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Title: Symbolism
Its meaning and effect
Author: Alfred North Whitehead
Release date: June 29, 2026 [eBook #78977]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: The MacMillan Company, 1927
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78977
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SYMBOLISM ***
Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect
SYMBOLISM
Its Meaning and Effect
BY
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
F.R.S., SC.D. (CAMBRIDGE),
HON. D.SC. (MANCHESTER).
HON. LL.D. (ST. ANDREWS),
HON. D.SC. (UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN),
HON. SC.D. (HARVARD AND YALE).
FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR
OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
BARBOUR-PAGE LECTURES
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
1927
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1927
Copyright, 1927,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped.
Published November, 1927.
_Printed in the United States of America by_
J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK
DEDICATION
These chapters were written before I had seen the Washington monument
which faces the Capitol in the City of Washington, and before I had
enjoyed the experience of crossing the borders of the State of
Virginia—a great experience for an Englishman.
Virginia, that symbol for romance throughout the world of English
speech: Virginia, which was captured for that world in the romantic
period of English history by Sir Walter Raleigh, its most romantic
figure: Virginia, which has been true to its origin and has steeped its
history in romance.
Romance does not yield unbroken happiness: Sir Walter Raleigh suffered
for his romance. Romance does not creep along the ground; like the
memorial to Washington, it reaches upward—a silver thread uniting earth
to the blue of heaven above.
April 18, 1927.
PREFACE
In accordance with the terms of the Barbour-Page Foundation, these
lectures are published by the University of Virginia. The author owes
his thanks to the authorities of the university for their courtesy in
conforming to his wishes in respect to some important details of
publication. With the exception of a few trifling changes the lectures
are printed as delivered.
These lectures will be best understood by reference to some portions of
Locke’s _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_. The author’s
acknowledgments are due to _Locke’s Theory of Knowledge and Its
Historical Relations_ by Professor James Gibson, to _Prolegomena to an
Idealist Theory of Knowledge_ by Professor Norman Kemp Smith, and to
_Scepticism and Animal Faith_ by George Santayana.
A. N. W.
Harvard University, June, 1927.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I ... 1
1. KINDS OF SYMBOLISM ... 1
2. SYMBOLISM AND PERCEPTION ... 2
3. ON METHODOLOGY ... 5
4. FALLIBILITY AND SYMBOLISM ... 6
5. DEFINITION OF SYMBOLISM ... 7
6. EXPERIENCE AS ACTIVITY ... 9
7. LANGUAGE ... 10
8. PRESENTATIONAL IMMEDIACY ... 13
9. PERCEPTIVE EXPERIENCE ... 16
10. SYMBOLIC REFERENCE IN PERCEPTIVE EXPERIENCE ... 18
11. MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ... 20
12. RÔLES OF SENSE-DATA AND SPACE IN PRESENTATIONAL IMMEDIACY ... 21
13. OBJECTIFICATION ... 25
CHAPTER II ... 30
1. HUME ON CAUSAL EFFICACY ... 30
2. KANT AND CAUSAL EFFICACY ... 37
3. DIRECT PERCEPTION OF CAUSAL EFFICACY ... 39
4. PRIMITIVENESS OF CAUSAL EFFICACY ... 43
5. THE INTERSECTION OF THE MODES OF PERCEPTION ... 49
6. LOCALIZATION ... 53
7. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN ACCURATE DEFINITION AND IMPORTANCE ... 56
8. CONCLUSION ... 59
CHAPTER III ... 60
USES OF SYMBOLISM ... 60
CHAPTER I
1. _Kinds of Symbolism._
The slightest survey of different epochs of civilization discloses great
differences in their attitude towards symbolism. For example, during the
medieval period in Europe symbolism seemed to dominate men’s
imaginations. Architecture was symbolical, ceremonial was symbolical,
heraldry was symbolical. With the Reformation a reaction set in. Men
tried to dispense with symbols as ‘fond things, vainly invented,’ and
concentrated on their direct apprehension of the ultimate facts.
But such symbolism is on the fringe of life. It has an unessential
element in its constitution. The very fact that it can be acquired in
one epoch and discarded in another epoch testifies to its superficial
nature.
There are deeper types of symbolism, in a sense artificial, and yet such
that we could not get on without them. Language, written or spoken, is
such a symbolism. The mere sound of a word, or its shape on paper, is
indifferent. The word is a symbol, and its meaning is constituted by the
ideas, images, and emotions, which it raises in the mind of the hearer.
There is also another sort of language, purely a written language, which
is constituted by the mathematical symbols of the science of algebra. In
some ways, these symbols are different to those of ordinary language,
because the manipulation of the algebraical symbols does your reasoning
for you, provided that you keep to the algebraic rules. This is not the
case with ordinary language. You can never forget the meaning of
language, and trust to mere syntax to help you out. In any case,
language and algebra seem to exemplify more fundamental types of
symbolism than do the Cathedrals of Medieval Europe.
2. _Symbolism and Perception._
There is still another symbolism more fundamental than any of the
foregoing types. We look up and see a coloured shape in front of us, and
we say,—there is a chair. But what we have seen is the mere coloured
shape. Perhaps an artist might not have jumped to the notion of a chair.
He might have stopped at the mere contemplation of a beautiful colour
and a beautiful shape. But those of us who are not artists are very
prone, especially if we are tired, to pass straight from the perception
of the coloured shape to the enjoyment of the chair, in some way of use,
or of emotion, or of thought. We can easily explain this passage by
reference to a train of difficult logical inference, whereby, having
regard to our previous experiences of various shapes and various
colours, we draw the probable conclusion that we are in the presence of
a chair. I am very sceptical as to the high-grade character of the
mentality required to get from the coloured shape to the chair. One
reason for this scepticism Is that my friend the artist, who kept
himself to the contemplation of colour, shape and position, was a very
highly trained man, and had acquired this facility of ignoring the chair
at the cost of great labour. We do not require elaborate training merely
in order to refrain from embarking upon intricate trains of inference.
Such abstinence is only too easy. Another reason for scepticism is that
if we had been accompanied by a puppy dog, in addition to the artist,
the dog would have acted immediately on the hypothesis of a chair and
would have jumped onto it by way of using it as such. Again, if the dog
had refrained from such action, it would have been because it was a
well-trained dog. Therefore the transition from a coloured shape to the
notion of an object which can be used for all sorts of purposes which
have nothing to do with colour, seems to be a very natural one; and
we—men and puppy dogs—require careful training if we are to refrain from
acting upon it.
Thus coloured shapes seem to be symbols for some other elements in our
experience, and when we see the coloured shapes we adjust our actions
towards those other elements. This symbolism from our senses to the
bodies symbolized is often mistaken. A cunning adjustment of lights and
mirrors may completely deceive us; and even when we are not deceived, we
only save ourselves by an effort. Symbolism from sense-presentation to
physical bodies is the most natural and widespread of all symbolic
modes. It is not a mere tropism, or automatic turning towards, because
both men and puppies often disregard chairs when they see them. Also a
tulip which turns to the light has probably the very minimum of
sense-presentation. I shall argue on the assumption that
sense-perception is mainly a characteristic of more advanced organisms;
whereas all organisms have experience of causal efficacy whereby their
functioning is conditioned by their environment.
3. _On Methodology._
In fact symbolism is very largely concerned with the use of pure
sense-perceptions in the character of symbols for more primitive
elements in our experience. Accordingly since sense-perceptions, of any
importance, are characteristic of high-grade organisms, I shall chiefly
confine this study of symbolism to the influence of symbolism on human
life. It is a general principle that low-grade characteristics are
better studied first in connection with correspondingly low-grade
organisms, in which those characteristics are not obscured by more
developed types of functioning. Conversely, high-grade characters should
be studied first in connection with those organisms in which they first
come to full perfection.
Of course, as a second approximation to elicit the full sweep of
particular characters, we want to know the embryonic stage of the
high-grade character, and the ways in which low-grade characters can be
made subservient to higher types of functioning.
The nineteenth century exaggerated the power of the historical method,
and assumed as a matter of course that every character should be studied
only in its embryonic stage. Thus, for example, ‘Love’ has been studied
among the savages and latterly among the morons.
4. _Fallibility of Symbolism._
There is one great difference between symbolism and direct knowledge.
Direct experience is infallible. What you have experienced, you have
experienced. But symbolism is very fallible, in the sense that it may
induce actions, feelings, emotions, and beliefs about things which are
mere notions without that exemplification in the world which the
symbolism leads us to presuppose. I shall develop the thesis that
symbolism is an essential factor in the way we function as the result of
our direct knowledge. Successful high-grade organisms are only possible,
on the condition that their symbolic functionings are usually justified
so far as important issues are concerned. But the errors of mankind
equally spring from symbolism. It is the task of reason to understand
and purge the symbols on which humanity depends.
An adequate account of human mentality requires an explanation of (i)
how we can know truly, (ii) how we can err, and (iii) how we can
critically distinguish truth from error. Such an explanation requires
that we distinguish that type of mental functioning which by its nature
yields immediate acquaintance with fact, from that type of functioning
which is only trustworthy by reason of its satisfaction of certain
criteria provided by the first type of functioning.
I shall maintain that the first type of functioning is properly to be
called ‘Direct Recognition,’ and the second type ‘Symbolic Reference.’ I
shall also endeavour to illustrate the doctrine that all human
symbolism, however superficial it may seem, is ultimately to be reduced
to trains of this fundamental symbolic reference, trains which finally
connect percepts in alternative modes of direct recognition.
5. _Definition of Symbolism._
After this prefatory explanation, we must start from a formal definition
of symbolism: The human mind is functioning symbolically when some
components of its experience elicit consciousness, beliefs, emotions,
and usages, respecting other components of its experience. The former
set of components are the ‘symbols,’ and the latter set constitute the
‘meaning’ of the symbols. The organic functioning whereby there is
transition from the symbol to the meaning will be called ‘symbolic
reference.’
This symbolic reference is the active synthetic element contributed by
the nature of the percipient. It requires a ground founded on some
community between the natures of symbol and meaning. But such a common
element in the two natures does not of itself necessitate symbolic
reference, nor does it decide which shall be symbol and which shall be
meaning, nor does it secure that the symbolic reference shall be immune
from producing errors and disasters for the percipient. We must conceive
perception in the light of a primary phase in the self-production of an
occasion of actual existence.
In defence of this notion of self-production arising out of some primary
given phase, I would remind you that, apart from it, there can be no
moral responsibility. The potter, and not the pot, is responsible for
the shape of the pot. An actual occasion arises as the bringing together
into one real context diverse perceptions, diverse feelings, diverse
purposes, and other diverse activities arising out of those primary
perceptions. Here activity is another name for self-production.
