Classics in the
History of Psychology
An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green
ISSN
1492-3173
(Return to Classics index)
James Gibson Hume (1922)
First
published in Philosophical Essays
Presented to John Watson (pp. 298-330).
Posted October 2001
Spencer in his Data of Ethics treated his subject from
several successive standpoints entitled, The Physical, The Biological, The
Psychological, the Sociological. He
also attempted to co-ordinate all these various stages into what he termed a
Synthetic Philosophy. This would give a
fifth standpoint, the Philosophical. These five terms might be used to describe
several different types of evolutionary theory. Let us note how these arose,
that is, let us trace the evolution of evolutionary theory.
Physical Evolution. Early
Greek speculation was dominated by this standpoint which found its culmination
in the Atomists. Among these Empedocles
is noteworthy. He is quoted in the
article 'Evolution' in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica by J. Sully and T. H. Huxley.
After a general
Cosmology dealing with the formation of the Cosmos from the four original
elements, fire, air, earth, water, by love and discord (attraction and
repulsion) he proceeds to treat of the first origin of plants and of animals
including man. As the original elements entered into various combinations there
arose curious aggregates, heads without [p. 299] necks, arms without shoulders.
These got strangely combined. Men's heads on oxen's shoulders, heads of .oxen
on men's bodies, etc. Most of these combinations could not survive and so
disappeared. Only in the rare cases where the several parts that contingently
came together were adapted to one another did they survive.
As man, lower
animal, and plant, are all composed of the same elements in different
proportions, there is an identity of nature in them all. They all have sense
and understanding.
It is quite easy to
trace here the early outlines of our modern theory of evolution. Already we have the assertion of the identity
of nature in man, lower animal and plant, the participation pf all in sense and
understanding -- the survival of those suitably 'adapted.'
It was the attempt
to level down a theory of knowledge to this account that guided or misguided
the Sophists and awakened the critical or sarcastic comments of the great
Socrates.
What is suggested in
Socrates as a substitute for the Sophistic naturalism is built upon and
extended in Plato and Aristotle. In
Aristotle we have a comprehensive 'synthesis' that might be termed
philosophical, and as it was opposed to the naturalism it might be termed
philosophical development rather than philosophical evolution.
It is obvious that
there is a direct antagonism between the evolution of the naturalistic and
sophistical writers and the development in Aristotle's idealistic
constructions, and this antagonism between these two types can be traced
through all succeeding speculation and it persists to-day. Unfortunately many people uncritically
confuse evolution and development or
imagine that if development is conceded or [p. 300] affirmed 'evolution' is
admitted or affirmed. Furthermore as in
Aristotle, so now, the opposition between these is not equally balanced. For Aristotelian development is wide enough
to include evolution in nature within it as a part of the whole system, but
evolutionary naturalism must exclude idealistic development or else level it
down to naturalism. Development is tolerant, evolution is intolerant.
After the Atomists
the interest shifts from the physical cosmos to the moral and religious puzzles
for which Aristotelianism was more suited.
And throughout the middle ages the chief interest is in the moral and
religious situation. Christianity utilizes Creek idealism in combating
naturalism and eventually so divided matters that a moral dualism arose, nature
seeming to fall under the domain of the Prince of Darkness, as in the legend of
Faust.
Perhaps some of the
popular prejudice against physical science, as also some of the enthusiasm for
it, may in Christian countries have some root in the survival of the party
spirit engendered in this old mediaeval dualism.
But with the rise of
humanism and the new learning there is not only a revival of Greek literature
but also a return at least to some extent of the Greek spirit of impartial
inquiry and innocent wonder, and this allowed an opportunity for the rise of
science· Now though Science and 'Naturalism' are not identical, the student who
concentrates on physical science is more apt to be impressed by the theory of
naturalism, and we soon find a recrudescence of the naturalistic theory side by
side with the early scientific discoveries.
Very notable was the
discovery of the circulation of the blood by the Englishman, William Harvey in
1628. Although in 1651
Life itself was to
be mechanically stated, mechanically explained; that is, we now have 'physical
evolution' theory in the ascendant among the scientists. Descartes under the
sway of this view eagerly dissects animals and after an ingenious mechanical
account of the origin or conformation of the Cosmos from its original matter
and motion, audaciously suggests that life in the animal is merely heat and
expansion causing the blood to circulate, and that this heat arises naturally
as in the fermentation of wet hay. Descartes, however, calls a halt when he
comes to what he calls the 'reasonable soul' in man. Here he turns to Dualism to save the
situation, and he believes that the only way to get the soul, or to secure its
immortality after he does get it, is to insist on an absolute separation
between matter and spirit. This is doubtless the real source of his 'dualism',
though he later claimed to derive it from 'clear and distinct' thought.
Descartes' dualism grew out of a mechanical starting-point and a mechanistic
method -- it became a great puzzle.
Thomas Hobbes,
however, has an easy way out of the difficulty.
The soul is a body that thinks (occasionally) is all he could see in
Descartes' 'Cogito ergo sum.' At bottom, in last analysis, everything is Motion.
Hence when the so-called object 'worketh on the eyes, ears and other
organs of a man's body and by diversity of working produceth diversity of
appearance', this 'appearance' in consciousness is and must be motion, for
'motion produceth nothing but motion.'
The original 'inner motion' is sensation, the parent of all the progeny
that later appears. Imagination is
'decayed sense' [p. 302] or retarded motion, memory is decayed sense or inner
motion almost stopped. Reason consists in trains of imagination or combinations
of inner motions. Volition is an inner
motion reappearing as an outer motion. Aristotle's celebrated deliberation is
merely a conflict of inner motions.
