Studies in Logical Theory Part 10

We may, perhaps, pause a moment to consider the significance of the a.s.sumption of four elements which plays so large a part in subsequent philosophies. There is no need of enlarging on the importance of the a.s.sociation of multiple elements with the postulate that nothing is absolutely created and nothing absolutely pa.s.ses away. These are indeed the pillars that support chemical science, and they further imply the existence of qualities of different rank; but that implication, as we shall see, lay even in the process of rarefaction and condensation introduced by Anaximenes. The four elements concern us here chiefly as testifying to the fact that certain practical interests had summed up the essential characteristics of nature in forms sufficiently significant to have maintained themselves even to our day. In regard to fire, air, and water this is not greatly to be wondered at; it is a somewhat different case with earth. If metallurgy and other pursuits which deal with that which is roughly cla.s.sed as earth had been highly enough developed to have reacted upon the popular mind, this element could not possibly have been a.s.sumed to be so h.o.m.ogeneous. The conception clearly reflects the predominantly agricultural interest of the Greeks in their relation to the earth. This further ill.u.s.trates the slow progress which deduction makes in the reconst.i.tution of the subject.

It is different, however, with Anaxagoras and the Atomists. Apparently the movement begun by Empedocles soon ran its extreme course. Instead of four elements there is now an infinite number of substances, each differentiated from the other. The meaning of this wide swing of the pendulum is not altogether clear; but it is evident from the system of Anaxagoras that the metals, for example, possessed a significance which they can not have had for Empedocles.

The opposite swing of the pendulum is seen in the later course of the Eleatics. Given a predicate as fixed and unified as they a.s.sumed, the subject cannot possibly be conceived in terms of it and hence it is denied outright. In the dialectic of Zeno and Melissus, dealing with the problems of the One and the Many, there is much that suggests the solution offered by the Atomists; but it is probably impossible now to ascertain whether these pa.s.sages criticise a doctrine already propounded or pointed the way for successors. While the Eleatics a.s.serted the sole reality of the One, Anaxagoras and the Atomists postulated a multiplicity without essential unity. But the human mind seems to be incapable of resting in that decision; it demands that the world shall have not meanings, but a meaning. This demand calls not only for a unified predicate, but also for an effective copula.

3. We have already remarked that the steps by which the predicate was inferred are for the most part unknown. Certain suggestions are contained in the reports of Aristotle, but it is safe to say that they are generally guesses well or ill founded. The summary inductive mediation has left few traces; and the process of verification, in the course of which hypotheses were rejected and modified, can be followed only here and there in the records. Almost our only source of information is the dialectic of systems. Fortunately for our present purpose we do not need to know the precise form which a question a.s.sumed to the minds of the several philosophers; the efforts which they made to meet the imperious demands of logic here speak for themselves.

At first there was no scheme for the mediation of the predicate back to the subject. Indeed there seems not to have existed in the mind of Thales a sense of its need. Anaximander raised the question, but the process of segregation or separation ([Greek: ekkrinesthai]) which he propounded was so vaguely conceived that it has created more problems than it solved. Anaximenes first proposed a scheme that has borne fruits. He said that things are produced from air by rarefaction and condensation. This process offers not only a principle of difference, but also a regulative conception, the evaluation of which engaged the thought of almost all the later Pre-Socratics. It implies that extension and ma.s.s const.i.tute the essential characters of substance, and, fully apprehended, contains in germ the whole materialistic philosophy from Parmenides at one extreme to Democritus and Anaxagoras at the other. The difficulties inherent in the view were unknown to Anaximenes; for, having a unitary predicate, he a.s.sumed also a h.o.m.ogeneous subject.

The logical position of Herac.l.i.tus is similar to that of Anaximenes. He likewise posits a simple predicate and further signalizes its functional character by naming it Fire. Without venturing upon debatable ground we may say that it was the restless activity of the element that caused him to single it out as best expressing the meaning of things. Its rhythmic libration typified to him the principle of change in existence and of existence in change. It is the "ever-living" copula, devouring subject and predicate alike and re-creating them functionally as co-ordinate expressions of itself. That which alone _is_, the abiding, is not the physical composition of a thing, but the law of reciprocity by which it maintains a balance. This he calls variously by the names of Harmony, Logos, Necessity, Justice. In this system of functional co-ordinates nothing escapes the accounting on 'Change;[91] all things are in continuous flux, only the nodes of the rhythm remaining constant. It is not surprising therefore that Herac.l.i.tus has been the subject of so much speculation and comment in modern times; for the functional character of all distinctions in his system marks the affinity of his doctrines for those of modern psychology and logic.[92]