6. _Experience as Activity._
In this way we assign to the percipient an activity in the production of
its own experience, although that moment of experience, in its character
of being that one occasion, is nothing else than the percipient itself.
Thus, for the percipient at least, the perception is an internal
relationship between itself and the things perceived.
In analysis the total activity involved in perception of the symbolic
reference must be referred to the percipient. Such symbolic reference
requires something in common between symbol and meaning which can be
expressed without reference to the perfected percipient; but it also
requires some activity of the percipient which can be considered without
recourse either to the particular symbol or its particular meaning.
Considered by themselves the symbol and its meaning do not require
_either_ that there shall be a symbolic reference between the two, _or_
that the symbolic reference between the members of the couple should be
one way on rather than the other way on. The nature of their
relationship does not in itself determine which is symbol and which is
meaning. There are no components of experience which are only symbols or
only meanings. The more usual symbolic reference is from the less
primitive component as symbol to the more primitive as meaning.
This statement is the foundation of a thoroughgoing realism. It does
away with any mysterious element in our experience which is merely
meant, and thereby behind the veil of direct perception. It proclaims
the principle that symbolic reference holds between two components in a
complex experience, each intrinsically capable of direct recognition.
Any lack of such conscious analytical recognition is the fault of the
defect in mentality on the part of a comparatively low-grade percipient.
7. _Language._
To exemplify the inversion of symbol and meaning, consider language and
the things meant by language. A word is a symbol. But a word can be
either written or spoken. Now on occasions a written word may suggest
the corresponding spoken word, and that sound may suggest a meaning.
In such an instance, the written word is a symbol and its meaning is the
spoken word, and the spoken word is a symbol and its meaning is the
dictionary meaning of the word, spoken or written.
But often the written word effects its purpose without the intervention
of the spoken word. Accordingly, then, the written word directly
symbolizes the dictionary meaning. But so fluctuating and complex is
human experience that in general neither of these cases is exemplified
in the clear-cut way which is set out here. Often the written word
suggests both the spoken word and also the meaning, and the symbolic
reference is made clearer and more definite by the additional reference
of the spoken word to the same meaning. Analogously we can start from
the spoken word which may elicit a visual perception of the written
word.
Further, why do we say that the word ‘tree’—spoken or written—is a
symbol to us for trees? Both the word itself and trees themselves enter
into our experience on equal terms; and it would be just as sensible,
viewing the question abstractedly, for trees to symbolize the word
‘tree’ as for the word to symbolize the trees.
This is certainly true, and human nature sometimes works that way. For
example, if you are a poet and wish to write a lyric on trees, you will
walk into the forest in order that the trees may suggest the appropriate
words. Thus for the poet in his ecstasy—or perhaps, agony—of composition
the trees are the symbols and the words are the meaning. He concentrates
on the trees in order to get at the words.
But most of us are not poets, though we read their lyrics with proper
respect. For us, the words are the symbols which enable us to capture
the rapture of the poet in the forest. The poet is a person for whom
visual sights and sounds and emotional experiences refer symbolically to
words. The poet’s readers are people for whom his words refer
symbolically to the visual sights and sounds and emotions he wants to
evoke. Thus in the use of language there is a double symbolic
reference:—from things to words on the part of the speaker, and from
words back to things on the part of the listener.
When in an act of human experience there is a symbolic reference, there
are in the first place two sets of components with some objective
relationship between them, and this relationship will vary greatly in
different instances. In the second place the total constitution of the
percipient has to effect the symbolic reference from one set of
components, the symbols, to the other set of components, the meaning. In
the third place, the question, as to which set of components form the
symbols and which set the meaning, also depends on the peculiar
constitution of that act of experience.
8. _Presentational Immediacy._
The most fundamental exemplification of symbolism has already been
alluded to in the discussion of the poet and the circumstances which
elicit his poetry. We have here a particular instance of the reference
of words to things. But this general relation of words to things is only
a particular instance of a yet more general fact. Our perception of the
external world is divided into two types of content: one type is the
familiar immediate presentation of the contemporary world, by means of
our projection of our immediate sensations, determining for us
characteristics of contemporary physical entities. This type is the
experience of the immediate world around us, a world decorated by
sense-data dependent on the immediate states of relevant parts of our
own bodies. Physiology establishes this latter fact conclusively; but
the physiological details are irrelevant to the present philosophical
discussion, and only confuse the issue. ‘Sense-datum’ is a modern term:
Hume uses the word ‘impression.’
For human beings, this type of experience is vivid, and is especially
distinct in its exhibition of the spatial regions and relationships
within the contemporary world.
The familiar language which I have used in speaking of the ‘projection
of our sensations’ is very misleading. There are no bare sensations
which are first experienced and then ‘projected’ into our feet as their
feelings, or onto the opposite wall as its colour. The projection is an
integral part of the situation, quite as original as the sense-data. It
would be just as accurate, and equally misleading, to speak of a
projection on the wall which is then characterized as such-and-such a
colour. The use of the term ‘wall’ is equally misleading by its
suggestion of information derived symbolically from another mode of
perception. This so-called ‘wall,’ disclosed in the pure mode of
presentational immediacy, contributes itself to our experience only
under the guise of spatial extension, combined with spatial perspective,
and combined with sense-data which in this example reduce to colour
alone.
I say that the wall contributes _itself_ under this guise, in preference
to saying that it contributes these universal characters in combination.
For the characters are combined by their exposition of one thing in a
common world including ourselves, that one thing which I call the
‘wall.’ Our perception is not confined to universal characters; we do
not perceive disembodied colour or disembodied extensiveness: we
perceive _the wall’s_ colour and extensiveness. The experienced fact is
‘colour away on the wall for us.’ Thus the colour and the spatial
perspective are abstract elements, characterizing the concrete way in
which the wall enters into our experience. They are therefore relational
elements between the ‘percipient at that moment,’ and that other equally
actual entity, or set of entities, which we call the ‘wall at that
moment.’ But the mere colour and the mere spatial perspective are very
abstract entities, because they are only arrived at by discarding the
concrete relationship between the wall-at-that-moment and the
percipient-at-that-moment. This concrete relationship is a physical fact
which may be very unessential to the wall and very essential to the
percipient. The spatial relationship is equally essential both to wall
and percipient: but the colour side of the relationship is at that
moment indifferent to the wall, though it is part of the make-up of the
percipient. In this sense, and subject to their spatial relationship,
contemporary events happen independently. I call this type of experience
‘presentational immediacy.’ It expresses how contemporary events are
relevant to each other, and yet preserve a mutual independence. This
relevance amid independence is the peculiar character of
contemporaneousness. This presentational immediacy is only of importance
in high-grade organisms, and is a physical fact which may, or may not,
enter into consciousness. Such entry will depend on attention and on the
activity of conceptual functioning, whereby physical experience and
conceptual imagination are fused into knowledge.
9. _Perceptive Experience._
The word ‘experience’ is one of the most deceitful in philosophy. Its
adequate discussion would be the topic for a treatise. I can only
indicate those elements in my analysis of it which are relevant to the
present train of thought.
Our experience, so far as it is primarily concerned with our direct
recognition of a solid world of other things which are actual in the
same sense that we are actual, has three main independent modes each
contributing its share of components to our individual rise into one
concrete moment of human experience. Two of these modes of experience I
will call perceptive, and the third I will call the mode of conceptual
analysis. In respect to pure perception, I call one of the two types
concerned the mode of ‘presentational immediacy,’ and the other the mode
of ‘causal efficacy.’ Both ‘presentational immediacy’ and ‘causal
efficacy’ introduce into human experience components which are again
analysable into actual things of the actual world and into abstract
attributes, qualities, and relations, which express how those other
actual things contribute themselves as components to our individual
experience. These abstractions express how other actualities are
component objects for us. I will therefore say that they ‘objectify’ for
us the actual things in our ‘environment.’ Our most immediate
environment is constituted by the various organs of our own bodies, our
more remote environment is the physical world in the neighbourhood. But
the word ‘environment’ means those other actual things, which are
‘objectified’ in some important way so as to form component elements in
our individual experience.
10. _Symbolic Reference in Perceptive Experience._
Of the two distinct perceptive modes, one mode ‘objectifies’ actual
things under the guise of presentational immediacy, and the other mode,
which I have not yet discussed, ‘objectifies’ them under the guise of
causal efficacy. The synthetic activity whereby these two modes are
fused into one perception is what I have called ‘symbolic reference.’ By
symbolic reference the various actualities disclosed respectively by the
two modes are either identified, or are at least correlated together as
interrelated elements in our environment. Thus the result of symbolic
reference is what the actual world is for us, as that datum in our
experience productive of feelings, emotions, satisfactions, actions, and
finally as the topic for conscious recognition when our mentality
intervenes with its conceptual analysis. ‘Direct recognition’ is
conscious recognition of a percept in a pure mode, devoid of symbolic
reference.
Symbolic reference may be, in many respects, erroneous. By this I mean
that some ‘direct recognition’ disagrees, in its report of the actual
world, with the conscious recognition of the fused product resulting
from symbolic reference. Thus error is primarily the product of symbolic
reference, and not of conceptual analysis. Also symbolic reference
itself is not primarily the outcome of conceptual analysis, though it is
greatly promoted by it. For symbolic reference is still dominant in
experience when such mental analysis is at a low ebb. We all know
Aesop’s fable of the dog who dropped a piece of meat to grasp at its
reflection in the water. We must not, however, judge too severely of
error. In the initial stages of mental progress, error in symbolic
reference is the discipline which promotes imaginative freedom. Aesop’s
dog lost his meat, but he gained a step on the road towards a free
imagination.
Thus symbolic reference must be explained antecedently to conceptual
analysis, although there is a strong interplay between the two whereby
they promote each other.
11. _Mental and Physical._
By way of being as intelligible as possible we might tacitly assign
symbolic reference to mental activity, and thereby avoid some detailed
explanation. It is a matter of pure convention as to which of our
experiential activities we term mental and which physical. Personally I
prefer to restrict mentality to those experiential activities which
include concepts in addition to percepts. But much of our perception is
due to the enhanced subtlety arising from a concurrent conceptual
analysis. Thus in fact there is no proper line to be drawn between the
physical and the mental constitution of experience. But there is no
conscious knowledge apart from the intervention of mentality in the form
of conceptual analysis.
