An Introduction to Philosophy Part 25

"Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque prioris,"

and he may be quite unable to give an account of the moods and figures of the syllogism; but he cannot lose the critical habit if he once has acquired it, and he cannot but be on his guard against himself as well as against others.

There is a keen pleasure in gaining such insight. It gives a feeling of freedom and power, and rids one of that horrid sense that, although this or that bit of reasoning is certainly bad, it is impossible to tell just what is the matter with it. And as for its practical utility, if it is desirable to get rid of prejudice and confusion, and to possess a clear and reasonable mind, then anything that makes for this must be of value.

Of the desirability that all who can afford the luxury of a liberal education should do some serious reading in ethics, it seems hardly necessary to speak. The deficiencies of the ethics of the unreflective have already been touched upon in Chapter XVIII.

But I cannot forbear dwelling upon it again. What thoughtful man is not struck with the variety of ethical standards which obtain in the same community? The clergyman who has a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare of his flock is sometimes accused of not sufficiently realizing the importance of a frank expression of the whole truth about things; the man of science, whose duty it seems to be to peer into the mysteries of the universe, and to tell what he sees or what he guesses, is accused of an indifference to the effect which his utterances may have upon the less enlightened who hear him speak; many criticise the lawyer for a devotion to the interests of his client which is at times in doubtful harmony with the interests of justice in the larger sense; in the business world commercial integrity is exalted, and lapses from the ethical code which do not a.s.sail this cardinal virtue are not always regarded with equal seriousness.

It is as though men elected to wors.h.i.+p at the shrine of a particular saint, and were inclined to overlook the claims of others. For all this there is, of course, a reason; such things are never to be looked upon as mere accident. But this does not mean that these more or less conflicting standards are all to be accepted as satisfactory and as ultimate. It is inevitable that those who study ethics seriously, who really reflect upon ethical problems, should sometimes criticise the judgments of their fellow-men rather unfavorably.

Of such independent criticism many persons have a strong distrust. I am reminded here of an eminent mathematician who maintained that the study of ethics has a tendency to distort the student's judgments as to what is right and what is wrong. He had observed that there is apt to be some divergence of opinion between those who think seriously upon morals and those who do not, and he gave the preference to the unthinking majority.

Now, there is undoubtedly danger that the independent thinker may be betrayed into eccentricities of opinion which are unjustifiable and are even dangerous. But it seems a strange doctrine that it is, on the whole, safer not to think, but rather to drift on the stream of public opinion. In other fields we are not inclined to believe that the ignorant man, who has given no especial attention to a subject, is the one likely to be right. Why should it be so in morals?

That the youth who goes to college to seek a liberal education has a need of ethical studies becomes very plain when we come to a realization of the curious limitations of his ethical training as picked up from his previous experience of the world. He has some very definite notions as to right and wrong. He is as ready to maintain the desirability of benevolence, justice, and veracity, as was Bishop Butler, who wrote the famous "a.n.a.logy "; although, to be sure, he is most inarticulate when called upon to explain what const.i.tutes benevolence, justice, or veracity. But the strangest thing is, that he seems to place some of the most important decisions of his whole life quite outside the realm of right and wrong.

He may admit that a man should not undertake to be a clergyman, unless he possesses certain qualifications of mind and character which evidently qualify him for that profession. But he does not see why he has not the right to become a wearisome professor or an incompetent physician, if he chooses to enter upon such a career. Is a man not free to take up what profession he pleases? He must take the risk, of course; but if he fails, he fails.

And when he is asked to consider from the point of view of ethics the question of marriage and its responsibilities, he is at first inclined to consider the whole subject as rather a matter for jest. Has a man not the right to marry or remain single exactly as he pleases? And is he not free to marry any one whom he can persuade to accept him? To be sure, he should be a little careful about marrying quite out of his cla.s.s, and he should not be hopelessly careless about money matters.

Thus, a decision, which may affect his whole life as much as any other that he can be called upon to make, which may practically make it or mar it, is treated as though it were not a matter of grave concern, but a private affair, entailing no serious consequences to any one and calling for no reflection.

I wish it could be said that the world outside of the college regarded these matters in another light. But the student faithfully represents the opinions current in the community from which he comes. And he represents, unhappily, the teachings of the stage and of the world of current fiction. The influence of these is too often on the side of inconsiderate pa.s.sion, which stirs our sympathy and which lends itself to dramatic effect. With the writers of romance the ethical philosophers have an ancient quarrel.

