Now, what is the logical value of this feeling as a basis for argument? We may fairly say, on the one hand, that it rests on a sound principle. For it embodies the conviction, of which all Philosophy is the elaboration, that the real world is a harmonious system in which irrational accident plays no part, and that, if we could only see the whole truth, we should realise that there is no final and irremediable defeat for any of our aspirations, but all are somehow made good. On the other side, we must remember that the argument from the desire for continuance to its reality also goes on to assert not only that our aspirations are somehow fulfilled and our unfinished work somehow perfected, but that this fulfilment takes place in the particular way which we, with our present lights, would wish. And in maintaining this, the argument goes beyond the conclusion which philosophical first principles warrant.
For it might be that, if our insight into the scheme of the world were less defective, we should cease to desire this special form of fulfilment, just as in growing into manhood we cease to desire the kind of life which appeared to us as children the ideal of happiness. The man’s life-work may be the realisation of the child’s dreams, but it does not realise them in the form imagined by childhood. And conceivably it might be so with our desire for a future life. Further, of course, the logical value of the argument from feeling must to some extent depend upon the universality and persistence of the feeling itself. We must not mistake for a fundamental aspiration of humanity what may be largely the effect of special traditions and training. Hence we cannot truly estimate the worth of the inference from feeling until we know both how far the feeling itself is really permanent in our own society, and how far, again, it exists in societies with different beliefs and traditions. In itself the sentiment, e.g., of Christian civilisation, cannot be taken as evidence of the universal feeling of mankind, in the face of the apparently opposite feelings, e.g., of Brahmins and Buddhists.
I should conclude, then, that the question of a future life must remain an open one for Metaphysics. We seem unable to give any valid metaphysical arguments for a future life, but then, on the other hand, the negative presumptions seem to be equally devoid of cogency. Philosophy, in this matter, to use the fine phrase of Dr. McTaggart, “gives us hope,”[[198]] and I cannot, for my own part, see that it can do more. Possibly, as Browning suggests in La Saisiaz, it is not desirable, in the interests of practical life, that it should do more. And here I must leave the question with the reader, only throwing out one tentative suggestion for his approval or rejection as he pleases. Since we have seen that the permanence of the self depends upon its degree of internal harmony of structure, it is at least conceivable that its continuance as a self, beyond the limits of earthly life, may depend on the same condition. Conceivably the self may survive death, as it survives lesser changes in the course of physical events, if its unity and harmony of purpose are strong enough, and not otherwise. If so, a future existence would not be a heritage into which we are safe to step when the time comes, but a conquest to be won by the strenuous devotion of life to the acquisition of a rich, and at the same time orderly and harmonious, moral selfhood. And thus the belief in a future life, in so far as it acts in any given case as a spur to such strenuous living, might be itself a factor in bringing about its own fulfilment. It is impossible to affirm with certainty that this is so, but, again, we cannot deny that it may be the case. And here, as I say, I must be content to leave the problem.[[199]]
Consult further:—B. Bosanquet, Psychology of the Moral Self, lect. 5; F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chaps. 9 (The Meanings of Self), 10 (The Reality of Self), 26 (The Absolute and its Appearances,—especially the end of the chapter, pp. 499-511 of 1st ed.), 27 (Ultimate Doubts); L. T. Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, part 3, chap. 5; S. Hodgson, Metaphysic of Experience, bk. iv. chap. 4; Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, bk. i part 4, §§ 5, 6; W. James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i. chap. 10; H. Lotze, Metaphysic, bk. iii chaps. 1 (especially § 245), 5; Microcosmus, bk. iii. c. 5; J. M. E. McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, chap. 2 (for a detailed hostile examination of Dr. McTaggart’s argument, which I would not be understood to endorse except on special points, see G. E. Moore in Proceedings of Aristotelian Society, N.S. vol. ii. pp. 188-211); J. Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series, lects. 6, 7.
[184]. “Bodily identity” itself, of course, might give rise to difficult problems if we had space to go into them. Here I can merely suggest certain points for the reader’s reflection. (1) All identity appears in the end to be teleological and therefore psychical. I believe this to be the same human body which I have seen before, because I believe that the interests expressed in its actions will be continuous, experience having taught me that a certain amount of physical resemblance is a rough-and-ready criterion of psychical continuity. (2) As to the ethical problem of responsibility referred to in the text, it is obviously entirely one of less and more. Our moral verdicts upon our own acts and those of others are in practice habitually influenced by the conviction that there are degrees of moral responsibility within what the immediate necessities of administration compel us to treat as absolute. We do not, e.g., think a man free from all moral blame for what he does when drunk, or undeserving of all credit for what he performs when “taken out of himself,” i.e. out of the rut of his habitual interests by excitement, but we certainly do, when not under the influence of a theory, regard him as deserving of less blame or credit, as the case may be, for his behaviour than if he had performed the acts when he was “more himself.” On all these topics see Mr. Bradley’s article in Mind for July 1902.
[185]. So “self-consciousness,” in the bad sense, always arises from a sense of an incongruity between the self and some contrasted object or environment.
[186]. Though, of course, it does appear in the process of framing and initiating the scheme of concerted action; the other self is here contrasted with my own, precisely because the removal of the collision between my purpose and my environment is felt as coming from without.
[187]. It might be said that it is not these features of the environment themselves, but my “ideas” of them, which thus belong to the self. This sounds plausible at first, but only because we are habitually accustomed to the “introjectionist” substitution of psychological symbols for the actualities of life. On the question of fact, see Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chap. 8, p. 88 ff. (1st ed.).
[188]. A colleague of my own tells me that in his case movements of the eyes appear to be inseparable from the consciousness of self, and are incapable of being extruded into the not-self in the sense above described. I do not doubt that there are, in each of us, bodily feelings of this kind which refuse to be relegated to the not-self and that it would be well worth while to institute systematic inquiries over as wide an area as possible about their precise character in individual cases. It appears to me, however, as I have stated above, that in ordinary perception these bodily feelings often are apprehended simply as qualifying the perceived content without any opposition of self and not-self. At any rate, the problem is one of those fundamental questions in the theory of cognition which are too readily passed over in current Psychology.