THE NORMATIVE SCIENCES AND THE PROBLEMS OF RELIGION

Sec. There are three sets of problems whose general philosophical importance depends upon the place which metaphysics assigns to the human critical faculties. Man passes judgment upon that which claims to be true, beautiful, or good, thus referring to ideals and standards that define these values. Attempts to make these ideals explicit, and to formulate principles which regulate their attainment, have resulted in the development of the three so-called normative sciences: logic, aesthetics, and ethics. These sciences are said to owe their origin to the Socratic method, and it is indeed certain that their problem is closely related to the general rationalistic attitude. In Plato’s dialogue, “Protagoras,” one may observe the manner of the inception of both ethics and logic. The question at issue between Socrates and the master sophist Protagoras, is concerning the possibility of teaching virtue. Protagoras conducts his side of the discussion with the customary rhetorical flourish, expounding in set speeches the tradition and usage in which such a possibility is accepted. Socrates, on the other hand, conceives the issue quite differently. One can neither affirm nor deny anything of virtue unless one knows what is meant by it. Even the possession of such a meaning was scarcely recognized by Protagoras, who was led by Socrates’s questions to attribute to the various virtues an external grouping analogous to that of the parts of the face. But Socrates shows that since justice, temperance, courage, and the like, are admittedly similar in that they are all virtues, they must have in common some essence, which is virtue in general. This he seeks to define in the terms, virtue is knowledge. The interest which Socrates here shows in the reduction of the ordinary moral judgments to a system centering in some single fundamental principle, is the ethical interest. But this is at the same time a particular application of the general rationalistic method of definition, and of the general rationalistic postulate that one knows nothing until one can form unitary and determinate conceptions. The recognition which Socrates thus gives to criteria of knowledge is an expression of the logical interest. In a certain sense, indeed, the whole labor of Socrates was in the cause of the logical interest. For he sought to demonstrate that belief is not necessarily knowledge; that belief may or may not be true. In order that it shall be true, and constitute knowledge, it must be well-grounded, and accompanied by an understanding of its object. Socrates thus set the problem of logic, the discovery, namely, of those characters by virtue of the possession of which belief is knowledge.

Sec. Logic deals with the ground of belief, and thus distinguishes itself from the psychological account of the elements of the believing state. But it is not possible sharply to sunder psychology and logic. This is due to the fact that the general principles which make belief true, may be regarded quite independently of this fact. They then become the most general truth, belonging to the absolute, archetypal realm, or to the mind of God. When the general principles of certainty are so regarded, logic can be distinguished from metaphysics only by adding to the study of the general principles themselves, the study of the special conditions (mainly psychological) under which they may be realized among men. In the history of human thought the name of logic belongs to the study of this attainment of truth, as the terms aesthetics and ethics belong to the studies of the attainment of beauty and goodness. It is evident that logic will have a peculiar importance for the rationalist. For the empiricist, proposing to report upon things as they are given, will tend on the whole to maintain that knowledge has no properties save those which are given to it by its special subject-matter. One cannot, in short, define any absolute relationship between the normative sciences and the other branches of philosophy.

Sec. Logic is the formulation, as independently as possible of special subject-matter, of that which conditions truth in belief. Since logic is concerned with truth only in so far as it is predicated of belief, and since belief in so far as true is knowledge, logic can be defined as the formulation of the most general principles of knowledge. The principles so formulated would be those virtually used to justify belief or to disprove the imputation of error.

Sec. What is called formal logic is animated with the hope of extracting these formulations directly from an analysis of the procedure of thought. The most general logical principles which have appeared in the historical development of formal logic are definition, self-evidence, inference, and observation. Each of these has been given special study, and each has given rise to special issues.

Definition has to do with the formation of concepts, or determinate and unequivocal meanings. The universality of such concepts, and their consequent relation to particular things, was, as we have seen, investigated at a very early date, and gave rise to the great realistic-nominalistic controversy. A large part of the logical discussion in the Platonic dialogues is an outgrowth of the earlier “eristic,” a form of disputation in favor with the sophists, and consisting in the adroit use of ambiguity. It is natural that in its first conscious self-criticism thought should discover the need of definite terms. The perpetual importance of definition has been largely due to the great prestige in modern philosophy of the method of geometry, which was regarded by Descartes and Spinoza as the model for systems of necessary truth.

