Arts, Faculty of
Philosophy, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Stedman, Ralph Elliott
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
[No abstract available]
THE PHILOSOPHY of BERNARD BOSANQUET t>y Ralph Elliott Stedman \ A Thesis submitted for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Department of PHILOSOPHY The University of British Columbia April - 1928 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERNARD BOSANQUET PREFACE In undertaking a work of this kind it is obvious that the writer, inasmuch as his appreciation"of his subject expands geometrically with greater understanding of and penetration into it, will always feel that his task is poorly done. This essay is rather an attempt to understand Bosanquet's thought than to criticise and evaluate it Justly. It is certain that criticism will creep in, at least in implication, and that evaluation cannot be escaped even in exposition. It should suffice to say that, at present, Bosanquet's position seems to the writer to be trery strong; and far more comprehensive and thorough than any of the somewhat easy-going pluralisms which are springing up around us. That there are difficulties remainiiig none can doubt, but this study is a beginning rather than an end. CONTENTS PART I INTRODUCTORY Chapter I His Life " II His Philosophical Affiliations 1. Remote a.Plato b.Spinoza c.Rousseau a.Hegel. E. Immediate a.Green and the Neo-Hegelians b.Bradley. " III Some General Comments Concerning His Philosophy. 1. Originality S. Peculiarities of His Idealism. a.Its placing of Mind. b.Not Subjectivism c.Not an "ancilla fidei" 3. His Starting Point. a.The'best of experience.' b.The 'full impression' c.importance and Reality' 4. Comparison with Bradley. a.Positive and optimistic "b.Diffusene3s of style and argument. CONTENTS PART I INTRODUCTORY Chapter I His Life " II His Philosophical Affiliations 1. Remote a.Plato b.Spinoza c.Rousseau a.Hegel. E. Immediate a.Green and the Neo-Hegelians b.Bradley. " III Some General Comments Concerning His Philosophy. 1. Originality S. Peculiarities of His Idealism. a.Its placing of Mind. b.Not Subjectivism c.Not an "ancilla fidei" 3. His Starting Point. a.The'best of experience.' b.The 'full impression' c.importance and Reality' 4. Comparison with Bradley. a.Positive and optimistic "b.Diffusene3s of style and argument. -III-PART II-A Chapter VI Mind, Body and Nature. 1. Paradox of His View of Mind. 2. Theories of Mind. 3. Nature and Mind. a. As complimentary b. As indistinguishable at their 'edges.* 4. Body and Mind. a. Mechanism b. Rejection of 'entelechy,' "teleology,' 'sponteneity.' 5. Recapitulation. Chapter VII The Self-Transcendence of the Finite Individual. 1. Are Selves Exclusive and Substantive? 2. Self-Transcendence. a. The fluctuation of the self between a bare potentiality and the absolute. b. The defect of the finite self. c. Accentuation of vitality in self-transcendence. d. Difficulty of finding suitable terms. 3. Illustrations. a. Art. b. Love. c. Society. -II-PART II-A METAPHYSIC AND LOGIC Chapter IV The Concrete Universal. 1. Statement of the Principle. £. Univer3als. a. Defect of the general rule. b. A true theory of identity. c. The Concrete Universal. 3. The Individual Rather than the Particular. 4. Ultimately there can only be One Individual. Chapter V Thought. 1. The Appeal to the Whole. a. The gulf between the 'real and the ideal.' b. The stability of a 'world.' c. Thought is 'self expression of reality in finite minds.' 2. Questions Remaining. a. Why'toward a world?' b. Why 'thought' rather than will, activity, intuition or feeling?' c. The relation of thought to existence. -VI-PART III Chapter XIII The World of Spiritual Membership. Hoi Chapter XVI Freedom. 1. The Capture of Mechanism by Freedom. 2. The Rejection of Contingency. 3. The Rejection of Pre-determination. Self-Determination the Rule. 4. Objections Reviewed. a. That this is not freedom b. That initiative is denied c. Creativity Is not ®de novo' but none the less real. 5. Responsibility. Chapter XV Religion and God. 1. His Attitude to Religion. 2. Bhat is the Religious Consciousness? 3. Its Independence of an Independently Existent Deity. 4. Difficulties Inherent in any Statement of God. a. 'Good' rather than 'Perfection' b. A Person. c. An 'Existent' 5. Religion an Attitude and a Devotion. Chapter XVI Immortality 1. Survival Rejected a. For Its heedlessness, b. Its extreme difficulty. c. Its naivete of belief. -III-PART II-A Chapter VI Mind, Body and Nature. 1. Paradox of His View of Mind. E. Theories of Mind. 3. Nature and Mind. a. As complimentary b. As indistinguishable at their 'edges.* 4. Body and Mind. a. Mechanism b. Rejection of 'entelechy,' "teleology,' 'sponteneity.' 5. Recapitulation. Chapter VII The Self-Transcendence of the Finite Individual. 1. Are Selves Exclusive and Substantive? E, Self-Transcendence. a. The fluctuation of the self between a bare potentiality and the absolute. b. The defect of the finite self. c. Accentuation of vitality in self-transcendence. d. Difficulty of finding suitable terms. 3. Illustrations. a. Art. b. Love. c. Society. -IV-PART II-A Chapter VIII The Absolute. ' 1. The Notion of the Absolute. a. Mistaken notions. b. The absolute implied in judgment. c. And in experience. 2. Is Knowledge of the Absolute Possible? There are clues. 3. What the Absolute cannot be. 4. What the Absolute may be. a. Formula of inclusion. b. Formula of transmutation. 5. Is the Absolute a 'Conscious Being?9 6. Examination of Criticism. PART II-B LOGIC Chapter IX Logic. 1. The Continuity of the Logical Forms. ^ 2. Criticism of a. Formal logic. b. Inductive logic. c. Symbolic logic d. Instrumental logic. - X -PART III Chapter XIII The World of Spiritual Membership. Hoi Chapter XVI Freedom. 1. The Capture of Mechanism by Freedom. 2. The Rejection of Contingency. 3. The Rejection of Pre-determination. Self-Determination the Rule. 4. Objections Reviewed. a. That this is not freedom b. That initiative is denied c. Creativity is not ®de novo' but none the less real. 5. Responsibility. Chapter XV Religion and God. 1. His Attitude to Religion. 2. Bhat is the Religious Consciousness? 3. Its Independence of an Independently Existent Deity. 4. Difficulties Inherent in any Statement of God. a. 'Good' rather than 'Perfection' b. A Person. c. An 'Existent' 5. Religion an Attitude and a Devotion. Chapter XVI Immortality 1. Survival Rejected a. For Its heedlessness, b. Its extreme difficulty. c. Its naivete of belief. -XI-PART II-B Chapter X The Logic of the Whole. 1. Sensation to Science. 2. Judgment. 3. Inference. 4. Intuition. PART III ETHICS AND RELIGION Chapter XI The Finite-Infinite Life (Pleasure and Pain) 1. Contradiction and Tension. 2. Pleasure and Pain. a. Their common root. b. Refutation of Pessimism. 3. The Weight of Suffering. a. Transmutation of '"brute agony1 to tragedy. b. Dens and Slums! Chapter XII The Finite-Infinite Life (The Moral Struggle) 1. The Conflict of the Whole Man 2. Good and Evil a. Have a common content b. And are correlative 3. This View does not Minimize the Moral Struggle. 4. The 'Final Victory of Good.' 5. 'Beyond Justice.' -VII-Chapter XVI (Cont'd) 2. What is Wanted is Survival of Values, Chapter XVII Progress PART IV FINIS Chapter XVIII Criticism Reviewed and a Word as to His Influence. 1. Criticism a. Reviewed "b. Of his logic, especially of the 'concrete universal' c. Criticism rejected 2. His Influence A very tentative fore-cast ABBREVIATIONS USED "Principle" "Value and Destiny" "Principle of Individuality and Value" "Value and Destiny of the Individual" "Meeting of Extremes" "Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy" "Symposium" "Life and Finite Individuality" In Aristotelian Society - N.S. IS HIS LIFE Part I Chapter I All who have written of the life of Bernard Bosanquet have done so with the feeling that they wrote of a very great man. And this is the more remarkable in that in the company of philosophers it is the more difficult to attain distinction because of the greatness of the tradition to be maintained. Both by the depth and breadth of his thought, and by the fineness of his character Bosanquet counts as among the foremost Englishmen of his generation, and that a generation rich in great men. Within his life's span fell most of the changes which have made our'modern world.' These movements he watched closely, and interpreted in the light of a knowledge of all that had been the most real in times previous, unexcelled by any contemporary. It is remarked that T.H. Green, his master at Balliol, considered him'the best equipped man of his generation.' S For an account of his life the reader should turn to the memoir by his wife. Only a brief note will be written here, for, as Bosanquet himself has said "the best of him is in his books." He was born in 1848 near Alnwick in Northumberland, of Huguenot-Scottish stock, and spent his early years after the manner of the sons of the 'country family.' His father was the squire of Rock, a tiny village, and the incumbent also, of the tiny church. His mother was an able and charming woman, who varied the management of her family with a great deal of stiff reading. Doubtless both parents by their broad intellectual interests shaped the mind and hence the future of their son to no small degree. His love of Shakespeare, evident throughout his pages, he traced to his mother's influence. The usual 'prep' school, and then Harrow, provided whatever of an education such places do provide, and at nineteen years of age he went up to Balliol as a scholar. At Oxford the influence of Jowett and of T.H. Green was at its height. It was during his undergraduate years that he decided against entering the church, and the atmosph-ere of his college was probably no small determinant in this decision. In 1870 he took a first in Lit. Hum., and was elected a fellow of University College. Here he lived as a don for eleven years. His creative career began when he moved to London. Here for sixteen years he lectured in University Extension -played then a new thing - and/a prominent part in the work of the 3 Charity Organisation Society, and of the London Ethical Society. During these years his writing commenced, and he published in 1888 his 'Logic/ and in 1892 his 'History of Aesthetic,' and many other works of permanent value. At the end of the London period he married Miss Helen Dendy, also a scholar of distinction, and moved into Surrey; living for a while at Caterham, and then building a house on the edge of Oxshott Common. To 1903 he published, among other lesser volumes his 'Philosophical Theory of the State' for which alone, he would have attained distinction in the field of political philosophy. Throughtout these years his activit-ies, social and academic, were undiminished. In 1903 he accpeted the chair of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, and taught there for the five following years. Of his class work it is said that "Even the weakest student, though he might understand only half of what was said, yet realized that something great and grave was being communicated to him - an interpretation of human life and experience which, all along the line, challenged easy-going surface impressions and customary prejudices; which deepened insight here, expanded it there, and throughout acted as a powerful fpull' towards 1 a fresher and profounder understanding of the world." In the life of the university he took a keen interest, and his influen-ce was so great that philosophy became, if anything, too popular, 1. Professor Hoernle - quoted in "Bernard Bosanquet" p. 110 both in the class and without. Professor Burnet writes "Another thing which none of us who were his colleagues will ever forget is his readiness to engage in long philosophical discussions with anyone who cared for such things. To these discussions junior members of the staff were freely admitted, and he often took them, and even their seniors, quite out of 1 their depth - which was very good for them." With his retirement in 1908 from the chair at St. Andrews the most fruitful period of his life began. Between his sixtieth and his seventy-fifth year he published ten books as well as numerous papers for the Aristotelian Society and for the magazines. Not all of them were large books but they included the most important volumes of all, the Gifford lectures of 1911-12. The little book "Some Suggestions in Ethics," the only purely ethical writing he published, contains some of his best thought, expressed with great beauty of style. Examples of his style will appear throughout this essay, but not as models of English. A passage, therefore, to be read for its beauty alone, will be quoted. In a little excursion on our relation to animals he writes: "Everyone who has had a friend among dogs or horses or birds must have felt much enlarged in sympathy and in faith and courage by having a representative, so to speak, at the Court of Pan. Just because it lacks the intelligence directed to a whole beyond the individual, which forms the glory 1. His Memoir for the British Academy. 5 and the imperfection of a man, the lower animal carries in itself a peculiar anticipation of the Absolute. The dog which runs beside one seems a middle term and an interpreter between one's worrying mind and the tranquil life of things. This quickness and simple trustfulness of an animal which is once your friend is surely the secret of its attractiveness. It is, I have fancied, as if the Absolute came to eat out of your hand. It is a world or kingdom, foreign and unbiased by interests, which recognizes you of its sovereign indulgence. See two or three people in a garden, and how gratified that one is to whom a robin makes advances, just as if it were a child or a 1 king that did so." There is in this a beauty of thought, of mind, and of expression, and a touch of whimsicality which ought to be an answer to the accusation that Bosanquet is stern and without humor. It is, in conclusion, the always astonishing discovery of a man 'wholly at home with himself' and strongly serene, not hurrying through life in search of a guide to tell him the way, but finding in every experience joyous or tragic, great or small, something which makes stronger and clearer his grasps on the single dominant conviction that there is value in living, which most arrests the rediscoverer of Bosanquet, as he lives in his books. 1. Some Suggestions in Ethics - p.79 - 80 HIS PHILOSOPHICAL AFFILIATIONS Chapter II In order to place Bosanquet in his true station among philosophers, and to evaluate with any semblance of Justice the streams of influence that have centred in his system we would be compelled to have before us every detail of his philosophy and every nuance of his writing. This we cannot claim to have either here or at the end of this essay. For nothing less than a history of philosophy would suffice. This outline is intended only to indicate in the barest manner those who upon his own admission or by the most obvious of evidence have influenced his thought. A word or two only need be given to each. 1 First in order of time, and perhaps of deeper influence is Plato. From Plato, whom he constantly quotes and refers to, he has taken, in whole or in part, his sense of the need of synopsis in philosophy. Nothing less than 'the whole-spectacle' will serve. Then too, the solution of the problem of the one and the many' he feels to have been suggested in Plato's equally 'passionate' demand for multip-licity as well as unity; for differentiation as well as integ-ration and coherence. His own view of reality as a 'world' he takes to be foreshadowed in the concept of 'the good,' rightly understood. In the field of ethics the view of just-ice contained in the Republic he holds to be fundamental both in the life of the state and of the individual. That the 'spiritual' is not reached by abstraction from the mechanical and quantitative, but is rather reached through the refinement and organisation of the physical, he finds to be in harmony with 'Plato's deepest views. Details might be multiplied, but it will serve our purpose to note how profoundly his reading of Plato has coloured all of his thought. Leaping a millennium and more we come to Spinoza. While in his expression Bosanquet does not tend to reproduce that of Spinoza, nevertheless his spirit is at many points not dissimilar. In detail he accepted Spinoza's view of causality and of freedom, and particularly agrees with him in his view of what Spinoza called Substance, but what he called the Absolute. "It is that which the mind necessarily thinks as the ground of all being." It is the starting point of thought. The agreement, therefore, extends downward into the nature of things and of individuals who, both philosophers insist, may only be known as they are when considered as parts of an all-embracing whole. "The essences of individual things are not to be discovered by looking at the series or order of their existence, for in that way we can only get external marks or relations, but not the explanation of things in themselves .... These changeable things are so intimately and in their essence, dependent on those things which are 8 eternal, that, apart from them, the former can neither exist 1 nor "be conceived." Bosanquet acknowledges also that the third kind of cognition mentioned by Spinoza is noe other than that which Plato refers to as the contemplation of 'the good' and which he himself sometimes calls intuition, or at times, 'theoria.' That it is the nature of the thinking being, moreover, to frame true or adequate thoughts, he derives equally from Spinoza and He&el and from the whole classical tradition. Finally we may note that the attitude Spinoza termed 'amor intellectualis dei' is that which Bosanquet himself maintains toward the whole, and which he cites as the highest of experience. One recent writer characterizes Bosanquet as "A great and consistent student of Spinoza. All his life long he seems to have kept Spinoza by him, and in all his books down to the very last there are to be found discussions not only of Spinozist conceptions but even of Spinozist texts." "One may suspect indeed," he continues,"that the increase of his attention to Spinoza in his later years is evidence of his own recognition of the fact that the good which he had received from Hegel he could have derived, in a more simple and concrete (and perhaps in a less dubious) form directly 2 from Spinoza himself." If this is exaggeration it is no more so than a fair-minded Spinefeist is likely to fall into. 1. 3)e Intell. Emend. Chapter XIV. 2. I. Roth in Mind, U.S. 36 p.2C8. 9 For his influence upon Bosanquet's political philosophy - though we are not dealing at length with this phase in our essay - Rousseau must be mentioned. The doctrine of the 'Real Will1 so often misunderstood, but so important a part of his social theory is descended directly from Rousseau. But it may be pointed out that Bosanquet saw far more clearly the real bearing of the Rousselian doctrine than did its founder. The mark made upon the world of thought, and hence, upon Bosanquet (who, in a way, is in the direct line of descent) by Hegel is too deep to more than indicate, for it is obvious of itself. The chief acknowledgments which Bosanquet would offer to Hegel are; that philosophy begins and ends in the actual and the concrete; that the real is the rational, and the rational the real, and that man by his dependence upon the real is guaranteed the ability to think true thoughts, or thoughts of the real; that finite minds in no way constit-ute nature, but are themselves elicited by nature, and with nature are expressions of the real; that mind and freedom reach their summit in civilization, the ranges of 'objective mind;1 and finally that in art, especially, is an analogue of the absolute, and an aspect of experience most valuable to man. Bosanquet's high appreciation of this last is evid-concerning Hegel enced by his remark/ "The Philosophy of Fine Art is almost a 1 microcosm of his entire system." 1. In his Introduction. S These affiliations are more or less remote. Mention may be made also of those whose influence was immediate. It has been said that Hegel did not come into his own until he was transplanted into the more suitable soil and climate of constitutional and liberal England. The neo-Hegelian school of the mid-nineteenth century was the atmosphere of Bosanquet-'s early years. Especially was he influenced by T.H. Green, to whom he acknowledges a deep debt. As to this school in general he has written somewhere "Not that German Idealism has introduced into English thought an element wholly exotic and unknown, but rather that it has suggested certain intellect-ual forms and presented certain organized regions of experien-ce, drawn from the analogous, though distinct development of a kindred nation, which may aid in the systematic expression of that many sided ideal reality which our rational mind also has been grappling with, and gradually comprehending." From this school of English Hegelianism, and from Green in partic-ular .Bosanquet drew two conceptions very pronounced in their influence. The first is the conception of self-realization in the social whole, which co-operating with what he had taken of Rousseau, directly shaped his social and political philosophy. The practical interest of Green was intense, and Bosanquet came to share it. The second is not a single concept so much as a wealth of detailed suggestion in ethical theory, derived from Green's 'Prolegomena.' Then too the Cairds, and Wallace and Nettleship, also of this group have afforded Bosanquet much material and inspiration. 11 He with whom Bosanquet will always tend to be coupled, and whose work in a large measure paralleled his own, and to whom he acknowledged more debt than to any other modern is F.H. Bradley, fellow of Menton College. The conditions under which they worked were wholly different, their temperaments were different, but the bearing and chara-cter of their philosophy is strangely alike. Since space is taken below to differentiate the general tone and method of these two, we need not remark upon it here; but we may point their similarity. Bosanquet's logic, in the main, is th$ same as that of Bradley; this metaphysic is, apart from difference of terms, (and possibly one real departure of thought) almost alike. Characteristic phrases as "the degrees of truth and reality" are common to both. The only reason why Bosanquet did not write at length in the field of ethics was his appreciation of Bradley's 'Ethical Studies.® 12 SOME GENERAL COMMENTS Chapter III 1. The genuine originality of the philosophy of Bernard Bosanquet must not be minimized on account of the generous acknowledgment of indebtedness to former and to contemporary philosophers which is found in all of his writings. His membership of a great tradition is, to him, a greater source of pride than any distinctiveness he may have achieved. Nevertheless, that he has contributed to English Idealism something quite distinctive and in the truest sense original cannot be questioned. If it were only the unbending honesty of purpose coupled with a consideration for the thoughts of others, the complete absence of any controversial spirit even in sharp disagreement, his originality in this alone would not be undeserving of comment, but there is something more. As we shall amply see, creation is never 'de novo;' and therefore, if old materials are worked up into new forms, and old views are re-stated in astonishingly varied and fresh ways, the work may justly claim to be creative. In a single generation the total atmosphere of thought may undergo incred-ible modification, incredible, that is, before the event. Forces long at work below the surface of common appreciation may suddenly emerge, and in a moment shift the whole bearing of world interests. Nothing that was not implicit before has 13 borne to light, but as soon as the implicit has become explicit and obvious, every attitude of mind and every activity, of thought must undergo adjustment Tinder the pressure of the emphasis that is, for the time, dominant. The situation of Idealism underwent during Bosanqu-et' s life-time radical re-adjustment. A new world and a new theory both had their birth in the Nineteenth Century. The world after Napoleon and after the Industrial Revolution could never be the same. Its problems were new and very pressing. The political interest of Bosanquet and of G-reen before him was rooted in this changed world. Then too, from the first careful enunciation of the hypothesis to the present day, it is not too much to say, no other topic has had influence to be compared with that which evolution has exerted on the public, the scientific, and the philosophic mind. Absolute idealism, regnant in 1860, successfully withstood the tide of Nationalism toward the close of the century, (and for this, F.H. Bradley bears the laurels), suffered somewhat under the guerilla warfare of the earlier Pragmatisms, and was eclipsed by the rapid rise of the New Realism of these latter days. Throughout these shifting times, and for over half a' century Bosanquet has shown the ability of an Absolutism that 'knows its business' to meet all challengers on their own ground, to take to itself everything of value which the new emphases express, and to 14 emerge whole and vigorous at the end. There is a sanity in a system of thought which, while insisting above a'll that the wide and deep agreements of twenty-three centuries merit consideration, if not as the norm, at least as the guiding light of philosophy, and that newness alone is no recommendation, draws virtually all of its material for philosophising, and its method, from sources to which the most recent science can take no exception. The task undertaken by Bosanquet is no less than a re-statement of the best of Idealism in the light of the most recent thought. So successful is he in this attempt, that 'enemies' have accused him openly of materialism. The philosophy of Bosanouet claims, then, to be a fresh expression of all honest and thoroughgoing philosophy; 1 not a syncretism but a synthesis; the best of experience interpreted in the light of the whole, which is the ground of all intelligibility. His preference, therefore, as to the title by which his thought may be known, is not Idealism, but "Speculative Philosophy," and in view of its catholicity of interest, the title is not unwarranted. Titles, too, around which controversy has long been waged may darken rather than illumine counsel. Professed realists may be found in agreement with idealists on vital issues, and any reading of contemporary philosophy 1. That is, the great and obviously important experiences, rather than the more obviously trivial and incomplete. will show the lines between the camps to be quite arbitrary and never for long in the same place. "Every philosophy" Bosanquet writes "and not idealism alone is attempting to 1 do justice to the standpoint of the whole." It is a tenet of his speculative philosophy that good may come from any quarter. He "Welcomes the neo-realis-ts1 assertion that the world of sense perception has being in its own right, and that the splendour and values which we seem to contemplate directly are apprehended by us as they truly are." And further "Pnilosophy does not volatilize, so to speak, our world and externality but accepting it for all that it claims of existence and reality, then passes on to interpret its conditions and assign its significance more S profoundly." The material which, worked together, constitutes this 'Speculative Philosophy' is the subject of Part II of our essay, but in order that its most obvious difference from 'idealism' as popularly thought of may be known in advance, the following points may be noted. E Since idealism is commonly known to have been generous in its estimate of mind the student of Bosanquet must be prepared to discover a theory of mind far less 1. M. of Ex. P.vi. S. Ibid. p.S flattering than the popular tradition of idealism has assigned it. Whatever the ultimate nature of things may be, Bosanquet is firmly persuaded that it is not constituted by particular minds. By his own admission he belongs to a "faction of the idealistically minded who refuse to see in mind and nature either the factors of an ultimate antithesi or provinces of data either of which is simply reducible to 1 the other." "You do not," he writes elsewhere "make the world, it communicates your nature to you." b. It follows from this that the idealism so ably refuted by the New Realists,(Professor Perry, for example,) an idealism, that is, for which particular minds are the ult imate reals, has no relation whatever to the thought of Bosanquet. The persistent attempt to reduce such a system as "his to subjectivism can only be characterised as perverse Moreover, it is now becoming an article of agreement between both realists (Mr. Whitehead, for example) and idealists (as Professor Hoernle) that Bishop Berkeley himself is radic ally misinterpreted, if he is understood to conceive of constituted ky reality asAparticular minds as we know them. c. Idealism, also, has been viewed as an 'ancilla fidei,' a handmaid of revealed religion. It may be said without equivocation that, although Bosanquet's writing is 1. M. of Ext. p-vi. 17 instinct with religion, his philosophy attempts no justific-ation of the ways of God. to men. Indeed, any such purpose is frankly denied. Bertrand Russell, it will be recalled, maintains that philosophy must "repudiate the attempt to prove that particular pleasant things are true because they are pleasant" and must also "decline to inquire into any problems of the nature or conditions, the presence or absence 1 in the universe of satisfaction or satisfactoriness." The former of these 'necessary repudiations' Bosanquet would most certainly accept, but the latter he has denied. Satis-factoriness, he maintains, is an element of the universe, and its conditions may, in some measure, be known; but its pursuit to the neglect of logical necessity, and the attempt to pin it onto the -universe as a whole he condemns. Philoso-phy cannot be 'ethically neutral' nor can it neglect the contribution of religion to experience as a whole, but philosophy must be severe and honest. An uncriticised desire must not cause her to demand for mankind that which careful and reflective theory will be compelled to deny. The robustness of Bosanquet's philosophy makes William James' foolish witticism about the'tender minded' idealist so reflect upon the confortable inclusiveness of pragmatism as to make it appear quite hospitable in comparison. 3. In his lecture entitled "Science and Philosophy," Bosanquet remarks that philosophy may be approached from any 1. Quoted in Sc. and Ph. p. avenue, and that given thoroughness and an obstinate attempt to penetrate the problems which will emerge on the way the result will be very much the same. The reason, he would point out, for Mr. Russell's failure to advance beyond his present impasse (and any careful criticism of the notion of 'neutral particulars' would seem to indicate that it is an impasse), and his failure to come to any agreement with the traditional philosophers is th be found in his refusal to face the implication of great areas of experience for the sake of a predilection (doubtless temperamental) for symbolic logic. In so far as his method is adequate to the whole of any sphere of experience, only by lack of persistence does it fall short of adequacy in the entire field. It is Bosanquet's contention, therefore, that as there is a -universal in art which transcends the peculiarities of different artists and ages, there is an essential agreement in philosophy, shared by all serious thinkers end all generat-ions which is even more marked than the differences of emphasis which, upon a superficiel reading withdraw attention to themselves. He has a very apt phrase. "To be right as the great men are right is to have traversed thousands of ingenuit-ies and come back to the centre enriched by their negative results." Agreement too soon may be a token of superficial-ity, but agreement, at the last, with the best thought of the race, is a sign of greatness. His own philosophy began with logic. "When I wrote about logic," he confesses, " am afraid that I really thought, 1. And a strong dislike of the conditions of the present world. 