The Pythagoreans, having by abstraction obtained a predicate, acknowledged the existence of the subject, but did not feel the need of a copula in the theoretical sphere, except as it concerned the inner relation of the predicate. To them the world was number, but number itself was pluralistic, or let us rather say dualistic. The odd and the even, the generic const.i.tuents of number, had somehow to be brought together. The bond was found in Unity, or, again, in Harmony. When they inquired how numbers const.i.tuted the world, their answer was in general only a nugatory exercise of an unbridled fancy.[93] Such and such a number was Justice, such another, Man. It was only in the wholly practical sphere of experiment that they reached a conclusion worth recording. Its significance they themselves did not perceive. Here, by the application of mathematical measurements to sounds, they discovered how to produce tones of a given pitch, and thus successfully demonstrated the efficiency of their copula.

The Eleatics followed the same general course of abstraction; but with them the sense of the unity of the world effaced its rich diversity.

Xenophanes does not appear to have pressed the conception so far as to deny all change within the world. Parmenides, however, bated no jot of the legitimate consequences of his logical position, interpreting, as he did, the predicate, originally conceived as meaning, in terms of existence. That which is simply _is_. Thus there is left only a one-time predicate, now converted into a subject of which only itself, as a brute fact, can be predicated. Stated logically, Parmenides is capable only of uttering identical propositions: A=A. The fallacious character of the report of the senses and the impossibility of Becoming followed as a matter of course. Where the logical copula is a mere sign of equation there can be neither induction nor deduction. We are caught in a theoretical _cul-de-sac_.

We are not now concerned to know in what light the demand for a treatise on the world of Opinion may have appeared to Parmenides himself. The avenues by which men reach conclusions which are capable of simplification and syllogistic statement are too various to admit of plausible conjecture in the absence of specific evidence. But it is clear that his resort to the expedient reflected a consciousness of the state of deadlock. In that part of his philosophical poem he dealt with many questions of detail in a rather more practical spirit. Following the lead of Herac.l.i.tus and the Pythagoreans he was more successful here than in the field of metaphysics. Thus we see once more that the wounds of theory are healed by practice. But, as usual, even though the metaphysician does receive the answer to his doubts by falling into a severely practical pit and extricating himself by steps which he fas.h.i.+ons with his hands, his mental habit is not thereby reconstructed.

The fixed predicate of the Eleatics was bequeathed to the Platonic-Aristotelian formal logic, and induction and deduction remained for centuries in theory a race between the hedgehog and the hare.[94]

The true significance of the destructive criticism brought to bear by Zeno and Melissus on the concepts of unity, plurality, continuity, extension, time, and motion is simply this: that when by a s.h.i.+ft of the attention a predicate becomes subject or meaning fossilizes as existence, the terms of the logical process lose their functional reference and grow to be unmeaning and self-contradictory.

We have already remarked that Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists sought to solve the problem of the One and the Many, of the subject and the predicate, by shattering the unitary predicate and thus leaving the field to plurality in both spheres. But obviously they were merely postponing the real question. Thought, as well as action, demands a unity somewhere. Hence the absorbing task of these philosophers is to disclose or contrive such a bond of unity. The form which their quest a.s.sumed was the search for a basis for physical interaction.[95]

Empedocles clearly believed that he was solving the difficulty in one form when he inst.i.tuted the rhythmic libration between unity under the sway of Love and multiplicity under the domination of Hate. But even he was not satisfied with that. While Love brought all the elements together into a sphere and thus produced a unity, it was a unity const.i.tuted of a mixture of elements possessing inalienable characters not only different but actually antagonistic. On the other hand, Hate did indeed separate the confused particles, but it effected a sort of unity in that, by segregating the particles of the several elements from the others, it brought like and like together. In so far Aristotle was clearly right in attributing to Love the power to separate as well as to unite. Moreover, it would seem that there never was a moment in which both agencies were not conceived to be operative, to however small an extent.

