upon them, is treated as if it originated the uncertainty and created the skepticism.

It may be contended, however, that all this does not justify the earlier statement that the limiting situation which occasions and cuts off judgment is not itself a value. Why, it will be asked, does a man buy a suit of clothes unless that is a value, or at least a proximate means to a further value ? The answer is short and simple: Because he has to; because the

(383) situation in which he lives demands it. The answer problably seems too summary. But it may suggest that while a man lives, he never is called upon to judge whether he shall act, but simply how he shall act. A decision not to act is a decision to act in a certain way; it is never a judgment not to act, unqualifiedly. It is a judgment to do something else —to wait, for example. A judgment that the best thing to do is to retire from active life, to become a Simon Stylites, is a judgment to act in a certain way, conditioned upon the necessity that, irrespective of judging, a man will have to act somehow anyway. A decision to commit suicide is not a decision to be dead; it is a decision to perform a certain act. The act may depend upon reaching the conclusion that life is not worth living. But as a judgment, this is a conclusion to act in a way to terminate the possibility of further situations requiring judgment and action. And it does not imply that a judgment about life as a supreme value and standard underlies all judgments as to how to live. More specifically, it is not a judgment upon the value of life per se, but a judgment that one does not find at hand the specific means of making life worth while. As an act to be done, it falls within and assumes life. As a judgment upon the value of life, by definition it evades the issue. No one ever influenced a person considering committing suicide by arguments concerning the value of life, but only by suggesting or supplying conditions

(384) and means which make life worth living; in other words, by furnishing direct stimuli to living.

However, I fear that all this argument may only obscure a point obvious without argument, namely, that all deliberation upon what to do is concerned with the completion and determination of a situation in some respect incomplete and so

indeterminate. Every such situation is specific; it is not merely incomplete; the incompleteness is of a specific situation. Hence the situation sets limits to the reflective process; what is judged has reference to it and that which limits never is judged in the particular situation in which it is limiting. Now we have in ordinary speech a word which expresses the nature of the conditions which limit the judgments of value. It is the word "invaluable." The word does not mean something of supreme value as compared with other things any more than it means something of zero value. It means something out of the scope of valuation —something out of the range of judgment; whatever in the situation at hand is not and cannot be any part of the subject-matter of judgment and which yet instigates and cuts short the judgment. It means, in short, that judgment at some point runs against the brute act of holding something dear as its limit.

V

The statement that values are determined in the process of judgment of what to do (that is. in situa-

(385) -tions where preference depends upon reflection upon the conditions and possibilities of a situation requiring action) will be met by the objection that our practical deliberations usually assume precedent specific values and also a certain order or grade among them. There is a sense in which I am not concerned to deny this. Our deliberate choices go on in situations more or less like those in which we have previously chosen. When deliberation has reached a valuation, and action has confirmed or verified the conclusion, the result remains. Situations overlap. The m which is judged better than it in one situation is found worse than l in another, and so on; thus a certain order of precedence is established. And we have to broaden the field to cover the habitual order of reflective preferences in the community to which we belong. The valu-eds or valuables thus constituted present themselves as facts in subsequent situations. Moreover, by the same kind of operation, the dominating objects of past valuations present themselves as standardized values.

But we have to note that such value-standards are only presumptive. Their status depends, on one hand, upon the extent in which the present situation is like the past. In a progressive or rapidly altering social life, the presumption of identical present value is weakened. And while it would be foolish not to avail one's self of the assistance in present valuations of the valuables established in other situations,

(386) we have to remember that habit operates to make us overlook differences and presume identity where it does not exist —to the misleading of judgment. On the other hand, the contributory worth of past determinations of value is dependent upon the extent in which they were critically made; especially upon the extent in which the consequences brought about through acting upon them have been carefully noted. In other words, the presumptive force of a past value in present judgment depends upon the pains taken with its verification.

In any case, so far as judgment takes place (instead of the reminiscence of a prior good operating as a direct stimulus to present action) all valuation is in some degree a revaluation. Nietzsche would probably not have made so much of a sensation, but he would have been within the limits of wisdom, if he had confined himself to the assertion that all judgment, in the degree in which it is critically intelligent, is a transvaluation of prior values. I cannot escape recognition that any allusion to modification or transformation of an object through judgment arouses partisan suspicion and hostility. To many it appears to be a survival of an idealistic epistemology. But I see only three alternatives. Either there are no practical judgments —as judgments they are wholly illusory; or the future is bound to be but a repetition of the past or a reproduction of something eternally existent in some transcendent realm (which is the same thing

(387) logically),[12] or the object of a practical judgment is some change, some alteration, to be brought about in the given, the nature of the change depending upon the judgment and yet constituting its subject-matter. Unless the epistemological realist accepts one of the two first alternatives, he seems bound, in accepting the third, to admit not merely that practical judgments make a difference in things as an after-effect (this he seems ready enough to admit), but that the import and validity of judgments is a matter of the difference thus made. One may, of course, hold that this is just what marks the distinction of the practical judgment from the scientific judgment. But one who admits this fact as respects a practical judgment can no longer claim that it is fatal to the very idea of judgment to suppose that its proper object is some difference to be brought about in things, and that the truth of the judgment is constituted by the differences in consequences actually made. And a logical realist who takes seriously the

(388) notion that moral good is a fulfilment of an organization or integration must admit that any proposition about such an object is prospective (for it is something to be attained through action), and that the proposition is made for the sake of furthering the fulfilment. Let one start at this point and carry back the conception into a consideration of other kinds of propositions, and one will have, I think, the readiest means of apprehending the intent of the theory that all propositions are but the propoundings of possible knowledge, not knowledge itself. For unless one marks off the judgment of good from other judgment by means of an arbitrary division of the organism from the environment, or of the subjective from the objective, no ground for any sharp line of division in the propositional-continuum will appear.

But (to obviate misunderstanding) this does not mean that some psychic state or act makes the difference in things. In the first place, the subject-matter of the judgment is a change to be brought about; and, in the second place, this subject-matter does not become an object until the judgment has issued in act. It is the act which makes the difference, but nevertheless the act is but the complete object of judgment and the judgment is complete as a judgment only in the act. The anti-pragmatists have been asked (notably by Professor A. W. Moore) how they sharply distinguish between judgment —or knowledge— and

( 389) act and yet freely admit and insist that knowledge makes a difference in action and hence in existence. This is the crux of the whole matter. And it is a logical question. It is not a query (as it seems to have been considered) as to how the mental can influence a physical thing like action —a variant of the old question of how the mind affects the body. On the contrary, the implication is that the relation of knowledge to action becomes a problem of the action of a mental (or logical) entity upon a physical one only when the logical import of judgment has been misconceived. The positive contention is that the realm of logical propositions presents in a realm of possibility the specific rearrangement of things which overt action presents in actuality. Hence the passage of a proposition into action is not a miracle, but the realization of its own character —its own meaning as logical. I do not profess, of course, to have shown that such is the case for all propositions; that is a matter which I have not discussed. But in showing the tenability of the hypothesis that practical judgments are of that nature, I have at least ruled out any purely dialectic proof that the nature of knowledge as such forbids entertaining the hypothesis that the import —indirect if not direct— of all logical propositions is some difference to be brought about. The road is at least cleared for a more unprejudiced consideration of this hypothesis on its own merits.

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SENSE PERCEPTION AS KNOWLEDGE

I mentioned incidentally in the first section that it is conceivable that failure to give adequate consideration to practical judgments may have a compromising effect upon the consideration of other types. I now intend to develop this remark with regard to sense perception as a form of knowledge. The topic is so bound up with a multitude of perplexing psychological and epistemological traditions that I have first to make it reasonably clear what it is and what it is not which I propose to discuss. I endeavored in an earlier series of papers[13] to point out that the question of the material of sense perception is not, as such, a problem of the theory of knowledge at all, but simply a problem of the occurrence of a certain material — a problem of causal conditions and consequences. That is to say, the problem presented by an image[14] of a bent stick, or by a dream, or by "secondary" sensory qualities is properly a problem of physics — of conditions of occurrence, and not of logic, of truth or falsity, fact or fiction. That the existence of a red quale is dependent upon disturbances of a certain velocity of a medium in connection with certain changes of the organism is not to be confused with the notion that red is a way of knowing, in some more or less adequate fashion, some more "real" object or else

(391) of knowing itself. The fact of causation —or functional dependence— no more makes the quale an "appearance" to the mind of something more real than itself or of itself than it makes bubbles on the water a real fish transferred by some cognitive distortion into a region of appearance. With a little stretching we may use the term appearance in either case, but the term only means that the red quale or the water-bubble is an obvious or conspicuous thing from which we infer something else not so obvious.