19 though I did not loudly proclaim it, that logic was the whole of philosophy," but with the advance of years and the broadening of his outlook and too, by some sweeping modification of his view of the scope and function of logic, he came to draw upon the whole of life for his data. Leaving the course of 1 his argument to clear him of ambiguity he states belief that from the great and central experiences alone, from, for example, love, art, religion, the social life, can the philosopher come to a full appreciation of man and find clues (if he can) which will lead him on to clearer knowledge of reality. Rather than be brought to these experiences in the long run, he will make them his starting point, take them for his inspiration, and conceive of his purpose in terms of a deeper understanding and appreciation of them. It cannot be too much stressed that here lies the key to Bosanouet's philosophy. When, in reading intricate passages; concerning, say, the Absolute, or some other supposedly'abstract theme;' it is well to remember the purpose that is implicit throughout, and not to write it off as impatiently (as one reader has done)/"Superficial and illogical idealism." "We begin" he writes, "with the principle, the truism if you like, that in our attitude to experience and through experience to our world, we are going to put the central thing in the centre ... to take for our standard what 1. In the Introduction to Principle. 20 man recognises as value when his life is fullest and his soul at its highest strength." For lack of taking the full impression of the world as he finds it, in all the strength of its opposition, and "by over anxiety to order his theory early, the philosopher may fall into the error of the 'first look' and fall dismally short of the whole, and offer a deformed picture of reality. Thus, for example, the moralist, receiving his impression either of the weight of evil, or the depth of good in the world may feel tempted to ignore the one for the sake of the other, and will readily form the habit of selection. He will present an ethical pessimism on an Emersonian optimism which does gross injustice to the fact of opposition of good and evil in the world, and which shirks its responsibility by too easy a resolution. Any lover of the world's great tragedies, readers of the Greeks, of Shakespeare, of Chekov, will witness that it is in the apparently irreconcileable contra-diction of the tragedy, and in the inevitableness of its opposition that its strength and its value as a representat-ion of experience lies. "You have rather to open your eyes to the higher obvious, and look at the greater experiences as they are. You have to apprehend the sublimity and splendour actually 1 lighting up the lines of homribleness and squalor." Not an immediate impression of the world, nor a near and narrow 1. Principle - p.5 21 reading of experience, but a steady and strong grasp of things as they are is the beginning of philosophy. With Hegel, Bosanquet maintains that philosophy is concerned with the concrete, and not the abstract, with life, and not with a theory for its own sake. Professor 1 Hoernle writes of it as a "literal transcript of experience," and Professor Leighton adds that "He gives us a positive and constructive interpretation of the main concrete forms of human culture." A brief word of Bosanquetfs. Philosophy looks for "the greatness and ideality of life in its commonest actual phases." On the other hand, though the riches of life are necessary to philosophy, philosophy is not necessary to life. "In suggesting that philosophy gives usthe. quintessence of life I am not," he remarks, "suggesting that the best thing in life is the pursuit of philosophy. What I mean is that the things which are the most important in a man's experience are also the things which are most certain to his thought. And further, I should urge, this is not an accident but inevitable, because importance and reality are sides of the same characteristic." In thus coupling the words "importance and reality" we have the central thought of Bosanquet again brought into sharp focus. Existence is a concern only as it is the guaran-tee of importance. Ontology is not a game to be played for its own sake. It is from the logical connection and inter-pretation of all that interests the human spirit and matters most to man that the web of our understanding of reality is mad©. This is not 'humanism,' for what is important to man is not itself the truly real, but is the only possible clue to the real. Man is not being made the 'measure of all things,' but that which is most significant to man, his longings, loves, and all his experience, is subjected to thoroughgoing criticism iri order to detect, if possible, in the wide range of difference some strands of essential agreement, some common movement, which may be traced through-out, and which, in its manifestations, and in its projection beyond them, may lead to some knowledge, incomplete but veridical of the truly real. It is the discoirerable streak of continuity in the world and in man as he finds himself, and obviously beyond him that links 'importance and reality.' We shall return to this theme under the title of the "Self Transcendence of the Finite Individual." A further consideration of this 'movement of experience,' of the daily fluctuation of the human spirit (for although at present definition of the human spirit is not possible - we come to that later - it would be a pedantry to avoid the use of the term) leads us to see the inevitability of philosophy. If man is to be reflective at all, life is of such a sort that he cannot rest in it but must look for its reasons and its grounds and advance upon a 'pilgrim's progress' of thought until he reaches the limit of his capacity for reflection, or dies. There is no way out, nor any standing 23 ground, either of a solid and given self, or of immediate and. given fact to which we can retire and ignore the movement of experience which always carries us 'beyond ourselves' and beyond every artificial limit we have set for ourselves. Not everyone will consciously philosophise, but everyone is in the adventure which makes philosophy of some sort inevit-able . t -4 To the question, sometimes asked. "If we have life, what need have we of philosophy?" Bosanquet would reply. ' "Philosophy is not an abstraction alien to life, it is the best of life made the most of. It is the obvious things, the platitudes, even, which taken in their full . significance, bring us into the midst of philosophy." 4. „ As has already been indicated the tone of Bosanquet's writing is, for all its severity, serene, and its tendency is toward the positive rather than the negative statement of a situation. But he does not expound a 'meliorism,1 which so often is the outcrop of a deeply laid pessimism, or an ultimate optimism which would involve the fallacy of a universe judged to be good by some standard external to it - a criterion i ' of value that can have no possible meaning. His optimism is reflected rather as a strong assurance of the worth whileness of life and a deep appreciation of the wealth, both material and cultural of the world. Professor C.C.J. Webb remarks upon this quality of serenity in Bosanouet, and it has been noticed by many others, as refreshing after the brilliant 24 negations of F.H. Bradley. He (Professor Webb) complains of an "air of almost inhuman serenity while dismissing much that has been precious to many generations of our spiritual fore-1 fathers." Mr. Bradley's 'melancholy' he finds more fitting. For his own part, Bosanquet feels that his philosop-hy offers enough for "any reasonable man" of security for all he values most highly. Dr. fficTaggart,however, sees in this attitude signs of presumption too obvious to uass without 2 comment. But Dr. McTaggart belongs to another camp, and as it is a camp of one, his criticism of Bosanquet for 'presump-tion' need not be taken too seriously. Another difference from the method and tone of Bradley (with whom he has so much in common) is also worthy of note. Bradley advances to the heart of his problem, the defect of relational thought, by an inevitable dialectic almost diabolic in its destructiveness. The feeling induced by a reading of "Appearance and Reality" is of a doom moving relentlessly. Contrasted with this dreadful precision Bosanquet is diffuse in his style, almost to distraction. But when entered into, his argument is no less vigorous, and his logical skill no less refined. The argument is slowly, even effortlessly,gathered up from the four quarters of his world 3 which is not a narrow one, and is illustrated now from this 1. Divine Personality and Human life - by C.C.J. Webb, 19, p.253. 2. In his Review for Mind of "Principle. 3. It is reported that T.H. Green regarded Bosanquet as the "best equipped man of his generation." area of. experience, now from that, with fresh light from a whole firmament of philosophers, until having attained its purpose, it gives place to some further thought. The style is as conversational as the subject matter will allow, breaking, here and there into sheer beauty, but the mind at work is as massive as the more trenchant Bradley. The latter writes as a controversialist and with the clarity of a frosty night; the former as a philosopher, and with charity toward all man. He concludes, for illustration, his "Meeting of Extremes," a work of his later years, with a recognition of the values that may fall to philosophy by the working out of a tendency he had resisted strenuously all his life. Moreover, to all we have said, it may be added; every line that Bosanquet published is the 'record of a strong conviction.' V 26 THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL Part II Chapter IT The philosophy of Bosanquet is so closely built about its central principle that it is not easy to treat effectively with any one aspect or problem without referring 'passim® to others also. Nor is it possible to expound his i central principle without venturing into the wider ranges of his philosophy. The central thesis, that truth is a coherent system, which cannot be understood except in the light of the whole is exemplified in the architechtonic of his theory. The single principle which comprehends the whole i.s the "Principle of Individuality." By means of this principle logic is knit into Metaphysics, and Ethics, Aesthetics and^PolitiLcji^^vei!) are brought in as the very material of Ontology. Nor is this strange. It follows from the conviction that the truth is the whole - a 'world' - and that within a world these can be no hard and fast lines. And a world is the type, as we shall see, of the universal, and the formula of Bosanquet's scheme of reality. 27 In this chapter the concept of the logical universal, the defeat of the general rule, the importance of a true theory of identity, the character of the concrete universal, a*nd the emergence of the principle of individuality will be elaborated. "It is difficult to condense without evaporation a doctrine that meant so much to Bosanquet as the "Concrete Universal,'" writes Mr. Muirhead in his obituary notice of 1 Bosanquet in "Mind." Upon its elaboration alone fifty pages of the "Principle" is spent, but the entire series of lectures is, in a sense, an amplification of the same theme. As is suggested by the name, the concrete universal is set over against the-abstract universal, and is preferred as the higher and more adequate type. Universals are commonly defined as 'qualities characterising a number of distinct particulars, or relations recurring in a number of different situations.' The universal, therefore, is, when so consider-ed, of the nature of a general rule, and is an identity dis-conerable in particulars which, because of the identity (the quality which they exhibit in common) are taken together as members of a class. a. To Bosanauet, however, the formulation of a general rule, while a step in the direction of system in knowledge appears to be an insufficient step. Every generalization (or abstract universal) does, it is true, illuminate the 1. U.S. 32, p.393 situation it covers. The assignment of particulars to classes does throw-light both on them and on their world, but this defect remains. For the sake of a very narrow identity (which, indeed, is not in the fullest sense an identity at all, as we shall show later) wide areas of difference are overlooked. The abstract universal, proceeding by successive generalization toward the whole can never give a picture of the whole. Valuable information it can afford, but it cannot approach any closer to the nature of the universe, or of any 'concrete subject® as a work of art, for example, than a number of piecemeal assertions can take it. In falling short of the whole it fails completely as a means to the understand-ing of its world, however close its approximation to the whole may be. "Its method" Bosanquet writes "is omission." Or,as another put it, "It murders to dissect." If it only failed of reaching, for us, the ultimate whole, the defect would be less grievous; but as it is inadequate to the consideration of the 'concrete nature of any individual,' it must be super-ceded by a type of universal which will take in difference as well as formal identity, and which will thus allow of the those formulation of/ 'ideal syntheseswhich are the chief desiderata 1 of Bosanquet's speculation. b. The theory of identity which is defended by Bosanquet in this connection may be briefly stated as, "An individual is itself." The identity that disregards difference is, strictly, 1. Science and Philosophy - p.35. not an identity at all, "because no part may be considered as unconditioned by the whole of which it is a part. "An identity is a meeting point of differences and therefore 1 always, in a sense, concrete." It is, in other words, the element of continuity that persists through differences, and not in spite of difference. "A great country" for example, "does not represent itself by mapping itself on a portion of its surface, but by developing, say, a university at one point, a church at another, a manufacturing town at £ a third." c. To cover this higher form of identity Bosanquet has taken over the Hegelian theme, the'concrete universal,' and the term 'abstract universal' is left to cover those identit-ies which disregard differences. This abstract universal expresses the common element which constitutes a class, but the concrete, universal expresses the nature of a 'world,' an 'organism,' 'a system of members,' a 'cosmos.' The only way to understand a world is to realize that it 'takes all sorts' to make it. It is essentially inclusive, and exclusive of nothing. The class, on the other hand "is essentially of one sort only." In a world the members, though formally distinct, contribute to the unity of the whole by virtue of their the peculiarities which constitute/distinctness. 1. Science and Philosophy, p.35 2 . Principle, p.38 "The universal is no longer treated," Bosanquet writes in his essay "On a True Theory of Identity,""as an -abstraction, but, so to speak, as a concretion. We can no longer see why the universal, within which a certain element falls should.be more abstract than that element; why for example, the state should be a more abstract existence than 1 the citizen." 1 The formula of reality which Bosanquet is developing may be briefly stated as "The typical structure of reality is that of worlds within worlds.' His own phrase is "A diversity recognized as a unity, a macrocosm constituted by microcosms is the type of the concrete universal; a living 2 world, complete and acting out of itself." As an illustration of the type of identity of a world or organism he points to the unity in difference of a steam engine. . It is not,in bare repitition of parts each the same, that- the engine functions, but by the co-operative movement of many parts each different, but each so shaped as to form together a systematic whole. For further examples we may go to the membership of the human body, and finally the membership of man and woman and their whole environment in what we call civilization. Stated logically "The test of universality which is imposed by the concrete universal is not the number of subjects v/hich share a common predicate, but the number of predicates (as the complex members in a state) that can be attached to a single subject." 1. Science and Philosophy p.37 2. Principle p.38 3. Ibid p.39 31 \ We have glimpsed thus the 'key thought' of Bosanquet's philosophy, which like an air with its variations, runs through the whole. From the recognition of the concrete universal the principle of individuality arises. Correlative to the abstract universal is the particular, and particularity is itself an abstraction. The term 'particular' leaves the idea of isolation and exclusiveness, an idea untenable in the light of the conditioning of the part by the whole of which it is a member. The better term is the "individual," a term which is, in this sense, (and throughout Bosanquet's writing) technical, but which he feels to do justice not only to the element of diversity and formal particularity, but also to the "maintenance and expression of an abiding unity." Particularity is the first obvious judgment concerning almost any object, the more valuable discovery lies in the further judgment as to its connections. The individual, however, cannot be considered as correlative to the concrete universal, as the particular was to the abstract universal, for the notion of membership introduces a new factor, and the hard opposition of the two sides is broken down. Once the type of universal is recognized as a system of members the character of which (members) lies as much in the whole as it does within themselves, then the member is, to that extent, at least the system. That is, the true character of the member is the system, or the whole of which it is a part. Bosanquet is very emphatic. "The Concrete 32 Universal is the Individual," or again "The key to all sound philosophy lies in taking the concrete universal, that is, the 1 individual, as the true type of universal." The Principle of Individuality, or of membership within living wholes is manifested in every phase of experience and in every movement in the universe; in 'finite individuals' - men and women are the obvious examples - in society and in every sphere of human interest and activity. This concept of the concrete universal and the Principle of Individuality is the theoretical basis of all Bosanquet's speculation, but it is from the fields of life, as we shall see, that the clues to the concept are drawn. It must be noted that the principle of individuality, taken to its logical conclusion, points ultimately to an individual. Strictly there can only be one self-complete whole, which is the Absolute, and within this individual all other individuals will show signs of incompleteness, of lack on several sides. The ultimate individual is not, therefore arrived at arbitrarily, but is reached in the attempt to complete the statement of a principle discoverable in every experience. The road to the absolute individual is of the nature of a necessary inference from the observed fact of individuality. THOUGHT Chapter V The picture of reality suggested in the preceding section, a macrocosm, that is, of microcosms, an orderly whole of distinct but contributory members is, it must be admitted, a picture on the 'grand scale.' It appears to be, so to speak, somewhat of a marble palace shining on a hill; a beautiful fabrication built altogether out of reach of the warring world; fine enough to contemplate, it is true; but with such a gulf fixed between it, the ideal, and the world, the real, as to be no more potent in motivating conduct and affairs than something that never was and never will be. In short, it is so divorced from 'things as they are' as to be no more than a lovely dream. Bosanquet, however, would urge that the defect lies not in the ideal, but in the failure to see all that is in the real; that 'things as they are' if understood more completely would take one over the gulf that only our impoten ce has put between. He would point out that this picture, far from doing violence to common experience is indeed no more than an outline of something any reasonably penetrating 34 mind can discern through and in the confusion of daily events and everyday experiences; and that only the dullness of the eye or the lack of appreciation of an ordinary insight obscures it for a moment. The defect again, is not in the structure of reality, but in our conception of it. If only we would see it we could "Experience the Absolute better than anything else," the movement of a single day being enough to establish it beyond any doubt. The contradiction and flux of everyday experience, rather than being evidence against the truth of our picture, is, in fact, the very source from which its support is derived. The possibility of complete scepticism which refuses to give its reasons Bosanouet admits, but that there is any ground upon which to stand and deny the proposition that the truth is the whole he does not admit. And once the scepticism has declared itself, and taken its stand upon any proposition, then, he declares, the 'game is up.' The movement of experien-ce will do the rest; the discovery of contradiction and the attempt to overcome it will lead inevitably to the conclusion that the truth is the whole, and that the activity of thought is towards that whole. "Every day experience" Bosanquet borrows from Plato, "tumbles backward and forward between 'is' and 'is not.' Today a thing is experienced as beautiful, tomorrow as ugly," &nd "this is because the beauty we judge by is a fragment and not a world." Neither can be taken as 'of the character of being,' for each undoes itself. The only way out is to accept them both, the judgment of beauty and the judgment of ugliness as cooperating(and not conflicting) members of a world. "The removal of contradiction involves the character of a world; and this character we must ascribe to Plato's'ayaBoy and in ultimate interpretation to Kant's noumenon, to every principle, in fact, which seriously aspires to express the 1 full nature of being." This necessity of experience to attempt the resolution of its contradictions, this "appeal to the whole' is technically stated as the principle of non-contradiction. Hot only does this principle apply to those few propositions the formal negation of which is tantamount to an affirmation, but extends to all proposit-ions whatever. It is the 'emptiness' of the so called necess-ary propositions which gives them their apparent logical advantage, but the larger content of the so called contingent propositions, propositions, that is, which affirm the general trueness and being of whole provinces of advanced experience, such as religion or morality or the world of beauty, affords them, in fact, a deeper and fuller logical necessity than that which is enjoyed by the formally necessary proposition. Particular propositions relating to these large areas of experience may be denied, but as the content becomes larger, the self-maintenance becomes stronger and it is increasingly difficult to deny them and leave the world standing. The concrete universal, it will be remembered, is an identity, a world, which expands through the inclusion of wide areas of difference. And the movement of experience 1. Principle p.46 toward an even larger whole, which we have stated as the principle of non-contradiction, is the same thing as the principle of individuality which is logically stated as the concrete universal. The character of experience is toward a whole, and the type of reality, the concrete universal is of the same character, the latter indeed, being, as we have seen, a theoretical statement of what experience offers. This is the 'spirit of logic,' and the working of this spirit in human minds is called thought. 2. Thought, then, is the*nisus toward the whole.' It is at once the motive and the method of achieving contact between finite minds and reality as a whole. It is, maintain-ing our illustration, the sight by which the 'shining palace' is seen, the way by which it is approached, and the enjoyment of it in anticipation and attainment. That it is attained all of the mystics agree, and Bosanquet is the first to admit the strength of their evidence. Put another way, if the principle of individuality is the formula of reality, it is in thought that the principle comes to consciousness in human minds, and by the process of thought, in turn, that the formula is discovered. It is by 'thought' that men know the nature of things, but it is by the working of things according to their nature that they become known. Thought, in other' words, is the 'self expression of reality' in finite minds; it is the concrete universal as it functions in man. The above are not Bosanquet's own words, therefore, lest misinter-pretation be suspected, a quotation or so may be added. "Thought is the nisus of experience toward the 1 world." And again, "It is an affirmation about reality 2 through the processes of particular minds." By it the multitude of common experiences are brought into an organic, living whole, and become replete with new meaning. There are three further considerations which arise: a. Upon what grounds can the process of thought be said to be 'towards a world?' b. Is thought a suitable word to be used thus in view of the claims which have been advanced in favor of Will, Feeling, Activity, Intuition? c. What is the relation of thought to Existence? Or how valid is thought as an instrument of knowledge of the real? a. This point has been made reasonably clear above. It remains only to simplify the thought advanced. It is commonly held that thought is discursive, and that its advance is always linear, in a straight line from judgment to judgment; that it pieces together and hence falls short of any whole. The defect of this theory is, as we have remarked, is in taking the wrong kind of universal, the abstract universal or the general rule, for its type of the logical process. Once the concept of the concrete 1. Principle - p.55 2. Contemporary British Philosophy - p.60 universal is seized, then the question of thought being discursive or towards a whole is no longer open. Concreteness ' consists in the number of predicates that may be predicated of a single subject, and not the number of subjects, scattered here and there, of which the same predicate may be predicated. And finally the subject of all predication is the whole, for except as considered in the implied context of the whole nothing is what it is. In essence, therefore, the process of thought is a gathering together, and not a scattering. Start-ing with the given, a slender 'that' the tendency of thought is to pursue the 'what' beyond the 'that' and finding itself in an ever widening context of new meanings, to continue the pursuit of new meanings which, however, only have meaning at all as they are linked up with the whole which thought is ever enlarging. To the truth of this the commonest experience will bear witness. The tendency to link experiences with a living whole none-can deny. All thought attempts to be self-contain-ed, to have no loose fragments lying around, but to form a system of members, to be 'at home with itself.' That elements of disharmony remain, wide crevices in the ambitious arch, is more than an inevitable defect, it is the motive to unceasing effort in overcoming that which 1 'jars' the spirit of the whole. "Thought" Bosanquet writes, is the active form of totality present in all and every experience of a rational 1. To use Bradley's phrase. being." A somewhat extended statement makes his position very-clear. "We may take as an example (of thought) a work of art. This is an object in which we can realize what the Greeks meant by Theoria. In its essence, as a thing of beauty, and neglecting its aspect as a physical object or movement, it is self-contained and a true whole, possessing its significance in itself, and not driving our thought beyond it to a detached meaning and explanation. Every point in it carries the burden, or lives with the life, of the whole. Of course its unity and indpeendence are imperfect, but that makes no difference when once we understand that we are talking about matters of degree within finite experience. The point to be grasped is simply the contrast between the relation of abstra-ct generalization on the one hand, and of concrete modes of thinking on the other, to completeness of experience. In the latter we see the return to the fulness of experience which thought in the former appeared to abandon. Pursuing the same law or principle - the removal of contradiction - the mind tends to arrive at experience incomparably more living and intense, as also incomparably more logical and rational, than that of everyday perception. The true office of thought we begin to see, is to build up, to inspire with meaning, to intensify, to "vivify." The object which thought is the true sense has worked upon is not a relic of decaying sense, but is a living world, analogous to a perception of the beautiful, in which every thought - determination adds fresh point and 40 V deeper "bearing to every element of the whole." b. Is 'thought' a suitable term for the nisus towards a whole, in view of the claims put forward for Will, Feeling, Activity, Contemplation or Intuition? This, Bosanquet would maintain, is, relatively, a minor point, since it concerns terms, and if agreement as to wide meanings may be achieved, the particular terms used are unimportant. That minds do display some such nisus or appeal toward a whole as we have suggested above offers a ground of agreement; but in statement of the nisus or the factor of experience, or the character of mind by which it gains its contact with, or insight into the whole there is radical difference of opinion. F.H. Bradley, for example, denies thought any ability to know or apprehend the whole on the grounds of the inherent defect of the relational method by which thought works, and by which it can never arrive at reality, but will lead inevitably into irresoluble contradictions of appearance. This perversity of thought cannot be overcome. As an analogy of 'supra-relational experience' which character-ises the real he has chosen 'feeling1 inasmuch as feeling grasps its object and itself, as it were, together; and 'possesses' its experience as a 'felt whole.' It does not take over its field piecemeal, but seizes it at once, and 'in toto.' But Bosanquet is not striving for a word. "It is possible" he writes, "that those philosophers may prove to 1. Principle - p.58 41 hold the more suitable language who deny that thought can ever be one with the real. But at any rate, we are bound to follow thought as it obviously develops itself toward higher vitality, and a fuller perfection in the certainty that if it is itself a vanishing form, it will point us the way to what lies beyond, and when necessary, introduce us to its nature." This is the position he is interested to defend. That there is an underlying difference here, however, between the philosophy of Bosanquet and that of Bradley, diould be recognized, since it is from his preference for feeling and his distrust of thought, there can be little doubt, that Bradleys philosophy derives its formidable and (almost) depressing char-acter. It appears that Bosanquet"s position, stated in the quotation above, is the more measured of the two. On this point, as has often been said, the two divide in more than terms. It is important to bear in mind, however, that by thought, Bosanquet does not mean cognition merely, nor reflect-ive judgment, nor the course of inference. Thought is for him. "The self-assertion of reality according to its characteristic laws within a complex of psychical matter which may be called I the mind. The operation, in a word, whereby the growing and 2 coherent body of experience governs our psychical processes." All experience, therefore, whether cognitive, affective or conative is thought, and its characteristic forms in life are "knowledge, including sense-perception, love and work." This broadening of the base of thought from intellection to 1. Principle - p.39 2. Ibid. - p.60 experience is in accord with the whole trend of recent psychology which refuses to divide the mind into faculities. The underlying unity of the mind as it functions, and the common character that emerges either as will, feeling, activ-ity, or as cognition seems to have been as necessary to the great philosophers of old as to the moderns. The feeling of may be mentioned Plato,/that when there is harmony among the members of the mind, the spirited, the rational, and the appetitive parts, then there is something more superadded, as it were, to the three. The reconciliation of the ancients is a speculative business, but it does not seem altogether unjustifiable to ascribe a deep feeling for unity as well as for multiplicity y^h i to Plato. From an area of experience^Bosanquet often quotes, another illustration may be drawn. In the 'touch of a hand we love' sensation moves over with affection, cognition, ' Theoria,' even, and in such experience as this, thought is at its highest. Bosanquet suggests that what the common man tends to call feeling, or intuition, is what the great philosophers have meant by thought. Nevertheless, in the cognitive side of thought, in judgment, by virtue of which the judging consciousness 'sustains its world,' in the quick apprehension of far-reaching relations; in this, thought reaches a degree of concreteness exceeded only by that form of apprehension which the Greeks called Theoria - the pure aesthetic act in which sense-percep-tion, feeling, understanding are blent into a perfect whole in which the finite being is at once infinite. 