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 "ma.s.s 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 nave 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 compet.i.tion and co-operation. It has incorporate also in its own being the surprise of aesthetic values--the sudden joy of light, the gracious wonder of tone and form.
I do not mean that this holds in gross of the unreflective world of experience over against the critical thought-situation--such a contrast implies the very wholesale, at large, consideration of thought which I am striving to avoid. Doubtless many and many an act of thought has intervened in effecting the organization of our commonest practical-affectional-aesthetic region of values. I only mean to indicate that thought does take place in such a world; not _after_ a world of bare existences lacking value-specifications; and that the more systematic reflection we call organized science, may, in some fair sense, be said to come _after_, but to come after affectional, artistic, and technological interests which have found realization and expression in building up a world of values.
Having entered so far upon a suggestion which cannot be followed out, I venture one other digression. The notion that value or significance as distinct from mere existentiality is the product of thought or reason, and that the source of Lotze"s contradictions lies in the effort to find _any_ situation prior or antecedent to thought, is a familiar one--it is even possible that my criticisms of Lotze have been interpreted by some readers in this sense.[13] This is the position frequently called neo-Hegelian (though, I think, with questionable accuracy), and has been developed by many writers in criticising Kant. This position and that taken in this chapter do indeed agree in certain general regards. They are at one in denial of the factuality and the possibility of developing fruitful reflection out of antecedent bare existence or mere events. They unite in denying that there is or can be any such thing as mere existence--phenomenon unqualified as respects meaning, whether such phenomenon be psychic or cosmic. They agree that reflective thought grows organically out of an experience which is already organized, and that it functions within such an organism. But they part company when a fundamental question is raised: Is all organized meaning the work of thought? Does it therefore follow that the organization out of which reflective thought grows is the work of thought of some other type--of Pure Thought, Creative or Const.i.tutive Thought, Intuitive Reason, etc.?
I shall indicate briefly the reasons for divergence at this point.
To cover all the practical-social-aesthetic values involved, the term "thought" has to be so stretched that the situation might as well be called by any other name that describes a typical value of experience.
More specifically, when the difference is minimized between the organized and arranged scheme of values out of which reflective inquiry proceeds, and reflective inquiry itself (and there can be no other reason for insisting that the antecedent of reflective thought is itself somehow thought), exactly the same type of problem recurs that presents itself when the distinction is exaggerated into one between bare unvalued existences and rational coherent meanings.
For the more one insists that the antecedent situation is const.i.tuted by thought, the more one has to wonder why another type of thought is required; what need arouses it, and how it is possible for it to improve upon the work of previous const.i.tutive thought. This difficulty at once forces us from a logic of experience as it is concretely experienced into a metaphysic of a purely hypothetical experience. Const.i.tutive thought precedes _our_ conscious thought-operations; hence it must be the working of some absolute universal thought which, unconsciously to our reflection, builds up an organized world. But this recourse only deepens the difficulty. How does it happen that the absolute const.i.tutive and intuitive Thought does such a poor and bungling job that it requires a finite discursive activity to patch up its products?
Here more metaphysic is called for: The Absolute Reason is now supposed to work under limiting conditions of finitude, of a sensitive and temporal organism. The antecedents of reflective thought are not, therefore, determinations of thought pure and undefiled, but of what thought can do when it stoops to a.s.sume the yoke of change and of feeling. I pa.s.s by the metaphysical problem left unsolved by this flight into metaphysic: Why and how should a perfect, absolute, complete, finished thought find it necessary to submit to alien, disturbing, and corrupting conditions in order, in the end, to recover through reflective thought in a partial, piecemeal, wholly inadequate way what it possessed at the outset in a much more satisfactory way?
