The doctrine of the self in the philosophy of James Bissett Pratt

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THE DOCTRINE OP THE SELF IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF JAMES BISSETT PRATT

A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Philosophy The University of Southern California

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts

by Donald Franklin Morey February 1950

UMI Number: EP62743

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Dissertation. PVfclisWng

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and a p p ro v e d by a l l its members, has been presented to and accepted by the C o u n c il on G raduate S tu d y and Research in p a r t ia l f u l f i l l ­ ment o f the requirem ents f o r the degree o f

MASTER OP ARTS

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TABLE DP CONTENTS CHAPTER I.

PAGE GENESIS OF THE PROBLEM..........................

1

Introduction, History of the Problem.........

1

Anaximenes, Democritus............ ...........

2

Pythagoras and the s o u l .....................

4

P l a t o n i s m ................... • ..............

6

Aristotelianism . . . . .................

7

Aquinism and the soul . . . . . . ........... «

11

Averrhoes and Arabian Aristotelianism

11

. . . .

Individuality in Aquinas, Summary . . . . . .

13

The revolt against A q u i n i s m .................

14

Descartes and the search for basic principles.................................. Descartes and the method of

d o u b t .....

15

17

Descartes and the soul substance theory . . .

18

The antithesis, Pascal, Summary and Conclusion.................................. II.

THE MODERN P E R I O D ......................... The world of Descartes, Galileo,Spinoza.

19 21

. •

21

British reaction, Berkeley,

Locke . ........

22

The insufficiency of Hume’s

analysis. ♦ .

23

The Kantian reaction.

. .

• » . • » • . . . » » .

25

The •object*1 of p e r c e p t i o n . .................

25

iv CHAPTER

page

The unity of consciousness*

*

27

Kantfs transcendental synthesis . . . . . . .

28

Hegel and the rationalistic solution* . . . .

30

Two nineteenth century forces--naturalism, idealism

• • • • • • • • • • • . • • • . .

Darwin and Spencer in America

30

.........

31

The philosophy of speculative insight-Jamesian r e a c t i o n ..................... . . Roots of evolutionary n a t u r a l i s m . ...........

33

The significance of Darwin.

34

The development of Darwinism.

III.

32

.............. ....

35

Fiske and evolutionary n a t u r a l i s m ...........

37

Conclusion

37

•

JAMES BISSETT PRATT:

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUNDS.

Pratt’s early years . . . . . .

39

.............

39

The influence of his m o t h e r .................

40

Pratt’s most obvious concerns • • • • . • • •

41

Main influences at Harvard...................

43

The tone of mysticism in Pratt

.

The four major i n f l u e n c e s ...............

44

44

The struggle between idealism

and realism . •

46

The notion of ’’transcendence11

in Pratt. . . .

47

The religious aspect in experience. . . . . .

49

Summary and conclusion. • • • • • • • • • • •

50

V

CHAPTER IV.

PAGE

THE REALISTIC ARGUMENT.

51

Elaboration of epls.temological dualism. . . .

51

The mediatory nature of perception...........

52

Dualism* s theory of "truth” ..........

53

The "correspondence" t h e o r y .................

55

Montague1s criticism..........................

57

Strong and the notion of "immediacy11.........

58

The roots of realism.

V.

. .................

..............

59

Historic aspects of the perceptual analysis .

60

The psychological cue. for realism . . . . . .

61

The significance of the p e r c e p t .............

63

The rejection of epistemological monism . . .

64

C o n c l u s i o n ...................

65

DOCTRINE OP THE S E L F . .......................... Three types of soul theory.

...............

69 69

The fusion, of "substance” and "subject” c o n c e p t i o n s ................................

70

The definition of "subst a n c e " ...............

71

Relation of the "self" to time...............

74

Definition of temporal r e l a t i o n ............

74

Knowledge of the " s e l f " ..............

75

Selfhood as an achievement...................

77

Volition as a key to the "self” .............

78

Influence of McDougall.................

79

Vi

CHAPTER

PAGE The seven arguments from meaning. The analysis of meaning Conclusion

...............

82

• • . • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

85

THE IMPLICATIONS O P .SELFHOOD...................

87

The implication

of

immortality.........

87

The implication

of

meaning...... .

88

The implication

of

immanent p u r p o s e

The implication

of

m a n ’s unique nature.. . . 90

The implication

of

purpose in human life..♦

Comparison with Lotze

VII.

80

.

VI.

. . . . . .

89

.

92

Roots of the doctrine in Hindu philosophy . .

94

The main question in Pratt’s philosophy . . .

96

THE FRUITS OF REALISM:

................. ..

91

CRITICAL CONCLUSION . .

97

The confusion in critical r e a l i s m ..........

97

..........

98

The possibility of a science of man . . . . .

100

The definition of empiricism.

The inadequacy of the epistemologicalmetaphysical distinction

101

11Detachment” and "objectivity” ................. 102 The struggle between east and west meta­ physics

............ • • • •

The struggle to retain individuality........... 105 Summary— the search for a b a l a n c e ............. 106

vil CHAPTER

PAGE Realism reaches maturity--conclusion.

. . . .

BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................

107

109

CHAPTER I GENESIS OP THE PROBLEM Were a defense of the subject matter of this paper demanded, it might well take the form of a justification for the whole field of philosophy*

The history of phil­

osophy, it seems safe to assert, could be written in rela­ tion to the problem of the "self."

The life work of James

BIssett Pratt was, in no small measure, directed toward this constant and timeless problem in modern thought and the forces of the personal versus the impersonal, the objec­ tive as over against the subjective, the. act versus the actor, the mental versus the physical, have been battling with renewed vigor since the turn of the present century* Although the problem before us is as old as philosophy, the genesis of it forms one of the scantily surveyed fields of human endeavor*

This is so, doubtless, because man's

awareness of his nature is tied up with the act of cognition between experience on the one hand and reflection on the other*

We know very little about the beginnings of the more

sophisticated modes of thinking*

We may, however, not be

far wrong in asserting that nature was the foil against which man was suddenly shocked into self-awareness. band states,

Windel-

2 In order to turn the look of philosophy inward and make human action the object of its study, there was first need, for one thing, of subse­ quent reflection upon what had, and what had not, been accomplished by this study of Nature, and, for another thing, of the imperious demands made by public life on science now so far matured as to be a social factor.^ One of those things found not to have been accomplished by the study of nature was man.

The anthropological period of

Greek history reflects an attempt to deal with this problem, but not before much had already been done by the way of breaking ground, on the part of the early Milesians and Ionians. The Greeks have given us several theories of the soul, or self, as present day thought names it.

Anaximenes, in 2 many respects following primitive notions, retained the notion of ,fairft as the soul.

At this time breath was Identi­

fied with air and breath was the very nature of soul. Therefore, air was soul.

It was the unitary principle which

also performed the function of holding the cosmos together. Perhaps we should call to mind the fact that this is a rather materialistic notion of soul.

It is a physical

principle rather than a spiritual force; yet the world for Anaximenes is a living, breathing thing and he wants, like 1 Wilhelm Windelband, History of Philosophy (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1921), p. 25. 2

James Burnham and Phillip Wheelwright, Philosophical Analysis (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1952), p. 305.

3 all humanistic Greeks, to conceive of it after the principle of living, human beings.

In spite of the physical nature of

his theory he is searching for a vital principle more responsive than the non-human qualities of nature.

He probes

behind the scenes and finds, as Thales did, that the gods are everywhere.

Anaximenes evidently finds that these powers

are somehow inherent in the elements that make up bodies and the world about us.

Air is one of these powers, but it is

4

also life and therefore Soul.

Democritus remained closer to a materialistic concep­ tion.

The nature of soul does not serve to describe the

physical world, but the nature of the physical world precedes the conceptualization of the soul. the former for its reality.

The latter depends upon

Reality is reducible to atoms

hurtling about in a void where qualitative differences are reducible to contrasts in shape and arrangement.

At this

point the antiquity and yet the modernity of our theme be­ comes apparent.

As one writer expresses it;

The philosophic question at issue between the atomists and their opponents was the same as that which reappeared in the eighteenth century, when Newton1s physics were made the basis of a mechanical philosophy by his French disciples. Is the reality underlying nature something which in its essence resembles nature as it appears to 3

Ibid., p. 305*

^ Kathleen Freeman, The Bre-Socratic Philosophers Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946), p. 75.

4 the human mind, or is it a vast machine indifferent to man and his welfare?5 It is only a step from the atomism of nature to the ‘atomistic reduction of man— a step that was taken in the ancient world and a step that moderns find convenient.

We shall come to

that point in the history of thought when the only escape from the popular and regnant authority of Newtonian atomism was to be found in the Dualism of Descartes or the Idealism of Berkeley.

Can there be a legitimate separation between

man and nature, or is man essentially the same as the uni­ verse he observes?

This was the challenge Democritus threw

up and the history of philosophy from this point on is, in a very real sense, an attempt to defend or reject this position. The Pythagoreans, occult in their ritual, mystical in their religious outlook, and scientific in their intent, sought to meet the problems that atomism seemed to raise. The Pythagoreans conceived of soul under two aspects.

First,

it was asserted to be something imprisoned within the body. Second, it was conceived of as a non-spatial harmony--a blending of opposites.

It is oftentimes assumed that Greek

philosophy was primarily interested in intellectual pursuits, and indeed this concern bulked large in Greek thought; but

5

William Dampier, A History of Science (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1956), p. 27.

5 on the other hand, there is considerable warrant for the belief that the Greek concern over the problem of reality takes us beyond science and places us in the context of a deep seated spiritual urge.

As Burnet has remarked,

Greek philosophy is based on the faith that reality is divine, and that the one thing needful is for the soul, which is akin to the divine, to enter into communion with it. ... We see again and again that philosophy sought to do for men what the mysteries could only do in part, and that it there­ fore includes most of what we should now call religion.^ Pythagoreanism sought, in this manner, to supply what was lacking in the mystery cults and at the same time to satisfy the fundamental urge to know.

It was a religion built

partly of rational'materials, but with important reserva­ tions.

It sought to make the soul both an immaterial, uni­

tary principle and a material force imprisoned in the ma­ terial body.

There seems to be no reconciliation here and

it may be that we have an effort to unite conflicting tra­ ditions that entered in.

The Dionysian myth, for example,

held three positions regarding the soul. identical with the Orphic doctrine.

These points are

First, the conviction

that the soul has a divine origin; second, the fall of the soul and its imprisonment in the body; and third, the soul's eventual transmigration.

6

7

Evidently the Pythagoreans did

John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (London: A. & G, Black, 1892), p. 12. 7 Matthew Thompson McClure, The Early Philosophers of Greece (New York: D. Appleton Century Co., 1935), p. 34.

6 not believe that confining the soul within the body meant that it was a substance in space and therefore saw no con­ flict between assertions that it was the immaterial harmony of the body and the prisoner within the body, or in a sense, spatial*

The reason we have lingered so long over Pythagoras

is that much of Plato’s discourse on the "soul” pre-supposes a previous Pythagorean tradition.8 Platonism represents both a synthesis and a recation; it is a synthesis in that the conflicting trends of Greek science and religion were brought together, and a reaction in so far as Plato opposes man to nature and establishes man as a spectator of nature. be made.

For Plato the dichotomy must

We are inclined to believe the statement he puts

into the mouth of the Athenian stranger when he says, Then we are right, and speak the most perfect and absolute truth, when we say that the soul is prior to the body, and that the body is second and comes afterwards, and is born to obey the soul which is the ruler Here, then, we have a strong and clear mandate for dualism. Here the emphasis is on self-knowledge, not on knowledge of

Zeller feels that the whole doctrine of the soul as presented here is not representative of true Pythagorean tra­ dition. Thus, 11This dogma appears therefore to have been not an element of the Pythagorean philosophy, but a tradition of the Pythagorean mysteries originating probably from more ancient Orphic traditions...." E. Zeller, A History of Greek Philosophy (London: Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd., 1&81T7 p. 4§7. 9 Plato, Laws, 896 A-C (B. Jowett’s first translation.)

nature alone,

Plato could never agree with Aristotle in

comparing the desire for knowledge with the delight we take in our senses.

10

For Plato, knowledge is the vision of the

ngood,f cut loose from sensuous perceptions

He accepts

the empirical world and carries along the scientific tradi­ tion of Greek thought, but he limits it to the objects of perception and in so doing, reserves a special place for the one who perceives.

The world of ”Ideas” is not to be ex­

plained in terms of nature, or in terms of "life*1 as Aristotle was to say later,

12

but only in terms of the excel­

lence of the soul, which is the "good.”

When the smoke of

dialectic has cleared it is plainly seen that man is no longer at home in the merely sensuous world, although it is 10

”A11 men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything we prefer seeing to everything else.” Aristotle, Metaphysics, Basic Works of Aristotle, by Ed. Richard McKeon, Book A-l. 11

The writer is aware of Plato*s tri-partite division of the soul in the Republic, but space allows only the pre­ sentation of what seem to be Plato’s views of the soul in relation to the world of empirical objects, consequently more time is spent here in showing that Plato regarded the soul as a unique entity, rather than presenting what the soul is considered in itself.

12

See Ernst Cassirer’s illuminating passage in An Essay on Man, (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1944T7 p. 2.

8 a condition of his knowledge.

Flato has performed the

marriage ceremony between Pre-Socratic Naturalism and G-reek religion, but the cost has been so prohibitive that Aristotle rejects the union.

Aristotle finds that man must reach a

knowledge of his own unique position not by ignoring the world but by making an adjustment to the world, for no separation is possible.

Cassirer remarks at this point,

In nature as well as in human knowledge the higher forms develop from the lower forms. Sense percep­ tion, memory, experience, imagination, and reason are all linked together by a common bond; they are merely different stages and different expressions of one and the same fundamental activity, which attains its highest perfection in man, but which in a way is shared by the animals and all forms of organic life. In clarifying Plato’s thought we have pointed rather clearly the direction of Aristotle’s reaction to the Platonic scheme.

Aristotle conceives the body and the soul as in

intimate connection. entelechy of the body.

In fact the soul is the "telos” or In De Anima he outlines cautiously

the direction of his thought after considering at some length, previous theories.

The most general definition

Aristotle formulates considers the soul as ...a substance in the sense of the form of the natural body having life potentially within it. But substance (in the sense of form) is actuality,

15 Ibid., pp. 2-5.

9 and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized.14 Now the soul plus the body constitutes what we term the "animal,11 and since the soul is analogous to the sight of the eye, being actuality, it follows that ...the soul is inseparable from its body, or at any rate that certain parts of it are (if it has parts)— for the actuality of some of them is nothing but the actualities of their bodily parts. Aristotlers reluctance to separate the soul from the body is not necessarily to be construed as meaning that the psy­ chical functions depend upon the physical functions.

Rather,

for Aristotle, the soul is the entelechy of the body, i.e., the Form which realizes itself in the motions and changes of the organic body.

The soul is the cause of bodily for­

mation and motion, a cause acting from ends; itself incor­ poreal, it is yet actual only as the motive or controlling force of the body.

But the question inevitably comes as

to whether or not Aristotle believed that the soul survived death.

There is little indication that he did, although

some authors pump for a doctrine of immortality in the Stygarite. —

Others abstain from any conclusions whatsoever.

17

_

Aristotle, De Anima, Bk. II, 412a20. 15

Ibid., 413a5.

16 W. Windelband, op. cit., p. 149. 17

"We shall be wiser if we recognize the plain impli­ cation of his [Aristotiefs ] words, namely, that he held it

10 Indications are that Aristotle never clearly formulated his position.

Regardless of our conclusions in this respect, it

seems clear that he aimed at avoiding any sharp dualism between soul and body and at the same time escaping a Democritean atomism, for he objected strenuously to the Democritean habit of reducing quality to quantity.

