1912
_Copyright, 1896_
First Edition. February, 1897,
Reprinted, May, 1897, September, 1897,
March, 1898, August, 1899, June, 1902,
January, 1903, May, 1904, June, 1905,
March, 1907, April, 1908,
September, 1909, December, 1910,
November, 1911, November, 1912
To
My Old Friend,
To whose philosophic comradeship in old times
and to whose writings in more recent years
I owe more incitement and help than
I can express or repay.
{vii}
At most of our American Colleges there are Clubs formed by the students
devoted to particular branches of learning; and these clubs have the
laudable custom of inviting once or twice a year some maturer scholar
to address them, the occasion often being made a public one. I have
from time to time accepted such invitations, and afterwards had my
discourse printed in one or other of the Reviews. It has seemed to me
that these addresses might now be worthy of collection in a volume, as
they shed explanatory light upon each other, and taken together express
a tolerably definite philosophic attitude in a very untechnical way.
Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I
should call it that of _radical empiricism_, in spite of the fact that
such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I
say 'empiricism,' because it is contented to regard its most assured
conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to
modification in the course of future experience; and I say 'radical,'
because it treats the doctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and,
{viii} unlike so much of the half-way empiricism that is current under
the name of positivism or agnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does
not dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all experience
has got to square. The difference between monism and pluralism is
perhaps the most pregnant of all the differences in philosophy. _Primâ
facie_ the world is a pluralism; as we find it, its unity seems to be
that of any collection; and our higher thinking consists chiefly of an
effort to redeem it from that first crude form. Postulating more unity
than the first experiences yield, we also discover more. But absolute
unity, in spite of brilliant dashes in its direction, still remains
undiscovered, still remains a _Grenzbegriff_. "Ever not quite" must be
the rationalistic philosopher's last confession concerning it. After
all that reason can do has been done, there still remains the opacity
of the finite facts as merely given, with most of their peculiarities
mutually unmediated and unexplained. To the very last, there are the
various 'points of view' which the philosopher must distinguish in
discussing the world; and what is inwardly clear from one point remains
a bare externality and datum to the other. The negative, the alogical,
is never wholly banished. Something--"call it fate, chance, freedom,
spontaneity, the devil, what you will"--is still wrong and other and
outside and unincluded, from _your_ point of view, even though you be
the greatest of philosophers. Something is always mere fact and
_givenness_; and there may be in the whole universe no one point of
view extant from which this would not be found to be the case.
"Reason," as a gifted writer says, "is {ix} but one item in the
mystery; and behind the proudest consciousness that ever reigned,
reason and wonder blushed face to face. The inevitable stales, while
doubt and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the universe is
wild,--game-flavored as a hawk's wing. Nature is miracle all; the same
returns not save to bring the different. The slow round of the
engraver's lathe gains but the breadth of a hair, but the difference is
distributed back over the whole curve, never an instant true,--ever not
quite."[1]