It may be said: But the world gets along very well as it is, and without brooding too much upon ethical problems. To this we may answer: Does the world get along so very well, after all? Are there no evils that foresight and some firmness of character might have obviated? And when we concern ourselves with the educated cla.s.ses, at least, the weight of whose influence is enormous, is it too much to maintain that they should do some reading and thinking in the field of ethics? should strive to attain to clear vision and correct judgment on the whole subject of man's duties?

Just at the present time, when psychological studies have so great a vogue, one scarcely feels compelled to make any sort of an apology for them. It is a.s.sumed on all hands that it is desirable to study psychology, and courses of lectures are multiplied in all quarters.

Probably some of this interest has its root in the fallacy touched upon earlier in this chapter. The science of psychology has revolutionized educational theory. When those of us who have arrived at middle life look back and survey the tedious and toilsome path along which we were unwillingly driven in our schoolboy days, and then see how smooth and pleasant it has been made since, we are impelled to honor all who have contributed to this result. Moreover, it seems very clear that teachers of all grades should have some acquaintance with the nature of the minds that they are laboring to develop, and that they should not be left to pick up their information for themselves--a task sufficiently difficult to an un.o.bservant person.

These considerations furnish a sufficient ground for extolling the science of psychology, and for insisting that studies in it should form some part of the education of a teacher. But why should the rest of us care for such studies?

To this one may answer, in the first place, that nearly all of us have, or ought to have, some responsibility for the education of children; and, in the second, that we deal with the minds of others every day in every walk in life, and it can certainly do no harm to have our attention called to the way in which minds function. To be sure, some men are by nature tactful, and instinctively conscious of how things strike the minds of those about them. But even such persons may gain helpful suggestions, and, at least, have the habit of attention to the mental processes of others confirmed in them. How often we are impressed at church, at the public lecture, and in private conversations, with the fact that the speaker lives in blissful unconsciousness of what can be understood by or can possibly interest his hearers! For the confirmed bore, there is, perhaps, no cure; but it seems as though something might be done for those who are afflicted to a minor degree.

And this brings me to another consideration, which is that a proper study of psychology ought to be of service in revealing to a man his own nature. It should show him what he is, and this is surely a first step toward becoming something better. It is wonderful how blind men may be with regard to what pa.s.ses in their own minds and with regard to their own peculiarities. When they learn to reflect, they come to a clearer consciousness of themselves--it is as though a lamp were lighted within them. One may, it is true, study psychology without attaining to any of the good results suggested above; but, for that matter, there is no study which may not be pursued in a profitless way, if the teacher be sufficiently unskilled and the pupil sufficiently thoughtless.

82. METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.--Perhaps it will be said: For such philosophical studies as the above a good defense may perhaps be made, but can one defend in the same way the plunge into the obscurities of metaphysics? In this field no two men seem to be wholly agreed, and if they were, what would it signify? Whether we call ourselves monists or dualists, idealists or realists, Lockians or Kantians, must we not live and deal with the things about us in much the same way?

Those who have dipped into metaphysical studies deeply enough to see what the problems discussed really are; who have been able to reach the ideas concealed, too often, under a rather forbidding terminology; who are not of the dogmatic turn of mind which insists upon unquestioned authority and is repelled by the uncertainties which must confront those who give themselves to reflective thought,--these will hardly need to be persuaded that it is desirable to give some attention to the question: What sort of a world, after all, is this world in which we live? What is its meaning?

To many men the impulse to peer into these things is over-powering, and the pleasure of feeling their insight deepen is extremely keen. What deters us in most instances is not the conviction that such investigations are not, or should not be, interesting, but rather the difficulty of the approach. It is not easy to follow the path which leads from the world of common thought into the world of philosophical reflection. One becomes bewildered and discouraged at the outset.

Sometimes, after listening to the directions of guides who disagree among themselves, we are tempted to believe that there can be no certain path to the goal which we have before us.

But, whatever the difficulties and uncertainties of our task, a little reflection must show that it is not one which has no significance for human life.

Men can, it is true, eat and sleep and go through the routine of the day, without giving thought to science or religion or philosophy, but few will defend such an existence. As a matter of fact, those who have attained to some measure of intellectual and moral development do a.s.sume, consciously or unconsciously, some rather definite att.i.tude toward life, and this is not independent of their conviction as to what the world is and means.