In con­

clusion, we can say that in Aristotle we have the beginning of a reaction to Platonism which was to carry through till the time of Descartes.

Aristotle moves away from Plato in

describing the whole area of nature in teleological terms and in placing man within, not on the fringe of that system as its culminating perfection.

The soul, according to

Aristotle, becomes a reality In nature so far as it animates things or bodies, but it is never cut entirely loose from the biological realm and allowed to subsist in an ideal state.

Mind is one aspect of the soul and is not actual in

any sense until it performs its function, that is, until it 18 lfthinks.” Surprisingly enough, this conception of the union of body and soul was the one that satisfied Aquinas, but not before it had gone through the severe testings ad­ ministered by Scepticism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism. Aristotle’s followers were not all united and after his impossible to return a decisive answer to this great question without further empirical knowledge of the bodily processes involved in mental activities....” William McDougall, Body and Mind (London: Methuen & Co., 1920), p. 24. hoc. cit.

death

a division of labor took place in scientific endeavor

along with a general decline in philosophical speculation.

19

The Lyceum degenerated into a school for those interested in dialectic cleverness and in deducing theories about "soul."

Cosmic relations were, to a great extent, Ignored. Thomas Aquinas forms the link between Aristotle and

the thought of the Middle Ages.

Averrhoes, the Arab phil­

osopher, and interpreter of Aristotle, maintained that reason or intelligence was a metaphysical entity, but this entity*s relation to individual human souls was a matter of accident--it was temporary.

This amounted to a denial

of immortality for individual souls, or any existence of individual souls apart from the body, and this implication was explicitly expounded by Averrhoes although not always 20 followed by his disciples. In one of his most important treatises, Aquinas set about to refute this doctrine. Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroestas.)

(De

Like those who

had preceded him in the scholastic tradition, Aquinas claimed to have returned to the real and true Aristotle. Indeed he taught, like Aristotle, that the soul is the form of the body.

The soul is a unitary being and therefore the

19

"Among the most distinguished scholars who succeeded him in the Lyceum were, Theophrastus, Dicaearchus, Aristoxemus and Strabo of Lampascus, the teacher of Ptolemy Philadelphius.” Ibid ., p. 24. 20

Ibid., p. 34.

12 reason is not separable from it.

Yet he found it impossible

to stay with Aristotle at just this point.

Instead of binding

fast the reason— ...in the body together with the nutritive and sensitive faculties, he rather set free all alike from the body and declared the whole unitary soul to be immortal: the soul is the form of the body, but it is the form In a new sense, for it is a separable form.21 It is important to note that for Aquinas the intellect, so far as the external world is concerned, is dependent upon sense for the possession of the materials of knowledge. Subjectively, however, it is independent of the organism in its powers of thought and volition.

This intrinsic inde­

pendence which is characteristic of the soul is at once its proof of immortality and its testimony to spirituality.

So

after long centuries of speculation we have the soul once again, as in Plato, set over against matter.

The reaction

has reached a full cycle from Plato to Aquinas, but like Augustine and the early Fathers, Aquinas rejected the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul; for each soul, he held, was created at the moment the body is ready for functioning. tion here.

Another peculiar point arrests our atten­

The principle of individuality for Aquinas was

the body, not the soul, and in this he followed Aristotle.

21 Ibid., p. 55.

13 It was Aristotlefs contention that the soul must be fitted to the body;

the fact that a person has such and such a

body determines that he will have a particular type of soul. Yet let us remember that for Aquinas the soul is not merely the actuality of the body, but something brought into being by God and united with an embryo at a stage of development. Clearly Aquinas*s "soul” is akin to what we term the self. It is not difficult to see that in his strong opposi­ tion to the Arabian philosophy, Aquinas, somewhat unwitting­ ly, departed from Plato and Aristotle,

Aquinas established

a spiritual principle which was intimately tied in with material processes.

In this way he overcame the sharp type

of dualism of Augustine.

But this system was well fortified

with scientific rationalism, that is, the effort was to found a theology natural to man.

In doing this, Aquinas

set in motion the forces that were to undermine the Holy Catholic Church.

Aquinas*s efforts to do justice to sensory

perception, to place man in a dignified position in the realm of nature, and his signal success, mark the high water line of the Middle Ages and usher in the Renaissance.

Men like

Bruno and Scotus did much for an independent pursuit of philosophy.

Soon, two kinds of truths were adopted, theo­

logical and philosophical, in order to free scientific investigation— a practice prevalent today between the fields of religion and science.

Aquinas sought to demonstrate the

14 spiritual harmony of all truth and thus bring philosophy back into the fold.

In spite of Aquinas*s great prestige,

the distinction held even to Bruno, who urged before the Inquisition in 1592, the distinction upon his inquisitors. Thus it was that the Renaissance gave new life to the problem of the soul, and in the sixteenth century it was openly and clearly discussed.

For a time the stalemated forces of

monism and dualism were helpless in the face of this tempo­ rary truce but ironically enough, a child of the church ended the uneasy intellectual equilibrium.

Hardly realizing

the potency of his weapons, Descartes upset the delicate balance between man and nature and soon the old concepts were torn down, and man, the self, the soul were threatened with extinction.

As McDougall has said,

...by his bold assertion of the purely mechanical nature of all animal behavior and by his ingenious speculations in support of this assertion, he hastened the advent of the time when all the be­ havior of men also should be asserted with equal confidence to be the product of purely mechanical factors.22 Descartes found himself in a confusing world.

The methods

of the Schoolmen were beginning to pale before his mind while at the same time the advances of science were pressing for attention.

His was the century that spawned the efforts of

such men as Galileo, Bacon, Hobbes, Leibnitz, Spinoza,

22

Ibid., p. 53.

15 Huygens, Harvey, Locke, Boyle and Newton.

There was expect­

ancy in the air; the solutions seemed at hand and the prize would go to the man who could boldly step out and command the territory.

If men like Galileo wished to seek for the

reasons in particular effects, Descartes was to say, let them, but he must seek these first principles in nature, the first causes behind all phenomena.

His youthful paramours— phil­

osophy, eloquence, poesy, language— all these he found strangely insufficient.' Only mathematics delighted him wbecause of the certainty of its demonstrations and the evi­ dence of-its reasoning”; yet he says, ...I had not as yet a precise knowledge of its true use; and thinking that they but contributed to the mechanical arts, I was astonished that foundations so strong and solid should have no loJTIfcier superstructure reared on t h e m . Here, then, was the field for fruitful exploitation, a field that Plato and Pythagoras had realized the possibilities of but one that Aristotle had greatly ignored.

This was an

opportunity to substitute for the stubborn qualities of the Scholastics, exact measurement.

But this was a bold task,

indeed, and Descartes looked about him for a starting point — an authority to use as a sanction.

The nbook of the world11

had offered little of value; the philosophers were still

Q •s

Rene Descartes, The Method, Meditations and Phil­ osophy of Descartes (Translated by John Veitch, M. Walter Dunne, publisher, 1901), p. 153.

16 haggling among themselves; the debris of the Schoolmen was rusty, and the machinery of Scholasticism creaked with mis­ use and age.

In the end, Descartes remarks with desperation,

”1 could, however, select from the crowd no one whose opinions seemed worthy of preference, and thus I found my­ self constrained, as it were, to use my own Reason in the conduct of my life,”^

Descartes found, then, that he had

two tools in shaping his thought— himself and mathematics. I saw consequently that there must be some general science to explain that element as a whole which gives rise to problems about order and measure­ ment, restricted as they are to no special subject matter. This I perceived, was called Universal Mathematics .25 But now what are the presuppositions of such a method?

Let

us, Descartes says, sweep the world clear— casting aside even the supposed truths of mathematics.

Out the window

goes everything except a residuum of ”doubt”--the destruc­ tive tool whereby is accomplished this tour de force in the realm of speculation.

It may be legitimately asked, ,!0f

what use is this?1* Descartes recalls that it takes a doubter to doubt. doubt.

He finds that he cannot doubt ^his*1

That fact is his one entrance back again into the

world, a piece of timber to cling to, and from here on Descartes builds his world. P4 25

It is a different world.

He

Ibid., p, 159.

Rene' Descartes, Rules For the Direction of the Mind, in the Philosophical Works of Descartes (Cambridge: University Press, 1951), Rule IV, Vol. I, 13. Tr. by E.S. Haldane arid G. R. T. Ross.

17 left a medieval world of qualities, measureless entities and unpredictable spirits.

It is to a vastly different sphere

that he returns after his purge.

We can hardly improve upon

Professor Eaton’s characterization of this shift of emphasis: The axiom, tfI think therefore I a m / ’ places the self in high relief as the primary datum of phil­ osophy. It sets the fashion for philosophizing outward from the inner world of self-consciousness. Other selves and a common realm of objects are no longer taken for granted but must be proved to exist. A strange new problem enters philo sophy-^1*13 there anything in existence beyond my own mind and its thoughts ?tf26 The road is clear for one great wing of philosophic thought from Descartes onward.

This emphasis on the self is

for the first time brought clearly into the open and made the point of departure for the imposing edifices of Berkeley, Malebranche, Kant, Fichte and Hegel.

And the point to keep

in mind especially is that while the idealistic followers of Descartes used the devices of all sorts of spiritual panthe­ isms, the world, when restored by Descartes, is not of this nature.

It was effectively cleansed of spiritual admixture—

a stroke in the spirit of mechanism.

The only link, then,

with mediaeval religion is his insistence on the Divine Being, for God sets the mechanism in motion.

Although the bodily

machine can perform marvelous acts, Descartes would ridicule the idea of the materialists that it can think.

26

.--Ibid, xxx *

Another

18 type of substance must do that, that is 11thinking substance.” Thus it was that his doctrine of the soul, as a thing not expressible in physical terms, gave physical science complete independence of this idea in its later developments. We have hinted above that the soul is a substance for Descartes and this has important bearings on later topics of our study since the soul-substance theory is not at all dead.

The subject of our study, James Bissett Pratt, main­

tained a soul-substance theory.

For moderns, consciousness

is usually treated, not as an "entity" or "thing," but as 27 a "function." "Function” expresses the most prevalent modern attitude toward the definition of consciousness and this function is not an operation of some underlying stuff. There is no such thing as a substratum with qualities.

For

Descartes, on the other hand, mind is a substance with the character of extension.

Now the independence of the thought

substance rests on a logical argument.

I may doubt the pre­

sentations of sense, for dreams represent presentations which turn into illusions, but I find it impossible to doubt my own existence.

That is, the very act of doubting implies

that I exist in order to doubt, and doubting is thinking; but thinking is an attribute which requires a substance as its ground.

There must, then, be a substance whose essence

William James, "Does Consciousness Exist?" Journal 21 Philosophy, 1:477, 1904.

19 is to think*

That substance is thought or soul substance.

Prom here on to our day the pattern is set.

Knowledge of

the world was funnelled through the subtle organism of man— a factor that set the whole effort of thought in a new per­ spective and placed the emphasis on the faculties of man as the key to an understanding of the world.

The examination

of nature, though popular with Descartes and the wing of materialism that followed, had a hollow ring for many who had experienced the failure of a young science to grasp what man is.

A famous contemporary of Descartes, when faced with

this, could only cry out, ”who will follow these marvellous processes?

The author of these wonders understands them. ,28 None other can do so. Pascal was quick to grasp the new emphasis in thought. In a passage marvellous for its insight, he strikes the problem for subsequent philosophy, and indeed, the problem of this paper.

This is the great dilemma.

Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being. Pascal asserts that nature presents nothing to him which is not a matter of doubt.

This was precisely Descartes* dilemma

28 (New York*

Blaise Pascal, Pensees, The Provincial Letters #72, The Modern Library, 1941), p. 25.

29 Ibid., p. 27.

20 and the only escape he found was through man--I think, ergo, I am, God is, ergo, the world is not a deception. condemns such a solution. untrustworthy.

Pascal

Reason alone is deceptive and

Only the ’’reason of the heart” stands.

With

all his probing of nature, man finds that homo sapiens is the r eal problem, that nature is merely the measure of his ignorance writ large.

Prom that day till this we have not

been able to find a standard by which to judge the claims of science.

Science has always chosen the field of battle.

We need a Plato who can adjust the claims of both.

As Sir

Richard Livingston remarks: Plato brought order into the spiritual chaos of his day and laid a firm basis for a philosophy of life, which in. various forms and with various modifications served the ancient world for eight hundred years, and then was taken up into the framework of Christian Theology. The same thing has happened to us, since in the seventeenth century science came out of a long eclipse and, as its light fell on one province of life after another, traditional ways of thought and accepted beliefs were troubled. But our Plato has not yet appeared.

Sir Richard Livingston, ”The Road Ahead,” Article in Atlantic Monthly, November, 1948.

CHAPTER II THE; MODERN PERIOD The world of Descartes was overshadowed by Galileo* Galileo held to a theory that was strictly exclusive in its view of nature.

We mean by this that only those phenomena

describable in quantitative terms could be a part of it. Many concepts were extruded from the consideration of nature.

They needed to find lodging somewhere.

This some­

what alarming housing shortage was not lost on Descartes. The significant entity left out of Galileo’s account was "mind.”

Qualities also, were not accounted for.

As

Descartes saw it, qualities must be explained outside of nature and he did this by saying that they belong to the union of minds and bodies.

Although Descartes reared a two-

substance doctrine, he hastened to add that the two substances must have a common source, or God.

Therefore his two-

substance doctrine was not unqualified.

He said that because

substance means that which exists of itself, there must be 31 only one substance, that is God. Spinoza seems to have drawn out the logical implication of this point in Descartes. Since there was only one substance in actuality, mind and

31

R. C. Colllngwood, The idea of Nature (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1945), p. 105.

22 matter merely represented two attributes of that one sub­ stance, God.

As thought, it was mind, as extension, matter,

and it could be called indifferently, Nature or God.

32

Spinoza1s matter and consciousness were merely two aspects of God, two modes of Divine expression.

To delegate to man,

as a conscious animal, some sort of unique function, would., have been to destroy the unity or oneness of God and at the same time reduce religion to a gross anthropomorphism, all of which Spinoza ahhorred. On the tiny island across the channel, great move­ ments of thought were in evidence.

Berkeley, Bishop of

Gloyne, observing the startling hold that Newtonian objec­ tivism was having on the faith of the church and carrying along with him the lessons of Locke, struck out to vindicate the place of a universe as "personal.”

To condemn what

seemed to be the current deification of substance, Berkeley found it necessary to attack the notion of substance by ask­ ing what it could possibly mean.

Starting, then, with an idea

of nature as a complex composed of inert matter, a view common to the seventeenth century, he strove to show that this

32

"From all this it follows then: that of Nature all in all is predicated, and that consequently Nature consists of infinite attributes, each of which is perfect in its kind. And this is just equivalent to the definition usually given of God.” Benedict Spinoza, Short Treatise on God, Man, and. His Well Being (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1910), p. £5. Translated by A. Wolf.

23 was a mere abstraction, for nowhere in nature do we find quantity devoid of quality.

In a second move Berkeley pointed

out that secondary qualities in nature are the work of mind according to the current conception.

Now if nature cannot

exist without this element, then nature as a whole is the work of mind.

Furthermore, Berkeley asserted, this does

not leave us in a phantom world.

All we have asserted is

that, ...the unthinking beings perceived by sense have no existence distinct from being perceived, and cannot therefore exist in any other substance than those unextended, indivisible substances or spirits which act and think and perceive them. 33 Thus, the spirits who perceive, and G-od who sustains, as the supreme spirit, represent the ultimate categories of Berkeley*s system.

All other so-called material entities,

are conceived of after the manner of the nominalists.

Uni-

versals are merely particular names which we generalize. It is usual to point up the natural line of descent from Locke to Berkeley to Hume.