43 c , To the third question, "What is the relation of thought to existence?" some answer has already been implied. Thought, it is true, may "never be one with the real," but is it the only clue there is, and may be taken to be reliable; for not only is thought an affirmation about reality, but reality is'the correlative affirmant of thought. Both hang together. This is not an attempt to resurrect the old rationalist fallacy that the laws of thought can generate the matter of concrete knowledge; rather it is an assurance founded upon the extremely intimate relation which holds between the finite creature and his world, and the complete dependence of the creature upon the universe for all that he is. It is not that 'I think reality to be such and such' but that 'Reality thinks in me thus and so,' which is the ground of confidence. In my thought, reality reaches some sort of a conscious focus, working from below, with such factors as the "universe (i.e. itself) so far has provided, and with whatever immanent spirit of totality an age-long history of selection may have achieved; and it is not, therefore, altogether presumptuous to suppose that my nature is its own nature (that is, of the universe) subject to the limitations of the material used. My activity is its activity. My love, work, art, and so forth, are the "Stuff of reality taking control." It is none the less I who think because my thought is inevitable. It is the more my own, because, being what I am, I could do no other. And the degree to which my thought involves existence is "in proportion to its coherence wi&h 44 the world, and this defends on the nature of the thought, how 1 far it is a pure deliverance of mind, without confusion." That is, when most myself I am most in touch with reality. To the development of this last a chapter will be given. The extreme of scepticism is here, as elsewhere, possible; but rather than being a sign of any becoming modesty, it is the 'extreme of arrogant audacity.' "You make" the says Bosanquet, "your own private defect a limit of/coherent nature of thought." Scepticism involves the assumption that thought in man is something utterly divorced from all that it has sprung from; cut quite adrift from the rock from whence it was hewn; which assumption is not acceptable. The whole is immanent in experience, and upon coherence with the whole all aspiration depends. "I hold" Bosanquet writes in 'Mind', "that we must not raise the question of existence apart from knowledge. If we do we break up our synthesis of reality, restore the chasm between knowledge and existence and with it the whole epistemological mystification which we claimed to have set E aside." Knowledge herein is, of course, not limited to cognition. Another suggestive sentence, "thought is that activity in which mind, so far as at any moment it can reach and penetrate, makes itself one with the whole life of reality and affirms in form and intention that all existence enters 3 into and sustains its decree." 1. Meeting of Extremes - p.81 S. Mind, U.S. £6 - p.474 3. Meetings of Extremes - p.EO MIND, BODY AND NATURE Chapter VI The purpose of the chapter is to develop Bosanquet's theory of mind, as a 1 supervenient perfection' appearing at a certain stage in the organization of matter, with its 'roots in the history of the species,' and its growing point toward the perfection which is the whole; to distinguish his theory on the one hand from materialism, and one the other hand, from the miraculous; to point its dependence upon mechanism and its 'emptiness' except as functioning it becomes filled with meaning; and finally to gather up what remains to be said as to the relation of mind and matter, and as to the status, so far as we can determine it, of the external world, whether as independent, as indistinguishable from mind, or as compli-mentary to it. 1. For his theory of mind Bosanquet has been called a materialist. Professor Laird finds his writing flagrantly materialistic except that somehow it is all of it 'bathed in logic' - an inefficacious immersion, we may gather; and Dr. McTaggart writes "Almost every word that Dr. Bosanquet has written about the relation of mind and matter might have been written by a complete materialist." The reason for Bosanouet's severity beyond that which is expected of idealists, we have seen. In the first place he is determined to do justice to the new data of the post-Darwinian world. The emergence in time of mind from that in which, if mind is present at all, it is not present as explicit. The fact, too, of mechanism as the 'way the world works' appeals very strongly to him, and his final explanation of or assignment of status to mind must therefore be one in which mechanical intelligibility is the prime factor. Then too, he has expressed the belief that neither matter nor mind can be adequately explained and assigned places by 'simple reduction' to one or other of the two. The situation is not relieved by the recurrence of such sentences in his writing as "I doubt not that anything which can ultimately be, must 1 be of the nature of mind or experience." And his expression of what he takes to be the lesson of Hegel, that "The world is a single spirit of which all appearances are manifestations that all its manifestations fall within a single experience, compact of experiences; that all of it is life and activity, and that outside of this living experience there can be E nothing." To all of this Bosanauet agrees. The paradox of his position is apparent. Professor Watson points a way out when he says, with reference to the former quotation above "To be of the nature of mind, and to 1. Principle -.135 2. Quoted by Professor Hoernle in the Philosophical Review Vol.32 - g.583. 47 exist only as an object for a mind are two quite different things."'1' That is, there may be in mind as the 'spirit' of a highly specialized range of matter something, if only an 'empty form of totality,' a way that things, coming together, gather meaning, which may indicate the direction in which we are likely to find the real nature of both matter and mind. Returning to the paradox, the two poles of Bosanquet's conception of nature and of mind are these, that the natural world, clothed in its qualities, primary and secondary, is 'out there' to individual minds and is all that it appears, and more; and secondly that the only adequate expression of the character of nature is 'of the nature of mind, life and activity, in a word, spirit.' 2. Theories of mind are too many to enumerate, much less to expound. Professor Hoernle remarks that the theory of Bosanquet is one of 'genuine original ity.' We ought, therefore, to have before us an outline of other theories in order to discover the distinctiveness of the one. This cannot be attempted; but it may be suggested that this origin-ality lies in the steady maintenance of a position somewhere between the two extremes into which theories of mind tend to fall, and these are, that minds are substantive, are indepen-dent units, or 'self subsistent angelic beings;' and that minds are 'non est' except as useful fictions, convenient terms, merely, to cover 'all that is going on in the body including the nervous system.' For the former view it is necessary to go, not to idealists of the older school, but either to certain 1. Philosophical Review - Vol.33 p.230 48 of the New Realists or Of the New Idealists. To the latter, view in its extremest statement, the modern behaviourist is committed. Shades of opinion are far too varied to so much as mention them all. Dr. McTaggart and Gentile, whatever their divergence in other directions agree that all that is, is finite minds, and that although finite minds are impermanent, in their passing they sustain the universe. With this notion Bosanquet has nothing in common. He has far more sympathy with the opposing theory. "We need" he writes, "no original pure subject nor any acts distinctive of a being cr substance 1 to be considered as the mind." Indeed he leans so strongly toward a view of mind so purely functional (that is, that the mind is what the body does) as to call for the closest scrutiny in order to discover any saving difference remaining. There is a marked similarity between Bosanquet's theory, and that of Bertrand Russell, and in America., of E.B. Holt, which will offer a point of departure. According to their ('cross-section') theory, mind is all that focuses upon a centre at which is a nervous system of a certain degree of complexity. The agreement lies here, that Bosanquet also maintains mind to be a centre or focus of externality; the difference is this, that the centre for Bosanquet is not passive, receptive merely, but is active, with the power of the real behind it. 3. Knowing his insistence upon the coherence of reality we may not expect Bosanquet to see in mind something to break 1. Meetings of Extremes - p.EE 49 the continuity, or introduce some element alien to the system. Mind appeared late in the process of evolution, and in its appearance introduced nothing which was not implicit in the character of the world before mind made its debut. When the physical world had reached - by a teleology below conscious-ness no less remarkable than that above consciousness - a cert-ain stage of complexity, then along side of or at the peak of all that had been, mind emerged as a supervenient perfection. "Mind is" Bosanquet writes,"the self-guidance of that world which appears as matter when it reaches a certain level of organisation." What 'nature' was before mind appeared we cannot say. We know that it was there; and know too that it cannot be conceived of at all except in terms which imply meanings that minds have themselves introduced. Mind is necessary to the conception of a world, but a world we shall, have occasion to repeat is equally necessary as a basis of material for mind. Bosanquet does not allow, however, that mind (in the sense of a consciousness in any way akin to that of man) can have been present. The 'mind' that may be ascribed say to, an orchid could no more "contrive its own fertilization" than a man could ^choose the century of his birth." "Everywhere finite consciousness makes its appearance, so far as this is obvious and unmistakable, at a relatively high level, focusing and revealing the significance of a huge complication of 2 mute history and circumstance behind it and surrounding it." 1. Principle - p.194 2. Ibid. - p.154 50 Not any mind 'in the phases' of evolution, directed their advance, but the determination was of a 'deeper wisdom, which lay hidden in the general structure of the environment.' The 'hidden wisdom1 which is that of the Absolute, comes to light, becomes explicit, as we have said, in the advancing stages of a continuous process, which appears to have been in the order, matter, life, and mind. Each of them is "essential to the whole of things, but not capable of indep-endent reality." The world, then, gained 'meaning' with the advent of mind. But what we must call'nature'was.before r finite minds ever were. The external world must not be reduced, by philosophy to anything other than itself. So to reduce nature to mind is to deprive it of its 'raison d'etre,' its distinctiveness, by which it is of value to the whole. It is to take away from nature its character, and from mind its necessary material. The formula of the 'full impression' must be applied here as elsewhere. The harsh nativeness of nature, that stubborn externality of it,which is the substance of the Realist emphasis, is the very reason of its being. It is the business of externality to stay external and to defy sub Rectification. This, in brief, is the attitude taken by Bosanquet. 'Reality'he defines as'something that resists efforts to destroy it and refuses to be remodelled at our pleasure.' plainly, according to this specification, the external world has strong claim to be real. But on the other hand it cannot be maintained that nature is 'impenetrable' to minds, as has been supposed. The critical realists may claim as their most notable achievement the refutation of this notion of their more 'naive' colleagues. "Nature is penetrated with mind" Professor Watson points out, but this does not imply that nature is constituted by the minds of men, but that in the mind of a man is a faculty or power by which he is able to comprehend the meaning, the nature of the world as it is presented in each individual's experience." Mind gives meaning to and finds meaning in nature. From this it follows that neither nature nor mind can be dispensed with unless the whole of reality is to suffer loss. They must be considered as complimentary terms of an inclusive system. Any attempt at reduction weakens the differences upon which their underlying unity depends. Another line of approach to the problem tends to offer the suggestion that mind and the external world, although complimentary and irreducible, are not divided by any hard and fast line. Although difference is their important element, wherever the two approach they tend to fuse at their edges. "Either term seems inconceivable without the other; and there must b e something of arbitrariness in any attempts to draw 2 a line between them." Nature "though nearly everything, is not quite everything." Where the line can be drawn we cannot say, for it is not a single line at all. Nature fuses with, or diffuses into mind, but there is something distinct-ive in mind which resists complete assimilation. All of the 1. Philosophical Review Vol.33, p.230 2. Principle p.358 106" detailed content of a mind is drawn from the external world, including the special contribution of the bodily and the nervous system; 'everything positive' comes from Nature; but yet there is something which mind alone can do, and that is to give unity to the manifold of nature; to the disconnected, a vital connection. "If" writes Bosanquet, "you ask what in mind is not Nature, you can ohly answer, 'the spirit of totality,' the attitude which makes everything alive in its bearing 1 bearing on the whole." "If you ask what in Nature is not mind, you can only answer, the fragmentary, the disconnected qua fragmentary and disconnected." Looked at from one angle, as a piece of silk, all looks as if it were nature, while regarded from another aspect, the whole is shot through with mind. Both are aspects of the whole, the one would not be what it is without the other, and neither can be divided arbitrarily from the other. A favorite word of Bosanquet's is that minds are 'elicited' from nature, but an active factor in the eliciting is the growing mind itself. Another typical phrase is that "Man (speaking of the human mind) is organic to nature, and nature is organic to man; man is the voice of nature, and 2 nature the basis of man." The relation of mind and body is the same, in a narrower sense, as of mind and nature.- Mind is no more than the body can make it, but the meaning of the body is the mind. 1. Principle - p.367 2. Mind N.3. 26 p.474 Bosanquet states it thus. "We -understand them best if we take mind as the significance and interpretation (not the effect) of body, and body as the stored acquisitions and adaptations which are the foundation and machinery of the 1 single but complex world which is mind." Or otherwise, "Mind is not a separate thing, but a perfection and cooperat-ion of the adaptations stored in a body which is a complex bit of external Nature." Clearly this theory is mechanism, through and through, and so, Bosanquet insists it should be. Mechanism is the method of the external world, and is, if it is only seen as such, the truly 'spiritual® method. It is only man's misunderstanding of the nature and the conditions of the physical world, that makes him flee to miracle or to sponteneity, or some form of contingency as the way to the spiritual. Philosophy will best be served by recognising and accepting the presence of mechanism, and by taking it as a clue to the real than by ignoring a province of experien-ce so obvious and so inescapable. If the obviously mechan-ically conditioned were to be removed, the heart, as it were, would be cut out of the whole. Discontinuity, not mechanism is the enemy. The spirit of the whole is either the spirit of logic, of coher-ence and of totality, of system and intelligibility, or there is none. Nowhere is this spirit so plainly evidenced as in the ordered realm of mechanical causation. The introduct-ion of any new factor, a spiritual entelechy, or free will, 1. Principle p. XXV can only defeat the end of spirituality by breaking the logical nexus. Every 'movement of the spirit is represented in the physical system.' Every alternative to mechanism offered either falls unawares into the physical system, or i9 meaningless. That is, some 'inappreciable something' which may be supposed to tilt the beam in mind either this way, or that, will turn out to be either a co-operating mechanical factor or will be nothing at all. The theory of a spiritual 'entelechy' advocated by Hans Drieschr- for example, would fall under this condemnation. That the 'force' it exerts is 'negligible' is no excuse for its surreptitious introduction. Any formation of'spiritual energy' outside of the physical system is, very properly, scouted; for the term spiritual, thus used, is misused; and the thought it implies is contrary to all coherence. Bosanquet rejects, as well, the notion of an 'end' as determinative of the present working of the mind. Any "Far off divine event" cannot for a moment be considered by philosophy as motivating present movements. Ends run into means, and the selection of any conceivable end as the 'raison d'etre' of the universe at large is absurd. Teleology, if it is to have any cosmic bearing must be free from the whole analogy of finite contrivance and selection, and fall back on the characteristics of value which, apart from time and from selected purposes, attach to the nature of a totality which is perfection.^" Herein teleology becomes no less than the principle of individuality, and might be 1. Bee Principle - p.126 stated thus, 'The universe is itself, and is perfection; to approach this perfection is the characteristic of every part; the end is no less than the whole.1 The notion of teleology therefore, as an alternative to mechanism is rejected. Sponteneity too, in the sense of miracle, can find no "place in an intelligible world. Better give up the attempt to philosophise, Bosanquet suggests, than admit so impotent an answer. Individuality, that is, system and non-contradiction, as it were, incarnate, 'could not "be realized in any system which is not transparent according to the law of causation or sufficient reason.' There can be no 'meaning' in miracle. "The overwhelming weight of probability rests on the side of the assumption that all tendencies and capacities are 1 transmitted through bodily arrangements." Insisting that this is no debasement of mind from the high place it should hold in philosophy Bosanquet repeats that "true spirituality must be seen in mechanical intelligibility." This does not imply prediction, for prediction is 'predoing,' and the universe does not repeat itself; but it does imply that the mind is a centre that does logically express and give meaning to all that focuses in it, the history of the race, the present environment and the total habituations and adaptations of that exquisitely refined 'shopful of machines' which is a man. 1. Principle - p.171 106" In recapitulation the arguments are these: a. Continuity is essential, the logical nexus must not be severed, or intelligibility goes. b. The direction of the world was not and is not left to finite minds; but is the work of a deeper 'world wisdom,' which must be trusted "It is not," Bosancuet writes,"finite consciousness that has planned the great phases of civilization which are achieved by the linking of finite minds on the essential basis of the geological structure of the globe. Each separate mind reaches but a little way, and relating to the whole of the movement must be counted as 'unconscious.' Neither city nor coral reef were ever any design of the men or the insects who constructed them; they lay altogether deeper 1 in the roots of things." It is nothing other than lack of confidence in this 'wisdom of the world' which drives men to seek relief in miracle, monadism, in spiritual entelechies, or in the power of their own 'free will.' It is fear of the physical that makes men look elsewhere for the spiritual. c. The expression of perfection in some whole, as a work of art (the absolute 'in propria persona') waits for mechanical refinement and is dependent upon mechanical adjust-ments of the material world. "His very ideas," Bosanciuet writes of man, "are not created from the void, but simply represent the immanent capacities of his world." His distin-ctive contribution lies in the possibility of infinitely" varied adjustments to a vastly wider range of materials, and in his 'more concrete world* rather than in any principle 1. Principle - p.143 foreign to the rest of reality. d. It is only as complimentary members of the absolute that Nature and mind are maintained. Take the gift of nature out of mind, and only a 'mere form of totality' is left. But this 'mere form' is itself enough to afford a foundation for all that we call spiritual, inasmuch as it is the means of focussing all that it touches, of bringing 'worlds' together to form wider worlds. Externality is 'external' only for minds, and the inward and spiritual is only so as it is a centre of externality in which the 'outer is made the inner" and the'inner is the converted outer. ' Reflective experience will defend this view, that the mind 'makes- things its own.' It is a principle of system working in every possible kind of material. -An extended quotation will illumine the whole situation. "The distinction between mental purpose and natural selection is superceded so far as this, that we should look for the value of the universe in its entire and continuous working; and-while its order or unity would be recognised as expressing itself in part through human consciousness, we should not treat this as super-adding a new principle of plan and direction upon the ordinary laws of nature considered as directionless. We should consider the whole, nature and mind, as the revelation of the value of the universe. The bearing and result of these considerations would be to lay greater stress on natural selection" (includ-ing the highly important phase of social selection, i'n which a most important part of the environment of a mind is other minds) "that is to say on the moulding of the organic world and even the world of mind, in relation to the environment which we know as physical nature, by and through which the possibility of life and mind are elicited and determined; while they in turn elicit and determine those of nature.""*" This is the 'genuinely original' view of mind developed by Bosanquet. It is a spiritual view, and too, one doing justice to the claim of externality to be all that it seems, and unconstituted by finite minds. Nature is not a shadow creation of the minds of many observers, nor is it akin to mind, in the sense of 'pan-psychism' - a reduction to a one-sided homogeneity. Neverthe-less nature is 'organic to spiritual ends': the ends lying deep in the nature of the whole. In the rise of finite minds from the brute creation (in the high order of which no small degree of 'mind in embryo' appears), and the birth of life from an inaminate world, the spirit of totality or 'principle of individuality' has been expressing itself, even in wider and more comprehensive wholes. The capacity of stored response in the animal,made reaction to a larger world possible; larger, that is in the sense of variety, than the laws of the inorganic world would allow. In man the principle of individuality, as the it were, finds itself in a new form. The spirit o ^ whole, which is the power of the teleology below consciousness reaches a microcosmic representation of itself in finite consciousnesses, which, in turn, offer a material of infinite 1. Principle - P. XXIV adaptability for the same spirit to work with in the creation of those higher obRectifications of mind in civilization and institution which Hegel is not alone in regarding as mind at its best. To the finite mind is given the double role of spectator and player in the theatre of life. Man cannot see the whole drama 'sub specie aeternitatis' but he can reflect, in the wings, upon the part he is playing, and form at least some idea of the whole. THE SELF-TRANSCENDENCE OF THE FINITE INDIVIDUAL. Chapter VII Most of the criticism of Bosanquet's philosophy, whether directed openly at his conception of the Absolute, f at his treatment of the subject of immortality, or at his theory of the state has as its underlying discontent a feeling that the finite individual(what members of other schools prefer to call the particular 'person') is being belittled; that the status of man in the cosmos is being set too low. Professor Pattison, for example, urges that "Professor Bosanquet completely fails to realize the elementary conditions of self-hood.""1" This is a sweeping criticism, in order to evaluate it the view actually presented by Bosanquet must be fully understood. Professor Laird has written, in his "Problems of the Self," "We know what our souls are, we know the meaning of their identity, we know the sense in which they are distinct 2 and independent in the world." The distinctness, it may be remarked, is that of a special 'soul substance.' All of this Bosanquet is 'anxious to deny.' 1. Symposium - 517. 2. Page 364 106" As in the preceding pages it has been shown that minds are denied any independent substantive existence considered as isolated from the whole range of externality to which th^r give coherence and meaning, so in these pages, the thesis will be carried further, that what is generally thought of as an isolated 'person,' having an existence highly independent and exclusive, is better interpreted, as an 'individual,' that is, as a world with a widely fluctuating content. There is, therefore, no line between the thought of the last chapter, aid the argument of this chapter. The latter is an expansion of the former having especial reference to the higher phases of the individual's environment. We may elaborate the criticism of "Professor Pattison. He writes, "Finite centres may 'overlap' indefinitely in content, but'ex vi termini'they cannot overlap at all in existence; their very raison d'etre is to be distinct and, in that sense, separate and exclusive focalizations of a 1 common universe." His complaint continues, that the destiny of the finite self is always in "Terras of objective and impersonal content," instead of in the "distinct personalities that focus it." "Each self is a unique existence which is perfectly impervious to other selves - impervious in a fashion of which the impenetrability of matter is a faint analogue." (It might be pointed out that the 'impenetrability of matter' is a very uncertain analogue in the light of the new conception 1. Symposium p.513 of matter which the new physics affords). Professor Pattison denies that he is especially pleading for a view consistent with the survival of 'distinct personalities' after death, but the denial is not half as urgent as his insistence upon the particularity of persons, and in any case, the absence of any other reason for his warmth would almost imply an underground interest in survival. His vigor in defence of 'self-hood' would hardly be justified by the maintenance of an impersonal-ity of existence which is doomed to be so impermanent. Bosanquet would admit Professor Pattison's right to be inter-ested in immortality, but would condemn any attempt, either to force the evidences of experience into a form shaped by an underground interest, or to belittle the values which are open and on the surface of every present movement of experience. By no means all of those philosophers who uphold a theory of the self as substantive do so on the basis of the necessity of personal survival. Many realists, for example, 'sit loose' on the problem of immortality. N. Returning to the immediate problem, the issue may be put thus. All philosophers agree that the individual is conditioned to a greater or less degree by the complex situat-ion in which he has his being. The opponents of Bosanouet maintain, however, that in spite of his overlapping in content with other selves, he enjoys a particularity which is the most real thing about him. On the other hand, Bosanquet insists that not his exclusiveness, but his tendency to 'go outside of himself' is the true character of his being. In 106" support of this thesis material may be drawn from a wide variety of non-philosophical writing. Dean Inge, for example, writes of the "fluid conception of personality which we find in the New Testament" referring thereby to the Johannine and the Pauline conception of 'membership one of another' and of 1 "Fellowship with Christ and Christ with us." And a modern novelist who representa a not uncommon trend, "Men must get back into touch. And to do so they must forfeit the vanity 2 and the 'noli me tangere' of their own absoluteness." Bosanquet's own statement of the same thought is "Our contin-ued self-identity is apt to be a fetish which becomes a 3 slavery." The sheer emptiness of the ego conceived as-exclusive is something his opponents "misconceive with really 4 amazing jaerverseness." The true character of the self always lies outside of the arbitrary limits which it tends to set for itself only to transcend; and its nature and spirit are best seen in the movement of self-transcendence. Unreflective opinion may venture to interrupt at this point, and express its impatience with the general line taken. That there is a 'given self,' it may be again mainta-ined, is the most obvious thing in the world. Pressed further the nature of this self may be given as like a 'boatman in a 1. "Personal Idealism and Mysticism" - p.104-5 2. D.H. Lawrence in a Book Review For the "Dial" 3. Science and Philosophy - p.110 4. Ibid., p.107 boat.' This naive notion is foundational to much 'psuedo-metaphysical' doctrine, theosophies, and such; but can find no favour in thoroughgoing philosophy any longer. Empedocles could suppose souls to be peculiarly shapely atoms among other atoms, and be blameless; but since psychology has shown the dependence of self-hood upon the whole environment, physical and psychical of the growing child, none other may assume a soul substance without high "risk of condemnation for leaping to too hasty an answer. For purposes of public administration the isolation of finite selves may be assumed, but it must be remembered that isolation, even in justice, is not the only thing that can be said of a man. There is more of him than his "given self." In good philosophical theory the stream can and does rise higher than its source, and the individual, as he goes outside of himself becomes, plainly, a 'new creature.' As mind, when it is not 'energizing' is a 'mere empty form;' but when active, makes alive with new meanings an illimitable range of material; so the finite self, as such, is a bare potentiality, and a very shallow thing, but when most itself it may mirror the universe. In it "The absolute appears as a soul with the capacity for forming a self, because the stuff and pressure for utterance are there, to which nothing less than a soul can do justice." It becomes the responsibility of the individual to work out all the possibilities which the stored adaptations, the acquisition of aeons of history, have bequeathed him. So immeasurable is the reach of their possibilities that the old attempt to draw arbitrary lines and say, "Here is humanity, and there divinity" can no more be countenanced. On the side of exclusiveness, only the bare separation of bodies can be offered, and that, it may be urged, is no 1 insuperable barrier; while the heights and depths of shared experience, in love, for example, and the social life, may be adduced in favour of the essential community of existence of formally separate beings. The self which is most fully his own is the self which an individual cannot withdraw from others, and which on every boundary blends into the individuality of his group, and with the richer material world which his group life makes his own. "So, Bosanquet writes, "when we look round us today for appreciations of the unity of man with himself and his fellows, and nature, and the universe, and God; we find not so much an appeal to abstract argument as a consensus from innumerable sources based on a subtle study and appreciation of the emotional continuities by which man betrays his incom-pleteness in all these directions, and affirms intuitively 2 and emotionally the connection he cannot break." It is important to realize the full measure of fluctuation of the self from its lowest point, to its highest. According to the view we are developing it is obvious that the self or soul is 'a power or quality of which there can be more 1. W.E. Hocking, "Meaning of God in Human Experience." p. 265. 