Self-evidence is the principle according to which conviction of truth follows directly from an understanding of meaning. In the practice of his intellectual midwifery, Socrates presupposed that thought is capable of bringing forth its own certainties. And rationalism has at all times regarded truth as ultimately accredited by internal marks recognizable by reason. Such truth arrived at antecedent to acquaintance with instances is called a priori, as distinguished from a posteriori knowledge, or observation after the fact. There can be no principles of self-evidence, but logicians have always been more or less concerned with the enumeration of alleged self-evident principles, notably those of contradiction and identity. A philosophical interest in the mathematical method has led to a logical study of axioms, but with a view rather to their fruitfulness than their intrinsic truth. Indeed, the interest in self-evident truth has always been subordinate to the interest in systematic truth, and the discovery of first principles most commonly serves to determine the relative priority of definite concepts, or the correct point of departure for a series of inferences.

The greater part of the famous Aristotelian logic consists in a study of inference, or the derivation of new knowledge from old knowledge. Aristotle sought to set down and classify every method of advancing from premises. The most important form of inference which he defined was the syllogism, a scheme of reasoning to a conclusion by means of two premises having one term in common. From the premises “all men are mortal” and “Socrates is a man,” one may conclude that “Socrates is mortal.” This is an instance not only of the syllogism in general, but of its most important “mood,” the subsumption of a particular case under a general rule. Since the decline of Aristotle’s influence in philosophy there has been a notable decrease of interest in the different forms of inference; though its fundamental importance as the very bone and sinew of reasoning or deductive thinking has never been challenged. Its loss of pre-eminence is in part due to the growth of empiricism, stimulated by the writings of Lord Bacon in the seventeenth century, and fostered by the subsequent development of experimental science.

Observation is the fundamental logical principle of empiricism. For a radical empiricism, knowledge would consist of descriptive generalizations based upon the summation of instances. That branch of logic which deals with the advance from individual instances to general principles, is called inductive logic. It has resulted in the announcement of canons of accuracy and freedom from preconception, and in the methodological study of hypothesis, experiment, and verification. Rules for observation directed to the end of discovering causes, constitute the most famous part of the epoch-making logic of J. S. Mills.

Sec. There are two significant tendencies in contemporary logic. Theories of the judgment have arisen in the course of an attempt to define the least complexity that must be present in order that thought shall come within the range of truth and error. It is evident that no one either knows or is in error until he takes some attitude which lays claim to knowledge. Denoting by the term judgment this minimum of complexity in knowledge, an important question arises as to the sense in which the judgment involves the subject, predicate, and copula that are commonly present in its propositional form.

Sec. But a more important logical development has been due to the recent analysis of definite accredited systems of knowledge. The study of the fundamental conceptions of mathematics and mechanics, together with an examination of the systematic structure of these sciences, furnishes the most notable cases. There are two senses in which such studies may be regarded as logical. In the first place, in so far as they bring to light the inner coherence of any body of truth, the kind of evidence upon which it rests, and the type of formal perfection which it seeks, they differ from formal logic only in that they derive their criteria from cases, rather than from the direct analysis of the procedure of thought. And since formal logic must itself make experiments, this difference is not a radical one. The study of cases tends chiefly to enrich methodology, or the knowledge of the special criteria of special sciences. In the second place, such studies serve to define the relatively few simple truths which are common to the relatively many complex truths. A study of the foundations of arithmetic reveals more elementary conceptions, such as class and order, that must be employed in the very definition of number itself, and so are implied in every numerical calculation. It appears similarly that the axioms of geometry are special axioms which involve the acceptance of more general axioms or indefinables. Logic in this sense, then, is the enumeration of conceptions and principles in the order of their indispensableness to knowledge. And while it must be observed that the most general conceptions and principles of knowledge are not necessarily those most significant for the existent world, nevertheless the careful analysis which such an enumeration involves is scarcely less fruitful for metaphysics than for logic.