This position thus freely resumed here needs to be adequately guarded on all sides. It implies that the question of the existence or presence of the subject-matter of even a complex sense perception may be treated as a question of physics. It also implies that the existence of a sense perception may be treated as a problem of physics. But the position is not that all the problems of sense perception are thereby exhausted. There is still, on the contrary, the problem of the cognitive status of sense perception. So far from denying this fact, I mean rather to emphasize it in holding that this knowledge aspect is not to be identified —  as it has been in both realistic and idealistic epistemologies — with the simple occurrence of presented subject-matter and with the occurrence of a perceptive act. It is often stated, for example, that primitive sense objects when they are stripped of all inferential material cannot possibly be false — with the implication that they, therefore, must

(392) be true. Well, I meant to go this statement one better —to state that they are neither true nor false— that is, that the distinction of true-or-false is as irrelevant and inapplicable as to any other existence, as it is, say, to being more than five feet high or having a low blood pressure. This position when taken leaves over the question of sense perception as knowledge, as capable of truth or falsity. It is this question, then, which I intend to discuss in this paper.

I

My first point is that some sense perceptions at least (as matter of fact the great bulk of them), are without any doubt forms of practical judgment —or, more accurately, are terms in practical judgments as propositions of what to do. When in walking down a street I see a sign on the lamp-post at the corner, I assuredly see a sign. Now in ordinary context (I do not say always or necessarily) this is a sign of what to do —to continue walking or to turn. The other term of the proposition may not be stated or it may be; it is probably more often tacit. Of course, I have taken the case of the sign purposely. But the case may be extended. The lamp-post as perceived is to a lamp-lighter a sign of something else than a turn, but still a sign of something to be done. To another man, it may be a sign of a possible support. I am anxious not to force the scope of cases of this

(393) class beyond what would be accepted by an unbiased person, but I wish to point out that certain features of the perceived object, as a cognitive term, which do not seem at first sight to fall within this conception of the object, as, an intellectual sign of what to do, turn out upon analysis to be covered by it. It may be said, for example, that our supposed pedestrian perceives much besides that which serves as evidence of the thing to be done. He perceives the lamp-post, for example, and possibly the carbons of the arc. And these assuredly do not enter into the indication of what to do or how to do it.

The reply is threefold. In the first place, it is easy —and usual— to read back into the sense perception more than was actually in it. It is easy to recall the familiar features of the lamp-post; it is practically impossible —or at least very unusual— to recall what was actually perceived. So we read the former into the latter. The tendency is for actual perception to limit itself to the minimum which will serve as sign. But, in the second

place, since it is never wholly so limited, since there is always a surplusage of perceived object, the fact stated in the objection is admitted. But it is precisely this surplusage which has not cognitive status. It does not serve as a sign, but neither is it known, or a term in knowledge. A child, walking by his father's side, with no aim and hence no reason for securing indications of what to do, will probably see more in his idle curiosity than his

(394) parent. He will have more presented material. But this does not mean that he is making more propositions, but only that he is getting more material for possible propositions. It means, in short, that he is in an aesthetic attitude of realization rather than in a cognitive attitude. But even the most economical observer has some aesthetic, non-cognitive surplusage.[15] In the third place, surplusage is necessary for the operation of the signifying function. Independently of the fact that surplusage may be required to render the sign specific, action is free (its variation is under control) in the degree in which alternatives are present. The pedestrian has probably the two alternatives in mind: to go straight on or to turn. The perceived object might indicate to him another alternative —to stop and inquire of a passer-by. And, as is obvious in a more complicated case, it is the extent of the perceived object which both multiplies alternative ways of acting and gives the grounds for selecting among them. A physician, for example, deliberately avoids such hard-and-fast alternatives as have been postulated in our instance. He does not observe simply to get an indication of whether the man is well or ill; but in order to determine what to do he extends his explorations over a

(395) wide field. :Much of his perceived object field is immaterial to what he finally does; that is, does not serve as sign. But it is all relevant to judging what he is to do. Sense perception as a term in practical judgment must include more than the element which finally serves as sign. If it did not, there would be no perception, but only a direct stimulus to action.[16]

The conclusion that such perceptions as we have been considering are terms in an inference is to be carefully discriminated from the loose statement that sense perceptions are unconscious inferences. There is a great difference between saying that the perception of a shape affords an indication for an inference and saying that the perception of shape is itself an inference. That definite shapes would not be perceived, were it not for neural changes brought about in prior inferences, is a possibility; it may be, for aught I know, an ascertained fact. Such telescoping of a perceived object with the object inferred from it may be a constant function; but in any case the telescoping is not a matter of a present inference

( 396) going on unconsciously, but is the result of an organic modification which has occurred in consequence of prior inferences. In similar fashion, to say that to see a table is to get an indication of something to write on is in no way to say that the perception of a table is an inference from sensory data. To say that certain earlier perceived objects not having as perceived the character of a table have now "fused" with the results of

inferences drawn from them is not to say that the perception of the table is now an inference. Suppose we say that the first perception was of colored patches; that we inferred from this the possibility of reaching and touching, and that on performing these acts we secured certain qualities of hardness, smoothness, etc., and that these are now all fused with the color-patches. At most this only signifies that certain previously inferred qualities have now become consolidated with qualities from which they were formerly inferred. And such fusion or consolidation is precisely not inference. As matter of fact, such "fusion" of qualities, given and formerly inferred, is but a matter of speaking. What has really happened is that brain processes which formerly happened successively now happen simultaneously. What we are dealing with is not a fact of cognition, but a fact of the organic conditions of the occurrence of an act of perception.

Let us apply the results to the question of sense "illusions." The bent reed in the water wines

(397) naturally to mind. Purely physical considerations account for the refraction of the light which produces an optical image of a bent stick. This has nothing to do with knowledge or with sense perception —with seeing. It is simply and wholly a matter of the properties of light and a lens. Such refractions are constantly produced without our noting them. In the past, however, light refracted and unrefracted has been a constant stimulus to responsive actions. It is a matter of the native constitution of the organism that light stimulates the eyes to follow and the arms to reach and the hands to clutch and handle. As a consequence, certain arrangements of reflected and refracted light have become a sign to perform certain specific acts of handling and touching. As a rule, stimuli and reactions occur in an approximately homogeneous medium —the air. The system of signs or indexes of action set up has been based upon this fact and accommodated to it. A habit or bias in favor of a certain kind of inference has been set up. We infer from a bent ray of light that the hand, in touching the reflecting object, will, at a certain point, have to change its direction. This habit is carried over to a medium in which the conclusion does not hold. Instead of saying that light is bent —which it is— we infer that the stick is bent: we infer that the hand could not protract a straight course in handling the object. But an expert fisherman never makes such an error in spearing fish.

(398) Reacting in media of different refractive capacities, he bases his signs and inferences upon the conditions and results of his media. I see no difference between these cases and that of a man who can read his own tongue. He sees the word "pain" and infers it means a certain physical discomfort. As matter of fact, the thing perceived exists in an unfamiliar medium and signifies bread. To the one accustomed to the French language the right inference occurs.[17] There is neither error nor truth in the optical image: It just exists physically. But we take it for something else, we behave to it as if it were something else. We mis-take it.

II

So far as I can see, the pronounced tendency to regard the perceived object as itself the object of a peculiar kind of knowledge instead of as a term in knowledge of the practical kind has two causes. One is the confirmed habit of neglecting the wide scope and import of practical judgments. This leads to overlooking the responsive act as the other term indicated by the perception, and to taking the perceived object as the whole of the situation just by itself. The other cause is the fact that because perceived objects are constantly employed as evidence of what is to be done —or how to do something— they them-

(399) -selves become the objects of prolonged and careful scrutiny. We pass naturally and inevitably from recognition to observation. Inference will usually take care of itself if the datum is properly determined. At the present day, a skilled physician will have little difficulty in inferring typhoid instead of malaria from certain symptoms provided he can make certain observations-that is, secure certain data from which to infer. The labor of intelligence is thus transferred from inference to the determination of data, the data being determined, however, in the interests of inference and as parts of an inference.

