contents

chapters  I,II,III,IV,VI,VII,VIII,IX,X,XI,XII

[166] 1. Root metaphors induced from world theories.—The material of this chapter is on a different level from the level of those preceding. I believe that anyone taking a broad and tolerant view of the cognitive situation would sooner or later reach essentially the conclusions of the previous chapters. Those conclusions, and the evidence and reasoning on which they are based, are a sort of bedrock of cognition. That utter skepticism and dogmatism are self-defeating, that there is common sense, that we do have great confidence in data, which numbers of observations confirm, and in danda, which large masses of fact confirm—those seem to be minimum conclusions safely acceptable.

[167] But one may accept those conclusions without accepting the suggestions of this chapter. Here I shall offer a hypothesis concerning the origin of world theories—a hypothesis which, if true, shows the connection of these theories with common sense, illumines the nature of these theories, renders them distinguishable from one another and acts as an instrument of criticism for determining their relative adequacy.

[168] Logically, this chapter should follow our study of such theories; for it purports to be no more than a summary of conclusions gained by studying them and the men who made them. But to serve the purposes of exposition the theory comes better first and the evidence afterward. I call it the "root-metaphor theory." Such a theory of world theories seems to me much less important than the clarification it introduces into the field of cognition it covers. Our interest is not so much in the truth of a certain theory about world theories as in the cognitive value of the world theories themselves.

[169] Strangely enough, if this root-metaphor theory is correct, its truth could only be established by the adequacy of the theories which constitute its evidence. For this theory is itself a structural hypothesis—at least, it would be such in its ultimate corroboration—and, as we have seen, a structural hypothesis only attains full confirmation in a world theory. Hence, if this theory is true, an adequate world theory will support it. This theory would then, so to speak, become absorbed in its own evidence, that is, become an item in the very theory which it is a theory about. If this sounds like a dark saying, we reply that a world theory that cannot adequately explain it is not an adequate world theory.

[170] But it is not a dark saying, though it does constitute a curious puzzle like that of the bottle carrying a label of the picture of that bottle, which picture of that bottle is pictured with a label which pictures the picture of that bottle, and so on—if so on. A bottle with a label like that is a fact of some sort in the world—a dubitandum, at least— and so is a world theory, and a theory about a world theory. And we know that the critical refinement of, at any rate, the second and third of the facts just presented lies in the direction of danda and world theories. There is nothing but dogmatism that can stop such criticism. To say, therefore, that a theory about world theories is something the cognitive value of which will depend ultimately on the value ascribed to it by an adequate world theory is merely to say that this theory, like any other criticizable cognitive item, is as valuable as the relevant evidence that corroborates it. And I stress this point at once to make it clear that our interest is not in a particular theory but in the nature and value of cognition itself.

[171] This chapter and its root-metaphor theory, the purpose of which is to link dubitanda and data to danda, and indirectly to link different sorts of danda together, would therefore drop completely out of sight so far as it were true. Ideally, we should pass directly from dubitanda and data to fully adequate danda which would exhibit all things cognitively in their proper order. Unfortunately, danda are not at present nearly adequate. We are therefore prompted to ask ourselves why. The result of the inquiry is this root-metaphor theory, which in its content is in the nature of a rough dandum. This theory, therefore, definitely does not legislate over world theories except so far as these voluntarily accept it and thereby refine it. On the contrary, an adequate world theory by virtue of its refinement legislates over this theory or any like it. There is no reliable cognitive appeal beyond an adequate world theory. But when world theories show themselves to be inadequate we accept what makeshifts we can find. This root-metaphor theory is such a makeshift. Its purpose is to squeeze out all the cognitive values that can be found in the world theories we have and to supply a receptacle in which their juices may be collected, so that they will not dry up from dogmatism, or be wasted over the ground through the indiscriminate pecking of marauding birds.

[172] 2. Can logical postulates make world theories?—How could world theories be generated? Barring the refined account from world theories themselves, and sticking to the levels of common sense and data, two suggestions emerge. One of these is typical of common sense, the other of data. The first suggestion is analogy; the second, permutations of logical postulates. The root-metaphor theory is an elaboration of the first suggestion. It has the advantage of being practically a common-sense theory and therefore inviting refinement and self-development along the lines of structural corroboration, so that each refined interpretation of the root-metaphor theory by a relatively adequate world theory appears as simply the natural and fully detailed exposition of precisely what a root metaphor is. Just as common-sense fact always calls for refinement, so a common-sense theory of world theories will call for refinement, and that refinement by the very nature of the material itself is bound to culminate in a world theory or in a number of alternative world theories.

[173] But the suggestion that comes from the field of data would also seem worth considering. Coming as it does from a field of cognition already refined, it might seem more promising than the common-sense suggestion. So it has seemed to many men. And yet, that such is its source may be why it has proved less successful.

[174] At the break of the century, when the potentialities of the new symbolic logic were dawning upon men, there were some who expected that mathematical logical systems would yield all that traditional metaphysical systems had, and more too, and would therefore in time completely supplant the traditional modes of metaphysical thought. These hopes have waned. But the possibility still remains of using the apparatus of symbolic logic as a means of generating world theories.

[175] The idea is to conceive a world theory in the form of a deductive system with theorems derived from postulates. Once obtain such a system, and new world theories might then be generated like new geometries by simply adding or dropping or changing a postulate and noting the result in the self-consistency of the system and in the application of the theorems to all the observed facts of the world.

[176] The idea is particularly attractive to the positivist. Suppose we conceive such a system as a summary of the facts of the world, that is, as a conventionalistic hypothesis. Something like this is being done with a degree of success in physical cosmology, both microscopic and macroscopic. Just conceive such mathematical speculation of physicists and astronomers expanded to cover all facts, and then we have a conventionalistic world hypothesis. By manipulating the postulates, hypotheses might be spawned by the dozens, and many of them might be adequate world hypotheses according to the conventionalistic standard of adequacy, namely, intellectual convenience.

[177] Here we seem to avoid the difficulties of dictatorial positivism noted in chapter iii. Danda are not denied. They are not denominated false, nor even ignored, for by definition a conventionalistic hypothesis affirms nothing. It merely organizes the facts observed in such a manner as to be most conveniently used and perused. If no dictatorial claims are made, and these conventionalistic hypotheses are merely presented as alternative world theories to be considered along with the analogically generated world theories, what objections can there be?

[178] None, if the proponents of this method do really maintain an undictatorial attitude. But it is to be noticed that no conventionalistic world hypothesis has ever been generated by the postulational method. The method, therefore, is quite speculative so far as it applies to world theories. It does not, therefore, actually exist as an alternative to the analogical method, which we shall develop. It is only a possible alternative. This fact in itself is noteworthy.

[179] Can any reasons be given for this failure? We suspect that there is a good reason; which is, that the postulational method itself is not quite free from structural presuppositions. For this method is an application of multiplicative corroboration in terms of logical data. And all types of multiplicative corroboration seem to take for granted the fact of exact repetition or exact similarity. The corroboration of man by man seems to take it for granted that each man agrees with the others that their observations are the same.

[180] But, from the standpoint of structural criticism, the unquestioning acceptance of the principle of multiplicative corroboration and its apparent assumption of exact repetitions of observation is rather naive. The fact of repetition itself is something that needs refinement, and by the nature of the case multiplicative corroboration cannot give it; only structural corroboration can. From the standpoint of structural corroboration, a datum is barely more than a dubitandum—something very curious and problematic just because in its extremes of pointer readings it is so reliable.

[181] Now, among the relatively adequate structural world theories which we shall study there is only one that accepts exact repetition of observations at its face value, that is, accepts a refined datum as a refined dandum. The other world theories, of course, accept the evidence of the reliability of data; but they account for this reliability not in terms of exact repetition, but in quite different terms. We therefore reach the curious result that so far as the postulational method is accepted at its face value (even as purely conventionalistic) the cognitive values it offers fall within only one of several alternative structural world hypotheses. In other words, the idea of a conventionalistic world hypothesis (even barring the consideration of chapter iii) is not so innocent as it sounds. It presupposes the danda of a certain structural world theory, name formism.

[182] Hence it does not seem likely that adequate world theories will be generated in the postulational way. Subsidiary theories of limited scope can be generated in this way; but probably not world theories, for the cogent reason that an uncritical acceptance of data at their face value already commits a man to one structural world theory, and all the permutations of postulates he can make will never get him out of that theory. If he accepts the interpretation of data in terms of some other structural world theory the same condition will hold there.

