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A Modern Utopia Appendix, Scepticism of the Instrument · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty of A Modern Utopia. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Calm Dragon. A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty Appendix Skepticism of the Instrument a portion of
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  Speaker 1: a paper read to the Oxford Philosophical Society, November eighth,
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  Speaker 1: nineteen o three, and reprinted with some revision from the
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  Speaker 1: version given in Mind, Volume thirteen, n S. Number fifty one.
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  Speaker 1: It seems to me that I may most propitiously attempt
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  Speaker 1: to interest you this evening by describing very briefly the
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  Speaker 1: particular metaphysical and philosophical system in which I do my thinking,
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  Speaker 1: and more particularly, by setting out for the consideration one
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  Speaker 1: or two points in which I seem to myself to
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  Speaker 1: differ most widely from current excscept philosophy. You must be
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  Speaker 1: prepared for things that will strike you as crude, for
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  Speaker 1: a certain difference of accent and dialect that you may
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  Speaker 1: not like. And you must be prepared to hear what
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  Speaker 1: may strike you as the clumsy statement of my ignorant
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  Speaker 1: rediscovery of things already beautifully thought out and said. But
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  Speaker 1: in the end you may incline to forgive me some
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  Speaker 1: of this first offense. It is quite unavoidable that in
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  Speaker 1: setting out these intellectual foundations of mine, I should lapse
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  Speaker 1: for a moment or so towards autobiography. A convergence of
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  Speaker 1: circumstances led to my having my knowledge of concrete things
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  Speaker 1: quite extensively developed before I came to philosophical examination at all.
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  Speaker 1: I have heard someone say that a savage or an
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  Speaker 1: animal is mentally a purely objective being, and in that
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  Speaker 1: respect I was like a savage or an animal. Until
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  Speaker 1: I was well over twenty. I was extremely unaware of
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  Speaker 1: the subjective or introverted element in my being. I was
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  Speaker 1: a positivists without knowing it. My early education was a
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  Speaker 1: feeble one. It was one in which my private observation, inquiry,
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  Speaker 1: and experiment were far more important factors than any instruction.
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  Speaker 1: Or rather, perhaps the instruction I received was less even
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  Speaker 1: than what I learnt for myself, and it terminated at thirteen.
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  Speaker 1: I had come into pretty intimate contact with the harder
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  Speaker 1: realities of life, with hunger in various forms and many
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  Speaker 1: base and disagreeable necessities. Before I was fifteen about that age,
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  Speaker 1: following the indication of certain theological and speculative curiosities, I
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  Speaker 1: began to learn something of what I will call deliberately
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  Speaker 1: and justly elementary science stuff I got out of Cassell's
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  Speaker 1: popular educator and cheap text books, and then, through accidents
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  Speaker 1: and ambitions that do not matter in the least to
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  Speaker 1: us now, I came to three years of illuminating and
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  Speaker 1: good scientific work. The central fact of those three years
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  Speaker 1: was Huxley's course in comparative anatomy at the School in
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  Speaker 1: Exhibition Road. About that as a nucleus, I arranged a
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  Speaker 1: spacious digestifacts. At the end of that time, I had
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  Speaker 1: acquired what I still think to be a fairly clear
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  Speaker 1: and complete and ordered view of the abstantially real universe.
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  Speaker 1: Let me try to give you the chief things I had.
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  Speaker 1: I had men definitely placed in the great scheme of
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  Speaker 1: space and time. I knew him incurably for what he was,
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  Speaker 1: finite and not final, a being of compromises and adaptations.
