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Title: Spencer's Philosophy of Science
The Herbert Spencer Lecture Delivered at the Museum 7 November, 1913
Author: C. Lloyd Morgan
Release Date: September 23, 2011 [eBook #37513]
Language: English
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SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
The Herbert Spencer Lecture
Delivered at the Museum
7 November, 1913
by
C. LLOYD MORGAN, F.R.S.
Price Two Shillings net
Oxford
At the Clarendon Press
MCMXIII
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow New York
Toronto Melbourne Bombay
Humphrey Milford M.A.
Publisher to the University
SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Towards the close of 1870, while I was still in my teens, my youthful
enthusiasm was fired by reading Tyndall's Discourse on _The Scientific
Use of the Imagination_. The vision of the conquest of nature by
physical science--a vision which had but lately begun to open up to my
wondering gaze--was rendered clearer and more extensive. Of the theory
of evolution I knew but little; but I none the less felt assured that it
had come to stay and to prevail. Was it not accepted by all of _us_--the
enlightened and emancipated men of science whose ranks I had joined as a
raw recruit? Believing that I was independently breaking free of all
authority, to the authority that appealed to my fancy, and to a new
loyalty, I was a willing slave. And here in one glowing sentence the
inner core of evolution lay revealed.
'Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that
not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular and animal life,
not alone the nobler forms of the horse and the lion, not alone
the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that
the human mind itself--emotion, intellect and all their
phenomena--were once latent in a fiery cloud.'[1]
With sparkling eyes I quoted these brave words to a friend of my
father's, whose comments were often as caustic as his sympathy in my
interests was kindly. With a grave smile he asked whether the notion was
not perhaps stripped too naked to preserve the decencies of modest
thought; he inquired whether I had not learnt from _Sartor Resartus_
that the philosophy of nature is a Philosophy of Clothes; and he bade me
devote a little time to quiet and careful consideration of what Tyndall
really meant--meant in terms of the exact science he professed--by the
phrase 'latent in a fiery cloud'. I dimly suspected that the old
gentleman--old in the sense of being my father's contemporary--was
ignorant of those recent developments of modern science with which I had
been acquainted for weeks, nay more for months. Perhaps he had never
even heard of the nebular hypothesis! But I felt that I had done him an
injustice when, next morning, he sent round a volume of the _Westminster
Review_ with a slip of paper indicating an article on 'Progress: its Law
and Cause'.
Such was my introduction to Herbert Spencer, some of whose works I read
with admiration during the next few years.
I have no very distinct recollection of the impression produced on my
mind by the germinal essay of 1857, save that it served to quicken that
craving, which is, I suppose, characteristic of those who have some
natural bent towards philosophy--the imperative craving to seek and, if
it may be, to find the one in the many. In any case Tyndall's suggestive
sentence was here amplified and the underlying law was disclosed.
'Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development
of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of
Government, of Manufacture, of Commerce, of Language, Literature,
Science, Art, the same evolution of the simple into the complex,
through successive differentiations, holds throughout. From the
earliest traceable cosmical changes down to the latest results of
civilisation, we shall find that the transformation of the
homogeneous into the heterogeneous, is that in which Progress
essentially consists.'[2]
Here was just what I wanted--on the one hand the whole wide universe of
existence; and on the other hand a brief formula with which to label its
potted essence. How breathlessly one was led on, with only such breaches
of continuity as separate paragraphs inevitably impose, right away from
the primitive fire-mist to one of Bach's fugues or the critical
doctrines of Mr. Ruskin, guided throughout by the magic of
differentiation. What if the modes of existence, dealt with in
successive sections, were somewhat startlingly diverse! Was not this
itself a supreme example of the evolution of that diversity which the
formula enables us to interpret? For if there were a passage from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, the more heterogeneous the
products--inorganic, organic, and superorganic, as I learnt to call
them--the stronger the evidence for the law. Only by shutting one's eyes
to the light that had been shed on the world by evolution could one fail
to see how simple and yet how inevitable was the whole business.
If then differentiation be the cardinal law of evolution--for the
correlative concept of integration receives no emphasis in this early
essay--does not the universality of the law imply a universal cause?
Just as gravitation was assignable as a _cause_ of each of the groups of
phenomena which Kepler formulated; so might some equally simple
attribute of things be assignable as the cause of each of the groups of
phenomena formulated in terms of differentiation. Now the only obvious
respect in which all kinds of Progress are alike, is, that they are
modes of change; and hence in some characteristic of changes in general,
the desired solution must be found. Thus we are led up to the statement
of the all-pervading principle which determines the all-pervading
process of differentiation. It is this: _Every active force produces
more than one change--every cause produces more than one effect._[3]
In the first part of the Essay many and varied facts are adduced to show
that every kind of progress is from the simple to the complex. The aim
of the second part is to show why this is so: it is 'because each change
is followed by many changes'. From the beginning, the decomposition of
every expended force into several forces has been perpetually producing
a higher complication, and thus Progress is not an accident but a
beneficent necessity. In a brief third part we are bidden to remember
that
'after all that has been said the ultimate mystery remains just as
it was. The explanation of that which is explicable does but bring
out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which
remains behind.... The sincere man of science, content to follow
wherever the evidence leads him becomes by each new enquiry more
profoundly convinced that the Universe is an insoluble problem....
In all directions his investigations bring him face to face with
the unknowable; and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the
unknowable'.[4]
There is I think a growing consensus of opinion that the first of
these three parts, subsequently expanded and illustrated with
astonishing wealth of detail in the volumes of the _Synthetic
Philosophy_, contains the germ of all that is best in the teaching of
Herbert Spencer; and that it was amid phenomena which admitted of
interpretation from the biological, or quasi-biological, point of view
that he found his most congenial sphere of work and the one in which his
method was most effectively employed. The story of evolution is the
story of inter-related changes. In any organic whole there are certain
salient features of the historical sequence.[5] The parts get more
different from each other, and they also get more effectively connected
with each other; the individual whole gets more different from its
environment, and it also preserves and extends its connexion with the
environment; the several individuals get more different from others,
while their connexion with others is retained and new connexions are
established. Nowadays these central ideas may seem familiar enough; but
that is just because Spencer's thought has been so completely
assimilated. And then we must remember that these main principles are
supplemented by a great number of ancillary generalizations, many of
which have been incorporated in the scientific doctrine which is current
to-day. We must bear in mind that of the _Biology_ Charles Darwin
wrote:[6] 'I am astonished at its prodigality of original thought.' Of
the _Psychology_ William James says[7] that of the systematic treatises
it will rank as the most original. These are the opinions of experts. No
discussion of sociology or ethics is complete if it ignores Spencer's
contributions to these subjects. The _Ethics_, says James[8] is a most
vital and original piece of attitude-taking in the world of ideals. It
was his firm and often inflexible 'attitude' which was a source of
strength in Spencer, though it was the strength of rigidity rather than
that of sinewy suppleness. This was part of a certain 'narrowness of
intent and vastness of extent' which characterized his mental vision. He
was so obsessed with the paramount importance of biological
relationships that in his _Sociology_, his _Ethics_, his _Psychology_,
he failed to do justice to, or even to realize the presence of, other
and higher relationships--higher, that is, in the evolutionary scale.
But it was his signal merit to work biological interpretation for all,
and perhaps more than, it was worth. It was on these lines that he was
led to find a clue to those social and political developments, the
discussion of which, in the _Nonconformist_ of 1842, constituted the
first step from the life of an engineer to that other kind of life which
led to the elaboration of the _Synthetic Philosophy_.[9] In his later
years he was saddened to see that many of the social and political
doctrines, for the establishment of which he had striven so strenuously,
were not accepted by a newer generation of thinkers. Still, to have
taken a definite and, for all his detractors may say, an honoured
position in the line of those who make history in the philosophy of life
and mind--that could never be taken away from him.
It will perhaps be said that this emphasis on the philosophy of life
and mind does scant justice to the range and sweep of Spencer's
philosophy as a whole; and no doubt others will contend that the
emphasis should be laid elsewhere; on the mechanical foundations; on
evolution as a universal principle. It will be urged that Spencer
widened to men's view the scope of scientific explanation. He proclaimed
'the gradual growth of all things by natural processes out of natural
antecedents'.[10] Even in the _Nonconformist_ letters 'there is', he
himself says,[11] 'definitely expressed a belief in the universality of
law--law in the realm of mind as in that of matter--law throughout the
life of society as throughout the individual life. So, too, is it with
the correlative idea of universal causation.' And if there be law it
must at bottom be one law. Thus in _First Principles_ Spencer propounded
a sweeping and sonorous formula, which every disciple knows by heart,
embodying the fundamental traits of that unceasing redistribution of
matter and motion which characterizes evolution as contrasted with
dissolution. Was it not this that he himself regarded as his main
contribution to philosophy? Did he not himself provide a summary,
setting forth the sixteen articles of the Spencerian creed; and is not
this summary given a prominent position in the Preface he wrote to
Howard Collins's _Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy_? Do not these
fundamental articles of his faith deal with ubiquitous causes, with the
instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects, with
segregation and equilibration, and with the basal conception of the
persistence of force? There is here, it may be said, no special
reference to the organic and the superorganic. And why? Just because
Spencer's interpretation is all-inclusive; because biology, psychology,
sociology, ethics are, broadly considered, concerned only with incidents
of the later scenes of the great mechanical drama of evolution. Are we
not again and again bidden, now in forecast, now in retrospect, to look
below the surface, and constantly to bear in mind that the aim of
philosophy, as completely unified knowledge, is 'the interpretation of
all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force'?[12] It is true
that the affairs of the mind give pause and seem to present something of
a difficulty. But even here 'specifically stated, the problem is to
interpret mental evolution in terms of the redistribution of matter and
motion'.[13] An adequate explanation of nervous evolution involves an
adequate explanation of the concomitant evolution of mind. It is true
that the antithesis of subject and object is never to be transcended
'while consciousness lasts'.[14] But if all existence, distinguishable
as subjective, is resolvable into units of consciousness, which in their
obverse or objective aspect are oscillations of molecules,[15] what more
is required to round off the explanation of every thing, save the
Unknowable--save the Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are
united? In the end we are baffled by mystery; let us, therefore, make
the best of it and rejoice.