2. Meeting of Extremes - p.66 or less.1 The low level is, of course, the form of totality that accompanies the union of two mature cells which have reached the limit of their own solitary growth, and which at the same time contain as potential within them, the history of the race and the possibility of a new generation. The low level in the sense of attainment,, is virtually nothing. The high level is obviously the Absolute. Between these two points the finite individual has his being. He cannot, as we have said, rest on any island out of the universal flow, but he can observe the general direction that it takes. "Our given nature implies and carries us to the Absolute." How is it, then, that the finite individual stays finite? Why does his fullest flow not tide him into the Absolute? Becaiise of the defect of insularity which asserts itself and holds him short of his destiny. . The finite consciousness fails 'because it 1 stops short of its own nature.* With a hint in it o f the whole, and a thirst for self-completion (that is, the overcoming of every contradiction and the achievement o f complete coherence) it is denied its fulfilment by the correlative defect of its quality. It takes a nervous system to focus snd to bring to significance a world, and the same nervous system sets its own limitation of possible response as the limit of expansion and self transcendence o f the finite individual. But the limits are wider than we have supposed. It is the fat e of the finite being that he should stretch out his hands 1. Principle - p.310 toward that which he cannot reach. But, since the real, for its expression must have multiplicity as well as unity, this impotence while a defect in finite individuality, is not a defect in the real. For were the goal of all self-transcen-dence attained, the universe would become quiescent. It is a fact of experience, however, to which we can bring many evidences, that the movement of self-transcendence is central to finite life, and that 'at their strongest' selves 'tend to become confluent.' Professor Pattison, it would appear, is anxious to hold, as it were, in the one hand, both a high degree of exclusiveness, and a degree of confluence. The difficulty of this attempt lies in the nature of self-transcendence, that the typical self-transcendence does not 'set a reserve upon itself,'but rather 'gives itself away.' In the face of such a demand it is well nigh impossible to hear the egoistic cry for exclusiveness. It is typical of all devotion that it 'holds itself of no account' and seeks only to be absorbed in the perfection that is sought after. The immeasurable accentuation of vitality, the wealth of new values which come to a being 'when it throws itself completely outside of 'itself' is too well known to need pressing, but the far reaching significance which its recognition lends and the illumination it gives to philosophy cannot be overemphasised. It offers the key to the house of knowledge 'of the self-maintenance and self-assertion of the universe.' 106" The acceptance of the theory of self-transcendence is rendered difficult by the popular tendency, not without its influence in philosophy to set up arbitrary divisions. 'Self' and 'other' are assumed to be set in opposition, the self versus the other. This is not a valid picture at all. The relation is rather of self in other, and the other made over into the self. "The universal is just that character of experience which overcomes the 'is not' by reducing it to an element harmonious and corroborative of the 'is-' It is the 'self in the other."' The Self-transcendence of the finite individual is the same in principle as the principle of non-contradiction. The former is a 'close up' of the movement of every day life, the latter is the same movement as expressed in logical theory. In summary Bosanquet remarks that "There is nothing in the world worth having, doing, or being which 1 does not involve enormous self-transcendence." Lest this be swept aside as a mere assertion certain examples may be taken. 3. In every artistic effort the artist, using as his means of expression certain materials and instruments, paints, oils, stone and chisels, and also the skill which is the sum and the significance of his bodily mechanism, highly trained and refined, sets himself to mirror some aspect of the universe in such a way that his work of art will be of itself a little 1. Principle - p.258 universe, self sustaining and complete - regarded as a work of art - in itself. Plainly the artist at work is a living example of self-transcendence; or a man 'absorbed in his task!' And in this absorption he is far more himself than when, say, he is aping the 'artistic temperament.' In this common phrase, 'Absorbed in his work' there is a truth for philosophy which can be made much of. The work of art also, the picture or the statue is a model of reality and an example of self-transcendence. The trees are no less themselves because they are also a wood. The minutiae of the picture are no less real because their highest reality is not as details in isolation but as small things supporting the unity of the whole. Obviously it takes the whole to give full meaning to the part. The stone set as the key of an arch is as much a stone as it was on the rock pile, but it is more. This common fact, Bosanquet insists, must be seen in its full strength, if the part played by finite selves is to be understood. in his appreciation of it, is gone, in a sense The observer of a work of art,/ outside of himself. This truth also, Bosanquet holds to be so obvious as to have been overlooked, if not altogether, at any rate, in its full significance.lt must be taken in 'bitter earnest.' The full degree of self-transcendence in aesthetic appreciation, with its swallowing up of every trace of the 'given self,' or the self we have taken ourselves to be, must be whole heartedly accepted as a datum of philosophy. To the accusation that, since in such high self-transcendence we can hardly or are unable to recognize ourselves, it cannot matter very much to us, Bosanquet has a quick answer. Of course you hardly know yourself "When, for a moment, Shakespeare or Beethoven has laid his spell upon you," for you so seldom live at the level you might. In love, too, the self-transcendence of the individ-ual is not beyond the discovery of the most unreflective. v In love the movement is from isolation to absorption, from exclusiveness to inclusion in a new unity which is wider and higher than either individual taken alone. The example of V Antony and Cleopatra will serve. These two were fused by the heat"of a single passion (too great to fall under moral condemnation) into a single being, in which there remained enough residual perversity to be their undoing. But the climax of the tragedy and the death of both by the same passion is said to perfect a unity which otherwise remained incomplete. Thus love (like all finite experience) lies somewhere between the poles of isolation and absorption, but its perfection would be absorption. * To this view of self-transcendence exception has been 1 taken. It is asked "Does this world of deeper spiritual membership mean absorption?" The answer given is,"Ho, for though the ego goes out of itself it does so only to become richer, 'more adequate to response, more capable of the joy and intensified life in the experience of love.'" Bosanouet h a 3 1. For example, Braham in Personality and Immortality in Post-Kantian Thought, p.123. 106" replied, in effect, thus. "With all that you have said as to the enrichment and intensification of life in love I agree; but you do not take with sufficient strength the 'abandon' of the experience at its best. We agree that 'love seeks not its own,' and we have only to remember the world's greatest lovers to know that quite often they do not get it. One of them, at any rate was crucified; and the greatest measure of r^fh e r enrichment, by far, has been that of the race^than that which was consciously his own. There is, of course, a sense in which a 'return with an enriched self' can be said to follow self-transcendence, but it is only by a misunderstanding of the conditions of self-hood along the lines of 'thing-hood' that it can be said other than in this colloquial sense. The defect is one of language. The self is the flow, or the rising and falling tide of experience. There is no spiritual structure into and out of which the self can pass. The narrower or smaller self, and the wider self are convenient names, merely for different levels of the same experience. To over-come these difficulties as1far as possible, the term 'individ-ual' is preferred to 'self or person, and an individual is 'a whole' whatever its degree of comprehensiveness. So, in love, enrichment of the self need not be expressed in terms of a 'return', but of greater comprehension. And, after all, since the love we allude to is a finite and imperfect experience, we use it only as a pointer towards perfection. Inasmuch as the quality of love (and to this all agree) intensifies geometrically with the more complete self-transcendence, that is doing, writes his book, builds his empire, preaches his 'good tidings;' and in the long run he does far more, or less than he thought. And, viewed as a part of the 'whole ordered spectacle,' the latter is the true work of the man, and it is a work, in a very real sense, outside of himself. He is a co-operating factor in a whole world of influences, and the result is - as it is. Strictly speaking he does not do it at all, yet it'is historically, the. most real thing about him. He is an agent, with other agents of the same 'world wisdom' that worked below consciousness. Great men have never begun to know their influence in the world, though some have felt it. In the movement of life every individual is undergoing self-transcendence, whether he knows it or not. He is so identified with the whole that his private 'personality' is but a fragment of himself, which self is genuinely present throughout his group, and which is projected in time, for thousands of years and which, in fact modifies the whole. "Individuals," Bosanouet writes, "not merely exist for a brief space in the world, but characterize it as permanent qualifications." "*"What is a platitude upon our lips, 'the solidarity of the race,' Bosanquet would exalt into an every day demonstration of a whole field of private self-transcendence; the blending, that is, of/purpose and of will with the purpose and will of the race. The larger wholes of society are as real, in fact more real than the individuals which compose them. As a universal, a society, the is more concrete,in / sense of taking in wider ranges of 1. Science and Philosophy - p.Ill 106" difference, than the finite individual. "The unity of the individual human as a 'concrete universal' is not to be exaggerated above the unity of human beings in identical senti-ments, ideas, purposes or habits, as something not a datum, not real, the mere creation of our comparing intelligence." Of self-transcendence in the social situation and elsewhere Bosanquet writes thus, "The individual, then, does not attain the maximum of originality in his exclusive self when he feels himself repellent against others. And if personality is taken in the strict sense of the character of being a subject of rights and duties among other similar subjects, then personality itself is only possible in virtue of an individuality which already transcends it .... so individuality, the principle of reality takes us beyond personality in the strict sense, beyond the consciousness of self which is mediated by an opposing not self, into the region where we go out of the self and into it by the same movement, in the q\iasi-religion of social unity, in knowledge, art, and in religion proper. And in all these experiences, as the repellent self-consciousness diminishes, and the sense of unity with the world and with man becomes pre-eminent, - and in all these individuality is strengthened, and the self, though less in opposition to a not-self, is more itself, and is more at home .... In religion the self no longer insists on its exclusive claim, and the whole being goes out into the service which is perfect freedom ... It is plain that the height of individuality is to be looked for in the experiences 106" which raise to the actuest pitch the sense and fact of identity 1 with man, nature and God." To this whole view yet further objection is raised, though along lines similar to that noticed above Dr. McTaggart maintains that because A is in the relation B to a thing C, and in the relation E to a thing F and so on, does not detract from the distinctness of A. "Of course A is not 'isolated,' 2 but can very well be "really and ultimately distinct.'" It is well to remember that Dr. McTaggart finds nothing but pluralism in pluralism in Hegel, and is therefore peculiarly fitted to find things 'really and ultimately distinct.' The difference would appear to be foundational. McTaggart begins with things apparently distinct and takes distinctness to be the last word that may be said of them; whereas Bosanquet .is impressed above all with the connections of things and takes their apparent distinctness as offering no clue to their actual nature. Scratch the surface of the disconnected, and you will find roots of a common membership. In his whole emphasis both on differentiation and multiplicity, and on a fundamental unity - upon the basis of which alone intelligibil-ity can rest - Bosanquet's view seems the more synoptical and hence the most truly philosophical. The life of the finite individual is, Bosanauet remarks - and with him the common man agrees, an adventure. His imperfections and inconsistenceis drive him to remove them and in so doing he moves 'towards the Absolute." He rejoices in that 'greater than himself which underlies and surrounds him.' In his 'life, love, and death' there is before him what Bosanquet pleases to call the 'open secret of the Absolute.' 1. Principle - p.270-371 2. *s Revi w f Pri pie THE ABSOLUTE Chapter VIII We have been compelled to make use of a term without attempting any adequate definition of it. The Absolute stands (if the imperfect analogy is permitted) in the shadow of almost every word that is written in the spirit of Bosanquet. The nature of the concept covered by the term has doubtless been illuminated by its numerous contexts, but the central!ty of the docttine, its liability to confusion, and the criticism that has been hurled about it call for a clear and fairly full statement of what the Absolute stands for in the philosop-hy of Bosanquet. Any reader of contemporary philosophy or indeed of the literature of theology, sociology or any of the special fields of a philosophical colour will not have read far without detecting a high scorn of 'Absolutism.' The terms 'Monist' or 'Absolutist' are almost missiles in the hands of Pluralists and Pragmatists. What is the reason for this? It grows, there can be little doubt from an acute misunderstand-ing of what the Absolute implies. For the misunderstanding there may be a number of reasons adduced. 106" The healthy democratic mood of the American philosopher has engendered an unreflective distaste for the name, as tinged, somehow with Imperialism and autocracy, and has therefore failed to recognize the inevitable presence of the absolute, even in the midst of pragmatism. It is slipped in surreptitiously, but is there none the less, as the reader of John Dewey can be sure. Moreover, William James' impish delight in 'calling names' has confused the issue in the minds of the unreflective, without helping to any understanding of the situation. We have seen that an absolutism can be 'tough' rather than 'tender.' William James' notion of idealism was drawn too exclusively from Josiah Royce, who, it has been said, never entered quite to the heart of English Hegelianism. James did not begin to understand what T.H. Green and the Cairds were driving at. He thought they were defending revelation. It is probable that the too neat triadic steps of Hegel's dialetic, and the too brilliant axe-manship of Bradley in his "Appearance and Reality" have frightened many away with the feeling that for the sake of a theory Absolutism was carving all experience into a shape of its own. To such as these the more diffuse dialectic of Bosanquet would have been less disturbing. It is a gross misconception, however, to accuse either Hegel or his successors, particularly Bosanquet, of striving for a theory. We have pointed to the roots of in his theory in life ancl/the daily fluctuation of experience. In particular the popular misconception of the Absolute is that it is outside of or other than the "living universe.' Or, in James' phrase that it is 'something to lie back on.' Nothing could be more erroneous. The quite meritorious interest of the present day in present and pract-ical affairs has tended to dissatisfaction with anything tak£n to be 'transcendent.' The tendency is evident in writers as widely divided both in thought and in space as Croce, on the one hand, and Professor Perry, on the other. Perhaps the best answer to this current complaint from Bosanquet's point of view is to be found in his essays "The True Conception cf Another World," and "The Kingdom of God on Earth." But the fancy yet prevails that the absolute is a 'sort of a myth' or in philosophical phrase 'a hypostatization;' something beautifully conceived, but 'in the air,' and nowhere grounded in experience. If all of this were confined to the popular mind it would be idle to refute it, but since writings of 'philos-ophers' are full of it, some attempt at re-statement must be made, not only here and for the sake of this essay, but at large and for the sake of the philosophy of the day. It must be pointed out that the Absolute 'strictly concerns ourselves;' is present in the simplest experience when properly understood is 'one with its world' and that this is 'all the world we have.' The notion of the absolute arises in the reflective mind as a result of the attempt to judge at all. In every judgment there is implied a reference to the whole of reality. The most incomplete knowledge of the finite demands at least some knowledge of the infinite. In order to offer a rational explanation of any local or particular situation, the order and rationality of the whole of which it is a part must be assumed. There is no meaning in a part except as a part of a whole. This necessary inference to unity which even the pluralist affirms as implied in his world of essences, or which he introduces without notice somewhere in his series of propositions, is sufficient to establish the absolute for thought. That this is no equivocation, merely, is the subst-1 ance of Bosanquet's essay "Time and the Absolute." The whole need not be given in order to condition the part. "Within our experience there is no limit to the transformation which a given part may undergo by being seen in connection 2 with a whole which was not given along with it." Also, as the absolute is implied (and affirmed) in every judgment so every experience likewise bears us on to the like affirmation. Action and argument carry us, like the wind, to the absolute for logical stability. The movement is prompted by the principle of non-contradiction immanent in all experience by the tendency towards self-transcendence which we have elaborated above. "The general formula of the absolute" 1. Science and Philosophy, p.113-122. 2. Ibid., p.122 Bosanquet remarks, "is the transmutation and re-arrangement of particular experiences "by inclusion in a completer whole of experience." The absolute, therefore, cannot be less than all that is, including impotence, defect, and every degree of reality. 2. There is no escape from the fact of the absolute, but the question remains, '7/b.at knowledge of the absolute is Concerning within the reach of finite intelligences?' /such a subject dogmatism is impossible but it is not necessary to rest content with sheer aqnosticism. A measure of acquaintance with the Absolute is man's daily portion. There are clues. The type of self-transcendence in art has been noted above. We may also conceive of art as an analogue of the Absolute. "The spiritual world", Bosanquet writes in his Introduction to 'Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art," "which is present, actual and concrete (that is, the Absolute) contains much besides beauty. But to apprehend one element of such a whole (as in some great picture) constitutes and pre-supposes a long step towards apprehending the rest." The character of a picture or a poem is that it is, and must be regarded as, a whole. It is lifted above serial enumeration of content; it "does not refer beyond itself for explanation or for justification." "It raises no questions of cause or compar-ison, but is, in respect of its beauty, infinite." It is an analogue of the Absolute. So too the other examples chosen above reveal an infinite side as well as a finite, in their characteri finite, in that the unity and self-dependence breaks down at a point, infinite in that they are, in their genuine unity in difference, and in principle, concrete universals. In the state individuals, themselves dependent on many sides, "begin to be re-inforced by others, their defic-iencies supplied, in a word, their immanent contradictions removed by readjustment and supplementation, so that the body of particularized centres begins to take on a distinct resemblance to what we know must be the character of the Absolute." It is religion, however, which as the most concrete experience, offers the clearest type of, and the nearest approach to the Absolute. The typical attitude of religion is of complete devotion to the object of worship, conceived as perfection, so that only complete identifi-cation with the object can satisfy the worshipper. The religious attitude must "come nearest to indicating a state of consciousness that can exemplify the Absolute." Knowledge, therefore, of the general outline of reality as a whole is possible to finite minds wholly devoted to the quest. It is possible to glimpse the "vast unitary vision' that is the universe. The quest ot philosophy which, for its satisfaction rests on 'the whole spectacle of the ordered -universe, and on the judgments of value which are 106" essentially and rationally implied in that vision' is net altogether in vain, Bosanquet's own statement is, "Now I maintain indeed, and will not surrender the position, that what thought ultimately reveals and expresses through necessity, can be nothing less than the nature of reality. Reality is not - as Croce maintains - the 'thinking' of finite minds, neither can reality be reached by wholly cognitive processes, but we do, it is his contention, 'experience' the Absolute; and that, in a sense, 'better than anything else.' 3. We 'experience' the Absolute, thus and so, but what may be said of the 'nature of the Absolute?' The two questions are not altogether separable, but there is a difference of 1 emphasis. A writer in the Philosophical Review remarks that Bosanquet "writes more about our experience of the whole than of the nature of the Absolute as such." Surely this is not to be wondered at. It is one thing to recognize cuite clearly the inevitable implication of judgment and experience, and to feel the approach to unity that the highest grades of experi-ence afford, but quite another thing to venture far in the detailed drawing of the Absolute. What the Absolute cannot be he is not diffident in declaring. Against the tendency of many moderns he maintains that the Absolute cannot be thought of on the analogies of Will or Purpose or Activity; neither can the Absolute as a whole be changeable. 1. M.C. Carrol, Philosophical Review, Vol. 30 p. 179 106" In refuting the theory that the Absolute is will or purpose Bosanquet follows closely the line marked out by Bradley in his chapter "The Absolute and its Appearances." The argument is this, that "will implies relation and process, and an unsolved discrepancy of elements,'1 something which cannot be imputed to the Absolute that would fill the logical demand for complete comprehensiveness. It is no less than an "uncritical attempt to make play with the unknown." The same, Bradley adds, holds of "energy or activity, or anything else of the kind." Bosanquet puts it thus "A purpose or a will can never be the whole of a world. A purpose always means that, founding yourself on matter accepted as a basis you recognise a certain alternation as essential in view of the admitted situation, for the restoration or partial restoration 1 of harmony." An Absolute that was 'will would be a meaning-less pursuit of nothing in particular. Purpose and will are in the Absolute but they are not the Absolute. Against the notion of change as the form of the Absolute (in the sense of an Absolute that changes as a whole) Bosanquet directs the entire weight of his logic. How can there be change without identity? Change, in order to be change needs some standard fixed and external to that which changes; in other words, change must be of something less than the Absolute. The conception of 'progress of or outside the whole' or of any movement which is not wholly exhausted within 1. Principle, p. 391 1 the Absolute 'falls to pieces at a touch.' "The whole cannot change or depart from its unity of character and value," for the whole is "simply everything," the theatre of all that happens." Change, of course, goes on within the Absolute, 2 hut not beyond it, for there is no beyond. As Bradley tersely remarks "The Absolute has no seasons," for every season falls within it. So far the emphasis has been laid upon the unity of the Absolute, arrived at by logical necessity from the simplest process of thought or from the most elementary experience. But this is no more than half a tale. In view of the way thought has been going of late, emphasis on unity is necessary enough, but for a whole picture of reality or of 'logical necessity' there must be a like emphasis upon multiplicity. "Our inference to any total perfection must be what might be called a matter of concomitant variations ...." With these variations "we must be in earnest ... I have noted" Bosanquet continues "the passionate vehemence of Plato's belief in the multiplicity as well as the unity, which is actual in the 3 universe." If parts are nothing without the whole, the whole is likewise nothing without the parts. We 'must be in earnest about the relation of part and whole,' letting neither association nor dissociation have the upper hand. We are presented at every point with a multiplicity which must advance 1. Meeting of Extremes, p. 125 2. Ibid., p.177 3. Contemporary British Philosophy - p.70. for its stability toward unity, yet whether the unity or the multiplicity is the more real is an idle question- The two hang together. "The hardness and ultimate giveness of fragmen tary appearances, and the miraculous alchemy with which the t^uch of thought and progressive experience is perpetually dissolving them, are fundamental facts of practical and theoretical life, which none but the very greatest of philos-1 ophers seem to have adequately appreciated." Thought, the • self expression of the real, would cease, if ever unity without 'concomitant variation' were attained. The argument as to the nature of the Absolute, as 2 pictured in the nature of thought has been given above. It will be recalled that,in terns at any rate,'Bradley breaks away from Bosanquet at this point. Since thought advances by the establishment of relations,.every relation demanding another for its support, it can never reach a single coherent experience. The experience of the Absolute must be supra-relational, and analogous to feeling. We have felt that in meaning the two, who differ in terms, tend to approximate, except for a difference of mood remaining. Bosanquet, however, is on more distinctive ground in his insistence upon a character of dissociation as essential to the nature of the Absolute, as its unity. "It is not an imperfection of the supreme being," Bosanquet writes - in the language of Edward Caird, "but an essential of his completeness, that his nature, 1. Science and Philosophy, p.121. 