At this point, a significant complication enters in. The ordinary assumption in the discussion of the relation of perceived objects to knowledge is that "the" object —the real object— of knowledge in perception is the thing which caused the qualities which are given. It is assumed, that is, that the other term of a proposition in which a sense datum is one term must be the thing which produced it. Since this producing object does not for the most part appear in ordinary sense perception, we have on our hands perception as an epistemological problem —the relation of an appearance to some reality which it, somehow, conceals rather than indicates. Hence also the difficulties of "reconciling" scientific knowledge in physics where these causes are the terms of the propositions with "empirical" or sense perception knowledge where they do not even appear.

(400) Here is where the primary advantage of recognizing that ordinary sense perceptions are forms of practical judgment comes in. In practical judgments, the other term is as open and aboveboard as is the sensory quality: it is the thing to be done, the response to be selected. To borrow an illustration of Professor Woodbridge's: A certain sound indicates to the mother that her baby needs attention. If she turns out to be in error, it is not because sound ought to mean so many vibrations of the air, and as matter of fact doesn't even suggest air vibrations, but because there is wrong inference as to the act to be performed.

I imagine that if error never occurred in inferences of this practical sort the human race would have gone on quite contented with them. However that may be, errors do occur and the endeavor to control inference as to consequences (so as to reduce their likelihood of error) leads to propositions where the knowledge-object of the perceived thing is not something to be done, but the cause which produced it. The mother finds her baby peacefully sleeping and says the baby didn't make the noise. She investigates and decides a swinging door made it. Instead of inferring a consequence, she infers a

cause. If she had identified the noise in the first place, she would have concluded that the hinges needed oiling.

Now where does the argument stand:' The proper control of inference in specific cases is found (a) to lie in the proper identification of tile datum. If

(401) the perception is of a certain kind, the inference takes place as a matter of course; or else inference can be suspended until more adequate data are found, and thus error is avoided even if truth be not found. Furthermore (b) it is discovered that the most effective way of identifying datum (and securing adequate data) is by inference to its cause. The mother stops short with the baby and the door as causes. But the same motives which made her transfer her inference from consequences to conditions are the motives which lead others to inferring from sounds to vibrations of air. Hence our scientific propositions about sensory data. They are not, as such, about things to do, but about things which have been done, have happened —"facts." But they have reference, nevertheless, to inferences regarding consequences to be effected. They are the means of securing data which will prevent errors which would otherwise occur, and which facilitate an entirely new crop of inferences as to possibilities —means and ends— of action. That scientific men should be conscious of this reference or even interested in it is not at all necessary, for I am talking about the logic of propositions, not about biography nor psychology. If I reverted to psychology, it would be to point out that there is no reason in the world why the practical activity of some men should not be predominantly directed into the pursuits connected with discovery. The extent in which they actually are so directed depends upon social conditions.

(402)

III

We are brought to a consideration of the notion of "primitive" sense data. It was long customary to treat the attempt to define true knowledge in terms derived from sense data as a confusion of psychology —or the history of the growth of knowledge— with logic, the theory of the character of knowledge as knowledge. As matter of fact, there is confusion, but in the opposite direction. The attempt involved a confusion of logic with psychology —that is, it treated a phase of the technique of inference as if it were a natural history of the growth of ideas and beliefs.

The chief source of error in ordinary inference is an unrecognized complexity of data. Perception which is not experimentally controlled fails to present sufficiently wide data to secure differentia of possible inferences, and it fails to present, even in what is given, lines of cleavage which are important for proper inference. This is only an elaborate way of saying what scientific inquiry has made clear, that, for purposes of inference as to conditions of production of what is present, ordinary sense perception is too narrow, too confused, too vivid as to some quales and too blurred as to some others. Let us confine our attention for the moment to confusion. It has often been pointed out that

sense qualities being just what they are, it is illegitimate to introduce such notions as obscurity or confusion into them: a slightly

(403) illuminated color is just as irretrievably what it is, as clearly itself, as an object in the broad glare of noonday. But the case stands otherwise when the quale is taken as a datum for inference. It is not so easy to identify a perceived object for purposes of inference in the dusk as in bright light. From the standpoint of an inference to be effected, the confusion is the same as an unjustifiable simplification. This over-simplification has the effect of making the quale, as a term of inference, ambiguous. To infer from it is to subject ourselves to the danger of all fallacies of ambiguity which are expounded in the textbooks. The remedy is clearly the resolution, by experimental means, of what seems to be a simple datum into its "elements." This is a case of analysis; it differs from other modes of analysis only in the subject-matter upon which it is directed, viz., some thing which had been previously accepted as a simple whole. The result of this analysis is the existence as objects of perception of isolated qualities like the colors of the spectrum scientifically determined, the tones of the scale in all their varying intensities, etc., in short, the "sensations" or sense qualities of contemporary psychology textbooks or the "simple ideas" of sensation of Locke or the "objects of sense" of Russell. They are the material of sense perception discriminated for the purpose of better inferences.

Note that these simple data or elements are not original; psychologically or historically;  they are

(404) logical primitives —that is, irreducible for purposes of inference. They are simply the most unambiguous and best defined objects of perception which can be secured to serve as signs. They are experimentally determined, with great art, precisely because the naturally given, the customary, objects in perception have been ambiguous or confused terms in inference. Hence they are replaced, through experimental means involving the use of wide scientific knowledge deductively employed, by simpler sense objects. Stated in current phraseology, "sensations" (i.e., qualities present to sense) are not the elements out of which perceptions are composed, constituted, or constructed; they are the finest, most carefully discriminated objects of perception. We do not first perceive a single, thoroughly defined shade, a tint and hue of red; its perception is the last refinement of observation. Such things are the limits of perception, but they are final, not initial, limits. They are what is perceived to be given under the most favorable possible conditions; conditions, moreover, which do not present themselves accidentally, but which have to be intentionally and experimentally established, and detection of which exacts the use of a vast body of scientific propositions.

I hope it is now evident what was meant by saying that current logic presents us not with a confusion of psychology with logic, but with a wholesale mistaking of logical determinations for facts of psy-

(405) chology. The confusion was begun by Locke —or rather made completely current through the enormous influence exercised by Locke— and some reference to Locke may be of aid in clearing up the point. Locke's conception of knowledge was logical, not psychological. He meant by knowledge thoroughly justified beliefs or propositions, "certainty," and carefully distinguished it from what passed current as knowledge at a given time. The latter he called "assent," opinion, belief, or judgment. Moreover, his interest in the latter was logical. He was after an art of controlling the proper degree of assent to be given in matters of probability. In short, his sole aim was to determine certainty where certainty is possible and to determine the due degree of probability in the much vaster range of cases where only probability is attainable. A natural history of the growth of "knowledge" in the sense of what happens to pass for knowledge was the last of his interests. But he was completely under the domination of the ruling idea of his time; namely, that Nature is the norm of truth. Now the earliest period of human life presents the "work of nature" in its pure and unadulterated form. The normal is the original, and the original is the normative. Nature is both beneficent and truthful in its work; it retains all the properties of the Supreme Being whose vice-regent it is. To get the logical ultimates we have only, therefore, to get back to the natural primitives. Under the influence

(406) of such deistic ideas, Locke writes a mythology of the history of knowledge, starting from clear and distinct meanings, each simple, well defined, sharply and unambiguously just what it is on its face, without concealments and complications, and proceeds by "natural" compoundings up to the store of complex ideas, and to the perception of simple relations of agreement among ideas: a perception always certain if the ideas are simple, and always controllable in the case of complex ideas if we consider the simple ideas and their compoundings. Thus he established the habit of taking logical discriminations as historical or psychological primitives —as "sources" of beliefs and knowledge instead of as checks upon inference and as means of knowing.

