II
Let us, however, turn from Mr. Bradley’s formal proof that the criterion of philosophic truth must be exclusively a canon of formal thought. Let us ignore the contradiction involved in first making the work of thought to be the producing of appearance and then making the law of this thought the law of an Absolute Reality. What about the intellectualist criterion? The intellectualism of Mr. Bradley’s philosophy is represented in the statement that it is “the theoretical standard which guarantees that reality is a self-consistent system” (p. 148). But how can the fact that the criterion of thinking is consistency be employed to determine the nature of the consistency of its object? Consistency in one sense, consistency of reasoning with itself, we know; but what is the nature of the consistency of reality which this consistency necessitates? Thinking without doubt must be logical; but does it follow from this that the reality about which one thinks, and about which one must think consistently if one is to think to any purpose, must itself be already logical? The pivot of the argument is, of course, the old ontological argument, stripped of all theological irrelevancies and reduced to its fighting weight as a metaphysical proposition. Those who question this basic principle of intellectualism will, of course, question it here. They will urge that, instead of the consistency of “reality” resting on the basis of consistency in the reasoning process the latter derives its meaning from the material consistency at which it aims. They will say that the definition of the nature of the consistency which is the end of thinking and which prescribes its technique is to be reached from inquiry into such questions as these: What sort of an activity in the concrete is thinking? what are the specific conditions which it has to fulfil? what is its use; its relevancy; its purport in present concrete experiences? The more it is insisted that the theoretical standard—consistency—is final within theory, the more germane and the more urgent is the question: What then in the concrete is theory? and of what nature is the material consistency which is the test of its formal consistency?[23]
Take the instance of a man who wishes to deny the criterion of self-consistency in thinking. Is he refuted by pointing to the “fact” that eternal reality is eternally self-consistent? Would not his obvious answer to such a mode of refutation be: “What of it? What is the relevancy of that proposition to my procedure in thinking here and now? Doubtless absolute reality may be a great number of things, possibly very sublime and precious things; but what I am concerned with is a particular job of thinking, and until you show me the intermediate terms which link that job to the asserted self-consistent character of absolute reality, I fail to see what difference this doubtless wholly amiable trait of reality has to make in what I am here and now concerned with. You might as well quote any other irrelevant fact, such as the height of the Empress of China.” We take another tack in dealing with the man in question. We call his attention to his specific aim in the situation with reference to which he is thinking, and point out the conditions that have to be observed if that aim is to fulfil itself. We show that if he does not observe the conditions imposed by his aim his thinking will go on so wildly as to defeat itself. It is to consistency of means with the end of the concrete activity that we appeal. “Try thinking,” we tell such a man, “experiment with it, taking pains sometimes to have your reasonings consistent with one another, and at other times deliberately introducing inconsistencies; then see what you get in the two cases and how the result reached is related to your purpose in thinking.” We point out that since that purpose is to reach a settled conclusion, that purpose will be defeated unless the steps of reasoning are kept consistent with one another. We do not appeal from the mere consistency of the reasoning process—the intellectual aspect of the matter—to an absolute self-consistent reality; but we appeal from the material character of the end to be reached to the type of the formal procedure necessary to accomplish it.
With all our heart, then, the standard of thinking is absolute (that is final) within thinking. But what is thinking? The standard of blacksmithing must be absolute within blacksmithing, but what is blacksmithing? No prejudice prevents acknowledging that blacksmithing is one practical activity existing as a distinct and relevant member of a like system of activities: that it is because men use horses to transport persons and goods that horses need to be shod. The ultimate criterion of blacksmithing is producing a good shoe, but the nature of a good shoe is fixed, not by blacksmithing, but by the activities in which horses are used. The end is ultimate (absolute) for the operation, but this very finality is evidence that the operation is not absolute and self-inclosed, but is related and responsible. Why must the fact that the end of thinking is ultimate for thought stand on any different footing?
Let us then, by way of experiment, follow this suggestion. Let us assume that among real objects in their values and significances, real oppositions and incompatibilities exist; that these conflicts are both troublesome in themselves, and the source of all manner of further difficulties—so much so that they may be suspected of being the source of all man’s woe, of all encroachment upon and destruction of value, of good. Suppose that thinking is, not accidentally but essentially, a way, and the only way that proves adequate, of dealing with these predicaments—that being “in a hole,” in difficulty, is the fundamental “predicament” of intelligence. Suppose when effort is made in a brute way to remove these oppositions and to secure an arrangement of things which means satisfaction, fulfilment, happiness, that the method of brute attack, of trying directly to force warrings into peace fails; suppose then an effort to effect the transformation by an indirect method—by inquiry into the disordered state of affairs and by framing views, conceptions, of what the situation would be like were it reduced to harmonious order. Finally, suppose that upon this basis a plan of action is worked out, and that this plan, when carried into overt effect, succeeds infinitely better than the brute method of attack in bringing about the desired consummation. Suppose again this indirection of activity is precisely what we mean by thinking. Would it not hold that harmony is the end and the test of thinking? that observations are pertinent and ideas correct just in so far as, overtly acted upon, they succeed in removing the undesirable, the inconsistent.
But, it is said, the very process of thinking makes a certain assumption regarding the nature of reality, viz., that reality is self-consistent. This statement puts the end for the beginning. The assumption is not that “reality” is self-consistent, but that by thinking it may, for some special purpose, or as respects some concrete problem, attain greater consistency. Why should the assumption regarding “reality” be other than that specific realities with which thought is concerned are capable of receiving harmonization? To say that thought must assume, in order to go on, that reality already possesses harmony is to say that thought must begin by contradicting its own direct data, and by assuming that its concrete aim is vain and illusory. Why put upon thought the onus of introducing discrepancies into reality in order just to give itself exercise in the gymnastic of removing them? The assumption that concrete thinking makes about “reality” is that things just as they exist may acquire through activity, guided by thinking, a certain character which it is excellent for them to possess; and may acquire it more liberally and effectively than by other methods. One might as well say that the blacksmith could not think to any effect concerning iron, without a Platonic archetypal horseshoe, laid up in the heavens. His thinking also makes an assumption about present, given reality, viz., that this piece of iron, through the exercise of intelligently directed activity, may be shaped into a satisfactory horseshoe. The assumption is practical: the assumption that a specific thing may take on in a specific way a specific needed value. The test, moreover, of this assumption is practical; it consists in acting upon it to see if it will do what it pretends it can do, namely, guide activities to the required result. The assumption about reality is not something in addition to the idea, which an idea already in existence makes; some assumption about the possibility of a change in the state of things as experienced is the idea—and its test or criterion is whether this possible change can be effected when the idea is acted upon in good faith.
In any case, how much simpler the case becomes when we stick by the empirical facts. According to them there is no wholesale discrepancy of existence and meaning; there is simply a “loosening” of the two when objects do not fulfil our plans and meet our desires; or when we project inventions and cannot find immediately the means for their realization. The “collisions” are neither physical, metaphysical, nor logical; they are moral and practical. They exist between an aim and the means of its execution. Consequently the object of thinking is not to effect some wholesale and “Absolute” reconciliation of meaning and existence, but to make a specific adjustment of things to our purposes and of our purposes to things at just the crucial point of the crisis. Making the utmost concessions to Mr. Bradley’s account of the discrepancy of meaning and existence in our experience, to his statement of the relation of this to the function of judgment (as involving namely an explicit statement at once of the actual sundering and the ideal union) and to his account of consistency as the goal and standard, there is still not a detail of the account that is not met amply and with infinitely more empirical warrant by the conception that the “collision” in which thinking starts and the “consistency” in which it terminates are practical and human.