Part 4

2. Thus far, as the last quotation clearly indicates, there is no question of reflective thought, and hence no question of logical theory. But further examination reveals a peculiar property of the current of ideas. Some ideas are merely coincident, while others may be termed coherent. That is to say, the exciting causes of some of our simultaneous and successive ideas really belong together; while in other cases they simply happen to act at the same time, without there being a real connection between them. By the associative mechanism, however, both the coherent and the merely coincident combinations recur. The first type of recurrence supplies positive material for knowledge; the second gives occasion for error.

3. It is a peculiar mixture of the coincident and the coherent which sets the peculiar problem of reflective thought. The business of thought is to recover and confirm the coherent, the really connected, adding to its reinstatement an accessory justifying notion of the real ground of coherence, while it eliminates the coincident as such. While the mere current of ideas is something which just happens within us, the process of elimination and of confirmation by means of statement of real ground and basis of connection is an activity which mind as such exercises. It is this distinction which marks off thought as activity from any psychical event and from the associative mechanism as receptive happenings. One is concerned with mere de facto coexistences and sequences; the other with the worth of these combinations.

Consideration of the peculiar work of thought in going over, sorting out, and determining various ideas according to a standard of value will occupy us in our next chapter. Here we are concerned with the material antecedents of thought as they are described by Lotze. At first glance, he seems to propound a satisfactory theory. He avoids the extravagancies of transcendental logic, which assumes that all the matter of experience is determined from the very start by rational thought; and he also avoids the pitfall of purely empirical logic, which makes no distinction between the mere occurrence and association of ideas and the real worth and validity of the various conjunctions thus produced. He allows unreflective experience, defined in terms of sensations and their combinations, to provide material conditions for thinking, while he reserves for thought a distinctive work and dignity of its own. Sense-experience furnishes the antecedents; thought has to introduce and develop systematic connection--rationality.

A further analysis of Lotze's treatment may, however, lead us to believe that his statement is riddled through and through with inconsistencies and self-contradictions; that, indeed, any one part of it can be maintained only by the denial of some other portion.

1. The impression is the ultimate antecedent in its purest or crudest form (according to the angle from which one views it). It is that which has never felt, for good or for bad, the influence of thought. Combined into ideas, these impressions stimulate or arouse the activities of thought, which are forthwith directed upon them. As the recipient of the activity which they have excited and brought to bear upon themselves, they furnish also the material content of thought--its actual stuff. As Lotze says over and over again: "It is the relations themselves already subsisting between impressions, when we become conscious of them, by which the action of thought which is never anything but reaction, is attracted; and this action consists merely in interpreting relations which we find existing between our passive impressions into aspects of the matter of impressions." And again: "Thought can make no difference where it finds none already in the matter of the impressions." And again: "The possibility and the success of thought's procedure depends upon this original constitution and organization of the whole world of ideas, a constitution which, though not necessary in thought, is all the more necessary to make thinking possible."

The impressions and ideas play a versatile rôle; they now assume the part of ultimate antecedents and provocative conditions; of crude material; and somehow, when arranged, of content for thought. This very versatility awakens suspicion.

While the impression is merely subjective and a bare state of our own consciousness, yet it is determined, both as to its existence and as to its relation to other similar existences, by external objects as stimuli, if not as causes. It is also determined by a psychical mechanism so thoroughly objective or regular in its workings as to give the same necessary character to the current of ideas that is possessed by any physical sequence. Thus that which is "nothing but a state of our consciousness" turns out straightway to be a specifically determined objective fact in a system of facts.

That this absolute transformation is a contradiction is no clearer than that just such a contradiction is indispensable to Lotze. If the impressions were nothing but states of consciousness, moods of ourselves, bare psychical existences, it is sure enough that we should never even know them to be such, to say nothing of conserving them as adequate conditions and material for thought. It is only by treating them as real facts in a real world, and only by carrying over into them, in some assumed and unexplained way, the capacity of representing the cosmic facts which arouse them, that impressions or ideas come in any sense within the scope of thought. But if the antecedents are really impressions-in-their-objective-setting, then Lotze's whole way of distinguishing thought-worth from mere existence or event without objective significance must be radically modified.