[183] The postulational method might accordingly be suggestive of alternative ways of presenting the categories of a single structural hypothesis already generated in the ana-logical way, or it might do other subordinate services, but it is unlikely to prove a fertile method of generating new sets of categories or new world theories.

[184] 3. The root-metaphor method.—So we return to the traditional analogical method of generating world theories. The method in principle seems to be this: A man desiring to understand the world looks about for a clue to its comprehension. He pitches upon some area of common-sense fact and tries if he cannot understand other areas in terms of this one. This original area becomes then his basic analogy or root metaphor. He describes as best he can the characteristics of this area, or, if you will, discriminates its structure. A list of its structural characteristics becomes his basic concepts of explanation and description. We call them a set of categories. In terms of these categories he proceeds to study all other areas of fact whether uncriticized or previously criticized. He undertakes to interpret all facts in terms of these categories. As a result of the impact of these other facts upon his categories, he may qualify and readjust the categories, so that a set of categories commonly changes and develops. Since the basic analogy or root metaphor normally (and probably at least in part necessarily) arises out of common sense, a great deal of development and refinement of a set of categories is required if they are to prove adequate for a hypothesis of unlimited scope. Some root metaphors prove more fertile than others, have greater powers of expansion and of adjustment. These survive in comparison with the others and generate the relatively adequate world theories.

[185] As a simple illustration of the growth of a root metaphor let us consider and imaginatively reconstruct the probable development of the Milesian theory, which was the first self-conscious world theory in European thought. Thales, wondering about the world, and dissatisfied with the explanations of mythology, suggested, "All things are water." He picked out a range of common-sense fact, water, which impressed him, a citizen of a seaport town, as likely to possess the secret of all things. Water stretches far and wide. It evaporates, generating fogs, and mists, and clouds, and these in turn condense in dampness and rain. Life springs out of its slime and mud, and the absence of water is death.

[186] Anaximander followed Thales and thought the selec-tion of common water rather crude. The substance of all things, metaphysical water, was not after all just common water. It was common water plus all its phases and acquired qualities. He accordingly emphasized the extensive category of infinity and a category of qualitative change which he called "shaking out." He gave the substance of all things the name apeiron or "infinite." In the "infinite" lay the "mixture" of all qualities: hardnesses, softnesses, shapes, colors, tastes, and odors. For any particular object in the world, such as a ship, a leaf, a pebble, or a fire, some of these qualities were "shaken out" of the "infinite mixture" as perhaps rain is shaken out of heavy clouds. These segregated qualities then congregated in the familiar forms we perceive.

[187] After Anaximander came Anaximenes, who felt that Anaximander was very near to substituting an abstraction for the concrete substance of things, but apparently agreed that water did not connote the infinity which a world substance should have. He accordingly suggested air, denoting by this something more akin to what we should now call mist, which was, after all, one of the phases of Thales’ "water." Anaximenes also added the clear discrimination of a category of quantitative change, namely, rarefaction-condensation, which seems to have been assumed by Thales and perhaps by Anaximander, but was not defined. It amounts to a category of the phases of matter: solid, liquid, and gas.

[188] The root metaphor of this theory thus ultimately turns out to be the characteristics of a basic material out of which all the facts of the universe can be generated by certain processes of change. The set of categories may be listed as (1) a generating substance (or maybe several), (2) principles of change like "shaking out," and rarefaction-condensation, and (3) generated substances produced by (1) through (2). We might call this the" generating-substance theory.

[189] It is not a very adequate theory, though its shadow falls upon the works of many men who developed much more adequate theories. It is periodically revived in practically pure form, but always by men of relatively small caliber. It was revived by Bernadino Telesio in the sixteenth century and by Buchner, Haeckel, and Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth. The trouble with the theory is that it lacks scope. There are too many facts that cannot be satisfactorily described in terms of these categories. We shall examine in detail one instance of this sort of inadequacy in this sort of theory when we study types of inadequacy in the next chapter.

[190] When attempts are made to develop these categories further so as to render them more adequate and give them the scope required of a world theory, we discover either that they break down or that they break out into various types of cognitive fallacy, or that new sets of categories are in the making and men are seeking inspiration from new groups of common-sense facts, seeking new root metaphors.

[191] So, after Anaximenes came Empedocles, who proposed in his perplexity over the inadequacies of water, apeiron, and air a plurality of generating substances and some new principles of change; and, in the same perplexity, but following another path, Anaxagoras; and also Parmenides and Zeno, who boldly but not so wisely proposed to solve the difficulties by believing only in elemental substance, denying generating change; and Heracleitus, who equally boldly and unwisely proposed believing only in generating change and apparently denying permanent substance. So we see how a world theory beginning promisingly with a root metaphor fresh from vital common sense grows for a while, meets obstacles in fact, is incapable of overcoming these obstacles, desperately juggles its categories, forgets the facts in the juggling of the categories, till these presently become so empty that some men can cast half of them overboard, devoutly believe the other half, substitute concepts for the facts, and deem it unnecessary to look back upon the forgotten facts. When an inadequate theory reaches such a state of intellectual chaos, there is stimulus for criticism and for new insight. Both came at once in Greece. The Sophists offered plenty of criticism, and two of the most adequate world theories came to birth: mech-anism, through Leucippus and Democritus; and formism through Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These theories were not sudden births, as the generating-substance theory seems to have been. There were germs of them in the disintegrating stages of the generating-substance theory itself, as if this disintegration of a promising theory turned men’s eyes back toward common sense to find new sources of cognitive inspiration, that is to say, new root metaphors.

[192] This brief account of the Milesian theory is a good parable for all of us who are interested in structural hypotheses and world theories. Never again do we see so simply and clearly the full course of a world theory—its promise, its bloom, its difficulties, its struggles, its collapse—and the type of men for every stage of it, exhibited almost in caricature. The genius Thales, who intuited the root metaphor and left only vague hints and a central saying, "All things are water"; the systematizers Anaximenes and Empedocles, who in different ways brought the theory to a high point of reasonableness by their careful reflection and extensive observation; Parmenides and Zeno, confident, brilliant, and clever jugglers of concepts, confounding to their opponents, uncompromising in their logic, who preserved some of the categories of the theory only by rejecting the others, and emptying all of them of the facts which generated them; Anaxagoras, observant again, but confused, reminiscent of Anaximander, full of promise, and  yet disappointing to the young Socrates, for Anaxagoras was an eclectic bridging the way from a theory he could not make work to a theory which as yet, from lack of a clear intuition of its root metaphor, he did not comprehend. The counterparts of all these men reappear over and over again in the later history of thought, and it is a good thing to mark their type here where they are so simply seen, and judge their reliability and worth.

[193] On the slim basis of this illustrative sketch of one root metaphor and its world theory let us make some critical generalizations. These will find their full justification, of course, only later. Once more, in the interest of clarity of exposition, we are led to state first what in the order of evidence should come last. Let us put these generalizations in the form of maxims:

[194] 4. Maxim I: A world hypothesis is determined by its root metaphor.—W hen we speak of different world hypotheses, we mean the several developments of different root metaphors. The theories of Thales, Anaximenes, Empedocles, Telesio, and Spencer are all one world theory, because they are all derived from one root metaphor. The statements of the theory may differ in the degree of refinement of the categories, in terminology, in emphasis on certain details, in omission of some details, and even in omission of some basic categories. Still, all these statements will be reckoned as statements of one world theory in that they are all generated from and related to a single root metaphor.

[195] Moreover, it is implied that there is some statement or number of statements which represent the world theory, its categories, and root metaphor, at the height of its development. So we suggested that Anaximenes and Empedocles represented the generating-substance theory at the height of its Greek development. It is always possible that a theory may develop farther than the best statement we have of it. In a sense, Herbert Spencer’s statement was a development beyond the Greek. It was a development, however, chiefly in respect to the vast accumulation of factual detail over what the Greeks had, and hardly a development at all in respect to the refinement of the categories. It is the latter sort of development we chiefly have in mind when we speak of the development of a world hypothesis. For its adequacy depends on its potentialities of description and explanation rather than upon the accumulation of actual descriptions, though its power of description is never fully known short of actual performance.

[196] This fact brings out that the unlimited scope essential to a world hypothesis is more a matter of intent and accepted responsibility than a matter of actual test. Obviously, all the facts in the world can never be described literally by any hypothesis. The testing of a world hypothesis consists in presenting to it for description types of fact or specimens from diverse fields of facts, and if it can adequately describe these we assume that it can describe the rest. Experience has made philosophers pretty well aware of what are likely to be the hardest facts for a world theory to handle, and these are at once respectfully presented for solution to any young hypothesis that ventures to claim world-wide scope. If the description of these facts tolerably well passes criticism, critics scour the universe for some other evidence which will break the theory down. The world-wide scope of a theory, therefore, is actually a challenge rather than an accomplishment.