Metaphysical speculations run out into the philosophy of religion; and, on the other hand, religious emotions and ideals have again and again prompted men to metaphysical construction. A glance at history shows that it is natural to man to embrace some att.i.tude toward the system of things, and to try to justify this by reasoning. Vigorous and independent minds have given birth to theories, and these have been adopted by others. The influence of such theories upon the evolution of humanity has been enormous.

Ideas have ruled and still rule the world, some of them very abstract ideas. It does not follow that one is uninfluenced by them, when one has no knowledge of their source or of their original setting. They become part of the intellectual heritage of us all, and we sometimes suppose that we are responsible for them ourselves. Has not the fact that an idealistic or a materialistic type of thought has been current at a particular time influenced the outlook on life of many who have themselves devoted little attention to philosophy? It would be interesting to know how many, to whom Spencer is but a name, have felt the influence of the agnosticism of which he was the apostle.

I say this without meaning to criticise here any of the types of doctrine referred to. My thesis is only that philosophy and life go hand in hand, and that the prying into the deeper mysteries of the universe cannot be regarded as a matter of no practical moment. Its importance ought to be admitted even by the man who has little hope that he will himself be able to attain to a doctrine wholly satisfactory and wholly unshakable.

For, if the study of the problems of metaphysics does nothing else for a given individual, it, at least, enables him to comprehend and criticise intelligently the doctrines which are presented for his acceptance by others. It is a painful thing to feel quite helpless in the face of plausible reasonings which may threaten to rob us of our most cherished hopes, or may tend to persuade us of the vanity of what we have been accustomed to regard as of highest worth. If we are quite unskilled in the examination of such doctrines, we may be captured by the loosest of arguments--witness the influence of Spencer's argument for the "Unknowable," in the "First Principles"; and if we are ignorant of the history of speculative thought, we may be carried away by old and exploded notions which pose as modern and impressive only because they have been given a modern dress.

We can, of course, refuse to listen to those who would talk with us.

But this savors of bigotry, and the world will certainly not grow wiser, if men generally cultivate a blind adherence to the opinions in which they happen to be brought up. A cautious conservatism is one thing, and blind obstinacy is another. To the educated man (and it is probable that others will have to depend on opinions taken at second hand) a better way of avoiding error is open.

Finally, it will not do to overlook the broadening influence of such studies as we are discussing. How dogmatically men are in the habit of expressing themselves upon those obscure and difficult problems which deal with matters that lie on the confines of human knowledge! Such an a.s.sumption of knowledge cannot but make us uncomprehending and unsympathetic.

There are many subjects upon which, if we hold an opinion at all, we should hold it tentatively, waiting for more light, and retaining a willingness to be enlightened. Many a bitter and fruitless quarrel might be avoided, if more persons found it possible to maintain this philosophical att.i.tude of mind. Philosophy is, after all, reflection, and the reflective man must realize that he is probably as liable to error as are other men. He is not infallible, nor has the limit of human knowledge been attained in his day and generation. He who realizes this will not a.s.sume that his neighbor is always wrong, and he will come to have that wide, conscientious tolerance, which is not indifference, but which is at the farthest remove from the zeal of mere bigotry.

CHAPTER XXIII

WHY WE SHOULD STUDY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

83. THE PROMINENCE GIVEN TO THE SUBJECT.--When one reflects upon the number of lecture courses given every year at our universities and colleges on the history of philosophy, one is struck by the fact that philosophy is not treated as are most other subjects with which the student is brought into contact.

If we study mathematics, or chemistry, or physics, or physiology, or biology, the effort is made to lay before us in a convenient form the latest results which have been attained in those sciences. Of their history very little is said; and, indeed, as we have seen (section 6), lectures on the history of the inductive sciences are apt to be regarded as philosophical in their character and aims rather than as merely scientific.

The interest in the history of philosophy is certainly not a diminis.h.i.+ng one. Text-books covering the whole field or a part of it are multiplied; extensive studies are made and published covering the work of individual philosophers; innumerable historical discussions make their appearance in the pages of current philosophical journals.

No student is regarded as fairly acquainted with philosophy who knows nothing of Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Spinoza, Berkeley and Hume, Kant and Hegel, and the rest. We should look upon him as having a very restricted outlook if he had read only the works of the thinkers of our own day; indeed, we should not expect him to have a proper comprehension even of these, for their chapters must remain blind and meaningless to one who has no knowledge of what preceded them and has given birth to the doctrines there set forth.