I confine myself to the logical difficulty. How can thought relate itself to the fragmentary sensations, impressions, feelings, which, in their contrast with and disparity from the workings of const.i.tutive thought, mark it off from the latter; and which in their connection with its products give the cue to reflective thinking? _Here we have again exactly the problem with which Lotze has been wrestling_: we have the same insoluble question of the reference of thought-activity to a wholly indeterminate unrationalized, independent, prior existence. The absolute rationalist who takes up the problem at this point will find himself forced into the same continuous seesaw, the same scheme of alternate rude robbery and gratuitous gift, that Lotze engaged in. The simple fact is that here _is_ just where Lotze himself began; he saw that previous transcendental logicians had left untouched the specific question of relation of _our_ supposedly finite, reflective thought to its own antecedents, and he set out to make good the defect. If reflective thought is required because const.i.tutive thought works under externally limiting conditions of sense, then we have some elements which are, after all, mere existences, events, etc. Or, if they have organization from some other source, and induce reflective thought not as bare impressions, etc., but through their place in some whole, then we have admitted the possibility of organic unity in experience, apart from Reason, and the ground for a.s.suming Pure Const.i.tutive Thought is abandoned.
The contradiction appears equally when viewed from the side of thought-activity and its characteristic forms. All our knowledge, after all, of thought as const.i.tutive is gained by consideration of the operations of reflective thought. The perfect system of thought is so perfect that it is a luminous, harmonious whole, without definite parts or distinctions--or, if there are such, it is only reflection that brings them out. The categories and methods of const.i.tutive thought itself must therefore be characterized in terms of the _modus operandi_ of reflective thought. Yet the latter takes place just because of the peculiar problem of the peculiar conditions under which it arises. Its work is progressive, reformatory, reconstructive, synthetic, in the terminology made familiar by Kant. We are not only _not_ justified, accordingly, in transferring its determinations over to const.i.tutive thought, but we are absolutely prohibited from attempting any such transfer. To identify logical processes, states, devices, results that are conditioned upon the primary fact of resistance to thought as const.i.tutive with the structure of such thought is as complete an instance of the fallacy of recourse from one genus to another as could well be found. Const.i.tutive and reflective thought are, first, defined in terms of their dissimilarity and even opposition, and then without more ado the forms of the description of the latter are carried over bodily to the former![14]
This is not meant for a merely controversial criticism. It is meant to point positively toward the fundamental thesis of these chapters: All the distinctions of the thought-function, of conception as over against sense-perception, of judgment in its various modes and forms, of inference in its vast diversity of operation--all these distinctions come within the thought-situation as growing out of a characteristic antecedent typical formation of experience; and have for their purpose the solution of the peculiar problem with respect to which the thought-function is generated or evolved: the restoration of a deliberately integrated experience from the inherent conflict into which it has fallen.
The failure of transcendental logic has the same origin as the failure of the empiristic (whether taken pure or in the mixed form in which Lotze presents it). It makes absolute and fixed certain distinctions of existence and meaning, and of one kind of meaning and another kind, which are wholly historic and relative in their origin and their significance. It views thought as attempting to represent or state reality once for all, instead of trying to determine some phases or contents of it with reference to their more effective and significant reciprocal employ--instead of as reconstructive. The rock against which every such logic splits is that either reality already has the statement which thought is endeavoring to give it, or else it has not. In the former case, thought is futilely reiterative; in the latter, it is falsificatory.
The significance of Lotze for critical purposes is that his peculiar effort to combine a transcendental view of thought (_i. e._, of Thought as active in forms of its own, pure in and of themselves) with certain obvious facts of the dependence of our thought upon specific empirical antecedents, brings to light fundamental defects in both the empiristic and the transcendental logics. We discover a common failure in both: the failure to view logical terms and distinctions with respect to their necessary function in the redintegration of experience.
III
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE DATUM OF THINKING
We have now reached a second epochal stage in the evolution of the thought-situation, a crisis which forces upon us the problem of the distinction and mutual reference of the datum or presentation, and the ideas or "thoughts." It will economize and perhaps clarify discussion if we start from the relatively positive and constructive result just reached, and review Lotze"s treatment from that point of regard.