The implication that impressions have actually a matter or quality or meaning of their own becomes explicit when we refer to Lotze's theory that the immediate antecedent of thought is found in the matter of ideas. When thought is said to "take cognizance of relations which its own activity does not originate, but which have been prepared for it by the unconscious mechanism of the psychic states," the attribution of objective content, of reference and meaning to ideas, is unambiguous. The idea forms a most convenient half-way house for Lotze. On one hand, as absolutely prior to thought, as material antecedent condition, it is merely psychical, a bald subjective event. But as subject-matter for thought, as antecedent which affords stuff for thought's exercise, it is meaning, characteristic quality of content.

Although we have been told that the impression is a mere receptive irritation without participation of mental activity, we are not surprised, in view of this capacity of ideas, to learn that the mind actually has a determining share in both the reception of stimuli and in their further associative combinations. The subject always enters into the presentation of any mental object, even the sensational, to say nothing of the perceptional and the imaged. The perception of a given state of things is possible only on the assumption that "the perceiving subject is at once enabled and compelled by its own nature to combine the excitations which reach it from objects into those forms which it is to perceive in the objects, and which it supposes itself simply to receive from them."

It is only by continual transition from impression and ideas as mental states and events to ideas as cognitive (or logical) objects or contents, that Lotze bridges the gulf from bare exciting antecedent to concrete material conditions of thought. This contradiction, again, is necessary to Lotze's standpoint. To set out frankly with "meanings" as antecedents would demand reconsideration of the whole view-point, which supposes that the difference between the logical and its antecedent is a matter of the difference between worth and mere existence or occurrence. It would indicate that since meaning or value is already there, the task of thought must be that of the transformation or reconstruction of worth through an intermediary process of valuation. On the other hand, to stick by the standpoint of mere existence is not to get anything which can be called even antecedent of thought.

2. Why is there a task of transformation? Consideration of the material in its function of evoking thought, giving it its cue, will serve to complete the picture of the contradiction and of the real facts. It is the conflict between ideas as merely coincident and ideas as coherent that constitutes the need which provokes the response of thought. Here Lotze vibrates (a) between considering coincidence and coherence as both affairs of existence of psychical events; (b) considering coincidence as purely psychical and coherence as at least quasi-logical, and (c) the inherent logic which makes them both determinations within the sphere of reflective thought. In strict accordance with his own premises, coincidence and coherence both ought to be mere peculiarities of the current of ideas as events within ourselves. But so taken the distinction becomes absolutely meaningless. Events do not cohere; at the most certain sets of them happen more or less frequently than other sets; the only intelligible difference is one of repetition of coincidence. And even this attributes to an event the supernatural trait of reappearing after it has disappeared. Even coincidence has to be defined in terms of relation of the objects which are supposed to excite the psychical events that happen together.

As recent psychological discussion has made clear enough, it is the matter, meaning, or content, of ideas that is associated, not the ideas as states or existences. Take such an idea as sun-revolving-about-earth. We may say it means the conjunction of various sense-impressions, but it is conjunction, or mutual reference, of attributes that we have in mind in the assertion. It is absolutely certain that our psychical image of the sun is not psychically engaged in revolving about our psychical image of the earth. It would be amusing if such were the case; theaters and all dramatic representations would be at a discount. In truth, sun-revolving-about-earth is a single meaning or idea; it is a unified subject-matter within which certain distinctions of reference appear. It is concerned with what we intend when we think earth and sun, and think them in their relation to each other. It is really a specification or direction of how to think when we have occasion to think a certain subject-matter. To treat the origin of this mutual reference as if it were simply a case of conjunction of ideas produced by conditions of original psycho-physical irritation and association is a profound case of the psychological fallacy. We may, indeed, analyze an experience and find that it had its origin in certain conditions of the sensitive organism, in certain peculiarities of perception and of association, and hence conclude that the belief involved in it was not justified by the facts themselves. But the significance of the belief in sun-revolving-about-earth as an item of the experience of those who meant it, consisted precisely in the fact that it was taken not as a mere association of feelings, but as a definite portion of the whole structure of objective experience, guaranteed by other parts of the fabric, and lending its support and giving its tone to them. It was to them part of the experience-frame of things--of the real universe.