Empedocles a.s.serted, however, that a world could arise only in the intervals between the extremes of victory in the contest between Love and Hate, when, so to speak, the battle was drawn and there was a general _melee_ of the combatants. It may be questioned, perhaps, whether he distinctly stated that in our world everything possessed its portion of each of the elements; but so indispensable did he consider this _mixture_ that its function of providing a physical unity is unmistakable. A further evidence of his insistent demand for unity--the copula--is found in his doctrine that only like can act on like; and the scheme of pores and effluvia which he contrived bears eloquent testimony to the earnest consideration he gave to this matter. For he conceived that all interaction took place by means of them.

Empedocles, then, may be said to have annulled the decree of divorce he had issued for the elements at the beginning. But the solution here too is found, not in the theoretical, but in the practical, sphere; for he never retracts his a.s.sertion that the elements are distinct and antagonistic. But even so his problem is defined rather than solved; for after the elements have been brought within microscopic distance of each other in the mixture, since like can act only on like, the narrow s.p.a.ce that separates them is still an impa.s.sable gulf.[96]

Anaxagoras endowed his infinitely numerous substances with the same characters of fixity and contrariety that mark the four elements of Empedocles. For him, therefore, the difficulty of securing unity and co-operation in an effective copula is, if that be possible, further aggravated. His grasp of the problem, if we may judge from the relatively small body of doc.u.mentary evidence, was not so sure as that of Empedocles, though he employed in general the same means for its solution. He too postulates a mixture of all substances, more consciously and definitely indeed than his predecessor. Believing that only like can act on like,[97] he is led to a.s.sume not only an infinite multiplicity of substances, but also their complete mixture, so that everything, however small, contains a portion of every other. Food, for example, however seeming-simple, nourishes the most diverse tissues of the body. Thus we discover in the universal mixture of substances the basis for co-operation and interaction.

Anaxagoras, therefore, like Empedocles, feels the need of bridging the chasm which he has a.s.sumed to exist between his distinct substances.

Their failure is alike great, and is due to the presuppositions they inherited from the Eleatic conception of a severe h.o.m.ogeneity which implies an absolute difference from everything else. The embarra.s.sment of Anaxagoras increases with the introduction of the [Greek: Nous]. This agency was conceived with a view to explaining the formation of the world; that is, with a view to mediating between the myriad substances in their essential aloofness and effecting the harmonious concord of concrete things. While, even on the basis of a universal mixture, the function of the [Greek: Nous] was foredoomed to failure, its task was made more difficult still by the definition given to its nature.

According to Anaxagoras it was the sole exception to the composite character of things; it is absolutely pure and simple in nature.[98] By its definition, then, it is prevented from accomplis.h.i.+ng the work it was contrived to do; and hence we cannot be surprised at the lamentations raised by Plato and Aristotle about the failure of Anaxagoras to employ the agency he had introduced. To be sure, the [Greek: Nous] is no more a _deus ex machina_ than were the ideas of Plato or the G.o.d of Aristotle. They all labored under the same restrictions.

The Atomists followed with the same recognition of the Many, in the infinitely various kinds of atoms; but it was tempered by the a.s.sumption of an essential h.o.m.ogeneity. One atom is distinguished from another by characteristics due to its spatial relations. Ma.s.s and weight are proportional to size. Aristotle reports that, though things and atoms have differences, it is not in virtue of their differences, but in virtue of their essential ident.i.ty, that they interact.[99] There is thus introduced a distinction which runs nearly, but not quite, parallel to that between primary and secondary qualities.[100] Primary qualities are those of size, shape, and perhaps[101] position; all others are secondary. On the other hand, that which is common to all atoms is their corporeity, which does indeed define itself with reference to the primary (spatial) qualities, but not alike in all. The atoms of which the world is const.i.tuted are alike in essential nature, but they differ most widely in position.

It is the void that breaks up the unity of the world--atomizes it, if we may use the expression. It is the basis of all discontinuity. Atoms and void are thus polar extremes reciprocally exclusive. The atoms in their utter isolation in s.p.a.ce are incapable of producing a world. In order to bridge the chasm between atom and atom, recourse is had to motion eternal, omnipresent, and necessary. This it is that annihilates distances. In the course of their motion atoms collide, and in their impact one upon the other the Atomists find the precise mode of co-operation by which the world is formed.[102] To this agency are due what Lucretius happily called "generating motions."