'We can think of Matter only in terms of Mind. We can think of
Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have pushed our explorations
of the first to its uttermost limit we are referred to the second
for a final answer; and when we have got the final answer to the
second we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of
it.'[14]
And so neither answer is final. Finality is only reached when both are
swallowed up, not in victory, but in defeat. Shall we not then glory in
defeat and sing its praises often?
I must leave to some future Herbert Spencer lecturer the discussion of
his doctrine of the Unknowable and the critical consideration of its
place and value in philosophy. I would fain leave it altogether on one
side; but that is impossible. Although the _First Principles_ is divided
into two Parts, dealing respectively with the Unknowable and the
Knowable, we have not by any means done with the former when we turn
from the First Part to the Second. With Spencer we have never done with
the Unknowable, the Unconditioned Reality and the other aliases by which
it goes. His persistence of force is the persistence of Unknowable
Force. In a leading passage, at any rate, it is avowedly 'the
persistence of some Cause which transcends our knowledge and conception.
In asserting it we assert an Unconditioned Reality without beginning or
end'.[16] There must, he holds, be something at the back of the
evolutionary drama which we study--something that is both a principle of
activity and a permanent _nexus_.[17] The pity of it is that we know
not, and can never know, what on earth (or in heaven!) it is. We only
know that it exists, and somehow produces the whole show. Now it would
much conduce to clearness of thought and of statement if we could agree
to eliminate those terribly ambiguous words 'force' and 'cause' when we
are dealing with the fundamental postulate (if such it be) that there
must be something at the back of evolution to make it what it is; and
the word Source seems ready to our hand and might well be given this
special significance. But Spencer uses Agency, Power, Cause, Force, in
this connexion. In how many senses he uses the word 'force' I am not
prepared to say. It is often a synonym for cause; it stands alike for
matter and energy;[18] it is the objective correlate of our subjective
sense of effort.[19] There is a 'correlation and equivalence between
external forces and the mental forces generated by them under the form
of sensations'.[20] And when we pass to human life in society, whatever
in any way facilitates or impedes social, political, or economic change,
is spoken of in terms of force.[21] With an apparent vagueness and
laxity almost unparalleled, force is used in wellnigh every conceivable
sense of this ambiguous word--except, perhaps, that which is now
sanctioned by definition in mathematical physics. I say apparent
vagueness and laxity because, subtly underlying all this varied usage,
is the unifying conception of Source as the ultimate basis of all
enforcement. From this flows all necessity whether in things or thoughts
or any combination of the two. Thus persistence of force is Spencer's
favourite expression for uniform determinism at or near its Source.
Now, as I understand the position, science has nothing whatever to do
with the Source or Sources of phenomena. By a wise self-denying
ordinance it rules all questions of ultimate origin out of court. It
regards them as beyond its special sphere of jurisdiction. It deals with
phenomena in terms of connexion within an orderly scheme, and it does
not profess to explain _why_ the connexions are such as they are found
to be. In any discussion of this or that sequence of events which may
fall under the wide and rather vague heading of evolution, it is just a
consistent story of the events in their total relatedness that science
endeavours to tell. The question: But what evolves the evolved? is for
science (or should I say for those who accept this delimitation of the
province of science?) not so much unanswerable in any terms, as
unanswerable in scientific terms. For the terms in which an answer must
be given are incommensurable with the concepts with which science has
elected to carry on its business as interpreter of nature. To this
question therefore the man of science, speaking for his order, simply
replies: We do not know. Is this, then, Spencer's answer? Far from it.
The man of science here makes, or should make, no positive assertion,
save in respect of the limits of his field of inquiry. If you beg him to
tell you what that which he knows not is, or does, he regards such a
question as meaningless. But Spencer's Unknowable, notwithstanding its
negative prefix, is the Ultimate Reality, and does all that is in any
way done. We may not know _what_ it is; but _that_ it is, is the most
assured of all assured certainties. And when it comes to doing, what can
be more dramatically positive than that which bears a name of negation?
Whatever it may not be, it is the Power that drives all the machinery in
this workshop of a world; it is the Power which lies at the back of such
wit as man has to interpret it, and, in some measure, to utilize its
mechanism.
It seems plain enough that Spencer distinguishes, or seeks to
distinguish, between those knowable effects which we call natural
phenomena and their Unknowable Cause or Source. And this seems to be in
line with the distinction which his critic, M. Bergson, draws between
'the evolved which is a result' and 'evolution itself, which is the act
by which the result is obtained'.[22] An act implies an agent, and the
agency of which the evolved is a manifestation is for M. Bergson Life,
while for Spencer it is that very vigorous agency--the Unknowable. Now
in criticizing Spencer, M. Bergson says:
'The usual device of the Spencerian method consists in
reconstructing evolution with the fragments of the evolved.... It
is not however by dividing the evolved that we shall reach the
principle of that which evolves. It is not by recomposing the
evolved with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which
it is the term.'[23]
But does Spencer ever suggest that we shall thus reach the principle of
that which evolves--by which, if I mistake not, M. Bergson means the
Source of evolution? Does he not urge that we can neither reach it in
this way, nor in any other way? For M. Bergson, as for Spencer, it is
unknowable by the intellect--it can only be known by what M. Bergson
calls intuition. For both thinkers, the intellect provides only a world
of symbols; and Spencer's transfigured realism may be matched by what
Dr. Wildon Carr calls M. Bergson's transformed realism.[24] So long as
we are dealing with the evolved--which is that with which alone science
attempts to deal--Spencer, M. Bergson, and the rest of us are in like
case. We must stumble on intellectually with our symbols as best we may.
'Whether we posit the present structure of mind or the present
subdivision of matter in either case we remain in the evolved: we are
told nothing of what evolves, nothing of evolution.'[25] _Nothing of
what evolves!_ Spencer might exclaim with a groan. Have I then written
all those pages and pages on the Unknowable for nought? Is it not a
fundamental tenet of my philosophy that there must be, and therefore is,
a Source of the evolved--of the phenomenal world which is merely an
expression in terms of intellectual symbolism, of that ultimate Power
which, though its nature may baffle the intellect, is none the less the
most real of all realities?
It would take us too far from the line of Spencer's thought to consider
M. Bergson's doctrine that it is the intellect that portions the world
into lots;[26] that cuts the facts out of the interpenetrating whole of
reality, and renders them artificially distinct within the continuity of
becoming. It suffices to note that on such a presupposition 'the
cardinal error of Spencer is to take experience already allotted as
given, whereas the true problem is to know how the allotment was
worked'.[27] I am not prepared to give--indeed I have been unable to
find--M. Bergson's own solution of the problem. I gather that it was
Life itself that somehow allotted concepts and objects in such
correspondence as should be practically useful though metaphysically
false and illusory. But just how it was done I have still to learn. 'The
original activity was', we are told, 'a simple thing which became
diversified through the very construction of mechanisms such as those of
the brain,'[28] which, as Life's tool, has facilitated the chopping up
of a continuous interpenetrating reality into mince-meat for
intellectual assimilation. Such a conception was foreign to Spencer's
thought. But some of us may find it hard to distinguish M. Bergson's
'original activity' from Spencer's Unknowable, which, so far as one can
make out, somehow produced precisely the same results. As a matter of
fact, M. Bergson seems to put into Life, as Spencer put into the
Unknowable, the potentiality of producing all that actually exists.
For Spencer, as for M. Bergson, we live in a world of change. But
neither is content to accept changes as facts to be linked up within a
scheme of scientific interpretation. Both must seek their Source. Now to
inquire into the Source or Sources of phenomena is characteristic of man
as thinker. And if, in common with those whom I follow, I regard this
quest as beyond the limits of science, I am well aware that such
delimitation of fields of inquiry is by no means universally accepted.
M. Bergson, for example, regards metaphysics as the _Science_[29] which
claims to dispense with symbols, which turns its back on analysis, which
eschews logic, which dispenses with relativity and pierces to the
absolute, which, apparently, uses the intellect only to establish its
utter incompetence in this department of 'science'. Merely saying that
this, whatever else it may be, is not what I, for one, understand by
science--and not, by the way, what M. Bergson in other passages seems to
mean by science[30]--I pass on to Spencer's treatment of the philosophy
of science which, for him, is 'completely unified knowledge', 'the
truths of philosophy bearing the same relation to the highest scientific
truths that each of these bears to lower scientific truths.'