Put the other way, if such an instance meant a mere conjunction of psychical states, there would be in it absolutely nothing to evoke thought. Each idea as event, as Lotze himself points out (Vol. I, p. 2), may be regarded as adequately and necessarily determined to the place it occupies. There is absolutely no question on the side of events of mere coincidence versus genuine connection. As event, it is there and it belongs there. We cannot treat something as at once bare fact of existence and as problematic subject-matter of logical inquiry. To take the reflective point of view is to consider the matter in a totally new light; as Lotze says, it is to raise the question of rightful claims to a position or relation.

The point becomes clearer when we contrast coincidence with connection. To consider coincidence as simply psychical, and coherence as at least quasi-logical, is to put the two on such different bases that no question of contrasting them can arise. The coincidence which precedes a valid or grounded coherence (the conjunction which as coexistence of objects and sequence of acts is perfectly adequate) never is, as antecedent, the coincidence which is set over against coherence. The side-by-sideness of books on my bookshelf, the succession of noises that rise through my window, do not as such trouble me logically. They do not appear as errors or even as problems. One coexistence is just as good as any other until some new point of view, or new end, presents itself. If it is a question of the convenience of arrangement of books, then the value of their present collocation becomes a problem. Then I may contrast their present bare conjunction with a scheme of possible coherence. If I regard the sequence of noises as a case of articulate speech, their order becomes important--it is a problem to be determined. The inquiry whether a given combination means only apparent or real connection, shows that reflective inquiry is already going on. Does this phase of the moon really mean rain, or does it just happen that the rain-storm comes when the moon has reached this phase? To ask such questions shows that a certain portion of the universe of experience is subjected to critical analysis for purposes of definitive restatement. The tendency to regard one combination as bare conjunction or mere coincidence is absolutely a part of the movement of mind in its search for the real connection.

If coexistence as such is to be set over against coherence as such, as the non-logical against the logical, then, since our whole spatial universe is one of collocation, and since thought in this universe can never get farther than substituting one collocation for another, the whole realm of space-experience is condemned off-hand and in perpetuity to anti-rationality. But, in truth, coincidence as over against coherence, conjunction as over against connection, is just suspected coherence, one which is under the fire of active inquiry. The distinction is one which arises only within the grasp of the logical or reflective function.

3. This brings us explicitly to the fact that there is no such thing as either coincidence or coherence in terms of the elements or meanings contained in any couple or pair of ideas taken by itself. It is only when they are co-factors in a situation or function which includes more than either the "coincident" or the "coherent" and more than the arithmetical sum of the two, that thought's activity can be evoked. Lotze is continually in this dilemma: Thought either shapes its own material or else just accepts it. In the first case (since Lotze cannot rid himself of the presumption that thought must have a fixed ready-made antecedent) its activity can only alter this stuff and thus lead the mind farther away from reality. But if thought just accepts its material, how can there be any distinctive aim or activity of thought at all? As we have seen, Lotze endeavors to escape this dilemma by supposing that, while thought receives its material, it yet checks it up: it eliminates certain portions of it and reinstates others, plus the stamp and seal of its own validity.

Lotze objects most strenuously to the notion that thought awaits its subject-matter with certain ready-made modes of apprehension. This notion would raise the insoluble question of how thought contrives to bring the matter of each impression under that particular form which is appropriate to it (Vol. I, p. 24). But he has not really avoided the difficulty. How does thought know which of the combinations are merely coincident and which are merely coherent? How does it know which to eliminate as irrelevant and which to confirm as grounded? Either this evaluation is an imposition of its own, or else gets its cue and clue from the subject-matter. Now, if the coincident and the coherent taken in and of themselves are competent to give this direction, they are already practically labeled. The further work of thought is one of supererogation. It has at most barely to note and seal the material combinations that are already there. Such a view clearly renders thought's work as unnecessary in form as it is futile in force.

