Part 24

Returning to the problem, from this point on we find the two standpoints, that of the specific situation and that of the absolute system, so closely interwoven and entangled that they are followed with great difficulty. We have already seen that the idea seeks correspondence with its object, because it is "fragmentary," "incomplete," "indetermined." And there we found that this indeterminate and fragmentary character belonged to the idea as a purpose, a plan of seeking relief from some sort of "restlessness" and "dissatisfaction," such as singing out of tune, etc. Here it is the incompleteness of an imperfect representation of its object in the absolute system that is the motif, and how it is to effect an improvement in its imperfect condition is now the problem. Here again the appeal is to purpose. Whatever may constitute the absolute system, one thing is assured: nothing in it can be an object except as the finite idea "intends it," purposes it, to be its object. Again must we ask: On what basis is this object in the absolute system selected at all? In general the answer is: On the basis of a need of "further determination;" but when we further analyze this, we find it means on the basis of a specific want or need, such as food, shelter, measuring, singing, etc. The basis of the selection, then, is entirely on the side of the concrete, finite situation.

Here, too, we might ask: Whence the confidence that there will be found something in the absolute system that will fulfil the purpose generated on the side of the finite? Must we not here fall back on something like a pre-established harmony? To this our author would say: "Yea, verily. The fact that the absolute system responds to the finite needs does precisely show that the finite and the absolute cannot be sundered." But when we try to state how the purpose generated on the side of the finite can be met by the absolute system, the account again seems to run so much in terms of the finite experience that to call it a system of "final," "completed," and "fulfilled" ideas does not seem accurate. We must note here, too, the shifting in the sense of "purpose." The idea selects its object on the basis of the material needed to relieve the unrest and dissatisfaction of singing out of tune, etc. But now it is to be satisfied by increasing the extent of its representation of its object in the absolute system.

And now, finally, what shall mark the attainment of this purpose of the idea to correspond and represent "its own completed form"? When is the correspondence and representation true? Simply at the point where "we pause satisfied," where "no other content need be substituted, or from the point of view of the satisfied idea could be substituted." That is all; there is no other answer. There are other statements, but they all come to the same thing. For instance:

It is true--this instant's idea--if, in its own measure, and on its own plan, it corresponds, even in its vagueness, to its own final and completely individual expression.

But the moment we ask what this "final and individual expression" is, and what is meant by "in its own measure," and "on its own plan," we are thrown back at once upon the preceding statement. The next sentence following the passage just quoted does indeed define this "individual expression." "Its expression would be the very life of fulfilment of purpose which this present idea already fragmentarily begins, as it were, to express." But how can we know that the expression is "fragmentary" unless we have some experience of wholeness?

And here perhaps is the place to say, what has been implied all along, that this absolutely "fragmentary" character of human experience is an abstraction of the relatively disintegrated condition into which experience temporarily falls, which abstraction is then reinstated as a fixed quality, overlooking the fact that experience becomes fragmentary only that it may again become whole. The absolute system, the final fulfilment, is in the same case. It too is but the hypostatized abstraction of the function of becoming whole, of wholing and fulfilling, which manifests itself in the "pauses of satisfaction."

"But," Mr. Royce would say, "the wholeness of the particular instance is after all not a true and perfect wholeness, because we can always think of the fulfilling experience as possibly different, as having a possibly different embodiment." But this implies also a different purpose. Moreover, it abstracts the purpose from the specific conditions under which the purpose develops. Thus in singing in tune one doubtless could easily imagine himself singing another tune, on another occasion, in another key, in a clear tenor instead of a cracked bass, etc. But if on this occasion, in this song, and with this cracked bass voice one, accepting all these conditions, does, with malice aforethought, purpose to strike the tune, and happily succeeds, why, for that purpose formed under the known and accepted conditions, is not the accomplishment final and absolute? Nor is the case any different, so far as I can see, in mathematical experience. To quote again:

You think of numbers, and accordingly count one, two, three. Your idea of these numbers is abstract, a mere generality. Why? Because there could be other cases of counting, and other numbers counted than the present counting process shows you, and why so? Because your purpose in counting is not wholly fulfilled by the numbers now counted.

I confess I cannot see here in what respect the purpose is not fulfilled. Doubtless there could be "other cases of counting," and "other numbers," but these may not be included in my present purpose, which is simply to count here and now. In this passage the purpose is not very fully defined. One's counting is usually for something, if for nothing more than merely to illustrate the process. In this latter case one's purpose would be completely fulfilled by just the numbers used when he should "pause satisfied" with the illustration. Or, if I wish to show the properties of numbers, then the discovery that there can always be more of them fulfils my purpose, since this endless progression is one of the properties. Or yet again, if one should suddenly become enamored of the process of counting, and forthwith should purpose to devote the rest of his days to it, it would still be fortunate that there were always other numbers to be counted. In other words, the idea as a purpose is formed with reference to, and out of, specific conditions. In the last analysis the problem always is: What is to be done here and now with the actual material at hand, under the present conditions? As the purpose is determined by these specific conditions, so is the fulfilment. To say that the fulfilment might be different is virtually to say that the purpose might have been different, or indeed that the universe might have been different.