2. See p.121 above. summing up all of Reality, should go out into its "other" to seek the completion which in this case alone is absolutely 1 found." It is a fundamental error to consider either side of the Absolute experience apart from the ohter. The one will lead to a conception of a 'static' Absolute; the other to a conception of the Absolute as a series. The former of these is the popular misinterpretation of Bosanouet's theory; the latter is indefensible in that "The determinate self-contain-edness of a truly infinite whole" could never be reached by adding unit to "unit. We are brought back again to the conception of the 'Concrete Universal,' in which identity is maintained through difference, as the true character of the Absolute. Further, the Absolute cannot be in Time, though time must be housed in the Absolute. If the Absolute were in Time, then Time would be a category prior to, in a sense external to, the whole; which is absurd. The argument to an 'Absolute Time' from the relativity of personal durations is fallacious. "No one should think that in connecting relative systems of space - Time with a total of their relativities, we are cojrabining them into a real time which supercedes their individual lives. The total of connected time systems is more concrete than the single standardised time-flow, but it is still a world of times and not a time. 2 So at least it appears to me." Moreover, contained within 1. Principle, p.243 2. Meeting of Extremes, p.155 temporal experience are suggestions which point to the transcendence of succession in, say, contemplation. 5. Positive statement of the nature of the Absolute is necessarily by analogy, and every analogy may obscure as well as illuminate. The capital difficulty is to find meaningful enough terms without resorting too freely to pictures. Parmenides 'perfect sphere' is the classical example of pictorial defect in thought of the whole. The analogy of any "thing" will never do. To talk of the Absolute as one does of a finite being is to be "on the brink of the meaning-less. Again, the problem is wrongly put if, in asking philosophy for the nature of the Absolute we really mean, "What is God like?" or some question of a similar sort. Neither will the attempt to reach the infinite by abstraction from the finite succeed. It is by participation in the infinite that the finite is what it is, and the road to the infinite lies in the direction of the finite and beyond it, rather, so to speak, than away from it. For the infinite is everything that the finite is, end more. The first word that must be said of the Absolute, and it has already been said, is that it is inclusive. It takes in everything and every value and in it none is lost. The manner in which variety, even what appears to be defect, may be taken up is probably the acutest problem of Absolutism. Bosanauet meets the problem squarely. How can. one mood contain another; how can one very distinct experience (as of 'sorrow for sin') move over into another without loss? The answer is contained in the preceding chapter, and is stated as, "by self-transcendence. " In religion for example, the local character of occasional moods, the various aspects of the individual's life are seen to blend and to be absorbed in a single 'high level' experience. "This comparison of the higher regions of experience with each, other, and with those that are less complete enables us in principle to understand the relation of the less to the more inclusive... and thus to meet one of the fundamental difficulties in the conception of an Absolute experience. Such an experience, we say, includes and absorbs the experiences which we possess severally - includes them positively in a fuller form of each, 1 yet without reproducing them in their separate distinctness." That we have no experience of our own by which to parallel the perfect experience does not mean that we cannot understand its conditions, and sense its nature. The point is that everything must be there, failures no less than successes; just as the many failures of the artist are truly contained in the final perfect production. Transmutation, which in living experience is exemplified in the advance from brute suffering to 'divine tragedy,' is the key to inclusion in the Absolute. The way in which,in Art, Philosophy and Religion the "Time spirit has practically lost its power, or rather has S become the spirit that conquers time," in the sense of succession, is a clear example of transmutation. "For us," 1. Principle, p.273 S. Science and Philosophy, p.118 106" Bosanquet writes, "the Absolute is the living source of the series, a source with which we can identify ourselves by faith and will, and can therefore unite ourselves with its perfection although not in factual existence transcending 1 the temporal series." Finite life belongs to the Absolute. "He (the finite individual) is a member of the universe 'inter pares'; he is something, however, trifling without which it v/ould not be what it is. He is, indeed, an organ through which, however 2 slightly in degree, the whole maintains itself." The Absolute needs him, and he needs the Absolute: as the 'flower' which gives brightness to its wall, needs its cranny and the whole world to sustain it. He takes a bit of material, fills it with new meaning, and commits it again to the whole from which together they sprang. Neither finite life, nor any of its appearances are defects in the Absolute. If this saying offends the moral sense, it is only an offence by misunderstand-ing. Men are living members of a universe spiritual through-out, showing their life on all sides by their continuity with the world and their fellows, and by their upward striving which is, in Bosanquet's phrase, the spirit of logic alive in them. The relation of selves to the Absolute is pictured by Dante in his Divine Comedy, in which "We have actual persons shown as moving freely and obviously themselves and self-determined, while no less obviously, though merely through 1. Meeting of Extremes, p.215 2. Principle, p.159 a deeper insight into their selves, exhibited as elements within an embracing spiritual universe." Another question concerning the Absolute or the universe is: Is it good or bad? Philosophical.pessimism on the one hand, and an ultimate optimism on the other may both be shown to be impossible conclusions as to the nature of the v/hole. The whole cannot be valued for it is the source of all values. The popular criterion, 'values are for and in persons' is modified by the conception of self-hood which we have accepted. Value lies in individuality, but finally there is only one individual, that is, the Absolute. Just as we cannot value specific qualities except as in an individual, so also we cannot evaluate the individual except as in the universe. There is no reason for drawing a line short of the whole. The only possible measure of value is the Absolute, and it is therefore meaningless to pronounce upon it as good, bad or indifferent. "In itself, though perfect, it is not good, because it is not on one side in the contrast of what ought to be with that which is not what it ought to be but is becoming so. Good and bad are not appropriate expressions by which to raise a question about it, but if it is raised, the universe must be pronounced good as opposed to bad. It is, however, though in the above sense not strictly good -certainly not morally good in the ordinary sense - yet perfection and the standard of all goodness and value." 1. Principle, p.310 The last question as to the nature of the Absolute which we shall attempt is this: Is it a self-conscious being? The predecessors of Bosanquet, T.H. Green and the Cairds, affirm that it is? but Bosanquet is non-committal. Bradley denies the applicability of the term, but Bosanquet is not, at this point, so outright. He will accept an analogy with greater grace than the other. Bradley is unhesitating, and will not have instruments and expressions fitted to appearance taken over into the realm of reality. But the chasm between appearance and reality is not, for Bosanquet the "gulf of despair1 that it is for Bradley. There are bridges that rise over the abyss. Professor Pattison equates God and the Absolute, and, of course, calls it a self-conscious being. Bosanquet denies the equation and doubts the rider. The substantial agreement of Bradley and Bosanquet in meanings, however, makes it doubtful whether the latter, though hospitable to every analogy will allow their too close application to reality. Its rich variety of analogy is the especial merit of Bosanquet' writing, but how far they may be trusted is an open question. To no small extent, it would appear. The 'concept' of the Absolute, therefore, is approached by a splendid series of pictures. With 'a maximum of reservation' the Absolute is faintly outlined in the great works of mind, the state, a great poem, religion, and the like. Hence it ought not to be inapplicable to characterise the Absolute as 'a self-conscious being' if we remember that the nature of the self is not seen 106" in its exclusiveness, but in its inclusiveness, and that the • highest ranges of 'objective mind' in, say, a greet civiliz-ation, are more truly individual and concrete than the self of a solitary person. There are passages which, at least, do not deny that the Absolute is a self-conscious being. In the 'Meeting of Extremes' Bosanquet takes issue with those who 'deny that there is a universal mind.' Again, he writes. "The infer-ence (to the Absolute) is to a unitary perfection lying in the complete individuality of the universe as a conscious being." The type of the 'conscious being,' however, is the 'individual' and not the 'person.' * It is because of the tendency to treat personality and self-consciousness as features of exclusiveness that Bosanquet is chary of their use as applied to the Absolute. A defect of finite-conscious-ness must not be made a character of the infinite. The term 'the perfect experience' remains. There can be 110 question at all as to the sort of analogy that does serve to illuminate our concept of what we are completely convinced is real and is, at the last, the only real. It may be repeated, for the sake of emphasis, that Bosanquet'3 interest in the Absolute is solely on the ground of the security it affords the myriad manifestations which make up the world of every day. It is the Infinite variety of life, its shape, colour and texture that moves him most deeply. It is the call to finer and higher appreciation of and responsiveness 106" to its beauty, its rewards and its opportunities that belong alike to men of high degree and of low; it is the whole wealth of the world that sends the thinker out to find to his own satisfaction and that of others, the roots of all of this in some sure and unshaken ground. The appeal to the Absolute and to the ideal is not a venture into the upper air, but a groundward movement; it is not a 'racking of the imagination about remote matters' but an attempt to know the underlying conditions of the near and the real. 5. Criticism of Bosanquet's theory of the Absolute has its rise, we have seen, in his treatment of the finite self. It reaches its climax in the criticism that he is advocating a 'static absolute,' which, to our dynamic age is a very grievous thing. In the attack many are joined, but a detailed examination of the views of one will suffice. Sir Henry Jones has devoted several chapters to a detailed criticism of the allied phases of self-transcendence and the concept of the 1 2 Absolute. With his general position Watson appears to agree. The attack is directed primarily against the self-Transcendence of the finite individual, and is in much the same spirit as 3 that noticed above. It is maintained that self-realization is the preferable term. Man does not seek to 'go beyond himself,' he is "endeavouring to reach or become himself." "I cannot admit," Sir Henry complains, "that man is a fore-1. A Faith that Inquires - p.174 - 213 2. Philosophical Review Vol.34 p.427 3. See p. ro. above. doomed failure." This last sentence sounds a trifle odd when we remember that the motive of Bosanquet's philosophy is, beyond any doubt, the establishment of the grounds of man's permanent value. 'Failure' varies according to what is looked for of success. Bosanouet feels that his philosophy affords all that any 'reasonable man would want.' If it falls short of granting personal immortality it does so not with a sense of loss, but with a clear statement of the 'wealth of values' that remain. In the first two phrases there is an inconsist-ency. If man is "endeavouring to reach himself,' his self truly lies outside of him. How then does he not seek to 'go beyond himself? Bosanquet maintains the inappropriateness of the 'inside and outside' interpretation, and guards himself 1 against its dangers.• The position of Bosanouet is that a man always is 'more or less' of himself, according as he is 'energizing,' but that he never need be a failure in any sense of the word. That simply because man is seldom or never all he would be, and because he is doomed to die, he is therefore doomed to be a failure is a palpable piece of bad philosophy. It would be, for example, a strange view of values that saw any failure in the life of an Easter lily, just because it died down before Whit Sunday. We cannot go over the whole argument for self-trangcendence again. It must be taken as established already. And from this reading of experience the rest follows; or if it be denied, then there is nothing more to be said. In any event 'fore-doomed 1. See p.68. above to failure1 is a strange reaction to Bosanquet's view, whether accepted, or rejected. Self-Transcendence in the Absolute becomes transmut-ation, which is 'too cruel.' Why cruel? It is plain that in a 'dynamic' "absolute, changing as a whole, transmutation would not be less but more. In some way also, Sir Henry has missed the point of identity in difference and of unity and multiplic-ity as the joint character of the real, and has fancied Bosanouet to have set up two worlds, with an abyss between. He writes "In this world man is condemned to failure, and the next world is the scene of such transmutation that nothing is 1 any longer recognizable." This is a charicature and not an interpretation of Bosanquet, who has said often that "This world is all the world there is." It is by penetration with the secret of this world that we discover it to be more than we ever thought, so much more that, in popular speech, it is known as another world. The true 'other' is 'this' understood. Further, it is written "The Absolute stands aloof aft'er all, from the world of finite happenings, of which by the way, this world is crammed full." Obviously Bosanquet would not claim to be unassailable, but attack on the side of dualism must come as a surprise. "Multiplicism, the variety of levels of experience each possessing its peculiar range and area becomes th§ obvious truth. Dualism loses its prominence as the one antithesis of monism, and the question of monism and the Absolute becomes simply the question how far we are able to 1. A Faith that Inquires - p.192 maintain a unity within multiplicism while following it out into its higher which are also necessarily its deeper ranges." Perhaps Bosanquet's phrase 'He has not been in earnest over the relation of part and whole' may be turned against the critic. If the abyss is conceived as between appearance and reality, it may be answered that at no point is there any break between the two. Bosanquet does not, even in terms (as Bradley does) lay himself open to this criticism. Appearance is held away from Reality by opposition to be overcome; but reality is not independent of the opposing appearances which blend and break sway within it. Contradict-ion is the 'spirit of logic.' The little quip "Contradiction is thus, for Mr. Bosanquet, the ultimate word regarding this world of time and tears,"and"It is a contradiction between 2 two things, each of which is fixed," fail completely of inter-preting the place of contradiction, and reveal a gulf of misunderstanding. The principle of non-contradict ion, we have seen, is the spirit of unity, and is so by virtue of its impulse toward the removal of every contradiction. Contradict-ion is, therefore, in a very real sense a 'prime mover,1 but is in no sense the 'last word.' The final criticism is of the Absolute as static. It is the 'shining palace on the hill' all over again. William James, if he had thought of it, would have called it "Bosanquet-2 Folly" - a round tower, set uselessly on the horizon. The accusation is directed against its inclusiveness. That in a sense, therefore, the Absolute is static, Bosanquet would agree, 1. Principle - p.373 2. A Faith That Enquires - p.212 106" inasmuch as it never has any call to go outside of itself. But that this is adequate ground of criticism he does not admit, for it cannot be escaped by any path of logic. Sir Henry admits that 'all process is in the Absolute1 and yet demands that the Absolute be not static. Estimated strictly, the criticism is meaningless. The 'process,' for which he pleads cannot go outside of the "Theatre of all that is going on everywhere," and the Absolute is the theatre. Nevertheless "It is" he writes, "a dead Absolute, like the static substance of Spinoza. The living turmoil is all elsewhere." It is inconceivable that Sir Henry has read the Gifford lectures without bias (and the bias, which sways him, and others also, is not improbably the demand that man be a permanent 'angelic spirit' with title clear to the skies) when he says of the Absolute that "It does not express itself in the changes" of this world. The 'living turmoil1 is, all of it, in the Absolute, only it suffers transmutation as the various moods of man undergo transmutation moment by moment. "You cannot" Bosanquet objects, "heap up contents all relevant to each other, within a single experience 1 and prevent them from reacting on each other." That is what transmutation, simply seen, amounts to. "Accidental views, imperfect essays, lower forms of beauty and goodness are really present in the totals which must gain depth and weight from all that has led up to them." 1 1. Principle, p.390 Bosanquet has an excellent phrase "The universe 1 does not move from its nature, but reveals it." The issue is this. What stability of values or of anything else can there be in a universe that cannot stay at home, but must go outside of itself for satisfaction, and is likely at any moment to change its mind and its nature. 1 . Meeting o f Extremes - p . 2 1 6 UBC Scanned by UBC Library LOGIC Part II - (B) Chapter IX With the detail of Bosanquet's logic (said by a recent American critic to be, "The greatest masterpiece of logical writing in our tongue," we are not concerned. For the purposes of this essay it will suffice to indicate its general trend and so to clear the mind of any confusion as to the logical basis of Bosanquet's wider philosophical system. We have already remarked upon his 'change of heart' concerning the place of logic in philosophy, and throughout our 'oages have touched on points of logic, particularly the general theory of the -universal, and Bosancuet's contribution in that direction. It is all-important to keep in mind that logic for him never was an arid discussion of forms. His general attitude never varied. In his large book on Logic, published in 1888, is the seed of his latest thought in the same field. The sub-title is significant, "The Morphology of Knowledge," in that it emphasises connection and life, rather than the division traditional to 'logic chopping.' Logic, we have seen, is not a part of the field of philosophy, but a spirit which pervades the whole. Divisions between the areas of inquiry could only be for convenience and by no means insurmountable. A typical sentence is, "Lcgic, or the spirit of totality, is the clue to reality, value and freedom." Within the area, even, of logical theory, divisions are not final. It is useful to indicate the various grades of the same essential process by terms such as, judgment and inference deduction and induction; but their continuity is the most important thing about them, and not the separation that formal logic has accentuated. "The conception of Logical Science," he writes in the introduction to his "Logic,* "which has been my guide in the present work is that of an unprejudiced study of the forms of knowledge in their development, their inter-connection and their comparative value as embodiments of truth. In elaboration of his subtitle he remarks, "If I have at all reproduced for others the spectacle of continuity and unity in the intellectual life, combined with the most varied and precise adaptation of its fundamentally identical function to manifold conditions and purposes, which this comparison never fails to present to my own mind, I shall, so far, have 1 succeeded in the object of my work." Bosanquet criticises certain other schools of logic 2 thus. 1. Logic, 1888 - p.VII 2. An article by R.C. Lodge in 'Philosophical Review' has been of service in the Dresent outline. 106" a. Formal logic, the logic of tradition and of the schools is defective, and is bound to fail in that it attempts to treat the form of knowledge without reference to content. It may be admitted that 'forms of knowledge' may be tentatively isolated and compared as to their place and function; that an intuition may be compared, for example, with a judgment of fact or an inference from some very concrete ground. But the vital connection is there, none the less. For a principle, aimed at by abstraction, to attempt to assess the reality of, say, a whole province of experience or of research, is the 1 sheerest nonsense. It is, as we have said, the concrete filling of a bare form that gives it stability and a strong claim to necessity. The place given to the syllogism and its modes in his Logic, is evidence of his attitude. b. Inductive Logic, too, falls under the charge of absorption in abstractions. The advance of induction is by means of the enumeration of a number of recurrent cases in which an identity appears,- and which can therefore be grouped under a single abstraction, a general rule. The universal thus appealed to is of the lower order, and must be replaced by the higher, the concrete mniversal, if the situation is to be seen at all as a whole. The path of induction is straight and narrow, whereas the progress of knowledge depends upon the deepening and filling in of a concrete world. The logical method, commonly held to be quite adecuate to the work of the 1. See p. 3 5". above. 106" natural sciences is, in fact, successful only when it is an •enumerative subsumption.' Bosanquet would see the principle of induction stated something as "Every universal nexus tends to continue itself inventively in new matter." "And the value of an inductive conclusion lies in the amount of material which it enables us to grasp and this is very slightly tested by the number of cases in which the nexus is repeated in fact. And if the idea of identical repetition could be realized (which it cannot, for every so-called repetition is differenced by a new context) the frequency of recurrence would have no 1 connection with universality at all." c. Symbolic logic, the favorite instrument of the new realist, deals not with knowledge or experience of this world, but with the conditions of 'possible worlds' built upon a foundation of premises assumed for the purpose. It evinces no interest in the world of affairs whatever, nor in the principles which an investigation of its movements reveals. It is essentially 'a game of counters,' find therefore of no possible attraction to the philosopher of Bosanauet's character; but is a happy retreat from reality, as indeed, Bertrand Russell, confesses more or less accidentally. Behind the cloak of his devotion to truth 'though it lead to an abyss' is a very strong aversion to the conditions of the real world. However brilliant its flights (and abstruse) and however 1. Science and Philosophy - p.72 106" peaceful its atmosphere once away in its own world of fancy, it cannot either displace or even supplement the attempt to interpret soundly the discerned data of experience. d. Instrumental Logic is, of course, quite inacceptable to Bosanquet. Its reduction of truth to the biologically useful cannot be conceded. That wherever, there is biological adaptation or any useful adjustment, reality is at work in self-expression, is his way of putting the case. Instrumental T Logic, it may be maintained is no logic at all, inasmuch as it denies the fundamental principle of logic, which is the rationality of things. Everything of value which the Instrum-entalist emphasises may be given place in a speculative philosophy. It is a loss to limit the field of inquiry as the « result of an alleged impotench of thought to know the real. Instrumental!sm, while superficially whole and competent, is by its own self-limitation permanently decapitated. THE LOGIC OF THE WHOLE Part II - (B) Chapter X "Truth is individual, and no general principle, no abstract reflection can be adeouate to the content of what is individual." These are the opening words of the 'Logic.' In his smaller book he cites with approval the reply of a certain teacher who, when asked to give his reasons for teaching logic, said, "If the men could learn what an infer-ence is, it would be something." An inference is, it may be added "That single development which in some stages we call judgment and in others inference." The three important elements of Bosancuet's logic are his theory of Identity, of Judgment, and of Inference. With the first of these it was necessary to introduce the metaphysics of this essay. The twp, judgment and inference remain. These are "forms in which our gradually evolving 1 knowledge and experience have precipitated themselves." The evolution of knowledge is from blank to an ever growing maximum in very concrete and comprehensive experience, such as, 1. R.C. Lodge in Philosophical Review Vol.32 - p.395 106" for example, the aesthetic appreciation. Its earliest form is sensation. In sensation the real world offers some direct evidence as to its nature but the evidence may be chaotic and untrustworthy without a great deal of interpretation. It must be transcended if knowledge is to achieve any high order. The systematized world of exact science, built up by progress-ive criticism of the data of sense is an immeasurable improve-ment upon the world of sense per se. Judgment and inference are stages in this organisation of a concrete world of know-ledge. Finally, the spatio-temporal world of the sciences must be transcended, if insight is to advance yet farther into the real. The function of judgment, therefore, is that of 1 "progressive articulation within a postulated system." The system is 'postulated' for although without it science would be inconceivable, and although we are carried on to infer it, 'it is not a direct observation that can be made from the nature of the world we live in.' The penetration needed, however, to become aware of the'system' in the shadow of experience is not, Bosanquet is quite sure, very great. The postulate is forced upon us by present perception. Judg-ment is the filling in of the spaces within the postulated world. "Judgment," Watson writes, "is what we mean by thought, when thought is properly understood, and in judgment reality 2 .... is a constituent." 1. Agnes Cumming in 'Mind' - N.S. 26, p.167 2. , Philosophical Review Vol.23 - p. 106" The forms of judgment pass over into each other. "We should accustom ourselves to think of these forms as constituting a progression in the sense that each of them betrays a reference to an ideal of knowledge which in itself it is unable to fulfil and therefore suggests some further 1 or divergent form." In the categorical judgment there are elements of the hypothetical and vice versa. So also every judgment is both analytic and synthetic. "This alone would not" Bosanouet proceeds, "by itself be a sufficient ground for our refusing to employ these terms as heads of classific-ation, for it is more or less the case through the whole of Logic that terms must be employed to mark predominant aspects rather than exclusive characters." "Inference," he begins in the second volume, "shares the essence of judgment, but at least qua explicit inference, in has/addition a differentia of its own." The problem of inference is "How can we know one thing by knowing another?" This is answered by reference to the principle of the concrete universal. If the line of identity that established the universal were maintained in spite of very wide differences which were necessarily ignored, then the inference from one situation to another would be very dubious; because of the unconsidered difference, but if the identity were to persist by the organic relations of very widely different details and many parts, then, within the organic whole, the inference should be broad and relatively secure. Subject to the reservation 1. Logic, 1888 - Vol. 1, p.87 106" that 'part' and 'whole' are not necessarily to be considered quantitatively, the position is theoretically stated thus: "Inference is the indirect reference to reality of parts within a whole on the strength of the nature of that whole 1 as revealed in parts directly referred to reality." The change that this new illumination brings over the face of logical theory is'little short of revolutionary.' What has passed for logic retains no more than archaeological interest. Thought, must be considered to be free from abstraction and an orderly evolution. Logic is one with Life and Reality. We have seen it working in the various phases of experience, always moving towards harmoniousness. Any one of its forms may fail or be superceded, but the same 'omnipot-ential principle' remains. It is of more than passing interest to remark that many men have been convinced of their actual contact with the real; and the form of their knowledge has been variously called vision, insight, or Intuition. Bosanquet insists that intuition is as genuine a form of knowledge as the simplest judgment. Intuition is the method of a mind sensitive to the less obvious sort of evidence. It entails "Looking at an object intrinsically systematic and distinct and discovering 2 its constitutive terms and relations." The goal, therefore of logic, as Bosanquet sees it, is that it bridges the gap between the theoretical statement 1. Logic, Vol.11 - p.4 2. Kathleen Gilbert, "Philosophical Review" Vol., 23, p.549. 106" of 'laws of thought' and the "actual mode in which expert writers on general subjects develop their comprehensive arguments." Every 'precipitated form' of thought, we have seen, is not insoluble, but may be blended with other forms to achieve yet more remarkable results. This is the unfailing and abundant resource of thought, that no limit can be set to its adventure or its rewards. It is indeed an 'Alchemy.' 1. Implication and linear Inference - p.4 UBC Scanned by UBC Library 106" THE FINITE INFINITE LIFE (Pleasure and Pain) Part III Chapter XI Bosanquet's interest in the ethical bearing of philosophy, always very keen, is so pronounced in his Gifford Lecture s that, by their title and content, they imply a pre-eminently human and ethical preoccupation. The only reason, he has said, why no large ethical book came from his pen was his high regard for Bradley's "Ethical Studies" which, he felt, dealt so thoroughly with the whole problem of conduct and of ethical theory. The ethical implication has not been scrupulously avoided in the preceding pages, but the actual amount of repetition need be quite small in the present section. The phrase so often repeated hitherto, 'the self-transcendence of the individual' is the link between our Metaphysics and Ethics. The 'impulse and movement toward the overcoming of contradiction' we have discovered as the formula of all life and activity. The pressure is that of the ideal within the real, or of Reality in all of its forms. Man is a finite-infinite being because the infinite is especially present and active in him, while, at the same time, 106" his particularity and peculiarity of structure set limits (not necessarily where we have fancied them to be, but limits none the less) to his self-transcendence. Though he may go out of it, in a way, he is more or less 'within his own skin.' The obstruction which the finite offers to the infinite sets up a tension within him. "The finite self" Bosanquet writes, "is inherently a contradiction. It is finite, and at the same time infinite. The spirit of the whole working in it drives it to seek satisfaction, but that which it seeks it never finds; but, like Socrates, it continues dissatisfied with what is, in the interest of what may be. The being of man, then, is double; and his life is essentially and inherent-1 ly one of hazard and hardship." As common experience will agree, he is drawn asunder between the'old man and the new.' With this general position, we have seen, Sir Henry Jones disagrees, but apparently by misunderstanding its significance. Bosanquet's belief is that contradiction is necessary to the maintenance of the finite-infinite life of man. Sir Henry agrees that there is contradiction, but holds that in religion, (for example) all contradiction is completely overcome. To this Bosanquet can reply, "If all contradiction were overcome, then the finite individual would no longer be a finite individual but the Absolute." But the "contradiction, he insists, does not constitute the really significant essence of a finite being." 