We have reached the point of conflict in the matters or contents of an experience. It is _in_ this conflict and because of it that the matters or contents, or significant quales, stand out as such. As long as the sun revolves about earth without tension or question, this "content," or fact, is not in any way abstracted _as_ content or object. Its very distinction as content from the form or mode of experience as such is the result of post-reflection. The same conflict makes other experiences a.s.sume conscious objectification; they, too, cease to be ways of living, and become distinct objects of observation and consideration. The movements of planets, eclipses, etc., are cases in point.[15] The maintenance of a unified experience has become a problem, an end. It is no longer secure. But this involves such restatement of the conflicting elements as will enable them to take a place somewhere in the new experience; they must be disposed of somehow, and they can be disposed of finally only as they are provided for. That is, they cannot be simply denied or excluded or eliminated; they must be taken into the fold of the new experience; such introduction, on the other hand, clearly demands more or less modification or transformation on their part. The thought-situation is the conscious maintenance of the unity of experience, with a critical consideration of the claims of the various conflicting contents to a place within itself, and a deliberate final a.s.signment of position.
The conflicting situation inevitably polarizes or dichotomizes itself.
There is somewhat which is untouched in the contention of incompatibles.
There is something which remains secure, unquestioned. On the other hand, there are elements which are rendered doubtful and precarious.
This gives the framework of the general distribution of the field into "facts," the given, the presented, the Datum; and ideas, the ideal, the conceived, the Thought. For there is always something unquestioned in any problematic situation at any stage of its process,[16] even if it be only the fact of conflict or tension. For this is never _mere_ tension at large. It is thoroughly qualified, or characteristically toned and colored, by the particular elements which are in strife. Hence it is _this_ conflict, unique and irreplaceable. That it comes now means precisely that it has never come before; that it is now pa.s.sed in review and some sort of a settlement reached, means that just _this_ conflict will never recur. In a word, the conflict as such is immediately expressed, or felt, as of just this and no other sort, and this immediately apprehended quality is an irreducible datum. _It_ is fact, even if all else be _doubtful_. As it is subjected to examination, it loses vagueness and a.s.sumes more definite form.
Only in very extreme cases, however, does the a.s.sured, unquestioned element reduce to as low terms as we have here imagined. Certain things come to stand forth as facts, no matter what else may be doubted. There are certain _apparent_ diurnal changes of the sun; there is a certain annual course or track. There are certain nocturnal changes in the planets, and certain seasonal rhythmic paths. The significance of these may be doubted: Do they _mean_ real change in the sun or in the earth?
But change, and change of a certain definite and numerically determinate character is there. It is clear that such out-standing facts (ex-istences) const.i.tute the data, the given or presented, of the thought-function.
It is obvious that this is only one correspondent, or status, in the total situation. With the consciousness of _this_ as certain, as given to be reckoned with, goes the consciousness of uncertainty as to _what it means_--of how it is to be understood or interpreted. The facts _qua_ presentation or existences are sure; _qua_ meaning (position and relationship in an experience yet to be secured) they are doubtful.
Yet doubt does not preclude memory or antic.i.p.ation. Indeed, it is possible only through them. The memory of past experience makes sun-revolving-about-earth an object of attentive regard. The recollection of certain other experiences suggests the idea of earth-rotating-daily-on-axis and revolving-annually-about-sun. These contents are as much present as is the observation of change, but as respects worth, they are only possibilities. Accordingly, they are categorized or disposed of as just ideas, meanings, thoughts, ways of conceiving, comprehending, interpreting facts.
Correspondence of reference here is as obvious as correlation of existence. In the logical process, the datum is not just real existence, and the idea mere psychical unreality. Both are modes of existence--one of _given_ existence, the other of _mental_ existence. And if the mental existence is in such cases regarded, from the standpoint of the unified experience aimed at, as having only _possible_ value, the datum also is regarded, from the value standpoint, as incomplete and una.s.sured. The very existence of the idea or meaning as separate _is_ the partial, broken up, and hence objectively unreal (from the validity standpoint) character of the datum. Or, as we commonly put it, while the ideas are impressions, suggestions, guesses, theories, estimates, etc., the facts are crude, raw, unorganized, brute. They lack relationship, that is, a.s.sured place in the universe; they are deficient as to continuity. Mere change of apparent position of sun, which is absolutely unquestioned as datum, is a sheer abstraction from the standpoint either of the organized experience left behind, or of the reorganized experience which is the end--the objective. It is impossible as a persistent object in experience or reality. In other words, datum and ideatum are divisions of labor, co-operative instrumentalities, for economical dealing with the problem of the maintenance of the integrity of experience.
