The Life of Reason Part 48

GEORGE SANTAYANA

he gar noy enhergeia zohe

This Dover edition, first published in 1982, is an unabridged republication of volume five of _The Life of Reason; or The Phases of Human Progress_, originally published by Charles Scribner's Sons, N.Y., in 1905.

CONTENTS

REASON IN SCIENCE

CHAPTER I

TYPES AND AIMS OF SCIENCE

Science still young.--Its miscarriage in Greece.--Its timid reappearance in modern times.--Distinction between science and myth.--Platonic status of hypothesis.--Meaning of verification.--Possible validity of myths.--Any dreamed-of thing might be experienced.--But science follows the movement of its subject-matter.--Moral value of science.--Its continuity with common knowledge.--Its intellectual essence.--Unity of science.--In existence, judged by reflection, there is a margin of waste.--Sciences converge from different points of origin.--Two chief kinds of science, physics and dialectic.--Their mutual implication.--Their cooperation.--No science _a priori_.--Role of criticism. Pages 3-38

CHAPTER II

HISTORY

History an artificial memory.--Second sight requires control.--Nature the theme common to various memories.--Growth of legend.--No history without doc.u.ments.--The aim is truth.--Indirect methods of attaining it.--Historical research a part of physics.--Verification here indirect.--Futile ideal to survey all facts.--Historical theory.--It is arbitrary.--A moral critique of the past is possible.--How it might be just.--Transition to historical romance.--Possibility of genuine epics.--Literal truth abandoned.--History exists to be transcended.--Its great role. Pages 39-68

CHAPTER III

MECHANISM

Recurrent forms in nature.--Their discovery makes the flux calculable.--Looser principles tried first.--Mechanism for the most part hidden.--Yet presumably pervasive.--Inadequacy of consciousness.--Its articulation inferior to that of its objects.--Science consequently r.e.t.a.r.ded, and speculation rendered necessary.--Dissatisfaction with mechanism partly natural, and partly artificial.--Bia.s.sed judgments inspired by moral inertia.--Positive emotions proper to materialism.--The material world not dead nor ugly, nor especially cruel.--Mechanism to be judged by its fruits Pages 69-94

CHAPTER IV

HESITATIONS IN METHOD

Mechanism restricted to one-half of existence.--Men of science not speculative.--Confusion in semi-moral subjects.--"Physic of metaphysic begs defence."--Evolution by mechanism.--Evolution by ideal attraction.--If species are evolved they cannot guide evolution.--Intrusion of optimism.--Evolution according to Hegel.--The conservative interpretation.--The radical one.--Megalomania.--Chaos in the theory of mind.--Origin of self-consciousness.--The notion of spirit.--The notion of sense.--Compet.i.tion between the two.--The rise of scepticism Pages 95-125

CHAPTER V

PSYCHOLOGY

Mind reading not science.--Experience a reconstruction.--The honest art of education.--Arbitrary readings of the mind.--Human nature appealed to rather than described.--Dialectic in psychology.--Spinoza on the pa.s.sions.--A principle of estimation cannot govern events.--Scientific psychology a part of biology.--Confused attempt to detach the psychic element.--Differentia of the psychic.--Approach to irrelevant sentience.--Perception represents things in their practical relation to the body.--Mind the existence in which form becomes actual.--Attempt at idealistic physics.--a.s.sociation not efficient.--- It describes coincidences.--Understanding is based on instinct and expressed in dialectic.--Suggestion a fancy name for automatism, and will another.--Double attachment of mind to nature.--Is the subject-matter of psychology absolute being?--Sentience is representable only in fancy.--The conditions and objects of sentience, which are not sentience, are also real.--Mind knowable and important in so far as it represents other things Pages 126-166

CHAPTER VI

THE NATURE OF INTENT

Dialectic better than physics.--Maladjustments to nature render physics conspicuous and unpleasant.--Physics should be largely virtual, and dialectic explicit.--Intent is vital and indescribable.--It is a.n.a.logous to flux in existence.--It expresses natural life.--- It has a material basis.--It is necessarily relevant to earth.--The basis of intent becomes appreciable in language.--Intent starts from a datum, and is carried by a feeling.--It demands conventional expression.--A fable about matter and form Pages 167-186

CHAPTER VII

DIALECTIC

Dialectic elaborates given forms.--Forms are abstracted from existence by intent.--Confusion comes of imperfect abstraction, or ambiguous intent.--The fact that mathematics applies to existence is empirical.--Its moral value is therefore contingent.--Quant.i.ty submits easily to dialectical treatment--Constancy and progress in intent.--Intent determines the functional essence of objects.--Also the scope of ideals.--Double status of mathematics.--Practical role of dialectic.--Hegel's satire on dialectic.--Dialectic expresses a given intent.--Its empire is ideal and autonomous Pages 187-209

CHAPTER VIII

PRERATIONAL MORALITY

Empirical alloy in dialectic.--Arrested rationality in morals.--Its emotional and practical power.--Moral science is an application of dialectic, not a part of anthropology.--Estimation the soul of philosophy.--Moral discriminations are natural and inevitable.--A choice of proverbs.--Their various representative value.--Conflict of partial moralities.--The Greek ideal.--Imaginative exuberance and political discipline.--Sterility of Greek example.--Prerational morality among the Jews.--The development of conscience.--Need of Hebraic devotion to Greek aims.--Prerational morality marks an acquisition but offers no programme Pages 210-232

CHAPTER IX

RATIONAL ETHICS

Moral pa.s.sions represent private interests.--Common ideal interests may supervene.--To this extent there is rational society.--A rational morality not attainable, but its principle clear.--It is the logic of an autonomous will.--Socrates' science.--Its opposition to sophistry and moral anarchy.--Its vitality.--Genuine altruism is natural self-expression.--Reason expresses impulses, but impulses reduced to harmony.--Self-love artificial.--The sanction of reason is happiness.--Moral science impeded by its chaotic data, and its unrecognised scope.--Fallacy in democratic hedonism.--Sympathy a conditional duty.--All life, and hence right life, finite and particular. Pages 233-261

CHAPTER X

POST-RATIONAL MORALITY

Socratic ethics retrospective.--Rise of disillusioned moralities.--The illusion subsisting in them.--Epicurean refuge in pleasure.--Stoic recourse to conformity.--Conformity the core of Islam, enveloped in arbitrary doctrines.--The latter alone lend it practical force.--Moral ambiguity in pantheism.--Under stress, it becomes ascetic and requires a mythology.--A supernatural world made by the Platonist out of dialectic.--The Hebraic cry for redemption.--The two factors meet in Christianity.--Consequent electicism.--The negation of naturalism never complete.--Spontaneous values rehabilitated.--A witness out of India.--Dignity of post-rational morality.--Absurdities nevertheless involved.--The soul of positivism in all ideals.--Moribund dreams and perennial realities. Pages 262-300

CHAPTER XI

THE VALIDITY OF SCIENCE

Various modes of revising science.--Science its own best critic.--Obstruction by alien traditions.--Needless anxiety for moral interests.--Science an imaginative and practical art.--Arriere-pensee in transcendentalism.--Its romantic sincerity.--Its constructive impotence.--Its dependence on common-sense.--Its futility.--Ideal science is self-justified.--Physical science is presupposed in scepticism.--It recurs in all understanding of perception.--Science contains all trustworthy knowledge.--It suffices for the Life of Reason Pages 301-320

REASON IN SCIENCE