But there is no alternative in this dilemma except to recognize that an entire situation of experience, within which are both that afterward found to be mere coincidence and that found to be real connection, actually provokes thought. It is only as an experience previously accepted comes up in its wholeness against another one equally integral; and only as some larger experience dawns which requires each as a part of itself and yet within which the required factors show themselves mutually incompatible, that thought arises. It is not bare coincidence, or bare connection, or bare addition of one to the other, that excites thought. It is a situation which is organized or constituted as a whole, and which yet is falling to pieces in its parts--a situation which is in conflict within itself--that arouses the search to find what really goes together and a correspondent effort to shut out what only seemingly belongs together. And real coherence means precisely capacity to exist within the comprehending whole. It is a case of the psychologist's fallacy to read back into the preliminary situation those distinctions of mere conjunction of material and of valid relationship which get existence, to say nothing of fixation, only within the thought-process.

We must not leave this phase of the discussion, however, until it is quite clear that our objection is not to Lotze's position that reflective thought arises from an antecedent which is not reflectional in character; nor yet to his idea that this antecedent has a certain structure and content of its own setting the peculiar problem which evokes thought and gives the cue to its specific activities. On the contrary, it is this latter point upon which we would insist; and, by insisting, point out, negatively, that this view is absolutely inconsistent with Lotze's theory that psychical impressions and ideas are the true antecedents of thought; and, positively, that it is the situation as a whole, and not any one isolated part of it, or distinction within it, that calls forth and directs thinking. We must beware the fallacy of assuming that some one element in the prior situation in isolation or detachment induces the thought which in reality comes forth only from the whole disturbed situation. On the negative side, characterizations of impression and idea (whether as mental contents or as psychical existences) are distinctions which arise only within reflection upon the situation which is the genuine antecedent of thought; while the distinction of psychical existences from external existences arises only within a highly elaborate technical reflection--that of the psychologist as such. Positively, it is the whole dynamic experience with its qualitative and pervasive identity of value, and its inner distraction, its elements at odds with each other, in tension against each other, contending each for its proper placing and relationship, that generates the thought-situation.

From this point of view, at this period of development, the distinctions of objective and subjective have a characteristic meaning. The antecedent, to repeat, is a situation in which the various factors are actively incompatible with each other, and which yet in and through the striving tend to a re-formation of the whole and to a restatement of the parts. This situation as such is clearly objective. It is there; it is there as a whole; the various parts are there; and their active incompatibility with one another is there. Nothing is conveyed at this point by asserting that any particular part of the situation is illusory or subjective, or mere appearance; or that any other is truly real. It is the further work of thought to exclude some of the contending factors from membership in experience, and thus to relegate them to the sphere of the merely subjective. But just at this epoch the experience exists as one of vital and active confusion and conflict. The conflict is not only objective in a de facto sense (that is, really existent), but is objective in a logical sense as well; it is just this conflict which effects the transition into the thought-situation--this, in turn, being only a constant movement toward a defined equilibrium. The conflict has objective logical value because it is the antecedent condition and cue of thought.

Every reflective attitude and function, whether of naïve life, deliberate invention, or controlled scientific research, has risen through the medium of some such total objective situation. The abstract logician may tell us that sensations or impressions, or associated ideas, or bare physical things, or conventional symbols, are antecedent conditions. But such statements cannot be verified by reference to a single instance of thought in connection with actual practice or actual scientific research. Of course, by extreme mediation symbols may become conditions of evoking thought. They get to be objects in an active experience. But they are stimuli only in case their manipulation to form a new whole occasions resistance, and thus reciprocal tension. Symbols and their definitions develop to a point where dealing with them becomes itself an experience, having its own identity; just as the handling of commercial commodities, or arrangement of parts of an invention, is an individual experience. There is always as antecedent to thought an experience of some subject-matter of the physical or social world, or organized intellectual world, whose parts are actively at war with each other--so much so that they threaten to disrupt the entire experience, which accordingly for its own maintenance requires deliberate re-definition and re-relation of its tensional parts. This is the reconstructive process termed thinking: the reconstructive situation, with its parts in tension and in such movement toward each other as tends to a unified experience, is the thought-situation.