Once more, and briefly, both datum and ideatum may (and positively, veritably, do) break up, each for itself, into physical and psychical.
In so far as the conviction gains ground that the earth revolves about the sun, the old fact is broken up into a new cosmic existence, and a new psychological condition--the recognition of a mental process in virtue of which movements of smaller bodies in relation to very remote larger bodies are interpreted in a reverse sense. We do not just eliminate as false the source of error in the old content. We reinterpret it as valid in its own place, viz., a case of the psychology of apperception, although invalid as a matter of cosmic structure. In other words, with increasing accuracy of determination of the given, there comes a distinction, for methodological purposes, between the _quality_ or matter of the sense-experience and its _form_--the sense-perceiving, as itself a psychological fact, having its own place and laws or relations. Moreover, the old experience, that of sun-revolving, abides. But it is regarded as belonging to "me"--to this experiencing individual, rather than to the cosmic world. It is _psychic_.
Here, then, _within_ the growth of the thought-situation and as a part of the process of determining _specific_ truth under _specific_ conditions, we get for the first time the clue to that distinction with which, as ready-made and prior to all thinking, Lotze started out, namely, the separation of the matter of impression from impression as psychical event. The separation which, taken at large, engenders an insoluble problem, appears within a particular reflective inquiry, as an inevitable differentiation of a scheme of values.
The same sort of thing occurs on the side of thought, or meaning. The meaning or idea which is growing in acceptance, which is gaining ground as meaning-of-datum, gets logical or intellectual or objective force; that which is losing standing, which is increasingly doubtful, gets qualified as just a notion, a fancy, a pre-judice, mis-conception--or finally just an error, a mental slip.
Evaluated as fanciful in validity it becomes mere image--subjective;[17]
and finally a psychical existence. It is not eliminated, but receives a new reference or meaning. Thus the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is not one between meaning as such and datum as such. It is a specification that emerges, correspondently, in _both_ datum and ideatum, as affairs of the direction of logical movement. That which is left behind in the evolution of accepted meaning is characterized as real, but only in a psychical sense; that which is moved toward is regarded as real in an objective, cosmic sense.[18]
The implication of the psychic and the logical within both the given presentation and the thought about it, appears in the continual shift to which logicians of Lotze"s type are put. When the psychical is regarded as existence over against meaning as just ideal, reality seems to reside in the psychical; it is _there_ anyhow, and meaning is just a curious attachment--curious because as _mere meaning_ it is non-existent as event or state--and there seems to be nothing by which it can be even tied to the psychical state as its bearer or representative. But when the emphasis falls on thought as _content_, as significance, then the psychic event, the idea as image[19] (as distinct from idea as meaning) appears as an accidental but necessary evil, the unfortunate irrelevant medium through which _our_ thinking has to go on.[20]
1. _The data of thought._--When we turn to Lotze, we find that he makes a clear distinction between the presented material of thought, its datum, and the typical characteristic modes of thinking in virtue of which the datum gets organization or system. It is interesting to note also that he states the datum in terms different from those in which the antecedents of thought are defined. From the point of view of the material upon which ideas exercise themselves, it is not coincidence, collocation, or succession that counts; but gradation of degrees in a scale. It is not things in spatial or temporal grouping that are emphasized, but qualities as mutually distinguished, yet cla.s.sed--as differences of a common somewhat. There is no inherent inconceivability in the idea that every impression should be as incomparably different from every other as sweet is from warm. But by a remarkable circ.u.mstance such is not the case. We have series, and networks of series. We have diversity of a common--diverse colors, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. In other words, the datum is sense-qualities which, fortunately for thought, are given arranged, as shades, degrees, variations, or qualities of somewhat that is identical.[21]
All this is given, presented, to our ideational activities. Even the universal, the common-color which runs through the various qualities of blue, green, white, etc., is not a product of thought, but something which thought finds already in existence. It conditions comparison and reciprocal distinction. Particularly all mathematical determinations, whether of counting (number), degree (more or less), and quant.i.ty (greatness and smallness), come back to this peculiarity of the datum of thought. Here Lotze dwells at considerable length upon the fact that the very possibility, as well as the success, of thought is due to this peculiar universalization or _prima facie_ ordering with which its material is given to it. Such pre-established fitness in the meeting of two things that have nothing to do with each other is certainly cause enough for wonder and congratulation.