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  Speaker 1: I had traced his lungs, for example, from a swimming bladder,
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  Speaker 1: step by step with scalpel and probe, through a dozen
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  Speaker 1: types or more. I had seen the ancestral secum shrink
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  Speaker 1: to that disease nest the appendix of to day. I
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  Speaker 1: had watched the gill slid patch slowly to the purpose
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  Speaker 1: of the ear, and the reptile jaw suspension utilized to
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  Speaker 1: eke out the needs of a sense organ taken from
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  Speaker 1: its native and natural water. I had worked out the
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  Speaker 1: development of those extraordinarily unsatisfactory and untrustworthy instruments man's teeth,
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  Speaker 1: from the skin scutes of the shark, to their present
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  Speaker 1: function as a basis for gold stoppings, and followed the
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  Speaker 1: slow unfolding of the complex and painful process of gestation
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  Speaker 1: through which man comes into the world. I had followed
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  Speaker 1: all these things, and many kindred things by dissection and
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  Speaker 1: in embryology. I had checked the whole theory of development
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  Speaker 1: again in a year's course of paleontology. And I had
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  Speaker 1: taken the dimensions of the whole process by the scale
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  Speaker 1: of the stars in a course of astronomical physics. And
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  Speaker 1: all that amount of objective elucidation came before I had
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  Speaker 1: reached the beginnings of any philosophical or metaphysical inquiry, any
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  Speaker 1: inquiry as to why I believed, how I believe, what
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  Speaker 1: I believed or what the fundamental stuff of things was. Now,
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  Speaker 1: Following hard upon this interlude with knowledge came a time
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  Speaker 1: when I had to give myself to teaching, and it
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  Speaker 1: became advisable to acquire one of those teaching diplomas that
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  Speaker 1: are so widely and so foolishly despised, And that enterprise
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  Speaker 1: set me to a superficial but suggestive study of educational method,
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  Speaker 1: of educational theory, of logic, of psychology, and so at last,
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  Speaker 1: when the little affair with the diploma was settled, to philosophy.
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  Speaker 1: Now to come to logic over the bracing uplands of
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  Speaker 1: comparative anatomy is to come to logic with a lot
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  Speaker 1: of very natural preconceptions blown clean out of one's mind.
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  Speaker 1: It is, I submit, a way of taking logic in
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  Speaker 1: the flank when you have realized to the narrow that
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  Speaker 1: all the physical organs of man and all his physical
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  Speaker 1: structures are what they are through a series of adaptations
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  Speaker 1: and approximations, and that they are kept up to a
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  Speaker 1: level of practical efficiency only by the elimination of death,
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  Speaker 1: And that this is true also of his brain, and
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  Speaker 1: of his instincts, and of his mental predispositions. You are
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  Speaker 1: not going to take his thinking apparatus unquestioningly as being
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  Speaker 1: in any way mysteriously different and better. And I had
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  Speaker 1: read only a little logic before I became aware of
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  Speaker 1: implications that I could not agree with, and assumptions that
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  Speaker 1: seemed to me to be altogether at a variance with
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  Speaker 1: the general scheme of objective fact established in my mind.
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  Speaker 1: I came to an examination of logical processes and of
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  Speaker 1: language with expectation that would share the profoundly provisional character,
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  Speaker 1: the character of a regular limitation and adaptation that pervades
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  Speaker 1: the whole physical and animal being of man. And I
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  Speaker 1: found the thing I had expected, And as a consequence,
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  Speaker 1: I found a sort of intellectual hardihood about the assumptions
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  Speaker 1: of logic, and at first confused me and then roused
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  Speaker 1: all the latent skepticism in my mind. My first quarrel
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  Speaker 1: with the accepted logic I had developed long ago in
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: a little paper that was printed in the Fortnightly Review
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  Speaker 1: in July eighteen ninety one. It was called the Rediscovery
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  Speaker 1: of the Unique, and re reading it, I perceived not
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  Speaker 1: only how bad and even annoying it was in manner
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  Speaker 1: a thing I have long known, but also how remarkably
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  Speaker 1: bad it was in expression. I have good reason for
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  Speaker 1: doubting whether my powers of expression in these uses have
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  Speaker 1: very perceptibly improved. But at any rate, I am doing
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  Speaker 1: my best now with the previous failure before me, that
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  Speaker 1: unfortunate paper, among other oversights I can no longer regard
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  Speaker 1: as trivial, disregarded quite completely the fact that a whole literature,
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  Speaker 1: upon the antagonism of the one and the many, of
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  Speaker 1: the specific ideal and the individual reality, was already in existence.