This necessity of falling back upon the character of the idea as a purpose in the sense of the specific "plan of action" comes into still bolder relief in the consideration of error from the standpoint of "the absolute system of ideas." As already mentioned, the initial and persistent problem here is to distinguish at all between truth and error in our experience from this standpoint. All our efforts at representing the absolute system must fall short. What can we mean, then, by calling some of our ideas true and others false? The definition of error is as follows:

An error is an error about a specific object, only in case the purpose, imperfectly defined by the vague idea at the instant when the error is made, is better defined, is in fact, better fulfilled by an object whose determinate character in some wise, although never absolutely, opposes the fragmentary efforts first made to define them.

But in relation to the absolute system the later part of this statement holds of all our ideas. There always is the absolute object which would "better define" and "better fulfil" our purposes. Hence it is only in reference to the "specific" instances of singing, measuring, etc., that a basis for the distinction can be found. Here our plan is not true so long as its mission of relieving the specific unrest and dissatisfaction, the specific discord or hunger, is unfulfilled.

The only criterion, then, which we have been able to find for the fulfilment of the purpose, for the truth of the idea as representing an object in the absolute system, is the sense of wholeness, the "pause of satisfaction," which we experience in realizing such specific purposes as "singing in tune." And if it be said again: "Precisely so; this only shows how intimate is the relation between our experience and the absolute system of ideas;" then must it also be said once more, either that the absolute system can be nothing more than an abstraction of the element of wholeness or wholing in our experience, or that thus far the relation appears to rest upon sheer assumption.

Again, it may be insisted, as suggested at the outset of this discussion, that the idea can well have two purposes: one to help constitute and solve the specific problems of daily life; the other to represent the absolute system. Very well, we must then make out a case for the latter. If the purposes are to be different, the purpose to represent the Absolute should have a criterion of its own. This we have not been able to find. On the contrary, whenever pushed to the point of stating a criterion for the representation of the absolute system, we have had to appeal, in every case, to the fulfilment of a specific finite purpose. And even if this purpose to represent the absolute system had some apparent standard of its own, we should not be content to leave the matter so. We should scarcely be satisfied to observe as a mere matter of fact that the idea has a reconstructive function, and also a representative function. Such a brute dualism would be intolerable.

IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

In the end, the outcome of the endeavor to establish a connection between the relation of the idea to human experience and its relation to the absolute system does not appear satisfying. The idea is left either with two independent purposes--one to reconstruct finite experience, the other to represent and symbolize the absolute system--or one of these purposes is merged in the other. When the attempt is made from the standpoint of the absolute system, the reconstructive purpose is swallowed up in the representative. When, on the other hand, the need for a basis of distinction between truth and error "here on this bank and shoal of time" is felt, the representative disappears in the reconstructive function. Nowhere are we able to discover a true unification. To be sure, we have been told again and again that the representation of the absolute object, if only we could accomplish it, would be "the final fulfilment," "completion," and "realization" of the human, finite purpose. But besides a confessed impotency at the very start, this involves, as we have seen, either a sudden transformation of the specific purpose of singing in tune, etc., into that of representing the absolute system, or a sheer assumption that the representation of the absolute object does somehow help in the realization of the specific finite purpose. Nowhere is there any account of how this help would be given.

And this suggests that if the analysis of the idea as purpose, given at the outset of Mr. Royce's lecture, had been developed further, if the conditions and origin of purpose had been examined, it is difficult to see how this discrepancy could have escaped disclosure. Mr. Royce starts his account by simply accepting from psychology a general description of the purposive character of the idea. Even in the more detailed passages on purpose we have nothing but descriptions of purpose after it is formed. Nothing is said of the origin of this purposiveness. The purposive character of experience is of course very manifest, but what is the significance of this purposing in experience as a whole? What is the source and the material of the purposes?

It is this uncritical acceptance of the purposive quality of the idea that obscures the irrelevancy of its relation to the absolute system. If the idea must merely be or have a purpose, then it may as well be that of representing the absolute system as any other. Of course, there are troublesome questions as to how our finite ideas ever got such a purpose; but, after all, if it is simply a matter of having any sort of a purpose, representing the absolute system may answer as well as anything. But when now we come to deal with the problem of fulfilment, with the question of truth and error, we have to reckon with this neglect of the source of this purposiveness.