[197] Our best world hypotheses, however, seem to have this scope. They seem to handle fairly adequately any fact that is presented to them. Their inadequacies arise not so much from lack of scope as from internal inconsistencies, so that the minimum requirement nowadays for a world hy-pothesis is unlimited scope. We therefore speak only of the relative inadequacies of world theories, their world-wide scope being taken for granted.

[198] 5. Maxim II: Each world hypothesis is autonomous.— This follows from our observation in the previous paragraph. If two or more world hypotheses handle their facts with the same degree of adequacy (so far as can be judged), and there is no world hypothesis of greater adequacy available, then there is no appeal beyond these hypotheses and each must be held to be as reliable as the other. The reason, of course, is that structural refinement reaches its culmination in world hypotheses, so that there is no cognitive appeal beyond the most adequate world hypotheses we have. Several important corollaries may be stated:

[199] i) It is illegitimate to disparage the factual interpretations of one world hypothesis in terms of the categories of another—if both hypotheses are equally adequate. This disparagement is an almost universal procedure, very plausible and entirely fallacious. We believe that at the present time there are four world hypotheses of about equal adequacy. We shall call them formism, mechanism, contextualism, and organicism. Now, the very statement that these are relatively adequate hypotheses means that they are capable of presenting credible interpretations of any facts whatever in terms of their several sets of categories. Indeed, these interpretations are so convincing that a man who has not had an opportunity to compare them with the parallel interpretations of a rival hypothesis will inevitably accept them as self-evident or indubitable. The basic danda, that is, the refined evidence, of every one of these rather reliable world hypotheses has traditionally been presented and accepted as indubitable by the believers in these hypotheses, so obviously pure fact do the refined danda of any good world hypothesis appear through the lenses of its categories. Remember the danda of Price and Dewey. It is the apparent transparency of danda for cognition that makes dogmatism so easy to accept and so hard to dispel. The exponents of the theories which we are about to study have in the past, almost to a man, been dogmatists. They have believed their theories implicitly, accepted their danda as indubitable, and their categories generally as self-evident.

[200] One reason they have been so sure of themselves is that whichever of these hypotheses they have espoused, they have been able to give relatively adequate interpretations in their own terms of the danda and categories of the other hypotheses. "You see," they say, "we are able to explain what these other mistaken philosophers have thought to be facts, and to show where the errors of their observations lay, how they rationalized their prejudices, accepting interpretations for facts and missing the real facts. Our hypothesis includes theirs and is accordingly the true account of the nature of things."

[201] This would be a good argument if the other hypotheses were not equally well able to make the same argument. Among the facts in the world that a relatively adequate world theory must adequately interpret are, of course, other world theories, and a world theory that cannot reasonably interpret the errors of other world theories is automatically inadequate. By that much it lacks the requisite scope. The four world theories which we shall consider have no difficulty in explaining each other’s errors.

[202] It follows that what are pure facts for one theory are highly interpreted evidence for another. This does not imply that there are no pure facts in the universe, but only that we do not know where they are. The danda of the best world hypotheses, however, are our best bet. It is the cognitive obligation of a world theory to interpret the danda and categories of other world theories in terms of its own categories. Within the mode of interpretation of any world theory, the categories of that theory legislate without appeal. But this privilege belongs to any other equally adequate theory. One set of categories, therefore, cannot legislate over another set of categories unless the latter fails to reciprocate or in any other way indicates a lesser degree of adequacy.

[203] ii) It is illegitimate to assume that the claims of a given world hypothesis are established by the exhibition of the shortcomings of other world hypotheses. This may be called the fallacy of clearing the ground. It assumes that if a theory is not perfect it is no good, and that if all other suggested theories are no good, then the ground is clear for whatever one’s own theory can produce. This holds, of course, only if the suggested theory is more adequate than those rejected.

[204] This is so obvious a fallacy that it is remarkable it should be so frequently used and to such persuasive effect. Yet a great proportion of philosophical—and not only philosophical—books give a large part of their space to polemic, finding the faults in rival theories with an idea that this helps to establish the theory proposed. The cog-nitive value of a hypothesis is not one jot increased by the cognitive errors of other hypotheses. Most polemic is a waste of time, or an actual obfuscation of the evidence. It is generally motivated by a proselytizing spirit supported on dogmatic illusions. If a theory is any good it can stand on its own evidence. The only reason for referring to other theories in constructive cognitive endeavor is to find out what other evidence they may suggest, or other matters of positive cognitive value. We need all world hypotheses, so far as they are adequate, for mutual comparison and correction of interpretative bias.

[205] iii) It is illegitimate to subject the results of structural refinement (world hypotheses) to the cognitive standards (or limitations) of multiplicative refinement. Data cannot legislate over danda. Data must be accepted as evidence to be accounted for in a world hypothesis, but a world hypothesis does not have to accept data at their face value, or to exclude acceptance of any other sort of evidence than data. This point was discussed in detail earlier, in our examination of the positivistic proposals.

[206] iv) It is illegitimate to subject the results of structural refinement to the assumptions of common sense. Dubitanda must be accepted as evidence to be accounted for, but, as we have seen, hardly ever at their face value. And this is without disparagement to the ultimate cognitive security of common sense.

[207] v) It is convenient to employ common-sense concepts as bases for comparison for parallel fields of evidence among world theories. Dubitanda definitions of a group of facts are the best test definitions for the comparison of parallel danda definitions in different world theories. For instance, suppose we wanted to compare the interpretations of "red tomato" in the four relatively adequate world theories we are to study. From the brief earlier quotations from Price and Dewey on such a subject, it is pretty obvious that the field of fact covered by "red tomato" would, for Dewey and Price, not exactly correspond. Some items of evidence which for Price would be rather or quite irrelevant in determining what "red tomato" is, would for Dewey be vitally relevant. For Dewey, "red tomato" spreads over, so to speak, a different area of fact from what it does for Price. Yet the descriptions these two men give of "red tomato" are as nearly descriptions of the "same" fact as can be found from their respective points of view. If we want to compare the views of the two men, we can do no better than compare their different interpretations of what may be called the "same" fact. Yet the fact is never literally the same, because, if it were, the description or interpretation would be just the same, which never happens if the categories are really different.

[208] If, let us imagine, there were an omniscient mind who looked upon the world with the "true" categories, which in such a case would, of course, be the actual structural order of nature and not interpretative conceptions at all, he could correct the interpretations of Dewey and Price, showing just where one perhaps took in too much fact here, and the other too little there. For such a mind Dewey’s and Price’s descriptions would be definitely two different facts of interpretation different from a third fact, which is the real red tomato truly intuited by this omniscient mind. (Any dogmatist of a theory other than Dewey’s or Price’s would also say just that, believing his interpretation of the red tomato to be the real red tomato.) But since we do not have (we find reason to believe) the fully adequate view of the world which definitely would tell us the difference in fact between the "same" red tomato interpreted by Price and by Dewey, how can we compare the two inter-pretations? Why, of course, as we have been comparing them—by noting the interpretation which each gives of the same common-sense fact.

[209] We take a common-sense dubitandum, red tomato, and we note the structural refinement of that fact which culminates in Dewey’s dandum, and also the refinement which culminates in Price’s dandum. We then say that Dewey’s dandum is the "same" fact in his world view that Price’s dandum is in his. Though in any specific instance there is some risk in such ascriptions of equivalence, in the end (that is, in the comparison of all the ascriptions made by both theories) there is no risk; for within world hypotheses having unlimited scope, the totality of interpretations in any two world hypotheses must be literally equivalent since they both take in all the facts there are.

[210] As a maxim of method, then, we find that there is no better way of entering upon the study of a field of fact than through common sense. Let the subject be perception, physical body, personal freedom, the law of gravitation, legal right, aesthetic beauty, myself, identity, space, yellow, saltiness, anger, air, action, truth—whatever you will, the essay or the book will most profitably begin with the common-sense meanings of these terms and then proceed to refinements of interpretation which can be compared with one another on the basis of their mutual points of origin.

[211] 6. Maxim III: Eclecticism is confusing.—This maxim follows from the second. If world hypotheses are autonomous, they are mutually exclusive. A mixture of them, therefore, can only be confusing. We are speaking now as having cognition in mind, not practice, which often entails other than purely cognitive considerations.

