Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 2

by Unknown

And so it is with all your doings. You tell us proudly, for instance, that you show us the deepest nature of the world by showing us the elements which the object contains, and that you thus bring us at least nearer to the essence of things; and yet if we begin to look into your real achievements, we are disappointed again to find that you are far away from even attempting anything of the kind. You tell us that water is hydrogen and oxygen, and if we say "Prove it," you show us simply that you can transform the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and that you can transform these two elements again into water. Is that really what you promise? We want to know what the thing is, and you show us simply how the one thing can be transformed into another thing; and whenever we turn to your wisdom, it is always the same story. You show us always, and most nicely, how the one goes over into the other, but you never show us what the one or the other really is in itself. For your practical purposes the first may be the most important aspect, but do not make us believe, therefore, that it is the only possible aspect. In short, whether science describes or explains, it never gives us what we find in reality, but makes out of reality a new ideal construction in the service of certain purposes, and never gives us the things as they are, but merely the effects and changes which they produce. Are we still, then, to be deeply impressed with the claim of the naturalist that he alone has the monopoly of knowing reality, while we see now that every step of his leads us away from reality? And have we still to be afraid to raise the voice as philosophers with the claim that reality itself must find its expression, that there must be a science which shall give account of reality as we really find it, of nature before it is made up and repolished for the purposes of the physicist? Only if we have such other account of nature, then only do we speak of that nature in which we live and in which we act, and compared with such an account of the fuller reality, the constructed schematism of the physicist must appear, indeed, as Emerson said, "barren like a single sex." Not the slightest result of natural science is depreciated, not the slightest discovery ignored, if we insist that all these so-called facts have a meaning only under certain artificial conditions which set them apart from the reality of our life; and in this reality lies the interest of the philosopher. We have thus no reason to reproach the scientist so long as the scientist does not fancy that his science gives an account of nature as it really is. Both kinds of work are necessary, and the scientist may well speak, as the squirrel in Emerson's poem:

"Talents differ,

All is well and wisely put;

If I cannot carry forests on my back,

Neither can you crack a nut."

Natural science has to crack our nuts, but philosophy has to carry on its back the flourishing forests of life, in which we wander and breathe. And if Emerson is right, to-day and forever, in claiming that the facts of natural science are not expressions of reality, it is only a small step to see that he was not less right in saying that man is free. Consider man as a particle in the physical universe, consider his actions from the point of view of a causal science, and there is no possibility of escaping materialism and fatalism. We must understand every activity as a necessary outcome of foregoing conditions. Psychology must do so, and physics must do the same. The empirical sciences would be disloyal to their own principles if they allowed the slightest exception. The noblest gesture, the greatest word, the bravest action, must be considered by them under the category of causality. They are necessary effects of all the preceding causes. It may be interesting, it may be fascinating to follow such lines with the enthusiastic energy of scholarly research. But are we really obliged to accept the outcome as an ultimate word concerning the meaning of our freedom? "Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the soul." Is it really merely an illusion? Has responsibility still its moral value, are we the actors of our actions, are we still good, are we still guilty, when every deed follows as necessary effect? Is not, then, the whole constitution of the world, which has made us, responsible whenever we move our hand for good or for bad?

But we know now where we are standing; we know now that the world of objects, of psychical as well as of physical, is a constructed world, constructed for the purpose of satisfying our demand for causal connection; for that world holds causality because it is the world seen from the point of view of causality; and just as there cannot be anything in that world of physical and psychical objects which is not causally connected, just so it cannot have any meaning at all to ask for causal connection before the world is conceived in the service of this artificial construction. Reality in itself is not causal, and to ask for the causes of the real experience of our inner life has not more meaning than to ask how many pounds is the weight of a virtue, and how many inches is the length of our hopes. But we must go farther. To apply the question of cause and effect to our real will means not only that we apply to the real object a standard which belongs to the artificial or constructed object, but it means above all that we consider as an object something which in reality is not an object at all. The will which the psychologist describes and must describe, the will which has causes and which is thus not free, is a will conceived as an object found in our mind like an idea, something of which we are aware, something whose happening we perceive, and yet if anything is sure it is the immediate experience that we are aware of our will in a way which is absolutely different from the way in which we perceive objects. We do not perceive our will at all, we will it, we strive it, we fight it; yes, we feel ourselves, only in so far as we are the subjects of will. Our will is our personality, which we do not find but which we are, and which stands opposed and separated by the deepest gulf from the world of objects. Those objects are means and purposes of our will, are ends and aims and instruments; but they come in question for us only as we will them, as we like and dislike them, as we approve and reject them. And if we take this world of objects and reconstruct it into the artificial world of physical and psychical things connected by causality, in this very act of reconstruction we feel ourselves as willing, deciding, approving, aiming personalities, whose wills decide, who think the world as causally connected, whose freedom guarantees the value of our conception of a world not free. There is no knowledge but in our judgments; there is no judgment but in our affirming and denying; there is no affirming and denying but in our will. Our will chooses for its purposes to conceive reality as if it were unfree. What a climax of confusion to think that this conception of an unfree world, the conception of science, can itself now condemn the freedom of the will which has chosen. "Freedom is necessary," said Emerson. We can add, necessity itself is merely a purpose determined by freedom. "Intellect annuls fate," Emerson says. We may add, fate is merely an idea of intellect. Let us be psychologists if we want to analyze, to calculate, to explain the unfree man; but let us be philosophers to understand what it means to be a psychologist. Now the synthesis is reached; the real world is free, but we choose for our purposes to conceive the world as unfree, and thus to construct causal sciences.

And if we understand that in reality man is free and that the psychological aspect of man as unfree is a special way of looking on man for special purposes, then suddenly there opens itself before us the vast field of history, and the historical life, which seemed deprived of all interest by the psychological, iconoclastic mood, suddenly wins again a new importance. We feel instinctively that this free man of reality, this man who is a responsible actor of his actions, he only is the agent of history; and history is falsified and cheapened when it is brought down to a causal explanation of psychological man instead of real man. History had become an appendix of sociology, and what great historians aimed at in the interpretation of the few "stout and earnest personalities" seemed lost in favor of a construction in which the great man and the genius rank with the fool as mere extreme variations of psychological averages. Now suddenly do we understand that history has to deal with the world of freedom, that it has not to explain, but to interpret, that it has not to connect the facts by linking causes and effects, but by understanding the meaning of purposes, their agreement and disagreement, their growth and liberty. Now we understand why Fichte, why Carlyle, why Emerson believes in heroes and hero-worship, why Idealism has been at all times the fertile ground for writing history and for making history, while Naturalism has made technique, and thought in an anti-historical spirit. Our time begins again to think historically. It can do so because it again begins to emancipate itself from its positivistic disbelief in man's freedom and from its unphilosophic superstition that causal science alone is science, that we know only when we explain.