I hope reference to Locke will not make a scapegoat. I should not have mentioned him if it were not that this way of looking at things found its way over into orthodox psychology and then back again into the foundations of logical theory. It may be said to be the stock in trade of the school of empiricist logicians, and (what is even more important) of the other schools of logic whenever they are dealing with propositions of perception and observation: vide Russell's trusting confidence in "atomic" propositions as psychological primitives. It led to the supposition that there is a kind of knowledge or simple apprehension (or sense acquaintance) implying no inference and yet basic to inference. Note, if you

( 407) please, the multitude of problems generated by thinking of whatever is present in experience (as sensory qualities are present) as if it were intrinsically and apart from the use made of its subject-matter of knowledge.

a) The mind-body problem becomes an integral part of the problem of knowledge. Sense organs, neurones, and neuronic connections are certainly involved in the occurrence of a sense quality. If the occurrence of the latter is in and of itself a mode of

knowledge, it becomes a matter of utmost importance to determine just how the sense organs take part in it. If one is an idealist he responds with joy to any intimation that the "process of apprehension" (that is, speaking truly, the physical conditions of the occurrence of the sensory datum) transforms the extra organic stimulus: the alteration is testimony somehow to the constitutive nature of mind! But if he is a realist he conceives himself under obligation to show that the external stimulus is transmitted without any alteration and is apprehended just as it is; color must be shown to be simply, after all, a compacting of vibrations —or else the validity of knowledge is impugned! Recognize that knowledge is something about the color, whether about its conditions or causes or consequences or whatever and that we don't have to identify color itself with a mode of knowing, and the situation changes. We know a color when we understand, just as we know a

( 408) thunder-storm when we understand. More generally speaking, the relation of brain-change to consciousness is thought to be an essential part of the problem of knowledge. But if the brain is involved in knowing simply as part of the mechanism of acting, as the mechanism for co-ordinating partial and competing stimuli into a single scheme of response, as part of the mechanism of actual experimental inquiry, there is no miracle about the participation of the brain in knowing. One might as well make a problem of the fact that it takes a hammer to drive a nail and takes a hand to hold the hammer as to make a problem out of the fact that it also requires a physical structure to discover and to adapt the particular acts of holding and striking which are needed.

b) The propositions of physical science are not found among the data of apprehension. Mathematical propositions may be disposed of by making them purely a priori; propositions about sense objects by making them purely a posteriori.[18] But physical propositions, such as make up physics, chemistry, biology, to say nothing of propositions of history, anthropology, and society, are neither one nor the other. I cannot state the case better than Mr. Russell has stated it, although, I am bound to add, the stating did not arouse in Mr. Russell any suspicion of the premises with which he was operating. "Men of science, for the most part, are willing

( 409) to condemn immediate data as 'merely subjective,' while yet maintaining the truth of the physics inferred from those data. But such an attitude, though it may be capable of justification, obviously stands in need of it; and the only justification possible must be one which exhibits matter as a logical construction from sense data . . . . . It is therefore necessary to find some way of bridging the gulf between the world of physics and the world of sense."[19] I do not see how anyone familiar with the two-world schemes which have played such a part in the history of humanity can read this statement without depression. And if it occurred to one that the sole generating condition of these two worlds is the assumption that sense objects are modes of apprehension or knowledge (are so intrinsically and not in the use made of them), he might think it a small price to pay to inquire into the standing of this assumption. For it was precisely the fact that sense perception and physical science appeared historically (in the seventeenth century) as rival modes of knowing the same world which led to the conception of sense objects as "subjective " —since they were so different from the

objects of science. Unless sense and science had both first been thought of as modes of knowing and then as modes of knowing the same things, there would not have been the slightest reason for regarding immediate data, as "merely subjective." They would have

(410) been natural phenomena, like any other. That they are phenomena which involve the interaction of an organism with other things is just an important discovery about them, as is also a discovery about starch in plants.

Physical science is the knowledge of the world by their means. It is a rival, not of them, but of the medley of prior dogmas, superstitions, and chance opinions about the world-a medley which grew up and flourished precisely because of absence of a will to explore and of a technique for detecting unambiguous data. That Mr. Russell, who is a professed realist, can do no better with the problem (once committed to the notion that sense objects are of themselves objects of knowledge) than to hold that although the world of physics is not a legitimate inference from sense data, it is a permissible logical construction from them —permissible in that it involves no logical inconsistencies — suggests that the pragmatic difference between idealist and realist —of this type— is not very great. From necessary ideal constructions to permissible logical constructions involves considerable difference in technique but no perceptible practical difference. And the point of this family likeness is that both views spring from regarding sense perception and science as ways of knowing the same objects, and hence as rivals until some scheme of conciliation has been devised.

c) It is but a variant of this problem to pass to what may he called either the ego-centric predica-

(411) -ment or the private-public problem. Sense data differ from individual to individual. If they are recognized to be natural events, this variation is no more significant than any change depending upon variation of generating conditions. One does not expect two lumps of wax at different distances from a hot body to be affected exactly alike; the upsetting thing would be if they were. Neither does one expect cast-iron to react exactly as does steel. That organisms, because of different positions or different internal structures, should introduce differences in the phenomena which they respectively have a share in producing is a fact of the same nature. But make the sense qualities thus produced not natural events (which may then be made either objects of inquiry or means of inquiry into something else) but modes of knowing, and every such deviation marks a departure from true knowing: it constitutes an anomaly. Taken en masse the deviations are so marked as to lead to the conclusion (even on the part of a realist like Mr. Russell) that they constitute a world of private existences, which, however, may be correlated without logical inconsistency with other such worlds. Not all realists are Leibnizian monadists as is Mr. Russell; I do not wish to leave the impression that all come to just this solution. But all who regard sense data as apprehensions have on their hands in some form the problem of the seemingly distorting action exercised by the

(412) individual knower upon a public or common thing known or believed in.

IV

I am not trying to discuss or solve these problems. On the contrary, I am trying to show that these problems exist only because of the identification of a datum determined with reference to control of inference with a self-sufficient knowledge-object. As against this assumption I point to the following facts. What is actually given as matter of empirical fact may be indefinitely complicated and diffused. As empirically existent, perceived objects never constitute the whole scope of the given; they have a content of indefinite extent in which they are set. To control inference it is necessary to analyze this complex situation-to determine what is data for inference and what is irrelevant. This analysis involves discriminative resolution into more ultimate simples. The resources of experimentation, all sorts of microscopic, telescopic, and registering apparatus, are called in to perform that analysis. As a result we differentiate not merely visual data from auditory —a discrimination effected by experiments within the reach of everybody— but a vast multitude of visual and auditory data. Physics and physiology and anatomy all play a part in the analysis. We even carry the analysis to the point of regarding, say, a color as a self-included object unreferred to any other object. We may avoid a false inference by conceiving it, not as a duality of any ob-

(413) -ject, but as merely a product of a nervous stimulation and reaction. Instead of referring it to a ribbon or piece of paper we may refer it to the organism. But this is only as a part of the technique of suspended inference. We avoid some habitual inference in order to make a more careful inference.

Thus we escape, by a straightening out of our logic (by avoiding erecting a system of logical distinctions and checks into a mythological natural history), the epistemological problems. We also avoid the contradiction which haunts every epistemological scheme so far propounded. As matter of fact every proposition regarding what is "given" to sensation or perception is dependent upon the assumption of a vast amount of scientific knowledge which is the result of a multitude of prior analyses, verifications, and inferences. What a combination of Tantalus and Sisyphus we get when we fancy that we have cleared the slate of all these material implications, fancy that we have really started with simple and independent givens, and then try to show how from these original givens we can arrive at the very knowledge which we have all the time employed in the discovery and fixation of the simple sense data![20]

SCIENCE AS A PRACTICAL ART

No one will deny that, as seen from one angle science is a pursuit, an enterprise—a mode of practice. It is at least that, no matter how much more

(414) or else it is. In course of the practice of knowing distinctive practical judgments will then naturally be made. Especially does this hold good when an intellectual class is developed, when there is a body of persons working at knowing as another body is

working at farming or engineering. Moreover, the instrumentalities of this inquiring class gain in importance for all classes in the degree in which it is realized that success in the conduct of the practice of farming or engineering or medicine depends upon use of the successes achieved in the business of knowing. The importance of the latter is thrown into relief from another angle if we consider the enterprises, like diplomacy, politics, and, to a considerable extent, morals, which do not acknowledge a thoroughgoing and constant dependence upon the practice of science. As Hobbes was wont to say, the advantages of a science of morals are most obvious in the evils which we suffer from its lack.

To say that something is to be learned, is to be found out, is to be ascertained or proved or believed, is to say that something is to be done. Every such proposition in the concrete is a practical proposition. Every such proposition of inquiry, discovery and testing will have then the traits assigned to the class of practical propositions. They imply an incomplete situation going forward to completion, and the proposition as a specific organ of carrying on the movement. I have not the intention of dwelling at length upon this

(415) theme. I wish to raise in as definite and emphatic a way as possible a certain question. Suppose that the propositions arising within the practice of knowing and functioning as agencies in its conduct could be shown to present all the distinctions and relations characteristic of the subject-matter of logic: what would be the conclusion? To an unbiased mind the question probably answers itself: All purely logical terms and propositions fall within the scope of the class of propositions of inquiry as a special form of propositions of practice. My further remarks are not aimed at proving that the case accords with the hypothesis propounded, but are intended to procure hospitality for the hypothesis.

If thinking is the art by which knowledge is practiced, then the materials with which thinking deals may be supposed, by analogy with the other arts, to take on in consequence special shapes. The man who is making a boat will give wood a form which it did not have, in order that it may serve the purposes to which it is to be put. Thinking may then be supposed to give its material the form which will make it amenable to its purpose —attaining knowledge, or, as it is ordinarily put, going from the unknown to the known. That physical analysis and synthesis are included in the processes of investigation of natural objects makes them a part of the practice of knowing. And it makes any general traits which result in consequence of such treatment

( 416) characters of objects as they aye involved in knowledge-getting. That is to say, if there are any features which natural existences assume in order that inference may be more fertile and more safe than it would otherwise be, those features correspond to the special traits which would be given to wood in process of constructing a boat. They are manufactured, without being any worse because of it. The question which I raised in the last paragraph may then be restated in this fashion: Are there such features? If there are, are they like those characters which books on logic talk about ?

Comparison with language may help us. Language —I confine myself for convenience to spoken language— consists of sounds. But it does not consist simply of those sounds which issue from the human organs prior to the attempt to communicate. It has been said that an American baby before talking makes almost every sound found in any language. But elimination takes place. And so does intensification. Certain sounds originally slurred over are made prominent; the baby has to work for them and the work is one which he neither undertakes nor accomplishes except under the incitation of others. Language is chiefly marked off, however, by articulation; by the arrangement of what is selected into an orderly sequence of vowels and consonants with certain rules of stress, etc. It may fairly be said that speech is a manufactured article: it consists of

(417) natural ebullitions of sound which have been shaped for the sake of being effective instrumentalities of a purpose. For the most part the making has gone on under the stress of the necessities of communication with little deliberate control. Works on phonetics, dictionaries, grammars, rhetorics, etc., mark some participation of deliberate intention in the process of manufacture. If we bring written language into the account, we should find the conscious factor extended somewhat. But making, shaping for an end, there is, whether with or without conscious control.

Now while there is something in the antecedent properties of sound which enters into the determination of speech, the worth of speech is in no way measured by faithfulness to these antecedent properties. It is measured only by its efficiency and economy in realizing the special results for which it is constructed. Written language need not look like sounds any more than sounds look like objects. It must represent articulate sounds, but faithful representation is wholly a matter of carrying the mind to the same outcome, of exercising the same function, not of resemblance or copying. Original structure limits what may be made out of anything: one cannot (at least at present) make a silk purse out of pigs' bristles. But this conditioning relationship is very different from one in which the antecedent existences, are a model or prototype to which

(418) the consequent must be servilely faithful. The boatmaker must take account of the grain and strength of his wood. To take account of, to reckon with, is a very different matter, however, from repetition or literal loyalty. The measure is found in the consequences for which existences are used.

I wish, of course, to suggest that logical traits are just features of original existences as they have been worked over for use in inference, as the traits of manufactured articles are qualities of crude materials modified for specific purposes. Upon the whole, past theories have vibrated between treating logical traits as "subjective," something resident in "mind" (mind being thought of as an immaterial or psychical existence independent of natural things and events), and ascribing ontological pre-existence to them. Thus far in the history of thought, each method has flourished awhile and then called out a reaction to its opposite. The reification (I use the word here without prejudice) of logical traits has taken both an Idealistic form (because of emphasis upon their spiritual or ideal nature and stuff) and a Realistic one, due to emphasis upon their immediate apprehension and givenness. That mathematics have been from Plato to Descartes and

contemporary analytic realism the great provocative of Realistic Idealisms is a familiar fact. The hypothesis here propounded is a via media. What has been overlooked is the reality and importance of art and its works. The tools and

( 419) works of art are neither mental, subjective things, nor are they antecedent entities like crude or raw material. They are the latter shaped for a purpose. It is impossible to overstate their objectivity from the standpoint of their existence and their efficacy within the operations in question; nor their objectivity in the sense of their dependence upon prior natural existences whose traits have to be taken account of, or reckoned with, by the operations of art. In the case of the art of inference, the art securely of going from the given to the absent, the dependence of mind upon inference, the fact that wherever inference occurs we have a conscious agent-one who recognizes, plans, invents, seeks out, deliberates, anticipates, and who, reacting to anticipations, fears, hates, desires, etc. — explains the theories which, because of misconception of the nature of mind and consciousness, have labeled logical distinctions psychical and subjective. In short, the theory shows why logical features have been made into ontological entities and into mental states.

To elaborate this thesis would be to repeat what has been said in all the essays of this volume. I wish only to call attention to certain considerations which may focus other discussions upon this hypothesis.

1. The existence of inference is a fact, a fact as certain and unquestioned as the existence of eyes or cars or the growth of plants, or the circulation of the

(420) blood. One observes it taking place everywhere where human beings exist. A student of the history of man finds that history is composed of beliefs, institutions, and customs which are inexplicable without acts of inference. This fact of inference is as much a datum —a hard fact— for logical theory as any sensory quality whatsoever. It is something men do as they walk, chew, or jump. There is nothing a priori or ideological about it. It is just a brute empirically observable event.

2. Its importance is almost as conspicuous as its existence. Every act of human life, not springing from instinct or mechanical habit, contains it; most habits are dependent upon some amount of it for their formation, as they are dependent upon it for their readaptation to novel circumstances. From the humblest act of daily life to the most intricate calculations of science and the determination and execution of social, legal, and political policies, things are used as signs, indications, or evidence from which one proceeds to something else not yet directly given.

3. The act of inferring takes place naturally, i.e., without intention. It is at first something we do, not something which we mean to do. We do it as we breathe or walk or gesture. Only after it is done do we notice it and reflect upon it —and the great mass of men no more reflect upon it after its occurrence than they reflect upon the process of walking and try to discover its conditions and mechanism.

(421) That an individual, an animal organism, a man or a woman performs the acts is to say something capable of direct proof through appeal to observation; to say that something called mind, or consciousness does it is itself to employ inference and dubious inference. The fact of inference is much surer, in other words, than that of a particular inference, such as that to something called reason or consciousness, in connection with it; save as mind is but another word for the fact of inference, in which case of course it cannot be rereferred to as its cause, source, or author. Moreover, by all principles of science, inference cannot be referred to mind or consciousness as its condition, unless there is independent proof of the existence of that mind to which it is referred. Prima facie we are conscious or aware of inference precisely as we are of anything else, not by introspection of something within the very consciousness which is supposed to be its source, but by observation of something taking place in the world —as we are conscious of walking after we have walked. After it has been done naturally —or "unconsciously"— it may be done "consciously," that is, with intent or on purpose. But this means that it is done with consciousness (whatever consciousness may be discovered to mean), not that it is done by consciousness. Now if other natural events characteristic only (so far as can be ascertained) of highly organized beings are marked by unique or by distinctive traits, there is good ground

(422) for the assumption that inference will be so marked. As we do not find the circulation of blood or the stimulation of nerves in a stone, and as we expect as a matter of course to find peculiar conditions, qualities, and consequences in the being where such operations occur, so we do not find the act of inference in a stone, and we expect peculiar conditions, qualities, and consequences in whatever beings perform the act. Unless, in other words, all the ordinary canons of inquiry are suspended, inference is not an isolated nor a merely formal event. As against the latter, it has its own distinctive structure and properties; as against the former, it has specific generating conditions and specific results.

4. Possibly all this seems too obvious for mention. But there is often a virtual conspiracy in philosophy, not to mention obvious things nor to dwell upon them: otherwise remote speculations might be brought to a sudden halt. The point of these commonplaces resides in the push they may give anyone to engage in a search for distinctive features in the act of inference. The search may perhaps be best initiated by noting the seeming inconsistency between what has been said about inference as an art and inference as a natural, unpremeditated occurrence. The obvious function of spontaneous inference is to bring before an agent absent considerations to which he may respond as he otherwise responds to the stimulating force of the given situation. To infer rain is

( 423) to enable one to behave now as given conditions would not otherwise enable him to conduct himself. This instigation to behave toward the remote in space or time is the primary trait of the inferential act; descriptively speaking, the act consists in taking up an attitude of response to an absent thing as if it were present. But just because the thing

is absent, the attitude taken may be either irrelevant and positively harmful or extremely pertinent and advantageous. We may infer rain when rain is not going to happen, and acting upon the inference be worse off than if there had been no inference. Or we may make preparations, which we would not otherwise have made; the rain may come, and the inference save our lives —as the ark saved Noah. Inference brings, in short, truth and falsity into the world, just as definitely as the circulation of the blood brings its distinctive consequences, both advantages and liabilities into the world, or as the existence of banking brings with it consequences of business extension and of bankruptcy not previously existent. If the reader objects to the introduction of the terms "truth" and "falsity", 1 am perfectly willing to leave the choice of words to him, provided the fact is recognized that through inference men are capable of a kind of success and exposed to a kind of failure not otherwise possible: dependent upon the fact that inference takes absent things as being in a certain real continuum with present things, so that our attitude toward the latter

(424) is bound up with our reaction to the former as parts of the same situation. And in any event, I wish to protest against a possible objection to the introduction of the terms "false" and "true". It may be said that inference is not responsible for the occurrence of errors and truths, because these accompany simple apprehensions where there is no inference: as when I see a snake which isn't there —or any other case which may appear to the objector to afford an illustration of his point. The objection illustrates my point. To affirm a snake is to affirm potentialities going beyond what is actually given; it says that what is given is going to do something —the doing characteristic of a snake, so that we are to react to the given as to a snake. Or if we take the case of a face in the cloud recognized as a phantasy; then (to say nothing of "in the cloud" which involves reference beyond the given) "phantasy," "dream," equally means a reference to objects and considerations not given as the actual datum is given.

We have not got very far with our question of distinctive, unique traits called into existence by inference, but we have got far enough to have light upon what is called the "transcendence" of knowledge. All inference is a going beyond the assuredly present to an absent. Hence it is a more or less precarious journey. It is transcending limits of security of immediate response. The stone which reacts only to stimuli of the present, not of the future, cannot

(425) make the mistakes which a being reacting to a future taken to be connected with the present is sure to make. But it is important to note just what this transcendence consists in. It has nothing to do with transcending mental states to arrive at an external object. It is behaving to the given situation as involving something not given. It is Robinson Crusoe going from a seen foot to an unseen man, not from a mental state to something unmental.

5. The mistakes and failures resulting from inference constitute the ground for transition from natural spontaneous performance to a technique or deliberate art of inference. There is something humorous about the discussion of the problem of error as if it were a rare or exceptional thing —an anomaly— when the barest glance at human history

shows that mistakes have been the rule, and that truth lies at the bottom of a well. As to inferences bound up with barely keeping alive, man has had to effect a considerable balance of good guesses over bad. Aside from this somewhat narrow held, the original appearance of inference upon the scene probably added to the interest of life rather than to its efficiency. If the classic definition of man as a rational animal means simply an inferring or guessing animal, it applies to the natural man, for it allows for the guesses being mostly wrong. If it is used with its customary eulogistic connotations, it applies only to man chastened to the use of a hardly won and toilsome art.

( 426) If it alleges that man has any natural preference for a reasonable inference or that the rationality of an inference is a measure of its hold upon him, it is grotesquely wrong. To propagate this error is to encourage man in his most baleful illusion, and to postpone the day of an effective and widespread adoption of a perfected art of knowing.

Summarily put, the waste and loss consequent upon the natural happening of inference led man, slowly and grudgingly, to the adoption of safeguards in its performance. In some part, the scope of which is easily exaggerated, man has come to attribute many of the ills from which he suffers to his own premature, inept, and unguarded performing of inference, instead of to fate, bad luck, and accident. In some things, and to some extent in all things, he has invented and perfected an art of inquiry: a system of checks and tests to be used before the conclusion of inference is categorically affirmed. Its nature has been considered in many other places in these pages, but it may prove instructive to restate it in this context.

a) Nothing is less adapted to a successful accomplishing of an inference than the subject-matter from which it ordinarily fares forth. That subject-matter is a nest of obscurities and ambiguities. The ordinary warnings against trusting to imagination, the bad name which has come intellectually to attach to fancy, are evidences that anything may suggest any-

(427) -thing. Regarding most of the important happenings in life no inference has been too extravagant to obtain followers and influence action, because subject-matter was so variegated and complex that any objects which it suggested had a prima facie plausibility. That every advance in knowledge has been effected by using agencies which break up a complex subject-matter into independent variables (from each of which a distinct inference may be drawn), and by attacking each one of these things by every conceivable tool for further resolution so as to make sure we are dealing with something so simple as to be unambiguous, is the report of the history of science. It is sometimes held that knowledge comes ultimately to a necessity of belief, or acceptance, which is the equivalent of an incapacity to think otherwise than so and so. Well, even in the case of such an apparently simple "self-evident" thing as a red, this inability, if it is worth anything, is a residuum from experimental analysis. We do not believe in the thing as red (whenever there is a need of scientific testing) till we have exhausted all kinds of active attack and find the red still resisting and persisting. Ordinarily we move the head; we shade the eyes; we turn the thing over; we take it to a different light. The use of lens, prism, or whatever device, is simply carrying farther the use of like methods

as of physical resolution. Whatever endures all these active (not mental) attacks, we accept—

(428) pending invention of more effective weapons. To make sure that a given fact is just and such a shade of red is, one may say, a final triumph of scientific method. To turn around and treat it as something naturally or psychologically given is a monstrous superstition. 

When assured, such a simple datum is for the sake of guarding the act of inference. Color may mean a lot of things; any red may mean a lot of things; such things are ambiguous; they afford unreliable evidence or signs. To get the color down to the last touch of possible discrimination is to limit its range of testimony; ideally, it is to secure a voice which says but one thing and says that unmistakably. Its simplicity is not identical with isolation, but with specified relationship. Thus the hard "facts," the brute data, the simple qualities or ideas, the sense elements of traditional and of contemporary logic, get placed and identified within the art of controlling inference. The allied terms "self-evident," "sensory truths," "simple apprehensions" have their meanings unambiguously determined in this same context; while apart from it they are the source of all kinds of error. They are no longer notions to conjure with. They express the last results attainable by present physical methods of discriminative analysis employed in the search for dependable data for inference. Improve the physical means of experimentation, improve the microscope or the

(429) registering apparatus or the chemical reagent, and they may be replaced tomorrow by new, simple apprehensions of simple and ultimate data.

b) Natural or spontaneous inference depends very largely upon the habits of the individual in whom inferring takes place. These habits depend in turn very largely upon the customs of the social group in which he has been brought up. An eclipse suggests very different things according to the rites, ceremonies, legends, traditions, etc., of the group to which the spectator belongs. The average layman in a civilized group may have no more personal science than an Australian Bushman, but the legends which determine his reactions are different. His inference is better, neither because of superior intellectual capacity, nor because of more careful personal methods of knowing, but because his instruction has been superior. The instruction of a scientific inquirer in the best scientific knowledge of his day is just as much a part of the control (or art) of inference as is the technique of observational analysis which he uses. As the bulk of prior ascertainments increases, the tendency is to identify this stock of learning, this store of achieved truth, with knowledge. There is no objection to this identification save as it leads the logician or epistemologist to ignore that which made it "knowledge" (that which gives it a right to the title), and as a consequence to fall into two errors: one, overlooking its function in the guidance and handling of

(430) future inferences; the other, confusing the mere act of reference to what is known (known so far as it has accrued from prior tested inquiries) with knowing. To remind myself of what is known as to the topic with which I am dealing is an indispensable performance, but to call this reminder "knowing" (as the presentative realist usually does) is to confuse a psychological event with a logical achievement. It is from misconception of this act of reminding one's self of what is known, as a check in some actual inquiry, that arise most of the fallacies about simple acquaintance, mere apprehension, etc. —the fallacies which eliminate inquiry and inferring from knowledge.

c) The art of inference gives rise to specific features characterizing the inferred thing. The natural man reacts to the suggested thing as he would to something present. That is, he tends to accept it uncritically. The man called up by the footprint on the sand is just as real a man as the footprint is a real footprint. It is a man, not the idea of a man, which is indicated. What a thing means is another thing; it doesn't mean a meaning. The only difference is that the thing indicated is farther off, or more concealed, and hence (probably) more mysterious, more powerful and awesome, on that account. The man indicated to Crusoe by the footprints was like a man of menacing powers seen at a distance through a telescope. Things naturally inferred are accepted, in other words, by the natural man on altogether too 

( 431) realistic a basis for adequate control; they ' impose themselves too directly and irretrievably. There are no alternatives save either acceptance or rejection in toto. What is needed for control is some device by which they can be treated for just what they are, namely, inferred objects which, however assured as objects of prior experiences, are uncertain as to their existence in connection with the object from which present inference sets out. While more careful inspection of the given object —to see if it be really a footprint, how fresh, etc. —may do much for safe-guarding inference; and while forays into whatever else is known may help, there is still need for something else. We need some method of freely examining and handling the object in its status as an inferred object. This means some way of detaching it, as it were, from the particular act of inference in which it presents itself. Without some such detachment, Crusoe can never get into a free and effective relation with the man indicated by the footprint. He can only, so to speak, go on repeating, with continuously increasing fright, "There's a man about, there's a man about." The "man" needs to be treated, not as man, but as something having a merely inferred and hence potential status; as a meaning or thought, or "idea." There is a great difference between meaning and a meaning. Meaning is simply a function of the situation: this thing means that thing: meaning is this relationship. A meaning is something quite different; it

(432) is not a function, but a specific entity, a peculiar thing, namely the man as suggested.

Words are the great instrument of translating a relation of inference existing between two things into a new kind of thing which can be operated with on its own account; the term of discourse or reflection is the solution of the requirement for greater flexibility

and liberation. Let me repeat: Crusoe's inquiry can play freely around and about the man inferred from the footprint only as he can, so to say, get away from the immediate suggestive force of the footprint. As it originally stands, the man suggested is on the same coercive level as the suggestive footprint. They are related, tied together. But a gesture, a sound, may be used as a substitute for the thing inferred. It exists independently of the footprint and may therefore be thought about and ideally experimented with irrespective of the footprint. It at once preserves the meaning-force of the situation and detaches it from the immediacy of the situation. It is d meaning, an idea.

Here we have, I submit, the explanation of notions, forms, essences, terms, subsistences, ideas, meanings, etc. They are surrogates of the objects of inference of such a character that they may be elaborated and manipulated exactly as primary things may be, so far as inference is concerned. They can be brought into relation with one another, quite irrespective of the things which originally- suggested them. Without

(433) such free play reflective inquiry is mockery, and control of inference an impossibility. When a speck of light suggests to the astronomer a comet, he would have nothing to do but either to accept the inferred object as a real one, or to reject it as a mere fancy unless he could treat "comet" for the time being not as a thing at all, but as a meaning, a conception; a meaning having, moreover, by connection with other meanings, implications —meanings consequent from it. Unless a meaning is an inferred object, detached and fixed as a term capable of independent development, what sort of a ghostly Being is it ? Except on the basis stated, what is the transition from the function of meaning to a meaning as an entity in reasoning? And, once more, unless there is such a transition, is reasoning possible?

Cats have claws and teeth and fur. They do not have implications. No physical thing has implications. The term "cat" has implications. How can this difference be explained ? On the ground that we cannot use the "cat" object inferred from given indications in such a way as will test the inference and make it fruitful, helpful, unless we can detach it from its existential dependence upon the particular things which suggest it. We need to know what a cat would be if it were there; what other things would also be indicated if the cat is really indicated. We therefore create a new object: we take something to stand for the cat-in-its-status as inferred in

(434) contrast with the cat as a live thing. A sound or a visible mark is the ordinary mechanism for producing such a new object. Whatever the physical means employed, we now have a new object; a term, a meaning, a notion, an essence, a form or species, according to the terminology which may be in vogue. It is as much a specific existence as any sound or mark is. But it is a mark which notes, concentrates, and records an outcome of an inference which is not yet accepted and affirmed. That is to say, it designates an object which is not yet to be reacted to as one reacts to the given stimulus, but which is an object of further examination and inquiry, a medium of a postponed conclusion and of investigation continued till better grounds for affirming an object (making a definite, unified response) are given. A term is an object so far as that object

is undergoing shaping in a directed act of inquiry. It may be called a possible object or a hypothetical object. Such objects do not walk or bite or scratch, but they are nevertheless actually present as the vital agencies of reflection. If we but forget where they live and operate —within the event of controlled inference— we have on our hands all the mysteries of the double world of existence and essence, particular and universal, thing and idea, ordinary life and science. For the world of science, especially of mathematical science, is the world of considerations which have approved themselves to be effectively regulative of the operations of

(435) inference. It is easier to wash with ordinary water than with H2O and there is a marked difference between falling off a building and 1/2gt2. But H2O and 1/2gt2 are as potent for the distinctive act of inference —as genuine and distinctive an act as washing the hands or rolling down hill— as ordinary water and falling are impotent.

Scientific men can handle these things-of-inference precisely as the blacksmith handles his tools. They are not thoughts as they are ordinarily used, not even in the logical sense of thought. They are rather things whose manipulation (as the blacksmith manipulates his tools) yield knowledge —or methods of knowledge— with a minimum of recourse to thinking and a maximum of efficiency. When one considers the importance of the enterprise of knowledge, it is not surprising that appropriate tools have been devised for carrying it on, and that these tools have no prototypes in pre-existent materials. They are real objects, but they are just the real objects which they are and not some other objects.

THEORY AND PRACTICE

Our last paragraphs have touched upon the nature of science. They contain, by way of intimation, an explanation of the distance which lies between the things of daily intercourse and the terms of science. Controlled inference is science, and science is, accordingly, a highly specialized industry. It is such a

(436) specialized mode of practice that it does not appear to be a mode of practice at all. This high specialization is part of the reason for the current antithesis of theory and practice, knowledge and conduct, the other part being the survival of the ancient conception of knowledge as intuitive and dialectical —the conception which is set forth in the Aristotelian logic.

Starting from the hypothesis that the art of controlled inference requires for its efficient exercise specially adapted entities, it follows that the various sciences are the various forms which the industry of controlled inquiry assumes. It follows that the conceptions and formulations of the sciences —physical and mathematical— concern things which have been reshaped in view of the exigencies of regulated and fertile inference. To get things into the estate where such inference is practicable, many qualities of the water and air, cats and dogs, stones and stars, of daily intercourse with the world have been dropped or depressed. Much that was trivial or remote has been elevated and exaggerated. Neither the omissions nor the accentuations are arbitrary. They are

purposeful. They represent the changes in the things of ordinary life which are needed to safeguard the important business of inference.

There is then a great difference between the entities of science and the things of daily life. This may be fully acknowledged. But unless the admis-

(437) -sion is accompanied by an ignoring of the function of inference, it creates no problem of conciliation, no need of apologizing for either one or the other. It generates no problem of the real and the apparent. The "real" or "true" objects of science are those which best fulfil the demands of secure and fertile inference. To arrive at them is such a difficult operation, there are so many specious candidates clamoring for the office, that it is no wonder that when the objects suitable for inference are constituted, they tend to impose themselves as the real objects, in comparison with which the things of ordinary life are but impressions made upon us (according to much modern thought), or defective samples of Being —according to much of ancient thought. But one has only to note that their genuinely characteristic feature is fitness for the aims of inference to awaken from the nightmare of all such problems. They differ from the things of the common world of action and association as the means and ends of one occupation differ from those of another. The difference is not that which exists between reality and appearance, but is that between the subject-matter of crude occupations and of a highly specialized and difficult art, upon the success of which (so it is discovered) the progress of other occupations ultimately depends.

The entities of science are not only from the scientist; they are also for him. They express, that is, not only the outcome of reflective inquiries, but

(438) express them in the particular form in which they can enter most directly and efficiently into subsequent inquiries. The fact that they are sustained within the universe of inquiry accounts for their remoteness from the things of daily life, the latter being promptly precipitated out of suspense in such solutions. That most of the immediate qualities of things (including the so-called secondary qualities) are dropped signifies that such qualities have not turned out to be fruitful for inference. That mathmatical, mechanical, and "primary" distinctions and relations have come to constitute the proper subjectmatter of science signifies that they represent such qualities of original things as are most manipular for knowledge-getting or assured and extensive inference. Consider what a hard time the scientific man had in getting away from other qualities, and how the more immediate qualities have been pressed upon him from all quarters, and it is not surprising that he inclines to think of the intellectually useful properties as alone "real" and to relegate all others to a quasiillusory field. But his victory is now sufficiently achieved so that this tension may well relax; it may be acknowledged that the difference between scientific entities and ordinary things is one of function, the former being selected and arranged for the successful conduct of inferential knowings.

I conclude with an attempt to show how bootless the ordinary antithesis between knowledge (or theory)

( 439) and practice becomes when we recognize that it really involves only a contrast between the kinds of judgments appropriate to ordinary modes of practice and those appropriate to the specialized industry of knowledge-getting.