[212]  When we say that world theories are mutually exclusive, we do not mean that they stand apart from one another like so many isolated posts. Each theory is well aware of the others, criticizes and interprets them and entirely includes them within its scope. It is only from the perspective of common sense, in the recollection of the different theories’ diverse courses of critical refinement, that we are aware of their mutual exclusiveness.

[213] More perspicuously, it is only through our study of their factual conflicts, their diverse categories, their consequent differences of factual corroboration, and—in a word—their distinct root metaphors that we become aware of their mutual exclusiveness.

[214] It is not to be denied (especially after our perception that root metaphors become themselves refined in consort with the refinement of the very theories they generate) that the root metaphor of one theory may merge with that of another, and eventually all may come harmoniously together. But this idea itself is a principle derived from one world theory, and cannot be affirmed until, or if, that theory (organicism) should turn out to be completely adequate. For, contrariwise, it is barely possible that the world has no determinate structure, but that the past is being continually revised by the future and that the present is consequently utterly indeterminate and likely to change its nature without notice at any time, so that an indefinite number of structural hypotheses are all equally pertinent and equally impertinent. Though this latter proposal skims perilously close to the dogma of utter skepticism, something very like it is defended by some pragmatists and therefore receives some support from the categories of contextualism.

[215] The point is, once more, that there is no way of obtaining better cognitive judgments than in terms of the best cognitive criticism we have. At present this criticism seems to be concentrated in four diverse modes of cognition or world hypotheses. While all sorts of things might happen to these diverse theories so far as abstract possibility is concerned, as a fact (in the best sense of fact we know) these four theories are just now irreconcilable. Any creditable attempt to reconcile them turns out to be the judgment of one of the theories on the nature of the others—as just now we saw was the case with the organic idea. This is a good idea, one of the best. But it would be dogmatic to accept it, when other equally adequate hypotheses have other ideas on the subject.

[216] Yet it is a tempting notion, that perhaps a world theory more adequate than any of the world theories mentioned above (those bound to their metaphors) might be developed through the selection of what is best in each of them and organizing the results with a synthetic set of categories. This seems to be the deliberate principle of method used by Whitehead in his Process and Reality. It is the eclectic method. Our contention is that this method is mistaken in principle in that it adds no factual content and confuses the structures of fact which are clearly spread out in the pure root-metaphor theories; in two words, that it is almost inevitably sterile and confusing.

[217] The literature of philosophy is, of course, full of eclectic writings. Moreover, it is probably true that all (or nearly all) the great philosophers were in various degrees eclectic. There are various reasons for this. One is undue faith in self-evidence and indubitability of fact, another the desire to give credit to all good intuitions with the idea that these all have to be put inside of one theory. But the best reason is that many of the great philosophers were not so much systematizers as seekers of fact, men who were working their way into new root metaphors and had not yet worked their way out of old ones. The eclecticism of these writers is, therefore, cognitively accidental and not deliberate, though psychologically unavoidable.

[218] There are, then, two sorts of eclecticism: the static, deliberate sort; and the dynamic, accidental sort. Whitehead is mainly an example of the first, Peirce or James of the second. Both sorts are confusing and (I believe) can be clarified only by unraveling their eclectic tangles in terms of the different root metaphors that got mixed up. The dynamic sort, however, is obviously not sterile. This eclecticism contains the best creative work in philosophy. But its cognitive value comes not from the eclectic factor (which is entirely obstructive), but from the creative factor. The dynamic eclectic tries to divest himself of his eclectic encumbrances, and the drama of his struggle often produces great literature as well as great philosophy. But the greatness of his philosophy is not so much intrinsic as prospective. Peirce and James intuited the pragmatic, or contextualistic, root metaphor. But their intuitions were primitive, and they were in need of a technical vocabulary, and were constantly enmeshed in formistic categories. As pragmatists their cognitive achievements were probably inferior to those of Dewey and Mead, though as creative thinkers they were probably superior. Dynamic eclecticism is, therefore, the sort of exception that proves the rule. We honor its exponents above all other cognizers because of their keen scent for new facts. But it is not for their eclecticism that we honor them, for that is still only a source of confusion.

[219] Static and deliberate eclecticism, however, cannot claim the discovery of new fact or insight, but only the merit of a method different from that of the root-metaphor method. The two methods are not in any way in contradiction with each other. The issue between the two is consequently not fatally serious. Nevertheless, it would greatly simplify the critical problem of estimating the value of world theories if we had reason to believe that eclectic theories were in principle less reliable than pure root-metaphor theories. The question is this: Does a deliberate eclectic theory add anything that is not better found in the alternative root-metaphor theories from which an eclectic theory must obtain its materials? If not, we can safely limit our attention to pure root-metaphor theories.

[220] There are theoretically two ways of deliberately constructing an eclectic world theory. One is to combine all the adequate world theories we have into one synthetic whole. The merit of this way is supposed to be greater comprehensiveness. But clearly nothing could be more comprehensive than the complete comprehensiveness of a theory of world-wide scope. Every relatively adequate world theory is completely comprehensive. The reason that there are several root-metaphor theories is precisely that they are all fully comprehensive and their categories refuse to merge and their danda refuse to harmonize. So that way is impossible. The other alternative is to make selections, generally said to be of "the best," from the several theories, and then out of the combined selections to elicit a new synthetic set of categories. The merit of this way is supposed to be greater adequacy.

[221] But the trouble with this second way is how to determine a reliable ground of selection. What shall determine "the best" in the various theories? If anyone can suggest any other mode of cognitive refinement (that is, mode of finding "the best" in cognition) than multiplicative or structural refinement, he is certainly to be listened to attentively. But if not, how can the selection be made? As we have seen, multiplicative refinement will not help us. As to structural refinement, there are as many "bests" as there are world theories on an equal footing of adequacy. What, then, or who determines the "best" that is better) than the "best" guaranteed by the relative adequacy of each world theory? Apparently only the personal preferences of the eclectic selector.

[222] But is it not true that some world hypotheses seem to be especially strong in some cognitive fields, others in others? And would not an eclectic theory which combined these strong fields be more adequate than any pure root-metaphor theory? For instance, is it not true that the mechanistic theory seems to be particularly effective in the field of the physical sciences and rather shallow in the field of values, and is not the organistic theory rather strained in the field of the physical sciences and strong in the field of values? Would not an eclectic theory which accepted the mechanistic interpretations of physical facts and the organistic interpretations of facts of value be a more adequate world theory than either pure mechanism or pure organicism?

[223] But would it? We must not forget that the main strength of a world hypothesis comes from structural corroboration. That means that the greater the spread of corroborative fact, the greater the cognitive reliability of the interpretations of each separate fact and field of facts. Now, the cognitive strength of both mechanism and organicism lies in their relative adequacy of unlimited scope. If their scope were limited, their interpretations would lack full corroboration. We find them credible precisely because their scope is unlimited. But the eclectic suggestion amounts to a limitation in the scope of both interpretations. In the eclectic theory the interpretations of physical facts would not be corroborated by the interpretations of value facts, and vice versa. The eclectic theory would actually lack universal scope and would not literally be a world theory at all.

[224] More than that, can we afford to sacrifice the mechanis-tic interpretations of value or the organistic interpretations of physical facts? These interpretations are convincing to many men, and they do have structural corroboration. There is refined cognitive evidence for them. On what cognitive grounds can we discard them?

[225] There are indeed some grounds. It may be pointed out that the mechanistic root metaphor springs out of the common-sense field of uncriticized physical fact, so that there would be no analogical stretch, so to speak, in the mechan-istic interpretations of this field, while the stretch might be considerable in the mechanistic interpretation of the common-sense field of value; and somewhat the same, in reverse order, with respect to organistic interpretations. Moreover, mechanism has for several generations been particularly congenial to scientists, and organicism to artists and to persons of religious bent. Also, the internal difficulties which appear from a critical study of the mechanistic theory seem to be particularly acute in the neighborhood of values, and contrariwise the internal difficulties with organicism seem to be particularly acute in the neighborhood of physical fact.

[226] These are cognitive grounds, and they all converge on the suspicion that mechanistic interpretations are perhaps more trustworthy for physical fact, while organistic interpretations are more trustworthy for values. But can more be legitimately said than that? And is not this suspicion based on the universal structural adequacy of both theories? Is it not precisely because both of these theories generate unlimited factual corroboration, and because their relative adequacy is about the same, because, in short, they are cognitively of equal weight and reliability, that we are somewhat justified in considering these external grounds of criticism? We, as practical human beings hav-ing to make practical choices in a pressing world, may well take these suspicions into account when we make our choices—rely more confidently on the judgment of a mechanist, perhaps, if we are building a bridge, more on the judgment of an organicist if we are building a society. But can we do more than that with these grounds of suspicion?

[227] For these grounds of suspicion cannot legislate over world theories, over the most highly refined cognitive criticism we have. The mechanistic interpretation of value has, after all, the powerful corroboration of the remarkably satisfactory mechanistic interpretations of physical fact. And the mechanistic interpretations of value are by no means unsatisfactory. Many men have been satisfied to be dogmatic about them. Those corroborative grounds are cognitively stronger than our grounds of suspicion in the previous paragraph. For in status these latter are little better than common-sense hunches—cognitive grounds all right, but dubitanda grounds, chiefly valuable in irritating us into the search for still better world theories.

[228] But our proposed eclectic theory has by definition no root metaphor, and does not, so far as we can see, carry cognition forward at all. If such a combination of mech-anism and organicism were proposed as a substitute for the two pure theories, the cognitive loss would be obvious. If it is proposed simply as another alternative, there is not so much objection. But why do it? As a flight of fancy it may be amusing, as men have fancied fauns, centaurs, angels, and dragons. But it can hardly be a genuinely creative cognitive achievement. If a man is to be creative in the construction of a new world theory, he must dig among the crevices of common sense. There he may find the pupa of a new moth or butterfly. This will be alive, and grow, and propagate. But no synthetic combination of the legs of one specimen and the wings of another will ever move except as their fabricator pushes them about with his tweezers. Moreover, what happens at the joints? What happens under the skin between the centaur’s neck and body? How do the wings of angels fit into their shoul-ders? Either the eclectic glosses these difficulties over, or we perceive confusion.

[229] How far such criticisms apply to Whitehead’s Process and Reality, it is for each man to decide. There are many genuinely creative touches in the book, where Whitehead pushes forward now one mode of interpretation, now another, especially many insights into the implications of contextualism. But all agree that it is a hard book. The question is whether it is not an intrinsically confused book. When Whitehead writes in the Preface, "The history of philosophy discloses two cosmologies.... In attempting an enterprise of the same kind, it is wise to follow the clue that perhaps the true solution consists in a fusion of the two previous schemes, with modifications demanded by self-consistency and the advance of knowledge," the question is whether he is not proposing to himself something impossible. [Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1930), p. ix.] He has, I think, underestimated the number of cosmologies that he is about to "fuse." But to "fuse" even two and to have the fusion "self-consistent" is, on the evidence of our root-metaphor theory, impossible. All that can result is confusion, and I suggest that that is just what did result.

[230] 7. Maxim IV: Concepts which have lost contact with their root metaphors are empty abstractions.—This fault is one stage worse than eclecticism and is very likely to grow out of it. When a world theory grows old and stiff (as periodically it does and then has to be rejuvenated), men begin to take its categories and subcategories for granted and presently forget where in fact these come from, and assume that these have some intrinsic and ultimate cosmic value in themselves. The concepts are often pretty thin by that time, little more than names with a cosmic glow about them. Such has been the fate of many good terms and some not so good—substance, matter, mind, spirit, God, ego, consciousness, essence, identity, phlogiston, ether, force, energy, magnetism. As a fallacy this cognitive propensity is sometimes called hypostatization.

[231] The fallacy is somewhat tricky, however. Every world theory considers the danda and categories of other world theories as hypostatizations. Terms are only genuinely hypostatized, clearly, if some cognitive weight is given to their very emptiness, if the absence of evidence they have attained is actually used as evidence—word magic, in short. A term or concept is no better than the corroborative evidence it stands for. When it begins to demand respect in its own right, it is beginning to be hypostatized. The fallacy is often hard to detect because the process of hypostatization is gradual and rarely complete. It is for this reason all the more disturbing to cognition, for its detection depends upon a careful weighing of the cognitive evidence for a concept against its cognitive claims. The detection is easier, however, once the dogmatic claims of infallibility, self-evidence, and indubitability have been recognized as fallacious. All that remains to be done, then, is to find the concept’s actual significance in terms of multiplicative or structural corroboration—or, for our imme-diate purposes, to trace it back to its root metaphor.

[232] We must not forget, however, that there are many root metaphors. A concept or category derived from even an inadequate root metaphor is not a hypostatization. It is simply a concept of an inadequate hypothesis. That is, there is no cognitive trouble with the term, which is functioning as well as it can. The trouble is with the hypothesis which generates the term. Nevertheless, there is a strong tendency to hypostatize the terms of a weak hypothesis. For where cognitive claims cannot be legitimately produced they tend to be illegitimately sought.

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[233] 1. Tests of adequacy.—As we look back over the maxims presented in the previous chapter, we see that they constitute a canon of cosmological criticism based on the hypothesis that the most promising way of developing reliable world theories is by the root-metaphor method. These maxims do not, however, indicate how we may judge the relative adequacies of different pure root-metaphor theories. Since we believe that even our best world theories are somewhat inadequate, this question becomes rather serious. We have no assuredly adequate theory against which to judge the apparently inadequate ones. How, then, can we judge any theory claiming world-wide scope to be more inadequate than others? How can we legitimately restrict our study to four world theories, and reject others (like the generating-substance theory) as too inadequate for further consideration?

[234] By the maxim of autonomy, we know that one world theory cannot be legitimately convicted of inadequacy by the judgment of another. How, then, do we discover that a theory is inadequate? By its own judgment of its own achievements in attaining complete precision in dealing with all facts whatever presented. A world theory, in other words, convicts itself of inadequacy. By its own logic, or refined canons of cognition, it acknowledges its own shortcomings in dealing with certain kinds of facts, or in dealing with them consistently with its dealing with other kinds of facts. These judgments, once made by the theories them selves, can then be compared externally. Theories which show themselves up as dealing much less adequately with the world-wide scope of facts than others are said to be relatively inadequate; the others, relatively adequate.

[235] This is not an absolutely final judgment. It may be mistaken. A theory so judged to be relatively inadequate may not as yet have reached its full capacities of development. Nevertheless, a detailed study of a theory that has been long worked over generally leaves one pretty well convinced that it has done all that its categories can do, and that the inadequacies of which it convicts itself are permanent inadequacies.

[236] It must be recalled that we make a sharp distinction between world theories and the men who develop them and write them out. The maxims of the previous chapter suggest ways by which the eccentricities of authors may be separated from the development of the theories themselves. It is not what any author thinks about his theory that counts in determining its inadequacy, but what the theory itself in terms of its own logic thinks of itself. The authors are generally confident and dogmatic. The theories themselves have better judgment, assisted thereto, of course, by the unrelenting criticism of the exponents of rival theories as much as by the honest work of their own exponents.

[237] Men, in other words, come to agree with men under certain circumstances about the structural agreement of fact with fact. The self-sufficiency of a world theory and its independence of any one man’s judgment are based on a qualified application of multiplicative corroboration superimposed upon structural corroboration. One honest, clear-thinking man should be able to make a correct judgment of the adequacy or degree of structural corroboration of a world hypothesis. But every honest, clear-thinking man is aware of his susceptibility to bias and to plain mistakes in observation and reasoning, and therefore seeks the corroboration of other men for his conclusions. So, the two fundamental modes of cognitive refinement collaborate here; as actually they do also in scientific hypotheses of limited scope, but there with the emphasis reversed, structural corroborations being superimposed upon the data of multiplicative corroboration. That is, we feel surer of our data, as data, if they do fit together as a hypothesis. In spite of the tension between these two modes of cognitive refinement, we as cognizers demand in the end that they shall collaborate. This demand shows itself within the field of structural refinement in the expectation that a structural world theory will stand on its own feet and make its own judgments about its own inadequacies. In practice this means that competent men will come to essential agreement about the shortcomings of a world theory, once the claims of dogmatism have been set aside. To a considerable degree, competent men have agreed about the shortcomings of world theories, even under the embarrassment of dogmatic claims.

[238] These agreements come to light as the regular, or traditional, difficulties found in this or that type of theory—the "perennial problems" of philosophy with which the textbooks have made us familiar. Even with this explanation, however, the situation is likely to be regarded as sufficiently extraordinary to require exemplification. We shall, therefore, present two definitely very inadequate world theories, namely, animism and mysticism, and show how neatly they convict themselves of inadequacy.

