But the explicit statement of this starting point of agreement encounters a practical dilemma. On the one hand, anything can be defined in terms so general that the thing is bound to be included: make the genus large enough and it includes anything. The limit, in this direction, would be to define the object as a case of being; which would be safe, but hardly a start toward determining anything about it. On the other hand, the least advance toward narrowing the meaning incurs a very rigorous obligation to produce a principle of selection which shall be a satisfactory logical warrant for narrowing it in just the way selected, since this way excludes others whose claims may be in question. The situation is thus beset with the pitfall of logical presumption.
There are three quite distinct conceptions of philosophy, in the form of ill criticized assumption, each of which is taken by its adherents to be unquestionable—as safe as the concept “being.” I will word them thus: (1) An absolute evaluation of reality; (2) A revelation of reality in its essential nature; (3) A comprehension of the meaning of reality.
The first of these conceptions is that of Kant and Fichte and those philosophers to whom reality seems unrelated to apprehending consciousness, related only to will. Reality is neither directly nor indirectly perceivable. Knowledge of it is possible—if the term is proper at all—only in the broadest sense of “knowledge,” the sense equivalent to “consciousness,” within which will is sharply distinguished from two more or less receptive or cognitive modes, thinking and feeling. Knowledge of reality is thus, for this type of philosopher, a practical, personal evaluation of it, only; a moral disposition or attitude.
The second conception is Professor Bergson’s; its meaning is a peculiarly intimate acquaintance with reality. It is a relationship between reality and consciousness in the æsthetic mode, consciousness as the quality-knowing faculty, very explicitly distinguished by Bergson, under the name “intuition,” from the relation-knowing or intellectual faculty.
The third conception, the analytic or intellectualistic, means knowledge about reality, such knowledge as may be relatively independent of acquaintance. The second and third conceptions are distinct from each other only in emphasis, and may be indefinitely approximated toward each other, to the limit of mutual identity. But, historically, the philosopher’s besetting sin of hypostasis has pushed the emphasis, in each of these two conceptions, to so vicious an extreme that they contrast with each other sharply. Pushed to such extreme, the third conception has been stigmatized by adherents of the second as “vicious” conceptualism or intellectualism. By the same right, the intellectualist may denounce intuitionism as equally “vicious.”
To these three conceptions of philosophy this is common: a relationship between reality and consciousness which is apogeal. Philosophy is at any rate a supreme experience, a mode of consciousness which is eminent over other modes. But this initial generalization is too indeterminate to constitute a satisfactory theory of the nature of philosophy; whereas (for the other horn of the dilemma), the above attempts at greater specificity appear to invoke no logical principle, but rather to follow a deep-lying personal instinct, without due critical reflection on it; in other words, without logical justification of it. They all beg the question.
Such ill criticized assumption concerning the nature of philosophy is what determines a philosopher’s “method” in distinction from his “doctrine.” The names voluntarism, intuitionism and rationalism have been applied to philosophies whose method is one or other of the three outlined above. Religion, art and science are their models, respectively. Under voluntarism fall the romantic and the pietistic philosophies, wherein value is all that is real, and personal attitude towards value is the only mode of consciousness that illuminates reality. Intuitionism includes radical empiricism, temporalism and mysticism. Such philosophies are based on the conviction that only quality is real, only intuition is knowledge. And under rationalism are positivism and absolutism, in which reality is order and knowledge is reason.
If art, science and religion correspond to the ancient triad feeling (intuition), thought (intellect) and will, it would seem either that philosophy must be consciousness employed in one or more of these modes, or else that a fourth mode of consciousness, coordinate with these, must correspond to philosophy. Such a mode has not been discovered. Philosophy must therefore be one or two or all three of the above things. Can analysis of that generalization which was derived above from the more specific definitions produce a logical principle capable of determining the genuine philosophic method among the three modes of consciousness, feeling, thought and will? Yes, such analysis of the supremacy which is a feature common to all three conceptions of philosophy proves unequivocally that philosophy must be a function of intellect, and cannot be a function either of will or of intuition.
This would not be the case, needless to say, if “supremacy” were here a eulogism. Eulogistically, either of the three modes of consciousness has equal claim to supremacy. That mode of consciousness to which reality is most interesting is supreme, in the eulogistic sense, and this depends on the philosopher’s personal constitution. To the man of dominating intuition, the relations and teleology of things may be incidental characters of them; but, by comparison with reality’s qualitative aspect, those other aspects are relatively extrinisic and accidental. In whatever sense it may not be true, in the eulogistic sense it is true that such a man’s supreme experience is intuitional rather than intellectual or ethical. Bergson’s psychological life seems to be of such a type. But, for the man of ethical, and for the man of intellectual prepossession, supreme experience cannot be intuitional, in this sense of supreme. Yet, if an intuitional bent be regarded by anyone as a hopeful qualification for effective philosophizing, no intuitionist denies to the man in whom reason or will, instead, is paramount, the possibility, by proper effort, of achieving the genuinely philosophic—that is to say, intuitional—activity. And when such a man does, in spite of difficulty, achieve it, it has the same supremacy, as philosophy, that it has for the intuitionist, for whom it is, more fortunately, also supremely congenial and “worth while”. It is not this latter supremacy, therefore, but the other, which distinguishes philosophy, on the intuitionist conception; and that other supremacy has a meaning which is thus proved to be independent of relation to any constitutional prepossession or aptness. If philosophy is intuitional, this is not because intuition is any man’s most characteristic faculty.
And so of the two other modes of consciousness, reason and will, in which, in different beings, according to their constitution, life most naturally and best finds realization: for each of these modes of consciousness, as for the intuitional mode, there is one sort of experience, called philosophy, which is distinguished by a certain supremacy of self-same nature, independent of any distinction of personal constitution among philosophers. The voluntarist, indeed, might claim a peculiarly eulogistic supremacy for volitional experience over any other kind; for it is ethically supreme for all, whatever one’s constitutional bent. But its ethical supremacy is no more the philosophic quale of volitional experience, on the voluntaristic conception of philosophy, than is its other eulogistic supremacy, its mere congeniality, for the strongly volitional type of character. For, men of such character may be conspicuously deficient in philosophic faculty in the judgment of all, including the voluntarist philosopher.