[CHAPTER IV.]
SECOND ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.
I. Empiricism.
37.] Under these circumstances a double want began to be felt. Partly it was the need of a concrete subject-matter, as a counterpoise to the abstract theories of the understanding, which is unable to advance unaided from its generalities to specialisation and determination. Partly, too, it was the demand for something fixed and secure, so as to exclude the possibility of proving anything and everything in the sphere, and according to the method, of the finite formulae of thought. Such was the genesis of Empirical philosophy, which abandons the search for truth in thought itself, and goes to fetch it from Experience, the outward and the inward present.
The rise of Empiricism is due to the need thus stated of concrete contents, and a firm footing—needs which the abstract metaphysic of the understanding failed to satisfy. Now by concreteness of contents it is meant that we must know the objects of consciousness as intrinsically determinate and as the unity of distinct characteristics. But, as we have already seen, this is by no means the case with the metaphysic of understanding, if it conform to its principle. With the mere understanding, thinking is limited to the form of an abstract universal, and can never advance to the particularisation of this universal. Thus we find the metaphysicians engaged in an attempt to elicit by the instrumentality of thought, what was the essence or fundamental attribute of the Soul The Soul, they said, is simple. The simplicity thus ascribed to the Soul meant a mere and utter simplicity, from which difference is excluded: difference, or in other words composition, being made the fundamental attribute of body, or of matter in general. Clearly, in simplicity of this narrow type we have a very shallow category, quite incapable of embracing the wealth of the soul or of the mind. When it thus appeared that abstract metaphysical thinking was inadequate, it was felt that resource must be had to empirical psychology. The same happened in the case of Rational Physics. The current phrases there were, for instance, that space is infinite, that Nature makes no leap, &c. Evidently this phraseology was wholly unsatisfactory in presence of the plenitude and life of nature.
38.] To some extent this source from which Empiricism draws is common to it with metaphysic. It is in our materialised conceptions, i.e. in facts which emanate, in the first instance, from experience, that metaphysic also finds the guarantee for the correctness of its definitions (including both its initial assumptions and its more detailed body of doctrine). But, on the other hand, it must be noted that the single sensation is not the same thing as experience, and that the Empirical School elevates the facts included under sensation, feeling, and perception into the form of general ideas, propositions or laws. This, however, it does with the reservation that these general principles (such as force), are to have no further import or validity of their own beyond that taken from the sense-impression, and that no connexion shall be deemed legitimate except what can be shown to exist in phenomena. And on the subjective side Empirical cognition has its stable footing in the fact that in a sensation consciousness is directly present and certain of itself.
In Empiricism lies the great principle that whatever is true must be in the actual world and present to sensation. This principle contradicts that 'ought to be' on the strength of which 'reflection' is vain enough to treat the actual present with scorn and to point to a scene beyond—a scene which is assumed to have place and being only in the understanding of those who talk of it. No less than Empiricism, philosophy (§ 7) recognises only what is, and has nothing to do with what merely ought to be and what is thus confessed not to exist. On the subjective side, too, it is right to notice the valuable principle of freedom involved in Empiricism. For the main lesson of Empiricism is that man must see for himself and feel that he is present in every fact of knowledge which he has to accept.
When it is carried out to its legitimate consequences, Empiricism—being in its facts limited to the finite sphere—denies the super-sensible in general, or at least any knowledge of it which would define its nature; it leaves thought no powers except abstraction and formal universality and identity. But there is a fundamental delusion in all scientific empiricism. It employs the metaphysical categories of matter, force, those of one, many, generality, infinity, &c.; following the clue given by these categories it proceeds to draw conclusions, and in so doing pre-supposes and applies the syllogistic form. And all the while it is unaware that it contains metaphysics—in wielding which, it makes use of those categories and their combinations in a style utterly thoughtless and uncritical.