Sec. Aesthetics is the formulation, as independently as possible of special subject-matter, of that which conditions beauty. As logic commonly refers to a judgment of truth, so aesthetics at any rate refers to a judgment implied in appreciation. But while it is generally admitted that truth itself is by no means limited to the form of the judgment, the contrary is frequently maintained with reference to beauty. The aphorism, De gustibus non est disputandum, expresses a common opinion to the effect that beauty is not a property belonging to the object of which it is predicated, but a property generated by the appreciative consciousness. According to this opinion there can be no beauty except in the case of an object’s presence in an individual experience. Investigators must of necessity refuse to leave individual caprice in complete possession of the field, but they have in many cases occupied themselves entirely with the state of aesthetic enjoyment in the hope of discovering its constant factors. The opposing tendency defines certain formal characters which the beautiful object must possess. Evidently the latter school will attribute a more profound philosophical importance to the conception of beauty, since for them it is a principle that obtains in the world of being. This was the first notable contention, that of Plato. But even with the emphasis laid upon the subjective aspect of the aesthetic experience, great metaphysical importance may be attached to it, where, as in the case of the German Romanticists, reality is deliberately construed as a spiritual life which is to be appreciated rather than understood.

As in the case of logic, a strong impulse has manifested itself in aesthetics to deal with groups of objects that lie within its province, rather than directly with its concepts and principles. The first special treatise on aesthetics, the “Poetics” of Aristotle, belongs to this type of inquiry, as does all criticism of art in so far as it aims at the formulation of general principles.

Sec. Ethics, the oldest and most popular of the normative sciences, is the formulation, as independently as possible of special subject-matter, of that which conditions goodness of conduct. Ethics is commonly concerned with goodness only in so far as it is predicated of conduct, or of character, which is a more or less permanent disposition to conduct. Since conduct, in so far as good, is said to constitute moral goodness, ethics may be defined as the formulation of the general principles of morality. The principles so formulated would be those virtually employed to justify conduct, or to disprove the imputation of immorality.

Sec. The student of this science is confronted with a very considerable diversity of method and differentiation of problems. The earliest and most profound opposition of doctrine in ethics arose from the differences of interpretation of which the teaching of Socrates is capable. His doctrine is, as we have seen, verbally expressed in the proposition, virtue is knowledge. Socrates was primarily concerned to show that there is no real living without an understanding of the significance of life. To live well is to know the end of life, the good of it all, and to govern action with reference to that end. Virtue is therefore the practical wisdom that enables one to live consistently with his real intention. But what is the real intention, the end or good of life? In the “Protagoras,” where Plato represents Socrates as expounding his position, virtue is interpreted to mean prudence, or foresight of pleasurable and painful consequences. He who knows, possesses all virtue in that he is qualified to adapt himself to the real situation and to gain the end of pleasure. All men, indeed, seek pleasure, but only virtuous men seek it wisely and well.

“And do you, Protagoras, like the rest of the world, call some pleasant things evil and some painful things good? for I am rather disposed to say that things are good in as far as they are pleasant, if they have no consequences of another sort, and in as far as they are painful they are bad."

According to this view painful things are good only when they lead eventually to pleasure, and pleasant things evil only when their painful consequences outweigh their pleasantness. Hence moral differences reduce to differences of skill in the universal quest for pleasure, and sensible gratification is the ultimate standard of moral value. This ancient doctrine, known as hedonism, expressing as it does a part of life that will not suffer itself for long to be denied, is one of the great perennial tendencies of ethical thought. In the course of many centuries it has passed through a number of phases, varying its conception of pleasure from the tranquillity of the wise man to the sensuous titillations of the sybarite, and from the individualism of the latter to the universalism of the humanitarian. But in every case it shows a respect for the natural man, praising morality for its disciplinary and instrumental value in the service of such human wants as are the outgrowth of the animal instinct of self-preservation.

Sec. But if a man’s life be regarded as a truer representation of his ideals than is his spoken theory, there is little to identify Socrates with the hedonists. At the conclusion of the defence of his own life, which Plato puts into his mouth in the well-known “Apology,” he speaks thus:

“When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing."

It is plain that the man Socrates cared little for the pleasurable or painful consequences of his acts, provided they were worthy of the high calling of human nature. A man’s virtue would now seem to possess an intrinsic nobility. If knowledge be virtue, then on this basis it must be because knowledge is itself excellent. Virtue as knowledge contributes to the good by constituting it. We meet here with the rationalistic strain in ethics. It praises conduct for the inherent worth which it may possess if it express that reason which the Stoics called “the ruling part.” The riches of wisdom consist for the hedonist in their purchase of pleasure. For the rationalist, on the other hand, wisdom is not coin, but itself the very substance of value.