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  Speaker 1: It defined no relations to other thought or thinkers. I
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  Speaker 1: understand now what I did not understand then why it
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  Speaker 1: was totally ignored. But the idea underlying that paper I
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  Speaker 1: cling to to day. I considered an idea that will
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  Speaker 1: ultimately be regarded as one of primary importance to human thought.
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  Speaker 1: And I will try and present the substance of that
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  Speaker 1: early paper again, now very briefly, as the best opening
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  Speaker 1: of my general case. My opening skepticism is essentially a
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  Speaker 1: doubt of the objective reality of classification. I have no
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  Speaker 1: hesitation in saying that it is the first and primary
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  Speaker 1: position of my philosophy. I have it in my mind
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  Speaker 1: that classification is a necessary condition of the working of
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  Speaker 1: the mental implement but that it is a departure from
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  Speaker 1: the objective truth of things. That classification is very serviceable
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  Speaker 1: for practical purposes of life, but a very doubtful preliminary
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  Speaker 1: to those fine penetrations. The philosophical purpose, in its more
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  Speaker 1: arrogant moods, demands all the peculiarity of my way of
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  Speaker 1: thinking derived from that a mind nourished upon anatomical study
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  Speaker 1: is of course permeated with the suggestion of the vagueness
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  Speaker 1: and instability of biological species. A biological species is quite
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  Speaker 1: obviously a great number of unique individuals, which is separable
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  Speaker 1: from other biological species only by the fact that an
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  Speaker 1: enormous number of the other linking individuals are inaccessible in time,
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  Speaker 1: are in other words, dead and gone. And each new
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  Speaker 1: individual in that species does, in the distinction of its
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  Speaker 1: own individuality, break away in however infinitesimal degree from the
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  Speaker 1: previous average properties of the species. There is no property
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  Speaker 1: of any species, even the properties that constitute the specific definition.
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  Speaker 1: That is not a matter of more or less. If,
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  Speaker 1: for example, a species be distinguished by a single large
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  Speaker 1: red spot on the back, you will find if you
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  Speaker 1: go over a great number of specimens, that the red
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  Speaker 1: spot shrinking here to nothing, expanding there to a more
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  Speaker 1: general redness, weakening to pink, deepening to russet, and brown
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  Speaker 1: shading into crimson, and so on and so on. And
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  Speaker 1: this is true not only a biological species. It is
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  Speaker 1: true of the mineral specimens constituting a mineral species. And
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  Speaker 1: I remember, as a constant refrain in the lectures of
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  Speaker 1: Professor Judd upon rock classification, the words they pass into
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  Speaker 1: one another by insensible graduations. That is true, I hold
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  Speaker 1: of all things. You will think perhaps of atoms of
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  Speaker 1: the elements, as instances of identically similar things. But these
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  Speaker 1: are things not of experience, but of theory. And there
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  Speaker 1: is not a phenomenon in chemistry that is not equally
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  Speaker 1: well explained on the supposition that it is merely the
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  Speaker 1: immense quantities of atoms necessarily taken in any experiment, that
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  Speaker 1: masked by the opper operation of the law of averages.
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  Speaker 1: The fact that each atom also has its unique quality,
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  Speaker 1: its special individual difference. This idea of uniqueness in all
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  Speaker 1: individuals is not only true of the classification of material science.
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  Speaker 1: It is true, and still more evidently true of the
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  Speaker 1: species of common thought. It is true of common terms.