The problem, however, so insistently pursued the philosophers of this time that the Atomists did not content themselves with this solution, satisfactory as modern science has pretended to consider it. They followed the lead of Empedocles and Anaxagoras in postulating a widespread, if not absolutely universal, _mixture_. Having on principle excluded "essential" differences among the atoms, the impossibility of finally distinguis.h.i.+ng essential and non-essential had its revenge.

Important as the device of mixture was to Empedocles and Anaxagoras, just so unmeaning ought it to have been in the Atomic philosophy, provided that the hypothesis could accomplish what was claimed for it.

It is not necessary to rea.s.sert that the a.s.sumption of "individua,"

utterly alienated one from the other by a void, rendered the problem of the copula insoluble for the Atomists.

Diogenes of Apollonia is commonly treated contemptuously as a mere reactionary who harked back to Anaximenes and had no significance of his own. The best that can be said of such an att.i.tude is that it regards philosophical theories as accidental utterances of individuals, naturally well or ill endowed, who happen to express conclusions with which men in after times agree or disagree. A philosophical tenet is an atom, set somewhere in a vacuum, utterly out of relation to everything else. But it is impossible to see how, on this theory, any system of thought should possess any significance for anybody, or how there should be any progress even, or r.e.t.a.r.dation.

Viewed entirely from without, the doctrine of Diogenes would seem to be substantially a recrudescence of that of Anaximenes. Air is once more the element or [Greek: arche] out of which all proceeds and into which all returns. Again the process of transformation is seen in rarefaction and condensation; and the attributes of substance are those which were common to the early hylozoists. But there is present a keen sense of a problem unknown to Anaximenes. What the early philosopher a.s.serted in the innocence of the youth of thought, the later physiologist reiterates with emphasis because he believes that the words are words of life.

The motive for recurring to the earlier system is supplied by the imperious demand for a copula which had so much distressed Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists. And here we are not left to conjecture, but are able to refer to the _ipsissima verba_ of our philosopher. After a brief prologue, in which he stated that one's starting-point must be beyond dispute, he immediately[103] turned to his theme in these words:[104] "In my opinion, to put the whole matter in a nutsh.e.l.l, all things are derived by alteration from the same substance, and indeed all are one and the same. And this is altogether evident. For if the things that now exist in the world--earth and water and air and fire and whatsoever else appears to exist in this world--if, I say, any one of these were different from the other, different that is to say in its proper peculiar nature, and did not rather, being one and the same, change and alter in many ways, then in no-wise would things be able to mix with one another, nor would help or harm come to one from the other, nor would any plant spring from the earth, nor any other living thing come into being, if things were not so const.i.tuted as to be one and the same."

These words contain a singularly interesting expression of the need of restoring the integrity of the process which had been lost in the effort to solve the problem of the One and the Many without abandoning the point of view won by the Eleatics. Aristotle and Theophrastus paraphrase and sum up the pa.s.sage above quoted by saying[105] that interaction is impossible except on the a.s.sumption that all the world is one and the same. Hence it is manifest, as was said above, that the return of Diogenes to the monistic system of Anaximenes had for its conscious motive the avoidance of the dualism that had sprung up in the interval and had rendered futile the multiplied efforts to secure an effective copula.

We should note, however, that in the attempt thus made to undo the work of several generations Diogenes retained the principle which had wrought the mischief. We have before remarked that the germ of the Atomic philosophy was contained in the process of rarefaction and condensation.

Hence, in accepting it along with the remainder of Anaximenes's theory, the fatal a.s.sumption was reinstated. It is the story of human systems in epitome. The superstructure is overthrown, and with the debris a new edifice is built upon the old foundations.

In the entire course of philosophical thought from Thales onward the suggestion of an opposition between the subject and the predicate had appeared. It has often been said that it was expressed by the search for a [Greek: physis], or a _true nature_, in contrast with the world as practically accepted. There is a certain truth in this view; for the effort to attain a predicate which does not merely repeat the subject does imply that there is an opposition. But the efforts made to return from the predicate to the subject, in a deductive movement, shows that the difference was not believed to be absolute. This is true, however, only of those fields of speculation that lie next to the highways of practical life, which lead equally in both directions, or, let us rather say, which unite while they mark separation. In the sphere of abstract ideas the sense of embarra.s.sment was deep and constantly growing deeper. The reconstruction, accomplished on lower levels, did not attain unto those heights. Men doubted conclusions, but did not think to demand the credentials of their common presuppositions.