Sec. Rationalism has undergone modifications even more significant than those of hedonism, and involving at least one radically new group of conceptions. Among the Greeks rationalism and hedonism alike are eudaemonistic. They aim to portray the fulness of life that makes “the happy man.” In the ethics of Aristotle, whose synthetic mind weaves together these different strands, the Greek ideal finds its most complete expression as “the high-minded man,” with all his powers and trappings. But the great spiritual transformation which accompanied the decline of Greek culture and the rise of Christianity, brought with it a new moral sensibility, which finds in man no virtue of himself, but only through the grace of God.

“And the virtues themselves,” says St. Augustine, “if they bear no relation to God, are in truth vices rather than virtues; for although they are regarded by many as truly moral when they are desired as ends in themselves and not for the sake of something else, they are, nevertheless, inflated and arrogant, and therefore not to be viewed as virtues but as vices."

The new ideal is that of renunciation, obedience, and resignation. Ethically this expresses itself in pietism. Virtue is good neither in itself nor on account of its consequences, but because it is conformable to the will of God. The extreme inwardness of this ideal is characteristic of an age that despaired of attainment, whether of pleasure or knowledge. To all, even the persecuted, it is permitted to obey, and so gain entrance into the kingdom of the children of God. But as every special study tends to rely upon its own conceptions, pietism, involving as it does a relation to God, is replaced by rigorism and intuitionism. The former doctrine defines virtue in terms of the inner attitude which it expresses. It must be done in the spirit of dutifulness, because one ought, and through sheer respect for the law which one’s moral nature affirms. Intuitionism has attempted to deal with the source of the moral law by defining conscience as a special faculty or sense, qualified to pass directly upon moral questions, and deserving of implicit obediences. It is characteristic of this whole tendency to look for the spring of virtuous living, not in a good which such living obtains, but in a law to which it owes obedience.

Sec. This third general ethical tendency has thus been of the greatest importance in emphasizing the consciousness of duty, and has brought both hedonism and rationalism to a recognition of its fundamental importance. Ethics must deal not only with the moral ideal, but also with the ground of its appeal to the individual, and his obligation to pursue it. In connection with this recognition of moral responsibility, the problem of human freedom has come to be regarded in the light of an inevitable point of contact between ethics and metaphysics. That which is absolutely binding upon the human will can be determined only in view of some theory of its ultimate nature. On this account the rationalistic and hedonistic motives are no longer abstractly sundered, as in the days of the Stoics and Epicureans, but tend to be absorbed in broader philosophical tendencies. Hedonism appears as the sequel to naturalism; or, more rarely, as part of a theistic system whose morality is divine legislation enforced by an appeal to motives of pleasure and pain. Rationalism, on the other hand, tends to be absorbed in rationalistic or idealistic philosophies, where man’s rational nature is construed as his bond of kinship with the universe.

Ethics has exhibited from the beginning a tendency to universalize its conceptions and take the central place in metaphysics. Thus with Plato good conduct was but a special case of goodness, the good being the most general principle of reality. In modern times Fichte and his school have founded an ethical metaphysics upon the conception of duty. In these cases ethics can be distinguished from metaphysics only by adding to the study of the good or of duty, a study of the special physical, psychological, and social conditions under which goodness and dutifulness may obtain in human life. It is possible to attach the name of ethics, and we have seen the same to be true of logic, either to a realm of ideal truth or to that realm wherein the ideal is realized in humanity.

Sec. A systematic study of ethics requires that the virtues, or types of moral practice, shall be interpreted in the light of the central conception of good, or of conscience. Justice, temperance, wisdom, and courage were praised by the Greeks. Christianity added self-sacrifice, humility, purity, and benevolence. These and other virtues have been defined, justified, and co-ordinated with the aid of a standard of moral value or a canon of duty.

There is in modern ethics a pronounced tendency, parallel to those already noted in logic and aesthetics, to study such phenomena belonging to its field as have become historically established. A very considerable investigation of custom, institutions, and other social forces has led to a contact of ethics with anthropology and sociology scarcely less significant than that with metaphysics.

Sec. In that part of his philosophy in which he deals with faith, the great German philosopher Kant mentions God, Freedom, and Immortality as the three pre-eminent religious interests. Religion, as we have seen, sets up a social relationship between man and that massive drift of things which determines his destiny. Of the two terms of this relation, God signifies the latter, while freedom and immortality are prerogatives which religion bestows upon the former. Man, viewed from the stand-point of religion as an object of special interest to the universe, is said to have a soul; and by virtue of this soul he is said to be free and immortal, when thought of as having a life in certain senses independent of its immediate natural environment. The attempt to make this faith theoretically intelligible has led to the philosophical disciplines known as theology and psychology.