It is a fair question to ask: Why is philosophy so bound up with the study of the past? Why may we not content ourselves with what has up to the present been attained, and omit a survey of the road along which our predecessors have traveled?

84. THE ESPECIAL IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL STUDIES TO REFLECTIVE THOUGHT.--In some of the preceding chapters dealing with the various philosophical sciences, it has been indicated that, in the sciences we do not regard as philosophical, men may work on the basis of certain commonly accepted a.s.sumptions and employ methods which are generally regarded as trustworthy within the given field. The value both of the fundamental a.s.sumptions and of the methods of investigation appear to be guaranteed by the results attained. There are not merely observation and hypothesis; there is also verification, and where this is lacking, men either abandon their position or reserve their judgment.

Thus, a certain body of interrelated facts is built up, the significance of which, in many fields at least, is apparent even to the layman. Nor is it wholly beyond him to judge whether the results of scientific investigations can be verified. An eclipse, calculated by methods which he is quite unable to follow, may occur at the appointed hour and confirm his respect for the astronomer. The efficacy of a serum in the cure of diseases may convince him that work done in the laboratory is not labor lost.

It seems evident that the several sciences do really rise on stepping stones of their dead selves, and that those selves of the past are really dead and superseded. Who would now think of going back for his science to Plato's "Timaeus," or would accept the description of the physical world contained in the works of Aristotle? What chemist or physicist need busy himself with the doctrine of atoms and their clas.h.i.+ngs presented in the magnificent poem of Lucretius? Who can forbear a smile--a sympathetic one--when he turns over the pages of Augustine's "City of G.o.d," and sees what sort of a world this remarkable man believed himself to inhabit?

It is the historic and human interest that carries us back to these things. We say: What ingenuity! what a happy guess! how well that was reasoned in the light of what was actually known about the world in those days! But we never forget that what compels our admiration does so because it makes us realize that we stand in the presence of a great mind, and not because it is a foundation-stone in the great edifice which science has erected.

But it is not so in philosophy. It is not possible to regard the philosophical reflections of Plato and of Aristotle as superseded in the same sense in which we may so regard their science. The reason for this lies in the difference between scientific thought and reflective thought.

The two have been contrasted in Chapter II of this volume. It was there pointed out that the sort of thinking demanded in the special sciences is not so very different from that with which we are all familiar in common life. Science is more accurate and systematic, it has a broader outlook, and it is free from the imperfections which vitiate the uncritical and fragmentary knowledge which experience of the world yields the unscientific. But, after all, the world is much the same sort of a world to the man of science and to his uncritical neighbor. The latter can, as we have seen, understand what, in general, the former is doing, and can appropriate many of his results.

On the other hand, it often happens that the man who has not, with pains and labor, learned to reflect, cannot even see that the philosopher has a genuine problem before him. Thus, the plain man accepts the fact that he has a mind and that it knows the world. That both mental phenomena and physical phenomena should be carefully observed and cla.s.sified he may be ready to admit. But that the very conceptions of mind and of what it means to know a world are vague and indefinite in the extreme, and stand in need of careful a.n.a.lysis, he does not realize.

In other words, he sees that our knowledge needs to be extended and rendered more accurate and reliable, but he does not see that, if we are to think clearly and consciously, all our knowledge needs to be gone over in a different way. In common life it is quite possible to use in the attainment of practical ends knowledge which has not been a.n.a.lyzed and of the full meaning of which we are ignorant. I hope it has become evident in the course of this volume that something closely a.n.a.logous is true in the field of science. The man of science may measure s.p.a.ce and time, and may study the phenomena of the human mind, without even attempting to answer all the questions which may be raised as to what is meant, in the last a.n.a.lysis, by such concepts as s.p.a.ce, time, and the mind.

That such concepts should be a.n.a.lyzed has, I hope, been made clear, if only that erroneous and misleading notions as to these things should be avoided. But when a man with a genius for metaphysical a.n.a.lysis addresses himself to this task, he cannot simply hand the results attained by his reflections over to his less reflective fellow-man.

His words are not understood; he seems to be dealing with shadows, with unrealities; he has pa.s.sed from the real world of common thought into another world which appears to have little relation to the former.

Nor can verification, indubitable proof, be demanded and furnished as it can in many parts of the field cultivated by the special sciences.