[239] We found earlier that the adequacy of a structural hypothesis depended upon its precision in dealing with individual facts and its scope of factual corroboration. A world hypothesis may, therefore, be inadequate in precision or in scope. It may, that is, on the one hand have world-wide scope but lack precision, this lack of precision showing itself either in an inability to come to close quarters with a fact (that is, cognitive vagueness), or in an overability to produce interpretations of a fact any one of which would be as consistent with the categories as any other (that is, cognitive indeterminateness); or, on the other hand, a world hypothesis may have apparent precision in the interpretation of many fields of fact, but lack world-wide scope through its inability to offer any interpretation of some field or fields.

[240] The typical ruse in this latter case is to call the recalcitrant fields "unreality." It follows that whenever a world hypothesis makes an appeal to "unreality" (especially as an explanatory or interpretative principle), it unwittingly convicts itself of inadequacy, and the more definitely it locates its fields of "unreality" the more definitely it shows just where it falls short of world-wide scope and factual corroboration.

[241] It follows, further, that in a completely adequate theory everything referred to would be "real" and there would be no "appearance" or "unreality" at all. Errors would be noted, but they would be "real" errors, facts fully explained or interpreted even if part of the explanation were in terms of pure chance, for then chance would be "real." Whence it follows, still further, that in a completely adequate world theory, even the term "reality" would disappear, since there would be no "unreality" to contrast it with. Or rather, "unreality" would be merely the name for the fact of inadequate interpretation suggested by hypotheses claiming, but not possessing, world-wide scope.

[242] Even among inadequate world theories, the danda of one theory are likely to be called "unreal" in the interpretations of another. This detraction may often rebound to do more damage to the criticizing theory than to the theory criticized. For unless the criticizing theory can convert the "unreal" danda of the criticized theory into "real" danda of its own, it convicts itself of lack of scope in its inability to absorb and interpret the danda of the rival theory.

[243] "Reality" and "unreality" and "appearance" are red-hot words. A very prudent thinker will never use them. They are as likely to burn fingers as faggots. Was the author of Appearance and Reality more burning or more burned? Much use of these words is almost surely a signal of trouble.

[244] Animism is a world theory chiefly inadequate for the indeterminateness of its interpretations and lack of precision; mysticism, chiefly for its lack of scope and its lavish use of "unreality." These two types of inadequacy are plainly visible in these two theories, which will thereby act as models of badness against which to compare the relative goodness of more adequate world hypotheses. If we cannot judge the relative inadequacy of world theories by the comparison with the model adequacy of a perfect theory, we can at least judge relative adequacy by comparison with the model inadequacies of two very inadequate theories. The greater the distance of world hypotheses from the inadequacies of animism and mysticism, the greater their adequacy.

[245] 2. The animistic world hypothesis, an example of inadequate precision. — Animism, as a metaphysical hypothesis, is the theory that takes common-sense man, the human being, the person, as its primitive root metaphor. This is the most appealing root metaphor that has ever been selected. Nothing is so interesting to man as man. To take man, everything about him, his body, his shape, his actions, his expressions, his motives, his emotions, and anything else about man that appeals to man’s fancy, as the source of explanation of everything in the world: what could be more to man’s taste, or seem more natural? Every child is a natural animist, and so (if the secret be known) is every man, not only primitive man, but civilized man as well. This view of the world is the only one in which a man feels completely at home. It is perhaps as well for us to learn early, therefore, that we shall probably never feel completely at home in a world view that is adequate. For the world does not seem to be made after man’s own image.

[246] The root metaphor of animism has had its development. The person of man expands very naturally over the universe by the process of personification, not to mention other similar, more vivid, processes such as dreams and illusions. The result has been a certain crystallization of the root metaphor into what may be regarded as its most developed form in the notion of spirit. It is characteristic of animism that we can never precisely capture spirit in conceptual terms and list a set of categories that will stand firm. But the following classic summary from E. B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture may be taken as perhaps as clear a statement of its categorial structure as we are likely to obtain.

To the lower tribes of man [writes Tylor], sun and stars, trees and rivers, winds and clouds, become personal animate creatures, leading lives conformed to human or animal analogies, and performing their special functions in the universe with the aid of limbs like beasts, or of artificial instruments like men; or what men’s eyes behold is but the instrument to be used or the material to be shaped, while behind it there stands some prodigious but yet half human creature, who grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath. [At] its full development, [this view] includes the belief in souls and in a future state, in controlling deities and subordinate spirits.’ [It culminates in the notion of] the personal soul or spirit.

[This personal soul or spirit] is a thin unsubstantial human image, in its nature a sort of vapour, film or shadow; the cause of life and thought in the individual it animates; independently possessing the personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner, past or present; capable of leaving the body far behind, to flash swiftly from place to place; mostly impalpable and invisible, yet also manifesting physical power, and especially appearing to men waking or asleep as a phantasm separate from the body of which it bears the likeness; continuing to exist and  appear to men after the death of that body; able to enter into, possess, and act in the bodies of other men, of animals, and even.

[Primitive Culture (London: Murray, 1915), Vol. I, pp. 285, 427, 429.]

[247] The indeterminateness of this notion as an interpretative principle is obvious. What is thunder? It is the angry voice of a great spirit. It is the stamping of the hoofs of the steeds of a great spirit. It is a great spirit clanging his arms. It is the roar of the lightning bolts hurled by a great spirit. It may even be a spirit itself roaring in pursuit of some other spirit to devour. These interpretations are all consonant with the categories of spirit, and there is nothing but the limitations of poetic fancy to put a stop to such interpretations. There is no one precise and determinate interpretation of thunder, nor is there any precise method for finding one, nor is there any hope that more factual observation will ever produce one through these categories. On the contrary, the more details of observation are presented, the more the animistic imagination luxuriates and the more indeterminate the interpretations become—that is, the more mutually contrary and equally consonant interpretations are thrown in our lap.

[248] What means can animism itself suggest for settling upon a determinate interpretation of facts? There are dozens of elaborate animistic mythologies. How can we settle which is right, or even which is the better of any two? The natural animistic theory of cognitive value is the authority of spirit. What a great spirit says is true, and what the greatest spirit says is most true. When the direct word of a spirit cannot be obtained—in his immediate presence, in dreams, in voices, in omens, in prognostications, in sacred traditions, or in holy books—then the word of the most authoritative representative of a spirit must be taken.  So we come to the authority of shaman, medicine man, and priest. Animism is the natural metaphysical support of authoritarianism, which inevitably culminates in the dogma of infallible authority. It is ultimately infallible authority that is appealed to for rendering final and determinate the factual interpretation of the animistic world hypothesis.

[249] The unsatisfactoriness of dogmatic authoritarianism we have already seen. A theory that is driven to this extremity to counteract the indeterminateness of its categories and the internal contradictions that develop, automatically confesses its inadequacy. We note, moreover, how quickly this confession appears.

[250] The full maturity of an animistic world theory, then, occurs when the root metaphor of man’s personality has developed into the richest conception of spirit, and when a luxuriant mythology has vividly populated the universe with explanatory spirits and has told the world’s history in considerable detail from its creation to the day the chronicler was speaking. There are many men in civilized countries today who accept a pretty mature animism. In this country we call them "fundamentalists."

[251] But a fairly reflective civilized man cannot stomach fundamentalism. Accordingly, under the pressure of criticism, mythological interpretations begin to be thinned down. At first they are treated as allegories, then as mere symbols of something higher and finer, and finally the

[251] But a fairly reflective civilized man cannot stomach fundamentalism. Accordingly, under the pressure of criticism, mythological interpretations begin to be thinned down. At first they are treated as allegories, then as mere symbols of something higher and finer, and finally the notion of spirit itself is ephemeralized into an emotionally shaded word with a vague direction outward or inward. When this occurs we have an excellent example of that empty abstractionism or hypostatization of which we were speaking at the end of the last chapter. The very emptiness of the concept is used as an argument for its acceptance, and often the claim is made on pseudo-empirical grounds. Since this fallacy appears here more clearly than in better theories, let us notice briefly an example of it, so that we may be on our guard against the fallacy in theories where it is harder to detect.

[252] 3. An example of empty abstractionism.—Tolstoy in his What Is Religion? provides a good example, especially good because, as a rather reflective civilized man, he is so well aware and so scornful of the luxuriant mature animism which analysis shows is the main source of "facts" for his forthcoming abstract beliefs. Such animistic interpretations as "the absurdities of the Old Testament,"’ together with the accounts of miracles, the claims of infallibility, and the offices of priesthood, are, he claims, distortions of the "true religion." "True religion," he writes, "is the establishment by man of such a relation to the Infinite Life around him, as, while connecting his life with this Infinitude and directing his conduct, is also in agreement with his reason and with human knowledge." "True religion," we thus see, is something which Tolstoy wishes to be in conformity with "reason and human knowledge." [What Is Religion? (New York: Crowell, 1902), pp. 220,  213-214.]