Closer study, however, re­

veals that Hume owed less to Berkeley than to Locke. Berkeley*s arguments did not demand an answer from Hume because they were not convincing to him.

33

34

Hume started,

George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge (La Salle, 111.: Open Court Publishing Go., 1946}, Sec791, p. 83. 34 David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (La Salle, 111.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1946), footnote p. 164.

24 as Locke did, with an exact description of the mechanism of knowing, which for both was the essence of the psychological problem*

The question as to nhow'M the mind actually comes

to know individual things was covered up by Hume*

He never

could explain the synthesizing operation of the human intel­ lect*

As Robert Adamson states, ••♦in Hume the effort to explain the synthesis which is essential to cognition as merely the accidental result of external relations among the elements of conscious experience, appears with the utmost clearness, and gives the key­ note of all his philosophical work.36

As a substitute for the peculiar synthesizing operation in cognition Hume offered a weak brew of external relations, natural bonds of connections among ideas, principles of association,— all of which form a sort of mechanical combi­ nation in cognition.

Hume was forced, then, to deny person­

al identity or the unified nature of personality.

He calls

the mind a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in difference; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity*36 And lest we jump to the unwarranted conclusion that the

Robert Adamson, **David Hume,,f Encyclopaedia Britan nica, ninth edition, XII, 352. 36

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), Part IV, Sec. V, p. 85*

25 figure of the stage represents a point of identity, Hume hastens to add that, ...the comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind? nor have we the distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which It is composed. Kant was obviously impressed by this analysis.

It pointed

up, once and for all, the dangers that any consistent empiricism must face. large.

The danger from subjectivism loomed

Thus it was that Kant sought to work out deductions

from those fundamental categories that we use in our de­ scriptions of experience, and to ferret out the presupposi­ tions involved.

But there is ample warrant for the belief

that Kant fell into the very trap he sought to avoid.

This

seems especially true when we consider Kant’s baffling con­ cept of the ’’object” of cognition.

The statement of the

Deductions of the Categories deals with the ability of con­ cepts to serve as characterizations of the world of objects. In other words, how can these apriori categories refer to objects?

Kant states, in partial answer, that he hopes to

find ”In experience, the contingent causes of the production 38 of these concepts.” is this:

The question pressing for an answer

In what sense is this contingent cause more than

37 Ibid., p. 85. 38 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1881), p. 71. Translated by Max Muller.

26 the state of our own sensibility?

In answer, Kant seems

occasionally to veer toward an almost air-tight subjectivity. W e must admit, however, that he was aware of this danger, for he asks, does the object alone make the representation possible, or does the representation alone make the object possible?

He definitely accepts the latter alternative and

modifies it just enough so that the representation is said to determine the object if ffthrough it alone it is possible to know anything as an object.”

39

The object, on the other

hand, seems to impose an external check or restraint on our minds.

Kant admits this but is quick to change the discussion

to an analysis of the Transcendental Object— quite a differ­ ent thing.

There seems to be a realization here that an

”object” must be more than a construct of the manifold of sense in space and time, yet this is all our Intuitions are allowed to apprehend.

It follows, then, that anything,

characteristic of the object above the range of sense, can only be dealt with by the understanding.

So it would seem

that the understanding, inasmuch as it deals with universals, is the necessary condition for our conception of what makes the object.

Gan we get closer to the object than our own

states of sensibility?

The only answer seems to be that the

object is separated only Insofar as it determines the direc­ tions of our characterizations of it, and this begs the whole

39

Ibid., p. 77.

27 point at issue, since this is precisely our quandry— just to what extent does it determine our characterizations? The distinction is often pointed out between two types of knowledge, that is, knowledge that commences with expar40 ience and knowledge that comes from experience, Kant holds that we invariably must start with experience in the act of knowing, for this is precisely the point at which I»eibniz failed, in his opinion, but not all our knowledge comes from experience.

Causation, for example, could not become evi­

dent without experience of some kind, and yet no amount of analysis on that level can make that idea intelligible, had pointed this out for all time.

So the "object11 is torn

between the aposteriori and the apriori. real object at all.

Hume

This, then, is no

Yet though Kant denies the objectivity

of space and time, he does not deny, at least overtly, the external world.

Again, what would the external world be,

stripped of the objectivity of space and time? tions should be faced squarely in Kant.

These ques­

Kant*s demonstra­

tion of the existence of the external most certainly rests on the faculties of cognition, which are surely subjective. The object, then, seems shut up within the subject.

Much of

this argument is based on an underlying unity behind the consciousness of objects.

This self-identity implies con­

sciousness of objects and consciousness of objects implies self-identity.

Another proof is certainly needed here to

28 resolve one or another of the above assertions.

Otherwise

we are in a vicious circle. Kant, then, certainly makes the subject paramount for he says, If we drop our subject or the subjective form of our sense, all qualities, relations of objects in time and space, nay space and time themselves would vanish.41 It is difficult to see, here, the difference between this assertion and the famous statement that as far as objects are concerned their "esse” is to be perceived. On point we find considerable

the same

support in Collingwood.

What he says is that although we cannot know the thing in itself we can think it: we think of it as that which gives us sense data, and hence as some­ thing creative, and rationally creative, and since his ethical studies convinced him that a rational creative activity is to be found in the human will, he actually went so far as to suggest that the thing in itself is more like will than anything else. This brings him back to a metaphysics not very remote from that of Berkeley's and Aristotle, a metaphysics according to which the ultimate ground of phenomena is to be sought in something which is at any rate more like mind than it is like matter.42 Kant's answer to his first problem seems to be that the contingent cause turns out to be something more than the

state

of our own sensibility insofar as it moulds into a transcen­ dental systhesis the materials given in the operations of sensibility.

This presupposes the real identity of the ttselfft

41 Kant, 42

0 £.

cit., p. 37.

Collingwood, o£. cit., p. 117.

29 as a ground for the unity of apperception.

Kant does not

tell us the relation between the human "self” and the divine "self”— a problem that Hegel was to tackle and give a very definite answer to in the course of his work.

But the sig­

nificant point to note here is that the course of thought reversed itself again, and the postulation of the unique individual was found necessary to an adequate understanding of experience.

Hegel, speaking of the object of knowledge,

and the "ding an sieh” in particular, makes it abundantly clear that though we cannot postulate knowledge of the ob­ ject as it is in itself, we can think of it.

It is something

that gives us sense data, something that is rationally operative in the world. on this point.

Hegel’s answer, then, rests right

The importance of man is that he is the

vehicle of this rationally operative factor in the world. Man becomes, for Hegel, the crowning masterpiece of ration­ ality.

Man is,

...the form in which God’s being or rather becoming develops itself into its crowning phase, the being or becoming of spirit.4® As might be anticipated, critical followers of Hegel were not contented with the status of man under the awful embrace of Hegel’s philosophy.

It was a blight upon individualism.

Hegelianism came under closer scrutiny it soon became

43

Ibid., p. 122.

As

30 apparent that the soul was nothing more than the backdrop Tor the rationally conceived mind--a spoke in the perfect circle of rationalism# In 1865 Stirling1s Secret of Hegel, signalled the beginning of the idealistic movement in England.

Caird,

Green and Bradley were the exponents of a vigorous form of Hegelianism at the end of the 19th century.

Transcenden­

talism, another form of Hegelianism, appeared in America by virtue of the work of the Scottish realists, Witherspoon, McCosh and Porter.

These men were under the spell of Emer­

son who was in turn greatly influenced by Coleridge*s Aids to Reflection.

Victor Cousin, whose Kantian commentaries

were widely read toward the close of the second quarter of the century, was responsible in large measure, for popular­ izing Kant in England and America.

Briefly, Kantianism and

Hegelianism came through Schelling to Coleridge and thence to Emerson and was presented to the Scottish realists in the works of Cousin as well as of Emerson and of Coleridge.^4 dn the other hand the idealism of Caird, Green and Bradley in England had its sometimes unwitting opponents in such great names as Kelvin, Darwin, Spencer and Huxley.

In

America also, we witness at the close of the century a great conflict brought about, in part, through the vigorous study

44

Ralph Barton Perry, Philosophy of the Recent Past (Hew York: Charles S c r i b n e r ^ Sons, 192677 P* I*7*

31 of Darwin and the implications of evolutionary naturalism. The teachings of Darwin combined with the writings of Spencer, which were read in America almost as soon as they were in England, moved American thought profoundly in the direction of naturalism and gave rise to what Ferry calls "an evolutionary philosophical »cult1 with John Fiske as the most prominent leader."4®

We shall, for the moment,

trace the development of Hegelianism in America, In the year 1867, in St. Dodls, Missouri, the first number of a philosophical journal was published under the title, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy,

The editor,

W. T. Harris, announced as the primary aims of the journal: (1) to provide a philosophy of religion suitable to the changing times;

(2) to develop a social philosophy respon­

sive to the new demands of the national consciousness; and (3) to give deeper or more systematic expression to the implications of the physical sciences.

The editor felt that

deep religious changes were going on in the world, that is, there seemed to be a tendency to break with tradition.

The

demand was that "reason11 should find a basis for the tra­ ditional elements of religious dogma.

Thus it was assumed

that the only kind of thought that could accomplish this was what was termed "speculative insight."4®

Muirhead has summed

° Ibid., p. 17. 46

G. Watts Cunningham, The Idealistic Argument in Recent British and American Philosophy ^London: Century Co., 1933T* p. 253.

32 up this development admirably: It was because Harris and his companions thought they saw in the Hegelian philosophy a sword where­ with to smite the three-headed monster of anarchy in politics, traditionalism in religion, and natur­ alism in science, that they found the courage to undertake and perseverance to carry through the task of naturalizing it in America.47 So Hegelianism founded schools, first at St. Eouis and then at Concord, and boasted many disciples and many beach-heads in enemy territory.

But its victory was not final.

reactions began to set in from all sides.

Severe

William James

was one of the first to recognize the threat in Hegelianism and in a stinging statement first appearing in Mind in 1882 and later reprinted in The Will to Believe,he charged that Hegel^s philosophy mingles mountain-loads of corruption with its scanty merits, and must now that it has become quasi-official make ready to defend itself as well as to attack others. It is with no hope of converting independent thinkers, but rather with the sole aspiration of showing some chance youthful disciple that there is another point of view in philosophy, that I fire this skirmisher's shot, which may, I hope, soon be fol­ lowed by somebody else's heavier musketry.48 One line of influence, evolutionary naturalism, has an interesting and significant place in the development of American philosophy.

In 1797 Maithus published his Essay on

the Principle of Population.

At the end of the concluding

chapter he makes the following significant statement:

47

J. H. Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in AngloSaxon Philosophy (New York: The Macmillan Go., 1931), p. 321. 48

Ibid., p. 325.

33 It would indeed be a melancholy reflection that, while the views of physical science are daily en­ larging, so as scarcely to be bounded by the most distant horizon, the science of moral and political philosophy should be confined within such narrow limits, or at best be so feeble in its influence, as to be unable to counteract the obstacles to human happiness arising from a single cause. ... And although we cannot expect that the virtue and happiness of mankind will keep pace with the brilliant career of physical discovery; yet, if we are not wanting to ourselves, we may confidently indulge the hope that to no unimportant extent, they will be influenced by its progress and will partake in its success.^ The spiritual claustrophobia sensed by Maithus as science cast its shadow over successive areas of his world, is typical of the period of Newtonian reaction and the impact of Darwinism* this movement.

There seemed to be only one way to combat Maithus attempted a rigorous application of

the principles of s cience to the realms of politics and religion.

The assumption here was, that there were laws,

natural laws which man must discover and once discovered, take care not to cut across.

The same laws that govern the

movements of Newtonian bodies, govern-the actions of men, and cause their destruction if ignored.

Man is a creature of

law and he must be studied as such in all of his institutional forms.

Whereas before we consulted God to unlock the secrets

of nature, now we find that the ^method of coming at the will of God from the light of nature, is to inquire into the

.

Thomas R. Maithus, Essays on Population (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1914), p. 262.

54 tendency of the action to promote or diminish the general 50 happiness.ft

The facts are first.

The laws are discovered

through the facts and thereby the will of God is revealed. The whole principle of population rests on the use of reason in accordance with natural law.

Speaking of the necessity

for raising only as many children as can be supported, Maithus shows that chastity is not ...a forced produce of artificial society; but that it has the most real and solid foundation in nature and reason; being apparently the only virtuous means of avoiding the vice and misery which result so often from the principle of population.51 Never again can we ...make facts bend to systems, instead of establish­ ing systems upon facts. ...the constancy of the laws of nature, and of effects and causes, is the founda^ tion of all human knowledge.^2 In spite of Malthus’s professed loyalty to a scientific framework, he doubtless never dreamed that his theory would be one of the adumbrating elements of Darwinism.

That this

was the actual case indicates the irony of the attempted wedding of science and morality within the general framework of natural or revealed religion. to

It was religion that sought

embrace both science and religion in its frame, but the 50

Ibid., p. 166 (Quotation from Paley's Moral Philo sophyTT 51 Ibid., p. 161. 52 Ibid., p. 6.

effect of Darwin1s theory was to point up the illusory nature of this compromise.

It soon was difficult to distinguish,

like the problem of the serpents devouring each other, which one was predominant— which was in movement. was not long in doubt. slow adjustment.

But the issue

Religion represented the area of

Science moved relentlessly on as it narrowed

its interests and the principle of Natural Selection broke the ground ahead of it.

This was to have far-reaching conse­

quences for those who wished to preserve the spiritual in­ tegrity of man, as we shall see presently.

In the Origin

of Species, Darwin states that his doctrine of Natural Selec­ tion, that is, the general doctrine of the struggle for existence as shown in Malthus’s Essay on Population, is applied to the whole animal kingdom.

W. R. Scottfs quota­

tion from Darwin’s correspondence well illustrates our point. Being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long con­ tinued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these cir­ cumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then I had a theory by which to work. Despite the misunderstandings that overtook Darwin, he was essentially a religious man and had no desire to upset the delicate balance between man and the supernatural.

Actually,

Charles Darwin, Letter written in 1877, quoted by W. B. Scott, The Theory of Evolution (New York? The Macmillan Co., 1923), p. 17.

36 few had taken the trouble to read the Origin of Species or the Descent of Man,

If they had, they would doubtless have

been much impressed and subdued by the quotations that Darwin placed before the introduction of his work.

Part of

the quotation from Butler*s Analogy of Revealed Religion reads, ...what is natural presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, I. E . , to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miracu­ lous does to effect it for once.54 In spite of these protestations of orthodoxy, the faithful would draw unwarranted implications, and in spite of the fact that it was never meant to be such, they concluded that it was a poor enchiridion for God*s people.

The great diffi­

culty with Darwin1s theory seemed to be that it left the world to the none too tender mercies of chance factors working through natural selection.

Natural selection, in

turn, seemed to be carried out on purely mechanistic princi­ ples.

The writings of Huxley in England, and the system of

Piske in America, only served to heighten this suspicion, and these writings, as we mentioned earlier, achieved great popularity in America.

In short, Darwinism was the bridge

over which came the independent, critical tradition of American philosophy.

Hegelianism was pledged to fight

naturalism in science, and the cults of evolutionism were 54

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), p. 13.

37 out to strip religion of its superstition*

Hegelianism in

America, was religion become critical and sophisticated, and Darwinism, but not Darwin, was science become dogmatic* Whichever alternative one accepted, one had also to accept many presuppositions and, to many, multitudes of dogmas which were perilous to the life of the spirit* At the turn of the century, then, we are dealing with two gigantic forces; one was refurbished with the armour of Kantian critical method, armed with the sword of Hegelian dialectic; the other, injected with the new, heady blood of evolutionary theory and the metaphysics of naturalism. Pratt was active and busy in these early years, studying under some of the greatest representatives of these schools. As we shall see later, he attempted to steer a middle course between two views that were, to him, extreme views.