I suppose one of the basal truths in his philosophy of science is for
Spencer the universality of connexion between cause and effect. Now let
us eliminate Source as the Ultimate Cause (so far as that is possible in
Spencer); let us restrict our attention to cause and effect in the realm
of the knowable. When we try to do this we find his statements
concerning them scarcely less puzzling than those that refer to force,
with which cause is so often identified. Thus we are told[31] that
'motion set up in any direction is itself a cause of further motion in
that direction since it is a manifestation of a surplus force in that
direction'; and elsewhere[32] that 'the momentum of a body causes it to
move in a straight line and at a uniform velocity'. A distinction is
drawn between cause and conditions. But both produce effects, and only
on these terms can there be that 'proportionality or equivalence between
cause and effect' on which Spencer insists.[33] There is, however,
scarcely a hint of what constitutes the difference between cause and
conditions, save in so far as he speaks[34] of 'those conspicuous
antecedents which we call the causes' and 'those accompanying
antecedents which we call the conditions'. Many of the details of his
treatment I find most perplexing; but to recite examples would be
wearisome. And then, in the ninth and tenth articles of the Spencerian
creed, cause plays a somewhat different part. For, there, the
instability of the homogeneous and the multiplication of effects are
given as the chief causes which 'necessitate' that redistribution of
matter and motion of which evolution is one phase. Similarly, as I have
noted above, in 'Progress: its Law and Cause', the fundamental attribute
of all modes of change--that every cause produces more than one
effect--is itself spoken of as a cause, and likened to 'gravitation as
the cause of each of the groups of phenomena which Kepler formulated'.
In these cases a generalization is regarded as the cause of the
phenomena from which the generalization is drawn. But sometimes it is
spoken of as the reason for the phenomena.[35] Here again, however, as
throughout his work, reference to Source is close at hand. Hence, in
place of the words cause and force, the word agency[36] sometimes stands
for that which produces effects; or the word factor may be used. Thus we
are told[37] of phenomena continually complicating under the influence
of the same original factors'; and we meet with the argument (contra
Huxley) that states of consciousness are factors, that is, they 'have
the power of working changes in the nervous system and setting up
motions'.[38] Always close at hand, constantly underlying Spencer's
thought, is the notion of power which works changes. In his treatment of
the philosophy of science we are never far from the noumenal Source of
phenomena.
'For that interpretation of things which is alone possible for us
this is all we require to know--that the force or energy
manifested, now in one way now in another, persists or remains
unchanged in amount. But when we ask what this energy is, there is
no answer save that it is the noumenal Cause implied by the
phenomenal effect.'[39]
Was it partly with Spencer in view that Mr. Bertrand Russell recently
urged[40] that the word cause 'is so inextricably bound up with
misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the
philosophical vocabulary desirable'? Professor Mach[41] had previously
expressed the hope 'that the science of the future will discard the use
of cause and effect as formally obscure'. And as long ago as 1870 W. K.
Clifford[42] tried to show in 'what sort of way an exact knowledge of
the facts would supersede an enquiry after the causes of them'; and
urged that the hypothesis of continuity 'involves such an
interdependence of the facts of the universe as forbids us to speak of
one fact or set of facts as the cause of another fact or set of facts'.
Such views may, perhaps, be regarded as extreme; and the word cause is
not likely to be extruded from the vocabulary of current speech, of the
less exact branches of science, or of general discussions of
world-processes. Still, a philosophy of science must take note of this
criticism of the use of a term which is, to say the least of it,
ambiguous. We must at any rate try to get rid of ambiguity. Now we live
in a world of what, in a very broad and inclusive sense, may be called
things; and these things are in varied ways related to each other. (I
must beg leave to assume, without discussion, that the relatedness of
things is no less constitutive of the world with which a philosophy of
science has to deal than the things which are in relation.) And when
things stand in certain kinds of relatedness to each other changes take
place. The trouble is that the kinds of relatedness are so many and the
kinds of change are also so many! Spencer tried to reduce all kinds of
relatedness to one quasi-mechanical type; and he signally failed--or
shall I say that he succeeded only by ignoring all the specific
differences on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by so smudgy an
extension of the meaning of mechanical and physical terms as to make
them do duty in every conceivable connexion?
So long as we can deal with simple types of relatedness, such as that
which we call gravitative, in any given system of things regarded as
isolated, we can express in formulae not only the rate of change within
the system, but also the rate at which the rate of change itself
changes. And these formulae are found to be generally applicable where
like things are in a like field of relatedness. So that Spencer's
persistence of force (at least in one of its many meanings) is replaced
in such cases by sameness of differential equations. And in such cases
we have no need for the word cause. Of course the value of the constants
in any such formula depends upon the nature of the field of relatedness
and of the things therein; and only certain systems, in which the
relations are simple, or are susceptible of simplification, can be dealt
with, at present, in this manner. It is imperative to remember that not
only the rate of change but the kind of change differs in different
relational fields--a fact of which Spencer took too little cognizance,
so bent was he on some sort of unification at all hazards. Revert now to
a field of gravitative relatedness, in which the motion of things is the
kind of change, while the rate of change is expressible in a formula;
may we not say that the co-presence of things in this relationship does
imply certain motions and changes of motion within the system to which
the term gravitative applies? There seems little room for ambiguity if
we call what is thus implied the effect, and if we term those modes of
relatedness which carry this kind of implication, effective. It may,
however, be said that it sounds somewhat strange to speak of relations
as effective. How can mere relatedness as such _do_ anything? What is
implied by the effect is surely, it will be urged, a cause in the full
and rich sense of the word--a cause which produces the effect. For what
is here suggested is nothing more than a generalized statement of the
truth that the relational constitution of the system being what it is,
the changes are what they are! And so we come back to the conception of
an agency which in some way produces the observable change--of a power
which is active behind the phenomenal scene--of force and cause in the
Spencerian sense. But, so far as scientific interpretation is concerned,
this reference to Source--for such it really is--is useless. The
gravitative system can be dealt with scientifically just as well without
it as with it.
What, then, becomes of the scientific conception of energy? Is not
energy that which produces observable change? Is it not active in the
sense required? And can we say that this conception is useless for
scientific interpretation? I suppose most of us, in our student days,
have passed through the phase of regarding energy as an active demon
which plays a notorious part in the physical drama. Spencer loved it
dearly. But some of us, under what we consider wiser guidance, hold that
what we should understand by kinetic energy is nothing of this sort. It
is a constant ratio of variables, conveniently expressed as 1/2_mv_^{2}.
That, however, it may be said, is absurd. Energy is not merely a ratio
or a formula; it is something much more real; perhaps the most real of
all the realities the being of which has been disclosed by physical
science. Granted in a sense, and a very true sense. But what is this
reality? It is the reality of the changes themselves in those fields of
relatedness to which the formula has reference. There is nothing, I
conceive, in the modern treatment of energy that affords any scientific
justification of the Spencerian view[43] that energy is an agent through
the activity of which the constant ratio of variables is maintained in
the physical world.
I feel sure that it will still be said that change must inevitably
imply that which produces change, and that, even if energy be only a
ratio of variables within a changing field, there is still the
implication of Force as the real Cause of which the change itself,
however formulated, is the effect. No doubt this is one of the meanings
which the ambiguous words force and cause may carry. It is to remove
this ambiguity that I have suggested that the word Source should be
substituted for cause in this sense. And what about force? In one of its
meanings it now generally stands for a measure of change. For those who
accept Source as a scientific concept it may well stand for the measure
or degree of its activity gauged by the phenomenal effect; for those who
do not accept it, the measure or degree of the change itself[44]--to be
dealt with in mechanics in terms of mass and acceleration. This leaves
outstanding, however, the use of the word force in the phrase--the
forces of nature--gravitative force, cohesive force, electromotive
force, and so on. It was, I take it, with this usage in view that
Spencer spoke of vital, mental, and social forces. Now the reference in
each of these cases is to some specific mode of relatedness among the
things concerned. We need to name it in some way; and this is the way
that is, rather unfortunately, sanctioned by custom and long usage. When
we say that a thing is in a field of electromotive force we mean (do we
not?) that the relatedness is of that particular kind named
electromotive, and not of another kind. When Spencer spoke of social
forces he had in view changes which take place within a field of social
relationships. We do not really need the word force in this sense, since
the term relatedness would suffice, and has no misleading associations.
But there it is: our business should be to understand clearly what it
means. It does not, or should not, I think, mean more, in this
connexion, than a particular kind of relatedness in virtue of which an
observable kind of change occurs.
We may now pass to cause and conditions. When Spencer distinguishes
between those conspicuous antecedents which we call the causes and those
accompanying antecedents which we call the conditions, he invites the
question: What, then, is the essential difference between them? If the
accompanying antecedents are distinguished as inconspicuous, we surely
need some criterion of the distinction. Furthermore, inconspicuous
conditions are, in science, every whit as important as those which are
conspicuous. Now we all know that Mill regarded the cause as 'the sum
total of the conditions positive and negative taken together.'[45] But
he expressly distinguishes between _events_ and _states_.[46]
Discussing, for example, the case of a man who eats of a particular dish
and dies in consequence, he says:
'The various conditions, except the single one of eating the food,
were not events but states possessing more or less of permanency,
and might therefore have preceded the effect by an indefinite
length of duration, for want of that event which was requisite to
complete the required concurrence of conditions.'
Again he says:
'When sulphur, charcoal, and nitre are put together in certain
proportions and in a certain manner, the effect is, not an
explosion, but that the mixture acquires a property by which in
given circumstances it will explode. The ingredients of the
gunpowder have been brought into a state of preparedness for
exploding as soon as the other conditions of an explosion shall
have occurred.'