[253] His means of obtaining this "true religion" in conformity with "reason and human knowledge," it soon appears, is to find out what beliefs are held in common by all religions after "distortions" have been cleared away. Such a method is excellently calculated to sterilize the facts. Even if this method were properly used, it is clear the result could not be an induction from the facts concerned, but only from beliefs about the facts. The procedure turns out to be simply a peculiar kind of majority vote, an appeal to authority much diluted, a movement away from the facts rather than toward them.

[254] Take the following passage, in which he summarizes his method and his thesis:

Such a modern religion, common to all men,—not some one particular religion with all its peculiarities and distortions, but a religion consisting of those principles which are the same in all the religions obtaining among men and known to us, professed by more than nine-tenths of the human race,—such a universal religion does exist, and men have not yet become finally brutalized only because the best men of all nations adhere to this religion and profess it, even though unconsciously, and it is only the inculcation of deceit which is practiced on men by the aid of the priests and the scientists which hinders them from accepting it consciously.

The principles of this true religion are so natural to men that the moment they are communicated they are accepted as something long familiar and self-evident. For us this true religion is Christianity, in those of its principles in which it coincides, not with the external forms, but with the fundamental principles of Brahmanism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Buddhism, even Mohammedanism. In the same way, for those who profess Brahmanism, Confucianism, and so on, the true religion will be the one the fundamental principles of which coincide with those of all the other great religions. And these principles are very simple, comprehensible, and not numerous.

They assert that there is a God, the source of all; that in man there is a particle of this divine element which he can either diminish or increase by his life; that to increase this element man must suppress his passions and increase love in himself; and that the practical means to attain this is to act with others as one wishes others to act toward oneself. All these principles are common to Brahmanism and Judaism and Confucianism and Taoism and Buddhism and Christianity and Mohammedanism. [Ibid., pp. 245—246.]

[255] Notice how Tolstoy finds it necessary to interpolate an appeal to self-evidence ("principles so natural that they are accepted as something long familiar and self-evident") to bolster up a cognitive weakness, of which he is partly conscious. He partly knows that his procedure is only pseudo-rational.

[256] Notice also the two sources of the persuasiveness of his procedure—for there is no question that many are persuaded by this and similar arguments: First, the procedure is such as to depersonalize or sterilize the animistic categories and so make them acceptable to a somewhat critical intelligence, which will entertain concepts ("Infinite Life," "God," "source of all," "particle of this divine element") when it would refuse to entertain the images and concrete evidence to which these concepts refer. Second, the procedure does not entirely cut off, though it does greatly constrict and thereby in large part conceal, the evidential channel, which runs from the full and familiar animistic mythology to the acceptable abstractions. The appeal of the abstractions is their animistic source. Such evidence as supports them is there. They would not be entertained for a moment if the source were cut off. But neither would they be entertained for a moment by a thinking civilized man if the source were clearly revealed. Tolstoy’s "true religion" is a little nest of hypostatizations, concepts subtly claiming cognitive value because of their very emptiness.

[257] Animism thus gives us a good idea of the symptoms of inadequacy through lack of precision. Since the categories lack determinateness, they are unable to control their interpretations, which multiply about the same fact and mutually contradict one another. The situation gets worse rather than better the more information is brought forward. To save the theory there follows a strong tendency to take refuge in abstractions and hypostatizations. On either count the theory convicts itself of inadequacy.

[258] 4. The mystic world hypothesis, an example of inadequate scope.—We now turn to mysticism for a view of the opposite sort of inadequacy. Here we begin with a very impressive immediate fact, the mystic experience, a fact that is never lost sight of and never apologized for, a fact that is as certain as a fact can be. But the certainty of this fact is so intense that it undertakes to absorb the whole universe within it. Where it does not plausibly succeed, it denounces the unsubmissive "facts" as unreal; and, since there are many of these, it spreads unreality far and wide. As the philosophy of unity and love, it is the most destructive of all world theories in cognition and finally destroys itself by the very intensity of its desire for unity and peace.

[259] Though everyone has heard of mystic experiences and many have had them with various degrees of intensity, we had best begin our criticism by a description of the experience. I choose from William James’ selections in his The Varieties of Religious Experience a relatively sober and generalized description by St. John of the Cross:

We receive this mystical knowledge of God clothed in none of the kinds of images, in none of the sensible representations, which our mind makes use of in other circumstances. Accordingly in this knowledge, since the senses and the imagination are not employed, we get neither form nor impression, nor can we give any account or furnish any likeness, although the mysterious and sweet-tasting wisdom comes home so clearly to the inmost parts of our soul. Fancy a man seeing a certain kind of thing for the first time in his life. He can understand it, use and enjoy it, but he cannot apply a name to it, nor communicate any idea of it, even though all the while it be a mere thing of sense. How much greater will be his powerlessness when it goes beyond the senses! This is the peculiarity of the divine language. The more infused, intimate, spiritual, and supersensible it is, the more does it exceed the senses, both inner and outer, and impose silence upon them.... The soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude, to which no created thing has access, in an immense and boundless desert, desert the more delicious the more solitary it is. There, in this abyss of wisdom, the soul grows by what it drinks in from the well-springs of the comprehension of love,... and recognizes, however sublime and learned may be the terms we employ, how utterly vile, insignificant, and improper they are, when we seek to discourse of divine things by their means. [The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green, 1928), pp. 407—408.]

[260] From this description we learn that the experience is felt as (1) supremely cognitive and revelatory ("mystical knowledge of God"),   (2) as immediate and totally uninterpreted (like "seeing a certain kind of thing for the first time"), (3) as accordingly certain and indubitable ("wisdom comes home so clearly to the inmost part of the soul"), (4) as emotionally ecstatic ("sweet-tasting  wisdom," "from the well-springs of the comprehension of love"), (5) as a unity increasing with the intensity ("the more delicious the more solitary"), (6) as wide and comprehensive ("vast and profound solitude," "immense and boundless desert"), (7) as negating other modes of cognition and other "facts" ("the senses and the imagination are not employed,’’ ‘‘we get neither form nor impression,’’ "no created thing has access" in this "desert").

[261] These seven points are a rough statement of the categories of mysticism. For convenience they may be reduced to two: (I) the revelatory, beatific, emotional quality which is the ultimate ground of all evidence (1, 2, 3, and 4), and (II) principles of reduction by means of which all other apparent evidence is reduced to the ultimate ground (5, 6, and 7).

[262] Now, hypothetically, a mystic need not be a metaphysician. He might have and enjoy his experience and make no cognitive claims for it beyond his having had it and enjoyed it. As such, it would be like any intense emotional experience—like being absorbed in a sunset, thrilled with a piece of music, or in love with a girl. In its milder forms, this is perhaps just the way we do take the experience. In fact, these illustrations of emotion just given may be the experience in mild forms. Perhaps any intense, absorbing, sweet emotion is a mild mystic experience. Leuba, for instance, in his study The Psychology of Religious Mysticism believes he has evidence that even the most intense mystic experiences are nothing but sublimated sex emotion. So regarded, the enthusiasm for the object of the emotion, and the conviction of its superlative value while the emotion holds, would be smiled at and recognized as simply a curious feature of the emotion to be corrected at a calmer moment so far as it had any cognitive implications. Every lover believes his beloved to be the most perfect and beautiful creature in the world. We expect every lover to have that conviction. We smile at his illusion, wish him his full and happy indulgence of it, make our own cognitive corrections, and expect him to do the same at a soberer time. The feeling of cognitive certainty which normally accompanies the emotion is discounted as cognitive evidence for anything beyond the intensity and sincerity of the emotion. Under these conditions there is no cognitive problem.

[263] But a typical mystic would resent the implications of the previous paragraph. For him, the distinctive characteristic of the mystic experience is that it does make a cognitive claim—a superlative cognitive claim, in fact, which is never rescinded. The mystic himself, of course, does not make the claim. It is not a claim on the grounds of arbitrary authority, or any other authority in the manner of animism. The mystic simply reports the claim which the experience itself reveals. The stronger the experience the stronger the claim, and in the apical form of the experience (which in our terms would be the mature root metaphor of the theory) the claim becomes unique and cancels out all other cognitive claims whatsoever. The revelation of the experience is the truth (or The Truth), and all other cognitive claims are completely or partly false, apparent, and unreal.