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  Speaker 1: Take the word chair. When one says chair, one thinks
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  Speaker 1: vaguely of an average chair. But collect individual instances. Think
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  Speaker 1: of arm chairs and reading chairs, and dining room chairs
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  Speaker 1: and kitchen chairs, chairs that pass into benches, chairs that
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  Speaker 1: cross the boundary and become settees, and dentist chairs, thrones,
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  Speaker 1: opera stalls, seats of all sorts, those miraculous fungoid gross
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  Speaker 1: that cumber the floor of the Arts and Crafts exhibition,
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  Speaker 1: And you will perceive what a lacks bundle. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: is this simple, straightforward term. In cooperation with an intelligent joiner,
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  Speaker 1: I would undertake to defeat any definition of chair or
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  Speaker 1: cherishness that you gave me. Chairs just as much as
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  Speaker 1: individual orgasms, just as much as mineral and rock specimens
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  Speaker 1: are unique things. If you know them well enough, you
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  Speaker 1: will find an individual difference even in a set of
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  Speaker 1: machine made chairs. And it is only because we do
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  Speaker 1: not possess minds of unlimited capacity, because our brain has
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  Speaker 1: only a limited number of pigeonholes for our correspondence with
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  Speaker 1: an unlimited universe of objective uniques, that we have to
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  Speaker 1: delude ourselves into the belief that there is a cherishness
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  Speaker 1: in the species common to and distinctive of all chairs.
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  Speaker 1: Let me repeat this is of the very smallest importance
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  Speaker 1: in all the practical affairs of life, or indeed in
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  Speaker 1: relation to anything but philosophy and wide generalizations. But in
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  Speaker 1: philosophy it matters profoundly. If I ordered two new laid
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  Speaker 1: eggs for breakfast, upcome two unhatched but still unique aving individuals,
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  Speaker 1: and the chances are they serve my rude physiological purpose.
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  Speaker 1: I can afford to ignore the hen's eggs of the
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  Speaker 1: past that were not quite so nearly this sort of thing,
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  Speaker 1: and the heads eggs of the future that will accumulate
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  Speaker 1: modification age by age. I can venture to ignore the
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  Speaker 1: rare chance of an abnormality and chemical composition, and of
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  Speaker 1: any startling aberration in my physiological reaction. I can, with
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  Speaker 1: a confidence that is practically perfect, say, with unqualified simplicity,
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  Speaker 1: two eggs. But not if my concern is not my
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  Speaker 1: morning breakfast but the utmost possible truth. Now let me
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  Speaker 1: go on to point out whether this idea of uniqueness tends.
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  Speaker 1: I submit to you that syllogism is based on classification,
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  Speaker 1: and that all hard logical reasoning tends to imply, and
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  Speaker 1: is apt to imply, a comfort evidence in the objective
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  Speaker 1: reality of classification. Consequently, in denying that, I deny the
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  Speaker 1: absolute validity of logic, classification, and number, which in truth
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  Speaker 1: ignore the fine differences of objective realities have in the
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  Speaker 1: past of human thought been imposed upon things. Let me,
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  Speaker 1: for clearness sake, take a liberty here commit, as you
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  Speaker 1: may perhaps think an unpardonable insolence. Hindu thought and Greek
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  Speaker 1: thought alike impress me as being overmuch obsessed by an
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  Speaker 1: objective treatment of certain necessary preliminary conditions of human thought,
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  Speaker 1: number and definition, and class and abstract form. But these
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  Speaker 1: things number, definition, class, and abstract form, I hold are
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  Speaker 1: merely unavoidable conditions of mental activity, regrettable conditions rather than
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  Speaker 1: essential facts. The forcep of our minds are clumsy forceps,
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  Speaker 1: and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.
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  Speaker 1: It is about this difficulty that the mind of Plato
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: played a little inconclusively all his life. For the most part,
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  Speaker 1: he tended to regard the idea as the something behind reality,
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  Speaker 1: whereas it seems to me that the idea is the
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  Speaker 1: more proximate and less perfect thing. The thing by which
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  Speaker 1: the mind, by ignoring individual differences, attempts to comprehend an
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  Speaker 1: otherwise unmanageable number of unique realities. Let me give you
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  Speaker 1: a rough figure of what I am trying to convey
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  Speaker 1: in this first attack upon the philosophical validity of general terms.
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  Speaker 1: You have seen the results of those various methods of
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: black and white reproduction that involved the use of a
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  Speaker 1: rectangular net. You know the sort of process picture I mean.
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  Speaker 1: It is used to employ it very frequently in reproducing
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  Speaker 1: photographs at a little distance. You really seem to have
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  Speaker 1: a faithful reproduction of the original picture. When you peer closely,
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  Speaker 1: you find not the unique form and masses of the original,
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  Speaker 1: but a multiple of little rectangles, uniform and shape and size.