And he tells us that physiological processes 'often have for the chief
part of their operation to predispose the constitution to some mode of
action'.
This distinction may profitably be carried further and emphasized in
our terminology. Take any thing, or any integrated group of things,
regarded as that higher order of thing which we call a self-contained
system. Process occurs therein, and process involves change. In so far
as the system is self-contained its changes and states are inherent in
its constitution. We need a term by which to designate that which is
thus inherent and constitutional. The term _ground_ might be reserved
for this purpose. The word ground has its natural home in logic. It is
here extended (if it be an extension) to that to which the logic has
reference in the existing world. One is here following Spencer, who
claims[47] that 'Logic is a science pertaining to objective existence'.
On these terms the constitution of any system is the ground of the
properties, states, and happenings in that system regarded as isolated.
But the changes or properties will be also in relation to surrounding
things or systems. _These_ changes, or modifications of change, in
relation to external things or events, may properly be said to be
conditioned; and we may well restrict the term conditions to influences
_outside_ the constitution as ground. Of course, if we accept this
usage, we must not speak, with Mill, of the constitution of any system
as the condition of its inherent changes or properties. That is why we
need some such word and concept as ground. Now we may fix our attention
on any constituent part of some natural system and make that part the
centre of our interest. That part may be changing in virtue of its
constitution; and the rest of the system, regarded as external to this
selected part, must therefore be regarded as conditioning. It is a
matter of convenience for purposes of scientific interpretation whether
we select a larger or a smaller system-group and discuss its
constitutional character. Thus we may think of the constitution of the
solar system, or of that of the sun's corona; of the constitution of an
organism or of that of one of its cells; of the constitution of a
complex molecule or of that of an atom therein. We have here reached, or
nearly reached, the limiting case in one direction--that of restricting
our field of inquiry. The limiting case in the other direction is, I
suppose, the universe. But could we so expand our thought as to embrace,
if that were possible, the whole universe, then there are no conditions;
for _ex hypothesi_ there is nothing for science outside the universe. We
have reached the limiting concept. Hence, for science, the constitution
of nature is the ultimate ground of all that is or happens.
Let us now see how we stand. Consider the following statements:
1. The Unknowable is the cause of all the phenomena we observe.
2. The constitution of gunpowder is the cause of its explosiveness.[48]
3. The fall of a spark was the cause of the actual explosion of the
powder.[49]
Or these:
1. Life is the cause of all vital manifestations.
2. The inherited nature of a hen's egg is the cause of its producing a
chick and not a duckling.
3. The cause of the development of the chick embryo is the warmth
supplied by the incubating mother.[50]
In each case the reference under (1) is to a transcendent cause which
produces the phenomena under consideration. I suggest that the word
Source should here be used instead of cause. In each case the reference
under (2) is to the nature or constitution of that within which some
process occurs. I suggest that the word ground should here be used
instead of cause. In each case the reference under (3) is to some
external influence. I suggest that the word condition should here be
used instead of cause. We thus eliminate the word cause altogether. But
since, in nine cases out of ten, the conditions, or some salient
condition, is what is meant by cause in popular speech, and in the less
exact sciences, the word cause may perhaps be there retained with this
particular meaning. These are of course merely suggestions towards the
avoidance of puzzling ambiguity. One could wish that Spencer could have
thought out some such distinctions to help his sorely perplexed readers.
One could wish, too, that he had devoted his great powers of thought to
a searching discussion of the different types of relatedness which are
found in nature, and to a fuller consideration of a synthetic scheme of
their inter-relatedness. It is imperative that our thought of relations
should have a concrete backing. 'Every act of knowing', says Spencer,
'is the formation of a relation in consciousness answering to a relation
in the environment.' But the knowledge-relations are of so very special
a type; and the relations in the environment are so many and varied.
Much more analysis of natural relations is required than Spencer
provides. I do not mean, of course, that there is any lack of
analysis--and of very penetrating analysis--in the _Psychology_, the
_Biology_, the _Sociology_, and the _Ethics_. I mean that in _First
Principles_, which must be regarded as his general survey of the
philosophy of science, there is no searching analysis of the salient
types of relationship which enter into the texture of this very complex
world. Such omnibus words as differentiation, integration, segregation,
do duty in various connexions with convenient elasticity of meaning to
suit the occasion. But apart from qualifying adjectives,[51] such as
astronomic, geologic, and so on up to artistic and literary, there is
too little attempt at either a distinguishing of the types of
relatedness or at a relationing of the relations so distinguished. One
just jumps from one to another after a break in the text, and finds
oneself in a wholly new field of inquiry. Little but the omnibus
terminology remains the same. Nor does the _Essay on the Classification
of the Sciences_, with all its tabulation, furnish what is really
required. What one seeks to know is how those specific kinds of
relatedness which characterize the successive phases of evolutionary
progress, inorganic, organic, and superorganic, differ from one another
and how they are connected. This one does not find. The impression one
gets, here and elsewhere, is that all forms of relatedness must somehow,
by the omission of all other specific characters, be reduced to the
mechanical type. This, no doubt, is unification of a sort. But is it the
sort of unification with which a philosophy of science should rest
content?
It may be said that unification can only be reached by digging down to
some ubiquitous type of relation which is common to all processes
throughout the universe at any stage of evolution. But what, on these
terms, becomes of evolution itself as a problem to be solved? Surely any
solution of that problem must render an account of just those specific
modes of relatedness which have been ignored in digging down to the
foundations. Surely there must be unification of the superstructure as
well as of the substructure. Here and now is our world, within the
texture of which things stand to each other in such varied relations,
though they may be reducible to a few main types. There, in the faraway
part, was the primitive fire-mist, dear to Spencer's imagination, in
which the modes of relationship were so few and so simple, and all
seemingly of one main type. How do we get in scientific interpretation
from the one to the other? Will it suffice to breathe over the scene the
magic words differentiation and integration? Spencer appears to think
so. Of course he did exceptionally fine work in elucidating the modes of
differentiation and integration within certain relational fields--though
he sometimes uses the latter word for mere shrinkage in size.[52] But
what one asks, and asks of him in vain, is just how, within a connected
scheme, the several relational fields in the domain of nature are
themselves related, and how they were themselves differentiated. How,
for instance, did the specific relationships exhibited in the fabric of
crystals arise out of the primitive fire-mist relations? At some stage
of evolution this specific form of relatedness came into being, whereas
before that stage was reached it was not in being. No doubt we may say
that the properties of the pre-existing molecules were such that these
molecules could in due course become thus related, and enter into the
latticed architecture of the crystal. They already possessed the
potentiality of so doing. And if we have resort to potentialities, all
subsequently developed types and modes of relatedness were potentially
in existence _ab initio_--they were, as Tyndall said, 'once latent in a
fiery cloud.' But it is difficult to see how the specific modes of
relatedness which obtain within the crystal, can be said to exist prior
to the existence of the crystal within which they so obtain.
Preserving the spirit of Spencer's teaching we must regard all modes
of relatedness which are disclosed by scientific research as part and
parcel of the constitution of nature, from whatever Source, knowable or
unknowable, that constitution be derived. Of these modes there are many;
indeed, if we deal with all concrete cases, their number is legion. For
purposes of illustration, however, we may reduce them, rather
drastically, to three main types. There are relations of the
physico-chemical type,[53] which we may provisionally follow Spencer in
regarding as ubiquitous; there are those of the vital type, which are
restricted to living organisms; there are those of the cognitive type,
which seem to be much more narrowly restricted. How we deal with these
is of crucial importance. Denoting them by the letters A, B, C we find
that there are progressively ascending modes of relatedness within any
given type. There is evolution within each type. Within the
physico-chemical type A, for example, atoms, molecules, and synthetic
groups of molecules follow in logical order of evolution. Now the
successive products, in which this physico-chemical type of relatedness
obtains, have certain _new and distinctive properties_ which are not
merely the algebraic sum of the properties of the component things prior
to synthesis. We may speak of them as constitutive of the products in a
higher stage of relatedness, thus distinguishing constitutive from
additive properties.[54] Similarly when B, the vital relations, are
evolved, the living products, in which these specific relations obtain,
have new constitutive properties, on the importance of which vitalists
are right in insisting, though I emphatically dissent from some of the
conclusions they draw from their presence. For if, beyond the
physico-chemical, a special agency be invoked to account for the
presence of new constitutive properties, then, in the name of logical
consistency, let us invoke special agencies to account for the
constitutive properties within the physico-chemical--for radio-active
properties for example. If a Source of phenomena be postulated, why not
postulate One Source of all phenomena from the very meanest to the very
highest? There remains the case of C--the synthetic whole in which
cognitive relatedness obtains. This is unquestionably more difficult of
scientific interpretation. But I believe that like statements may be
made in this case also. What we have, I conceive, is just a new and
higher type of relatedness with specific characters of its own. But of
this more in the sequel.
It must be remembered that A, B, C stand for _relationships_ and that
the related things are progressively more complex within more complex
relational wholes. Relationships are every whit as real as are the terms
they hold in their grasp. I do not say more real; but I say emphatically
as real. And if this be so, then they ought somehow to be introduced
into our formulae, instead of being taken for granted. We give H{2}O as
the formula for a molecule of water. But that molecule is something very
much more than two atoms of hydrogen + one atom of oxygen. The
absolutely distinctive feature of the molecule is the specific
relatedness of these atoms. This constitutive mode of relatedness is,
however, just taken for granted. And it is scarcely matter for surprise
that, when we find not less specific modes of vital relatedness in the
living organism, they are too apt to be just ignored!