It will be necessary later on to make some slight reference to
conceptual analysis; but at present I must assume consciousness and its
partial analysis of experience, and return to the two modes of pure
perception. The point that I want to make here is, that the reason why
low-grade purely physical organisms cannot make mistakes is not
primarily their absence of thought, but their absence of presentational
immediacy. Aesop’s dog, who was a poor thinker, made a mistake by reason
of an erroneous symbolic reference from presentational immediacy to
causal efficacy. In short, truth and error dwell in the world by reason
of synthesis: every actual thing is synthetic: and symbolic reference is
one primitive form of synthetic activity whereby what is actual arises
from its given phases.
12. _Rôles of Sense-data and Space in Presentational Immediacy._
By ‘presentational immediacy’ I mean what is usually termed
‘sense-perception.’ But I am using the former term under limitations and
extensions which are foreign to the common use of the latter term.
Presentational immediacy is our immediate perception of the contemporary
external world, appearing as an element constitutive of our own
experience. In this appearance the world discloses itself to be a
community of actual things, which are actual in the same sense as we
are.
This appearance is effected by the mediation of qualities, such as
colours, sounds, tastes, etc., which can with equal truth be described
as our sensations or as the qualities of the actual things which we
perceive. These qualities are thus relational between the perceiving
subject and the perceived things. They can be thus isolated only by
abstracting them from their implication in the scheme of spatial
relatedness of the perceived things to each other and to the perceiving
subject. This relatedness of spatial extension is a complete scheme,
impartial between the observer and the perceived things. It is the
scheme of the morphology of the complex organisms forming the community
of the contemporary world. The way in which each actual physical
organism enters into the make-up of its contemporaries has to conform to
this scheme. Thus the sense-data, such as colours, etc., or bodily
feelings, introduce the extended physical entities into our experience
under perspectives provided by this spatial scheme. The spatial
relations by themselves are generic abstractions, and the sense-data are
generic abstractions. But the perspectives of the sense-data provided by
the spatial relations are the specific relations whereby the external
contemporary things are to this extent part of our experience. These
contemporary organisms, thus introduced as ‘objects’ into experience,
include the various organs of our body, and the sense-data are then
called bodily feelings. The bodily organs, and those other external
things which make important contributions to this mode of our
perception, together form the contemporary environment of the percipient
organism. The main facts about presentational immediacy are: (i) that
the sense-data involved depend on the percipient organism and its
spatial relations to the perceived organisms; (ii) that the contemporary
world is exhibited as extended and as a plenum of organisms; (iii) that
presentational immediacy is an important factor in the experience of
only a few high-grade organisms, and that for the others it is embryonic
or entirely negligible.
Thus the disclosure of a contemporary world by presentational immediacy
is bound up with the disclosure of the solidarity of actual things by
reason of their participation in an impartial system of spatial
extension. Beyond this, the knowledge provided by pure presentational
immediacy is vivid, precise, and barren. It is also to a large extent
controllable at will. I mean that one moment of experience can
predetermine to a considerable extent, by inhibitions, or by
intensifications, or by other modifications, the characteristics of the
presentational immediacy in succeeding moments of experience. This mode
of perception, taken purely by itself, is barren, because we may not
directly connect the qualitative presentations of other things with any
intrinsic characters of those things. We see the image of a coloured
chair, presenting to us the space behind a mirror; yet we thereby gain
no knowledge concerning any intrinsic characters of spaces behind the
mirror. But the image thus seen in a good mirror is just as much an
immediate presentation of colour qualifying the world at a distance
behind the mirror, as is our direct vision of the chair when we turn
round and look at it. Pure presentational immediacy refuses to be
divided into delusions and not-delusions. It is either all of it, or
none of it, an immediate presentation of an external contemporary world
as in its own right spatial. The sense-data involved in presentational
immediacy have a wider relationship in the world than these contemporary
things can express. In abstraction from this wider relationship, there
is no means of determining the importance of the apparent qualification
of contemporary objects by sense-data. For this reason the phrase ‘mere
appearance’ carries the suggestion of barrenness. This wider
relationship of the sense-data can only be understood by examining the
alternative mode of perception, the mode of causal efficacy. But in so
far as contemporary things are bound together by mere presentational
immediacy, they happen in complete independence except for their spatial
relations at the moment. Also for most events, we presume that their
intrinsic experience of presentational immediacy is so embryonic as to
be negligible. This perceptive mode is important only for a small
minority of elaborate organisms.
13. _Objectification._
In this explanation of Presentational Immediacy, I am conforming to the
distinction according to which actual things are _objectively_ in our
experience and _formally_ existing in their own completeness. I maintain
that presentational immediacy is that peculiar way in which contemporary
things are ‘objectively’ in our experience, and that among the abstract
entities which constitute factors in the mode of introduction are those
abstractions usually called sense-data:—for example, colours, sounds,
tastes, touches, and bodily feelings.
Thus ‘objectification’ itself is abstraction; since no actual thing is
‘objectified’ in its ‘formal’ completeness. Abstraction expresses
nature’s mode of interaction and is not merely mental. When it
abstracts, thought is merely conforming to nature—or rather, it is
exhibiting itself as an element in nature. Synthesis and analysis
require each other. Such a conception is paradoxical if you will persist
in thinking of the actual world as a collection of passive actual
substances with their private characters or qualities. In that case, it
must be nonsense to ask, how one such substance can form a component in
the make-up of another such substance. So long as this conception is
retained, the difficulty is not relieved by calling each actual
substance an event, or a pattern, or an occasion. The difficulty, which
arises for such a conception, is to explain how the substances can be
actually together in a sense derivative from that in which each
individual substance is actual. But the conception of the world here
adopted is that of functional activity. By this I mean that every actual
thing is something by reason of its activity; whereby its nature
consists in its relevance to other things, and its individuality
consists in its synthesis of other things so far as they are relevant to
it. In enquiring about any one individual we must ask how other
individuals enter ‘objectively’ into the unity of its own experience.
This unity of its own experience is that individual existing _formally_.
We must also enquire how it enters into the ‘formal’ existence of other
things; and this entrance is that individual existing _objectively_,
that is to say—existing abstractly, exemplifying only some elements in
its formal content.
With this conception of the world, in speaking of any actual individual,
such as a human being, we must mean that man in one occasion of his
experience. Such an occasion, or act, is complex and therefore capable
of analysis into phases and other components. It is the most concrete
actual entity, and the life of man from birth to death is a historic
route of such occasions. These concrete moments are bound together into
one society by a partial identity of form, and by the peculiarly full
summation of its predecessors which each moment of the life-history
gathers into itself. The man-at-one-moment concentrates in himself the
colour of his own past, and he is the issue of it. The ‘man in his whole
life history’ is an abstraction compared to the ‘man in one such
moment.’ There are therefore three different meanings for the notion of
a particular man,—Julius Cæsar, for example. The word ‘Cæsar’ may mean
‘Cæsar in some one occasion of his existence’: this is the most concrete
of all the meanings. The word ‘Cæsar’ may mean ‘the historic route of
Cæsar’s life from his Cæsarian birth to his Cæsarian assassination.’ The
word ‘Cæsar’ may mean ‘the common form, or pattern, repeated in each
occasion of Cæsar’s life.’ You may legitimately choose any one of these
meanings; but when you have made your choice, you must in that context
stick to it.
This doctrine of the nature of the life-history of an enduring organism
holds for all types of organisms, which have attained to unity of
experience, for electrons as well as for men. But mankind has gained a
richness of experiential content denied to electrons. Whenever the ‘all
or none’ principle holds, we are in some way dealing with one actual
entity, and not with a society of such entities, nor with the analysis
of components contributory to one such entity.
This lecture has maintained the doctrine of a direct experience of an
external world. It is impossible fully to argue this thesis without
getting too far away from my topic. I need only refer you to the first
portion of Santayana’s recent book, _Scepticism and Animal Faith_, for a
conclusive proof of the futile ‘solipsism of the present moment’—or, in
other words, utter scepticism—which results from a denial of this
assumption. My second thesis, for which I cannot claim Santayana’s
authority, is that, if you consistently maintain such direct individual
experience, you will be driven in your philosophical construction to a
conception of the world as an interplay of functional activity whereby
each concrete individual thing arises from its determinate relativity to
the settled world of other concrete individuals, at least so far as the
world is past and settled.
CHAPTER II
1. _Hume on Causal Efficacy._
It is the thesis of this work that human symbolism has its origin in the
symbolic interplay between two distinct modes of direct perception of
the external world. There are, in this way, two sources of information
about the external world, closely connected but distinct. These modes do
not repeat each other; and there is a real diversity of information.
Where one is vague, the other is precise: where one is important, the
other is trivial. But the two schemes of presentation have structural
elements in common, which identify them as schemes of presentation of
the same world. There are however gaps in the determination of the
correspondence between the two morphologies. The schemes only partially
intersect, and their true fusion is left indeterminate. The symbolic
reference leads to a transference of emotion, purpose, and belief, which
cannot be justified by an intellectual comparison of the direct
information derived from the two schemes and their elements of
intersection. The justification, such as it is, must be sought in a
pragmatic appeal to the future. In this way intellectual criticism
founded on subsequent experience can enlarge and purify the primitive
naïve symbolic transference.
I have termed one perceptive mode ‘Presentational Immediacy,’ and the
other mode ‘Causal Efficacy.’ In the previous lecture the mode of
presentational immediacy was discussed at length. The present lecture
must commence with the discussion of ‘Causal Efficacy.’ It will be
evident to you that I am here controverting the most cherished tradition
of modern philosophy, shared alike by the school of empiricists which
derives from Hume, and the school of transcendental idealists which
derives from Kant. It is unnecessary to enter upon any prolonged
justification of this summary account of the tradition of modern
philosophy. But some quotations will summarize neatly what is shared in
common by the two types of thought from which I am diverging. Hume[1]
writes:—“When both the objects are present to the senses along with the
relation, we call _this_ perception rather than reasoning; nor is there
in this case any exercise of the thought, or any action, properly
speaking, but a mere passive admission of the impressions through the
organs of sensation. According to this way of thinking, we ought not to
receive as reasoning any of the observations we may make concerning
_identity_ and the _relation_ of _time_ and _place_; since in none of
them can the mind go beyond what is immediately present to the senses,
either to discover the real existence or the relations of objects.”
The whole force of this passage depends upon the tacit presupposition of
the ‘mind’ as a passively receptive substance and of its ‘impression’ as
forming its private world of accidents. There then remains nothing
except the immediacy of these private attributes with their private
relations which are also attributes of the mind. Hume explicitly
repudiates this substantial view of mind.
But then, what is the force of the last clause of the last sentence,
“since ... objects?” The only reason for dismissing ‘impressions’ from
having any demonstrative force in respect to ‘the _real_ existence or
the relations of objects,’ is the implicit notion that such impressions
are mere private attributes of the mind. Santayana’s book, _Scepticism
and Animal Faith_, to which I have already referred, is in its earlier
chapters a vigorous and thorough insistence, by every manner of
beautiful illustration, that with Hume’s premises there is no manner of
escape from this dismissal of identity, time, and place from having any
reference to a real world. There remains only what Santayana calls
‘Solipsism of the Present Moment.’ Even memory goes: for a
memory-impression is not an impression of memory. It is only another
immediate private impression.
It is unnecessary to cite Hume on Causation; for the preceding quotation
carries with it his whole sceptical position. But a quotation[2] on
substance is necessary to explain the ground of his explicit—as distinct
from sporadic implicit presuppositions—doctrine on this point:—“I would
fain ask those philosophers, who found so much of their reasonings on
the distinction of substance and accident, and imagine we have clear
ideas of each, whether the idea of substance be derived from the
impressions of sensation or reflection? If it be conveyed to us by our
senses, I ask, which of them, and after what manner? If it be perceived
by the eyes, it must be a colour; if by the ears, a sound; if by the
palate, a taste; and so of the other senses. But I believe none will
assert that substance is either a colour, or sound, or a taste. The idea
of substance must, therefore, be derived from an impression of
reflection, if it really exist. But the impressions of reflection
resolve themselves into our passions and emotions; none of which can
possibly represent a substance. We have, therefore, no idea of
substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities,
nor have we any other meaning when we either talk or reason concerning
it.”
This passage is concerned with a notion of ‘substance,’ which I do not
entertain. Thus it only indirectly controverts my position. I quote it
because it is the plainest example of Hume’s initial assumptions that
(i) presentational immediacy, and relations between presentationally
immediate entities, constitute the only type of perceptive experience,
and that (ii) presentational immediacy includes no demonstrative factors
disclosing a contemporary world of extended actual things.
He discusses this question later in his ‘Treatise’ under the heading of
the notion of ‘Bodies’; and arrives at analogous sceptical conclusions.
These conclusions rest upon an extraordinary naïve assumption of time as
pure succession. The assumption is naïve, because it is the natural
thing to say; it is natural because it leaves out that characteristic of
time which is so intimately interwoven that it is natural to omit it.
Time is known to us as the succession of our acts of experience, and
thence derivatively as the succession of events objectively perceived in
those acts. But this succession is not pure succession: it is the
derivation of state from state, with the later state exhibiting
conformity to the antecedent. Time in the concrete is the conformation
of state to state, the later to the earlier; and the pure succession is
an abstraction from the irreversible relationship of settled past to
derivative present. The notion of pure succession is analogous to the
notion of colour. There is no mere colour, but always some particular
colour such as red or blue: analogously there is no pure succession, but
always some particular relational ground in respect to which the terms
succeed each other. The integers succeed each other in one way, and
events succeed each other in another way; and, when we abstract from
these ways of succession, we find that pure succession is an abstraction
of the second order, a generic abstraction omitting the temporal
character of time and the numerical relation of integers. The past
consists of the community of settled acts which, through their
objectifications in the present act, establish the conditions to which
that act must conform.
Aristotle conceived ‘matter’—ὑλγ—as being pure potentiality awaiting the
incoming of form in order to become actual. Hence employing Aristotelian
notions, we may say that the limitation of pure potentiality,
established by ‘objectifications’ of the settled past, expresses that
‘natural potentiality’—or, potentiality in nature—which is ‘matter’ with
that basis of initial, realized form presupposed as the first phase in
the self-creation of the present occasion. The notion of ‘pure
potentiality’ here takes the place of Aristotle’s ‘matter,’ and ‘natural
potentiality’ is ‘matter’ with that given imposition of form from which
each actual thing arises. All components which are _given_ for
experience are to be found in the analysis of natural potentiality. Thus
the immediate present has to conform to what the past is for it, and the
mere lapse of time is an abstraction from the more concrete relatedness
of ‘conformation.’ The ‘substantial’ character of actual things is not
primarily concerned with the predication of qualities. It expresses the
stubborn fact that whatever is settled and actual must in due measure be
conformed to by the self-creative activity. The phrase ‘stubborn fact’
exactly expresses the popular apprehension of this characteristic. Its
primary phase, from which each actual thing arises, is the stubborn fact
which underlies its existence. According to Hume there are no stubborn
facts. Hume’s doctrine may be good philosophy, but it is certainly not
common sense. In other words, it fails before the final test of obvious
verification.
2. _Kant and Causal Efficacy._
The school of transcendental idealists, derived from Kant, admit that
causal efficacy is a factor in the phenomenal world; but hold that it
does not belong to the sheer data presupposed in perception. It belongs
to our ways of thought about the data. Our consciousness of the
perceived world yields us an objective system, which is a fusion of mere
data and modes of thought about those data.
The general Kantian reason for this position is that direct perception
acquaints us with particular fact. Now particular fact is what simply
occurs as particular datum. But we believe universal principles about
all particular facts. Such universal knowledge cannot be derived from
any selection of particular facts, each of which has just simply
occurred. Thus our ineradicable belief is only explicable by reason of
the doctrine that particular facts, as consciously apprehended, are the
fusion of mere particular data with thought functioning according to
categories which import their own universality in the modified data.
Thus the phenomenal world, as in consciousness, is a complex of coherent
judgments, framed according to fixed categories of thought, and with a
content constituted by given data organized according to fixed forms of
intuition.
This Kantian doctrine accepts Hume’s naïve presupposition of ‘simple
occurrence’ for the mere data. I have elsewhere called it the assumption
of ‘simple location,’ by way of applying it to space as well as to time.
I directly deny this doctrine of ‘simple occurrence.’ There is nothing
which ‘simply happens.’ Such a belief is the baseless doctrine of time
as ‘pure succession.’ The alternative doctrine, that the pure succession
of time is merely an abstract from the fundamental relationship of
conformation, sweeps away the whole basis for the intervention of
constitutive thought, or constitutive intuition, in the formation of the
directly apprehended world. Universality of truth arises from the
universality of relativity, whereby every particular actual thing lays
upon the universe the obligation of conforming to it. Thus in the
analysis of particular fact universal truths are discoverable, those
truths expressing this obligation. The given-ness of experience—that is
to say, all its data alike, whether general truths or particular sensa
or presupposed forms of synthesis—expresses the specific character of
the temporal relation of that act of experience to the settled actuality
of the universe which is the source of all conditions. The fallacy of
‘misplaced concreteness’ abstracts from time this specific character,
and leaves time with the mere generic character of pure succession.
3. _Direct Perception of Causal Efficacy._
The followers of Hume and the followers of Kant have thus their diverse,
but allied, objections to the notion of any direct perception of causal
efficacy, in the sense in which direct perception is antecedent to
thought about it. Both schools find ‘causal efficacy’ to be the
importation, into the data, of a way of thinking or judging about those
data. One school calls it a habit of thought; the other school calls it
a category of thought. Also for them the mere data are the pure
sense-data.
If either Hume or Kant gives a proper account of the status of causal
efficacy, we should find that our conscious apprehension of causal
efficacy should depend to some extent on the vividness of the thought or
of the pure intuitive discrimination of sense-data at the moment in
question. For an apprehension which is the product of thought should
sink in importance when thought is in the background. Also, according to
this Humian-Kantian account, the thought in question is thought about
the immediate sense-data. Accordingly a certain vividness of sense-data
in immediate presentation should be favourable to apprehension of causal
efficacy. For according to these accounts, causal efficacy is nothing
else than a way of thinking about sense-data, given in presentational
immediacy. Thus the inhibition of thought and the vagueness of
sense-data should be extremely unfavourable to the prominence of causal
efficacy as an element in experience.
The logical difficulties attending the direct perception of causal
efficacy have been shown to depend on the sheer assumption that time is
merely the generic notion of pure succession. This is an instance of the
fallacy of ‘misplaced concreteness.’ Thus the way is now open to enquire
empirically whether in fact our apprehension of causal efficacy does
depend either on the vividness of sense-data or on the activity of
thought.
According to both schools, the importance of causal efficacy, and of
action exemplifying its presupposition, should be mainly characteristic
of high-grade organisms in their best moments. Now if we confine
attention to long-range identification of cause and effect, depending on
complex reasoning, undoubtedly such high-grade mentality and such
precise determination of sense-data are required. But each step in such
reasoning depends on the primary presupposition of the immediate present
moment conforming itself to the settled environment of the immediate
past. We must not direct attention to the inferences from yesterday to
today, or even from five minutes ago to the immediate present. We must
consider the immediate present in its relationship to the immediate
past. The overwhelming conformation of fact, in present action, to
antecedent settled fact is to be found here.
My point is that this conformation of present fact to immediate past is
more prominent both in apparent behaviour and in consciousness, when the
organism is low grade. A flower turns to the light with much greater
certainty than does a human being, and a stone conforms to the
conditions set by its external environment with much greater certainty
than does a flower. A dog anticipates the conformation of the immediate
future to his present activity with the same certainty as a human being.
When it comes to calculations and remote inferences, the dog fails. But
the dog never acts as though the immediate future were irrelevant to the
present. Irresolution in action arises from consciousness of a somewhat
distant relevant future, combined with inability to evaluate its precise
type. If we were not conscious of relevance, why is there irresolution
in a sudden crisis?
Again a vivid enjoyment of immediate sense-data notoriously inhibits
apprehension of the relevance of the future. The present moment is then
all in all. In our consciousness it approximates to ‘simple occurrence.’
Certain emotions, such as anger and terror, are apt to inhibit the
apprehension of sense-data; but they wholly depend upon a vivid
apprehension of the relevance of immediate past to the present, and of
the present to the future. Again an inhibition of familiar sense-data
provokes the terrifying sense of vague presences, effective for good or
evil over our fate. Most living creatures, of daytime habits, are more
nervous in the dark, in the absence of the familiar visual sense-data.
But according to Hume, it is the very familiarity of the sense-data
which is required for causal inference. Thus the sense of unseen
effective presences in the dark is the opposite of what should happen.
4. _Primitiveness of Causal Efficacy._
The perception of conformation to realities in the environment is the
primitive element in our external experience. We conform to our bodily
organs and to the vague world which lies beyond them. Our primitive
perception is that of ‘conformation’ vaguely, and of the yet vaguer
relata ‘oneself’ and ‘another’ in the undiscriminated background. Of
course if relationships are unperceivable, such a doctrine must be ruled
out on theoretic grounds. But if we admit such perception, then the
perception of conformation has every mark of a primitive element. One
part of our experience is handy, and definite in our consciousness; also
it is easy to reproduce at will. The other type of experience, however
insistent, is vague, haunting, unmanageable. The former type, for all
its decorative sense-experience, is barren. It displays a world
concealed under an adventitious show, a show of our own bodily
production. The latter type is heavy with the contact of the things gone
by, which lay their grip on our immediate selves. This latter type, the
mode of causal efficacy, is the experience dominating the primitive
living organisms, which have a sense for the fate from which they have
emerged, and for the fate towards which they go—the organisms which
advance and retreat but hardly differentiate any immediate display. It
is a heavy, primitive experience. The former type, the presentational
immediacy, is the superficial product of complexity, of subtlety; it
halts at the present, and indulges in a manageable self-enjoyment
derived from the immediacy of the show of things. Those periods in our
lives—when the perception of the pressure from a world of things with
characters in their own right, characters mysteriously moulding our own
natures, become strongest—those periods are the product of a reversion
to some primitive state. Such a reversion occurs when either some
primitive functioning of the human organism is unusually heightened, or
some considerable part of our habitual sense-perception is unusually
enfeebled.
Anger, hatred, fear, terror, attraction, love, hunger, eagerness,
massive enjoyment, are feelings and emotions closely entwined with the
primitive functioning of ‘retreat from’ and of ‘expansion towards.’ They
arise in the higher organism as states due to a vivid apprehension that
some such primitive mode of functioning is dominating the organism. But
‘retreat from’ and ‘expansion towards,’ divested of any detailed spatial
discrimination, are merely reactions to the way externality is
impressing on us its own character. You cannot retreat from mere
subjectivity; for subjectivity is what we carry with us. Normally, we
have almost negligible sense-presentations of the interior organs of our
own bodies.
These primitive emotions are accompanied by the clearest recognition of
other actual things reacting upon ourselves. The vulgar obviousness of
such recognition is equal to the vulgar obviousness produced by the
functioning of any one of our five senses. When we hate, it is a man
that we hate and not a collection of sense-data—a causal, efficacious
man. This primitive obviousness of the perception of ‘conformation’ is
illustrated by the emphasis on the pragmatic aspect of occurrences,
which is so prominent in modern philosophical thought. There can be no
useful aspect of anything unless we admit the principle of conformation,
whereby what is already made becomes a determinant of what is in the
making. The obviousness of the pragmatic aspect is simply the
obviousness of the perception of the fact of conformation.
In practice we never doubt the fact of the conformation of the present
to the immediate past. It belongs to the ultimate texture of experience,
with the same evidence as does presentational immediacy. The present
fact is luminously the outcome from its predecessors, one quarter of a
second ago. Unsuspected factors may have intervened; dynamite may have
exploded. But, however that may be, the present event issues subject to
the limitations laid upon it by the actual nature of the immediate past.
If dynamite explodes, then present fact is that issue from the past
which is consistent with dynamite exploding. Further, we unhesitatingly
argue backwards to the inference, that the complete analysis of the past
must disclose in it those factors which provide the conditions for the
present. If dynamite be now exploding, then in the immediate past there
was a charge of dynamite unexploded.
The fact that our consciousness is confined to an analysis of experience
in the present is no difficulty. For the theory of the universal
relativity of actual individual things leads to the distinction between
the present moment of experience, which is the sole datum for conscious
analysis, and perception of the contemporary world, which is the only
one factor in this datum.
The contrast between the comparative emptiness of Presentational
Immediacy and the deep significance disclosed by Causal Efficacy is at
the root of the pathos which haunts the world.
‘Pereunt et imputantur’
is the inscription on old sundials in ‘religious’ houses:
‘The hours perish and are laid to account.’
Here ‘Pereunt’ refers to the world disclosed in immediate presentation,
gay with a thousand tints, passing, and intrinsically meaningless.
‘Imputantur’ refers to the world disclosed in its causal efficacy, where
each event infects the ages to come, for good or for evil, with its own
individuality. Almost all pathos includes a reference to lapse of time.
The final stanza of Keats’ _Eve of St. Agnes_ commences with the
haunting lines:—
‘And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
Those lovers fled away into the storm.’
There the pathos of the lapse of time arises from the imagined fusion of
the two perceptive modes by one intensity of emotion. Shakespeare, in
the springtime of the modern world, fuses the two elements by exhibiting
the infectiousness of gay immediacy:—
‘... daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; ...’
(_The Winter’s Tale_, IV, iv, 118-120.)
But sometimes men are overstrained by their undivided attention to the
causal elements in the nature of things. Then in some tired moment there
comes a sudden relaxation, and the mere presentational side of the world
overwhelms with the sense of its emptiness. As William Pitt, the Prime
Minister of England through the darkest period of the French
Revolutionary wars, lay on his death-bed at England’s worst moment in
that struggle, he was heard to murmur,
‘What shades we are, what shadows we pursue!’
His mind had suddenly lost the sense of causal efficacy, and was
illuminated by the remembrance of the intensity of emotion, which had
enveloped his life, in its comparison with the barren emptiness of the
world passing in sense-presentation.
The world, given in sense-presentation, is not the aboriginal experience
of the lower organisms, later to be sophisticated by the inference to
causal efficacy. The contrary is the case. First the causal side of
experience is dominating, then the sense-presentation gains in subtlety.
Their mutual symbolic reference is finally purged by consciousness and
the critical reason with the aid of a pragmatic appeal to consequences.
5. _The Intersection of the Modes of Perception._
There cannot be symbolic reference between percepts derived from one
mode and percepts from the other mode, unless in some way these percepts
intersect. By this ‘intersection’ I mean that a pair of such percepts
must have elements of structure in common, whereby they are marked out
for the action of symbolic reference.
There are two elements of common structure, which can be shared in
common by a percept derived from presentational immediacy and by another
derived from causal efficacy. These elements are (1) sense-data, and (2)
locality.
The sense-data are ‘given’ for presentational immediacy. This given-ness
of the sense-data, as the basis of this perceptive mode, is the great
doctrine common to Hume and Kant. But what is already given for
experience can only be derived from that natural potentiality which
shapes a particular experience in the guise of causal efficacy. Causal
efficacy is the hand of the settled past in the formation of the
present. The sense-data must therefore play a double rôle in perception.
In the mode of presentational immediacy they are projected to exhibit
the contemporary world in its spatial relations. In the mode of causal
efficacy they exhibit the almost instantaneously precedent bodily organs
as imposing their characters on the experience in question. We see the
picture, and we see it with our eyes; we touch the wood, and we touch it
with our hands; we smell the rose, and we smell it with our nose; we
hear the bell, and we hear it with our ears; we taste the sugar, and we
taste it with our palate. In the case of bodily feelings the two
locations are identical. The foot is both giving pain and is the seat of
the pain. Hume himself tacitly asserts this double reference in the
second of the quotations previously made. He writes: “If it be perceived
by the eyes, it must be a colour; if by the ears, a sound; if by the
palate, a taste; and so of the other senses.” Thus in asserting the lack
of perception of causality, he implicitly presupposes it. For what is
the meaning of ‘_by_’ in ‘_by_ the eyes,’ ‘_by_ the ears,’ ‘_by_ the
palate’? His argument presupposes that sense-data, functioning in
presentational immediacy, are ‘given’ by reason of ‘eyes,’ ‘ears,’
‘palates’ functioning in causal efficacy. Otherwise his argument is
involved in a vicious regress. For it must begin again over eyes, ears,
palates; also it must explain the meaning of ‘by’ and ‘must’ in a sense
which does not destroy his argument.
This double reference is the basis of the whole physiological doctrine
of perception. The details of this doctrine are, in this discussion,
philosophically irrelevant. Hume with the clarity of genius states the
fundamental point, that sense-data functioning in an act of experience
demonstrate that they are given _by_ the causal efficacy of actual
bodily organs. He refers to this causal efficacy as a component in
direct perception. Hume’s argument first tacitly presupposes the two
modes of perception, and then tacitly assumes that presentational
immediacy is the only mode. Also Hume’s followers in developing his
doctrine presuppose that presentational immediacy is primitive, and that
causal efficacy is the sophisticated derivative. This is a complete
inversion of the evidence. So far as Hume’s own teaching is concerned,
there is, of course, another alternative: it is that Hume’s disciples
have misinterpreted Hume’s final position. On this hypothesis, his final
appeal to ‘practice’ is an appeal against the adequacy of the then
current metaphysical categories as interpretive of obvious experience.
This theory about Hume’s own beliefs is in my opinion improbable: but,
apart from Hume’s own estimate of his philosophical achievement, it is
in this sense that we must reverence him as one of the greatest of
philosophers.
The conclusion of this argument is that the intervention of any
sense-datum in the actual world cannot be expressed in any simple way,
such as mere qualification of a region of space, or alternatively as the
mere qualification of a state of mind. The sense-data, required for
immediate sense-perception, enter into experience in virtue of the
efficacy of the environment. This environment includes the bodily
organs. For example, in the case of hearing sound the physical waves
have entered the ears, and the agitations of the nerves have excited the
brain. The sound is then heard as coming from a certain region in the
external world. Thus perception in the mode of causal efficacy discloses
that the data in the mode of sense-perception are provided by it. This
is the reason why there are such given elements. Every such datum
constitutes a link between the two perceptive modes. Each such link, or
datum, has a complex ingression into experience, requiring a reference
to the two perceptive modes. These sense-data can be conceived as
constituting the character of a many-termed relationship between the
organisms of the past environment and those of the contemporary world.
6. _Localization._
The partial community of structure, whereby the two perceptive modes
yield immediate demonstration of a common world, arises from their
reference of sense-data, common to both, to localizations, diverse or
identical, in a spatio-temporal system common to both. For example,
colour is referred to an external space and to the eyes as organs of
vision. In so far as we are dealing with one or other of these pure
perceptive modes, such reference is direct demonstration; and, as
isolated in conscious analysis, is ultimate fact against which there is
no appeal. Such isolation, or at least some approach to it, is fairly
easy in the case of presentational immediacy, but is very difficult in
the case of causal efficacy. Complete ideal purity of perceptive
experience, devoid of any symbolic reference, is in practice
unobtainable for either perceptive mode.
Our judgments on causal efficacy are almost inextricably warped by the
acceptance of the symbolic reference between the two modes as the
completion of our direct knowledge. This acceptance is not merely in
thought, but also in action, emotion, and purpose, all precedent to
thought. This symbolic reference is a datum for thought in its analysis
of experience. By trusting this datum, our conceptual scheme of the
universe is in general logically coherent with itself, and is
correspondent to the ultimate facts of the pure perceptive modes. But
occasionally, either the coherence or the verification fails. We then
revise our conceptual scheme so as to preserve the general trust in the
symbolic reference, while relegating definite details of that reference
to the category of errors. Such errors are termed ‘delusive
appearances.’ This error arises from the extreme vagueness of the
spatial and temporal perspectives in the case of perception in the pure
mode of causal efficacy. There is no adequate definition of
localization, so far as what emerges into analytic consciousness. The
principle of relativity leads us to hold that, with adequate conscious
analysis, such local relationships leave their faint impress in
experience. But in general such detailed analysis is far beyond the
capacity of human consciousness.
So far as concerns the causal efficacy of the world external to the
human body, there is the most insistent perception of a circumambient
efficacious world of beings. But exact discrimination of thing from
thing, and of position from position, is extremely vague, almost
negligible. The definite discrimination, which in fact we do make,
arises almost wholly by reason of symbolic reference from presentational
immediacy. The case is different in respect to the human body. There is
still vagueness in comparison with the accurate definition of immediate
presentation; although the locality of various bodily organs which are
efficacious in the regulation of the sense-data, and of the feelings,
are fairly well-defined in the pure perceptive mode of causal efficacy.
The symbolic transference of course intensifies the definition. But,
apart from such transference, there is some adequacy of definite
demarcation.
Thus in the intersection of the two modes, the spatial and temporal
relationships of the human body, as causally apprehended, to the
external contemporary world, as immediately presented, afford a fairly
definite scheme of spatial and temporal reference whereby we test the
symbolic use of sense-projection for the determination of the positions
of bodies controlling the course of nature. Ultimately all observation,
scientific or popular, consists in the determination of the spatial
relation of the bodily organs of the observer to the location of
‘projected’ sense-data.
7. _The Contrast Between Accurate Definition and Importance._
The reason why the projected sense-data are in general used as symbol,
is that they are handy, definite, and manageable. We can see, or not
see, as we like: we can hear, or not hear. There are limits to this
handiness of the sense-data: but they are emphatically the manageable
elements in our perceptions of the world. The sense of controlling
presences has the contrary character: it is unmanageable, vague, and
ill-defined.
But for all their vagueness, for all their lack of definition, these
controlling presences, these sources of power, these things with an
inner life, with their own richness of content, these beings, with the
destiny of the world hidden in their natures, are what we want to know
about. As we cross a road busy with traffic, we see the colour of the
cars, their shapes, the gay colours of their occupants; but at the
moment we are absorbed in using this immediate show as a symbol for the
forces determining the immediate future.
We enjoy the symbol, but we also penetrate to the meaning. The symbols
do not create their meaning: the meaning, in the form of actual
effective beings reacting upon us, exists for us in its own right. But
the symbols discover this meaning for us. They discover it because, in
the long course of adaptation of living organisms to their environment,
nature[3] taught their use. It developed us so that our projected
sensations indicate in general those regions which are the seat of
important organisms.
Our relationships to these bodies are precisely our reactions to them.
The projection of our sensations is nothing else than the illustration
of the world in partial accordance with the systematic scheme, in space
and in time, to which these reactions conform.
The bonds of causal efficacy arise from without us. They disclose the
character of the world from which we issue, an inescapable condition
round which we shape ourselves. The bonds of presentational immediacy
arise from within us, and are subject to intensifications and
inhibitions and diversions according as we accept their challenge or
reject it. The sense-data are not properly to be termed ‘mere
impressions’—except so far as any technical term will do. They also
represent the conditions arising out of the active perceptive
functioning as conditioned by our own natures. But our natures must
conform to the causal efficacy. Thus the causal efficacy _from_ the past
is at least one factor giving our presentational immediacy in the
present. The _how_ of our present experience must conform to the _what_
of the past in us.
Our experience arises out of the past: it enriches with emotion and
purpose its presentation of the contemporary world: and it bequeaths its
character to the future, in the guise of an effective element forever
adding to, or subtracting from, the richness of the world. For good or
for evil,
‘Pereunt et Imputantur.’
8. _Conclusion._
In this chapter, and in the former chapter, the general character of
symbolism has been discussed. It plays a dominant part in the way in
which all higher organisms conduct their lives. It is the cause of
progress, and the cause of error. The higher animals have gained a
faculty of great power, by means of which they can define with some
accuracy those distant features in the immediate world by which their
future lives are to be determined. But this faculty is not infallible;
and the risks are commensurate with its importance. It is the purpose of
the next chapter to illustrate this doctrine by an analysis of the part
played by this habit of symbolism in promoting the cohesion, the
progress, and the dissolution of human societies.
Footnote 1:
‘Treatise’, Part III, Section II.
Footnote 2:
Cf. Hume’s ‘Treatise’, Part I, Section VI.
Footnote 3:
Cf. _Prolegomena to an Idealist Theory of Knowledge_, by Norman Kemp
Smith, Macmillan and Co., London, 1924.
CHAPTER III
_Uses of Symbolism_
The attitude of mankind towards symbolism exhibits an unstable mixture
of attraction and repulsion. The practical intelligence, the theoretical
desire to pierce to ultimate fact, and ironic critical impulses have
contributed the chief motives towards the repulsion from symbolism.
Hard-headed men want facts and not symbols. A clear theoretic intellect,
with its generous enthusiasm for the exact truth at all costs and
hazards, pushes aside symbols as being mere make-believes, veiling and
distorting that inner sanctuary of simple truth which reason claims as
its own. The ironic critics of the follies of humanity have performed
notable service in clearing away the lumber of useless ceremony
symbolizing the degrading fancies of a savage past. The repulsion from
symbolism stands out as a well-marked element in the cultural history of
civilized people. There can be no reasonable doubt but that this
continuous criticism has performed a necessary service in the promotion
of a wholesome civilization, both on the side of the practical
efficiency of organized society, and on the side of a robust direction
of thought.
No account of the uses of symbolism is complete without this recognition
that the symbolic elements in life have a tendency to run wild, like the
vegetation in a tropical forest. The life of humanity can easily be
overwhelmed by its symbolic accessories. A continuous process of
pruning, and of adaptation to a future ever requiring new forms of
expression, is a necessary function in every society. The successful
adaptation of old symbols to changes of social structure is the final
mark of wisdom in sociological statesmanship. Also an occasional
revolution in symbolism is required.
There is, however, a Latin proverb upon which, in our youth, some of us
have been set to write themes. In English it reads thus:—Nature,
expelled with a pitchfork, ever returns. This proverb is exemplified by
the history of symbolism. However you may endeavour to expel it, it ever
returns. Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is
inherent in the very texture of human life. Language itself is a
symbolism. And, as another example, however you reduce the functions of
your government to their utmost simplicity, yet symbolism remains. It
may be a healthier, manlier ceremonial, suggesting finer notions. But
still it is symbolism. You abolish the etiquette of a royal court, with
its suggestion of personal subordination, but at official receptions you
ceremonially shake the hand of the Governor of your State. Just as the
feudal doctrine of a subordination of classes, reaching up to the
ultimate overlord, requires its symbolism; so does the doctrine of human
equality obtain its symbolism. Mankind, it seems, has to find a symbol
in order to express itself. Indeed ‘expression’ is ‘symbolism.’
When the public ceremonial of the State has been reduced to the barest
simplicity, private clubs and associations at once commence to
reconstitute symbolic actions. It seems as though mankind must always be
masquerading. This imperative impulse suggests that the notion of an
idle masquerade is the wrong way of thought about the symbolic elements
in life. The function of these elements is to be definite, manageable,
reproducible, and also to be charged with their own emotional
efficacity: symbolic transference invests their correlative meanings
with some or all of these attributes of the symbols, and thereby lifts
the meanings into an intensity of definite effectiveness—as elements in
knowledge, emotion, and purpose,—an effectiveness which the meanings
may, or may not, deserve on their own account. The object of symbolism
is the enhancement of the importance of what is symbolized.
In a discussion of instances of symbolism, our first difficulty is to
discover exactly what is being symbolized. The symbols are specific
enough, but it is often extremely difficult to analyse what lies beyond
them, even though there is evidently some strong appeal beyond the mere
ceremonial acts.
It seems probable that in any ceremonial which has lasted through many
epochs, the symbolic interpretation, so far as we can obtain it, varies
much more rapidly than does the actual ceremonial. Also in its flux a
symbol will have different meanings for different people. At any epoch
some people have the dominant mentality of the past, some of the
present, others of the future, and others of the many problematic
futures which will never dawn. For these various groups an old symbolism
will have different shades of vague meaning.
In order to appreciate the necessary function of symbolism in the life
of any society of human beings we must form some estimate of the binding
and disruptive forces at work. There are many varieties of human
society, each requiring its own particular investigation so far as
details are concerned. We will fix attention on nations, occupying
definite countries. Thus geographical unity is at once presupposed.
Communities with geographical unity constitute the primary type of
communities which we find in the world. Indeed the lower we go in the
scale of being, the more necessary is geographical unity for that close
interaction of individuals which constitutes society. Societies of the
higher animals, of insects, of molecules, all possess geographical
unity. A rock is nothing else than a society of molecules, indulging in
every species of activity open to molecules. I draw attention to this
lowly form of society in order to dispel the notion that social life is
a peculiarity of the higher organisms. The contrary is the case. So far
as survival value is concerned, a piece of rock, with its past history
of some eight hundred millions of years, far outstrips the short span
attained by any nation. The emergence of life is better conceived as a
bid for freedom on the part of organisms, a bid for a certain
independence of individuality with self-interests and activities not to
be construed purely in terms of environmental obligations. The immediate
effect of this emergence of sensitive individuality has been to reduce
the term of life for societies from hundreds of millions of years to
hundreds of years, or even to scores of years.
The emergence of living beings cannot be ascribed to the superior
survival value either of the individuals, or of their societies.