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  Speaker 1: The more earnestly you go into the thing, the closer
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  Speaker 1: you look, the more the picture is lost in reticulations.
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  Speaker 1: I submit the world of reasoned inquiry has a very
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  Speaker 1: similar relation to the world I call objectively real. For
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  Speaker 1: the rough purposes of every day, the network picture will do.
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  Speaker 1: But the finer your purpose, the less it will serve.
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  Speaker 1: And for an ideally fine purpose for absolute and general knowledge,
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  Speaker 1: that will be as true for a man at a
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: distance with a telescope, as for a man with a microscope,
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  Speaker 1: it will not serve at all. It is true you
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  Speaker 1: can make your net of logical interpretation finer and finer.
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  Speaker 1: You can find your classification more and more up to
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  Speaker 1: a certain limit. But essentially you are working in limits.
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  Speaker 1: And as you come closer, as you look at finer
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  Speaker 1: and subtler things, as you leave the practical purpose for
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  Speaker 1: which the method exists, the element of error increases. Every
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  Speaker 1: species is vague, every term goes cloudy at the edges,
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  Speaker 1: and so, in my way of thinking, relentless logic is
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: only another phrase for a stupidity, for a sort of
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: intellectual pig headedness. If you push a philosophical or metaphysical
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  Speaker 1: inquiry through a series of valid syllogisms, never committing any
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  Speaker 1: generally recognized fallacy, you nevertheless leave a certain rubbing and
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  Speaker 1: marginal loss of objective truth, and you get deflections that
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: are difficult to trace at each phase in the process.
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  Speaker 1: Every species waggles about it in its definition, Every tool
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  Speaker 1: is a little loose in its handle, Every scale has
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  Speaker 1: its individual error. So long as you are reasoning for
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  Speaker 1: practical purposes about the finite things of experience, you can
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: every now and then check your process and correct your adjustments,
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  Speaker 1: but not when you make what are called philosophical and
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: theological inquiries, when you turn your implement towards the final
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: absolute truth of things. Doing that is like firing at
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  Speaker 1: an inaccessible, unmarkable, and indestructible target at an unknown distance
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: with a defective rifle and variable cartridges. Even if by
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: chance you hit, you cannot know that you hit, and
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  Speaker 1: so it will matter nothing at all. This assertion of
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  Speaker 1: the necessary untrustworthiness of all reasoning processes, arising out of
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the fallacy of classification in what is quite conceivably a
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: universe of uniques, forms only one introductory aspect of my
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: general skepticism of the instrument of thought. I have now
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  Speaker 1: to tell you of another aspect of this skepticism of
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  Speaker 1: the instrument, which concerns negative terms. Classes in logic are
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: not only represented by circles with a hard, firm outline,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: whereas they have no such definite limits. But also there
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: is a constant deposition to think of negative terms as
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: if they represented positive classes with words. Just as with
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: numbers and abstract forms, there are definite phases of human development.
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  Speaker 1: There is, you know, with regard to number, the phase
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  Speaker 1: which man can barely count at all, or counts in
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  Speaker 1: perfect good faith and sanity upon his fingers. Then there
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: is the phase when he is struggling with the development
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: of number, which he begins to elaborate all sorts of
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: ideas about numbers, until at last he develops complex superstitions
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  Speaker 1: about perfect numbers and imperfect numbers, about threes and sevens
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  Speaker 1: and the like. The same is the case with abstracted forms.