Sec. Theology, as a branch of philosophy, deals with the proof and the nature of God. Since “God” is not primarily a theoretical conception, the proof of God is not properly a philosophical problem. Historically, this task has been assumed as a legacy from Christian apologetics; and it has involved, at any rate so far as European philosophy is concerned, the definition of ultimate being in such spiritual terms as make possible the relation with man postulated in Christianity. For this it has been regarded as sufficient to ascribe to the world an underlying unity capable of bearing the predicates of perfection, omnipotence, and omniscience. Each proof of God has defined him pre-eminently in terms of some one of these his attributes.

Sec. The ontological proof of God held the foremost place in philosophy’s contribution to Christianity up to the eighteenth century. This proof infers the existence from the ideal of God, and so approaches the nature of God through the attribute of perfection. It owes the form in which it was accepted in the Middle Ages and Renaissance to St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury at the close of the eleventh century. He argued from the idea of a most perfect being to its existence, on the ground that non-existence, or existence only in idea, would contradict its perfection. It is evident that the force of this argument depends upon the necessity of the idea of God. The argument was accepted in Scholastic Philosophy largely because of the virtual acceptance of this necessity. Mediaeval thought was under the dominance of the philosophical ideas of Plato and Aristotle, and through them rationalism had come to be the unquestioned starting-point for all thought. For Plato reality and rationality meant one and the same thing, so that the ultimate reality was the highest principle of rationality, which he conceived to be the idea of the good. In the case of Aristotle the ideal of rationality was conceived to determine the course of the cosmical evolution as its immanent final cause. But in itself it was beyond the world, or transcendent. For Plato perfection itself is reality, whereas for Aristotle perfection determines the hierarchical order of natural substances. The latter theory, more suitable to the uses of Christianity, because it distinguished between God and the world, was incorporated into the great school systems. But both theories contain the essence of the ontological proof of God. In thought one seeks the perfect truth, and posits it as at once the culmination of insight and the meaning of life. The ideal of God is therefore a necessary idea, because implied in all the effort of thought as the object capable of finally satisfying it. St. Anselm adds little to the force of this argument, and does much to obscure its real significance.

In stating the ontological argument the term perfection has been expressly emphasized, because it may be taken to embrace both truth and goodness. Owing to a habit of thought, due in the main to Plato, it was long customary to regard degrees of truth and goodness as interchangeable, and as equivalent to degrees of reality. The ens realissimum was in its completeness the highest object both of the faculty of cognition and of the moral will. But even in the scholastic period these two different aspects of the ideal were clearly recognized, and led to sharply divergent tendencies. More recently they have been divided and embodied in separate arguments. The epistemological argument defines God in terms of that absolute truth which is referred to in every judgment. Under the influence of idealism this absolute truth has taken the form of a universal mind, or all-embracing standard experience, called more briefly the absolute. The ethical argument, on the other hand, conceives God as the perfect goodness implied in the moral struggle, or the power through which goodness is made to triumph in the universe to the justification of moral faith. While the former of these arguments identifies God with being, the latter defines God in terms of the intent or outcome of being. Thus, while the epistemological argument does not distinguish God and the world, the latter does so, assuming that independent reality can be attributed to the stages of a process and to the purpose that dominates it.

Sec. The cosmological proof of God approaches him through the attribute of creative omnipotence. The common principle of causal explanation refers the origin of natural events to similar antecedent events. But there must be some first cause from which the whole series is derived, a cause which is ultimate, sufficient to itself, and the responsible author of the world. Because God’s function as creator was a part of the Christian teaching, and because explanation by causes is habitual with common sense, this argument has had great vogue. But in philosophy it has declined in importance, chiefly because it has been absorbed in arguments which deal with the kind of causality proper to a first cause or world-ground. The argument that follows is a case in point.