2 1. Value and Destiny - p. 2. Ibid. - p.25 Ill The tension which characterizes the life of man is three-fold. There is the conflict of truth and error, of pleasure and pain and of good and evil. The first is the conflict of coherence and incoherence,' the second is the pre-eminent factor in the evolution of the species, and the last, the moral struggle, is the central conflict which belongs to human life as such. While not itself the Absolute, the moral struggle presents itself to man as if it were absolute. It may be argued that his sense of the beautiful and of the true are elements quite as characteristic of his being, but in actual living there is no conflict so severe, nor any imperative so categorical as that of the moral life. 2. With the conflict of truth and error we are not strictly concerned in a chapter on ethics. It is enough to repeat that error is "made through and through of the same stuff as truth." "The character of falsity is a matter of degree, normally reducible to exaggerated emphasis on one element in a whole." It is by rearrangement and systematization that error is made over into truth. ''Error is what stands out and refuses to come into the system though of one substance and texture with it." Since the 'stuff of truth and error is the same, neither truth nor error can characterize the Absolute, but they are essential to the life of the finite individual. The conflict arises out of his attempt to 1 systematize his world. 1. Value and Destiny, p.213-15. Our first real concern in this chapter is the conflict of pleasure and pain, a conflict so intense that pessimism, the philosophy of pain predominant and universal has never been far from the centre of the world of thought. Bosanquet's concern is to trace the two, pleasure and pain to their common root, and to show that root as the source of all our values. He disclaims any anxiety to show a balance of 'compensation,' or to justify the ways of God to men. A whole theory of the psychology of pain and pleasure, Bosanquet does not attempt. His intention is simply to show that life is very 'costing,' and that its high cost is the corollary of its value. The place of pain in organic evolution may not be overemphasised. It is possible to complain that the world is a painful place, but it cannot very well be wished otherwise, unless it is to be wished away altogether. Sensitivity seems to have been the first instrument of adaptation, and hence, of selection, that painful process by which, at last, our species for better or for worse, appeared. Pain follows an obstruction to activity. Theories as to its origin in evolution vary, but as to its actual conditions this brief definition will serve. The condition of pain is a 'felt 1 contradiction.' No line can be drawn between the condition of pain and of pleasure. In general pain appears to us as correlative to contradiction, while pleasure is correlative 1. Value and Destiny, p.166. 106" to successful union. It is a commonplace of experience that the two go hand in hand. Both in the sub-human world, and in the world of man it appears that pain has nothing in it of a special curse, but is rather a "characteristic belinging to the position of finite members of an infinite universe, which is perpetually remould-ing them by struggle and death to a wealth of expressions of itself, including at least in our case, the becoming the vehicle of intelligence." Pain does not belong to evil any more than pleasure does to the good, which is not at all. Their only kindship is the common root in the double nature 1 of man. bffth A word word further as to the common root of^pleasure and pain. The movement of Self-Transcendence is promoted by both: by pleasure in that the unobstructed activity is encour-aged, and by pain in that the organism is compelled to seek relief from obstruction. The two from the point of view of result do the same thing. That as experienced pleasure and pain are often so fused as to defy separation we have remarked. This is true of every degree of the two. "True pleasure," Bosanquet writes, "must include pain." Small pleasures readily pass into pain; higher pleasures are so 'touched with pain ' that the language of pain is often more appropriate; and the 1. There is no reason to raise the whole question of Hedonism here. It is dead to all reflective minds. See "Ethical Studies," or for a brief modern statement John Baillie in the Hibbert Journal for October, 1927. fiercer sort of pleasures, rising out of the basic instincts, have, unquestionably, in them, as much of pain as pleasure. 1 "They are infected with fierceness and restlessness." The many refinements of this common experience need no further emphasis. There is no ground, in the prevalence of pain, for pessimism, Bosanquet points out, once its conditions are understood. We have stated above the argument that the whole is the only standard of value, and that therefore pessimism is a false valuation. To this it may be objected "That may be so, but, in any case, I have my own standard, and however relative or imperfect a standard it may be, it still suffices to convince me that pain is more prevalent than the worth of life to me, can excuse." This view is less easily refuted, and for many will remain; but Bosanquet would see in it both defective experience and defective reasoning. Pain cannot 'predominate,' for it is correlative to pleasure, the two advancing 'pari passu.' Moreover it is as idle as undignified for a man to cry out against the conditions that made him. 3 Nevertheless, any shallow attempt to minimize the place and the prevalence of pain is equally culpable. It would reduce the "full impression" of the world. It is not by accident that Christianity has, as the centre of its system, a symbol of suffering. The instinct that saw in the tragedy of its founder the central truth of its message was sure. The 1. Value and Destiny - (note below p.163) The full weight of the contradiction of finite life and its ever impending threat of calamity and of death is, in a sense, the price paid for a slight hold on the infinite. The wealth of art, of love, of religion must be paid for. Any theory which tended to reduce the place of pain, by, for example an appeal to the future in which 'sorrow and sighing' are extinguished cannot be accepted as in the spirit of Bosanquet's thought. The danger inherent in the use of pictures of future bliss is ever present and acute in popular theology. "If," he writes, "we really think the race is progressing to a stage of felicity in which without any jot of participation in tragic experience, it is to draw from it a painless enjoyment, then I think that the doctrine of hell contributing to the pleasure of heaven is not far away." The weight of pain must be recognized to the full before any theory can do it justice; the depth of the final problem created by the apparent cessation of all activity at death must be squarely met before it can be solved. A death that is a mere 'Translation' is an evasion of an issue, and too, a thing without value, Bosanquet remarks, compared with "the love and courage which make death seem a little thing." We have touched here (and above) the secret by which pain in the life of man becomes a positive means of his exhaltation. There i& in pain as such no mysterious good, but as transmuted from pain into tragedy it becomes one of life's 1. Principle, p.18 1 1 6 most potent instruments. There is the spiritual induction to which the experience of suffering is instrumental. The way out of the problem which Tragedy affords is not through abolition but by way of the conversion of "brute agony and dumb endurance and despair with spiritual conflict and triumph." A writer whom Bosanquet both loved and admired has put this experience of tragedy and noted its ennoblement 1 thus, and though not every word bears directly on our argument, he leaves the impression which we desire. "We are left by contemplation of Tragedy, with an idea showing two sides or aspects, which we can neither.separate nor reconcile. The whole or order against which the individual part shows itself powerless, seems to be animated with a passion for perfection: we cannot otherwise explain its behaviour towards evil. Yet it appears to engender this evil within itself, and in its effort to overcome and expel it it is agonised with pain and driven to mutilate its own substance and to loose not only evil but priceless good. That this idea, though very different from the idea of blank fate, is no solution of the riddle of life is obvious; but only should we experience such a solution. Shakespeare is not attempting to justify the ways of God to men .... But there are other impressions. Sometimes from the very furnace of affliction a conviction seems borne to us that somehow, if we could see it, this agony counts as nothing against the heroism and love 1. A.C. Bradley - "Shakespearian Tragedy" p.38. 1 1 7 which appears in it and thrills our hearts.... Somewhere from these sources, and from others comes a presentiment, formless but haunting and profound that all the fury of conflict, with its waste and woe is less than half the truth But these faint and scattered intimations that the Tragic world, being but a fragment of the whole beyond our vision, must needs be a contradiction and no ultimate Truth, avail nothing to interpret the mystery." Bosanouet feels all of this, but would go on, in the manner of Hegel to show the reconciliation, even the exaltation which this mysterious burden of tragedy bears in with it, a reconciliation which Bradley himself is aware of and which he puts thus, writing of that heaviest of tragedies, Othello. "And pity itself vanishes, and love and admiration alone remain; in the majestic dignity and sovereign ascendency of the close .... , And when he dies upon a kiss the most painful of all tragedies leaves us for the moment free from pain and exulting in the 1 power of 'love and man's unconquerable mind.'" If we were to attempt to set limits to what pains we would and what we would not bear we would be closing doors deliberately upon life's way of ennoblement, and estrang-ing ourselves from its inner grandeur. One other correction of much popular thought on the subject of pain remains. As it is weak to minimize the pain in the world, it is equally mistaken to suppose pain to be where it is not. It is characteristic of Bosanquet, both 1. Shakespearian Tragedy, p.198. early and late, to deprecate the tendency to ascribe all manner of ^miseries to the poor: to call their dwellings (the homes of the vast majority of working class Londoners) slums and dens. For all the disadvantages they endure there is, he maintains, a quality of decent living that ought not to be poorly thought of, and a degree of simple cheer, owing to the irrepressible quality of mankind that would be hard to surpass. Criticism from without may detect all manner of 'sheer miseries' which those who criticise would be the first to "make the best of" (they would say) if forced into them. The poor, because they are poor are not "wholly wretched" The comfortable, he complains, will say, with an affectation of practical insight, "That people whose lives are a struggle cannot be expected to take pleasure in beauty and knowledge. " His reply is, "I agree so far as this, that they cannot be expected to take such pleasure. All I know is that they do take it."1 From this view no political or social conservatism may rightly be assumed. The position is this that seen from outside (and we usually tend to except ourselves from analysis) pain and misery may appear to predominate, but as known from within, life even in narrowly restricting circumstances and under severe hardship, has large elements of satisfactoriness all its own. There is a 'Treasure of the humble.' The kindred view is that which owns the claims of savage life and primitive societies to an excellence, and a satisfactoriness of their own. The association of real delight in living with 1. Essays and Addresses - p . 3 0 119 the conditions we with our 'confortable, cultivated and i peaceful ways' are accustomed to is quite mistaken. The reverse might almost be assumed to be nearer the truth. Finally, it has been .said that in his whole treatment of the place of suffering in life, Boaanquet minimizes the side of humor. There can be little question that he is severe, both in character, and in his reading of life, but to the sensitive reader there is not a little humor in his thought, and in his theory it is not wholly absent. The world is a painful place. This cannot be denied; and it is true also that pain can be transcended by laughter as well as by tragedy. In support of this notion the lighter side of the war may be quoted, but it seems to remain that, when all is said and done, the greatest transm-utation of severe suffering lies not in the direction of mirth, but of the'spiritual induction that accompanies it. It may be remarked, however, and in defence that for Bosanquet "tears are made human by laughter and laughter triumphant over tears." — 1 120 THE FINITE INFINITE LIFE (The Moral Struggle) Chapter XII The conflict of pleasure and pain is present in all sub-human animal forms, but the moral struggle is, though its rudiments certainly appear in the higher animal creation, a peculiarly human conflict. It belongs to the life of those who have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. All philosophies agree that the moral struggle is very important; and too,however they differ in their statement of the source or the nature of the struggle they agree that its imperative once imposed is binding upon the life of the individual. Theories of a special moral faculty have given of way before the advance /modern psychology; but only the unimportant and unreflective can diminish their awe of "the moral law within " as a result of any 'explanation' of it. If it is not the most real thing about a man, it certainly presents itself to him as such. Goodness, beauty and truth are equally contended for as characters of the Absolute (and by Bosanquet equally denied more than a place in the Absolute) but it is goodness that bulks largest as the characteristic demand of human endeavour. 1 2 1 As an "Absolutist" Bosanquet is much criticised for belittling the conflict of good and evil. Absolutism will not be selective, it is complained it takes things "all in" and will not discriminate as thought between good and evil. Idealists as Sir Henry Jones, Seth Pringle, Pattison, and of course, numerous Pragmatists and others accuse him of shirking the problem of evil. Professor Pattison regards his treatment of good and evil as "the crowning instance of his tendency to disintegrate the indiv-idual personality and reassemble its abstract elements in 1 the Absolute." This criticism as it bears on the problem of good and evil is taken up throughout this chapter. With every phase of this most complex and vexed problem we cannot possibly deal. At the most the struggle may be shown (as we have done with pleasure and pain) as a characteristic of the double life of man, striving toward perfection,' yet grounded in defect and impotence. Pain and pleasure, we have seen, arise from partial obstruction of particular activities, or impulses to activity in the organism. They are the outcome of 'felt contradiction' and its attempted adjustment. The moral struggle, however, concerns no partial activities, but the whole individual. Every choice presents itself as the whole man versus the universe. Bosanquet writes of the moral struggle, "It takes the whole object - that is the moral of Plato's Republic -1. Symposium - p.522 122 to satisfy the whole man. But then, the man cannot receive the whole object, and therefore ex hypothesi, cannot bring his whole nature into correspondence with any satisfaction." The infinite in him makes him reach out for the universal object, but he cannot but fall short of it. Put another way, he seeks to be completely at one with himself, but since his true self is utterly beyond him, is, indeed, the Absolute, there is always in him, a large residue of unresolved contradiction and of unsatisfied striving. There are always "loose ends" left unravelled. The struggle to attain that harmony which is the 'good' of the self, is never finished. 2. The good, it is agreed, must satisfy desire, but the desire to be satisfied is not uncriticised or occasional desire, but the desire for perfection. "The identification of goodness with the trained and formed character, skilled and enthusiastic in realizing the ideal self which is the whole, has always been my delight." So does Mr. Muirhead 1 quote Bosanquet as saying. Evil is the reverse of this. It is a desire or a self assertion that does not want to be in harmony with the whole. It 'wants its own way.' In content good and evil are necessarily the same. They are made up, both of them, of desires and their attempted satisfactions, but in attitude they differ, and that radically. Evil desires, Bosanquet points out, are not 'desires for evil.' Strictly no one 1. His Obituary Notice in Mind. desires evil, "but none the less the.re are many evil selves, and all selves, inasmuch as they can never be altogether unified, partake in some degree of evil. That it is the same content or 'material' that enters into both good and evil must be stressed in moral theory. "No tendency or desire could be pointed out in the worst of lives or o f actions which is incapable of being with 1 addition or readjustment, incorporated with the good self. The point may be pressed further. Not only do good and evil represent different attitudes or arrangements of the same stuff of human desires and attempted satisfactions, but it may be shown that without the character of good there would be no character of evil, and without that which is evil there would be no good. It may be shown, that is, that good and evil are correlates, like pleasure and pain, known only by opposition to each other. The chapter "On Doubting the 2 Reality of Evil" is a simple statement of this ^iew,- which is not, of course, original at all. The common sense view that evil is strictly evil and is untouched with good, and that good is uninfected with evil; that the war between them is one of extermination is obviously untenable in reflective theory. Either is inconceivable without the other. "The contradiction," he writes, "is necessary to the nature of both." To be good is to overcome the evil; to be evil"is to 1. Value and Destiny, p.215 2. Some Suggestions in Ethics. 124 "be in contradiction with the good. If the evil were over-come in a man, there could be for him no good. 3. In ethical theory this view is old, being in agreement with both Plato and Hegel, but the criticism it arouses is ever new. Professor Macintosh in his "Some Aspects of Christianity" complains bitterly of this "all in" policy of Idealism. The good must be good for good and all, and the evil, evil, or there is no pleasing a theologian. Inasmuch as both he and those who are agreement with his general thesis insist as much as they upon the finality of the opposition between good and evil as given in the individual, and guarantee his striving for the good by an imperative rising out of his very nature, the rancour * of the critic is not readily understood. Professor Pattison again is 'on the other side,1 but though he expresses much dissatisfaction, he offers no possible alternative to the solution that sets good and evil over against each other as correlates. As we have seen above, 'goodness' in the moral sense may not be ascribed to the Absolute as its especial character. There must be room for error and for evil. But as long as the moral struggle, a conflict inevitable to the double nature of man as a finite-infinite being, drives him ever to seek higher satisfactions, and to set for himself an ideal of harmony far beyond his attainment, it should suffice the moralist. In any event, he will find difficulty in fitting another view into the frame of a consistent philosophy. It 1 2 5 is a wild guess to suppose that the struggle will ever end as long as there are finite beings whose business it is to convert disorder into order, and to give to all manner of material, themselves included, spiritual meanings. "A spirit which has its being in transforming the external world into the Absolute must proceed by trial and error and so by setting itself against itself." The moral struggle, whatever the theory as to its origin, is central to life as it is lived. 4. They who criticise this view require that 11 Somehow good Shall be the final goal of ill" The final'victory of good' is their demand. The defect of this desire is, of course, that were it granted, the moment of victory would also be one of defeat, for the good would cease to have any meaning, unless by the good one means something other than mere moral good. The strength of the Kantian ethic is in its assurance that the attitude rather than content of conduct is all important. It is true that content may not be so stripped away and thus the 'good1 arrived at; for the good is always a 'good for1 something; but the good for the situation arises out of the attitude the individual as a whole adopts toward the whole object of his desire. It is to a very considerable extent true that not what one does so much as how one does it, constitutes goodness. The point of this excursus is that 126 if goodness is conceived in terms of a 'heavenly host' its victory is a tenable hypothesis, or if goodness is a certain body of solid rules of conduct, even, then the total accomplishment of them is at least conceivable; but when goodness is a good will, a total motive, or a consistent and harmonious attitude, or as Bosanquet put it a 'trained and formed character' then plainly there must have been a process of trial and error, a series of attempts before anything approaching a good will, or a trained character can have been achieved. The term 'victory of good' is one unsuited to ethical theory, except in the sense of individual achievement. It is, if the term may be used, a victory that must constantly be re-won, or it is lost. It must never be forgotten that goodness rises out of concrete situations, and is a character of adjustment to those situations. It is not something 'suspended in the heavens,' but a character of growing unity with himself and his world that the individual, driven forward by the contradiction he encounters, is enabled to achieve. When contradiction ceases, goodness ceases with it. 5. Moreover, there is another difficulty in the way of our accepting the notion of good finally victorious. It aoes injustice to a very deep and subtle form of appreciation. In some situations there is borne in upon one the certainty that the moral judgment is not enough: that there is more about a man than his morality. Bosanquet illustrates this point thus. "Everyone, I should think must have had his moral judgment 127 and his general estimate of values brought into collision by the character of Falstaff. We cannot conceive him in 1 hell any more than he could himself." Because of this and other kindred evidence he says, "We are convinced by daily life, I think, that the ethical struggle is in place, sd to speak, only as it can be serviceable as an instrument that is of the necessary self-assertion of the finite mind. When that point is passed or that aspect subordinated, there is room only for love or pity, or again for faith and triumph. We feel, as we constantly admit, that our real judgment of morality and of failure is not all there is to be said about 2 a man. His value and his reality lie deeper than that." Again, "Good (in the sense of perfection) we feel, needs and includes the ethical struggle, but is much more than it, or the struggle itself would be impossible," It is interesting to note that Dean Inge is in essential agreement with Bosanquet in this regard (i.e.'Confess!o Fidei'). Passing the thought of the last two chapters in review we find that Truth and Error, Pleasure and Pain, Good and Evil, 'spring from the general source of satisfaction and value,* namely the finite-infinite life of man. Each imperfect ion is, in Truth, a direct challenge to pursue perfection; the immeasurable greatness of the ideal of perfection itself being the guarantee of the continuance of the auest. "The self in striving to complete itself will welcome the chapter of accid-ents (incidental to his hazardous life) and clothe itself in conflict and adventure." 1. Note on p.17 - "Principle" 3. Value and Destiny -2. Principle - p.17 p ' 1 7 THE WORLD OF SPIRITUAL MEMBERSHIP Chapter XIII A concept which, with the maturing of Bosanquet's philosophy came to have ever deeper meaning for him is expressed in the phrase "The World of Spiritual Membership." In all that we have said as to the non-particularity and non-exclusiveness of finite individuals, and in the thought of minds as the'whole'finding in them a 'local habitation;' and in the emphasis we have placed throughout upon the higher phases of'objective mind' the notion of spiritual membership has been implied. In his 'last will and testament,' the essay on 'Life and Philosophy' written for Mr. Muirhead, Bosanquet returns time and again to it, as the secret of the 'Art of living together.' It is t h e lack of appreciation of this element in his thought, in all probability, which brings some of his critics to portray him a3 one stripping life of its bloom. In Sir Henry Jones chapter on "The World of the Individualist" it is the opposition and contradiction between —(«.«-•; ___ individualsAthat draws his fire* H^the "World of Claims and Counterclaims^ IliaI ire uuulmnmrgg. It is true that this 129 last is much mentioned by Bosanquet, but it is mentioned only as the ground upon which to build his higher concept of the World of Spiritual Membership. It is characteristic of Bosanquet that no 'prima facie1 view will do. It is only, as it were, upon a 'firm foundation of despair1 (anjfl. he goes so far as to approve this phrase of Mr. Russell's)that a philos-opher has a right to build comfortable doctrines. Otherwise his integrity of vision is in danger of impairment. The full weight, therefore, of conflict in human contacts must be measured before putting forward so pregnant a notion as this of which we write. Only so can we appreciate fully its gift of enriched individuality. Alone "The finite-infinite being retains only enough hold on infinity to realize its own finiteness in impotence 1 and despair." Out of the sharpest contradiction of the finite life arises this solution, by which, in going outside of himself and entering into membership with all men and the whole, insofar as it may be apprehended, he grasps the infinite with a firmer hand. But in a very real sense he 'loses his life,' before he gains it. We may examine further the conditions of the 'World of Claims and Counterclaims.' It is a world of rights and duties of individuals considered as isolated units, each 'fighting for his own hand.' It is a world in which men are 'at arm'slength.' "It has," Bosanquet writes, "the peculiar 1. Value and Destiny - p.276 130 characteristics which belong to these quasi-natural worlds of isolated units - natural selection, formative discip-line and hardship, a condition where every man is for himself 1 subject to claims arising-out of relations." It is a world of individualistic morality, of which the justice is the rights and duties of each duly met and fulfilled. There is, in fact, no such world, but it is the world of the 'first look,1 and the world for which everyday notions of morality are made. Religious thought has long been infected with this notion of the individualistic claim. "That will be glory for me" is fortunately no longer considered good religion. It remains, however, that "The finite self (in religion) is burdened by the sense of duty to a superior being, with whom it is in relation, and this duty constitutes its morality, its sense of good and bad. The self makes on its side a number of demands upon the Supreme Being and upon the other beings that are the terms of its universe, and their fulfilment or non-fulfilment impresses it with a contradictory sense of justice and injustice." The justice of this world is cast in terms of 'compensation,' "an eye for an eye;" but is no more than a pale shadow of the real relation of membership in which men live. When 'justice'is done, experience so often shows that the sore spot in the organism is not healed. 1. Value and Destiny - p.276 \ 131 The fact is that this world of rights and duties must be merged into a world of membership in which all flow together as members of a widely differentiated whole. The bars must be put down. That this is already the unrecognized law of social life is revealed by the constant splintering of every 'established order1 by which claims and counterclaims are allocated, a break up of all crystalised forms which no degree of conservatism can restrain for long. This is so because there is no fixed standard of individual right. Merit can never be judged upon the basis of the man in isolation from his world. The justification of any man's lot can never be in terms of himself alone, but must take in as much of the whole as can be apprehended. It is certain that "Individual fortunes betray no approximation to any single standard of individualistic justice." , _ " and of Obviously the whole problem of inequality/ 'vicarious suffering' is raised, and a way out is suggested. Men are bound together more closely than they realize, and must there-fore suffer together. The typical expression of this community of disaster and of advantage is to be found in the Christian doctrine of the 'vicarious atonement.' This, Bosanquet remarks, was a 'stumbling block' in his earlier years, but took on ever deepening meaning as his appreciation of the underlying law of membership in all life grew. The phrase, lightly used, but very significant, 'the solidarity of the race' bears this same thought in which Bosanquet is interested. The suffering of any 132 member is spread over all and weighs especially heavily on those who can "bear the most. Thus the strong bear the burdens of the weak, and the supremely good, carry the transgression of us all. The least guilty and the most able bear the sins of the race. There can be no doubt that it is the same principle, that of common membership, which lies behind the hard sayings "Love your enemies, and do them good," and "Judge not, that ye be not Judged;" for in a world of spiritual membership the central fact is that all are responsible, and none may take pride to himself for any virtue. If mankind is Tnan . a unit (and not in any strict sense cut off from his world) A * the part cannot possibly judge another part any more than the part (as we have seen) can judge the whole. And, as one cannot judge of the rights or wrongs of another, so too he cannot decide as to his own. He obviously does not know. What measure of goods or of suffering belongs to his life in its place he cannot tell for he has not the necessary conspectus. It is a truism, the repetition of which may be pardoned, that if we refuse to face the point of life's danger, we miss its best. The only sort of justice that can fit in with the nature of a world of spiritual membership is the justice of Plato's Republic; that is, an 'organized righteousness' in which individuals are not treated as abstractions, and isolated, but as members contributory each in his own way to the harmony of the wholer It is the justice of 'every man in 133 his place,1 and by it, the servant is no less than his lord. We have said that the "World of Claims and Counterclaims" is not the real world. Neither is the "World of Spiritual Membership." But it is the truer picture of the underlying conditions of the social life, and is the only pattern by which a better actual world may be won. Bosanquet doubts its complete practicability in the world of affiars. "This attitude," he writes, "is not wholly possible for a finite society in Space and Time, composed of finite individuals having many characteristics of isolation and distinctiveness - material characters such as a body and its accessories in the way of property. He must have protection for his life and his property and be recognized as a legal person." It is notorious that an unscrupulous group will sacrifice the individual in the sacred name of the whole, and that this likelihood of abuse must be considered. Unless the level of the leaders was that of 'philosopher kings' the danger*would be too acute7\g?