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  Speaker 1: And even today we are scarcely more than heads out
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  Speaker 1: of the vast, subtle muddle of thinking about spheres and
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: ideally perfect forms and so on. That was the price
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: of this little necessary step to clear thinks you know
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  Speaker 1: better than I do. How large a part numerical and
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: geometrical magic numerical and geometrical philosophy has played in the
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  Speaker 1: history of the mind, and the whole apparatus of language
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  Speaker 1: and mental communication is beset with like dangers. The language
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  Speaker 1: of a savage is, I suppose, purely positive. The thing
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  Speaker 1: has a name. The name has a thing. This, indeed
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: is the tradition of language, and today even we when
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: we hear a name, are predisposed, and sometimes it is
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: a very vicious disposition to imagine forthwith something answering to
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  Speaker 1: the name. We are disposed as an incurable mental vice
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: to accumulate intention in terms. If I say to you
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: wadget or crump, you find yourself passing over the fact
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  Speaker 1: that these are nothings. These are, so to speak, mere
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: blankety blanks. And trying to think what sort of things
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: a wadget or a crump may be. And where this
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: position has come in in its most alluring guise is
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  Speaker 1: in the case of negative terms. Our instrument of knowledge
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  Speaker 1: persists in handling even such openly negative terms as the
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  Speaker 1: absolute the infinite, as though they were real existences. And
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: when the negative element is ever so little disguised, as
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: it is in such a word as omniscence, then the
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  Speaker 1: illusion of positive reality may be complete. Please remember that
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I am trying to tell you my philosophy, and not
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  Speaker 1: arguing about yours. Let me try and express how in
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: my mind this matter of negative terms has shaped itself.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I think of something which I may perhaps best describe
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: as being off the stage or out of court, or
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: as the void without implications, or as nothingness, or as
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: outer darkness. This is a sort of hypothetical beyond to
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the visible world of human thought, and thither I think
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: all negative terms reach at last and merge and become nothing.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Whatever positive class you make, whatever boundary you draw, straight
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: away from that boundary begins the corresponding negative class and
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: passes into the illimitable horizon of nothingness. You talk of pink,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: things you ignore if you are a trained logician, the
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: more elusive shades of pink, and draw your line beyond
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: is not the pink known and knowable. And still in
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: that not pink region, one comes to the outer darkness,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: not blue, not happy, not iron. All the knot classes
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: meet in the outer darkness. The same outer darkness and
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: nothingness is infinite space, an infinite time, and any being
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: of infinite qualities, and all that region I rule out
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: of court in my philosophy altogether, I will neither affirm
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: nor deny, if I can help it, about any not things.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I will not deal with not things at all, except
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: by accident and inadvertence. If I use the word infinite,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: I use it as one often uses countless, the countless
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: host of the enemy, or the immeasurable immeasurable cliffs, that
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: is to say, as the limit of measurement, rather than
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: as the limit of imaginary measurability, as a convenient equivalent
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: to as many times this cloth yard as you can,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: and as many again, and so on and so on. Now,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: a great number of apparently positive terms are or have
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: become practically negative terms, and are under the same band
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: with me. A considerable number of terms that have played
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: a great part in the world of thought seem to
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: me to be invalidated by this same defect, to have
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: no content, or an undefined content, or an unjustifiable content.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: For example, the word omniscient, as implying an infinite knowledge,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: impresses me as being a word with a delusive air
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: of being solid and full, when it is really hollow
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: with no content. Whatever. I am persuaded that knowing is
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the relation of a conscious being to something not itself,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: That the thing known is defined as a system of
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: parts and aspects and relationships, That knowledge is comprehension, and
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: so that only finite things can know or be known.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: When you talk of a being of infinite extension and
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: infinite duration, omniscant and omnipotent and perfect, you seem to
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: me to be talking in negatives of nothing whatever. When
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: you speak of the absolute, you speak to me of nothing. If, however,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: you talk of a great yet finite, thinkable being, a
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: being not myself, extending beyond my imagination in time and space.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Knowing all that I can think of as known, and
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: capable of doing all that I can think of as done,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: you come into a sphere of my mental operations and
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: into the scheme of my philosophy. These, then, are my
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: first two charges against our instrument of knowledge. Firstly, that
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: it can work only by disregarding individuality and treating uniques
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: as identically similar objects in this respect, or that so
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: as to group them under one term, and that once