Neither

position offered to man, the self, and things of the spirit, the autonomy that he felt they demanded.

His whole attitude

can be well represented in the preface to one of his most definitive works. The time has come, as it seems to me, for those of us who refuse to be brow-beaten by the fantastic exaggera­ tions of a dogmatic Naturalism and who are no longer to be fooled by the spiritual phraseology of a monistic idealism which is really no less destructive to most of men's spiritual values and most of his dearest hopes than is Naturalism itself--it is time, I say, for those of us who cannot accept either of these most unempirical philosophies to come forward frankly with

the opposing view and call ourselves dualists before our critics have the opportunity of branding us with that opprobrious title.*5

55

James Bissett Pratt, Matter and Spirit (New York The Macmillan Co., 1926), p. viii.

CHAPTER III JAMES BISSETT PRATT: BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUNDS A philosophic position or a work of art, it should be kept in mind, is always, whatever else may characterize it, the product of not only a personality, but of a time and place.

One of the necessary conditions preparatory to

the main theme of this paper will be a consideration of the biographical elements that may have had a bearing on Pratt’s thought— a few of the elements he inherited, and some of the additions he seems to have made to contemporary philosophi­ cal thought*

We are well aware that little precision can

be injected into a study of this kind, whereas, to leave it out most certainly leaves our treatment fragmentary and abandons elements of high significance. James Bissett Pratt was born in Elmira, New York, June 22, 1875, the son of Daniel Ransom Pratt and Katherine Murdoch Pratt.

His grandparents, emigres from Glasgow,

Scotland in the eighteen thirites, came to Canada and then settled in Elmira, New York, where Dr. Murdock, Pratt’s grandfather on the maternal side, founded the Presbyterian church that still goes by his name.

The energy and zest

for life manifested in this family is enough to make the

40 cautious and dyspeptic modern weak with astonishment.

This

intrepid clergyman (so Pratt1s widow informs the writer) came from Scotland with his wife, six children and a maid* In this country he had six more children*

All of the boys

in the family went to Yale, which attests to the careful and systematic training the children must have had.

Small

wonder, then that Pratt1s widow, in a letter, refers to his parents as "good church people and enlightened."

Pratt1s

mother seems to have been the greatest single and sustained influence in his life.

In the communication mentioned

above, Mrs. Pratt states concerning his mother, She had a very good mind, was a great reader, read with her son especially Biography, History, and was deeply religious— so was his Father— liberals I would say.5^ That his mother was an energetic woman of incomparable zeal may be gathered from Pratt1s first published book, The Psychology of Religious Belief, in which she ably assisted him In the preparation of the data that went into its writ­ ing.

The charming dedication of this work serves to empha­

size Prattfs acknowledgment of her exceptional strength of character.

Although, as a youth, he was a Presbyterian,

when he went to Williams College as a teacher he joined the local interdenominational Church of Christ. for the things of the spirit never slackened.

56

Prattfs concern His interest

Letter to writer from Mrs. J. B. Pratt, dated August 21, 1948.

41 in religion began in his teens, and lasted until his death. There was, in addition, a strong .mystic strain in his re­ ligious philosophy which is emphasized admirably in Mrs. Prattfs phrases: An empiricist ceases to be one in my mind when he does not see God, for He is everywhere, and we feel him as well as see Him. ... I remember Mr. Fratt said that this physical world of ours, is, in a sense the outer garment of God. You have doubt­ less read his Religious Consciousness. Those four chapters on Mysticism are as fine a writing on that subject, as exist.57 Fratt*s life-time falls during the ferment in Ameri­ can philosophic thought that finally culminated in the various realistic reactions to idealism.

His writings, therefore,

form an interesting and invaluable history of that period, since he was one of the leaders of the school of Critical Realism.

It is for this reason that his mystic tendencies

are seldom noted, since if we are to take the Critical Realists at their word, Critical Realism is no metaphysics. Anyone who remembers Pratt for his epistemological position alone misunderstands the whole direction of effort he exerted in the history of contemporary thought.

His episte-

mology formed, as far as he was concerned, the foundation for the autonomy of mind and the validity of the religious consciousness in its various operations.

It Is from these

foundations that he finds it possible to defend and support

67 Ibid.,

August 21, 1948.

42 the mystics and all that may be valuable in their insights * Indeed, mysticism is the core which runs through all of Pratt1s statements.

No exception, then, is the passage in

thelast of the four chapters referred to by Mrs,

Pratt,

The soul needs a larger draft of air, a less cir­ cumscribed horizon, than even these things can give. It needs a chance for spreading its wings, for looking beyond itself, beyond the immediate environment, and for quiet inner growth, which is best to be found in that group of somewhat indefi­ nite but very real experiences...aspirations, in­ sight, contemplation.♦ .which may well be called the mystic life.58 On the pressive.

academic side, Pratt*s record is no less im­

He received his college preparation at Elmira Free

Academy and entered Williams College with the class of 1898, where, throughout the entire four years he led his class -in scholarship.

During his academic career he received awards

for excellence in Latin, Greek and Mathematics, plus the highest award for oratory. Phi Beta Kappa.

He was, of course, elected to

His obituary, forwarded to this writer by

Mrs. Pratt and written by the secretary of the Class of 1898, Mr. James Frederick Bacon, admirably sums up his graduation: Jim's extraordinarily high scholarship, consistently maintained from his very entrance in college, brought to him the Valedictory and the traditional honorary title of first class philosophical orator. In addi­ tion to his Valedictory at the Commencement exer­ cises of June 22, he delivered an oration on "War.11 He was awarded the first prize in German, Graves essay

(New York:

James Bissett Pratt, The Religious Consciousness The Macmillan Co., 1945), pT 479,

43 prize, Van Vechten prize Tor extemporaneous speak­ ing, Dewey prize for excellence in speaking at the Commencement exercises, and the prize for prizes. As a graduate student in philosophy at Harvard, Pratt dis­ tinguished himself under James, Royce and Munsterberg, and received his M. A. after only a year’s residence, which was then unusual.

Despite his success at Harvard he decided

to try "law,11 upon the advices of his father, and so in September of 1899 he entered Columbia Law School.

While at

Columbia he took a teaching position at Berkeley, an out­ standing preparatory school for boys in New York City.

In

the *98 quinquennial report issued in 1903, he wrote, ”My first day at Berkeley was really one of the turning points of my life, for in an h ourTs time I discovered that teaeh60 ing was the work for me.” So after extensive traveling abroad, Pratt returned to Harvard to resume his graduate studies in philosophy. William James was undoubtedly Pratt’s first and most profound inspirer.

His studies in Germany, where he spent a

year under Pfleiderer and Paulson, made little impression upon the course of his thinking.

In fact, Mrs. Pratt states

that he found the period he spent there, ”dull and unin­ spiring.”

He felt that the level of instruction being given

59

Obituary: June 10, 1944, p. 4; written by James Frederick Bacon, Secretary, Class of *98. 60

Ibid., p. 5.

44 there was much more elementary than what he had received in the United States.

As in many other cases where thinkers

cut their eye teeth on some early study at an impressionable age, Pratt succumbed to the influence of Emerson at the age of sixteen, whom he read at great length. The earliest decisive note which Pratt put into public writing is the published volume The Psychology of Religious Belief.

The universal standpoint enunciated here was only

modified slightly during his lifetime in the direction of a more specific statement rather than in content and the splendid expression at the conclusion of this volume sums up admirably the mediating position he sought to expound. This inner experience, I say, is really one; all the mystics speak one language and profess one faith...their little lives lead out into a larger life not altogether identical with theirs but essentially of the same nature. Beyond this— they vary. But they all agree with Plotinus that, though "God escapes our knowledge, He does not escape us.f,61 In concluding this section, then, there are several observations to be made relative to the forces that aided in the shaping of Prattfs thought, and although this listing cannot pretend to be definitive, it stands as a significant and crucial element in the full understanding of his message. First, It is not without import that this man, reared in a zealous Scotch Presbyterian background, should finally 61 James Bissett Pratt, The Psychology of Religious Belief (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1907), p* 304.

adopt a position closely parallel to that of the Scotch Realists*

The down to earth, fundamental, commonsense;

attitude of the Scotch Realists was one of the starting points of Pratt's polemic, although the attempt is made to escape the epithet nna2ve.”

Suffice it to say that there

is a characteristic in the background mentioned above that presupposes an attitude of realism toward the world.

It

is this fundamental realistic instinct that Pratt embraces, with all of its implications for the autonomy of religion and the immanent teleology in nature.

His intimate associ­

ations with this religious side of life convinced him that there were elements of high significance to be defended here • Second, his training under James, Royce and Munsterberg forced him to organize his thinking in a distinctive direction if he was to survive the confusion attendant upon sitting at the feet of three such forceful thinkers.

James,

and the Varieties of Religious Experience in particular, coupled with his negative reactions to the continental idealism as he experienced them, and in a modified form in America under Royce In particular, gave him the cue to the direction he must take in his thinking*

For the most part

he was sympathetic toward James, but could not endure that thinker's anti-intellectualistic element, and so he devoted a volume to an attack upon James at this point.

What is

46 Pragmatism? was a formidable attack upon pragmatism, carried on with as much vehemence as Pratt*s love for his old teacher and first inspirer, would allow. The third great element in Pratt*s development was un­ doubtedly the Hindu philosophy.

On two separate occasions

he took his Sabbatical leave and visited the oriental coun­ tries.

Two outstanding volumes, India and Its Faiths and

The Pilgrimage of Buddhism, are the results of those visits. Pratt*s interest in the history of the religions of India was aroused by Charles Carroll Everett, and this interest was heightened by the lectures of Pfleiderer in Berlin.

But

Pratt began serious study on his own under the guidance of George Foot Moore.

Pratt remarks of these years,

During all the years I have spent developing a Pluralistic Realism, the undertone of the Upanishads has, strangely enough, never been long out of hear­ ing. ... My long study of mysticism and the re- . ligious consciousness reinforces, I suspect, the influence of oriental thought; and I cannot say with assurance I felt some years ago that Hindu and Buddhist Monism are quite mistaken.62 For a time, Pratt admits, he made a concerted attempt to be an idealist, but the idealistic arguments were unconvincing. The influence of James was too strong— those lessons had been well learned.

And, although he had to admit frankly that

probably neither side of the controversy could put forth a

James Bissett Pratt, Contemporary American Phil­ osophy (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1930), II, 218. Edited by Wm. Pepperell Montague and George P. Adams.

47 convincing proof, he felt, all the same, that the realist had much the better of the argument.

Yet Neo-Realism and

the English New Realism did not appeal to him, so his ...earnest search was for a realistic view which would neither commit itself to the impossible positions...of the new schools, nor yet return merely to the Lockean form. Thus it was that Pratt was constantly vacillating between the two most powerful influences in his life:

the one

James’s realistic pluralism, the other, the idealistic monism of Josiah Royce and Palmer.

In the end it seems

safe to assert that he leaned definitely in the direction of James and realism.

This is so because he finds it

possible- to give a satisfactory account of his experience only if the fact of transcendence is recognized. The assertion of Locke that the f,mind hath no other immediate object save its own ideas” not only is false, it is the root of many hopeless vagaries in both epistemoiogy and ethics.64 The principle of transcendence is wider than the area of critical realism considered merely as an epistemoiogy.

For

Pratt, it is a fundamental category for ethics and once this is recognized the whole argument for what he calls egoistic hedonism Is demolished.

It is true, he points out, that

critical realism was "intended” and "maintained” as episte­ moiogy only.

But it would be passing strange If it had no

Ibid., p. 215.

64

Ibid., p* 216.

48 bearing on ontology*

Although, he states, several members

of the school have developed a naturalistic metaphysics out of critical realism, the argument, for him, runs the other way* The concept of mind that can and does transcend itself--which is the very center of Critical Realism— would seem to imply a uniqueness on the part of mind such as to separate it rather sharply glfrom the physical world and from mechanistic nature. Writing as early as 1930 Fratt remarked that he found that he was leaning definitely toward some form of personal­ ism, although at that time he did not find it possible to go all the way with the personalist school in ascribing to reality as a whole, or in its parts, a personal or pan­ psychic character, yet he did wish to assert that the "real­ ity and efficiency of our own human selves is one of the hard effects which philosophy is bound to reckon with." It is hazardous but for the moment worthwhile to note that there are generally two types of philosophies:

the re­

ligious and the non-religious--perhaps analogous to James’s distinction between the tough and tender-minded views.

If

this be accepted, then Pratt’s philosophy must be classed among the tender-minded views, for it is a thorough-going spiritualized view of the world.

It is interesting to note,

in this connection, that of some ninety-one books, articles

DO Ibid., pp. 216-17. 66 Ibid., p. 217.

49 and pamphlets from Prattfs pen, forty-three are on matters religious, while thirty-three are concerned with purely philosophical problems*

Eight publications are in the area

of the psychology of religion, five deal with intercultural problems and two with governmental issues— the problems of war and peace, democracy and dictatorship. We have, then, a right to assert that Prattfs phil­ osophic position was developed to satisfy a feeling con­ cerning the religious nature of the universe, a feeling that leaned strongly in the direction of values and the life of the spirit.

This is not to criticize this aspect, since no

philosopher can very well maintain that his position was developed free of the general feeling state he manifests toward the world.

To the contrary, if it is to be success­

ful, it must reflect that state of being.

If this is not

accomplished, the statement is nothing but an analytic one and is bereft of that degree of synthesis that any complete philosophic position should have.

This presupposes the

fact that the individual, qua individual, has something unique to contribute to the world— that the world is some­ how intimately related to his feeling and that such a feeling has a justified place in any account that pretends to tell us the meaning of life. This is clearly the attitude that Pratt adopts in his account systematically given in Personal Realism.

Personal realism signifies the reality of a substantial self both in and out of space and time.

That is, it is in space

and time so far as its interaction with the body is con­ cerned, but it acts beyond space and time in its power to transcend*

It is unique, sui generis, and is not to be

identified with t h e b r a i n or any brain state, or any collec­ tion of brain or body states. But before we can go on with a discussion of the self, it will be necessary to

consider the roots

of

as they are to be found

in epistemological

dualism

critical realism.

this accomplished,

we

With

the doctrine itself and

to its implications.

this doctrine and

shall goto

CHAPTER IV THE REALISTIC ARGUMENT In his introductory essay to the testament of the seven critical realists,

Durant Drake indicates the in­

tended setting for epistemological dualism.

He conceives

of his task as the "justification of realism.”

This justi­

fication springs in part from a reaction to two types of philosophy, the objective and the subjective types* The objective type insists that perceptive data are actual physical existents.

This is naive realism.

The

subjective type supposes these data to be merely psychologi­ cal.

This is representative realism.

Critical realism,

according to Drake, transcends the above two positions. us clarify the objective and subjective positions.

Let

The ob­

jective position would be realistic epistemological monism. The subjective position could be characterized as realistic epistemological dualism.

Drake mirrors the critical realis­

tic disaffection over these two schools of epistemological thought in the following terms: An impasse exists here, and will exist until it is seen that neither starting point, objective nor sub­ jective, correctly describes what is "given” (what appears, what is apprehended) in immediate experience. 67

Durant Drake, Essays in Critical Realism (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1921),

52 It is the object of this paper...to point out a third view...we call it Critical Realism...which combined the insights of both these historic positions while free from the objections that can properly be raised to e a c h . 6a As D r a k e s statement would imply, the dualistic argument has a history.

It i3 important to pause, then, to consider this

history as shown in the course of modern philosophy beginning with Descartes. Descartes is" rightly called a dualist.