~tyranng^ Yet, since the two views of justice, as individual, or as of a spiritual membership, are mutually exclusive, it is not unprofitable to consider the conditions necessary to the successful working in the world of affairs of the latter, and the better view. 134 FREEDOM Chapter XVI The conception of Freedom is dependent upon the conception of the nature of the mind and of the individual. The two theories therefore, of mind and of freedom tend to overlapj or at least, to suggest one another. Mind, we have found Bosanquet to interpret as a 'supervenient perfection' accompanying a certain advanced stage of mechanical develop-ment; and freedom is the character of, or the quality enjoyed "by the centre of an expanding range of externality when it is brought to that degree of adaptability and responsiveness which makes a mind the only possible expression and instrument of its nature. Minds are, we have seen, 'forms of totality' and the reaction of a mind to a situation is that of a totality acting out of itself, and the act is in that sense its own individual act, and is therefore free. "Freedom," Bosanquet writes, "Is the process viewed from the point of view of the soul (that is, the centre) which is being moulded." Already we have been schooled to "look for the differentia of the spiritual rather in the most comprehensive and organised harmony than in the escape from determination and sufficient reason." In more than one connection Bosanquet is moved to 135 express 'a strong repugnance to finding freedom in anything that savoured of chance or caprice." "The world imposes," he writes, "its plan upon the incipient centre of life and mind, but in proportion as that centre acquires a nature of its own, this nature determines what it can or will accept." This centre is an 'active unity' and is its own critic and its re-creator. "Here", he adds, "we have the root of Will." Again Bosanquet's method of defence is a vigorous offensive. He captures the camp of the enemy and encloses it within his own lines. Having accepted the challenge of the new scientific knowledge he can do no other. This is a point at which "thoroughgoing determinism must be met by a theory even more thorough-going." The part played by circumstance in moulding action, having once been acknowledged is likely to carry us on finally to a fatalistic conclusion unless we can show that active in the environment and the individual is a category potent enough to save what is essential of freedom; and this Bosanquet claims to have achieved by re-affirming the spirit of logic, the determination of reality to woik toward the whole and in wholes. In other words, his intent is to absorb mechanism to freedom as, both of them, the intelligible working of a system. It is the 'spirit of toted ity' that saves freedom. What we call 'environment' as if it were a blank determination and a blind force is, in reality, itself a living and active world. 136 The principle of individuality, of microcosms within microcosms is again the means of maintaining our point. It is not, however, with the abstract question 'What or why is Free Will? that Bosanquet is deeply concerned, but with the more concrete inquiry "When, in what and as what does man carry out his will with least hindrance and with fullest satisfaction? In attempting this question we have before us 'the actual phenomena of civilization instead of an idle and 1 abstract Yes or No." The history of human freedom, then, would be no less than the history of human institutions and ideals. Any other inquiry is empty and leaves the true miracle of will undiscovered. If it is asked 'What is the will of which freedom is the character?' then the answer may be given that the will of a man is none other than the man himself regarded as active. Will is but a term for thought on its functional side as distinguished from its more purely cognitive character. The difference, however, between cognition and volition is one of 'degrees in the same scale' or of aspects of the same process. 2. From all that we have said it follows that contingency, or miracle,and not mechanism, is the enemy. a. Free will in the sense of 'I might have done other-wise had I chosen'is a sheer shirking of responsibility. It is as if after a thousand actions and before the thousand and first, he could be any less committed than after the 1. Introduction to "Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art." p. XXIX. 137 thousand and first. Obviously such a view is an evasion of the inevitable results of one's actions; is an attempt'to disavow what one, by a long series of choices has become; to wish to be oneself and yet to reject all that has made one what one is. Setting out to make of the self something, It ends in making him nothing, for all his positive content of stored response is taken away from him. "b. Free-will, considered as the introduction of an element of chance into every choice would make all scientific prediction hypothetical, if not impossible, and would drive out reason from the universe as bad money drives out the good. The arguments that may be marshalled against any theory of a 'fountain of spiritual energy' iuu.y be brought equally against the notion of will as some similar fountain of caprice. The evidence is overwhelming that 'all capacities are transm-2 itted through bodily ( i.e. mechanical) arrangements.' "There is," he writes, "a road from every natural group of facts to every spiritual reality in the universe" and of course the road may be traversed in either direction. c. Creation can never be 'de novo.' The self-shaping centre that is a mind and will, however original its work, can not but build with materials (having their especial characteristics) and by means of the ability its history has laid at its disposal; by what has been called its 'fundamental Value and Destiny, p.106 138 brainwork.' In other words, the plan of a man's creation lies as much in the metal he is moulding as in his own mind. The artist's 'finished work,' so often taken as the type of creativity is obviously a composite product of the possibilit-ies that lay in his material, and the abilities of his mind and body, especially his refinement of sense and motor mechanism. 3. If contingency in all its forms is scouted by Bosanquet, so too is pre-determination. The bete noir of ethics ha3 long been tbe bogey of 'predictability.' If, as the 'reductio aj$d absurdum' has been made to run, all that happens is the outcome of what has happened before, then given a knowledge of the beginnings (of, say, a life) its farthest reaches and most complex development may be predicted with certainty. The bogey is the 'calculator' of conduct, and people generally object to the notion that any machine however intricately devised, is competent to predict their choices before they have chosen. Bosanquet treats the matter thus. Yes, he admits, prediction is possible, but upon one condition. To predict the whole you must be the Absolute, and the same applies to the whole of any part. Or again, you may predict a special act, but only if you are at the active centre, if you are at the growing point of a mind, and are adequately gifted. At this point, however, you cannot be. If you were it would be your own action that you were predicting, which would distress no one. Prediction, in short, implies pre-doing, and would pass over into doing. Fatalism is a defective determination, taken as linear, actions being considered on the false analogy of things, of, as it were, sausages on a string. In every fatalistic theory, the last and most important determination of all is neglected, namely the self-shaping of the world of the individual. Determination is complete, or chance would have crept in somewhere, but the last factor is the total character of the individual. The only adequate form of determination, therefore, is self-determination. This does not imply that the self hovers, as it were, above a number of possible actions, and chooses as it will from among them, but that it does act more or less as a whole. It may act upon its whole self or upon a fragment of itself, but its freedom lies in its action as a whole. No fragment of the past can be said to determine conduct. It is, as we have observed, of the nature of a mind to gather up its world, and its will is expressed in the movement of its world. Reflection that precedes action is the more or less conscious unification of and the self. The whole situation of freedom / determination Bosanquet illuminates by such a phrase as this. Conduct cannot be thought of as the "Rattling off of a chain of results inevitably decreed. The decree is a universal and spiritual one, and is the proclamation of the true character of the individual. The inevitability is that of logic and of life, and not of any dead causation." 140 It is frequently said that a man does this or that because he wants to. Analysis, however, of his want will resolve it into a contradiction to be overcome. Being what he is he finds himself a contradiction if he does not do this or that, as the case may be. If the total condition be modified, then the want is modified also. We are able, therefore to define freedom as the character of an individual whose actions proceed, not froib external determination, but from the necessity of his own nature. Briefly, freedom is a man's right ana ability to be himself. When most himself, he is most free. Bad choices are those which proceed, not from himself, but those which proceed from some single character of the individual or some single desire which, in its moment of dominance uses the whole man as a 'means merely.' A bad self is an incoherent self which seldom or never acts out of itself but always upon some passion or fragmentary motive. Another way of defining freedom in keeping with our general attitude is to say that it consists of being 'equal to the situation.1 And the full range of human possibility cannot be over-estimated. "Physical impossibility is to a very great and indefinite extent relative." Or as Bosanquet puts it again "The power of character against so called impossibilities" is little less than a miracle. The adequate will is the will that can enter with the full heritage which the whole past has brought together into its present world. 141 We can very well see, at this point in the argument, how essential to wide freedom are all the conditions which enlarge the private self. The freedom enjoyed by, say, the member of an enlightened state, in a highly advanced stage of civilisation, is not to be compared with the mere form of freedom that belongs to the character of a mind considered as excluded from the inheritance of the race. Obviously freedom is a concrete and not an abstract thing, and is achieved the more by the mind that maintains wide and varied relationships with other minds and which gathers about itself a multitude of interests and occupations. 4. To the objection that, if this is freedom, it is certainly not freedom as we have thought of it hitherto. The reply may be made at once; while it is true that freedom has been popularly confused with caprice or the right to 'do as we please and choose' yet what men ordinarily serious want when they demand freedom, is just this concrete freedom that we have attempted to expound. When a man seeks freedom it is not the right to play havoc with the stability and system of the universe, but the right to 'be himself that he desires. This is granted him. Throughout cur argument we have been expressing the thought of F.H. Bradley as well as of Bosanquet. The former especially remarks, in his 'Ethical Studies' that a man does, whatever his moral theory, expect those who know him well to have a very clear notion of what may be expected of him in 142 the way of conduct in any particular situation. Prediction, in this sense he will welcome, as the proper recognition of a unity of purpose and outlook and attitude in his life. The further objection has been pressed, that according to this notion of freedom, initiative is well applied to the specifically human activity may or may not be established; but that that activity is of such a sort that some meaningful word must be found for it, is evident from the least understanding of its 'miraculous' nature. The special characteristic with which the human being (whether among other kindred beings, or alone, we cannot tell) is endowed may be put as 'the ability to transfigure and so to conquer circumstance.' Bosanquet notes that mind as will elicits its own world out of the nature that is available to it. Inasmuch as w h e n ^ s will^a mind*acts it gathers up all that is past in the agent's career and all that is sign-ificant of its surroundings and acts as a totality, it is not straining an interpretation to say that the thing he does is 'his creative production of a new deed.' It is true that ordinary minds overlap tremendously, but in the 'act of acting' each mind does that which is itself, and is something new. It is enough to urge the point (without entering upon Dr. Moore's 'Would have, if I had chosen') that whatever a man does, is his own and in a very real sense an original act. Any observer unbiased by speculation may see signs clear enough of the creativity of the 'Art of Thought' to be satisfied that man has initiative in the world, though the 143 conditions are all prescribed for him beforehand except the single condition of his own nature as will, and that is a condition given to him by the 'wisdom of the world.' All the wonders of a civilization are the product of willing agents working in a situation in which they are 'at home,' and in which their abilities are met with possibilities lying ready as it were, in their world. That the world of freedom is a world orderly in every way, and suffering from no insurmountable gaps in its structure is self-evident. Every defect, for example, in the social order in which men find their freedom, itself sets those forces to work which will mend it. This is obviously no reactionary doctrine (though it is in the spirit of Hegel) but is evolutionary through and through; and even in evolution there appear to have been times of sudden and revolutionary change. Forces more or less pent suddenly topple the crust, and new forms appear. As we have shown, there is 'hazard and hardship,' but it is thus that man's freedom expands. The 'great man' is not excluded from such a world. He is indeed its greatest asset; but his stronger will is not in that he 'breaks the rules,' but in that he understands them better, and can see connections where average minds can only see chaos. The 'miracle of will' is that "There are always openings to the larger horizons and thinking will is always 1 in search of them." 1. Value and Destiny - p . 2 7 6 But freedom is achieved, (though it apuears as paradoxical) by way of necessity. "Necessity is laid upon me," Bosanquet writes, "seemed in all the higher walks of life, in conduct, in religious unity, in art and in love to be the utterance which the human soul at its fullest stretch 1 demanded and embodied." It is not from our small, even trivial choices, that, by niggling, the philosopher may arrive at a just evaluation of will; nor from our 'moments of hot rebellion,' but from the "Great logical choices which occupy years in the making, as when a man chooses his religion, or his profession, working by long processes of suggestion and elimination, till he has found, or nearly found, a self-2 expression which includes the whole of him." 5. From all of the above Bosanquet's position on 'responsibility' can be very well gathered. Since a man's act proceeds from what he is, and he is a self-shaping individual, he, and none other is 'responsible' for his act. Inasmuch, however, as men are all 'members one of another' the responsibility of society for the individual is as great as that of the individual to society, hence justice, to be just, must remember this spiritual membership. The embittered 'down and out' is responsible to the full for his act of sabotage, but so is the social system that cruelly conditioned his life. For my bad conduct, which is conduct less than it 1. Quoted in "Bernard Bosanouet" - p.18 2. Science and Philosophy - p.233. 156 might be as proceeding from my whole character, and which may be ascribed to defective self-knowledge, to momentary unbalance, or as you please, I am culpable, and society must act accordingly; but it will also inquire into the conditions of my defective self-knowledge or whatever it was that made me, for the moment, less than myself. For society needs •whole men' for its own good health. Bosanquet has an interesting sentence. "It is true that in the moral emergency, all depends on the individ-ual will which, as explained above, is in the right when it recognizes this. But it is true that the individual will is a principle and content having far deeper roots than what is commonly taken to be the individual mind, and the task which is really its taak is set it by the universe." By this phrase we are taken out beyond the place of man in his society, and are bidden to glimpse his place 'sub specie aeternitatis.' That we may be brought back from so distant a speculation to the field of immediate activity our consider-ation of freedom may well conclude with this fine sentence of Bosanquet. "Our actions issue from our world as a conclusion from its premises, or as a poem from its author's spirit. RELIGION AND GOD Chapter V The attitude of Bosanquet to religion in his Gifford Lectures, and in all his later writings is more than a modific-ation, merely, of that which he took, say, in his early essay on "The Kingdom of God on Earth." The change is, it is tr*ue, rather of emphasis and sympathy than of material, but is sufficiently significant to have been widely remarked, and to offer foundation for the view that religion, once conceived as an ancillary interest of man, and secondary to morality, of came to be seen as perhaps the central fact, certainly a very high form of experience. It is assumed throughout the Gifford Lectures, and directly stated here and there, that the general theory they advance is wholly sympathetic to and adequate to the real demands of the religious consciousness. Religion, it is remarked, can do without philosophy, but philosophy cannot possibly dispense with religion. The coming to maturity of his mind, and the discovery of the freedom of the religious consciousness from the objectionable forms in which religion had been presented, and the growth in him of a really mystical 147 spirit may be credited with the motivation of his change of attitude toward this wide area of experience. From first to last he had a high respect for the practical side of religion as it bears on conduct, and the modification was in the direction of the 'inner and solitary' quality of religion. In this his own experience played a profoundly influential part. Without any of their 'stiffness1 about him, Bosanquet cannot have been altogether without a quaker tinge. The luminosity of the religious life he often suggests. As an example of this 'volte face' we may notice a line written in 1892. "If we speak of duties to God we mean the same as duties to man. Worship or prayer, in the sense of meditation 1 are good things if they help us to do our duties." This is no ignoble attitude, but we may feel that although he could say in 1912 "Religion is at least half practical" he could not repeat the phrase as to 'worship .. in the sense of 2 meditation.' The central religious attitude came for him to be the strongest single self-Transcendence, in which the individual is, for the moment, and subject to recall by reason iS completely of his limitations,^gone d i m outside of himself in adoration of his perfection seen as perfect. It is interesting to notice that Professor Pattison, in criticism of Bosanquet, a^ign^s him beside Labadie, the mystic. The connection is more than accidental, for in Bosanquet the man of intense social sense 1. Essays and addresses - p. 2 . Unless 'Duty' be taken as different from the strictly moral. 3. In The'Symposium' 149 and practical interest fused with the serenity of the mystic. That which he knew only as Theoria in the beginning came more and more merged into his concept of the religious consciousness. The spirit of Spinoza, "that God intoxicated 1 man* seems to hover in the shadow of Bosanquet. It goes without saying that there is nothing in the religious experience not also found in some measure in other phases of life; nothing, in other words, discontinuous with the rest. "In religion," he writes, "we have a glowing intensification of the ordinary attitude of the finite being in inherent and normal self-Transcendence." Reversed, the same thought appears as "The religious consciousness permeates the whole of life." 2. What, then, is the religious consciousness and the religious attitude, expressed more specifically? "It includes," 2 Bosanquet answers, "all devotion." This narrows the field. But devotion always has some special object. So we have it that "The essence of religion is wherever certain characteris-tics are ascribed with a certain intensity by the finite subject to the object with which in his Self-Transcendence 3 in thought and will, he identifies himself." In other words, wherever you have a man caring supremely for something, there is religion. The excellence of the object must seem so great that the devotee is as "less than nothing" when compared 1. See L. Roth in "Mind" - 1927. 2. Value and Destiny - p.239. 3. Ibid. - p.25 150 with it. The 'character ascribed' is 'absolute perfection,' and the only concern of the self is identification with that perfection, even though it involve the loss of all else. "The general formula of religion is the surrender or complet-ion of finite self-hood in the world of spiritual membership." But by no means all religion is social. There are many forms of varying value, ranging from pure devotion to a lofty ideal of perfection to self-sufficiency which is at once the narrowest religion and the 'height of irreligion.' This last is the devotion of the man whose 'god is his belly;' or of the coward who is 'religious in it.' Thus there will be "false religions, conflicting religions, partial and 1 hesitating religions." Whatever is taken as the highest good, that a man makes his God. It follows, therefore, that 'there may be 'god's many,' all of them cast in more or less imaginary forms. The terms for instance, by which Christianity seeks to represent its God; the Almighty, the Creator, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, all of them are plainly representations more or less pictorial. Obviously for the religious consciousness some object of devotion is necessary, but it need neither be clearly defined, nor even considered as the same for all worshippers. 3. The religious experience indeed, is prior to and independent of the notion of an independently existent 1. Value and Destiny - p.236 ty. It is religion that makes its gods, rather than the gods who make religion. This is, for Bosanquet, no flippancy but the sober truth. To this conclusion he is forced by consideration first of the needlessness of an existent and objective God to make the religious experience valid, that is, all it claims to be; and secondly of the insoluble contradic-tions inherent in any concept of God. "The religious consciousness," Bosanquet maintains, "is self-contained, and stands on its own basis, although it must be remembered that in our view that basis is exceedingly broad, and includes indeed the greater part of our most 1 vital experience." Whether a God may be proved to be or not, the religious consciousness remains as vital and vitalizing as ever. "The truth of the experience in which we are aware implicitly or explicitly of the finite-infinite nature of the finite spirit is actually present and contained within the religious experience." Were it not for one consid-eration, this self-containedness of the religious experience would be welcomed even by the most orthodox; and that condit-ion is the fear that, unless religion has an objectively existent God to attach itself to, it may turn out to be no more than men's fancy. The view of Bosanquet, at this point, must be made quite clear. He does not for a moment suggest that religion, because its typical experience is self-contained is a fancy 1. Value and Destiny - 252. such as psychologists (of a sort) like to treat lightly as •merely subjective.' The whole tenor of his thought denies this categorically. As man's nature and his task is communicated to him, so also his experience is guaranteed by the universe. We have insisted that inasmuch as a man is himself, and utters-. : bis nature purely, he can only think true thoughts. So is it with the religious experience. It is the nature of the universe in him that expresses itself thus, in devotion, that is, in Self-Transcendence raised to the highest power. In religion we may justly say that the universe expresses and supports itself, and man is brought as near perfection as his limitations will allow. 4. As to the inherent defect in all attempted statements of God there is no doubt, even in the minds of the orthodox. Bishop Westcott (quoted by Bosanquet) Notices the contradiction implied in his own attribution of 'infinity' and 'personality' to the same God."1" Every name of God, it may be objected, is defective, but none the less, God is. Against this it may be urged that not only the names of God, and the statements of his attributes contain contradictions, but there is a contradiction at the heart of the necessary demand that religion makes of its God. The God of religion must be less than the Absolute, for it is demanded of him that he take a side. A God to which good and evil are equally necessary is a God whom religion cannot worship, for the religious attitude is the adoration of a perfection in which every 1. Value and Destiny - p.254 153 element of evil is overcome. "The characteristic faith of religion is not merely that the good is real, but that nothing 1 else than the good is real." It is equally true, however, that even in religion, as in morality "Good is still loaded with the inherent contrast to evil, and if evil were entirely to disappear, the practical attitude, which depends upon its presence, would vanish, and with it would go the attitude to 2 perfection as a good; as something to be realized." The problem is that of Sin or evil in the consciousness of God, a problem which cannot be solved without doing violence either to the demand of religion or the foundations of all other experience. The solution of Canon Rashdall, the postulation of a Finite God, is no solution, but the attempt in such a direction by a serious scholar, at least serves to show the intensity of the problem and the centre at which it is most acute. If God, (as some philosophers, Professor Pattison among them,tend to assume) is the Absolute, or the whole conceived as adorable, then he must be characterized by moral evil as well as by good, but if he is less than the whole, he is not the "Absolute perfection" that religion insists that he be. We have mentioned the difficulty inherent in the demand for a God at once personal and infinite. It is the same difficulty of the part and the whole that we have touched 1. Value and Destiny - p.242. 2. Ibid., - p. 248. on above. All that has been said on the subject of the exclusiveness implied in Personality apt)lies at this point also. It is widely conceded that the demand of religion for a'personal God1 is, in effect, for a 'God not less than personal,' but the difficulty, though mitigated is not over-come. Still, if as a super-person God is either the whole, or less than the whole, the demand of religion is unsatisfied at one or other of its poles, for the religious attitude is itself a paradox. It is the necessity of maintaining equally the claims both of morality and of religion; of good striving against evil and of good the only real that drives Bosanquet to re-affirm his conviction that the religious attitude must be self-contained and independent of the objective existence • of a God any attempt at the statement of whom does violence to one or other of the two. It may also be noted that the attribution of 'existence' to God is not without its difficulty. Existence, as we know it, is successive appearance in time and space, which is not at all the wayinw/iickreligion claims to experience him. But because religion makes demands that cannot be met, and is paradoxical and full of contradiction it is not on that account, we may repeat, any less valid. In this it but shows its continuity with the whole fabric of experience. But as it is experienced religion is not a contradiction, but a complete identification with the whole, which becomes 155 luminous and transparent to the finite being. Whatever the object, partial or very concrete, which becomes the object of his devotion, the experience is much the same, and in it and by it, the finite individual is made to feel his identity with the real, his 'at homeness' in the world, and his spirit-ual connection on every side with man, with nature, and with God. In effect, he becomes a new creature. In support of this whole thesis that religion is a devotion and an attitude which is in no need of a God conceived as independently existent evidences may be drawn from many of the most religious minds. Religion inevitably talks the language of God, but the variety of its tongues points to a unity as lying elsewhere than in its concepts of God. Religion, according to such minds is to 'Love God,' and to 'Love man.' The Hatter may be conceived upon the analogy of individual experience, but the former is not so easy. If the phrase 'heart and mind and soul and strength' be taken to mean the whole man, every bit of him, as it were, focused and at a white heat; then to love God so would be to throw 'oneself outside of oneself in abandon to a type of perfection compared with which all else drops away and is gone. This is the religious attitude, and as to its supremacy in the whole range of human experience there cannot be a moment's doubt. IMMORTALITY Chapter XVI At no point in his writing, where he touches the question at all, does Bosanquet fail to make his attitude toward immortality clear. Prom first to last his view is quite consistently negative. He does not attempt the impossible, and dogmatize, but his own mind is made up on 1 the matter. In this essay on "The Kingdom of God on Earth" he disagrees with Kant's 'unnecessary clinging' to the notions of God (in the sense of a Ruler of the world) and of a future life. His general attitude to religion underwent much modification as his life ran on, but a few years before S his death we find him writing to Br. Creighton expressing his complete satisfaction in the presence of immeasurable values, and his 'impatience of remoter inferences.' It is true that he grew up in an age when naturalism was rife, and he may be said therefore to have been unduly influenced by the atmosphere of his times, but it must be remembered that, 1. 