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: it is done so, it tends automatically to intensify the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: significance of that term. And secondly, that it can only
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: deal freely with negative terms by treating them as though
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: they were positive. But I have a further objection to
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the instrument of human thought, that it is not correlated
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to these former objections, and that it is also rather
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: more difficult to convey. Essentially, this idea is to present
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a sort of stratification in human ideas. I have it
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: very much in mind that various terms in our reasoning lie,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: as it were, at different levels and in different planes,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and that we accomplish a large amount of error and
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: confusion by reasoning terms together that do not lie or
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: nearly lie in the same plane. Let me endeavor to
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: make myself a little less obscure most flagrant instances from
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: physical things. Suppose someone began to talk seriously of a
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: man seeing an atom through a microscope, or perhaps of
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: cutting one in half with a knife. There are a
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: number of non analytical people who would be quite prepared
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: to believe that an atom could be visible to the
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: eye or cut in this manner. But anyone at all
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: conversant with the physical conceptions would almost as soon think
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: of killing the square root of two with a rook
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: rifle as of cutting an atom in half with a knife.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Our conception of an atom is reached through a process
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: of hypothesis and analysis, and in a world of atoms,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: there are no knives and no men to cut. If
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: you have thought with a strong, consistent mental movement, then
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: you have thought of your atom under the knife blade.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Your knife blade has itself become a cloud of swinging,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: grouped atoms, and your microscope lends a little universe of
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: oscillatory and vibratory molecules. If you think of the universe
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: thinking at the level of atoms, there is neither knife
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: to cut, scale to weigh, nor eye to see. The
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: universe at that plane to which the mind of the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: molecular physicist descends has none of the shapes or forms
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: of our common life. Whatever this hand with which I
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: write is in the universe of molecular physics a cloud
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: of warring atoms and molecules, combining and recombining, colliding, rotating,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: flying hither and thither in the universal atmosphere of ether.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: You see, I hope what I mean when I say
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: that the universe of molecular physics is at a different
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: level from the universe of common experience. What we call
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: stable and solid is in that world a freely moving
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: system of interlacing centers of force, what we call color
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and sound. Is there no more than this length of vibration,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: or that we have reached to a conception of that
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: universe of molecular fis hyas by a great enterprise of
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: organized analysis, And our universe of daily experiences stands in
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: relation to that elemental world as if it were a
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: synthesis of those elemental things. I would suggest to you
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: that this is only a very extreme instance of the
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: general state of affairs, that there may be finer and
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: subtler differences of level between one term and another, and
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: that terms may very well be thought of as lying
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: obliquely and as being twisted through different levels. It will
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: perhaps give a clear idea of what I am seeking
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: to convey. If I suggest a concrete image for the
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: whole world of man's thought and knowledge, imagine a large,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: clear jelly in which at all angles, and in all
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: states of simplicity or contortion, his ideas are embedded. They
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: are all valid and possible ideas as they lie, none
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: in reality incompatible with any If you imagine the direction
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: of up or down in this clear jelly, being, as
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: it were, the direction in which one moves by analysis
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: or by synthesis. If you go down, for example, from
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: matter to atoms and centers of force, and up to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: men in states and countries, if you will imagine the
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: ideas lying in that matter, you will get the beginning
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of my intention. But our instrument, our process of thinking,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: like a drawing before the discovery of perspective, appears to
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: have difficulties with the third dimension. Appears capable only of
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: dealing with the reasoning about ideas by projecting them upon
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the same plane. It will be obvious that a great
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: multitude of things may very well exist together in a
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: solid jelly, which would be overlapping and incompatible and mutually
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: destructive when projected together upon one plane. Through the bias
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: in our instrument. To do this through reasoning between terms
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: not in the same plane, an enormous amount of confusion, perplexity,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and mental deadlocking occurs. The old theological deadlock between predestination
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: and free will serves admirably as an example of the
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: sort of deadlock I mean. Take life at the level
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: of common sensation and common experience, and there is no
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: more indisputable fact than man's freedom of will, unless it
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: is his complete moral responsibility. But make only the least
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: penetrating analysis, and you perceive a world of inevitable consequences.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: A rigid succession of cause and effect insist upon a
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: flat agreement between the two, and there you are. The