Revert now to the empirical outcome of scientific research, for as such
I regard it, that new constitutive properties emerge when new modes and
types of relatedness occur, and when new products are successively
formed in evolutional synthesis. This, it will be said, involves the
acceptance of what is now commonly called creative evolution. I am far
from denying that, in the universe of discourse where Source is under
consideration, the adjective is justifiable. But, in the universe of
discourse of science, I regard it as inappropriate. What we have is just
plain evolution; and we must simply accept the truth--if, as I conceive,
it be a truth--that in all true evolution there is more in the
conclusion than is given in the premises; which is only a logical way of
saying that there is more in the world to-day than there was in the
primitive fire-mist. Not more 'matter and energy', but more varied
relationships and new properties, quite unpredictable from what one may
perhaps speak of as the fire-mist's point of view. This is no new
doctrine, though it has received of late a new emphasis. Mill, dealing
with causation,[55] speaks of a 'radical and important distinction'.
There are, he says in substance, some cases in which the joint effect of
the several causes is the algebraical sum of their separate effects. He
speaks of this as the 'composition of causes', and illustrates it from
the 'composition of forces' in dynamics. 'But in the other description
of cases', he says, 'the agencies which are brought together cease
entirely, and a totally different set of phenomena arise.' In these
cases 'a concurrence of causes takes place which calls into action new
laws bearing no analogy to any that we can trace in the separate
operation of the causes'. They might, he suggests, be termed
'heteropathic laws'. G. H. Lewes, too,[56] in his _Problems of Life and
Mind_, drew the distinction between properties which are _resultant_ and
those which are _emergent_. These suggestions were open to Spencer's
consideration long before the last edition of _First Principles_
appeared. They were, however, too foreign to the established lines of
his thought to call for serious consideration.
But if new relationships and new properties appear in the course of
evolutionary progress, where is the opportunity for that unification of
scientific knowledge which, according to Spencer, is the goal of
philosophy? To be frank, I am by no means sure that this question can be
answered in a manner that is other than tentative. Perhaps we have not
yet reached the stage at which more than provisional unification is
possible. Such provisional unification as is suggested by a survey of
the facts is that of seemingly uniform correlation in a hierarchy of
logical implication. There are certain modes of relatedness which belong
to the cognitive type. It would seem that whenever these obtain they may
be correlated with other modes of relatedness which are of the vital or
physiological type; and that these, in turn, may be correlated with
those that are physico-chemical. Thus C implies B, and B implies A. The
order cannot be reversed. Physico-chemical relations, _as a class_, do
not imply those that are physiological.[57] The implication is not
symmetrical. Spencer was within sight of this when he spoke[58] of the
abstract-concrete sciences as 'instrumental' with respect to the
concrete sciences, though the latter are not 'instrumental' in the same
sense with respect to the former. But unfortunately he regarded the
'chasm' between the two groups as 'absolute'. And for him the proper
home of properties--of all properties it would appear--is the
abstract-concrete group--mechanics, physics, and chemistry. This
seemingly leaves no place for a specific type of properties connected
with vital relatedness as such. In fact Spencer's method of treatment
reduces all modes of relatedness to the A type, the laws of which are,
for him, the primary 'causes' of all kinds of differentiation and
integration. Hence the laws of biology and psychology can ultimately be
expressed and explained, he thinks, in mechanical or mechanistic terms.
But in the doctrine of implication they are just the laws of B and C
respectively, though laws of A may underlie them in a logical sense. And
as we ascend the evolutionary plane from A to AB and thence to ABC--from
the physico-chemical to the vital and thence to the cognitive--we find
new modes of relatedness, new forms of more complex integration and
synthesis, new properties successively appearing in serial order. This
seems to me simply to express, in outline, the net result of
interpretation based on empirical observation--though much, very much,
requires to be filled in by future research. And the new properties are
not merely additive of preceding properties; they are constitutive, and
characterize the higher evolutionary products as such. Why they are thus
constitutive, science is unable to say. Spencer, of course, calls in the
Unknowable to supply the required nexus.[59] Otherwise, in each case, he
confesses that 'we can learn nothing more than that here is one of the
uniformities in the order of phenomena'.[60] None the less we may be
able some day to establish an ordinal correlation[61] of cognitive
processes with physiological processes, and an ordinal correlation of
these physiological processes with those of the physico-chemical type.
That I conceive to be the ideal of strictly scientific interpretation if
it is to be raised progressively to a level approaching that of the
exact sciences. It certainly is not yet attained. But I see no reason
why we should not regard it as attainable. It will involve the very
difficult determination of many correlation coefficients and
constants--and for some of these our data are, it must be confessed,
both scanty and unreliable.
We must here note a much-discussed departure on Spencer's part from his
earlier position. On the first page of the _Biology_ in the earlier
editions, and in the last, we are told:
'The properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by
combination are not destroyed in reality. It follows from the
persistence of force that the properties of a compound are
resultants of the properties of its components, resultants in
which the properties of the components are severally in full
action, though mutually obscured.'
There is no hint here of Mill's heteropathic laws nor of Lewes's
emergents. But in the last edition a special chapter is inserted on the
Dynamic Element in Life. We here find a tardy recognition of the
presence of specific vital characters.
'The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible
as the results of any physical actions known to us.... In brief,
then, we are obliged to confess that Life in its essence cannot be
conceived in physico-chemical terms.'[62]
I speak of this as a tardy recognition; but it is one that does honour
to the man; it is a frank admission that his previous treatment was in
some measure inadequate, which a smaller man would not have had the
honesty or the strength of character to make. Of course it is traced
down to the Unknowable. 'Life as a principle of activity is unknown and
unknowable; while phenomena are accessible to thought the implied
noumenon is inaccessible.'[63] Still, certain specific characteristics
of living organisms are explicitly recognized as among the accessible
phenomena; and these cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. But
did Spencer fully realize how big a hole this knocks in the bottom of
the purely mechanical interpretation of nature he had for so long
championed?
There remains for consideration the place of the cognitive relation in
Spencer's philosophy of science. We need not here discuss his
transfigured realism. Apart from the customary references to the
Unknowable, of which what is knowable is said to be symbolic, it comes
to little more than laying special emphasis on the truism that what is
known in the so-called objective world involves the process of knowing;
from which it follows that, apart from knowing it the objective world
cannot be known. From this Spencer draws the conclusion that terms in
cognitive relatedness have their very nature determined in and through
that relatedness, and cannot _in themselves_ be what they are, and as
they are, in the field of cognitive symbolism. This may or may not be
true. I am one of those who question the validity of the arguments in
favour of this conclusion. Since, however, the philosophy of science
deals only with the knowable--of which the so-called appearances with
which we have direct acquaintance are the primary data--we need not here
trouble ourselves with the controversy between realists and symbolists.
Even on Spencer's view the world as symbolized is the real world _for
science_.
Now one way of expressing the fact that the cognitive relation is
always present where knowledge is concerned is to proclaim 'the truth
that our states of consciousness are the only things we can know'.[64]
But it is a terribly ambiguous way of expressing the fact. What is here
meant by a state of consciousness? So far as cognition is concerned it
is, or at any rate it involves, a relationship between something known
and the organism, as knowing--for Spencer assuredly the organism, though
a so-called inner aspect therein. Of course it is a very complex
relationship. It comprises relations in what is known, and relations in
the organism as knowing. Hence Spencer defines life, psychical as well
as physical, as 'the continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations'.[65]
'That which distinguishes Psychology is that each of its
propositions takes account both of the connected internal
phenomena and of the connected external phenomena to which they
refer. It is not only the one, nor only the other, that
characterises cognition. It is the connexion between these two
connexions.'[66]
So far well. Cognition is a very complex network of relatedness
involving many terms. What are these terms? For Spencer the internal
terms are ultimately nervous (=psychic) shocks in highly integrated
aggregates; and the external terms are, proximately at least, things in
the environment. But both alike are spoken of as states of
consciousness. There is surely an opening for ambiguity here. Sometimes,
too, the words subjective affections are used in place of states of
consciousness. 'Thus we are brought to the conclusion that what we are
conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and
resistance, are but subjective affections.'[67] Well, these states of
consciousness, these subjective affections, fall into two great
classes--the vivid and the faint. The former, which we know as
sensations, accompany direct and therefore strong excitations of the
nerve-centres; the latter, which we know as remembered sensations, or
ideas of sensations, accompany indirect and therefore weak excitations
of the same nerve-centres.[68] And then we are told that the aggregate
of the faint is what we call the mind, the subject, the _ego_; the
aggregate of the vivid is what we call the external world, the object,
the _non-ego_.[69] It would seem, then, that the aggregate of vivid
_subjective_ affections is the _objective_ world so far as knowable. To
say the least of it, this terminology is somewhat perplexing.
No doubt our knowledge of the external world involves a subtle and
intricate inter-relation of what is experienced vividly and what is
experienced faintly--of what is actually presented and what is ideally
re-presented. The distinction between them is a valid one. But when
Spencer equates this distinction with that between the external world
and the mind, as he does in the passages to which I have referred, the
validity of his procedure is seriously open to question.
