SOME PRACTICAL ADMONITIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If a great man has been guilty of an error in reasoning, there is no reas............