It is this unanalyzed ground of the purpose that makes the matter of fulfilment so ambiguous. Such an analysis, we believe, would have shown that the conditions out of which the idea as a purpose arises determine also the sort of fulfilment possible. There are, indeed, one or two very general, but very significant, statements in this direction, if they were only followed up. For instance:

In doing what we often call "making up our minds" we pass from a vague to a definite state of will and of resolution. In such cases we begin with perhaps a very indefinite sort of restlessness which arouses the question: "What is it that I want, what do I desire, what is my real purpose?"

In other words, what does this restlessness mean? What is the matter? What is to be done?

Purpose is born, then, out of restlessness and dissatisfaction. But whence comes this restlessness and dissatisfaction? Surely we cannot at this point charge it to a discrepancy between our finite idea and the absolute object, since it is just this restlessness that is giving birth to the purposive idea. One thing, at any rate, appears pretty certain: this "indefinite restlessness" presupposes some sort of activity already going on. The restlessness is not generated in a vacuum. But why should this activity get into a condition to be described as "indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction?

Repugnant as it will be to many to have psycho-physical, to say nothing of biological, doctrines introduced into a logical discussion, I confess that, at this point facing the issue squarely, I see no other way. And it appears to me that just at this point it is the fear of phenomenalistic giants that has kept logic wandering so many years in the wilderness.

What, then, in this action already going on is responsible for this restlessness? First let us note that "indefinite restlessness" and "dissatisfaction" are terms descriptive of what Mr. James calls "the first thing in the way of consciousness." This assumes consciousness as a factor in activity. So that our question now becomes: What is the significance of this factor of restless, dissatisfied consciousness in activity? Now, there appears no way of getting at the part which consciousness plays different from that of discovering the function of anything else. And this way is simply that of observing, as best we may, the conditions under which consciousness operates, and what it does. Here the biologist and psychologist with one voice inform us that this indefinite restlessness which marks the point of the operation of consciousness arises where, in a co-ordinated system of activities, there develop out of the continuation of the activity itself new conditions calling for a readjustment and reconstruction of the activity, if it is to go on. Consciousness then appears to be the function which makes possible the reorganization of the results of a process back into the process itself, thus constituting and preserving the continuity of activity. So interpreted, consciousness appears to be an essential element in the conception of a self-sustaining activity. This "indefinite restlessness," in which consciousness begins, marks, then, the operation of the function of reconstruction without which activity would utterly break down.

Precisely because, then, the idea "as a plan" is projected and constructed in response to this restlessness must its fulfilment be relevant to it. It is when the idea as a purpose, a plan, born out of this matrix of restlessness, begins to aspire to the absolute system, and attempts to ignore or repudiate its lowly antecedents, that the difficulties concerning fulfilment begin. They are the difficulties that beset every ambition which aspires to things foreign to its inherited powers and equipment.

A detailed account at this point of the construction and fulfilment of the idea as "a plan of action" would contain a consecutive reinterpretation of Mr. Royce's principal rubrics. Such an account the limits of this paper forbid. We shall have to be content with pointing out in a general way a few instances by way of illustration.

In the first place, it is in this matrix of indefinite restlessness out of which the idea is born that the "fragmentary character of experience," of which Mr. Royce is so keenly conscious, appears. But, once more, this fragmentary character is discernible only by contrast with the wholeness on both sides of the fragments; the wholeness that precedes the restlessness, and the new "pause of satisfaction" toward which it points. Nor must we forget that the habit matrix, out of the disintegration of which the restlessness is immediately born, does not exist as some metaphysical ultimate out of which thought as such has evolved. Back of it is some previous purpose in whose service habit was enlisted. On the other hand, this disintegration means that the old purpose, the old plan, must be reconstructed; that it, along with the disintegrated habit, becomes the material for a new plan, a new wholing of experience.

In the next place, the construction of this new plan of action does involve "re-presentation." The first step in the transition from the condition of "indefinite restlessness" toward a "plan" is the diagnosis, the definition of the restlessness. This involves the re-presentation in consciousness of the activities, out of which the restlessness has arisen. This re-presentation is also the beginning of the reconstruction. The diagnosis of the singing activity as being "out of tune" is the negative side of beginning to sing in tune. It is now a commonplace of psychology that all representation is reconstruction. And this is where Mr. Royce's emphasis of the symbolic, the algebraic, as against the copy type of representation, has its application. All we want here is some sort of an image--visual, auditory, motor, it matters not--that shall serve to focus attention upon the singing activities until they are reconstructed sufficiently to bring us to the "pause of satisfaction." But nowhere in all this is there any reference to the idea's object in the absolute system. Nor does there appear to be any call or place for such reference. The representation here is a part of the very process of forming the plan of further reconstruction out of the materials of the specific situation. Representation is not the plan's own end and aim. This is to stimulate a new set of activities that shall lead out of the present state of unrest and dissatisfaction.