It should not be difficult to see why Lotze uses different categories in describing the given material of thought from those employed in describing its antecedent conditions, even though, according to him, the two are absolutely the same.[22] He has different _functions_ in mind.
In one case, the material must be characterized as evoking, as incentive, as stimulus--from this point of view the peculiar combination of coincidence and coherence is emphasized. But in the other case the material must be characterized as affording stuff, actual subject-matter. Data are not only what is given _to_ thought, but they are also the food, the raw material, _of_ thought. They must be described as, on the one hand, wholly outside of thought. This clearly puts them into the region of sense-perception. They are matter of _sensation_ given free from all inferring, judging, relating influence.
Sensation is just what is _not_ called up in memory or in antic.i.p.ated projection--it is the immediate, the irreducible. On the other hand, sensory-_matter_ is qualitative, and quales are made up on a common basis. They are degrees or grades of a common quality. Thus they have a certain ready-made setting of mutual distinction and reference which is already almost, if not quite, the effect of comparing, of relating, and these are the express traits of thinking.
It is easy to interpret this miraculous gift of grace in the light of what has been said. The data are in truth precisely that which is selected and set aside _as_ present, as immediate. Thus they are _given_ to _further_ thought. But the selection has occurred in view of the need for thought; it is a listing of the capital in the way of the undisturbed, the undiscussed, which thought can count upon in this particular problem. Hence it is not strange that it has a peculiar fitness of adaptation for thought"s further work. Having been selected with precisely that end in view, the wonder would be if it were not so fitted. A man may coin counterfeit money for use upon others, but hardly with the intent of pa.s.sing it off upon himself.
Our only difficulty here is that the mind flies away from the logical interpretation of sense-datum to a ready-made notion of it brought over from abstract psychological inquiry. The belief in sensory quales as somehow forced upon us, and forced upon us at large, and thus conditioning thought wholly _ab extra_, instead of determining it as instrumentalities or elements in its own scheme, is too fixed. Such qualities _are_ forced upon us, but _not_ at large. The sensory data of experience, as distinct from the psychologists" constructs, always come _in a context_; they always appear as variations in a continuum of values. Even the thunder which breaks in upon me (to take the extreme of apparent discontinuity and irrelevancy) disturbs me because it is taken as a part of the same s.p.a.ce-world as that in which my chair and room and house are located; and it is taken as an influence which interrupts and disturbs, _because_ it is part of my common world of causes and effects.
The solution of continuity is itself practical or teleological, and thus presupposes and affects continuity of purpose, occupations, and means in a life-process. It is not metaphysics, it is biology which enforces the idea that actual sensation is not only determined as an event in a world of events,[23] but is an occurrence occurring at a certain period in the evolution of experience, marking a certain point in its cycle, and, consequently--having always its own conscious context and bearings--is a characteristic function of reconstruction in experience.[24]
2. _Forms of thinking data._--As sensory datum is material set for the work of thought, so the ideational forms with which thought does its work are apt and prompt to meet the needs of the material. The "accessory"[25] notion of ground of coherence turns out, in truth, not to be a formal, or external, addition to the data, but a requalification of them. Thought is accessory as accomplice, not as addendum. "Thought"
is to eliminate mere coincidence, and to a.s.sert grounded coherence.