But even Hobbes, in
the onward march of his consistent and relentless materialism has intervals of
repentance, or shall we call them deeper insights where he can assert that
truth is not an attribute of things but of speech, and so though 'nature cannot
err' man does run into error. Also,
though nature cannot err, yet 'passions unguided are mere madness', and life
under mere nature or natural passions is one in which the life of man becomes
'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short', and so Hobbes sets out to find 'laws
of nature' or of reason, to take control of 'rights of nature.'
The French
Materialists, borrowing what suited them from Hobbes and from some portions of
John Locke where he speaks of the mind 'for the most part passive', and still
more relying on those parts of Descartes in which animals were treated as
machine-like automata, took the bold step of declaring that man too was merely
a machine-like automaton, without any so-called 'reasonable soul' being
required. This is most clearly expressed in La Mettrie's 'L'homme Machine.'
The confidence in
this plan of explanation became arrogance in the French Encyclopędists, who
could scarcely believe a man could be a scientist unless he were also a
pronounced materialist. This probably
marks the culmination of confidence in 'physical evolution' as a materialistic
theory. For Bishop Berkeley began to ask
a few questions about the meaning of 'matter.' -- What does 'matter' mean? How
do we know it? Do we know it at all? The Materialists found it exasperatingly
difficult to answer these simple and seemingly [p. 303] quite reasonable
questions. Could it be that they, the
leaders of enlightenment, were dealing in mysteries more occult and inscrutable
than those taught by the theologians and mystics?
Even those who found
it most convenient to answer Berkeley by kicking stones or by grinning felt in
their hearts that Berkeley's destructive criticism of 'matter' could not be
grinned away, let them grin never so wisely.
It thus soon came about that we find a remarkable, a sudden, a startling
right about face on the part of the materialists. They cannot prove a 'materialistic' substance,
but they can sarcastically refer to the impossibility of knowing an 'immaterialistic
substance.'[2]
The older, cruder
materialistic doctrine, now gives place to a milder doctrine; it becomes
transmuted into a 'Psychological Naturalism' following the lead of David Hume's psychological 'gentle force that
commonly prevails' elaborated by Hartley, Priestley, the Mills, Spencer, Bain,
into the Association theory, the bulwark of the new naturalism, or what we
shall call 'Psychological Evolution.' David Hume with the fear of
Causation by the
method of Procrustes until it fits the dimensions his 'customary conjunction.'
J. S. Mill continues the amputations, and Logic and Mathematics are also
suitably diminished. It soon becomes
admitted by the psychological naturalistic evolutionists that they by their
method are precluded from knowing reality as substantiality or truth as
causality or mathematical certainty. Now if they would not, like the dog in the
manger, try to prevent other methods being tried, surely no one could find
fault with them for confessing their own lack of power.
While naturalistic
'psychological Evolutionism' was thus running into agnosticism and failure,
Leibniz was trying to construct a very ambitious philosophical system,
admittedly borrowing from Aristotle, but believing that he had reconciled
materialism and idealism in his 'Monadology.'
There are many
brilliant things in Leibniz, but instead of really discovering a new
constructive method, he merely hitches up together in a double team empiricism
and rationalism -- and only God is able to drive this team.
It is Kant who sees
the situation clearly -- David Hume's Empiricism ending in scepticism --
Leibniz's system an external compromise.
Kant gives credit to David Hume for 'waking him from a dogmatic
slumber'. He was, however, not a heavy sleeper.
David Hume points out how impossible it is to derive Causation by mere
deductive analysis, but he tries something quite as unsatisfactory when he
tries to reduce Causation to 'customary Conjunction'. It is both interesting
and somewhat saddening to find how very near indeed the brilliant Scotchman
came to stating the problem of Causation as Kant later stated it. David Hume in his 'Treatise', Part III, Sec.
3, says 'since it is not from knowledge or any scientific reasoning that we
derive the opinion of the necessity of a cause to every new [p. 305]
production, that opinion must necessarily arise from observation and
experience. The next question, then, should naturally be How experience gives rise to such a principle.'
This question if
followed up might have led to Kant's discovery of 'Causality' as a 'condition
of the possibility of experience', but unfortunately David Hume does not follow
it up. The next sentence is a disappointing abandonment of the problem and the
substitution of something quite different and much simpler, viz., how we as a
matter of fact pass from a particular cause to a particular effect in our
ordinary experience and how we are led to an expectation of something
similar. And putting the cart before the
horse he concludes that because an expectation arises from the rule being found
to obtain, the rule is derived from the expectation.
Kant, however, keeps
at the central problem which had been abandoned by David Hume. He reconsiders Experience more carefully and
critically to try to discover the place, function and significance of causality
within experience. Let me quote from Morris in his Introduction
to Kant:
'This is one of the
oddities of the history of speculation, namely, that philosophic materialism
with its mechanico-sensible theory of knowledge
(what I have termed psychological evolution in David Hume and his:
successors) being always suicidal, not able to defend itself, turning all its
ontological science into nescience and changing the real material universe it
set out to magnify and defend into a spectre, has at last to· turn for
protection or for its relative justification to another doctrine, apparently
the precise opposite of itself. It is
spiritualistic idealism alone which finding in knowledge something more than
mechanical sense, rescues the material universe for us as a sense of objective
though dependent reality.' [p. 306]
Though Kant believes
that he has proved the validity truth and reality of 'substance' and
'causality', he also believes that these are true within experience and are not the whole truth about experience.
Substantiality and Causality are true within what Kant calls the
phenomenal, that is the experienced world.
They have no 'absolute' reality apart from such world.
We now turn from
physical and psychological naturalistic evolution to the rise of the question
of evolution or development -- one or the other within the realm of sociology
and biology, and· here we find the idealistic development theory first
attempted in Sociology, then the evolutionary (naturalistic) theory being
introduced into Biology, and then the whole situation, viz., whether in a total
synthesis or philosophical interpretation we shall follow naturalistic
evolution or idealistic development, being keenly debated.
Leibniz by his
theory of higher and lower grades of monads had a kind of premonition of later
evolutionary methodology; but Kant, as we have seen, distrusted Leibniz's
method. While Kant succeeded in substituting a synthetic constructive theory of
the principles of physical science, he stops short at efficient Causality. It is only after he has written his Critique of Practical Reason and
returned to the Critique of Judgement,
that the question of design or purpose within nature becomes an issue.
So though Kuno
Fischer finds much 'development' in Kant, I confess that I do not discover it
so widely. Nevertheless, Kant's
treatment of the teleological judgement and definition of organism is a
valuable contribution towards a re-instatement of something like
Aristotelianism and does not rely on Deism and dualism as some of Kant's
positions elsewhere do. And of course one must admit that in spite of the
extreme [p. 307] individualism in the formulation of Kant's ethics,
nevertheless he adds to his great maxim to 'treat personality in your own
person and in the person of others as an end, never as a means', the further
organic or social command that we should seek a 'kingdom of ends', and this
obviously would involve persons being means as well as ends in mutually
assisting one another within the 'kingdom'.
But it is not Kant,
but his disciple Hegel who consciously sets to work to extend the organic or
social implications in morality and in society as moral. Hegel quite
consciously and explicitly carries over the Aristotelian conception of
development into the domain of sociology. Continuity and progress is asserted
as being found even through the discordant variations and successive
controversies in History of Philosophy, and in Philosophy of History a great
providential purpose is traced or at least attempted in his well-known summary
of the significance of the various epochs of civilization.
Hegel published his Phenomenologie in 1807 and outlined this
method of treatment. Fifty-one years
later appeared
Herbert Spencer some
time later applied the method of 'naturalistic evolution' to the problem of
sociology, and had made considerable headway along this line in this field,
when [p. 308] everyone was startled by the irruption of this evolutionary
explanation within the field of biology by Darwin and Wallace in 1858. That is, if we may now be permitted a
retrospect, the method and theory of evolution was not first proposed by
Indeed the
controversy between naturalistic evolution and idealistic development had
occurred and persistently recurred, and just when the idealists had
congratulated themselves on their extension of development into philosophy,
history and sociology, the naturalistic evolutionists went them one better by
having a naturalistic evolutionary system simply presented, ably applied in
biology by a master workman, an outstanding man in science. Darwin himself was
an extremely cautious writer. He had no ambition to write and all-comprehensive
theory of evolution like Herbert Spencer. One thing he knew and knew thoroughly
-- biology, and one thing and one only he attempted, namely, to give an account
of biology along these lines.
Spencer is the man
who most widely exploited and applied the general principle in all directions,
and though as attempting to co-ordinate all sciences into one great synthesis,
he may, according to his own definition of philosophy, be marked as a
philosophical organizer, he was scarcely to be ranked as a critical
philosopher, and it soon appears that a kind of 'psychological evolution' is
his fundamental solvent of all difficulties.
It can scarcely
escape a careful reader that of all the grades and stages and transitions with
which he busies himself Spencer's chief attention is focussed on the problem or
difficulty of bridging over the seeming gap or chasm between the lower animals
and the human animal. And the chief effort to bridge this gap is directed
towards the attempt to secure a continuous unbroken psychological account that
would begin [p. 310] with lower animals and by slight and imperceptible
gradations pass over to and end in human psychological experiences. Now
Spencer's work was made very much easier for him by the fact that before he
began to level up sub-human experience in lower animals his predecessors from
Hobbes through David Hume had spent a tremendous amount of ingenuity in
levelling the human experience downwards towards the lower animals.
David Hume had
claimed it as a special merit for some of his psychological principles that
they could be equally well applied to lower animals and to man. Indeed when
Without following
the details of the well-known controversies that raged so fiercely for a time,
let us simply call attention to the inherent inadequacy and fallacy involved in
'psychological evolution' as a naturalistic doctrine.
In so far as this is
restricted to descriptive treatment of various aspects in human or sub-human experience,
it is not only not reprehensible, but most helpful both for science and
philosophy; but when psychological descriptions of lower I animals are foisted
upon human beings as an adequate statement of human experience, that is neither
science nor philosophy. Human experience must be directly examined, not fitted
into moulds borrowed from studying lower animals. And psychological
descriptions of lower animals or higher animals or men as description is one
thing, as a philosophy it is another· It
is, as philosophy, an interpretation or theory and must there stand the tests
applicable to all theories or interpretations. Descriptions can take limited
areas and stop there, but philosophy must always link up part with part into a
coherent view. [p. 311]
The usual
supposition that prevailed for a while that because lower animals are less
complex and have a simpler experience, they should be more easily studied and
the study of them should precede human psychology soon had to admit that
however complex and difficult human experience may be it is more directly
accessible to human investigators. In the field of interpretation or
explanation the earlier evolutionists, including Spencer (though there were
keen controversialists and debaters among them such as Huxley, were, however,
very trustful about the adequacy of several principles assumed from Darwin, and
only after the polemical dust cloud cleared away were they ready to reconsider
their own principles critically. One fallacy they fell easily into was to use
the term evolution quite ambiguously. The difference between naturalistic
evolution and idealistic development was a refinement too subtle for most of
them. Hence wherever development was conceded, it was supposed that
naturalistic evolution must be conceded.
Professor Watson in his book, Comte,
Mill and Spencer,[1] has directed much pertinent
criticism against the misuse of the term 'design' by the evolutionists. He specially charges them with making
ostensibly a direct attack on all use of the conception of Design. It turned out that they were really attacking
the Deistic external design such as was advocated by Paley; but later
theological writers (who were theistic, not deistic) had an indwelling design,
and the evolutionists, though they thought they had discarded design
altogether, were soon found themselves advocating an immanent design.
It by no means
follows that the inner design held by theists is identical with the immanent
design taught by the evolutionists, but the evolutionists were fighting a past
system when [p. 312] fighting Paley --
they were not meeting up-to-date theological views at all.
When one comes to
think of it, it is somewhat amusing when we remember that the extraneous
Deistic view of design that the evolutionists attacked, and so gleefully
discarded, was in reality objectionable just because it was so
naturalistically, even mechanically conceived. It had been borrowed by Paley
from current science and utilized in his theological construction. Now the new
immanent design to which evolutionists were committing themselves was
measurably nearer to the philosophical view of design as it had been long
before expounded even in Aristotle. In popular or semi-popular misconceptions
about what 'evolution' is and means, we still
find a continuation of the original confusion. That this confusion needs
clearing up is obvious. But we must diagnose before we can prescribe. Let us
try to bring out the confusion or contradiction that is quite widespread in
talking about 'evolution'. Let us like
Natural Law? We must exclude many meanings often given to law when we use the term
natural. We do not mean civil law, for
instance, nor what was meant during the middle ages when 'natural law' or 'law
of nature' meant a Stoic principle of reason inherent in nature. We mean a law
of nature as nature is now understood, but how is it now understood? Nature is
understood as the objective realm from which volition or the artificial is
excluded. In this field everything is
supposed to occur with a species of necessity or compulsion and this is usually
called Causation. When the [p. 313] causes or sum of conditions are given the
effect, must follow. Furthermore, it is still usually supposed that in this
effect there is nothing beyond what is included in the sum of conditions; that
is, there can be nothing additional in the effect. That would be quite
miraculous and quite unaccountable or quite impossible.
Of Evolution. But now turn to the usual
conception attached to 'of evolution' and quite a new attitude of mind is found
asserting itself. Now we are asked to think of a process extending over a
longer or a shorter time -- if any difficulty arises in the shorter time, it is
usually supposed that this will all disappear if we lengthen the time. So on the whole it is safer to speak always
of long times rather than short ones if you are to avoid awkward questions. At
the end of this period of time something is supposed to emerge which instead of
being equated with what we started from at the beginning is triumphantly
declared to be far in advance, far beyond, quite superior to what was at the
start. Sully and Huxley in the article Evolution to which I have previously
referred make this quite explicit.
Not only is an
advance asserted by 'evolution' but this advance is an improvement, an
increased value. 'At the same time, inasmuch as conscious and more particularly
human life is looked on by the evolutionist as the highest phase of all
development, and, since man's development is said to be an increase in
well-being and happiness, we do not greatly err when we speak of evolution as a
transition from the lower to the higher, from the worse to the better.'
'Evolution is thus almost synonymous with progress,
though the latter term is usually confined to processes of development in the
moral as distinguished from the physical world.' [p. 314]
Now if we put
together our results we find Natural Law -- of Evolution -- breaking into two
quite discordant parts. In so far as we stress 'natural law' we think of
physical nature and assume that the end will be on the same level as the
beginning. But when we say 'of evolution' we slip away from the 'physical
world' and its equivalence in cause and effect and' we run over into the moral
world of progress and take this in, ·and here we assert a 'progress' or
advance. But carrying over our view of necessity from the physical into the
moral we have a necessary progress.
Altogether it is a
great situation and most interesting. I am reminded of what used to be an old
debating subject among the Canadian Scottish pioneers: 'What would happen if an
irresistible force met an immovable object?'
In 'natural law' we have the immovable object, it cannot be budged
beyond what was originally given in its sum of conditions, but in the 'of
evolution' we have the irresistible force that must prevail in spite of all
obstructions and gives us 'progress'.
Now most
evolutionists alternate back and forward between the 'immovable object' and
'the irresistible force' in their views about naturalistic evolution. By the
way, if the Naturalism is stressed can evolution ever escape the 'immovable
object' standpoint' For instance, try to
conceive a fatalistically naturalistically compelled progress without volition
or choice, and yet evolutionary writers toy with this folly whenever they try
to write out a deterministic evolutionary ethics.
It is true that
Sully and Huxley, wandering over the whole field in their article, recognize as
one kind of 'evolution' the development theories. But though certain limitations and
difficulties are ·admitted as still confronting evolution, no hint [p. 315] is
given towards coming to terms with these two fundamentally opposed
philosophical interpretations.[3]
Kant, however, has
given some glimpses at this 'antinomy' -- and though Kant's solution is not
thorough-going, he provides for an irresistible force in his theory of duty and
freedom -- and it would seem that when the 'irresistible force' of duty meets
the 'immovable abject' of impulse, desire or nature ·in any of its forms, it
was the object that was alleged to be immovable that had to move--or in other
words, nature and natural law is a hypothetical imperative and as such
sub-ordinated to or instrumental to the 'categorical imperative' of the subject
or spirit as moral.
Instead of frankly
facing the dilemma in their contradictory conceptions of a 'natural law of
evolution' later 'naturalistic evolutionists' dodge the issue by deriding
philosophy. They are scientists and so
can slip in whatever aspect suits each case they are dealing with. But this is the ostrich plan of hiding the
head in the sand.
Let me now briefly
sum up wherein naturalistic evolution as a philosophical explanation or
complete world-view has failed all along the line.
1. Physical Evolution as Naturalism Fails.
Because instead of maintaining the reality of its basis, the physical universe,
it found itself in its account of knowledge on its [p. 316] own psychology
compelled to abandon the validity of both substantiality and causality and had
to fall back on the weak substitution of 'the unknowable' for substance and the
'customary conjunction' for Causation.
Idealistic
development in Kant has to rescue the validity of substantiality and of
causality and thus save the 'naturalistic' evolutionists from committing
suicide.
2. Biological Evolution as Naturalism Fails. It
runs into contradiction and failure in its treatment of design. It attacks design, but this turns out to be
an attack by biology on physics. It turns out that after it gets rid of
physical mechanical dualistic design it slips in without any acknowledgement,
an implicit, immanent design.
It is constructive
idealistic development which faces this issue and agreeing with the
naturalistic biological evolutionists that mechanical, physical design is
inadequate also shows that merely biological explanations of design also fall
short of the whole sweep of immanent design as it is found not merely in
biology but also in psychology and sociology.
3. Psychological Evolution as Naturalism Fails.
It lends itself to explaining away logic and mathematics without which science
ceases to be science. If everything is reduced to the level of merely
contingent sequences we have neither science nor coherent experience. The
mechanical bias, or atomistic tendency misled the psychological evolutionist
into reducing experience into atomistic experiences.
It is constructive
development which shows us that experience is not a mere aggregation of
experiences, and endeavours to trace the principles inherent in and valid for
experience; thus restoring psychology to its honourable place as a contribution
to the upbuilding of both science and philosophy instead [p. 317] of becoming a
mere negative dissolvent as it became in the hands of the naturalistic
psychological evolutionists.
4. Sociological Evolution as Naturalism Fails.
For in so far as the naturalism prevails we run back to the immovable and
static and so must deny human freedom and personal initiative. But there can be no human society with a
significant ethics in civil laws, or political organization, where all is
mechanically accounted for.
It is constructive
idealistic development which gives us a coherent statement of the principles
involved in significant ethics, political progress and the realization of
purposes, the significant 'designs' in human society.
Summing up,
Naturalistic theory as philosophy appearing in various shapes as 'physical
evolution, biological evolution, psychological evolution, and sociological
evolution['?], in every case runs into bankruptcy and failure, and in each case
the rescue is made by constructive idealistic development.
Let us now turn to
our second problem: the bearing of these two types of explanation or theory,
naturalistic evolution, or idealistic development on the problem of
personality.
II.
Personality.
According to the
view of naturalistic evolution we can very simply solve this problem. The
answer is easy -- there is no such thing as personality. If we accept naturalistic
evolution we must simply drive out personality as St. Patrick drove the snakes
out of
But here we need to
pause to distinguish very carefully between two tendencies both often called
'Idealistic' but totally unlike. We need
to distinguish carefully between, constructive organizing development idealism,
land deductive analytic rationalistic idealism.
The latter is
probably at bottom quite as intolerant of personality as naturalistic evolution
ever was, and so we must follow the pathway of constructive idealistic
development assailed on one side by naturalistic evolution and on the other by
rationalistic formalistic idealism. Let us note and contrast these in earlier
speculation. In Greek speculation, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were
'constructive idealists', asserting development and referring to a person who
possessed regulative reason and deliberative will.
But in the Stoics we
have a type of analytic formal rationalism in which personality is forced
violently into ready-made moulds. The
Stoics speak mainly about laws of nature or laws of reason, but the levelling
process is everywhere in evidence. [p. 319]
The Stoics kept
speaking about 'law', 'law' -- sometimes this 'law of nature' or 'law of
reason' means merely physical mechanical law, sometimes it means mathematical
law involved in physical happenings, sometimes it means logical law involved in
our experience of physical happenings in their mathematical relations and
sometimes it means moral-social law or the order that should ideally obtain in
our human experiences, however they may be related to physical nature with its
mathematical aspects. Nevertheless, there is a steady drift of the 'should be'
of the moral into the 'must be' of the logical-mathematical physical.
Ultimately the necessity becomes explicit fatalism, and though the Stoic began
bravely, even heroically, with the assertion of a proud even defiant will,
gradually this will is hemmed in, circumscribed more and more, till at length
it remains if at all only as mere resignation.
Now what happened
long ago with Stoicism becomes repeated over and over again, with later
rationalistic pantheistic systems. If personality ever seems to get a footing
it always ends in mere resignation. The fact is that both Naturalism and
Pantheism start at the wrong end. They have no use for Kant's 'Copernican
revolution'.
Naturalism: Nature,
or the world as a whole is impersonal. Man is a part of nature, therefore he is
impersonal. Q.E.D. He thinks he is personal -- then let him read our
demonstration and he will see he is mistaken, that is all.
Or Pantheism: The
Universe as a whole is impersonal, man is a part of this Universe, therefore he
is impersonal -- Q.E.D. Man imagines he is personal, well let him read our
demonstration and correct his foolish imaginings, that is all.
Now at the outset,
constructive idealistic development repudiates the method employed by both
Naturalism and [p. 320] rationalistic Pantheism. They start wrong, they reason wrong, they
end wrong. But again and again, constructive idealistic development is
misconstrued and it is supposed to be refuted by arguments that are really
directed against analytical rationalism.
David Hume for instance thought he was once for all settling those ·who
believed in a self, by claiming that he could never catch a particular state
self, nor a substance self. Well, what of it? The particular state self is the
empirical naturalistic misconception; the abstract substance 'I know not what'
is the rationalistic misconception about the self. Locke who did believe in a
'something we know not what' immaterial substance, self, nevertheless in his
chapter on personal identity did really come in sight of a truer view of a
persisting principle through varying experiences, co-ordinating them into a
coherent experience. And
Kant does not hesitate to accept David Hume's criticism of an
'immaterial substance' self, 'something we know not what', But Kant gives
suggestions towards a constructive idealistic view of a self, especially in his
development and proof of the synthetical functioning underlying or involved in
all experience; in his insight that synthetical unity underlies and renders
possible the shallower 'analytical identity' and Kant discovers the self not
merely in knowledge but in conduct, where he sees that duty is an undeniable
experience wherein 'I ought' involves 'I can.'
Hegel though at times swinging towards a pantheistic rationalism, on the
whole is a keen critic of this fallacious [p. 321] procedure. He insists that 'subject' is a more ultimate
principle than 'substance' as usually understood, and that the formalistic
method of the 'mere understanding' is the parent of countless errors and
misconceptions in philosophy. Fortunately for us who have the great heritage of
British speculation, the personal is seldom long forgotten. The Oxford scholars who have so treasured Greek literature
with its fine suggestiveness, easily grasped and extended hints taken from Kant
and Hegel towards modernizing and extending the tendencies already dimly
foreshadowed in Aristotle, and these so-called Neo-Hegelians, or
Neo-Aristotelians, T. H. Green, the Cairds, Ritchie, Watson, along with the
later constructive Scottish school thinkers, have gone a long way to develop
the principles of constructive idealistic development and have all perceived
how central, how fundamental personality must be in a constructive idealistic
development theory.
Now if we may be permitted to indicate directions in which we may
further extend their work and insight bearing on personality, we should be
inclined to make the following suggestions :
First: We need to scrutinize very carefully our psychological
foundations. Many early attempts to grapple with the problem of personality
were baffled or nullified because they ran against a prevailing psychology
which was really incorrect but which claimed a scientific ultimateness to which
philosophy must submit. There are two erroneous tendencies that easily creep
into and pervert scientific psychology.
Though claiming to describe and state facts of experience as they find
them, one set of psychologists can never find anything but what they have
pre-determined to find, and they pre-determine to find experience all broken up
into the ultimate atomic elements, a psychological atomism, that easily lends
itself to materialistic philosophical manipulation, ending with utter [p. 322]
loss of vital principles and of course inevitably losing 'personality' in any
attempted reconstructions. The earlier
'rationalistic' bias carried over into psychology led to a discovery of
'faculties' separate, distinct and independent. Later psychologists have pretty
well riddled these separate distinct and independent faculties, but they have
run over to the other abstraction of separate distinct and independent ultimate
elements of a simple kind like the ancient atomists, and they scarcely realize
cell realize that this is a variation merely of the old mistake. What is greatly needed at the present moment
is not less but more psychology, psychology which while claiming not to
philosophize will not slip in false philosophy, but truly describe the actual
living, actively working, concrete consciousness. The believers in constructive
idealistic development are quite willing to base their philosophical
interpretations on a valid impartial and complete psychological foundation, but
as philosophers they prefer to do their own theorizing, make their own
constructions, formulate their own interpretations.
Let me very briefly
note how personality will appear within any serious attempt to interpret human
experience fairly and without explaining it away in favour of some preconceived
misconceptions or assumptions.
1.·Consciousness. To begin with, as
Descartes long ago suggested, instead of our deriving or deducing consciousness
from something else which is supposed to be more real or better known, we
should really discover that consciousness itself is what most directly, most
certainly known, and until we have some test of what constitutes reality, we
must assume consciousness to have some kind of reality, and in any case we will
need consciousness both to discover and to prove reality wherever or however we
claim to reach such reality. Kant's 'Copernican revolution' consists in his
clear statement of the necessity for beginning with the actual concrete human
[p. 323] experience as the basis and starting-point of all our investigations,
reflections, and conclusions. It if turns out upon critical re-consideration that objects and
subjects are indispensably involved in this actual concrete human experience,
that will constitute the proper proof of the validity and reality of such
objects and subjects.
2. Self-Consciousness. A predominant amount of investigation has
centred on these objects involved in human experience, but we desire now to
concentrate on the subjects also as certainly and indispensably involved and to
try to state just what subject means; and reflectively reconsidering the actual
experience, our human consciousness, we discover that the human conscious
subject may become self-conscious: that is to say, it is characteristic of
human consciousness that it may rise to an explicit awareness of the content of
its own conscious life -- the knowing subject may dispassionately, even
critically, view or review the known content within its consciousness, what
Kant calls the 'Empirical Ego'. In this
dispassionate critical evaluating survey the human subject rises to the
possibility of morality for there begins the power of discriminating between
temptation and sin, and from this distinction we may rise to the emphasis or
preference whereby one is endorsed and retained, the other condemned, opposed
and eliminated.
3. Self-regulative Consciousness. At such stage and exercising this function
consciousness becomes self-regulative of the content of its accepted
life-filling -- by approval holding fast to what it regards as good and lovely,
by disapproval reacting against or trying to shun or escape what It views or
regards as unworthy or undesirable. And
this approving and disapproving is no external re-arrangement of a foreign
field extraneous to the self, it rather constitutes a building up [p. 324] or destroying
of the conscious life itself. This
activity modifies the actor.
4. Self-modifying Consciousness.· By its
selective emphasis the character of the approving, disapproving self becomes
modified. It advances or. recedes, it is improved or is degraded. If the choice
is of the unsuitable or unworthy, the self suffers loss and self-destruction or
self-degradation; but if on the contrary the selective approval is in
accordance with what is fitted for the subject, is what we term wise or
well-considered, or right or good, we find the self issues after its choice in
a self-developed increase.
5. Self-developing Consciousness. The
normal or hopeful or proper tendency should be, we assume, self-development, so
much so that many writers find it almost impossible to state coherently how it is
possible for a self to commit suicide, except perchance by inadvertence and
misconception, and hence self-development is more easy to formulate than
self-degradation, nevertheless there is one kind of choice that seems to enter
not abnormally or viciously or pathologically but normally into self-developing
consciousness, this is the paradoxical choice and action termed self-sacrifice,
namely, that to save our life, we must lose it, in some manner.
6. Self-sacrificing Consciousness. Not alone in some of the great crises of life
but in its lesser moments and ordinary routine, self-sacrifice seem to enter in
some way as an integral factor within the normal moral developing active
consciousness. For whenever the consciousness
first comes in sight of a line of action or an ideal of conduct that surpasses
what formerly it had sought, the higher nobler way if approved or adopted will
seem to come into conflict with the plan of life or content of life with which
the self had previously identified itself.
There will seem to arise a conflict between [p. 325] the old lesser
ideal and the new greater, higher ideal.
Thus every acceptance of a higher level will seem to involve a struggle
or require a sacrifice of the lower in favour of the higher, a sacrifice or
seeming sacrifice. Hence therefore we
meet what seems to me a perverted and false view of this sacrifice taught by
many ascetic writers. Those writers turn
all the attention on the negative aspect in the transition which they represent
as a rejection or casting out of the lower level, but as a matter of fact in a
real advance from a lower to a higher level what we need to stress is not the
giving up of the lower level, but the taking up of the effort towards the
higher level and with this the inclusion of the good in this higher level as
our good, which if secured and obtained and incorporated will end in
self-fulfilment not self-loss, in any sacrifice of self in that sense. The self, as it were, dedicates itself to this
new purpose or ideal and if this is really nobler it must if followed and
attained bring real self-fulfilment.
7. Self-dedicating fulfilment of Consciousness. When we follow up this new line of
investigation, it soon turns out that as a rule such self-dedicating fulfilment
is usually when we turn from a purpose or plan which while bringing some
pleasure or advantage to us does it unduly at the expense of other selves. So that this level cannot be discussed or
understood without implicating a social reference or reference to other
selves-self-deciding fulfilment then means co-operating with others in a good
that they can share with us, this is the field Kant referred to as a 'kingdom
of ends.'
8. Co-operating
Consciousness -- or selves mutually assisting. This is the point where we reach special
difficulties. At first ethical investigators could only represent the one as
benefiting at the expense of the other, and one set of writers advocated that
others were means to the one self, who should [p. 326] seek his own welfare. Others advocated 'benevolence' in sacrifice
as a plain duty. But if our analysis of
self-sacrifice be correct as a positive including a wider content, then we are
not really asked to give up altogether the legitimate demand of the individual
for self-maintenance of welfare, but we widen the content of welfare to the
self.
It must be in this
widening social co-operative moral consciousness that we get the key to the
religious life with its marvellous uplift and completion of the moral
consciousness. So it wild not surprise us that some writers advocate a giving
up of the human self, to the Divine, but may we not rather speak of this
momentous transition in the moral consciousness as an including or taking up in
our approval and well-being, the association with and acceptance of the Divine
person as necessary for the realization of our self-hood?
It will be seen that
I now have reached a point where the moral consideration reaches the religious,
where human personality touches on Divine personality. I do not propose to follow further. But I have gone far enough to indicate that
the religious life so intimately vital in human experience involves and implies
a personal Divine good being, who should be explicitly accepted in the moral
experience of human persons.
As to the proofs of
the existence of such a Divine personality, I can merely add that this to me
means more than the usual proofs of existence given in some discussions. It is God as person that I am interested in,
if there be such a person, as I believe there is. It is quite true that since Kant refuted the
ancient 'proofs' many have regarded it as vain and foolish to attempt any
proofs of God's existence. But as a matter of fact what Kant showed was that
the usual rationalistic deductive method and the usual empirical method are
alike [p. 327] incapable of proving God's existence, but many forget that Kant
has shown ad nauseam, that these two
methods are equally incapable of proving anything whatsoever. And if Kant found other methods, constructive
methods, for proving other things, might not these same constructive methods be
used in dealing with the question of God's existence? As a matter of fact we
may point to some of these attempts.
Royce's book, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy,
while it rejects the abstract formal ontological proof, turns attention to the
meaning of truth as truth, as always a truth for an adequate or trustworthy
judge of truth.
T. H. Green in his Prolegomena to Ethics rejects the old
cosmological argument because of its narrow and extraneous conception of
Causality. But basing his views on the
Kantian view of substance and causality in a phenomenal world, Green argues to
the 'eternal consciousness' as the implied basis of the phenomenal world.[4]
The defenders then of
design or purpose have long ago abandoned the extraneous design as a proper
statement of nature. Even naturalistic
evolution has been compelled however to
slip in an indwelling tendency in nature, and in spite of the former scorn
heaped on the 'anthropomorphism' of those who assumed that nature had some
purpose fulfilled in mankind, Sully and Huxley admit the following:
'In a sense it
may be said that the theory of evolution helps to restore the ancient sentiment
toward nature as our parent the source of our life. It is well to add, however,
that the theory of evolution, by regarding man as the [p. 328] last and highest
product of nature, easily lends support to the idea that all things exist and
have existed for the sake of our race.
This seems, indeed, to be an essential element in any conception we can
form of a rationally evolved universe.'
This is indeed far
from meeting the whole case but it certainly tends towards the persistent claim
of idealistic development that we cannot level man down to physical nature.
But to discover God as implicated in man as well as physical nature we
must pass from physical descriptive science to the moral experience of mankind
and what is implicated in man's power of choice and moral aspiration, and moral
advancement.
When we take into account not merely our sentient life but also our
intellectual, artistic and social activities, and especially our moral
distinctions and moral actions and moral ideals, it would seem to be more
reasonable to say 'God is our parent and the source of our life,' than to say
with naturalistic evolution 'nature is our parent and the source of our life.'
Naturalistic evolutionists in recent times have somewhat abandoned their
allegiance to Herbert Spencer's formulations, which so closely followed
Hobbes's 'inner motion' determinism and David Hume's 'customary conjunction'
with some 'unknowable' in the agnostic abyss, and have turned more to the new
explanations set forth in Pragmatism. In
so doing they have made appreciable progress away from materialism and
agnosticism and towards constructive idealism. William James s many jibes and
merry quips at rationalistic formalism and intellectualism may have some
pertinence against formalistic pantheistic rationalism, they do not touch
constructive idealistic development. Then when James insists that from the
outset psychological experience has in it unity and coherence essentially and
not accidentally or artificially or by constructive [p. 329] some subsequently
superimposed logical relatings, this too rejects the rationalistic theories but
is quite in harmony with Kantianism and modern constructive idealistic
development. Only of course James thinks this unity is an ultimate fact, yet a
fact in some vague way accounted for by the sentient organism in relation to
the world. Here he merely glances at an explanation that does not explain. Then when James repudiates the implicit
fatalism in rationalistic theories and passionately pleads for an
indeterministic even arbitrary volitional action or will in man, he does not
oppose constructive idealism,
but he not merely by this rejects rationalism, he also overturns the whole
naturalistic evolutionary psychology and ethics from Hobbes through Hume and
Mill up to Spencer and Bain. All the naturalistic expositors were determinists
in their account of volition, and James has gone over to the ranks of the
constructive idealists, who have long before him developed the significance of
volition and moral freedom much more fully
and adequately than James has done.[5]
And lastly when James proposes to test the truth of their theories by
their serviceability for life, though this is somewhat vague and looks more
like corroboration than proof, yet it is a test that will never stagger a
believer in the appeal to actual concrete experience. In short all James's emendations are really
abandonments of naturalistic evolution as materialistic. They are distinct approaches towards a
constructive idealism.
Our claim is tat the
theistic hypothesis or interpretation, if we so call it, is amore adequate and
satisfactory explanation of the facts and all the facts of human experience
than the [p. 330] hypothesis or theory of materialism or the hypothesis or
theory of Pantheism.
If we add James's
practical test as to how each theory when applied in practice would work out on
'a further life', we may remind ourselves that Christianity, though often
crudely expressed by pantheistic or mechanically minded expositors, is quite
clearly a theory of life that assumes human responsible personality and a
Divine Person. As to the effects of this theory on life and conduct we can see
that where it has been accepted and life has been governed by principles in
accordance with this theory, civilization has advanced. To me it seems beyond controversy that
personality in man is the only reasonable inference to draw from human
experience and any theory like materialism or pantheism that ignores this or
explains away the personality in man because it does not harmonize with their
preconceived ideas is guilty of making assumptions take precedence over
facts. If we speak at all or think at
all of human antecedents as 'parentage' we will need to look for such parentage
higher than some impersonal naturalistic principle or some impersonal
pantheistic principle.
Christ's teaching
that God is our Father, we are His children, seems to be the interpretation
that would best explain the stubborn facts.
JAMES GIBSON HUME.
Footnotes
[1] During
the years between 1891 and 1900, in connexion with the University Extension
Course in the University of Toronto, I gave a series of lectures under the
title 'Eras of Doubt and Triumphs of Faith', in which I traced five great
turning points in human civilization, showing the connexion of these upheavals
with speculative thought, viz., The Sophists and Socrates; Stoicism,
Epicureanism and Christianity; Medięvalism and The Renaissance; French
Materialism, The French Revolution and the beginnings of Modern Democracy;
Evolution and Development. During the
Session of 1905-1906, the lecture on Evolution and Personality was given at
Queen's University,
[*]
Classics Editor's Note: J. G. Hume
delivered a paper with the same title as the present one to the Philosophical
Society of Queen's University (where John Watson was professor of philosophy
for nearly 50 years) on
[2] That
'Hylas: Words are
not to be used without a meaning, and as there is no more meaning in spiritual
substance than in material substance, the one is to be exploded as well as the
other.
Philonous: How often
must I repeat that I know or am conscious of my own being; and that I myself am
not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking active principle that perceives,
knows, wills, and operates about ideas. I know that I, one and the same self,
perceive both colours and sounds: that a colour cannot perceive a sound, nor a
sound a colour; that I am therefore one individual principle, distinct from
colour and sound, and, for the same reason, from all other sensible things and
inert ideas. But I am not in like manner
conscious of either the existence or essence of matter.'
[1][sic] The later edition is entitled An Outline of Philosophy.
[3]
Sully and Huxley under Metaphysical Systems note Dualism and Materialism and
Pantheism, then Spiniozistic parallelism and a 'double aspect' curve,
materialistic on one side, pantheistic on the other. But they never come in sight of constructive
idealistic development, possibly because in terminology they use evolution and
development as synonymous; and when in theory they get a glimpse of idealistic
development, they regard it as a subordinate aspect of naturalistic
evolution. As a matter of fact
naturalistic evolution as a lesser aspect might get included within the greater
constructive idealistic development but we cannot include a greater under a
lesser. In short, they pluck the
feathers off the peacock and think they have changed it into a jackdaw, then
they stick the feathers on a jackdaw and think they have changed it into
peacock.
[4]
While Green rejects the extraneous 'design' argument, in his ethical writing,
he tries to justify a belief in an indwelling purpose, and points as a
'condition of the possibility' of our moral 'self-realization' or moral
development, our affinity with, our co-operation with, our dependence on, a
'spiritual principle' that possesses in actuality what is in us as yet possibility
or partially developed actualization.
[5]
William James revolts against Pantheistic fatalism, and in place of its monism
puts dualism, pluralism, Deism -- he does not rise to Theism. Bergson in Creative
Evolution seems to be reviving Schopenhauer's ingenious attempt to describe
a creation without any Creator.