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: instrument fails. It is upon these three objections, and upon
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: an extreme suspicion of abstract terms, which arise materially out
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of my first and second objections, that I chiefly rest
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: my case for a profound skepticism of the remoter possibilities
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: of the instrument of thought. It is a thing no
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: more perfect than the human eye or the human ear,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: though like those other instruments, it may undefined possibilities of
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: evolution towards increased range and increased power. So much for
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: my main contention. But before I conclude, I may, since
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I am here, say a little more in the autobiographical vein,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: and with a view to your discussion, to show how
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: I reconcile this fundamental skepticism with the very positive beliefs
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: about world wide issues I possess, and with very definite
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: distinction I make between right and wrong. I reconcile these
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: things by simply pointing out to you that if there
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: is any validity in my image of that three dimensional
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: jelly in which our ideas are suspended, such a reconciliation,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: as you demand in logic, such a projection of the
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: things as in accordance upon one plane, is totally unnecessary
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: and impossible. This insistence upon the element of uniqueness in being,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: this subordination of the class to the individual, difference not
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: only to Roy's the universal claim of philosophy, but the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: universal claim of ethical imperatives, the universal claim of any
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: religious teaching. If you press me back upon my fundamental position,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: I must confess I put faith and standards and rules
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: of conduct upon exactly the same level as I put
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: my belief of what is right in art and what
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I consider right practice in art. I have arrived at
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: a certain sort of self knowledge, and there are I
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: find very distinct imperatives for me. But I am quite
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: prepared to admit there is no proving them imperative as
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: any one else One's political proceedings, one's moral acts are
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I hold just as much self expression as one's poetry
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: or painting or music. But since life has for its
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: primortal elements assimilation and aggression, I try not only to
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: obey my imperatives, but to put them pervasively and convincingly
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: into other minds, to bring about my good and to
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: resist and overcome my evil, as though they were the
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: universal good and the universal evil in which unthinking men believe.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: And it is obviously in no way contradictory to this
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: philosophy for me if I find others responding sympathetically to
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: any notes of mine, or if I find myself responding
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: sympathetically to notes sounding about me, to give that common
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: resemblance between myself and others a name, to refer these
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: others and myself in common to this thing as if
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: it were externalized and spandaus. All skepticism of the instrument is,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: for example, not incompatible with religious association and with organization
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: upon the basis of a common faith. It is possible
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: to regard God as a being synthetic in relation to
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: men and societies, just as the idea of a universe
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: of atoms and molecules and inorganic relationships is analytical in
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: relation to human life. The repudiation of demonstration in any
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: but immediate and verifiable cases that this skepticism of the
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: instrument amounts to the abandonment of any universal validity for
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: moral and religious propositions, brings ethical, social, and religious teaching
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: into the province of poetry, and does something to correct
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: the estrangement between knowledge and beauty that is a feature
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: of so much mental existence. At this time. All these
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: things are self expression. Such an opinion sets a new
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: and greater value on the penetrating and illuminating quality of
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: mind we call insight. Insight which when it faces towards
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: the contradictions that arise out of the imperfections of the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: mental instrument. Is called humor. In these innate, unteachable qualities
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: I hold in humor and the sense of beauty lies
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: such hope of intellect actual salvation from the original sin
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: of the intellectual instrument, as we may entertain in this
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: uncertain and fluctuating world of unique appearances. So frankly I
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: spread my little equipment of fundamental assumptions before you, heartily
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: glad of the opportunity you have given me of taking
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: them out, of looking at them with the particularity the
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: presence of hears ensues, and of hearing the impression they
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: make upon you. Of course, such a sketch must have
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: an inevitable crudity of effect. The time I had for it,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, the time I was able to give in
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: preparation was altogether too limited for an exhaustive finish of presentation.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: But I think on the whole I have got the
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: main lines of the sketch map of my mental basis true.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Whether I have made myself comprehensible is a different question. Altogether.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: It is for you, rather than me, to say how
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: this sketch map of mind lies with regard to your
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: own systematic cartography. Here followed certain comments upon personal idealism
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: in mister F. C. S. Schiller's Humanism of No Particular Value.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: End of Appendix recording by Calmdragon dot net. End of
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: a Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells