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A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE


Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in
Philosophy


BY WILLIAM JAMES




1909




CONTENTS


LECTURE I

THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING 1

  Our age is growing philosophical again, 3. Change of tone since 1860, 4.
  Empiricism and Rationalism defined, 7. The process of Philosophizing:
  Philosophers choose some part of the world to interpret the whole by, 8.
  They seek to make it seem less strange, 11. Their temperamental
  differences, 12. Their systems must be reasoned out, 13. Their tendency
  to over-technicality, 15. Excess of this in Germany, 17. The type of
  vision is the important thing in a philosopher, 20. Primitive thought,
  21. Spiritualism and Materialism: Spiritualism shows two types, 23.
  Theism and Pantheism, 24. Theism makes a duality of Man and God, and
  leaves Man an outsider, 25. Pantheism identifies Man with God, 29. The
  contemporary tendency is towards Pantheism, 30. Legitimacy of our demand
  to be essential in the Universe, 33. Pluralism versus Monism: The 'each-
  form' and the 'all-form' of representing the world, 34. Professor Jacks
  quoted, 35. Absolute Idealism characterized, 36. Peculiarities of the
  finite consciousness which the Absolute cannot share, 38. The finite
  still remains outside of absolute reality, 40.


LECTURE II

MONISTIC IDEALISM 41

  Recapitulation, 43. Radical Pluralism is to be the thesis of these
  lectures, 44. Most philosophers contemn it, 45. Foreignness to us of
  Bradley's Absolute, 46. Spinoza and 'quatenus,'47. Difficulty of
  sympathizing with the Absolute, 48. Idealistic attempt to interpret it,
  50. Professor Jones quoted, 52. Absolutist refutations of Pluralism, 54.
  Criticism of Lotze's proof of Monism by the analysis of what interaction
  involves, 55. Vicious intellectualism defined, 60. Royce's alternative:
  either the complete disunion or the absolute union of things, 61.
  Bradley's dialectic difficulties with relations, 69. Inefficiency of the
  Absolute as a rationalizing remedy, 71. Tendency of Rationalists to fly
  to extremes, 74. The question of 'external' relations, 79. Transition to
  Hegel, 91.


LECTURE III

HEGEL AND HIS METHOD 83

  Hegel's influence. 85. The type of his vision is impressionistic, 87.
  The 'dialectic' element in reality, 88. Pluralism involves possible
  conflicts among things, 90. Hegel explains conflicts by the mutual
  contradictoriness of concepts, 91. Criticism of his attempt to transcend
  ordinary logic, 92. Examples of the 'dialectic' constitution of things,
  95. The rationalistic ideal: propositions self-securing by means of
  double negation, 101. Sublimity of the conception, 104. Criticism of
  Hegel's account: it involves vicious intellectualism, 105. Hegel is a
  seer rather than a reasoner, 107. 'The Absolute' and 'God' are two
  different notions, 110. Utility of the Absolute in conferring mental
  peace, 114. But this is counterbalanced by the peculiar paradoxes which
  it introduces into philosophy, 116. Leibnitz and Lotze on the 'fall'
  involved in the creation of the finite, 119. Joachim on the fall of
  truth into error, 121. The world of the absolutist cannot be perfect,
  123. Pluralistic conclusions, 125.


LECTURE IV

CONCERNING FECHNER 131

  Superhuman consciousness does not necessarily imply an absolute
  mind, 134. Thinness of contemporary absolutism, 135. The
  tone of Fechner's empiricist pantheism contrasted with that of the
  rationalistic sort, 144. Fechner's life, 145. His vision, the 'daylight
  view,' 150. His way of reasoning by analogy, 151. The whole universe
  animated, 152. His monistic formula is unessential, 153. The
  Earth-Soul, 156. Its differences from our souls, 160. The earth as
  an angel, 164. The Plant-Soul, 165. The logic used by Fechner,
  168. His theory of immortality, 170. The 'thickness' of his imagination,
  173. Inferiority of the ordinary transcendentalist pantheism,
  to his vision, 174.


LECTURE V

THE COMPOUNDING OF CONSCIOUSNESS 179
  The assumption that states of mind may compound themselves, 181. This
  assumption is held in common by naturalistic psychology, by
  transcendental idealism, and by Fechner, 184. Criticism of it by the
  present writer in a former book, 188. Physical combinations, so-called,
  cannot be invoked as analogous, 194. Nevertheless, combination must be
  postulated among the parts of the Universe, 197. The logical objections
  to admitting it, 198. Rationalistic treatment of the question brings us
  to an _impasse_, 208. A radical breach with intellectualism is required,
  212. Transition to Bergson's philosophy, 214. Abusive use of concepts,
  219.