It must be confessed that an adequate analysis of cognitive relatedness
on scientific lines is not to be found in Spencer's works. I am not sure
that it is yet to be found in the works of any other philosopher, though
there are many signs that the difficult problems it involves are
receiving serious attention. This much seems certain, for those who
accept the spirit, though not perhaps the letter, of Spencer's teaching:
that there it is as a constitutive mode of relatedness in the realm of
nature, and that, if it forms part of the evolutionary scheme, if it is
present in the conclusion, so far reached, though it was absent in the
physico-chemical premises, if it is to be included in a philosophy of
science it must be dealt with by that philosophy on lines strictly
analogous to those on which any other relational problem is treated.
Firmly as we may believe in the reality of Source, we must not call to
our aid some psychic entity, some entelechy, some _élan vital_, to help
us out of our difficulties; for one and all of these lie wholly outside
the universe of discourse of science; and not one of them affords the
smallest help in solving a single scientific problem in a manner that is
itself scientific.
We have seen that Spencer believed that the task of psychology is to
investigate the correlation of external and internal relations, and, in
that sense, itself to correlate them within a scientific interpretation.
Now the outcome of the former correlation is some form of behaviour or
conduct on the part of the organism. No doubt such behaviour affords
data to be dealt with in subsequent cognition. But it implies the prior
cognition which leads up to it; and it is this prior cognition,
abstracted from the behaviour to which it leads, that we have to
consider. It is so terribly complex that it is difficult to deal with it
comprehensibly in a brief space. Let me, however, try to do so, at least
in tentative outline. There occurs, let us say, an external event in the
physical world, such as the motion of a billiard-ball across the table;
and when during its progress this stimulates the retina, there is an
internal physico-chemical process which runs its course in retina, optic
nerves, and the central nervous system. We may regard these two
processes, external and internal, as _so far_, of like physical order.
With adequate knowledge the two could, in some measure, be serially
correlated as such. But the physico-chemical processes in the organism
are not only of this physical type. They are vital or physiological as
well. And this makes a real difference. Of course this statement is open
to question. But I, for one, believe that there are specific relations
present in physiological processes, _qua_ vital, other than those of the
physico-chemical type--relations which are effective and which require a
distinctive name. So far I am a vitalist. At some stage of evolution
these new modes of effective relatedness came into being, whereas in the
fire-mist and for long afterwards they were not in being. None the less
when they did actually come into being, under conditions of which we are
at present ignorant--though not so ignorant as we were--they were
dependent upon, and, for our interpretation, they logically imply, the
physico-chemical relations which are also present. In any given case
they further imply, through heredity-relatedness, the evolutionary
history of the organism in which they obtain. This so-called historical
element in biology no doubt involves a characteristic vital
relationship. But, I take it, the physico-chemical constitution of any
inorganic compound, and of any molecule therein, has also its
history--has relationship to past occurrences within its type, which
have helped to make it what it is. Still, in the organism the relation
to past happenings has a quite distinctive form which we deal with in
terms of heredity. See, then, how we stand so far. The internal
physiological process implies a long chain of heredity-relationships
through which the organism is prepared for its occurrence. It also
implies a physico-chemical basis, an underlying[70] physico-chemical
process. And this implies as a condition of its occurrence, the external
event, the passage of the billiard-ball across the table. In a broad
sense we may say that the inner process knows the external event which
is a condition of its occurrence. But we have not yet reached cognition
of the psychological type.
Before passing on to indicate, in tentative outline, the nature of this
higher mode of relatedness, I pause to note two points. The first is
that knowing in that extended sense which I have borrowed,[71] is
essentially selective in its nature. The physiological process, in the
case I have taken, knows only that external event which is directly
before the eyes and which is serially correlated with changes in the
retinal images through the stimulation of specialized receptors. Of
other external events it has no such knowledge. Compare this with the
gravitative knowledge--if a yet wider extension of the meaning of the
word be permitted--which the earth has of the sun and all the other
members of the solar system--nay more, in degrees perhaps infinitesimal,
of all other material bodies in the universe. The motion of the earth in
its orbit implies the whole of this vast field of gravitative
relatedness. The existing orbital motion at any moment implies, too, the
preceding motion which it has, in a sense, inherited from the past.
Abolish the rest of the universe at this moment and the earth's motion
would cease to be orbital. In virtue of its 'inheritance from the past',
it would continue at uniform velocity in one direction. The continuous
change of direction and velocity we observe, is a response which implies
gravitative knowledge. In a sense, then, the whole solar system is known
by the earth as it swings in its orbit.
The second point may be introduced by a question. Granted that we may
say, in a very liberal sense, that the earth in its motion has this
gravitative knowledge--is such knowledge accompanied by awareness? We do
not know. But the point I have in mind is this, that the question itself
is vague. Awareness of what? There must be awareness of something; and a
definite question should be directed towards the nature of that
something. For example: is the earth aware of its own motion? Or is it
aware of the solar system? Or is it aware of the relation of the one to
the other? If it be said that the second of these is meant when we ask
whether the knowledge is accompanied by awareness, well and good. The
answer will serve to define the question. Take now a case of biological
knowledge. Are the plants in the cottager's window, when they grow
towards the light, aware of a process in their own tissues? Or are they
aware of the sunshine? Or are they in some measure aware of the
connexion between the one and the other? To all these questions we must
answer, I suppose, that we do not know. But it may have been worth while
to ask them in a definite way.
We pass, then, to cognition in the usual acceptation of the term--to
what we speak of as knowledge in the proper and narrower sense. My
contention is that this is a mode of relatedness which science must
endeavour to treat on precisely the same lines as it deals with any
other natural kind of relatedness. At some stage of evolution it came
into being, whereas in the fire-mist, and for long afterwards, it was
not in being. None the less when it did come into being, it was
dependent on, and for our interpretation it logically implies,
underlying physiological processes, as they in turn imply
physico-chemical processes, in each case serially correlated. It is
pre-eminently selective. And just as any physiological process, however
externally conditioned, is grounded in[72] the constitution of the
organism, as such, so too is any cognitive process grounded in the
constitution of the organism as one in which this higher type of
relatedness has supervened. Again, just as the physiological
constitution implies a prolonged racial preparation, describable in
terms of that mode of relatedness we name heredity, so, too, does any
cognitive process imply, not only this racial preparation of the
biological kind, but also an individual preparation of the psychological
kind--implies relatedness to what we call, rather loosely, prior
experience--which itself implies a concurrent physiological preparation.
Now there can be no doubt that awareness is a characteristic feature of
the knowledge of cognition, whether it be present or absent in knowledge
in the more extended sense. We must just accept this as what appears to
be a fact. In science we do not pretend to say why facts are what they
are and as they are. We take them as they are given, and endeavour to
trace their connexions and their implications. Accepting, then,
awareness as given, we must ask: Awareness of what? It is sometimes said
that cognition is aware of itself. I am not sure that I understand what
this means. If we are speaking of the cognitive relation, which is an
awareness relation, the question seems to be whether a relation of
awareness is related to itself. But of course if a field of cognitive
relatedness be regarded as a complex whole, any part may be related to
the rest, and the rest to any part. That kind of self-awareness--if we
must so call it!--is eminently characteristic of cognition in the higher
forms of its development. On these terms cognition is aware of
itself--though the mode of statement savours of ambiguity.
Let us next ask whether there is awareness of the underlying cortical
process. If we are speaking of direct awareness, apparently not. The
correlation between the two is only discoverable through a very
elaborate and complex[73] application of further cognition in
interpretative knowledge. We only know the correlated cortical process
by description, as Mr. Bertrand Russell would say,[74] and never by
direct acquaintance.
Parenthetic reference must here, I suppose, be made to psycho-physical
parallelism. But it shall be very brief. The sooner this cumbrous term
with its misleading suggestions is altogether eliminated from the
vocabulary of science the better. The locus of the so-called parallelism
is, we are told, the cortex of the brain. But the cortical process is
only an incident--no doubt a very important one, but still an
incident--in a much wider physiological process, the occurrence of
which, in what we may speak of as primary cognition, implies events in
the external world. It is of these events that there is direct physical,
physiological, and cognitive knowledge. Of course there are also
inter-cortical relations which underlie the relations of those ideal
cognita (Spencer's faint class) that supplement the primary cognita
which imply direct stimulation of sensory receptors (Spencer's vivid
class). It is questionable whether any form of cognition, properly so
called, is possible in their absence. Now I see no objection to
labelling the fact (if it be a fact) that the cognitive process implies
a physiological process in which, as in a larger whole, the cortex
plays its appropriate part, by the use of some such convenient
correlation-word as psycho-physical; but only so long as this does not
involve a doctrine of parallelism; so long as it merely means that
cognition implies, let us say, certain underlying cortical changes. Of
course it implies a great deal more than cortical process only; but this
may perhaps be taken for granted. My chief objection to the word
'parallelism' is that it suggests two separate orders of being, and not
two types of relationship within one order of being for scientific
study.[75] We do not speak of parallelism between physiological and
physico-chemical processes. We just say that scientific interpretation
proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a
kind that physiological process implies a physico-chemical basis. So
too, I urge, we should be content to say that scientific interpretation
proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a
kind that cognitive process implies a physiological basis.