National life has to face the disruptive elements introduced by these
extreme claims for individual idiosyncrasies. We require both the
advantages of social preservation, and the contrary stimulus of the
heterogeneity derived from freedom. The society is to run smoothly
amidst the divergencies of its individuals. There is a revolt from the
mere causal obligations laid upon individuals by the social character of
the environment. This revolt first takes the form of blind emotional
impulse; and later, in civilized societies, these impulses are
criticized and deflected by reason. In any case, there are individual
springs of action which escape from the obligations of social
conformity. In order to replace this decay of secure instinctive
response, various intricate forms of symbolic expression of the various
purposes of social life have been introduced. The response to the symbol
is almost automatic but not quite; the reference to the meaning is
there, either for additional emotional support, or for criticism. But
the reference is not so clear as to be imperative. The imperative
instinctive conformation to the influence of the environment has been
modified. Something has replaced it, which by its superficial character
invites criticism, and by its habitual use generally escapes it. Such
symbolism makes connected thought possible by expressing it, while at
the same time it automatically directs action. In the place of the force
of instinct which suppresses individuality, society has gained the
efficacy of symbols, at once preservative of the commonweal and of the
individual standpoint.
Among the particular kinds of symbolism which serve this purpose, we
must place first Language. I do not mean language in its function of a
bare indication of abstract ideas, or of particular actual things, but
language clothed with its complete influence for the nation in question.
In addition to its bare indication of meaning, words and phrases carry
with them an enveloping suggestiveness and an emotional efficacy. This
function of language depends on the way it has been used, on the
proportionate familiarity of particular phrases, and on the emotional
history associated with their meanings and thence derivatively
transferred to the phrases themselves. If two nations speak the same
language, this emotional efficacy of words and phrases will in general
differ for the two. What is familiar for one nation will be strange for
the other nation; what is charged with intimate associations for the one
is comparatively empty for the other. For example, if the two nations
are somewhat widely sundered, with a different fauna and flora, the
nature-poetry of one nation will lack its complete directness of appeal
to the other nation—compare Walt Whitman’s phrase,
‘The wide unconscious scenery of my land’
for an American, with Shakespeare’s
‘... this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,’
for an Englishman. Of course anyone, American or English, with the
slightest sense for history and kinship, or with the slightest
sympathetic imagination, can penetrate to the feelings conveyed by both
phrases. But the direct first-hand intuition, derived from earliest
childhood memories, is for the one nation that of continental width, and
for the other nation that of the little island world. Now the love of
the sheer geographical aspects of one’s country, of its hills, its
mountains, and its plains, of its trees, its flowers, its birds, and its
whole nature-life, is no small element in that binding force which makes
a nation. It is the function of language, working through literature and
through the habitual phrases of early life, to foster this diffused
feeling of the common possession of a treasure infinitely precious.
I must not be misunderstood to mean that this example has any unique
importance. It is only one example of what can be illustrated in a
hundred ways. Also language is not the only symbolism effective for this
purpose. But in an especial manner, language binds a nation together by
the common emotions which it elicits, and is yet the instrument whereby
freedom of thought and of individual criticism finds its expression.
My main thesis is that a social system is kept together by the blind
force of instinctive actions, and of instinctive emotions clustered
around habits and prejudices. It is therefore not true that any advance
in the scale of culture inevitably tends to the preservation of society.
On the whole, the contrary is more often the case, and any survey of
nature confirms this conclusion. A new element in life renders in many
ways the operation of the old instincts unsuitable. But unexpressed
instincts are unanalysed and blindly felt. Disruptive forces, introduced
by a higher level of existence, are then warring in the dark against an
invisible enemy. There is no foothold for the intervention of ‘rational
consideration’—to use Henry Osborn Taylor’s admirable phrase. The
symbolic expression of instinctive forces drags them out into the open:
it differentiates them and delineates them. There is then opportunity
for reason to effect, with comparative speed, what otherwise must be
left to the slow operation of the centuries amid ruin and
reconstruction. Mankind misses its opportunities, and its failures are a
fair target for ironic criticism. But the fact that reason too often
fails does not give fair ground for the hysterical conclusion that it
never succeeds. Reason can be compared to the force of gravitation, the
weakest of all natural forces, but in the end the creator of suns and of
stellar systems:—those great societies of the Universe. Symbolic
expression first preserves society by adding emotion to instinct, and
secondly it affords a foothold for reason by its delineation of the
particular instinct which it expresses. This doctrine of the disruptive
tendency due to novelties, even those involving a rise to finer levels,
is illustrated by the effect of Christianity on the stability of the
Roman Empire. It is also illustrated by the three revolutions which
secured liberty and equality for the world—namely the English
revolutionary period of the seventeenth century, the American
Revolution, and the French Revolution. England barely escaped a
disruption of its social system; America was never in any such danger;
France, where the entrance of novelty was most intense, did for a time
experience this collapse. Edmund Burke, the Whig statesman of the
eighteenth century, was the philosopher who was the approving prophet of
the two earlier revolutions, and the denunciatory prophet of the French
Revolution. A man of genius and a statesman, who has immediately
observed two revolutions, and has meditated deeply on a third, deserves
to be heard when he speaks on the forces which bind and disrupt
societies. Unfortunately statesmen are swayed by the passions of the
moment, and Burke shared this defect to the full, so as to be carried
away by the reactionary passions aroused by the French Revolution. Thus
the wisdom of his general conception of social forces is smothered by
the wild unbalanced conclusions which he drew from them: his greatness
is best shown by his attitude towards the American Revolution. His more
general reflections are contained first, in his youthful work _A
Vindication of Natural Society_, and secondly, in his _Reflections on
the French Revolution_. The earlier work was meant ironically; but, as
is often the case with genius, he prophesied unknowingly. This essay is
practically written round the thesis that advances in the art of
civilization are apt to be destructive of the social system. Burke
conceived this conclusion to be a _reductio ad absurdum_. But it is the
truth. The second work—a work which in its immediate effect was perhaps
the most harmful ever written—directs attention to the importance of
‘prejudice’ as a binding social force. There again I hold that he was
right in his premises and wrong in his conclusions.
Burke surveys the standing miracle of the existence of an organised
society, culminating in the smooth unified action of the state. Such a
society may consist of millions of individuals, each with its individual
character, its individual aims, and its individual selfishness. He asks
what is the force which leads this throng of separate units to coöperate
in the maintenance of an organised state, in which each individual has
his part to play—political, economic, and Æsthetic. He contrasts the
complexity of the functionings of a civilised society with the sheer
diversities of its individual citizens considered as a mere group or
crowd. His answer to the riddle is that the magnetic force is
‘prejudice,’ or in other words, ‘use and wont.’ Here he anticipates the
whole modern theory of ‘herd psychology,’ and at the same time deserts
the fundamental doctrine of the Whig party, as formed in the seventeenth
century and sanctioned by Locke. This conventional Whig doctrine was
that the state derived its origin from an ‘original contract’ whereby
the mere crowd voluntarily organised itself into a society. Such a
doctrine seeks the origin of the state in a baseless historical fiction.
Burke was well ahead of his time in drawing attention to the importance
of precedence as a political force. Unfortunately, in the excitement of
the moment, Burke construed the importance of precedence as implying the
negation of progressive reform.
Now, when we examine how a society bends its individual members to
function in conformity with its needs, we discover that one important
operative agency is our vast system of inherited symbolism. There is an
intricate expressed symbolism of language and of act, which is spread
throughout the community, and which evokes fluctuating apprehension of
the basis of common purposes. The particular direction of individual
action is directly correlated to the particular sharply defined symbols
presented to him at the moment. The response of action to symbol may be
so direct as to cut out any effective reference to the ultimate thing
symbolized. This elimination of meaning is termed reflex action.
Sometimes there does intervene some effective reference to the meaning
of the symbol. But this meaning is not recalled with the particularity
and definiteness which would yield any rational enlightenment as to the
specific action required to secure the final end. The meaning is vague
but insistent. Its insistence plays the part of hypnotizing the
individual to complete the specific action associated with the symbol.
In the whole transaction, the elements which are clear-cut and definite
are the specific symbols and the actions which should issue from the
symbols. But in themselves the symbols are barren facts whose direct
associative force would be insufficient to procure automatic conformity.
There is not sufficient repetition, or sufficient similarity of diverse
occasions, to secure mere automatic obedience. But in fact the symbol
evokes loyalties to vaguely conceived notions, fundamental for our
spiritual natures. The result is that our natures are stirred to suspend
all antagonistic impulses, so that the symbol procures its required
response in action. Thus the social symbolism has a double meaning. It
means pragmatically the direction of individuals to specific actions;
and it also means theoretically the vague ultimate reasons with their
emotional accompaniments, whereby the symbols acquire their power to
organize the miscellaneous crowd into a smoothly running community.
The contrast between a state and an army illustrates this principle. A
state deals with a greater complexity of situation than does its army.
In this sense it is a looser organization, and in regard to the greater
part of its population the communal symbolism cannot rely for its
effectiveness on the frequent recurrence of almost identical situations.
But a disciplined regiment is trained to act as a unit in a definite set
of situations. The bulk of human life escapes from the reach of this
military discipline. The regiment is drilled for one species of job. The
result is that there is more reliance on automatism, and less reliance
on the appeal to ultimate reasons. The trained soldier acts
automatically on receiving the word of command. He responds to the sound
and cuts out the idea; this is reflex action. But the appeal to the
deeper side is still important in an army; although it is provided for
in another set of symbols, such as the flag, and the memorials of the
honourable service of the regiment, and other symbolic appeals to
patriotism. Thus in an army there is one set of symbols to produce
automatic obedience in a limited set of circumstances, and there is
another set of symbols to produce a general sense of the importance of
the duties performed. This second set prevents random reflection from
sapping automatic response to the former set.
For the greater number of citizens of a state there is in practice no
reliable automatic obedience to any symbol such as the word of command
for soldiers, except in a few instances such as the response to the
signals of the traffic police. Thus the state depends in a very
particular way upon the prevalence of symbols which combine direction to
some well-known course of action with some deeper reference to the
purpose of the state. The self-organisation of society depends on
commonly diffused symbols evoking commonly diffused ideas, and at the
same time indicating commonly understood actions. Usual forms of verbal
expression are the most important example of such symbolism. Also the
heroic aspect of the history of the country is the symbol for its
immediate worth.
When a revolution has sufficiently destroyed this common symbolism
leading to common actions for usual purposes, society can only save
itself from dissolution by means of a reign of terror. Those revolutions
which escape a reign of terror have left intact the fundamental
efficient symbolism of society. For example, the English revolutions of
the seventeenth century and the American revolution of the eighteenth
century left the ordinary life of their respective communities nearly
unchanged. When George Washington had replaced George III, and Congress
had replaced the English Parliament, Americans were still carrying on a
well-understood system so far as the general structure of their social
life was concerned. Life in Virginia must have assumed no very different
aspect from that which it had exhibited before the revolution. In
Burke’s phraseology, the prejudices on which Virginian society depended
were unbroken. The ordinary signs still beckoned people to their
ordinary actions, and suggested the ordinary common-sense justification.