Lotze makes it absolutely clear that he does not at bottom conceive of "thought" as an activity "in itself" imposing a form of coherence; but that the organizing work of "thought" is only the progressive realization of an inherent unity, or system, in the material experience.
The specific modes in which thought brings its "accessory" power to bear--names, conception, judgment, and inference--are successive stages in the adequate organization of the matter which comes to us first as datum; they are successive stages of the effort to overcome the original defects of the datum. Conception starts from the given universal (the common element) of sense. Yet (and this is the significant point) it does not simply abstract this common element, and consciously generalize it as over against its own differences. Such a "universal" is _not_ coherence, just because it does not _include_ and dominate the temporal and local heterogeneity. The _true_ concept (see Vol. I, p. 38) is a system of attributes, held together on the basis of some ground, or determining, dominating principle--a ground which so controls all its own instances as to make them into an inwardly connected whole, and so specifies its own limits as to be exclusive of all else. If we abstract color as the common element of various colors, the result is not a scientific idea or concept. Discovery of a process of light-waves whose various rates const.i.tute the various colors of the spectrum gives the concept. And when we get such a concept, the former mere temporal abruptness of color experiences gives way to organic parts of a color system. The logical product--the concept, in other words--is not a formal seal or stamp; it is a thoroughgoing transformation of data in a given sense.
The form or mode of thought which marks the continued transformation of the data and the idea in reference to each other is judgment. Judgment makes explicit the a.s.sumption of a principle which determines connection within an individualized whole. It definitely states red as _this_ case or instance of the law or process of color, and thus overcomes further the defect in _subject-matter_ or data still left by conception.[26] Now judgment logically terminates in disjunction. It gives a universal which may determine any one of a number of alternative defined particulars, but which is arbitrary as to _what_ one is selected.
Systematic _inference_ brings to light the material conditions under which the law, or dominating universal, applies to this, rather than that alternative particular, and so completes the ideal organization of the subject-matter. If this act were complete, we should finally have present to us a whole on which we should know the determining and effective or authorizing elements, and the order of development or hierarchy of dependence, in which others follow from them.[27]
In this account by Lotze of the operations of the forms of thought, there is clearly put before us the picture of a continuous correlative determination of datum on one side and of idea or meaning on the other, till experience is again integral, data thoroughly defined and corrected, and ideas completely incarnate as the relevant meaning of subject-matter. That we have here in outline a description of what actually occurs there can be no doubt. But there is as little doubt that it is thoroughly inconsistent with Lotze"s supposition that the material or data of thought is precisely the same as the antecedents of thought; or that ideas, conceptions, are purely mental somewhats brought to bear, as the sole essential characteristics of thought, extraneously upon a material provided ready-made. It means but one thing: The maintenance of unity and wholeness in experience through conflicting contents occurs by means of a strictly correspondent setting apart of fact to be accurately described and properly related, and meaning to be adequately construed and properly referred. The datum is given _in_ the thought-situation, and _to_ further qualification of ideas or meanings. But even in this aspect it presents a problem. To find out _what is_ given is an inquiry which taxes reflection to the uttermost. Every important advance in scientific method means better agencies, more skilled technique for simply detaching and describing what is barely there, or given. To be able to find out what can safely be taken as _there_, as given in any particular inquiry, and hence be taken as material for orderly and verifiable thinking, for fruitful hypothesis-making, for entertaining of explanatory and interpretative ideas, is one phase of the effort of systematic scientific inquiry. It marks its inductive phase. To take what is given _in_ the thought-situation, for the sake of accomplishing the aim of thought (along with a correlative discrimination of ideas or meanings), as if it were given absolutely, or apart from a particular historic situs and context, is the fallacy of empiricism as a logical theory. To regard the thought-forms of conception, judgment, and inference as qualifications of "pure thought, apart from any difference in objects," instead of as successive dispositions in the progressive organization of the material (or objects) is the fallacy of rationalism.
Lotze attempts to combine the two, thinking thereby to correct each by the other.
Lotze recognizes the futility of thought if the sense-data are final, if they alone are real, the truly existent, self-justificatory and valid.
He sees that, if the empiricist were right in his a.s.sumption as to the real worth of the given data, thinking would be a ridiculous pretender, either toilfully and poorly doing over again what needs no doing, or making a wilful departure from truth. He realizes that thought really is evoked because it is needed, and that it has a work to do which is not merely formal, but which effects a modification of the subject-matter of experience. Consequently he a.s.sumes a thought-in-itself, with certain forms and modes of action of its own, a realm of meaning possessed of a directive and normative worth of its own--the root-fallacy of rationalism. His attempted compromise between the two turns out to be based on the a.s.sumption of the indefensible ideas of both--the notion of an independent matter of thought, on one side, and of an independent worth or value of thought-forms, on the other.
This pointing out of inconsistencies becomes stale and unprofitable save as we bring them back into connection with their root-origin--the erection of distinctions that are genetic and historic, and working or instrumental divisions of labor, into rigid and ready-made differences of structural reality. Lotze clearly recognizes that thought"s nature is dependent upon its aim, its aim upon its problem, and this upon the situation in which it finds its incentive and excuse. Its work is cut out for it. It does not what it would, but what it must. As Lotze puts it, "Logic has to do with thought, not as it would be under hypothetical conditions, but as it is" (Vol. I, p. 33), and this statement is made in explicit combination with statements to the effect that the peculiarity of the material of thought conditions its activity.
Similarly he says in a pa.s.sage already referred to: "The possibility and the success of thought"s production in general depends upon this original const.i.tution and organization of the whole world of ideas, a const.i.tution which, though not necessary in thought, is all the more necessary to make thought possible."[28]
As we have seen, the essential nature of conception, judgment, and inference is dependent upon peculiarities of the propounded material, they being forms dependent for their significance upon the stage of organization in which they begin.
From this only one conclusion is suggested. If thought"s nature is dependent upon its actual conditions and circ.u.mstances, the primary logical problem is to study thought-in-its-conditioning; it is to detect the crisis within which thought and its subject-matter present themselves in their mutual distinction and cross-reference. But Lotze is so thoroughly committed to a ready-made antecedent of some sort, that this genetic consideration is of no account to him. The historic method is a mere matter of psychology, and has no logical worth (Vol. I, p. 2).
We must presuppose a psychological mechanism and psychological material, but logic is concerned not with origin or history, but with authority, worth, value (Vol. I, p. 10). Again: "Logic is not concerned with the manner in which the elements utilized by thought come into existence, but their value _after_ they have somehow come into existence, for the carrying out of intellectual operations" (Vol. I, p. 34). And finally: "I have maintained throughout my work that logic cannot derive any serious advantage from a discussion of _the conditions under which thought as a psychological process comes about_. The significance of logical forms ... is to be found in the utterances of thought, the laws which it imposes, after or during the act of thinking, not in the conditions which lie back of and which produce thought."[29]
Lotze, in truth, represents a halting-stage in the evolution of logical theory. He is too far along to be contented with the reiteration of the purely formal distinctions of a merely formal thought-by-itself. He recognizes that thought as formal is the form of some matter, and has its worth only as organizing that matter to meet the ideal demands of reason; and that "reason" is in truth only an ideal systematization of the matter or content. Consequently he has to open the door to admit "psychical processes" which furnish this material. Having let in the material, he is bound to shut the door again in the face of the processes from which the material proceeded--to dismiss them as impertinent intruders. If thought gets its data in such a surrept.i.tious manner, there is no occasion for wonder that the legitimacy of its dealings with the material remains an open question. Logical theory, like every branch of the philosophic disciplines, waits upon a surrender of the obstinate conviction that, while the work and aim of thought is conditioned by the material supplied to it, yet the _worth_ of its performances is something to be pa.s.sed upon in complete abstraction from conditions of origin and development.