[264] This, here, is the stand of the unsystematic metaphysical mystic. He is convinced of the supreme truth of his revelation. He takes his stand on the indubitable certainty of the experience and pays no particular cognitive attention to the other "facts" of the world. In practice he may become a hermit retiring as far as he can from the other "facts" of the world and seeking to be as much immersed as he can in the One Supreme Fact; or he may become a reformer or a poet and like St. Francis or Walt Whitman try to lead as many of his fellow men as he can to a realization of The Truth.

[265] But some mystics, like Plotinus, have had a philosophical bent and have tried to give a systematic account of the world in terms of their insight. These are the systematic metaphysical mystics. These men assume the absolute credibility of the experience. But they have a cognitive curiosity to know how this indubitable experience is connected with the ordinary "facts" of the world. There is, moreover, a practical utility in developing such a world theory as a means of showing common men how they may proceed from common "facts" to the truth.

[266] The immediate temptation here is to deny outright the reality of all "facts" except the one mystic Fact. There is also an aesthetic delight in such wholesale destruction through the possession of an inner secret. So we get a mystical formula for describing this one Reality in terms of everything else which it is not (or, with the opposite twist, which it really is), as Emerson in his poem "Brahma," Swinburne in "Hertha," or Dionysius the Areopagite as follows: "The cause of all things is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion, or reason, or intelligence; nor is it reason or intelligence; nor is it spoken or thought. It is neither number, nor order, nor magnitude, nor littleness, nor equality, nor inequality, nor similarity, nor dissimilarity. It neither stands, nor moves, nor rests.... It is neither essence, nor eternity, nor time. Even intellectual contact does not belong to it. It is neither science nor truth. It is not even royalty or wisdom; not one; not unity; not divinity or goodness; nor even spirit as we know it," etc. In the momentum of these negatives this sort of mystic may even end by naming his reality itself "Nothing."

[267] But even a mystic can sometimes see that this is going to ridiculous lengths. A man like Plotinus scrutinizes the nature of the experience more carefully to see if some structure cannot be found in it to provide the theory a little more scope. Plotinus himself was an eclectic, as probably all systematic mystics have been. He filled up the gaps of his theory with some animism and a great deal of Platonic formism, so that he is best known as a Neo-Platonist. This in itself is rather enlightening about the theory of the man who is considered the greatest philosophical mystic.

[268] Abstracting the eclectic elements from his theory, we see that the method he used amounts to an application of the generating-substance theory. The revelatory, beatific, emotional quality ,our general mystic category I, becomes for Plotinus the source, the end, and the cause of all things, a generating substance. Like the sun it is the light of the universe, and only the light is real. All other "facts" are in outer darkness and are real only so far as they are illuminated by the light of reality which "emanates" (his term) from the intense central reality. This principle of emanation is his principle at change by which facts other than the central generating reality acquire some degree of reality. Since what emanates is some of the reality itself which becomes adulterated in the surrounding darkness of unreality, the outer facts become thus "reduced" to reality and "emanation" is seen as a principle of reduction, our general mystic category II. Such is, we believe, the normal form of the mystic world hypothesis.

[269] So, leaving Plotinus and speaking in less exalted tones, we may venture to describe the typical structure of the mystic world hypothesis as follows : The ordinary common "fact" of the root metaphor is the common emotion of love. This emotion in its most intense sublimated form is taken as the mature root metaphor. The hypothesis states that this emotion is the substance of the universe, and that so far as we differentiate things, these are generated from this substance and are ultimately nothing but this substance. Certain principles of generation or reduction are derived from the observation of the action of emotion upon things. These principles are three: first, degrees of intensity of emotion (the stronger the emotion the more of it, and the more the reality ; second degrees of fusion (the stronger the emotion, the greater the tendency for things to melt together and unify, and the greater the reality); third, degrees of inclusiveness the greater the number of things melted together, the greater the reality). The categories of mysticism are thus finally the quality of the emotional substance and these three principles of reduction. The operation of these principles will be recognized as the so-called Mystic Ladder, or the Mystic Way, or the Mystic Symbolism, the "Signature of All Things."

[270] Those "facts" are most real which are most intense in the beatific quality of the emotion of love, most completely fused and unified in that emotion, and most widely comprehensive in the inclusion of fact. By extrapolation, it follows that the most intense, completely fused, beatific, loving feeling of the whole wide world would be an intuitive experience of the whole of reality itself, and would be Truth itself. Such an experience one seems to have in the apical mystic experience, which is, moreover, sealed with the feeling of indubitable certainty. "Facts" are false, and unreal, and apparent in proportion as they fall away from this apical experience. So pain, misery, sorrow, sadness are unreal, as opposed to beatific quality; pleasures, comforts, sensuous delights are false from lack of intensity ; intellect, logic, science, analysis, definition, discrimination, differentiation are falsifying as op. posed to fusion ; selfishness, lust, hate, war are unreal as opposed to comprehension. Appearance and unreality spread wide over the field of "facts."

[271] Such seems to be the hypothesis of mysticism, and such the dogma. On the basis of our previous discussions the criticism is simple and obvious. So far as mysticism trusts to the certainty and indubitability of its intuition, it is dogmatic and untrustworthy. So far as it trusts to its capacity to generate a structural hypothesis, it is almost completely lacking in scope. We notice, furthermore, how quickly it convicts itself of inadequacy by its own logic. For the logic of mysticism is the emotional theory of truth. Having pitched upon an "indubitable" fact as the criterion of truth and reality, inevitably the theory by its own criterion must judge all other facts false and unreal. All we have to do is to accept mysticism’s own judgment of its own very great inadequacy.

[272] The only reason the mystics themselves are not convinced by this criticism is that they are dogmatists. A skeptical mystic is a self-contradiction. For as soon as a mystic can entertain doubts about the revelatory powers of his intuition, he will become aware of the absurdities of his denials about pain, pleasure, war, and general common sense. Only while he is intensely certain of his own indubitable fact can he remain beyond the powers of reason and blind to the equal certainties of pain, prose, and separation. Thus mysticism becomes the champion of the dogma of certainty, as animism becomes the champion of infallible authority.

[These few paragraphs on mysticism should obviously not be taken as a thorough treatment of the subject. But I do maintain that this is the whole story so far as the evidence for mysticism goes, and the development of a warrantable metaphysics on its basis. If I should write a book on the subject, it would merely be an expansion of the points here condensed, together with direct references to the innumerable exponents and varieties of the doctrine. One classification of varieties of mysticism is the following, suggested by William Savery: I. Self-mysticism, or phenomenological mysticism, II. Cosmic mysticism, the latter divided into (1) pantheistic mysticism (Sankara, or Nagarjuna, or Bradley), (2) emanational mysticism (Plotinus), (3) theistic mysticism (Aquinas). These are different ways of trying to reduce the world to the mystic One, or of trying to give the mystic experience a commanding place in the world. But these varieties, it should be observed, are based on the kinds of eclectic mechanisms employed to produce the reduction. So far as Bradley is a mystic, he mediates his mysticism with organicism, Plotinus with animism and Platonic formism. Aquinas with Aristotelian formism. Spinoza mediates mysticism  most amazingly with mechanism.  If Bergson may be called a mystic (as some rather questionably have done), he mediates it with contextualism. An inadequate view has, in the nature of the case, many more varieties than a relatively adequate view, for there are an infinite number of ways of making errors. When a theory is driven to eclecticism to conceal its inadequacy, there is no end to the number of combinations possible. The summary of the view in the text keeps as close as possible to the mystical experience itself (the root metaphor), and tries to generate the reductive principles directly out of the experience, and tries to avoid all eclectic graftings.]

[274] Yet, though this is often a convincing union, it is not a credible one. The mystic intuition still potentially shoves all the multiplicity of spirits into unreality, and the world of spirits still try to raise their Great Spirit upon the throne which the mystic intuition occupies. To the natural internal contradictions of infallibility and indubitability, there is simply added the contradiction of infallibility with indubitability. And historically the ecclesiastics and the mystics have never harmonized very well. Periodically each group has tried to clean the other out—and this may be taken as a typical lesson in eclecticism;

[275] With these examples and preliminaries, we are now prepared to undertake a study of the relatively adequate world theories themselves. From them we trust it will be seen that our criticisms and maxims have been justified. For what we have so far said does not prescribe to cognitive practice. On the contrary, it is cognitive practice itself that prescribes these maxims and methods for still better practice.

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