LECTURE VI

BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 223

  Professor Bergson's personality, 225. Achilles and the tortoise, 228.
  Not a sophism, 229. We make motion unintelligible when we treat it by
  static concepts, 233. Conceptual treatment is nevertheless of immense
  practical use, 235. The traditional rationalism gives an essentially
  static universe, 237. Intolerableness of the intellectualist view, 240.
  No rationalist account is possible of action, change, or immediate life,
  244. The function of concepts is practical rather than theoretical, 247.
  Bergson remands us to intuition or sensational experience for the
  understanding of how life makes itself go, 252. What Bergson means by
  this, 255. Manyness in oneness must be admitted, 256. What really exists
  is not things made, but things in the making, 263. Bergson's
  originality, 264. Impotence of intellectualist logic to define a
  universe where change is continuous, 267. Livingly, things _are_ their
  own others, so that there is a sense in which Hegel's logic is true,
  270.


LECTURE VII

THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE 275

  Green's critique of Sensationalism, 278. Relations are as immediately
  felt as terms are, 280. The union of things is given in the immediate
  flux, not in any conceptual reason that overcomes the flux's aboriginal
  incoherence, 282. The minima of experience as vehicles of continuity,
  284. Fallacy of the objections to self-compounding, 286. The concrete
  units of experience are 'their own others,' 287. Reality is confluent
  from next to next, 290. Intellectualism must be sincerely renounced,
  291. The Absolute is only an hypothesis, 292. Fechner's God is not the
  Absolute, 298. The Absolute solves no intellectualist difficulty, 296.
  Does superhuman consciousness probably exist? 298.


LECTURE VIII

CONCLUSIONS 301

  Specifically religious experiences occur, 303. Their nature, 304.
  They corroborate the notion of a larger life of which we are a part,
  308. This life must be finite if we are to escape the paradoxes of
  monism, 310. God as a finite being, 311. Empiricism is a better
  ally than rationalism, of religion, 313. Empirical proofs of larger
  mind may open the door to superstitions, 315. But this objection
  should not be deemed fatal, 316. Our beliefs form parts of reality,
  317. In pluralistic empiricism our relation to God remains least
  foreign, 318. The word 'rationality' had better be replaced by the
  word 'intimacy,' 319. Monism and pluralism distinguished and
  defined, 321. Pluralism involves indeterminism, 324. All men use
  the 'faith-ladder' in reaching their decision, 328. Conclusion, 330.


NOTES 333


APPENDICES

  A. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS 847

  B. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 870

  C. ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING 895


INDEX 401




LECTURE I


THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING

As these lectures are meant to be public, and so few, I have assumed
all very special problems to be excluded, and some topic of general
interest required. Fortunately, our age seems to be growing
philosophical again--still in the ashes live the wonted fires. Oxford,
long the seed-bed, for the english world, of the idealism inspired by
Kant and Hegel, has recently become the nursery of a very different
way of thinking. Even non-philosophers have begun to take an interest
in a controversy over what is known as pluralism or humanism. It
looks a little as if the ancient english empirism, so long put out of
fashion here by nobler sounding germanic formulas, might be repluming
itself and getting ready for a stronger flight than ever. It looks as
if foundations were being sounded and examined afresh.

Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying
every one we meet under some general head. As these heads usually
suggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or other, the life
of philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and
complaints of being misunderstood. But there are signs of clearing up,
and, on the whole, less acrimony in discussion, for which both Oxford
and Harvard are partly to be thanked. As I look back into the sixties,
Mill, Bain, and Hamilton were the only official philosophers in
Britain. Spencer, Martineau, and Hodgson were just beginning. In
France, the pupils of Cousin were delving into history only, and
Renouvier alone had an original system. In Germany, the hegelian
impetus had spent itself, and, apart from historical scholarship,
nothing but the materialistic controversy remained, with such men as
Buechner and Ulrici as its champions. Lotze and Fechner were the sole
original thinkers, and Fechner was not a professional philosopher at
all.

The general impression made was of crude issues and oppositions, of
small subtlety and of a widely spread ignorance. Amateurishness was
rampant. Samuel Bailey's 'letters on the philosophy of the human
mind,' published in 1855, are one of the ablest expressions of english
associationism, and a book of real power. Yet hear how he writes of
Kant: 'No one, after reading the extracts, etc., can be surprised to
hear of a declaration by men of eminent abilities, that, after years
of study, they had not succeeded in gathering one clear idea from the
speculations of Kant. I should have been almost surprised if they had.
In or about 1818, Lord Grenville, when visiting the Lakes of England,
observed to Professor Wilson that, after five years' study of Kant's
philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce,
about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of
my own. "I am endeavoring," exclaims Sir James Mackintosh, in the
irritation, evidently, of baffled efforts, "to understand this
accursed german philosophy."[1]

What Oxford thinker would dare to print such _naif_ and
provincial-sounding citations of authority to-day?

The torch of learning passes from land to land as the spirit bloweth
the flame. The deepening of philosophic consciousness came to us
english folk from Germany, as it will probably pass back ere long.
Ferrier, J.H. Stirling, and, most of all, T.H. Green are to be
thanked. If asked to tell in broad strokes what the main doctrinal
change has been, I should call it a change from the crudity of the
older english thinking, its ultra-simplicity of mind, both when it was
religious and when it was anti-religious, toward a rationalism
derived in the first instance from Germany, but relieved from german
technicality and shrillness, and content to suggest, and to remain
vague, and to be, in, the english fashion, devout.

By the time T.H. Green began at Oxford, the generation seemed to
feel as if it had fed on the chopped straw of psychology and of
associationism long enough, and as if a little vastness, even though
it went with vagueness, as of some moist wind from far away, reminding
us of our pre-natal sublimity, would be welcome.

Green's great point of attack was the disconnectedness of the reigning
english sensationalism. _Relating_ was the great intellectual activity
for him, and the key to this relating was believed by him to
lodge itself at last in what most of you know as Kant's unity of
apperception, transformed into a living spirit of the world.

Hence a monism of a devout kind. In some way we must be fallen angels,
one with intelligence as such; and a great disdain for empiricism
of the sensationalist sort has always characterized this school of
thought, which, on the whole, has reigned supreme at Oxford and in the
Scottish universities until the present day.

But now there are signs of its giving way to a wave of revised
empiricism. I confess that I should be glad to see this latest wave
prevail; so--the sooner I am frank about it the better--I hope to
have my voice counted in its favor as one of the results of this
lecture-course.

What do the terms empiricism and rationalism mean? Reduced to their
most pregnant difference, _empiricism means the habit of explaining
wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts
by wholes_. Rationalism thus preserves affinities with monism, since
wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic
views. No philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a
picture of the world in abridgment, a foreshortened bird's-eye view of
the perspective of events. And the first thing to notice is this, that
the only material we have at our disposal for making a picture of the
whole world is supplied by the various portions of that world of
which we have already had experience. We can invent no new forms of
conception, applicable to the whole exclusively, and not suggested
originally by the parts. All philosophers, accordingly, have conceived
of the whole world after the analogy of some particular feature of it
which has particularly captivated their attention. Thus, the theists
take their cue from manufacture, the pantheists from growth. For one
man, the world is like a thought or a grammatical sentence in which a
thought is expressed. For such a philosopher, the whole must logically
be prior to the parts; for letters would never have been invented
without syllables to spell, or syllables without words to utter.

Another man, struck by the disconnectedness and mutual accidentality
of so many of the world's details, takes the universe as a whole to
have been such a disconnectedness originally, and supposes order to
have been superinduced upon it in the second instance, possibly
by attrition and the gradual wearing away by internal friction of
portions that originally interfered.

Another will conceive the order as only a statistical appearance, and
the universe will be for him like a vast grab-bag with black and white
balls in it, of which we guess the quantities only probably, by the
frequency with which we experience their egress.

For another, again, there is no really inherent order, but it is we
who project order into the world by selecting objects and tracing
relations so as to gratify our intellectual interests. We _carve out_
order by leaving the disorderly parts out; and the world is conceived
thus after the analogy of a forest or a block of marble from which
parks or statues may be produced by eliminating irrelevant trees or
chips of stone.

Some thinkers follow suggestions from human life, and treat the
universe as if it were essentially a place in which ideals are
realized. Others are more struck by its lower features, and for them,
brute necessities express its character better.

All follow one analogy or another; and all the analogies are with some
one or other of the universe's subdivisions. Every one is nevertheless
prone to claim that his conclusions are the only logical ones, that
they are necessities of universal reason, they being all the while, at
bottom, accidents more or less of personal vision which had far better
be avowed as such; for one man's vision may be much more valuable than
another's, and our visions are usually not only our most interesting
but our most respectable contributions to the world in which we play
our part. What was reason given to men for, said some eighteenth
century writer, except to enable them to find reasons for what they
want to think and do?--and I think the history of philosophy largely
bears him out, 'The aim of knowledge,' says Hegel,[2] 'is to divest
the objective world of its strangeness, and to make us more at home
in it.' Different men find their minds more at home in very different
fragments of the world.

Let me make a few comments, here, on the curious antipathies which
these partialities arouse. They are sovereignly unjust, for all the
parties are human