It may be said that Spencer accepted the so-called identity hypothesis
which does not lie open to the objection that it suggests two orders of
being. He believed[76] 'that mind and nervous action are the subjective
and objective faces of the same thing', though 'we remain utterly
incapable of seeing or even imagining how the two are related'. Well, we
may call them in one passage the same thing, we may speak, in another
passage, of the antithesis between them as never to be transcended, and
we may try to save the situation by reference to duality of aspect. But
this kind of treatment does not help as much towards a scientific
interpretation. It is true that, in yet another passage, speaking of the
correlation of the physical and the psychical, Spencer says:[77] 'We can
learn nothing more than that here is one of the uniformities in the
order of phenomena.' Then why not leave it at that? And if there be a
constant and uniform correlation which is 'in a certain indirect way
quantitive', it would seem that we _do_ see, as far as science ever
professes to see, 'how the two are related.' We see, or conceive, how
they are related in much the same way as we do in the case of the
connexion between the physiological and the physico-chemical, and in
numberless other cases. Both parallelism and identity will have to go by
the board in a philosophy of science. They must be replaced by the far
more modest hypothesis, which seems to express all that they really mean
for science, that cognition always implies certain physiological
processes in the organism.
If we do speak of mind and nervous action as two faces of the same
thing, it seems pretty certain that the one face is not directly aware
of the other. When we speak of awareness in cognition we must therefore,
it appears, exclude any direct awareness of concurrent physiological
processes. Of what, then, is there awareness? Primarily perhaps of some
occurrence in the external world. But the difficulty here is that, in
the simplest case of human cognition there is awareness of so many
things and in such varying degrees. There may be primary awareness of
events in the external world (Spencer's vivid series), awareness of the
relations involved in these occurrences as such, of the relations of
these to ideal re-presentations of like kind (Spencer's faint series),
of the relations of any or all of these to behaviour as actually taking
place or as ideally re-presented; and all in different degrees within a
relational meshwork of bewildering complexity, which we have not, as
yet, adequately unravelled. The essential point to bear in mind is that
the cognitive relation always involves relatedness of _many terms_, and
that its discussion involves the analysis of what, in the higher phases
of its existence, is probably the most complex natural occurrence in
this complex world.
I cannot here follow up further the difficult problem of
cognition[78]--save to add one or two supplementary remarks. First: it
is, I suppose, fairly obvious that any given field of cognitive
relatedness comprises _all_ that is then and there selectively cognized.
Just as, in the very extended sense of the word 'knowledge', the earth
knows, in gravitative fashion, the whole solar system, as does also any
one of the planets, so, in the restricted sense, is knowledge
co-extensive with all that is, selectively, in cognitive relationship
with the organism or that part of the organism which is the locus of
awareness. I speak here of the locus of awareness in just the same sense
as I might speak of the earth as a locus of gravitative knowledge of the
solar system. The locus of awareness is just a specialized portion of
the whole relational web. In other words, the relatedness is of the
part-whole kind, where whole means rest of the whole other than the
specific part. In any such integrated system the part implies the
whole--which, by the way, is quite a different matter from saying that
the part includes the whole, or, as I understand the words, is
equivalent to the whole. But, whereas gravitative knowledge is
reciprocal--the sun knowing the earth in the same fashion as the earth
knows the sun--cognitive knowledge is not reciprocal. My cognitive
awareness of a spinning-top does not imply that the spinning-top is in
like manner aware of me. The part knows the whole in a way that the
whole does not know the part. The relationship of the part to the rest
of the whole is not reciprocal or symmetrical. This we must just accept
as a given feature of cognitive relatedness.[79]
Another very important point is that cognitive relatedness is
effective. By this I mean that just as, when the earth is in gravitative
relation to the sun and the other planets (the constitution of nature
being what it is), changes take place because the parts of the system as
a whole are in this field of effective relatedness; so too, when the
organism is in cognitive relation to its environment, changes in this
system also take place just because a part of the whole system is in
cognitive relatedness to the rest of the system. That means that the
cognitive relation really counts--that it is not merely an epiphenomenal
accompaniment of changes which would be precisely the same if it were
absent. The 'sum of energy' presumably remains constant. There is no
necessary interference with physical principles. But we know of so many
cases in which the direction of change may be changed without any
alteration of the 'amount of energy', as the phrase goes, that I see no
reason, based on physical science,[80] for denying this kind of
effectiveness, within a field of cognitive relatedness, if the facts
seem indubitably to point to its existence. To assert that the presence
or absence of cognitive relatedness makes absolutely no difference
appears to me, I confess, little short of preposterous; to urge that it
may be brought under the rubric of physico-chemical relatedness surely
involves the ignoring of differentiating features, which science should
not ignore. But, on the other hand, to invoke an immaterial psychic
entity[81]--unless this merely names the relatedness itself[82] as
gravitation names the gravitative relatedness--appears to me quite
unwarranted in the scientific universe of discourse.[83]
I must, however, draw to a conclusion. I cannot but think that Spencer
failed to bring cognition and the conscious awareness it involves into
really close touch with the rest of his philosophy of science. No such
double-aspect theory as he accepted affords a satisfactory avenue of
scientific approach. But where Spencer failed, who has come within
measurable sight of success? We are only just beginning to see our way
to stating the problem in such a form as to bring it within the purview
of science. What we must insist on, as followers, at a distance, of
Herbert Spencer, is the treatment of this type of relatedness on lines
similar to our treatment of other types of relatedness within one order
of nature.
Surveying his work as a whole, we may confidently assert that Spencer
brought to a conclusion a great task, and was himself great in its
execution. The present generation can, perhaps, hardly realize how
potent his influence was on the thought of the latter half of the last
century. Many of his conclusions ran counter to those which were, in his
day, widely accepted. If only they seemed to him to be true, however, he
held to them with a tenacity which his opponents branded as obstinacy.
But as he himself said:
'It is not for nothing that a man has in him sympathies with some
principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities,
and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of
his time. While he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of
the future; and his thoughts are as children born to him, which he
may not carelessly let die. Not as adventitious therefore will the
wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he
sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of
it, he is thus playing his right part in the world.'[84]
NOTES
[1] _Fragments of Science_, vol. ii, p. 132.
[2] _Essays_, vol. i (American reprint), p. 3.
[3] _Op. cit._, p. 32.
[4] _Op. cit._, p. 58.
[5] Cf. W. K. Clifford, _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 95.
[6] _More Letters_, vol. ii, p. 235.
[7] _Memories and Studies_, p. 139.
[8] _Ibid._, p. 140.
[9] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 212.
[10] James, _op. cit._, p. 124.
[11] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 211.
[12] _First Principles_, Sixth (Popular) Edition, p. 446 (hereafter F.
P.).
[13] _Principles of Psychology_, Third Edition, vol. i, p. 508
(hereafter Ps.).
[14] Ps., vol. i, p. 627.
[15] _Ibid._, p. 158.
[16] F. P., p. 155.
[17] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.
[18] There is '_intrinsic_ force by which a body manifests itself as
occupying space, and that _extrinsic_ force distinguished as energy'. F.
P., p. 150.
[19] 'Divest the conceived unit of matter of the objective correlate to
our subjective sense of effort and the entire fabric of physical
conceptions disappears.' F. P., p. 151 note. Cf. Ps., vol. ii, pp. 237,
239.
[20] F. P., p. 171.
[21] e.g. 'Social changes take directions that are due to the joint
actions of citizens determined as are those of all other changes wrought
by the composition of forces.' 'The flow of capital into business
yielding the largest returns, the buying in the cheapest market and
selling in the dearest, the introduction of more economical modes of
manufacture, the development of better agencies for distribution,
exhibit movements taking place in directions where they are met by the
smallest totals of opposing forces.' F. P., pp. 193-6.
[22] _Creative Evolution_, English translation, p. 53.
[23] _Op. cit._, pp. 385, 6.
[24] According to Dr. Carr's interpretation of M. Bergson, 'The whole
world, as it is presented to us and thought of by us, is an illusion.
Our science is not unreal, but it is a transformed reality. The
illusions may be useful, may, indeed, be necessary and indispensable,
but nevertheless it is illusion.' _Problem of Truth_, p. 66.
[25] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389.
[26] 'But, when I posit the facts with the shape they have for me
to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception and intellection such as
they are in me to-day; for it is they that portion the real into lots,
they that cut the facts out of the whole of reality.' C. E., p. 389.
[27] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389.
[28] _Op. cit._, p. 387.
[29] _Introduction to Metaphysics_, English translation, p. 8 and
_passim_.
[30] e.g. 'Organisation can only be studied scientifically if the
organised body has first been likened to a machine.' C. E., p. 98.
Science is, I think, generally used by M. Bergson for _intellectual_
knowledge in contradistinction to intuitional knowledge.
[31] F. P., p. 184.
[32] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 14.
[33] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 366.
[34] F. P., p. 156.
[35] 'There remained to assign a reason for that increasingly-distinct
demarkation of parts, &c.... This reason we discovered to be the
segregation, &c.... This cause of the definiteness of local
integrations, &c.' F. P., p. 440.
[36] F. P., p. 43.
[37] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 47.
[38] F. P., p. 176.
[39] F. P., p. 154.
[40] _Proceedings Aristotelian Society_, 1912-13, p. 1.
[41] _Popular Scientific Lectures_, English translation, p. 254.
[42] _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 111.
[43] 'But when we ask what this energy is, there is no answer save that
it is the noumenal cause implied by the phenomenal effect.' F. P., p.