It is not true that to insist that scientific propositions fall within the domain of practice is to depreciate them. On its face, the insistence means simply that all knowledge involves experimentation, with whatever appliances are suited to the problem in hand, of an active and physical type. Instead of this doctrine leading to a low estimate of knowledge, the contrary is the case. This art of experimental thinking turns out to give the key to the control and development of other modes of practice. I have touched elsewhere in these essays upon the way in which knowledge is the instrument of regulation of our human undertakings, and I have also pointed out that intrinsic increments of meaning accrue in consequence of thinking. I wish here to point how that mode of practice which is called theorizing emancipates experience —how it makes for steady progress. No matter how much specialized skill improves, we are restricted in the degree in which our ends remain constant or fixed. Significant progress, progress which is more than technical, depends upon ability to foresee new and different results and to arrange conditions for their effectuation. Science is the instrument of increasing our technique in

(440) attaining results already known and cherished. More important yet, it is the method of emancipating us from enslavement to customary ends, the ends established in the past.

Let me borrow from political philosophy a kind of caricature of the facts. As social philosophers used to say that the state came into existence when individuals agreed to surrender some of their native personal rights for the sake of getting the advantages of non-interference and aid from others who made a like surrender, so we might say that science began when men gave up the claim to form the structure of knowledge each from himself as a center and measure of meaning —when there was an agreement to take an impersonal standpoint. Non-scientific modes of practice, left to their natural growth, represent, in other words, arrangements of objects which cluster about the self, and which are closely tied down to the habits of the self. Science or theory means a system of objects detached from any particular personal standpoint, and therefore available for any and every possible personal standpoint. Even the exigencies of ordinary social life require a slight amount of such detachment or abstraction. I must neglect my own peculiar ends enough to take some account of my neighbor if I am going to be intelligible to him. I must at least find common ground. Science systematizes and indefinitely extends this principle. It takes its stand, not with what is

(441) common with some particular neighbor living at this especial date in this particular village, but with any possible neighbor in the wide stretches of time and space. And it does so by the mere fact that it is continually reshaping its peculiar objects with an eye single to availability in inference. The more abstract, the more impersonal,

the more impartially objective are its objects, the greater the variety and scope of inference made possible. Every street of experience which is laid out by science has its tracks for transportation, and every line issues transfer checks to every other line. You and I may keep running in certain particular ruts, but conditions are provided for somebody else to foresee —or infer— new combinations and new results. The depersonalizing of the things of everyday practice becomes the chief agency of their repersonalizing in new and more fruitful modes of practice. The paradox of theory and practice is that theory is with respect to all other modes of practice the most practical of all things, and the more impartial and impersonal it is, the more truly practical it is. And this is the sole paradox.

But lest the man of science, the man of dominantly reflective habits, be puffed up with his own conceits, he must bear in mind that practical application —that is, experiment— is a condition of his own calling, that it is indispensable to the institution of knowledge or truth. Consequently, in order that he keep his

(442) own balance, it is needed that his findings be everywhere applied. The more their application is confined within his own special calling, the less meaning do the conceptions possess, and the more exposed they are to error. The widest possible range of application is the means of the deepest verification. As long as the specialist hugs his own results they are vague in meaning and unsafe in content. That individuals in every branch of human endeavor should be experimentalists engaged in testing the findings of the theorist is the sole final guaranty for the sanity of the theorist.

Notes

1. Scientific Method ill Philosophy, p.57.2. The analytic realists have shown a peculiar disinclination to discuss the nature of

future consequences as terms of propositions. They certainly are not identical with the mental act of referring to them; they are "objective" to it. Do they, therefore, already subsist in some realm of subsistence ? Or is subsistence but a name for the fact of logical reference, leaving the determination of the meaning of "subsistence" dependent upon a determination of the meaning of "logical"? More generally, what is the position of analytic realism about the future ?

3. Supposing the question to be that of some molten state of the earth in past geologic ages. Taken as the complete subject-matter of a proposition —or science— the facts discovered cannot be regarded as causative of, or a mechanism of, the appearance of life. For by definition they form a closed system; to introduce reference to a future event is to deny the definition. Contrariwise, a statement of that past condition of the earth as a mechanical condition of the later emergence of life means that that past stage is taken not merely as past, but as in process of transition to its future, as in process of alteration in the direction of life. Change in this direction is an integral part of a statement of the early stage of the earth's history. A purely geologic statement may be quite accurate in its own universe of discourse and yet quite incomplete and hence inaccurate in another universe of discourse. That is to say, a geologist's propositions may accurately set forth a prior state of things, while

ignoring any reference to a later state entailed by them. But a would-be philosophy may not ignore the implied future.

4. Philosophical Essays, pp. 104, 105.5. Sixth Meditation.6. Principles of Philosophy, p. 90.7. Treatise of Human Nature, Part III, sec. iii.8. It is perhaps poor tactics on my part to complicate this matter with anything else.

But it is evident that "passions" and pains and pleasures may be used as evidences of something beyond themselves (as may the fact of being more than five feet high) and so get a representative or cognitive status. Is there not also a prima facie presumption that all sensory qualities are of themselves bare existences or occurrences without cognitive pretension, and that they acquire the latter status as signs or evidence of something else' Epistemological idealists or realists who admit the non-cognitive character of pleasure and pain would seem to be under special obligations carefully to consider the thesis of the non-cognitive nature of all sensory qualities except as they are employed as indications or indexes of some other thing. This recognition frees logic from the epistemological discussion of secondary qualities.

9. To readers who have grasped the thought of my argument, it may not be meaningless to say that the typical idealistic fallacy is to import into the direct experience the results of the intellectual or reflective examination, while that of realism is to treat the reflective operation as dealing with precisely the same subject-matter as the original act was concerned with-taking the good of "reason" and the good of immediate behavior to be the same sort of things. And both fallacies will result from any assimilation of two different acts to one another through giving them both the title "knowledge," and hence treating the difference between them as simply the difference between a direct apprehension and a mediated one.

10. Analytic realism ought to be favorable to such a hedonism; the fact that present-day analytic realists are not favorable would seem to indicate that they have not taken their logic seriously enough, but have been restrained, by practical motives, from applying it thoroughly. To say that the moral life presents a high degree of organization and integration is to say something which is true, but is also to say something which by the analytic logic calls for its resolution into ultimate and independent simples. Unless they accept the pleasures and pains of Bentham as such ultimates, they are bound to present acceptable substitutes. But here they tend to shift their logic and to make the fulfilment of some organisation (variously defined) the standard good. Consistency would then admit the hypothesis that in all cases an eventual organization rather than antecedent simples supply the standard of knowledge. Meanwhile the term "fulfilment" (or any similar term) stands as an acknowledgment that the organization in question is not something ontologically prior but is one yet to he achieved.

11. It must not be overlooked that a mere reminder of an end previously settled upon may operate as a sufficient stimulus to action. It is probably this act of calling the end to mind which the realist confuses with knowledge, and therefore terms apprehension. But there is nothing cognitive about it, any more than there is in pressing a button to give the signal for an act already decided upon.

12. Upholders of this view generally disguise the assumption of repetition by the notion that what is judged is progress in the direction of approximation to an

eternal value. But as matter of fact, progress is never judged (as I have had repeated occasion to point out) by reference to a transcendent eternal value, but in reference to the success of the end-in-view in meeting the needs and conditions of the specific situation-a surrender of the doctrine in favor of the one set forth in the text. Logically, the notion of progress as approximation has no place. The thesis should read that we always try to repeat a given value, but always fail as a matter of fact. And constant failure is a queer name for progress.

13. See IX and X ante.14. I use the term "image" in the sense of optics, not of psychology.15. That something of the cognitive, something of the sign or term function, enters

in as a catalyzer, so to speak, in even the most aesthetic experiences, seems to be altogether probable, but that question it is not necessary to rare litre.

16. The superstition that whatever influences the action of a conscious being must be an unconscious sensation or perception, if it is not a conscious one, should be summarily dismissed. We are active beings from the start and are naturally, wholly apart from consciousness, engaged in redirecting our action in response to changes in our surroundings. Alternative possibilities, and hence an indeterminate situation, change direct response into a response mediated by a perception as a sign of possibilities, that is, a physiological stimulus into a perceived quality: a sensory datum.

17. Compare Woodbridge, Journal of Philosophy and Psychology, X, 5.18. See Russell, Scientific Method in Philosophy, p. 53.19. Ibid., p. 101.20. See the essay on The Existence of the World as a Logical Problem.