Side by side with the later philosophers whom we have mentioned there walked men whom we are wont to call the Sophists. They were the journalists and pamphleteers of those days, men who, without dealing profoundly with any special problem, familiarized themselves with the generalizations of workers in special fields and combined these ideas for the entertainment of the public. They were neither philosophers nor physicists, but, like some men whom we might cite from our own times, endeavored to popularize the teachings of both. Naturally they seized upon the most sweeping generalizations and the preconceptions which disclosed themselves in manifold forms. Just as naturally they had no eyes with which to detect the significance of the besetting problems at which, in matters more concrete, the masters were toiling. Hence the contradictions, revealed in the a.n.a.lysis we have just given of the philosophy of the age, stood out in utter nakedness.

The result was inevitable. The inability to discover a unitary predicate, more still, the failure to attain a working copula, led directly to the denial of the possibility of predication. There was no truth. Granted that it existed, it could not be known. Even if known, it could not be communicated. In these incisive words of Gorgias the conclusion of the ineffectual effort to establish a logic of science is clearly stated. But the statement is happily only the half-truth, which is almost a complete falsehood. It takes no account of the indications, everywhere present, of a needed reconstruction. Least of all does it catch the meaning of such a demand.

The Sophists did not, however, merely repeat in abstract from the teachings of the philosophers. It matters not whether they originated the movement or not; at all events they were pioneers in the field of moral philosophy. Here it was that they chiefly drew the inferences from the distinction between [Greek: physei] and [Greek: nomo]. Nothing could have been more effective in disengaging the firmly rooted moral pre-possessions and rendering them amenable to philosophy. Just here, at last, we catch a hint of the significance of the logical process. In a striking pa.s.sage in Plato's _Protagoras_,[106] which one is fain to regard as an essentially true reproduction of a discourse by that great man, Justice and Reverence are accorded true validity. On inquiring to what characteristic this honorable distinction is due, we find that it does not reside in themselves; it is due to _the a.s.sumption that a state must exist_.

Here, then, in a word, is the upshot of the logical movement. Logical predicates are essentially hypothetical, deriving their validity from the interest that moves men to affirm them. When they lose this hypothetical character, as terms within a volitional system, and set up as ent.i.ties at large, they cease to function and forfeit their right to exist.

X

VALUATION AS A LOGICAL PROCESS

The purpose of this discussion is to supply the main outlines of a theory of value based upon a.n.a.lysis of the valuation-process from the logical point of view. The general principle which we shall seek to establish is that judgments of value, whether pa.s.sed upon things or upon modes of conduct, are essentially objective in import, and that they are reached through a process of valuation which is essentially of the same logical character as the judgment-process whereby conclusions of physical fact are established--in a word, that the valuation-process, issuing in the finished judgment of value expressive of the judging person's definitive att.i.tude toward the thing in question, is constructive of an order of reality in the same sense as, in current theories of knowledge, is the judgment of sense-perception and science.

Our method of procedure to this end will be that of a.s.suming, and adhering to as consistently as possible, the standpoint of the individual in the process of deliberating upon an ethical or economic problem (for, as we shall hold, all values properly so called are either ethical or economic), and of ascertaining, as accurately as may be, the meaning of the deliberative or evaluating process and of the various factors in it as these are presented in the individual's apprehension.

It is in this sense that our procedure will be logical rather than psychological. We shall be concerned to determine the _meaning_ of the object of valuation as object, of the standard of value as standard, and of the valued object as valued, in terms of the individual's own apprehension of these, rather than to ascertain the nature and conditions of his apprehensions of these considered as psychical events. Our attention will throughout be directed to these factors or phases of the valuation-process in their functional aspect of determinants of the valuing agent's practical att.i.tude, and never, excepting for purposes of incidental ill.u.s.tration and in a very general and tentative way, as events in consciousness mediated by more "elementary" psychical processes. The results which we shall gain by adhering to this method will enable us to see not merely that our judgments of value are in function and meaning objective, but also that our judgments of sense-perception and science are, as such, capable of satisfactory interpretation only as being incidental to the attainment and progressive reconstruction of judgments of value.