Yet he does

not represent the type of dualism the critical realist is proud to own.

The reason for this is that Descartes made

the world of metaphysics seem infinitely more capable of certainty than the world of the natural sciences.

This

resulted from the method of doubt— sweeping the world, con­ firming self-existence and then arriving at God. the world was rebuilt with the aid of God.

Lastly,

Fratt explicitly

criticizes this aspect of Descartesf system. The fact that Descartes1 dualism made necessary a journey all the way to God, before one could justify the reality of the closest and most commonplace objects, seemed to remove the dual­ istic philosophy very far from common sense.... 9 Following Descartes, Locke made explicit the formula­ tion of the French philosopher and assumed that if Descartes were right we could only know the content of our minds. 68 69

Ibid.,

pp.

3-4.

*.

James Bissett Pratt, Critical Realism and the Possibility of Knowledge, in Essays on Critical Realism, p.86.

53 Since the mind hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about t h e m . ^ The reaction of the critical realist to the above is clear and pronounced: On such a view we can never know outer objects, we can never know eternal events, we can never know each other, we can never know anything but our own subjective states Berkeley sought to alleviate h o c k e d essentially agnostic view by making the ideas the t?summum bonum.w

Since the

ideas are supplied by God we are in constant intercourse with the reality of the world, and what could be more desirable? For Kant, however, Cartesian dualism maintains much of its original flavor.

There are two worlds for Kant, the

phenomenal and noumenal worlds, the phenomenal. known.

All that can be known is

Things as they are in themselves cannot be

As has been pointed out in an earlier connection,

the followers of Kant revolted against this world of things in themselves. What follows,

at least to the critical realist, is a

long history of idealistic domination of philosophy.

Fichte,

Hegel, Schopenhauer, Bradley, Bosanquet, Royce and others mark this fertile development in the direction of idealism 70

" John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: The Clarenden Press, 1894), Bk.IV, p. 167. Vol.II edited by A*C. Fraser. Pratt, 0 £. cit., p. 86.

54 and rationalism.

Much of the idealistic refusal to give

realism a hearing was based on the feeling that epistemolog­ ical realism could not be expressed without dualism.

But

a group of thinkers gradually became persuaded that it might be possible to reshape realism and at the same time avoid dualism.

Neo-realism in America represented this attempt.

Pratt pictures neo-realism in these terms:

We are not shut off from the real by our ideas, say the neo-realists; for we know things them­ selves directly. No ideas are needed to intervene; in fact, there are no such things as ideas at all. Knowledge is not a relation between a knowing sub­ ject and an object known. It is merely a special sorti of relation between objects. And since objects may thus be known directly, there is no longer any danger of agnosticism. The critical realist admits that the neo-realist has performed a valuable service, not only In the neo-realistic attack upon idealism, but in its recognition of the impossi­ bility of the extreme Lockian dualism.

However, in the view

of critical realism, neo-realism does not make sufficiently explicit the distinctions between meanings and sensations on the one hand, and the existent physical objects to which the meanings are tied, on the other hand.

This, of course,

leads to difficulties in the analysis of error, difficulties which to the critical realist are insurmountable.

The

severe monism of neo-realism, in other words, ignored the chasm between the sensa and the object.

72 Ibid., pp. 88-89.

Physiological

55 psychology will not let us forget that there is something of a mediatorial element present in perception.

Since Lockefs

weakness was to deny us anything save our own mental content, it was thought that directly intuited objects would bridge the chasm, with the aid of neutral entities. Critical realism takes up the challenge at this point, erecting its edifice on the proposition that although we do not intuit physical objects directly, it is possible for us to refer to objects and make them our referenda.

Thus the

mind can have epistemological objects and conceive of them as characterizing ontological objects.

Roy Wood Sellars,

one of the critical realists, states in this context: The external thing selected and referred to as an object is never existentially given in experience but is cognitively given in the sense that it is interpreted and revealed. Knowing is a selective and interpretive act which claims to manifest the object.75 With this hint as to the critical realistic epistemoi­ ogy we must examine the perceptual situation more closely by a study of the nature of the datum.

By !,datum” Strong

states that he means ”what we are immediately conscious of.”74 He then points out the six different views of the datum that have dominated modern philosophy. (1) That the datum is the real thing; (2) that it is an ideal representative of the real thing; Roy Wood Sellars, The Philosophy of Physical Realism (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1952), p. 70. 74 C. A. Strong, On the Nature of the Datum, in Essays in Critical Realism, p. 223.

56 (5) that It is an ideal nature; (4) that it is in nature; (5) that It logical nature but real; thing of logical nature,

thing psychological in an ideal thing, logical is a thing of psycho­ and (6) that it is a but real....7**

None of the above represent the view of the datum acceptable to critical realism.

So the seventh view, and the one adopt­

ed by the critical realist, is that the datum is the logical essence of the real thing, and by essence is meant the what of an object divorced from the go to find the significance

that.

We do not have far to

of this conception, at least to

the mind of the c ritical realist.

Three corollaries seem

significant from the above definition of the datum.

The

first is that the data are not real things themselves.

The

second is that the data are not psychological in nature; and the third insists that the category of existence Is not ap­ plicable to data.

The above points are obviously stream­

lined to avoid three main stumbling blocks.

First, the

statement that the data are not real things avoids the fallacy of representationism, or number two of the six statements of the datum.

If one states that one knows the

datum which "represents," one does not know the object and this Is because the datum is conceived as an existence and therefore knowable.

The second corollary avoids the spectre

of psychological and logical subjectivism.

As one reflects

upon the nature of the datum it can readily be seen that It

75

Ibid., p. 223.

57 is not a psychological something that is given, for ...it is a pure essence without any flavouring of givenness or the psychical. Psychological subjectivism thus perforce changes into logical subjectivism; or, in historical terms, the idealism of the post-Kantians*76 The third statement that the data cannot be existential, avoids the pitfalls inherent in psychological objectivism and logical objectivism or neo-realism, ...with its assertion that the fundamental data are neutral things which are yet at the same time continuously existent physical things, a chaos of mingled hits and misses which is yet at the same time the system of reality.77 The essence of the problem here is the dilemma of error.

How can things be unreal which are by definition

real--the only reals?

This predicament can be avoided only

if it is admitted that the existence of real things is merely an affirmation, a matter of faith.

In the final

analysis, then Truth of perception is possible only because the essences are not existences, but iniversals, the bare natures of the objects, in such wise that the essence embodied and the essence given may be the same. This combination of psychological duality with logical unity is therefore the very essence of the epistemological situation.78 This is, then, the core of the critical realistic protest.

.Ibdd., p. 243. 77 78

h o c . cit.

Ibid., p. 244.

58 What are its weaknesses?

If neo-realism was weak in its

provision for error, critical realism is just as weak in its theory of truth.

It would seem that the term truth is held

loosely in the minds of the critical realists.

Pratt, for

one, admits that immediate experience of one's ontological object is impossible. objects.

We can only have "knowledge about*

Also, it is impossible for us to know other

people's minds from the Inside.

In the final analysis

critical realism claims probable knowledge concerning two things;

(1) the existence of physical things, and (2) the

relational qualities of objects. the inside.

We cannot know things from

Intrinsic qualities are hot known.

still faced with the problem of "truth."

Yet we are

The critical

realist would start from an empirical approach, that Is, the relation of mind to its objects. ence theory of truth is defended.

At this point a correspond­ After pointing out that

the correspondence theory Is not a theory of copying, Pratt states "one's judgment corresponds with its object if the 79 object is as one thinks it." One might press this and ask, "How does one know that one's object is as one thinks it?"

To make a definition of knowledge depend upon the

process being analyzed and defined seems both circular and redundant and we must confess a lingering dissatisfaction

James Bissett Pratt, Personal Realism (Mew York: The Macmillan Co., 1937}, p* 76.

59 with this account of "truth." critical realism.

This is not a new criticism of

Pratt would counter with the question as

to how the critic knows that his "percepts" are true or how does anyone distinguish the true from the illusory?

He goes

on to assert that dualistic realism makes room for the il­ lusory which other realisms do not do, which seems to be his chief concern. Montague suggests that the fallacy in critical or dualistic realism is in holding the mutual exclusiveness of the experienced and existent objects.

Because they are held

to be due to different causation, they are assumed to be working independently of one another and consequently never can be said to be identical or overlapping,

It is true that

the monists have neglected the duality of causes whereby the coincidence of the two systems, that is the existence system of objects and the experience system of percepts, is possible and occasional rather than consistent and necessary.

On the

other hand, we can agree with Montague when he states, ...the epistemological dualists, on the other hand, have rightly emphasized in their first proposition the duality of causes, but in their second proposition have erred in assuming that such duality of causal contexts precludes coin­ cidence or identity of the objects that are experienced with the objects that exist. In short, if critical realism asserts as its basic proposition

(New York:

William Pepperell Montague, The Ways of Knowing The Macmillan Co., 1925), p. 309.

60 that all knowledge whatsoever is merely mediate and probable, then we are asked to ignore the vast fund of possible occur­ rences of immediate knowledge.

If immediate knowledge be

taken to mean an occasional one to one correlation between objects that are experienced and objects that exist, and this possibility is granted, then we have caused a serious breach in the wall of epistemological dualism.

It would

seem that even Pratt would admit that there is nothing meaningless about the proposition of immediate knowledge, for he discusses it as if he knew what it were all about and even admits it in introspection and the introspective states. If the above can be granted, then there is no reason for holding such a loose and essentially..agnostic theory of truth.

As Montague observes,

...the distortion involved in the immediate sensory picture, is. in.large measure corrected by the happy capacity of the brain to retain the traces of previous effects which may combine with the impressions of the moment to produce an experience in which things appear as they are— which i3 truth. In one of his most candid, statements Pratt asserts that while the knowledge, situation for the critical realist is a mediate one that fact does not make knowledge unreal. This is not agnosticism in epistemoiogy.

We must consider

ourselves in the center of a flux of experiences some of varying intensity and duration, some seemingly impinging

81

Ibid., p. 310

61 from the outside and others caused by one’s efforts.

There

are also other centers of this type of awareness like our­ selves and we proceed to communicate with those other centers. How are these facts to be e x p l a i n e d ? W e must choose the theory that has simplicity, ease and naturalness, and the dualist claims that his theory meets these specifications. Dualism admits many other things into the world; as Pratt states, he is not a worshiper of abstract duality, but he insists that it is possible to find room for all the variety of experience in these categories of the mental and the physical, although he is willing to grant the logicians a separate sphere for their concepts and orders.

All the

dualist is concerned with is: ...the preservation of the sharp distinction be­ tween the mental and the physical. On the question whether or not there are other distinctions in the universe of being equally sharp he is not called upon to take sides. We have attempted to show the rise of critical realism as a polemic against naive realism, representative realism and neo-realism.

Yet the rise of. critical realism is not

due entirely to. the element of protest. has positive roots.

Critical realism

One significant root is to be found

in James’s analysis of sensation and perception.

The real­

istic endeavor, would .have been infinitely less credible had

82

James Bissett Pratt, Journal of Philosophy, Psy­ chology and Scientific Methods, Vol. XIV, No. 10, May To?

62 it not been for the valuable work accomplished by James and the early psychologists. Sensation, for James, merges almost imperceptibly into perception.

Confronted with this conviction, James searches

for the common element in sensation.and perception respective­ ly*

The conclusion is reached that in both sensation and

perception we grasp the fact as an outward reality, immedi­ ately present.

This, of course, marks off sensation and

perception from thought and conception, whose objects do not appear immediate in this way.

In his analysis James

states that ”sensational and reproductive brain-processes combined...then are what give us the content of our per0*2

ceptions.11

Every particular object is a conflux of sense

qualities with which we have previously become acquainted. Reproduced sights and the present sensation a name, these are the my actually.perceived

contacts tied together with in the unity of a thing with complex stuff out of which table is made.8^

All this leads James to a final.statement or definition, taken from Sully*s outlines, which he adopts.

In Sully*s words

perception is the process in which the mind, ...supplements a sense impression by an accompaniment William James, Principles of Psychology (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1907), II, 78. The hPrinciples1* contain the most forceful exposition of the view presented above. However, the earlier writings of James represent the beginning of this realistic, trend, notably ”Does Consciousness Exist,” (1904) and ”The Function of Cognition,” (1885) both published In Mind. hoc. cit.

63 or escort of revived sensations, the whole aggregate of actual and revived sensations being solidified or integrated in the form of a per­ cept, that is, an apparently immediate appre­ hension or cognition of an object now present in a particular locality or region of space.8® The above definition is interesting i n many ways.

It clear­

ly recognizes two distinct elements in.perception, namely the synthesis of the sensory and ideational elements in experience, and the assertion, or at least the awareness of objects in a particular part of space.

But the second of

these elements was abandoned almost immediately by James in order to emphasize the mechanism of selection, fusion, etc. Wundt also, in his. Outlines of Psychology— section on Con­ sciousness and Attention— makes perception a peculiar kind of apperception and his interest centers about how the various parts of the mental, content become interrelated. This tendency in James, to ignore the outward reach of per­ ception, is dangerous to the epistemological realist, for if attention is confined to the selection and fusion of mental content, the implication.seems to be that nothing more is discoverable within the process, of perception itself.

The

point to be made here is that much of contemporary American realism is devoted to a rectification of this neglect. Now it Is interesting to note that critical realism has had, at its epistemological. core, a concern for a re-

85

Ibid., p. 79.

64 examination of perception*

Locke's system, whereby we knew

nothing save our own ideas and arrived at truth by a process of comparing those ideas in the light of their agreement or disagreement, seemed to leave little information concerning the "object” of knowledge*

It was, in short, difficult to

see how veridical perception was possible.

Modern American

neo-realism,, in its scheme of immediate intuition of the object, and its elaborate scientific machinery, is impressive, but it fails to point out that we are fallible beings, for error does not seem possible under its tenure.

Without

taking the time to criticize naive realism it is. simple to understand how crucial, for what Hasan terms the "realistic instinct," is the psychologists'neglect of the second ele­ ment involved in James's definition, for the explicit state­ ment of "outer, reference" would seem necessary to any real­ istic position.

James does, it is to be noted, make mention

of the "outward reality" in perception, as can be observed in the quotation above, but he_ fails to see the promise and potential in this aspect. The interesting fact to note, then, is that the real­ istic license springs in ample measure from this loop-hole left by the psychological analysis of sensation and percep­ tion and is the very life-line of the realists position.

The English psychologists seem to be more aware than others of the inadequacy of that view of. perception which would

65 make it merely the fusion of image sensations* article in the Brltannica

In his

on Psychology, Ward writes:

Perception as we know it involves not only recognition (or assimilation) and localiza­ tion or "spatial references," but it usually involves objective reference as well.^6 In a similar strain, Pratt quotes Stout to the effect that external objects are cognized as independent of us, just as we exist independently of them.®^ For the realist,

then, that type of intellectualism

in psychology which would exhaust the meaning of the percept in the percept, is an exaggerated intellectualism, for if the percept is to attain its full meaning it must stand as a token of the object which is present* guard, warns us of approaching things.

It puts us on our Thus, on the basis

of the element of objective reference as pointed up b y James and others, but inadequately carried out, as mentioned above, realism finds It posaible to make a sharp distinction be­ tween the object and psychical content. mind Is not what is within the mind.

What is before the

The percept will no

longer be confused with the object, although it will stand for and reveal the object. In.conclusion, we can say that the task of critical 86

James Ward, "Psychology,” Encyclopaedia Brltannica, 11th edition, 1911. 87

James BIssett Pratt, "Realism and Perception,w Journal of Philosophy and Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. XVI, No. 22, Dct. 23, 1919.