Sec. The teleological proof argues that the world can owe its origin only to an intelligent first cause. The evidence for this is furnished by the cunning contrivances and beneficent adaptations of nature. These could not have come about through chance or the working of mechanical forces, but only through the foresight of a rational will. This argument originally infers God from the character of nature and history; and the extension of mechanical principles to organic and social phenomena, especially as stimulated by Darwin’s principle of natural selection, has tended greatly to diminish its importance. When, on the other hand, for nature and history there are substituted the intellectual and moral activities themselves, and the inference is made to the ideal which they imply, the teleological argument merges into the ontological. But the old-fashioned statement of it remains in the form of religious faith, and in this capacity it has had the approval even of Hume and Kant, the philosophers who have contributed most forcibly to its overthrow as a demonstration of God. They agree that the acknowledgment of God in nature and history is the sequel to a theistic belief, and an inevitable attitude on the part of the religious consciousness.

Sec. Another group of ideas belonging to philosophical theology consists of three generalizations respecting God’s relation to the world, known as theism, pantheism, and deism. Although, theoretically, these are corollaries of the different arguments for God, two of them, theism and pantheism, owe their importance to their rivalry as religious tendencies. Theism emphasizes that attitude to God which recognizes in him an historical personage, in some sense distinct from both the world and man, which are his works and yet stand in an external relationship to him. It expresses the spirit of ethical and monotheistic religion, and is therefore the natural belief of the Christian. Pantheism appears in primitive religion as an animistic or polytheistic sense of the presence of a divine principle diffused throughout nature. But it figures most notably in the history of religions, in the highly reflective Brahmanism of India. In sharp opposition to Christianity, this religion preaches the indivisible unity of the world and the illusoriness of the individual’s sense of his own independent reality. In spite of the fact that such a doctrine is alien to the spirit of Christianity, it enters into Christian theology through the influence of philosophy. The theoretical idea of God tends, as we have seen, to the identification of him with the world as its most real principle. Or it bestows upon him a nature so logical and formal, and so far removed from the characters of humanity, as to forbid his entering into personal or social relations. Such reflections concerning God find their religious expression in a mystical sense of unity, which has in many cases either entirely replaced or profoundly modified the theistic strain in Christianity. In current philosophy pantheism appears in the epistemological argument which identifies God with being; while the chief bulwark of theism is the ethical argument, with its provision for a distinction between the actual world and ideal principle of evolution.

Sec. While theism and pantheism appear to be permanent phases in the philosophy of religion, deism is the peculiar product of the eighteenth century. It is based upon a repudiation of supernaturalism and “enthusiasm,” on the one hand, and a literal acceptance of the cosmological and teleological proofs on the other. Religions, like all else, were required, in this epoch of clear thinking, to submit to the canons of experimental observation and practical common sense. These authorize only a natural religion, the acknowledgment in pious living of a God who, having contrived this natural world, has given it over to the rule, not of priests and prophets, but of natural law. The artificiality of its conception of God, and the calculating spirit of its piety, make deism a much less genuine expression of the religious experience than either the moral chivalry of theism or the intellectual and mystical exaltation of pantheism.

Sec. The systematic development of philosophy leads to the inclusion of conceptions of God within the problem of metaphysics, and the subordination of the proof of God to the determination of the fundamental principle of reality. There will always remain, however, an outstanding theological discipline, whose function it is to interpret worship, or the living religious attitude, in terms of the theoretical principles of philosophy.

Sec. Psychology is the theory of the soul. As we have already seen, the rise of scepticism directs attention from the object of thought to the thinker, and so emphasizes the self as a field for theoretical investigation. But the original and the dominating interest in the self is a practical one. The precept, +gno:thi seauton+, has its deepest justification in the concern for the salvation of one’s soul. In primitive and half-instinctive belief the self is recognized in practical relations. In its animistic phase this belief admitted of such relations with all living creatures, and extended the conception of life very generally to natural processes. Thus in the beginning the self was doubtless indistinguishable from the vital principle. In the first treatise on psychology, the “+peri Psyche:s+” of Aristotle, this interpretation finds a place in theoretical philosophy. For Aristotle the soul is the entelechy of the body that function or activity which makes a man of it. He recognized, furthermore, three stages in this activity: the nutritive, sensitive, and rational souls, or the vegetable, animal, and distinctively human natures, respectively. The rational soul, in its own proper activity, is man’s highest prerogative, the soul to be saved. By virtue of it man rises above bodily conditions, and lays hold on the divine and eternal. But Plato, who, as we have seen, was ever ready to grant reality to the ideal apart from the circumstances of its particular embodiment, had already undertaken to demonstrate the immortality of the soul on the ground of its distinctive nature. According to his way of thinking, the soul’s essentially moral nature made it incapable of destruction through the operation of natural causes. It is evident, then, that there were already ideas in vogue capable of interpreting the Christian teaching concerning the existence of a soul, or of an inner essence of man capable of being made an object of divine interest.

Sec. The immediate effect of Christianity was to introduce into philosophy as one of its cardinal doctrines the theory of a spiritual being, constituting the true self of the individual, and separable from the body. The difference recognized in Plato and Aristotle between the divine spark and the appetitive and perceptual parts of human nature was now emphasized. The former (frequently called the “spirit,” to distinguish it from the lower soul) was defined as a substance having the attributes of thought and will. The fundamental argument for its existence was the immediate appeal to self-consciousness; and it was further defined as indestructible on the ground of its being utterly discontinuous and incommensurable with its material environment. This theory survives at the present day in the conception of pure activity, but on the whole the attributes of the soul have superseded its substance.

Sec. Intellectualism and voluntarism are the two rival possibilities of emphasis when the soul is defined in terms of its known activities. Wherever the essence of personality is in question, as also occurs in the case of theology, thought and will present their respective claims to the place of first importance. Intellectualism would make will merely the concluding phase of thought, while voluntarism would reduce thought to one of the interests of a general appetency. It is evident that idealistic theories will be much concerned with this question of priority. It is also true, though less evident, that intellectualism, since it emphasizes the general and objective features of the mind, tends to subordinate the individual to the universal; while voluntarism, emphasizing desire and action, is relatively individualistic, and so, since there are many individuals, also pluralistic.

Sec. The question of the freedom of the will furnishes a favorite controversial topic in philosophy. For the interest at stake is no less than the individual’s responsibility before man and God for his good or bad works. It bears alike upon science, religion, and philosophy, and is at the same time a question of most fundamental practical importance. But this diffusion of the problem has led to so considerable a complication of it that it becomes necessary in outlining it to define two issues. In the first place, the concept of freedom is designed to express generally the distinction between man and the rest of nature. To make man in all respects the product and creature of his natural environment would be to deny freedom and accept the radically necessitarian doctrine. The question still remains, however, as to the causes which dominate man. He may be free from nature, and yet be ruled by God, or by distinctively spiritual causes, such as ideas or character. Where in general the will is regarded as submitting only to a spiritual causation proper to its own realm, the conception is best named determinism; though in the tradition of philosophy it is held to be a doctrine of freedom, because contrasted with the necessitarianism above defined. There remains indeterminism, which attributes to the will a spontaneity that makes possible the direct presence to it of genuine alternatives. The issue may here coincide with that between intellectualism and voluntarism. If, e.g., in God’s act of creation, his ideals and standards are prior to his fiat, his conduct is determined; whereas it is free in the radical or indeterministic sense if his ideals themselves are due to his sheer will. This theory involves at a certain point in action the absence of cause. On this account the free will is often identified with chance, in which case it loses its distinction from nature, and we have swung round the circle.

Sec. There is similar complexity in the problem concerning immortality. Were the extreme claims of naturalism to be established, there would be no ground whatsoever upon which to maintain the immortality of man, mere dust returning unto dust. The philosophical concept of immortality is due to the supposition that the quintessence of the individual’s nature is divine. But several possibilities are at this point open to us. The first would maintain the survival after death of a recognizable and discrete personality. Another would suppose a preservation after death, through being taken up into the life of God. Still another, the theory commonly maintained on the ground of rationalistic and idealistic metaphysics, would deny that immortality has to do with life after death, and affirm that it signifies the perpetual membership of the human individual in a realm of eternity through the truth or virtue that is in him. But this interpretation evidently leaves open the question of the immortality of that which is distinctive and personal in human nature.