The first three main divisions will be given over to establis.h.i.+ng the objectivity of content and function of judgments of value. The fourth division will present a detailed a.n.a.lysis of the two types of judgment of value, the ethical and economic, defining them and relating them to each other, and correlating them in the manner just suggested with judgment of the physical type. After considering, in the fifth part, certain general objections to the positions thus stated, we shall proceed in the sixth and concluding division to define the function of the consciousness of value in the economy of life.[107]

I

The system of judgments which defines what one calls the objective order of things is inevitably unique for each particular individual. No two men can view the world from the standpoint of the same theoretical and practical interests, nor can any two proceed in the work of gaining for themselves knowledge of the world with precisely equal degrees of skill and accuracy. Each must be prompted and guided, in the construction of his knowledge of single things and of the system in which they have their being, by his own particular interests and aims; and even when one person in a measure shares in the interests and aims of another, the rate and manner of procedure will not be the same for both, nor will the knowledge gained be for both equally systematic in arrangement or in interrelation of its parts. Each man lives in a world of his own--a world, indeed, identical in certain fundamental respects with the worlds which his fellow-men have constructed for themselves, but one nevertheless necessarily unique through and through because each man is a unique individual. There is, doubtless, a "social currency" of objects which implies a certain ident.i.ty of meaning in objects as experienced by different individuals. The existence of society presupposes, and its evolution in turn develops and extends, a system of generally accepted objects and relations. Nevertheless, the "socially current object" is, as such, an abstraction just as the uniform social individual is likewise an abstraction. The only concrete object ever actually known or in any wise experienced by any person is the object as constructed by that person in accordance with his own aims and purposes, and in which there is, therefore, a large and important share of meaning which is significant to no one else.

It is needless in this discussion to dwell at length upon the general principle of recent "functional" psychology, that practical ends are the controlling factors in the acquisition of our knowledge of objective things. We shall take for granted the truth of the general proposition that cognition, in whatever sphere of science or of practical life, is essentially teleological in the sense of being incidental always, more or less directly, to the attainment of ends. Cognition, as the apperceptive or attentive process, is essentially the process of scrutinizing a situation (whether theoretical or practical) with a view to determining the availability for one's intended purpose of such objects and conditions as the situation may present. The objects and conditions thus determined will be made use of or ignored, counted upon as advantageous or guarded against as unfavorable--in a word, responded to--in ways suggested by their character as ascertained through reference to the interest in question. In this sense, then, objective things as known by individual persons are essentially complex stimuli whose proper function and reason for being it is to elicit useful responses in the way of conduct--responses conducive to the realization of ends.

From this point of view, then, the difference between one person's knowledge of a particular object and another's signifies (1) a difference between these persons' original purposes in setting out to gain knowledge of the object, and (2) consequently a difference between their present ways of acting with reference to the object. The bare object as socially current is, at best, for each individual simply a ground upon which subsequent construction may be made; and the subsequent construction which each individual is prompted by his circ.u.mstances and is able to work out in judgment first makes the object, for this individual, real and for his purposes complete.

Now, it is our primary intention to show that objects are, in cases of a certain important cla.s.s, not yet ready to serve the person who knows them in their proper character of stimuli, when they have been, even exhaustively, defined in merely physical terms. It is very often not enough that the dimensions of an object and its physical properties, even the more recondite ones as well as those more commonly understood--it is often not enough for the purposes of an agent that these characters should make up the whole sum of his knowledge of the object in question. A measure of knowledge in terms of physical categories is often only a beginning--the result of a preliminary stage of the entire process of teleological determination, which must be carried through before the object of attention can be satisfactorily known. In the present study of the logic of valuation we shall be occupied exclusively with the discussion of cases of this kind. In our judgments of sense-perception and physical science we have presented to us material objects in their physical aspect. When these latter are inadequate to suggest or warrant overt conduct, our knowledge of them must be supplemented and reconstructed in ways presently to be specified. It is in the outcome of judgment-processes in which this work of supplementing and reconstructing is carried through that the consciousness of value, in the proper sense, arises, and these processes, then, are those which we shall here consider under the name of "processes of valuation." They will therefore best be approached through specification of the ways in which our physical judgments may be inadequate.