66

realism in psychology has been to make the transfer from an implicit to an explicit statement of the realistic instinct, in terms of the latent and undeveloped notions to be found in the various psychological, analyses of perception, both British and American; of which, as we have seen, the psy­ chology of James is a notable example.

Not only does this

root of critical realism seem apparent but in the process, critical realism has found, in the psychological analysis of perception at this point, the foundation for its asser­ tion of the independence of the real world.

But there are

many other reasons why the dualist insists on his dualism. First of all, the dualist finds it impossible to regard "emotions,” "volitions," and "meanings" as anything but subjective.

88

It is asserted that one would seek in vain

for a physical object which would numerically duplicate the memory of last year's seasonal, r ains, ;:or the memory of the London fire.

In second place, it follows that the content

of mind is private and the argument that I can have knowl­ edge about another person's mind ignores the "immediateknowledge about” distinction.

One individual can doubtless

tell another about the content of his mind but this is hardly relevant unless the type of knowledge claimed is immediate

88

James Bissett Pratt, "A Defense of Dualistic Realism,” Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. XIV, No. 10, May 10, 1917.

67 knowledge, the only knowledge relevant in the monistic, dualistic controversy.

A third feature of the situation

significant in the mind of the du&listic realist is the fact that so many images can be elicited from a single physi­ cal object.

If, Pratt feels ”it be true (and surely no one

will deny it)

that there may be largenumber of different

images of the

same object, it is hard to see how they can

all be identically it.”

89

This point is. also closely allied

with the observations in physiological psychology, for if there are real objects in space and these objects are mediated by physical processes in the intervening space and in the organism itself, then it is difficult to see how the perceptual result can be identical.,with the object In space which was presumed to have started the series.

The fourth

point is that

the processes mentioned in the earlier con­

texts involve

the element of time, which is loaded with

significance for the dualist.

The time that passes between

the motion perceived and the rise of my perception consti­ tutes a c.ul de sac for all types of pan-objectivism.

The

particular Issue, then, especially burdensome to epistemo­ logical monism might be represented as follows: How then can the past and possibly non-existent event be numerically identified with my present perception of it? How can the object which no

89 Ibid., p. 260

68

longer exists be mg undeniably present and actual perception?90 When, these points are noted as a whole it can be seen that they constitute an elaborate defense for the postulation of the autonomy, of the mind, which is Pratt’s main point of emphasis and his starting point in both the assertion of dualism and the independence of the self*

With this review

of the roots of epistemological dualism and dualistic realism, it remains to indicate what bearing Pratt conceives this position to have, specifically, on the problem of the self*

90 Ibid., pp. 260-61

CHAPTER V DOCTRINE OP THE SELF The preceding sections have shown that the greater part of Pratt*s philosophical labors lay in the direction of arriving at the explicit distinction between the mind and the body within the framework of epistemological dual­ ism*

Characteristically, Pratt always develops his polemic

against materialism, parallelism, objective relativism, various mind-dust theories, and universally against the ”New Materialism*”^00

In the end he finds that interaction

is the best and only solution to the mind-body relation* Now in the answer to the question as to precisely what are the elements that interact, Pratt develops his doctrine of self.

He is not concerned with matter, the one term of the

dual relation, but he finds that the value and estimate one places on the mind has tremendous ramifications for all of life.

If mind is not to be identified with matter, or

the passing points in consciousness, it seems to have a certain degree of persistence in order to control what is known as purposive conduct and the development of what is termed ”character.”

100

Furthermore, consciousness is extremely

James Bissett Pratt, ”The New Materialism,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XIX, No. 15, June 22, 1922.

70 personal, and seems to involve an enduring "subject*11 Now such a theory first appears to be a transcendental recon­ struction of the self*

But it should be noted that Pratt

is not always consistent on this point. suffice to illustrate.

The following will

There are basically three theories

of the nature of the self:

substantiallsm, which regards

the self as a substance; integratlonlsm, which regards the self as an organized system of states and experiences; and transcendentalism.

In the latter the self acts as a subject

of its experiences rather than an object of experience.

Now

in his earlier lectures, Pratt repudiates the blank sub­ stance of the scholastics as well as the pure perceiving subject of the idealists.

As Jared S. Moore has shown,

Pratt’s remarks seem to imply that the self which owns its states is necessarily called the subject of these states. In later writings, notably Personal Realism, Pratt attempts to adopt both theories: Prom the beginning I have maintained that the self is a substance; and that means an existent being possessing qualities. But there are many grades and many kinds of substance and a self is a substance of its own kind. It is sui generis.102 And in contrast, or rather linked with this is a passage

Jared S. Moore, "Development of Pratt’s Concep­ tion of the Self,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 58, 1941. 102

James Bissett Pratt, Personal Realism (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1957), p. 501.

71 from the same volume.

After citing a passage from the sage

Yajnavalkya, Pratt remarks, The meaning of Yajnavalkya*s answer is this; the self is essentially a subject, not an object. Hence if you search for it among the objects of knowledge of course you will not find it. ... It is not a feeling among other feelings: it is that "whose condition the feelings a r e . "3*03 This„ statement would indicate that in a later position Pratt abandons his "dualism of process" in favor of a dual­ ism of substance.

But this difficulty, at least in Pratt*s

estimation, is eliminated when the definition of substance is indicated.

Pratt goes back to Aristotle and points out

that by his definition all_.transitory things are substances, but qualities are not, for they are not existents, yet such elements as this patch of white or even a flash of light, is existent, and even if it is called, in some sense, a sub­ stance ...it represents a very low degree of substance. But there are grades or degrees of substantivity, or independence;— for following Aristotle, I am using the words almost synonymously. Then, we can say, there are higher and lower substances and on the level of high grade substances can be noted things which seem to possess spontaneity and unified functioning. Such centers are rightly termed "Indivisibles."

It is in

the biological realm that Pratt finds the highest order of

103 Ibid., p. 310. 104

Ibid., p. 68.

72 substance* And while living organisms are plainly higher in grade than atoms, centers of conscious life would be still higher. The highest form of substance that we know, except perhaps, for reality as a whole— would be self conscious and self directing selves.105 This "substance theory" is really a telic conception— im­ manent teleology working in nature involving a conception analogous to Aristotle's "scala natura."

And there is in

P r a t t s view a good reason for this marriage of substance and subject concepts.

The self that he advocates is in a

sense similar to the "pure-ego" of traditional philosophy, but one consideration must be m e t 2 A self completely out of time, a substance with­ out attributes or distinct from them, a permanent and unchanging identity, a monad with no windows, a soul quite pure from the taint of the empirical — such an imaginary, or unimaginable, entity might belong in heaven but surely would have no place on earth. Our author is much too profoundly impressed by em­ piricism to postulate an ego which is completely out of time. But the question remains, precisely what is the relation be­ tween this entity and temporal succession?

If it is sui

generis as Pratt maintains, in what sense can it have any Intercourse with temporal events at all?

This is another

difficulty that Pratt never succeeds in clearing up. of all, several characters may be pointed up in its 105 106

Ibid., pp. 69-70.

Ibid., p. 300.

First

73 operations*

It is, as we have said, a subject in relation

to its operations in cognition and feeling*

It Is, too, the

agency, the source of action in volitional drives or acts of will*

Then it is the point of personal identity and in

this connection it is interesting to note that Pratt follows Locke closely In this last item*

Locke makes the distinction

between "identity of man11 and "personal identity*"

"Iden­

tity of man" consists merely in material, atomic arrange­ ments of physical organs and processes* This also shows wherein the identity of the same man consists; viz., in nothing but a participation of the same continued life by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized b o d y . 107 On the other hand "personal identity" is clearly a metaphysi­ cal category and is involved, for Locke, in the operation of consciousness* For since consciousness always accompanies think­ ing, and it is that that makes every, one to be what he calls "self" and thereby distinguishes himself from all. other thinking things; ,in this alone con­ sists personal identity, i.e., the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; It is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.3*0® It can be seen that Pratt follows closely to this view of his 107

John.Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (LaSalle, 111*: Open Court Publishing Co., 1933), p. 242. Edited by Mary Whiton Calkins. 108 Ibid., p. 247.

74 philosophical god-father*

But, in addition to the above

characters--although the self is not in space— it operates in space, for this is a necessary minimum if it is to have any effect upon the world at all.

On the other hand, since

the self can grasp and hold in meaningful unity several moments of time it would seem to be out of time. self is out of time how can it develop and change?

Yet if the The only

solution for Pratt is., that the time the self is in is a different time level of apprehension from the ordinary rate of change.

It stands above in another rhythmic world which

is to be distinguished but is in the same instance inclusive of our time rate. Events which are at different instants in what is sometimes called physical time may fall within its single moment. And something like this same power of grasping together the temporally, disparate is seen in wider compass when through memory, antici­ pation, and conception it sums up a mass of considera­ tions, transcends the years, and becomes in Platofs words, ”a beholder of all time and all existence.”109 The next question that should be asked is, How is the self known?

Or perhaps we should ask first, is the self

knowable at all?

HumeVs attack upon the knowability and,

indeed, the existence of the self, is famous.

Hume found

that whenever he attempted to discover the self he always stumbled upon some particular perception. to be fragmented upon introspection.

109

Everything seemed

That Hume should find

Pratt, Personal Realism, p. 308.

75 this Is. not to he wondered at*

In order to answer Hume,

Pratt goes again to Indian philosophy and the sage Yajnavalkya. The sage makes it clear to his understudy that the self is not a feeling among others, but it is the condition of those other feelings*

This is not, even so, a claim to immediate

knowledge of the self*

Clearly, the only way we know what /

the self, is, is by observing what it does.

Yet not all of

our knowledge is mere inference frqm its activity. The self is not part of the conscious content found directly, as feelings and sensa are* But in every case of knowledge we are directly aware of the ”datum* not merely, as a thing but as a datum, i.e.. as something given. The givenness is given.110 Pratt invariably fails to convince us of this direct knowl­ edge of the self*

As in most controversial points in his

thesis he. resorts to commonsense, that is, we can never tell another, for example, what we mean by red unless that other person has already experienced it.

So also, we can

never fully explain, what we mean by the self unless one has already some idea or can communicate directly to another’s mind.

This is because the self, Pratt insists, is sui

generis.

There is a strong non-rational element in its

make-up, so although we do not know the self in the strict sense of know, we do experience it.

The vacillation here

rests on Pratt’s failure to state clearly how we know the

110

Ibid., pp. 313-314

76 self.

Since, we, on his analysis, neither know it through

its passing states or in the usual sense of immediate knowl­ edge, nor alone by description— no choice seems to remain but to say merely that we do not know it save by observa­ tion of its apparent activity.

In the end Pratt admits

that there seems to be no ready solution. Going on, with Pratt’s analysis, although the self is not a body, it is provided with a body as a tool of expres­ sion.

This bodily inheritance does not exhaust the possi­

bilities of the new-born, if we start with the infant, for there seems to be a unique character that is part of the self, qua self and which is not to be attributed to inheri­ tance.

As development takes place the embodied self takes

on social traits and soon, bodily traits.

Social character­

istics and its own unique qualities unite to give us what we call character and personalityr-personality and person being the terms that Pratt uses to indicate the self with all of its character added.

The self then is a

...center of psychophysical powers used in the service of a harmonious group of purposes.iii Thus if Pratt is asked what constitutes character, that is the "me” aspect, he replies that it comes from the above three sources: experience, racial inheritance, and the original unique capacity, which, was his as an ego or subject. Ill (Hew York:

James Bissett Pratt, Reason in the Art of hiving The Macmillan Co., 1~94&), p. 225.

77 In a very real sense, then, one must achieve "self-hood ,n a term Pratt frequently uses#

No nobler credo could be en­

visaged than the challenge to youth thrown out on these terms in his posthumous publications Now the great task of youth— in a sense the great task of life as a whole— is the achievement of character and personality# The first thing for a man to do — the condition of his doing anything else that is definite and to be counted on— is to cease being a thing and to become, a person, to achieve self-guidance through the harmonizing of his pur­ poses and the control or elimination of those impulses which rebel against his central aims. ^ The self, then, is a substance with qualities, con­ cerning which we have much "knowledge-about" and a peculiar immediate awareness of.

It is not blank, but a unity which,

possesses infinite variety.

The qualities are to be noted

in its conscious states and in its activities# memory, sensa, activities and powers for action.

It has Prom the

point of view of ethics, its purposes are all important. But not at all as important as Royce would make them.

Pratt

has no sympathy with the interpretation that holds the self to be characterized by its purposes alone.

It is a charac­

teristic of realism that in its scheme the self is logically independent— often offering a soul-substance theory as we have seen.

But it must never, in Pratt’s view, go on to

name purpose as the sufficient condition for the existence of the self.

112

Nor is the Mystic extreme palatable, for we

Ibid., p. 227.

78 must be able to say more than ffNeti"ffNeti.” in this regard is interesting.

Royce’s position

He states in The World and

the Individual: By this meaning of my life plan, by this possession of an ideal, by this, intent always to remain another than m y fellows despite my divinely planned unity with them, by this, and not by the possession of a soul substance, I am defined and created a self. The above suffices to make the contract clear, for Pratt is not interested in the slightest in "abstract purpose” such as many of the absolute idealists are fond of talking about. It is perhaps in the free aets of the will that the self Is most easily discerned— cases where the will acts contrary to the instinctive biological urges of the organism. Pratt’s most characteristic argument is. on epistemological grounds.

Recognition, thought and knowledge presuppose a

subject, he states.

This means that we must actually be­

lieve that such an entity is existent.

Another argument

that points to the self is. the fact of transcendence.

Thought

requires a thinker who can "transcend” his psyehie states and refer to more than is immediately, present to experience.114 We must,

then, "accept the reality of the self or go on to 115 naturalism and the suicide of thought." It is, admitted­ ly, a baffling task to set into language the nature of the

11S Josiah Royce, The World and the Individual (New Yorkr The Macmillan Co., 1901), II, &76. 114 Pratt, Personal Realism, p* 290# 115 Ibid., p. 296.

79 self, as Fratt states.

His efforts consist mostly in de­

scribing its activities and gleaning from those activities somewhat of what the self's probable nature might be.

His

definition is ostensive and a typical example would be that which is given by Socrates in the first dialogue in Pratt1s rather amusing and extremely entertaining Adventures in Philosophy and Religion.

Socrates turns to the members of

the group, Dr. Idealist, Mrs. Sentimentalist (his daughter), Assistant Professor Pragmatist, Assistant Professor Neorealist, Mr. New-Realist, Dr. Behaviorist and Mr. TryEverything-Once, and in one of the most forceful of all of P r a t t s pronouncements, comments as follows: So for my part I choose the foolishness of believ­ ing in my own self: knowing that with this I must accept a dualism of process within reality, the denial of the universality of physical determina­ tion, the recognition that the laws of matter are not the laws of spirit, and the realization that in man there is something essentially and literally supernatural. ...when they shall have returned to the inevitable human belief that individual selves are real and that the spiritual life means more than logical implication, there will be some hope of attacking with a fair chance of success the great problems of philosophy. Those who are familiar with contemporary philosophical and psychological literature will recognize the decided influence of McDougall's Body and Mind on Pratt's thinking in respect to the doctrine of the f,Self.M

This is frankly

James Bissett Pratt, Adventures in Philosophy and Religion (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1931*77 PP« 139-40.

80 117 admitted*

Pratt points to McDougall’s treatment as to

the nature

of the self or soul, which consists

ing points

by way of definition.

of thefollow­

The soul isa being

possession of capacities for psychical interaction.

in

This

being operates in four w a y s : 1. 2.

It preserves and transmits sensations in response to stimuli; It is capable of producing meanings;

3.

It responds to meanings so that effort is generated and new meanings are forthcoming;

4.