This at once suggests the subjective phase. The situation, the experience as such, is objective. There is an experience of the confused and conflicting tendencies. But just what in particular is objective, just what form the situation shall take as an organized harmonious whole, is unknown; that is the problem. It is the uncertainty as to the what of the experience together with the certainty that there is such an experience, that evokes the thought-function. Viewed from this standpoint of uncertainty, the situation as a whole is subjective. No particular content or reference can be asserted off-hand. Definite assertion is expressly reserved--it is to be the outcome of the procedure of reflective inquiry now undertaken. This holding off of contents from definitely asserted position, this viewing them as candidates for reform, is what we mean at this stage of the natural history of thought by the subjective.

We have followed Lotze through his tortuous course of inconsistencies. It is better, perhaps, to run the risk of vain repetition, than that of leaving the impression that these are mere self-contradictions. It is an idle task to expose contradictions save we realize them in relation to the fundamental assumption which breeds them. Lotze is bound to differentiate thought from its antecedents. He is intent to do this, however, through a preconception that marks off the thought-situation radically from its predecessor, through a difference that is complete, fixed, and absolute, or at large. It is a total contrast of thought as such to something else as such that he requires, not a contrast within experience of one phase of a process, one period of a rhythm, from others.

This complete and rigid difference Lotze finds in the difference between an experience which is mere existence or occurrence, and one which has to do with worth, truth, right relationship. Now things, objects, have already, implicitly at least, determinations of worth, of truth, reality, etc. The same is true of deeds, affections, etc., etc. Only states of feelings, bare impressions, etc., seem to fulfil the prerequisite of being given as existence, and yet without qualification as to worth, etc. Then the current of ideas offers itself, a ready-made stream of events, of existences, which can be characterized as wholly innocent of reflective determination, and as the natural predecessor of thought.

But this stream of existences is no sooner there than its total incapacity to officiate as material condition and cue of thought appears. It is about as relevant as are changes that may be happening on the other side of the moon. So, one by one, the whole series of determinations of value or worth already traced are introduced into the very make-up, the inner structure, of what was to be mere existence: viz., (1) value as determined by things of whose spatial and temporal relations the things are somehow representative; (2) hence, value in the shape of meaning--the idea as significant, possessed of quality, and not a mere event; (3) distinguished values of coincidence and coherence within the stream. All these kinds of value are explicitly asserted, as we have seen; underlying and running through them all is the recognition of the supreme value of a situation which is organized as a whole, yet conflicting in its inner constitution.

These contradictions all arise in the attempt to put thought's work, as concerned with value or validity over against experience as a mere antecedent happening, or occurrence. Since this contrast arises because of the deeper attempt to consider thought as an independent somewhat in general which yet, in our experience, is specifically dependent, the sole radical avoiding of the contradictions can be found in the endeavor to characterize thought as a specific mode of valuation in the evolution of significant experience, having its own specific occasion or demand, and its own specific place.

The nature of the organization and value that the antecedent conditions of the thought-function possess is too large a question here to enter upon in detail. Lotze himself suggests the answer. He speaks of the current of ideas, just as a current, supplying us with the "mass of well-grounded information which regulates daily life" (Vol. I, p. 4). It gives rise to "useful combinations," "correct expectations," "seasonable reactions" (Vol. I, p. 7). He speaks of it, indeed, as if it were just the ordinary world of naïve experience, the so-called empirical world, as distinct from the world as critically revised and rationalized in scientific and philosophic inquiry. The contradiction between this interpretation and that of a mere stream of psychical impressions is only another instance of the difficulty already discussed. But the phraseology suggests the type of value possessed by it. The unreflective world is a world of practical values; of ends and means, of their effective adaptations; of control and regulation of conduct in view of results. Even the most purely utilitarian of values are nevertheless values; not mere existences. But the world of uncritical experience is saved from reduction to just material uses and worths; for it is a world of social aims and means, involving at every turn the values of affection and attachment, of competition and co-operation. It has incorporate also in its own being the surprise of æsthetic values--the sudden joy of light, the gracious wonder of tone and form.