One difficulty of explaining my meaning is that the intimate effective
symbolism consists of the various types of expression which permeate
society and evoke a sense of common purpose. No one detail is of much
importance. The whole range of symbolic expression is required. A
national hero, such as George Washington or Jefferson, is a symbol of
the common purpose which animates American life. This symbolic function
of great men is one of the difficulties in obtaining a balanced
historical judgment. There is the hysteria of depreciation, and there is
the opposite hysteria which dehumanises in order to exalt. It is very
difficult to exhibit the greatness without losing the human being. Yet
we know that at least _we_ are human beings; and half the inspiration of
our heroes is lost when we forget that _they_ were human beings.
I mention great Americans, because I am speaking in America. But exactly
the same truth holds for the great men of all countries and ages.
The doctrine of symbolism developed in these lectures enables us to
distinguish between pure instinctive action, reflex action, and
symbolically conditioned action. Pure instinctive action is that
functioning of an organism which is wholly analysable in terms of those
conditions laid upon its development by the settled facts of its
external environment, conditions describable without any reference to
its perceptive mode of presentational immediacy. This pure instinct is
the response of an organism to pure causal efficacy.
According to this definition, pure instinct is the most primitive type
of response which is yielded by organisms to the stimulus of their
environment. All physical response on the part of inorganic matter to
its environment is thus properly to be termed instinct. In the case of
organic matter, its primary difference from inorganic nature is its
greater delicacy of internal mutual adjustment of minute parts and, in
some cases, its emotional enhancement. Thus instinct, or this immediate
adjustment to immediate environment, becomes more prominent in its
function of directing action for the purposes of the living organism.
The world is a community of organisms; these organisms in the mass
determine the environmental influence on any one of them; there can only
be a persistent community of persistent organisms when the environmental
influence in the shape of instinct is favourable to the survival of the
individuals. Thus the community as an environment is responsible for the
survival of the separate individuals which compose it; and these
separate individuals are responsible for their contributions to the
environment. Electrons and molecules survive because they satisfy this
primary law for a stable order of nature in connection with given
societies of organisms.
Reflex action is a relapse towards a more complex type of instinct on
the part of organisms which enjoy, or have enjoyed, symbolically
conditioned action. Thus its discussion must be postponed. Symbolically
conditioned action arises in the higher organisms which enjoy the
perceptive mode of presentational immediacy, that is to say,
sense-presentation of the contemporary world. This sense-presentation
symbolically promotes an analysis of the massive perception of causal
efficacy. The causal efficacy is thereby perceived as analysed into
components with the locations in space primarily belonging to the
sense-presentations. In the case of perceived organisms external to the
human body, the spatial discrimination involved in the human perception
of their pure causal efficacy is so feeble, that practically there is no
check on this symbolic transference, apart from the indirect check of
pragmatic consequences,—in other words, either survival-value, or
self-satisfaction, logical and Æsthetic.
Symbolically conditioned action is action which is thus conditioned by
the analysis of the perceptive mode of causal efficacy effected by
symbolic transference from the perceptive mode of presentational
immediacy. This analysis may be right or wrong, according as it does, or
does not, conform to the actual distribution of the efficacious bodies.
In so far as it is sufficiently correct under normal circumstances, it
enables an organism to conform its actions to long-ranged analysis of
the particular circumstances of its environment. So far as this type of
action prevails, pure instinct is superseded. This type of action is
greatly promoted by thought, which uses the symbols as referent to their
meanings. There is no sense in which pure instinct can be wrong. But
symbolically conditioned action can be wrong, in the sense that it may
arise from a false symbolic analysis of causal efficacy.
Reflex action is that organic functioning which is wholly dependent on
sense-presentation, unaccompanied by any analysis of causal efficacy via
symbolic reference. The conscious analysis of perception is primarily
concerned with the analysis of the symbolic relationship between the two
perceptive modes. Thus reflex action is hindered by thought, which
inevitably promotes the prominence of symbolic reference.
Reflex action arises when by the operation of symbolism the organism has
acquired the habit of action in response to immediate sense-perception,
and has discarded the symbolic enhancement of causal efficacy. It thus
represents the relapse from the high-grade activity of symbolic
reference. This relapse is practically inevitable in the absence of
conscious attention. Reflex action cannot in any sense be said to be
wrong, though it may be unfortunate.
Thus the important binding factor in a community of insects probably
falls under the notion of pure instinct, as here defined. For each
individual insect is probably such an organism that the causal
conditions which it inherits from the immediate past are adequate to
determine its social actions. But reflex action plays its subordinate
part. For the sense-perceptions of the insects have in certain fields of
action assumed an automatic determination of the insects’ activities.
Still more feebly, symbolically conditioned action intervenes for such
situations when the sense-presentation provides a symbolically defined
specification of the causal situation. But only active thought can save
symbolically conditioned action from quickly relapsing into reflex
action. The most successful examples of community life exist when pure
instinct reigns supreme. These examples occur only in the inorganic
world; among societies of active molecules forming rocks, planets, solar
systems, star clusters.
The more developed type of living communities requires the successful
emergence of sense-perception to delineate successfully causal efficacy
in the external environment; and it also requires its relapse into a
reflex suitable to the community. We thus obtain the more flexible
communities of low-grade minds, or even living cells, which possess some
power of adaptation to the chance details of remote environment.
Finally mankind also uses a more artificial symbolism, obtained chiefly
by concentrating on a certain selection of sense-perceptions, such as
words for example. In this case, there is a chain of derivations of
symbol from symbol whereby finally the local relations, between the
final symbol and the ultimate meaning, are entirely lost. Thus these
derivative symbols, obtained as it were by arbitrary association, are
really the results of reflex action suppressing the intermediate
portions of the chain. We may use the word ‘association’ when there is
this suppression of intermediate links.
This derivative symbolism, employed by mankind, is not in general mere
indication of meaning, in which every common feature shared by symbol
and meaning has been lost. In every effective symbolism there are
certain Æsthetic features shared in common. The meaning acquires emotion
and feeling directly excited by the symbol. This is the whole basis of
the art of literature, namely that emotions and feelings directly
excited by the words should fitly intensify our emotions and feelings
arising from contemplation of the meaning. Further in language there is
a certain vagueness of symbolism. A word has a symbolic association with
its own history, its other meanings, and with its general status in
current literature. Thus a word gathers emotional signification from its
emotional history in the past; and this is transferred symbolically to
its meaning in present use.
The same principle holds for all the more artificial sorts of human
symbolism:—for example, in religious art. Music is particularly adapted
for this symbolic transfer of emotions, by reason of the strong emotions
which it generates on its own account. These strong emotions at once
overpower any sense that its own local relations are of any importance.
The only importance of the local arrangement of an orchestra is to
enable us to hear the music. We do not listen to the music in order to
gain a just appreciation of how the orchestra is situated. When we hear
the hoot of a motor car, exactly the converse situation arises. Our only
interest in the hoot is to determine a definite locality as the seat of
causal efficacy determining the future.
This consideration of the symbolic transference of emotion raises
another question. In the case of sense-perception, we may ask whether
the Æsthetic emotion associated with it is derivative from it or merely
concurrent with it. For example, the sound waves by their causal
efficacy may produce in the body a state of pleasurable Æsthetic
emotion, which is then symbolically transferred to the sense-perception
of the sounds. In the case of music, having regard to the fact that deaf
people do not enjoy music, it seems that the emotion is almost entirely
the product of the musical sounds. But the human body is causally
affected by the ultra-violet rays of the solar spectrum in ways which do
not issue in any sensation of colour. Nevertheless such rays produce a
decided emotional effect. Also even sounds, just below or just above the
limit of audibility, seem to add an emotional tinge to a volume of
audible sound. This whole question of the symbolic transfer of emotion
lies at the base of any theory of the Æsthetics of art. For example, it
gives the reason for the importance of a rigid suppression of irrelevant
detail. For emotions inhibit each other, or intensify each other.
Harmonious emotion means a complex of emotions mutually intensifying;
whereas the irrelevant details supply emotions which, because of their
irrelevance, inhibit the main effect. Each little emotion directly
arising out of some subordinate detail refuses to accept its status as a
detached fact in our consciousness. It insists on its symbolic transfer
to the unity of the main effect.
Thus symbolism, including the symbolic transference by which it is
effected, is merely one exemplification of the fact that a unity of
experience arises out of the confluence of many components. This unity
of experience is complex, so as to be capable of analysis. The
components of experience are not a structureless collection
indiscriminately brought together. Each component by its very nature
stands in a certain potential scheme of relationships to the other
components. It is the transformation of this potentiality into real
unity which constitutes that actual concrete fact which is an act of
experience. But in transformation from potentiality to actual fact
inhibitions, intensifications, directions of attention toward,
directions of attention away from, emotional outcomes, purposes, and
other elements of experience may arise. Such elements are also true
components of the act of experience; but they are not necessarily
determined by the primitive phases of experience from which the final
product arises. An act of experience is what a complex organism comes
to, in its character of being one thing. Also its various parts, its
molecules, and its living cells, as they pass on to new occasions of
their existence, take a new colour from the fact that in their immediate
past they have been contributory elements to this dominant unity of
experience, which in its turn reacts upon them.
Thus mankind by means of its elaborate system of symbolic transference
can achieve miracles of sensitiveness to a distant environment, and to a
problematic future. But it pays the penalty, by reason of the dangerous
fact that each symbolic transference may involve an arbitrary imputation
of unsuitable characters. It is not true, that the mere workings of
nature in any particular organism are in all respects favorable either
to the existence of that organism, or to its happiness, or to the
progress of the society in which the organism finds itself. The
melancholy experience of men makes this warning a platitude. No
elaborate community of elaborate organisms could exist unless its
systems of symbolism were in general successful. Codes, rules of
behaviour, canons of art, are attempts to impose systematic action which
on the whole will promote favourable symbolic interconnections. As a
community changes, all such rules and canons require revision in the
light of reason. The object to be obtained has two aspects; one is the
subordination of the community to the individuals composing it, and the
other is the subordination of the individuals to the community. Free men
obey the rules which they themselves have made. Such rules will be found
in general to impose on society behaviour in reference to a symbolism
which is taken to refer to the ultimate purposes for which the society
exists.
It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major
advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies
in which they occur:—like unto an arrow in the hand of a child. The art
of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code;
and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves
those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies
which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of
revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow
atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
referenced.
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