It has the capacity to direct the course of brain activity so that physical energy can be focused and dissipated.118 Now it is at this point that the nerve of Pratt’s

argument becomes apparent.

Two of the above points deal

with the concept of ”meaning.”

It is in the use of this

concept that our author finds his most potent weapon.

We

will, then, briefly consider the arguments from the concept of meaning.

So important is this concept to Pratt’s scheme

that he devotes a whole chapter to it in Personal Realism. In his usage it serves a host of purposes.

Specifically,

it is utilized with reference to seven rather definite types of arguments. Meaning, says our author, indicates reference beyond the sign or symbol.

The sign, ”I»os Angeles... .120 miles,”

117 James Bissett Pratt, Matter and Spirit (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1926), p. 180. 118 William McDougall, Body and Mind (iLondon: Methuen & Co., 1920), p. 365.

81 brings before the person viewing it, a host of impressions of some location, not immediately present, toward which one is working.

We go beyond the sign itself to a "referend”

or object which is more ultimate than the sign. then, involves transcendence,

Meaning,

the power to go beyond the

merely immediately present objects of sense.

Most important

of all, however, meaning involves awareness, which is but a name for the fact that someone is "personally thinking of"-thinking or meaning and especially, intending. words,

In other

the symbol "cannot stand alone as representing its

cause,"

119

as Ogden and fiichards would have us believe.

It

must be linked to persons or selves capable of awareness and the nourishment of meanings*

Thus before anything can

have meaning, someone must place that meaning there.

This

is then Pratt’s definition: ...meaning consists in an activity or attitude of the mind a form of behavior, if you like, a selection, a direction tendency.120 We are now in a position to assess the six uses to which Pratt puts this concept.

First, this concept is used

in the defense of realism in general.

If meaning has what

one might call an "external thrust," without the content of meaning being identical with the objects of that "thrust," then we have on our hands an idea, ipse facto, of what _

Pratt, Personal Realism, p. 22.

120

Ibid., p. 17.

82 otherness means*

Otherness is the very stuff of our meanings

and therefore a real world of objects cannot be denied or we are faced with the absurdity of denying that we have ttmeanings.,,

To deny this is to deny that our words can have any

significant content whatsoever. ...we know from our own experience what ”otherness11 means: we have experienced it within our own experiences. Since we know what we mean by it— it is possible for us to imagine certain qualities in a space and time other than the space and time of our experience.i21 The second argument is the application of the defini­ tion of meaning to the refutation of positivism.

The posi­

tivist asserts that, unless a proposition can be verified, it is meaningless.

This involves a contradiction since

verifiability can only apply to propositions and a proposi­ tion which had no meaning would merely be a string of words. That is to say, knowledge, verification, and verifiability presuppose meaning. Unless we know what we mean by a proposition, we cannot even raise the question whether or not it be verifiable. The third argument is the argument from meaning for the separation,of mind and body. to the consensus gentium.

This is essentially an appeal

Pratt asks us to consider honestly

whether we mean by consciousness what we mean by matter and its qualities.

Or to put it in another way:

Do I mean by

thinking and willing the same as those things that qualify

121 Ibid., p. 25.

122

Ibid., p. 26.

83 a physical object?

The answer is, of course, no, since con­

sciousness cannot be confused with its meaning*

Pratt notes

that pragmatism confines the "meaning” of a philosophical proposition to some particular consequence.

If this is true,

what we mean by belief in God--in fact, all religious be­ lief, in the pragmatic scheme, is precisely nothing signifi­ cant at all.

Such belief lies beyond the limit of our

finite experience, since if truth and meaning be confined, then, to particular consequences, we are deprived of a right to "talk about and believe in a being who by the very condi­ tions of the argument is not included within our expern123 xence." The fifth argument consists in the defense of the concept of mind from the nature of its subjective, private, quality as a focal point for meaning.

Meaning is subjective,

but it has an outer reference without being identical with that outer reference, as we have seen.

One cannot at the

same time, for example,, find the numerical identity between the physical object and my memory of last winterfs icicles* Thus there cannot be, because of the peculiar privacy of mind, any identity with the physical.

Mind is then a unique,

independent entity, but always found in some relation of interaction, "if it be true that the content of mind is not

\oo

James Bissett Pratt, What is Fragmatism? (New York: The Macmillan Co,, 1909), p, 197,

84 common, but private and subjective, we have here evidence for dualism which it would be hard to get around. The sixth argument is a variation of the above asser­ tion put to the service of the distinction between "body and mind."

Fratt makes the concept so central here, we

must reproduce a major part of his argument.

He points out

the impossibility of identifying a thought with some brain process and then remarks, "The question is one of our meanings•”124

g e £enies that to assert a distinction be­

tween mental and physical is to split the world into un­ related states that the two are vitally related and mutually influential*

Nevertheless, and here Pratt lays down what he

feels to be the only really conclusive argument, namely, "that by consciousness we mean one thing and that by physi­ cal existence we mean another, is in the long last indubitable."«125 It is not difficult to see that the arguments cited above under the heading of "meaning," are all, at the same time, arguments for the "self."

It is but one step from

the assertion of a dualism of mind and body to that of the uniqueness of one term of the two-term relation. 123

This is

James Bissett Pratt, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XIV, May 10, 1917. 124 James Bissett Pratt,"Actualites Seientifiques et Industrielles," Travaux du IX Gongres International de Philosophie, Paris, Aout 6, 1937, p. 5.

125

Loe. cit.

85 precisely what Pratt does*

Since the self is unique, sui

generis, by virtue of its power to refer to and mean more than its psychic content at any one time, it represents a power wholly peculiar in nature.

Even opponents would

seem to be forced to this conclusion. Por if they do not mean by the power of transcendence what we mean by it, they have not denied our assertion. And if they do mean the same thing as we do by the word, then in denying the existence of. such a power, they have admitted and illustrated the reality of it. For...it would be impossible for us to mean the same thing by "transcendence* if it were true that each of us could think of, or refer to nothing but his own psychic states.126 The self, however, in spite of its uniqueness, is organic to the parts of the physical world.

Persons have

their own laws, but at the same time operate in a world of law.

Thus, in selves two kinds of law meet.

The

natural concomitant of such a meeting is both Con f l i c t * 127 and "cooperation.* Much of the determining power of human bodies is to be found, not in mechanical sequences, but in acts of will.

The self, then in conclusion

...possesses a considerable degree of independence, and there is no a priori justification for the

126

James Bissett Pratt, tfThe Implications of Self­ hood,” Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, April 22, 1941, No. 27, p. 8.

127

Pratt, Matter and Spirit, p. 186.

86 denial of its survival of bodily death.* The self is not the body; nor is it a mere collec­ tion of ideas nor a stream of psychical pro­ cesses. It is essentially an active being, a center of thought, feeling, and choice. It influences and acts with and upon the body within which it is immanent, the body to which it has become organic and which is to it both an environment and a tool.128

128

Pratt, Personal Realism, p. 349

CHAPTER VI THE IMPLICATIONS OF SELFHOOD W hen a philosopher points out the implications in­ volved in his system, he Is usually asserting what he desires to see brought to pass, as well as excluded In life and society--the values that should be perpetuated, and his attitude toward the future*

Consequently, what

he conceives to be the implications of his philosophy will be significantly revealing as to his basic position and the emotional elements that contributed to that position* Pratt1s writings demonstrate this clearly, even, though it might be guessed, at least In part, beforehand, what bearing the doctrine of the autonomy of the self has on the meaning of life.

For Pratt the self is the light of

our lives, the meaning of existence*

When consciousness is

absent from the world, it is dead, colorless, silent*

It

cannot boast of a past or a future, no purpose, no dis­ appointment and no value; not even good and evil. the self appears, what a tranformation occurs!

But when With rare

evangelical rhetoric Pratt says, Then indeed we must conceive the dawning of a new creation, with the morning stars singing together and all the sons of God shouting for joy. For until then there was air waves but

88 no music, vibrations but no light* ... It was when conscious creatures came into being that Nature said, "Let there be light."129 Since the self is unique— sui generis— the possibility of immortality is admitted on the ground of the Law of Iden­ tity, for we must assert that the self is not what we mean by the apparatus of the nervous system and its complex of interconnecting physical systems. If you insist that, considering our human ignorance of obscure activities of the brain, the conscious self, or consciousness, as such, may turn out to be a material object,...I can only respond that in a world inhere such things could be, a right angle might just as well turn out to be the square root of minus two, and my cocker spaniel the cathedral of St. P a u l . 130 No other passage shows such a hatred of materialism as the above.

Once the transcendent nature of the self is admitted

the soul’s survival seems thoroughly consonant with the facts.

This is at least one solid implication that springs

directly from the doctrine of the self. I think it would be safe to say that there Is no other belief not based upon the evidence of the senses which has been so universally accepted by all races of men as the belief in the soul’s survival of bodily death.131 The self, then, implies two things at least:

(1) meaning

to a world otherwise dead and mechanical; and (2) the

l^9 James Bissett Pratt, "The Implications of Self­ hood," Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, A p r .22,1941,N o . 2, P * 9#

130 Ibid., p. 11.

131 Ibid., pp. 12-13.

89 survival of bodily, death.

But again if the self is unique,

we may say that there is purpose in the world and if asked to give an example of that purpose, or to point out the matrix, of that purpose, the answer seems apparent. That one place is in ourselves, in our own will, acts, in the effective efforts which we as selves make in innervating our muscles and controlling our bodies. 3-32 The above leads to still a fourth implication, that is that purpose in the world is immanent.

Thus we interpret the

immanent purpose as conscious purpose, and efficient purpose as immanent. Immanent purpose means purpose. And purpose means conscious purpose. An utterly uncon­ scious purpose is a contradiction in t e r m s . 3 - 3 3 This immanence goes farther than theism, for it tells us in what way purpose can act, and it gives us a way of repre­ senting to ourselves the working of divine purpose.

Pratt

calls this a metaphysics similar to S p i n o z a ^ Deus siva Natura, and then points out that the world of which we are parts, is the activity of a conscious spirit. He is the immanent self of the world, and his relation to it is best, though but dimly under­ stood on the analogy of our relation to our bodies. He is the inner being of all beings. Says Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita: "All this Universe is strung upon me as rows of gems on a thread. ”3*34 132

Ibid., P. 17

133 Ibid., P* 18 134

Ibid., p. 17

The fifth implication also follows closely from the doctrine of the self.

If this is the kind of world Pratt

suggests, then man is a part of the Divine, even though a certain amount of individuality is ours.

Yet Pratt calls

this relation between God and man one of partial identity. There can be no demonstration of this, as Pratt well knows, but he is content to say that although we cannot verbalize since "language was wrought and formed in primitive m a n ’s 135 commerce and struggle with the external world” ; we can say with Plotinus of old*. "Though God escapes our knowledge, He does not escape us.”^ ^ Most of the preceding implications appear in Pratt’s "Ingersoll Decture on Immortality.”3-36

consequently they

have a tendency to emphasize that most obvious implication* But Pratt’s viewpoint was much broader than this, much more eclectic than this.

Other writings support this observation.

For example, the assertion of a ”dualism of process” follows from the doctrine, of the self.

Specifically it follows from

the statement of natural law as a universal condition for all existence.

There are two processes going on:

those

under the sway of physical law and those in the realm of conscious activity— a realm of spirit.

135 136

This is, Pratt feels,

,_ Ibid., p. 18.

Pratt, "Implications of Selfhood,” Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, April.22, 1941, No* 2*

91 a Justification for natural religion, for t h e r e a l i t y of consciousness implies the kind of world in which man's highest religious aspirations can be nurtured and satisfied. Again, this doctrine not only implies a purpose in nature, but a purpose in human life.

If there is a purpose

in human life it is what Pratt terms the "education" and 133 "development11 of the self. This assumes that human souls have value and that human life Is worth an infinite amount of pain to perfect its ends.

Not only is this true, but if

man is essentially different from the kinds of objects which physical sciences study, he can command greater respect than anything else lower in the scale of existence.

This is

actually the assertion of the metaphysical nature of man. If man does not have the power to choose between Impulse and reason then why try to educate him? het us mould him like clay, breed him like guinea pigs, condition his reflexes and determine for him all his opinions and ,3g actions by means of skilful propaganda. What this means is that until the reality of the self is decided upon, none of the following can be decided: question of academic freedom;

(1) the

(2) the problem of the inculca­

tion of political, economic, historical, religious dogmas...; 137

James Bissett Pratt, "Natural Religion, Conscious­ ness and Its Implications,"Harvard Theological Review, Vol.XVI, No. 4, 1923, p. 304. 138 Personal Realism, p. 351. 139 ., Ibid., p. 345.

92 (3) the problem or public opinion and a free press;

(4)

whether the criminal is responsible for his acts, or merely an invalid;

(5) whether anyone is responsible for his acts

or whether effort in any direction is even worthwhile. 40 Prom the above it can be seen that the doctrine of the self is the cornerstone upon which Pratt’s whole phil­ osophy is built.

It cuts the ground out from under all forms

of naturalism and re-defines naturalism in its own manner. Naturalism should be nothing more than the open-minded study of nature and all it needs to do is to concede that the cosmos is shot through and through with immanent forces and is therefore a spiritual organism. And once a liberal naturalism and a liberal religion have accepted the concept of an organic and teleological universe, and have thought out as indicated above, the inevitable implications of such a view, it is plain that each will have taken a long step toward the position of the other.-*-4^ The type of immanent teleology asserted by Pratt is not far removed from Lotze.

However, Lotze asserted that every

individual thing must be a soul since nothing can be distinct unless it can remove itself consciously from other things. The universe, in this view, is a pseudo or insignificant unity unless its members do affirm their independence in

140 141

Ibid., p. 346.

James Bissett Pratt, Naturalism (New Haven; University Press, 1939), p. 175.

Yale

93 some such way as this.

142

Fratt would not go so far as to

ascribe lower levels of souls, although he does not shy away from some form of spiritual, pluralism.

He would go

along with Lotze. in asserting that nothing but an indivis­ ible unity can experience effects and this experiencing on the part of the soul represents its substance and its . . 143 being. We might go on to show how Pratt’s doctrine of the self is the contradictory to most other systems, but this is apparent.

It does not please naturalism, parallelism,

objective relativism, or idealism to postulate a uniquely divine agency, only partly understood under the laws of nature, and only partly operative out of time.

That it

does not follow necessarily from critical realism seems apparent, since no other members of the school found such a harvest.

It is clear that it springs, in Pratt’s case,

from the desire to find a permanent point of reference in the face of what seems to be an attack upon the facts of the spiritual life.

It implies, above all other elements we

have mentioned, a desire to preserve the essential integrity of the religious consciousness, and those spiritual values cherished by the race.

142

John Laird, The Idea of the Soul (London: Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., 1924), p. 36. 143

Ibid., p. 37.

94 It is interesting to note that Hinduism has had a significant part to play in this vigorous defense of the spiritual life*

It is to train and educate the soul that

we are placed here, the Hindus say, in preparation for its continued pilgrimage from the brute to the stature of God. This is strikingly similar to our author*s constant empha­ sis upon the attainment, the development, and the achieve­ ment of selfhood or personhood*

Linked with his view of

the world, this system lends itself strongly to the eastern interpretation.

On the other hand, Pratt finds little com­

fort in Buddhist philosophy since the self is a mere collec­ tion of characteristics for it.

The Buddhist view is ad­

mittedly modern since it fits.Into James*s view, Hume*s analysis and "most of modern psychology"; yet it must be rejected.

Buddhism closes the door to immortality or even

rebirth, for if there is no identifiable soul, what is it that is re-born? Pratt finds as one implication of selfhood, then, a world view that is akin to the Hindu outlook*

It is a dynamic

world with cross currents and forces meeting and interconnect­ ing, but all under the direction of a central, immanent, teleologies! principle which has its matrix In the self* Admittedly the empirical evidence Is not completely coercive one way or the other, but this, at least, Pratt deems the necessary minimum for the preservation of value in the world,

95 and he is willing to hazard this as an "ultimate guess” con­ cerning reality.