154. It is towards this and like statements that my criticism is
directed. There can be no objection to the treatment, by physicists, of
energy as an entity in the sense given below in note 82. Those phenomena
to which 1/2 _mv_^{2} has reference are fundamental realities for
physical science.
[44] In a statement of the law of gravitation we may substitute the
words 'in a degree' for 'with a force'; we may speak of 'the measure of
attraction' instead of 'the force of attraction'.
[45] _System of Logic_, Bk. III, ch. v, § 3, Eighth Edition, vol. i, p.
383.
[46] _Ibid._, § 3 and § 5, pp. 379 and 389.
[47] Ps., vol. ii, p. 93; cf. p. 97. One has now, however, to add the
realm of subsistence.
[48] As a more technical example the following may be given:--The
difference in properties of isomers is caused by difference of internal
molecular structure notwithstanding identity of chemical composition.
[49] If we take spark as cause and explosion as effect there is
obviously no proportionality between the cause and its effect. Thus M.
Bergson speaks of the spark as 'a cause that acts by releasing'; and he
adds that 'neither quality nor quantity of effect varies with quality or
quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable'. _Creative Evolution_,
p. 77. Compare what Spencer introduced into the Sixth edition of F. P.
(pp. 172-3), concerning 'trigger action which does not produce the power
but liberates it'. According to the treatment in the text there can be
no 'proportionality' unless both ground and conditions are taken into
account.
[50] Spencer says (F. P., pp. 169-70) that 'the transformation of the
unorganised contents of an egg into the organised chick is a question of
heat' ['altogether a question of heat', in the Third Edition], and tells
us that 'the germination of plants presents like relations of cause and
effect as every season shows'. But he also says that 'the proclivities
of the molecules determine the typical structure assumed'. Obviously
here the 'heat supplied' falls under (3) of the text, and 'the
proclivities of the molecules' is his notion of what should fall under
(2).
[51] See Index to F. P., _sub verbo_ 'integration'.
[52] e. g. 'Diminish the velocities of the planets and their orbits will
lessen--the solar system will contract, or become more integrated.'
_Essays_, vol. iii, p. 28. Mere condensation is often spoken of as
integration. But then the term is used with bewildering laxity. Cf.
James, _Memories and Studies_, p. 134.
[53] I retain in this connexion the current term physico-chemical. It
seems that the basal type of relatedness here is electrical. It may be
said that when we come down to the atom the _things in_ relation are
electrical, are electrons, are positive and negative charges. So be it.
But is it not the _electrical relatedness_ that is constitutive of the
atom as such?
[54] 'A large number of physical properties', says Nernst, 'have been
shown to be clearly additive; that is, the value of the property in
question can be calculated as though the compound were such a mixture of
its elements that they experience no change in their properties.' But
other properties are not additive. 'The kind of influence of the atom in
a compound is primarily dependent on the mode of its union, that is,
upon the constitution and configuration of the compound. Such
non-additive properties may be called constitutive.' Quoted by E. G.
Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 238.
[55] _System of Logic_, vol. i, Bk. III, ch. vi.
[56] _Problems of Life and Mind_, Series II, p. 212.
[57] Of course if a particular physico-chemical change (_a_) is
correlated with a particular physiological or vital change (_b_), then
(_b_) implies (_a_) as (_a_) implies (_b_). The statement in the text
refers to the implications of classes of change. There may be
physico-chemical relatedness without any correlated vital relatedness;
but there does not appear to be any vital relatedness which is not
correlated with physico-chemical relatedness.
[58] _Essays_, vol. iii, pp. 31, 55.
[59] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.
[60] F. P., p. 178.
[61] An ordinal correlation is one that couples every term of a series
(_a_) with a specific term of another series (_b_) and _vice versa_ in
the same order in each. Cf. Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 175. I
shall sometimes speak of such correlation as serial.
[62] _Principles of Biology_, Edition of 1898, pp. 117, 120.
[63] _Op. cit._, p. 122.
[64] Ps., vol. i, p. 208.
[65] F. P., p. 61. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 134.
[66] Ps., vol. i, p. 132. James well says 'Spencer broke new ground here
in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved together,
they must be studied together. He gave to the study of mind in isolation
a definite quietus, and that certainly is a great thing to have
achieved'. _Memories and Studies_, p. 140.
[67] Ps., vol. i, p. 206.
[68] Ps., vol. i, p. 124.
[69] F. P., p. 120. Ps., vol. ii, p. 472. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 98.
[70] The word underlying is used in the sense of occupying a lower
position in the logical hierarchy above indicated. If any one likes to
speak of the physico-chemical and the vital as two aspects of one
process, he is free to do so. And if he likes to say that the vital is
caused by the physico-chemical, let him do so; but he must define the
exact sense in which he uses the ambiguous word cause. The word inner in
the text means within the organism.
[71] See S. Alexander, 'On Relations: and in particular the Cognitive
Relation.' _Mind._, vol. xxi, N. S., No. 83, p. 318.
[72] I have avoided the use of the word determine. It would be well to
distinguish between that which is _determined_ from without, that is,
conditioned, and that which is _determinate_, that is, grounded in the
constitution. I am here, I think, in line with Bosanquet. (See
_Principle of Individuality and Value_, e. g. pp. 341, 352.) I have also
avoided all reference to teleology. Without committing myself to the
acceptance of all that Mr. Bosanquet says in the fourth lecture of the
series to which reference has just been made, his treatment, there,
appears to be on right lines. There is no opposition in teleology, so
treated, to what is determinate. Indeed, such teleology is the
expression of the logical structure of the world, or, as Spencer would
say, the universality of law. For just as higher types of relatedness
imply a substratum of physico-chemical processes, so do all events imply
the underlying logic of events. Cf. W. T. Marvin, _A First Book of
Metaphysics_, ch. xiii, 'On the logical strata of reality.'
[73] Cf. Ps., vol. i, pp. 99 and 140.
[74] _Problems of Philosophy_, ch. v; cf. _Proc. Aristotelian Soc._,
1910-11, p. 108.
[75] It should be distinctly understood that I here speak of one order
of being in reference to the phenomena dealt with by science, including
the cognitive phenomena discussed in the text. Whether we should speak
of the Source of phenomena as constituting a separate order of being is
a question I cannot discuss in a note. Does the logic of events imply a
Logos? That is the question in brief. But, since the implication in
question is not of the scientific kind, I may leave it on one side in
considering a philosophy of science.
[76] Ps., vol. i, p. 140.
[77] F. P., p. 178.
[78] I have confined my attention to the cognitive type of relatedness.
Other higher modes supervene when the course of evolution is traced
further upwards. Indeed, cognition is only part of the underlying basis
implied by the richer forms of distinctively human relational life.
Spencer has much to say of them in his _Sociology_ and his _Ethics_,
though he fails to realize that the phenomena he is dealing with involve
essentially new constitutive features in man and in society. Can music
or any form of art be discussed in terms of cognition only? I merely add
this note to show that I am not unaware of the patent fact that when we
have reached the cognitive type of relatedness, we are nowhere near the
top of the evolutional tree.
[79] The part which is the centre of awareness, may be spoken of as
experienc_ing_, in contradistinction to what is experienc_ed_. It is
clear that such experiencing is always correlative to what is
experienced actually or ideally (Spencer's vividly or faintly). The
centre of awareness is either the cortex, or some specific part of the
cortex, or (more generally) the organism as owning the cortex, in each
case in accordance with the universe of discourse.
[80] Few physicists would, I think, be prepared to deny that, within a
field of effective relatedness, there may be, and very often is,
guidance without work done or any change in the 'amount of energy'. What
physicists are concerned to insist on is their cardinal principle that
every physical change involves physical terms in physical relatedness.
This can be fully and freely accepted in accordance with the doctrine of
implication sketched in the text. It is when Life or Consciousness is
invoked to play the part of a non-physical term, or thing, which acts
and reacts as if it were a physical term or thing, that physicists enter
an emphatic protest. Cognitive relatedness among physical things may
well be effective in guidance. To claim its presence must not, however,
be regarded as in any sense equivalent to a denial of underlying
physico-chemical relatedness.
[81] Until those who seek to furnish evidence of the existence of
discarnate spirits can make some plausible suggestions as to the nature
of a comprehensible scheme of correlation which shall serve to link the
discarnate with the incarnate, one is forced to enter their results in a
suspense account. It is of little use to proclaim the existence of
'facts scorned by orthodox science'. The so-called facts must be
incorporated within a consistent scheme, before they can claim a place
in the fabric of scientific truth.
[82] As the word entity is now often used, for example by Mr. G. E.
Moore, cognitive relatedness may be termed an entity. 'When I speak of
an entity I shall mean to imply absolutely nothing more with regard to
that which I so call, than that it _is_ or _was_--that it is or was
contained in the Universe; and of anything whatever which _is_ or _was_,
I shall take the liberty to say that it is an entity.' G. E. Moore,
_Proc. Aristotelian Soc._, 1909-10, p. 36.
[83] I have no space to discuss the physiological differentiation which
is implied by the effectiveness of the cognitive relation. It involves,
I believe, the differentiation of a superior cortical system from an
inferior system of nervous arcs. I have dealt with it in some detail
elsewhere. See _Instinct and Experience_.
[84] F. P., pp. 91-2.
OXFORD: HORACE HART M.A.
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
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