Let us, then, a.s.sume, as has been indicated, that the process of acquiring knowledge--that is to say, the process of judgment or attention--is in every case of its occurrence incidental to the attainment of an end. We must make this a.s.sumption without attempting formally to justify it--though in the course of our discussion it will be abundantly ill.u.s.trated. Let us, in accordance with this view, think of the typical judgment-process as proceeding, in the main, as follows: First of all must come a sense of need or deficiency, which may, on occasion, be preceded by a more or less violent and sudden shock to the senses, forcibly turning one's attention to the need of immediate action. By degrees this sense of need will grow more definite and come to express itself in a more or less "clear and distinct" image of an end, toward which end the agent is drawn by desire and to which he looks with much or little of emotion. The emergence of the end into consciousness immediately makes possible and occasions definite a.n.a.lysis of the situation in which the end must be worked out. Salient features of the situation forthwith are noticed--whether useful things or favoring conditions, or, on the other hand, the absence of any such.

Thus predicates and then subjects for many subsidiary judgments in the comprehensive judgment-process emerge together in action and interaction upon each other. The predicates, developed out of the general end toward which the agent strives, afford successive points of view for fresh a.n.a.lyses of the situation. The logical subjects thus discovered--_objects_ of attention and knowledge--require, on the other hand, as they are scrutinized and judged, modification and re-examination of the end. The end grows clearer and fuller of detail as the predicates or implied ("const.i.tuent") ideas which are developed out of it are distinguished from each other and used in making one's inventory of the objective situation. Conversely, the situation loses its first aspect of confusion and takes on more and more the aspect of an orderly a.s.semblage of objects and conditions, useful, indifferent, and adverse, by means of which the end may in greater or less measure be attained or must, in however greatly modified a form, be defeated. Now, in this development of the judgment-process, it must be observed, the end must be more or less clearly and consistently conceived throughout as an _activity_, if the objective means of action which have been determined in the process are not to be, at the last, separate and unrelated data still requiring co-ordination. If the end has been so conceived, the means will inevitably be known as members of a mechanical _system_, since the predicates by which they have been determined have at every point involved this factor of amenability to co-ordination.

The judgment-process, if properly conducted and brought to a conclusion, must issue at the end in the functional unity of a finished plan of conduct with a perfected mechanical co-ordination of the available means.

We have now to see that much more may be involved in such a process as this than has been explicitly stated in our brief a.n.a.lysis. For the end itself may be a matter of deliberation, just as must be the physical means of accomplis.h.i.+ng it; and, again, the means may call for scrutiny and determination from other points of view than the physical and mechanical. The final action taken at the end may express the outcome of deliberate ethical and economic judgment as well as of judgments in the sphere of sense-perception and physical science. Let us consider, for example, that one's end is the construction of a house upon a certain plot of ground. This end expresses the felt need of a more comfortable or more reputable abode, and has so much of general presumption in its favor. There may, however, be many reasons for hesitation. The cost in time or money or materials on hand may tax one's resources and injuriously curtail one's activities along other lines. And there may be ethical reasons why the plan should not be carried out. The house may shut off a pleasing prospect from the view of the entire neighborhood and serve no better end than the gratification of its owner's selfish vanity. It will cost a sum of money which might be used in paying just, though outlawed, debts.

Now, from the standpoint of such problems as these the fullest possible preliminary knowledge of the physical and mechanical fitness of our means must still be very abstract and general. It would be of use in any undertaking like the one we have supposed, but it is not sufficient in so far as the problem is one's own problem, concrete, particular, and so unique. One may, of course, proceed to the stage of physical judgment without having settled the ethical problems which may have presented themselves at the outset. The end may be entertained tentatively as a hypothesis until certain mechanical problems have been dealt with. But manifestly this is only postponement of the issue. The agent is still quite unprepared, even after the means have been so far determined, to take the first step in the execution of the plan; indeed, his uncertainty is probably only the more hara.s.sing than before.

Moreover, the economic problems in the case are now more sharply defined, and these for the time being still further darken counsel.

Manifestly the need for deliberation is at this point quite as urgent as the need for physical determination can ever be, and the need is evidenced in the same way by the actual arrest and postponement of overt conduct. The agent, despite his physical knowledge, is not yet free to embrace the end and, having done so, use thereto the means at his disposal. It is plainly impossible to use the physical means until one knows in terms of Substance and Attribute or Cause and Effect, or whatever other physical categories one may please, what manner of behavior may be expected of them. So likewise is it as truly impossible, for one intellectually and morally capable of appreciating problems of a more advanced and complex sort, to exploit the physical properties thus discovered until ethical determination of the end and economic determination of the means have been completed.[108]