Sec. So far we have followed the fortunes only of the “spirit” of man. What of that lower soul through which he is identified with the fortunes of his body? When philosophy gradually ceased, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to be “the handmaid of religion,” there arose a renewed interest in that part of human nature lying between the strictly physiological functions, on the one hand, and thought and will on the other. Descartes and Spinoza analyzed what they called the “passions,” meaning such states of mind as are conditioned by a concern for the interests of the body. At a later period, certain English philosophers, following Locke, traced the dependence of ideas upon the senses. Their method was that of introspection, or the direct examination by the individual of his own ideas, and for the sake of noting their origin and composition from simple factors. The lineal descendants of these same English philosophers defined more carefully the process of association, whereby the complexity and sequence of ideas are brought about, and made certain conjectures as to its dependence upon properties and transactions in the physical brain. These are the three main philosophical sources of what has now grown to be the separate natural science of psychology. It will be noted that there are two characteristics which all of these studies have in common. They deal with the experience of the individual as composing his own private history, and tend to attribute the specific course which this private history takes to bodily conditions. It is only recently that these investigations have acquired sufficient unity and exclusiveness of aim to warrant their being regarded as a special science. But such is now so far the case that the psychologist of this type pursues his way quite independently of philosophy. It is true his research has advanced considerably beyond his understanding of its province. But it is generally recognized that he must examine those very factors of subjectivity which the natural scientist otherwise seeks to evade, and, furthermore, that he must seek to provide for them in nature. He treats the inner life in what Locke called “the plain historical method,” that is to say, instead of interpreting and defining its ideas, he analyzes and reports upon its content. He would not seek to justify a moral judgment, as would ethics, or to criticise the cogency of thought, as would logic; but only to describe the actual state as he found it. In order to make his data commensurable with the phenomena of nature, he discovers or defines bodily conditions for the subjective content which he analyzes. His fundamental principle of method is the postulate of psycho-physical parallelism, according to which he assumes a state of brain or nervous system for every state of mind. But in adopting a province and a method the psychologist foregoes finality of truth after the manner of all natural science. He deals admittedly with an aspect of experience, and his conclusions are no more adequate to the nature of the self than they are to the nature of outer objects. An admirable reference to this abstract division of experience occurs in Kuelpe’s “Introduction to Philosophy”:

“For the developed consciousness, as for the naïve, every experience is an unitary whole; and it is only the habit of abstract reflection upon experience that makes the objective and subjective worlds seem to fall apart as originally different forms of existence. Just as a plane curve can be represented in analytical geometry as the function of two variables, the abscissae and the ordinates, without prejudice to the unitary course of the curve itself, so the world of human experience may be reduced to a subjective and an objective factor, without prejudice to its real coherence."

Sec. The problems of psychology, like those of theology, tend to disappear as independent philosophical topics. The ultimate nature of the self will continue to interest philosophers more deeply, perhaps, than any aspect of experience but their conception of it will be a corollary of their metaphysics and epistemology. The remainder of the field of the old philosophical psychology, the introspective and experimental analysis of special states of mind, is already the province of a natural science which is becoming more and more free from the stand-point and method of philosophy.

Sec. Reminding ourselves anew that philosophical problems cannot be treated in isolation from one another, we shall hereinafter seek to become acquainted with general stand-points that give systematic unity to the issues which have been enumerated. Such stand-points are not clearly defined by those who occupy them, and they afford no clear-cut classification of all historical philosophical philosophies. But system-making in philosophy is commonly due to the moving in an individual mind of some most significant idea; and certain of these ideas have reappeared so frequently as to define more or less clearly marked tendencies, or continuous strands, out of which the history of thought is forever weaving itself. Such is clearly the case with naturalism. From the beginning until now there have been men whose philosophy is a summation of the natural sciences, whose entire thought is based upon an acceptance of the methods and the fundamental conceptions of these disciplines. This tendency stands in the history of thought for the conviction that the visible and tangible world which interacts with the body is veritable reality. This philosophy is realistic and empirical to an extent entirely determined by its belief concerning being. But while naturalism is only secondarily epistemological, subjectivism and absolute idealism have their very source in the self-examination and the self-criticism of thought. Subjectivism signifies the conviction that the knower cannot escape himself. If reality is to be kept within the range of possible knowledge, it must be defined in terms of the processes or states of selves. Absolute idealism arises from a union of this epistemological motive with a recognition of what are regarded as the logical necessities to which reality must submit. Reality must be both knowledge and rational knowledge; the object, in short, of an absolute mind, which shall be at once all-containing and systematic. This rationalistic motive was, however, not originally associated with an idealistic epistemology, but with the common-sense principle that being is discovered and not constituted by thought. Such an absolute realism is, like naturalism, primarily metaphysical rather than epistemological; but, unlike naturalism, it seeks to define reality as a logical or ethical necessity.

Under these several divisions, then, we shall meet once more with the special problems of philosophy, but this time they will be ranged in an order that is determined by some central doctrine. They will appear as parts not of the general problem of philosophy, but of some definite system of philosophy.