1889. S. A letter In "Philosophical Review" - Vol.30, p.S16 157 though he has been accused of being naturalistic himself, nothing is further from his spirit and intention. The probability of individual survival he rejects on these grounds; its needlessness, its difficulty and its naivete of belief. In maintaining that any emphasis on personal survival tends to lower the tone and quality of religion (and in this day three out of four advocates of 'liberal Christian-ity' will end their argument the note of immortality) he has the support of much reflective religious opinion. George Adam Smith, for example, is quoted as writing, "It is well for us all sometimes to pitch our religious life in. terms which do not include the hope of a future." It is doubtful whether so thoughtful a man would have written thus unless he felt keenly the dangers involved in the popular belief. The prophetic religion of Israel, in its highest expression in Amos and Hosea and the rest is cast in a shape exclusive of, or in any event, heedless of survival; and it is doubtful whether purer religious expression may anywhere be found. The teaching of Jesus, (as the present writer can discover it) is quite non-committal. "Where the corpses are - there will the eagles be gathered together." The one phrase "God is the God of the living" may be cited, but unless approached with a bias, does not bear heavily toward 'personal survival.1 These are quoted merely to show the possibility of high religious life and expression in the absence of the 158 notion of immortality. Wherever modern writers of 1 religious character touch this auestion they are non-committal also. As for philosophers, Bosanquet points out that they fsit loose1 on the issue. The contention of Bosanquet is that the commonplace thought of survival is the expression of a want other than itself; a desire that what is of most value to me shall tie of value, and the same, when I am gone. In other words, the thing that truly religious people ask for in immortality is no more than the security of value in the universe. What irreligious people ask for is of no importance. As to the difficulty of conceding the continuity after the death of the body of the finite self he is no less emphatic. Our whole treatment of the individual as anything but an 'isolated angelic spirit' should support our case here. The extreme intimacy of the relation between mind and body, or rather the dependence of what we call mind upon a long pre-condition of bodies sub-human and animal, though often mentioned, is seldom taken in its full strength. Apologists are always swift to leave the ticklish question and advance to Sir Oliver Lodge and the 'evidences' of spiritualism. Dr. Wildon Carr, even, begs the question of this intimate relation, and this long evolution in his question. "May it not be that in man life has found the means to carry forward living action by the individual in complete detachment from 1. As T.R. Glover in "Jesus in the Experience of Men" 169 the material conditions of individuality?" He does not answer, but his question carries the required suggestion, a suggestion which over-rides every trace of evidence in favor of a deeply implanted desire - a type of desire to be closely scrutinised in argument. Bosanquet will have none of these, philosophers who talk of "life" as a new category discontinuous with the categories of mechanism. Their new category will introduce 'chance' irxto the system, and through the breach all values will slip away. unless taken wildly, the evidences of evolution are all against 'personal survival.' The popular argument that evolution implies that the individual 'goes on and on' is, of course, an obvious error, but it is much repeated. "The gradation of animal mind presents an unbelievable difficulty to all theories which suggest that finite consciousnesses are correlative each to each with persistent and self-subsi stent differentiations of the Absolute." Or again. "We find no structure assigned to the particular individual or substantive mind, and it seems to take its place just as an activity of the real, which is while and what it does, but reposes, so to speak, nowhere and on nothing." A further difficulty in the way of survival is the location of the self that is to survive. We cannot repeat the argument of Bosanquet as to the nature of the finite individual, but it may be recalled that it bears on this question. The 'Self lies 'outside of itself.' It has no 1. "Changing Backgrounds in Religion and Ethics, p.174 160 •what and where,' hut lies somewhere between nothing and the whole. What then, by way of 'crystal nuclei' can be gathered up to represent each individual after death. Moreover, if my self survives as it is my sense of the fitness of things is violated, for the religious consciousness insists upon its defects; and if it survives other than it is, then by what manner of means is it recogn-izeably myself any more. The notion of exclusiveness must must be be broken down. Selves thought of as flowing together in an ideal harmony, in which particularity i3 no longer claimed. Then too, the naivete of the popular notion of survival, taken together with its very deep and far-reaching influence as en article of belief, points either to its beinp Mistaken wholly ( which is very improbable ) or none other than a vulgar expression of a real truth, hidden a little deeper than common reflection usually goes; a truth, that is, which is none the less feit by everyone because it is inadequately expressed by many. Of the two the latter is the more acceptable if experience is to be trusted at all. jtjosanauet *s final word of criticism of the theory of survival is this, "I cannot believe that the supreme end of the Absolute is to give rise to beings such as I experience myself to be." "Because men exist for a little while and make a difference to it on the whole it does not follow that 161 they are worlds with which the universe is primarily organised.n S. It is Bosanquet's main contention that he is uphold-ing to the limit all that a thorough going and consistent view of the whole can allow In the way of the value and destiny of the individual. What, therefore, is his positive finding? What is the truth as much obscured as illuminated of the common talk of survival? His answer is put very often and very variously. "The level and quality of mind attained" he begins, "and not the destiny of its centres is the main 2 thing and the principle value." To this.he adds further that, "What interests us is rather to know if the real is to be found on the lines of what we experience as the greatest and best." It is, as we have said, security we ask for in the demand for survival, and that the security of what we hold to be of the most value. To this his answer is quite definite. 'Importance and reality are sides of the same characteristic.' What matters for us of the character of the real. The question is further pressed. How can values survive when the centres that embodied them are blotted out? If values are only 'in and for persons' then how may they not be obliterated in the catastrophe of the individual? The answer is characteristic of Bosanquet. "If we accept this as a criticism of our theory of the self we are at the mercy of a demand which rests mainly on his (the person self-feeling 1. Science and Philosophy - p.111. S. Principle, p.20 172 or formal individuality." It is the cloven-hoof of exclusive ness that pokes out again. To accede to the demand is to do violence to everything of high level experience that differ en^iates it from the low. To look back to the narrow ego, a mere 'empty form,' for what is in reality far away in sweeping Self-Transcendence, is to look, so to speak, in the deserted tomb of the Easter story, for what is no longer there. 'Self Feeling' is not the secret of eternal value. The line of hope is in the direction of Transformation. All value, we have noticed, issues from the whole, and the ultimate goal implied in all striving is the Absolute. But the Absolute is here and now (if the present tense may be used to imply the transcendence of the time series) and the individual is admitedly a part of it now. The finite self is now as ever 'something without which the Absolute would not be what it is.' The future, in the sense of 'after death' can hold no more of value. If we are of the opinion that, unless we are on the spot to attend to things the Absolute is likely to 'lose its grip' we may remain in that opinion, but the the thought does not imply great confidence in-order of the cosmos. The common longing to be with ones departed friends involves elements of present value in the way of devotion and remembrance, but involves also difficulties quite inseparable -as the wish of a mother that her child remain a babe for her to all eternity. 1. Value and Destiny - p.276 163 The simplest thoughtful attempt at the solution of this difficulty would entail transmutation to a point not far short of that which Bosanquet insists upon. Indeed, it may be urged that in discussion, even in serious books, of immort-ality, the complications involved are rarely given any adequate consideration. Criticised desire, however, leads around again to the assertion o f , not my survival in any form, but the permanence in some form of what I have striven for. If I have striven for nothing, then, as Matthew Arnold has put it, I have failed to attain to 'eternal life.' It is the wearing out of 'hand and heart and nerve' that makes an eternal mark. There is plainly plenty of room left for'faith'in such a thought as this. All that can be said with certainty is that all higher experience offers clues which give suffici-ent reason for supposing that that which is most real in experience is the closest to the ultimately real, and that there are phases of experience in love, art, and religion which for their quality depend no more upon time succession or personal exclusiveness, but upon Self-Transcendence and even (for why balk at it) absorption in the whole. The life, therefore, that is lived(in whatever conditions it matters not) 'to the full* is not in any way wasted, however brief its temporal span; and is, in the best and only sense, for eternity. Bosanquet repeats that philosophy cannot attempt a 'map correct of heaven' and is hence at a disadvantage compared with theology, but a critical and comprehensive philosophy can admit that "We know that what we care for, in so far as it is 164 really what we care for, is safe through its continuity with the Eternal." The finite creature cannot, by reason of his limitation find any perfection completely, but by identifying himself wholly in thought and will (and as he can in action) with something quite beyond him he can attain to a relative perfection of his own, but not his by right; yet by every standard worthy of his striving. He joins on every side with his fellows, in the high 'art of living together' and achieves something of very great beauty. As to his survival again, a verse of Meredith is in the spirit of Bosanquet. "Full lasting is the song, though he The singer, passes: lasting too For souls not lent in usury The rapture of the forward view." Bosanquet has expressed a similar thought in the letter to Br. Creighton mentioned above. "Does the conservation of value imply the conservat-ion of personality? I picked up the December number of the 'Studio' and found myself in a world of supreme values .... A philosopher is not made by looking; no doubt he must think. Nevertheless, if he knows how and where to look, it seems to me that the inexhaustibleness in values, of human experience, is altogether "beyond the need of reasoning. To use a schoolboy phrase, 'There is plenty more where these came from.' And the revelation they bring leaves me, I confess, a little indiffer-ent to the remoter inferences which we may draw from it, and a little impatient of any discussion which implies that we are not constantly in presence of supreme realities and immeasurable values." UBC Scanned by UBC Library 166 PROGRESS Chapter XVII Following from our last chapter there is little more to be said as to the 'value and destiny of the individual;' but a brief note as to the future of society as Bosanquet sees it may be added. From what has gone before we may assume without further argument that progress in the sense of a movement to perfection in time is ruled out ab initio. He several times mentions to confute the motto "The End is Progress".Time is an appearance only,and is not a character of the real. The Absolute is not progress, neither can it progress. The notion, too, that time now is the real, and that some day it will pass into Eternity is categorically denied. Both these theories make heavy drafts on the future at the expense of the present. The only way to view the world of time is as the self-revelation of a reality which as a whole is timeless. Every age in the history of the world has a perfection of its own, inasmuch as it 'does the works' of the Absolute. The only sound way to see progress is in some way which will do justice equally to the demand of morality for 167 improvement, and the attitude of religion which takes in the whole, without succession, identifying itself with perfection conceived as already perfect; the two attitudes, that is, of morality as creative of the good, and of religion as adoring it. The manner in which a reality above time can express itself in a series is a question perennial to philosophy. The usual answer, to which Bosanquet agrees, is found in the dual nature of a musical phrase which, however surely it is grasped by the listener as a totality, is none the less constituted of notes in a series. The illustration also of the drama, in which its characters are at once themselves, moving thus and so, and at the same time, more than themselves, weaving a whole by which some universal truth may be portrayed. Since, as we have insisted, the individual lives and moves in an eternal world now, the place of progress must be other than that which it has been taken to occupy. Progress can only resolve itself with further differentiation of the real analogous to, and perhaps more refined and varied than, those of the present world. That thus justice is done to 'Time's past and the fathers that begot us1 far more than by any insistence on a 'far off divine event' as the 'raison d'etre' of present and past ages, can hardly be disputed. "I do think," Bosanquet writes, "as a matter of mere tendency and belief, that the analogy to be followed in forming views of the future is rather that of successive emphasis on different sides of reality than that of progress and change 168 in toto, leaving everything old in all respects behind. It seems to me that the growth of our civilization is carrying 1 us away from some unquestionable values." In other words, every step forward implies some real loss as well as some gain. . So we are brought around to the hope which Bosanquet has for the future of mankind, and especially of Western Civilizati on, that it may grow in appreciation of the spiritual values which, in its massive material development it has almost overwhelmed. The full indigtment against Western Civilization cannot yet be laid, but the sense of its imperfect-ion is growing. One writing in 1902 put this accusation on the lips of a Chinese critic of the West. "Like the prince in the fable you seem to have released from his prison the genie of competition, only to find that you are unable to control him Your legislation for the past one hundred years is a perpetual and fruitless effort to regulate the disorders of your economic system .... You have dissolved all human and personal ties ... the salient characteristic of your civilization is its irresponsibility ... you are caught in your own levers and cogs .... Such is the internal 2 economy of your State as it presents itself to a Chinaman." The truth of all of this is to some extent borne out by the turn affairs have taken in the succeeding twenty-five years. Expectation for the future, therefore, may be in the direction of an increasing sense and discrimination of 1. Philosophical Review Vol.29 - p.577 2. Letters of John Chinaman - G.Lowes Dickinson, p.14. 169 true values. Progress will not be toward things 'bigger and better,' but toward a more complete and refined evaluation of the riches that belong to the spirit of man; and a deeper enjoyment of the concrete and real world with which his knowledge of truth, beauty and goodness, together with all which the arts of social living may bring him. But no hope for the future may be entertained so much as for a moment if it diminished one iota the possible value of the immediate present, if the present be -understood and appreciated. UBC Scanned by UBC Library 170 CRITICISM REVIEWED AND A WORD AS TO HIS INFLUENCE Part IV Chapter XVIII 1 With those lines of criticism the intent of which is to heighten the status of the individual we have dealt already. This phrase of Sir Henry Jones' is the germ of the dispute, "One may doubt if Professor Bosanquet's substitution of'Self-Transcendence* for 'Self-realization® is altogether a gain in metaphysics." In Chapter VII the grounds of the doubt have been examined, and a conclusion ventured. We have also attempted to answer the criticism of Bosanquet's theory of the Absolute. It appears to be founded upon a misunder-standing. There is another, and a more fundamental criticism which has not been considered at all. It takes the form of an attack upon the logic underlying his whole system, and centres its condemnation upon the concept of the concrete universal. With the ramifications of this difference it is not possible to venture, for it would require a logical treatise of great length to expound and far more to evaluate the various alternatives which are put forward by logicians 1 such as Cook-Wilson, Stout, and especially Norman Kemp Smith. It must suffice to say, with the possibility of being hastily dogmatic, that the difference is either of terms, (which though productive of confusion, may be overcome) or of metaphysical bias (as Professor Smith's dissatisfaction with 'Absolutism') which is very difficult to overcome, and probably, cannot be met for lack of common ground to meet on. J. Cook Wilson complains "It has become customary to speak of a concrete and an abstract universal. These are terms to be avoided. Concrete was originally merely opposed to abstract and should mean a particular existence. Nothing is gained by calling an existence concrete and the term has the danger of seeming to give an explanation. Concrete 2 universals would be a veritable contradiction in terms." Professor Kemp Smith also changes Bosanquet with using terms in a special and also an ambiguous sense. The terms 'identity' 'individual,' 'concrete,' and 'abstract' are radically misused, and real confusion of thought results. The step by which Bosanquet makes 'individual' synonymous with 'system' is a mis-step. His central concept of 'identity in difference,' taken over from Hegel, should be displaced by the concept of 'relatedness within a system.' As a result of his personal metaphysical absorption, "any distraction which cannot be so treated" (in terms of identity in difference) "is neglected 3 or denied." This is, obviously, a dangerous line of attack 1. 'The Nature of Universals' by N.K. Smith in 'Mind' - Vol.36, N.S. 2. "Statement and Inference" - p.714 3. Ibid., p.266 which may be turned against its initiator. For instance, when Professor Smith goes on to remark, that we have "no reason to suppose that the physical system is also an organism," and that therefore "we have overwhelming evidence against the view that wider wholes are necessarily higher types of unity" he is expressing at once a judgment based upon ignorance, and also a judgment as to the probable superiority of the individ-ual man, as an organism, to the universe a3 a whole, both of which, and especially the latter Bosanquet would strongly denounce. On the one hand is a bias in favor of the perfection of the universe, and on the other hand a bias in favor of the peculiarly high type of unity that Professor Smith takes himself to be. Which of them is the less culpable pre-possess-ion? Professor Smith is impressed with the 'Selective adaptation' of the individual; Bosanquet, with many profound spirits, is the more impressed with the 'Teleology below and the Teleology above consciousness' by which the physical world and civilizations came into being. Again "Logic, they declare" {i.e. Bradley and Bosanquet) "is being wrongly treated so long as it continues to be modelled upon the methods which have been successful in solving the theoretical problems of practical life and of the sciences." This is palpably false. We may refer again to a sentence in "Implication and Linear Inference" which indicates Bosanquet's intention to show the "very real affinity which exists" between logic and "the actual mode in which 173 expert writers on general subjects develop their comprehensive arguments." He may conceivably have failed, but this and not the other, is his 'declaration.' We cannot pursue this criticism of Bosanquet's logic further, but may add another authority in his defence. Says Professor Muirhead "I believe that the difficulties" (in Bosanquet's philosophy and modern idealism) are to be met "by following further the clue that Professor Bosanquet's 1 interpretation of it puts into our hands." It may further be said that his central theory (as to the place of universals) can be stated, as Professor 2 Hoernle has shown, without introducing the terms 'abstract and concrete,' which have become objects of contention, and are therefore to be avoided in serious writing. 2. It is too early to trace the full influence Bosanquet upon the philosophy of his day, but a word as to its direction may be added. We have seen that his central intention is to show an absolutism that 'knows its business' as able to meet the problems of the 'new knowledge' and emerge unscathed. In this, it may be granted, he succeeded. It need not, however, be conceded that in every particular his philosophy is above further attack, but only that his general position is very strong and very consistent. 1. His Obituary Notice in 'Journal of Philosophy.' p.678 2. "Concerning Universals" in "Mind" Vol.36, N.S. 174 It is also relevant to ask as to whether or in what way this thought has shifted or influenced the trend of philosophy in our own day; to what extent his philosophy has flowed out with the next generation. Some have said that Bosanquet reaffirmed and re-illumined the philosophy of Green, his predecessor, and no more: others are more certain of a 'genuine originality.' His own opinion, firmly held, was that a man's work is the gift of his forebears and his times, and that again, when he lays it down, it "grows at every 1 point into the general vitality that surrounds it." He, therefore, could be the last to ask for the preservation in anything like its original form, of his philosophy. Miss Sinclair remarks that in spite of Bradley and Bosanquet the Hew Realism happened. This is true enough insofar as the New Realism 'happened' without reference to the thought of these two, and the tradition they represent; but is not true if it be taken to mean that, having penetrated the heart of their idealism, and understood it, they have set about to remedy for philosophy its defect. Any reading of the more ostentatiously 'new' realisms provokes the thought that they are of the nature of a retreat from and an impatience with the attempt to be consistent. It is worthy of note that where the New Realism, in its strongest exponents, becomes mathematics or philosophy (and not an appendix tc/ psychology) it moves over 2 toward a "speculative philosophy." 1. Some suggestions in Ethics - p.86. 2. Meeting of Extremes. 175 There is no need to repeat that, so far, such a philosophy as Bosanquetfs is not in the ascendant. Wherever the theological interest is dominant he is found wanting, and where mathematics is held to be the key to all philosophy, there also he is 'persona non grata.' But he has successors who,either as Professor Hoernle, trace their chief inspiration to him, or as Dr. Muirhead, regard his especial emphasis as of all recent systems, the most suggestive. The former of these writes very much in the spirit, and not a little in the style of Bosanquet. There are many others, from whom occasional comments in the magazines come who acknowledge the value they have found in his work. A series of articles by Katherine Gilbert, in the Philosophical Review (vols. 31 and 32) is especially worthy of note. It is not unlikely that tendencies now at work may emerge again in the direction of some gens ral interpretation of reality closely related to that of Bosanquet. The strong present tendency, however, toward "spiritual pluralism' or 'monadism * may draw off much of the revolt from the 'nondes-cript' pluralisms which have been current during the last two decades. There is always the difficulty, nevertheless, of making such a theory quite thorough-going. But there are many who are anxious to accept a maximum of what, without too violent contradiction, can be held in the one hand. 176 But with this, or after this, the desire for coherence, for 'synopsis' in philosophy, and for concreteness in its material, may bring Bosanquet yet more to the front in the thought of the English speaking world. "Without professing to understand, or to be able to expl-ain, everything in Bosanquet's philosophy" Professor Hoernle writes, "I find more of essential wisdom and truth in it than in the theories of any other philosopher of our time. Whenever I return to his writings after an interval, they give me more than they had done before. This, of course, is no less true of the writings of any other great philosopher - of Plato, or Spinoza, or Kant. But it is precisely by this test that I would rank 1 Bosanquet in the small company of the very great." 1. Journal of Philosophy - Vol.EO, p.516 BIBLIOGRAPHY The Writings of Bernard Bosanquet Schomann: Athenian Constitutional History, Translated, 1878. Translation of Lotze, {Edited and part translated) 1884. Knowledge and Reality - 1885. 1 Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art - 1886. ' Logic - 1888. ' Essays and Addresses - 1889. History of Aesthetic - 189E. Civilization of Christendom - 1893. Companion to Plato's Republic - 1895. Aspects of the Social Problem, (Edited and contributed) - 1895. ' Essentials of Logic - 1895. Psychology of the Moral Self - 1897. ' Philosophical Theory of the State - 1899. Education of the Young in Plato - 1900. ' Principle of Individuality and Value - 1912. Value and Destiny of the Individual - 1913. Distinction Between Mind and Its Objects - 1913. Three Lectures on Aesthetic - 1915. ' Social and International Ideals - 1917. -II-» Some Suggestions in Ethics - 1918. Zoar - 1919. ' Implication and Linear Inference - 1920 What Religion Is - 1920. ' Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary-Philosophy - 1920. ' Three Chapters on the Nature of Mind - 1923 Science and Philosophy - 1926. * Bernard Bosanquet, A short Account of His Life 1 By Helen Bosanquet, - 1924. A-II His contributions to magazines, and to the Aristotelian Society. Collected essays and certain others 2 omitted. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society U.S. 3 "The Relation of Logic to Psychology with special reference to the views of Dr. Bosanquet." A reply by Bosanquet. " 9 Symposium, "The Place of Experience in Democracy." 1. Those read for this essay marked (') 2. Early contributions to Sristotelian Society. -III-N.S. IE Symposium "Purpose and Mechanism." " 15 A Note ."Conflicting Social Obligations." it tiThe Function of the State in Promoting the Unity of Mankind." MIND Vol. £6 N.S. "Causality and Implication." "The Individual and the State." "The Basis of Bosanquet's Logic" A Reply. "The Notion of a General Will." "Croce's Aesthetic." 30 " "The Basis of Bosanquet's Logic" Further comment. 31 " "This or Nothing." "A Word about Coherence" A Note on "Professor Broad on the External World." PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW Vol.£6 "Realism and Metaphysics" "The Relation of Coherence to Immediate and Specific Purpose." -IV-Vol. 27 "Appearance and Reality and the Solution of Problems." " 29 "Appearance and the Absolute." " 30 A Hote "An Undesigned Coincidence" 31 "Humor in Bosanquet*s Theory of Experience" A Reply. "7 5 = 12" B-I - Other Articles Concerning Bosanquet. MIND Vol. 21 U.S. Notice of 'Principle' J.E. McTaggart. " 22 " Notice of 'Value and Destiny' J.H. Muirhead. " 27 " "The Basis of Bosanquet's Logic" L.J. Russell. " 28 " Notice of "Some Suggestions in Ethics" J.S. MacKenzie. " 28 v "The Basis of Bosanquet's Logic" L.J. Russell. -V-Vol.32 N.S. "Bernard Bosanquet" J.H. Muirhead. " 33 " Notice of "Three Chapters on the Nature of Mind" G.C. Field. "The Nature of Universals" Norman Kemp Smith. "(Concerning Universals" R.F.A. Hoernle. Notice of "Science and Philosophy" J.S. MacKenzie. PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW Vol.28 Notice of "Some Suggestions in Ethics" G.S. Ferguson. " 29 "The Method in the Metaphysics of Bernard Bosanquet" M.C. Carroll. " 30 "The Principle of Individuality in the Metaphysics of Bernard Bosanouet." "The Nature of the Absolute" M.C. Carroll. Notice of "Implication and Linear Inference" R.F.A. Hoernle. " 36 " 36 " 36 -VI-(Philosophical Review Cont'd) Vol.31 "Humor in Bosanquet's Theory of Experience" Katherine Gilbert. " 32 "An Estimate of Bosanquet's Philosophy" J.A. Leighton. "Bosanquet on Teleology" G. Watts Cunningham. "The Principle of Reason in the light of Bosanquet's Philosophy" Katherine Gilbert. "On Bosanquet's Idealism" R.F.A. Hoernle. Bosanquet and the Future of Logic" R.C. Lodge. "Bosanquet's Theory of the Real Will" G.H. Sabine. "Bosanquet's Interpretation of Religious Experience" E.L. Schaube. " 33 "Absolutism and Realism" John Watson. " 34 "Bosanquet on Mind and the Absolute" John Watson. " 35 "Bosanquet on the Philosophic Method" G.W. Cunningham. -VII-JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY V o l . 1 8 Reviews of "Implication and Linear Inference" and "Meeting of Extremes." " 20 "Bernard Bosanquet as I knew Him" J.H. Muirhead. "In Memoriam: Bernard Bosanauet" R.F.A. Hoernle. PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 1913 - 1914 "The Basis of Realism" Alexander. V o l . X Obituary Notice by A.C. Bradley and Lord Haldane. •II Bradley, A.C. Bradley, F.H. -VIII-Shakespearian Tragedy. Appearance and Reality. Essays on Truth and Reality, Ethical Studies. Braham, E.G. Post Kantian Thought. Carr, Wildon- Changing Background in Religion and Ethics. Hoernel, R.F.Alfred Studies in Contemporary Metaphysi Matter, Mind, Life and God. Idealism. Inge, W.R. Personal Idealism and Mysticism. Confessio Fidei - in "Outspoken Essays." Joachim, H.H. A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza. Jones, Sir Henry, A Faith that Enquires. Laird, John, Our Minds and their Bodies. Problems of the Self. Pattison, Seth Pringle, The Idea of Immortality. The Idea of God. -IX-Russell, Bertrand, The Analysis of Mind. A Free Man's Worship - and other Essays in - Mysticism and Logic. Sinclair, May, The New Idealism. Six Realists, The New Realism. Webb, C.C.J. Divine Personality and Human Life, All of the above are quoted or referred to directly or indirectly. Many others, needless to say, form the 'atmosphere' out of which this essay is crystalized.
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The philosophy of Bernard Bosanquet
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