I»et us examine Pratt’s view of the Hindu

outlook. In India and Its Faiths Pratt picks out the most prominent single characteristic to be found in Hindu phil­ osophy.

He finds it to be the concept of the soul*

He was

greatly impressed by the expression of Hindu pantheism which made the self of the flower the same as the self of each of us.

The world soul is in each one of us but we are not lost

In it.

In describing the self of the Hindus he uses almost

the same words we quoted earlier from Personal Realism; It is not a thing— like tables and chairs and scientific propositions. The self is sui generis^ and Is simply not in the category of things that are to be investigated, tabulated and described.144 Fratt finds that

although there is much vacillation

inthe

Gitas concerning

the independence of the self, they

cometoo

close to the view which would swallow up the individuality of the self.

Brahman Is both personal and impersonal, but in

the end the feeling is that the soul is drowned in some allembracing absolute.

In spite of this there is much comfort

here for those who hold some type of self-theory.

The re­

lation between the spiritual, and the material,, as the Hindus

144

* James Bissett Pratt, India and Its Faiths (Boston; Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1915), p. 76.

96 see It, bears a striking similarity to Pratt’s conception of immanent teleology: r,Thus at a million points spirit invades matter, which itself in fact Is but a manifestation of the Divine s p i r i t P r a t t ’s position Implies a close affinity for the world outlook of the Hindus, It is almost a commonplace in philosophy that the ques­ tions one asks will, in a large measure, determine the nature of the answers that are forthcoming. our subject’s case.

This is certainly so in

The question Pratt seeks to answer Is:

Tfifhat single fact will best explain my nature as a value-centric, experiencing individual?

It is almost a rhetorical question

since it presupposes the givenness of what Pratt calls the religious consciousness, and the uniqueness of individuality. He visualizes two implications--deny the subjective or resort to solipsism.

He rejects both in favor of a view that as­

serts the adequacy of the subject and the reality of the ex­ ternal world.

The only view that will do this is one that

from the beginning asserts the transcendence of mind.

Prom

here our author feels that the life of mind is protected, ego­ istic hedonism undermined, and the independence of human selves assured.

It should be made clear that these implications are

not held dogmatically, and the tolerant spirit in which Pratt’s whole system is expounded lends to it a persuasive charm that it otherwise would not possess.

145

Ibid., p. 163.

CHAPTER VII THE FRUITS OF H E A M S M * CRITICAL CONCLUSION Personal Realism the harvest of Pratt1s critical realism is gathered in and stored against the needs and assaults of time*

Thus a metaphysically grounded individ­

ualism is established upon a realistic epistemology.

The

key to this epistemology is the problem of meaning and the ultimate source of meaning rests in experience*

In the

face of a dualistic tradition, realism,in its assertion that mind and its objects are isolated by a gulf, shows a sur­ prising degree of humility and an amazing capacity for homely faith.

This faith is based on those elusive entities of two

worlds— the enigmatic ’’essences.”

With the aid of mental

existences, the external world and the essences, critical realism hopes to avoid the difficulties of its predecessors and, laying aside its sophistication, attempts a bold elope­ ment with coramonsense.

But the difficulty Is that while the

essences are placed in the position of being subsistent, they are always seen riding about in an existential vehicle. While the problem of essences is a logical difficulty at the root of critical realism, it is none the less serious.

Indeed,

it can be shown that most of Pratt’s difficulties are those inherent in his epistemology.

In this case, metaphysics does

98 not wait upon epistemology, so the metaphysics seems little affected by these difficulties.

In fact, the metaphysical

position moves beyond the epistemology and finds it neces­ sary to supersede it* Realism, understandably enough, wishes to be identi­ fied with the stylish empiricism of our day— almost to the point where intellectualism is abandoned*

The extreme re­

action to idealism and continental rationalism has blinded it to what it has lacked in its own perspective*

Pratt

wants to be identified with empiricism, yet he does not take the trouble to declare exhaustively what it is.

In his

definition of naturalism he satisfies no-one for he is clear­ ly bent upon making it synonymous with some type of organ­ ic ism, including teleology as a component*

A victory won by

re-defining the o p p o n e n t s position is a hollow victory indeed. But what of the empirical method?

Philosophers seem bent upon

either obliterating the meaning of the word by making it so broad, or deifying it by an outright, uncritical acceptance* Pratt does a little of both*.

It should be kept in mind that

philosophy might have a method of its own and if it is taken to be the critique and organization of the fundamental tenets of the sciences, then its method is one step removed from empiricism.

Empiricism, Werkmeister states, w±s essentially

hypothetically deductive... this method, legitimate as it is in itself, may not be applicable to philosophical problems in

99 the same sense In which it Is used in the sciences.”

146

In short, the admission of a frank dialectic in the analysis of basic categories would seem to be the method of philosophy.

It is an exaggerated estimate of the medicinal

effects of empiricism in our day that attempts to apply it to areas of distinctly philosophical import, such as the problem of the "self.”

To be sure, it has a limited appli­

cation, but cannot, in itself, provide the sufficient means for the answers to basic questions.

It is time for philos­

ophers to declare the autonomy and importance of their methods.

They are not the methods of observation alone, nor

the methods of refined and subtle intellectualism alone, but are the Instruments, perforce, of insight, creativity, and the disciplines of logic*

By insight is meant both individual

insight and the insights of the race--as rooted deep in foundations of

history.

Although professing empiricism,

Pratt ends by using these methods, but he might have said much more if he had had more respect for the integrity of the philosophic enterprise as a distinct endeavor.

To be

sure, the assertion of the individual uniqueness of each person Is a statement of considerable import and significance, but is it true that it must spring from critical realism and critical, realism alone?

We think not.

It might happen that

the mind is merely an aspect or one side of a neutral 146 Werkmeister, "Beview of Pratt’s ’Naturalism,’,f International. Journal of Ethics, Vol. 50, 1939-40, p. 103.

100

contextual situation as neo-realism insists, but would this mean that it could not be differentiated in some essential sense?

Pratt, at this point, constantly confuses logical

and temporal priority, always assuming that if we cannot sharply separate mind from matter, then no distinction is possible*

He insists upon the assertion of bald dichotomy*

On the other hand, Sellars finds it quite possible to assert uniqueness within the context of the organic without sharply separating the mind from the body*

The point is that Pratt

is concerned with an ultimate problem and he wishes to solve this problem on empirical grounds*

When he does not find

this possible he resorts to dichotomy on another level and thereby avoids many difficulties; and also avoids facing many problems.

Can the self be asserted on empirical grounds?

We think not, and for this reason it is felt that philosophy must rid itself of the notion that it can defend terminal categories from empirical vantage points alone. Pratt admits, that there is no science of man.

147

In the end For if man

is the kind of being Pratt asserts him to be, he is entirely unlike the objects of study of the special sciences. But, we may ask, how did Pratt find this out? tainly not through empiricism.

Cer­

An explicit recognition of

the method he actually used, the method of introspection and

James Bissett Pratt, Personal Realism (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1937), p. 355.

101

dialectical analysis, would have brought Pratt closer to an explicit statement of his whole purpose and would have re­ leased him from the haunting fear that he was not being completely empirical.

Inasmuch as critical realism professes

to be an empirical formulation of the steps in the knowing process, following the specific formulations of empirical psychology, what are we to say of the divergency in meta­ physics that has resulted from this single foundation? assertions seem possible at this point.

Two

Either epistemologi-

cal dualism is a mis-representation of the knowing process, or metaphysics is independent completely of the epistemologIcal analysis.

The second is obviously false, for no sharp

and rigid separation can be made between epistemology and metaphysics.

The analysis of the knowing situation immedi­

ately reveals the whole character complex of the knower, which involves ultimate characterizations of the unique con­ ceptual capacity of the person being analyzed. statement, then, seems to be the correct one. may ask, is this so?

The first But why, we

The answer would seem to be that

epistemology is not purely an empirical endeavor, for there are factors involved not susceptible of measurment.

Critical

realism, then, has grossly oversimplified the whole epistemological situation.

For some time realism has used the

term f,mechanism of knowing11 and has evidently assumed that all that need be done was to examine the nature of a process University of S o u tH ^ n California UfeTftVV

102

that followed mechanical laws*

This attitude generated the

many statements that critical realism is lfno metaphysics.w Of course this proved to be a fatuous claim*

From the very

beginning, the issues separating the seven members of the school were metaphysical in character* Each of the members came to the task with a different metaphysics.

This whole picture would seem to illustrate

what has been one of the sore spots in contemporary phil­ osophy.

The error seems to rest in the sharp and unequivocal

dichotomy made between epis temology and metaphysics.

The

cult of objectivity, in this instance has lulled much of American philosophy into assuming that detachment and objectivity are the same in meaning and import. not at all identical.

These terms are

Objectivity is applied, for example,

to the scientist or the experimentalist, who, under the utility or the exigency, of the moment, loses himself in the aspect of nature, separated for study, for tabulation and for observation.

But detachment is the function of an

Olympian point of view.

This is a word Pratt uses much in

Reason in the Art of jbiving.fl

This point of view recognizes

the need to listen to the subjective voice, a thoroughly honorable enterprise.

It is not impressed by the advocates

of total objectivity.

In philosophy, this Olympian view­

point must be the mark of distinction.

The realistic concern

for science tended to rub out this distinction.

Bfealisxrr then

103 became scientific sophistry and metaphysics, although al­ ways on call, was forced to bed down in the garret until the fad had run its cycle.

The appearance of such books

as Personal Realism and The Philosophy of Physical Realism, mark the end of this arid era in American philosophy. much damage had been done.

But

The philosopher had, in recent

decades, decided that if he could obtain objectivity, de­ tachment was somehow included; but now we are beginning to see that the data of objectivity form but part of the perspective of detachment.

Both are necessary.

Neither is

sufficient alone, and the philosophic enterprise loses its warrant the moment it bargains detachment for objectivity, or assumes that detachment is possible without objectivity. Thus the realization in the realistic camp has been that objectivity must give way and make room for larger perspec­ tives.

Realism, in our subject’s case, became less impor-

tant than personalism, absolute idealism or panpsychism.

148

In Pratt’s case the critical realist, although not com­ pletely obliterated, took second place to the insight of the east.

All things are linked, Pratt finally states.

Being with mind and a third element is added, H joy.M although we are individuals,

And

there is a sense in which our*

individuality does not disappear, but merely becomes un­ important.

The dualist can now say, astonishingly enough,

—

Ibid., p. 217.

104 we are f,subjects, and as such are ultimately one with the one self."149 We must pause to wonder whether this something utterly unique in nature can be said to be a part of nature and yet distinct, since all nature is but the expression of God? Reality, Pratt declares, is no block universe, for it is constantly changing.

It is maya, an eternal play.

It is

like a dancer. Ho instrument is here used or needed; the dancer is his own instrument. At every moment he is giving complete and untrammelled expression to the purppse which animates h i m . 3-50 The universe is the very body of God, then, and the relation between the universe and God is roughly the same as the re­ lation that obtains between our bodies and minds. has happened to God as personal,

the theistic God?

But what Pratt

states that we must be willing to accept spiritual pantheism all the way If we are prepared to accept any of it.

!,If God

be the world Soul there is an element of wildness in Him not recognized in the usual picture of f0ur Heavenly Father. »«3.51 Evil is merely our failure to grasp the beauty of the Immense and inevitable laws of nature as they press on oblivious to m a n fs small sphere.

149 150 151

This seems to make the sensitivity, the

Ibid., p. 188. Ibid., p. 577.

Ibid., p. 379.

105 creativity of the self unimportant.

Pratt realizes the

danger he courts when he adopts some type of pantheistic world soul, and if there is necessarily a conflict he is quick to say that these are merely over beliefs and so "My confidence in. the reality of the finite self is much greater than my trust in the truth of the over beliefs suggested in this chapter."

152

In the end, nevertheless, he

does not believe that there need be conflict. the body of the universal soul.

Matter is but

Our bodies are part of the

universal mind but our minds are partly hidden from the universal mind. Since finite individuals are real and have genuine wills of their own, it is possible for them to choose and act in ways not in perfect harmony with the cosmic m i n d . 153 We might say that certainly freedom where is it

is possible

here, but

possible for these same individuals

to act in

harmony with the Divine will?

Harmony, except in an accident

al sense, would seem impossible.

The individual is a minia­

ture "world soul,” free almost to the point of anarchy, only tied to the

world soul by the bonds of matter. Yet since we

grow out of

the world soul, and our bodies grow

out of the

world body, we are a part of its very nature.

Pratt fails

to show us how our individuality is retained.

Yet we cannot

152 153

Ibid., p. 380.

Ibid., p. 381.

106 press a man who, with unusual candor, in a modern philosopher, frankly calls his most fundamental thoughts, ^ultimate guesses.w In conclusion, we believe that Pratt represents a healthy emphasis in American philosophy.

He sought a

balance between the particular and the general, which in its ultimate analysis is the distinction between mind and spirit.

This was certainly, as Miss Hamilton points out,

the key to the enviable balance achieved by the Greeks. The flowering of genius in Greece was due to the immense impetus given when clarity and power of thought was added to great spiritual force.154 Such a balance was bound to yield great music, painting and significant literary forms.

In short, f,it established them

to hold fast both to the things that are seen and to the things that are not seen...

Since that time, however,

we have wavered between first one and then the other.

In

our day this opposition has taken the character of a struggle between the individual and the community.

Gur age will

doubtless stand for scientific advance, but science has divorced itself from the distinction between matter and spirit; the spiritual does not play a part.

As Miss Hamilton

with rare insight remarks,

154

Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way to Western Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1930), p. 185. 155 Ibid., p. 186.

107 It is not m e n ’s greed, nor their ambition, nor yet their machines, it is not even the removal of their ancient landmarks, that is filling our present world with turmoil and dissention, but our new vision of the individual’s claim against the majority’s c l a i m . - ^ 6 It Is clearly this adjustment that Pratt attempts to make in Personal Realismalis tic endeavor*

In a sense It is the whole person­

But as an issue, it is likely to be much

wider than personalism-

The inner world presents a view

into which the outer world must be brought In as a frame for it*

The world must fit into this picture.

”We must

not abstract from one to give preference to the claims of the other,” is the essential, message Pratt wishes us to receive. Each generation in turn is constrained to try to reconcile the truth the spirit knows with the truth the mind knows, to make the inner world fit into the ever changing frame of the outer world-157 The temptation, so successfully resisted in Pratt, Is to scrap either the frame or the picture*

Pratt struggles with

the eastern conceptions because they let the ”frame” go without a struggle. not accomplish this-

We In the west, slaves to science, can­ In the end, the best that can be hoped

for is a harmonization of the seen and the unseen. Pratt achieves this to a high degree.

156 Ibid., p. X88. 157

Ibid., p. 189.

Certainly

His_philosophy, in

108 spite of much that we object to, gives us a view, not as a melancholy "spectator of other m e n ’s fortunes and adventures and how they act their

p a r t s " ; - ^ 8

but as a participant in

and a student of all cultural view points.

His convictions

spring from the solid faith he places in the essential worth of the life of reason. With, then, this evolution of doctrinaire epistemology into metaphysics, realism truly comes of age, throws off its outmoded garments and seeks new and higher ground.

In the

fact of such a growth, it welcomes its successors, whatever they may be, knowing that they too will meet with the same growth, and therefore reflects the pattern of the ideal for philosophic development.

Robert Burton,"The Anatomy of Melancholy,11 Book of Seventeenth Century Prose, (Coffin and Witherspoon), p. 158.

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