Charles Carroll Everett

“ So it may not be impossible that one might, in the same intellectual way, prove to himself the non-existence of beings outside of himself, while he holds this belief in the same unreal way in which we hold the belief in the colorlessness and soundlessness of the external world.
However this may be, the position itself is one that offers a challenge to philosophic thought. This external reality is a crude fact which demands solution. It is not, like the existence of ourselves, absolutely given in consciousness. It is simply assumed by consciousness. ”

“ Various grave objections are urged against the speculative method of thought. It is urged that we cannot reach, thereby, concrete realities. These must in every case be given. When the philosopher seems to have reached by his deduction anything of a nature at all concrete, let it be even the Faculties of the Mind or the Categories of Thought, these are in fact accepted by him as given. They are really the products of experience. Further, it is urged that no real unity is attained by this process, but only the semblance of unity. ”

“ It must be admitted that speculative philosophy can never, by itself, reach concrete results; yet it accomplishes very much, if it have a place for these, if it show that the concrete fact represents some general principle or some moment in a process that by itself considered is purely formal. If it cannot construct in advance the content of experience, it is much if it can explain empirical results, when they are given. To take a very crude and inadequate example, the philosophy of history could not construct, in advance, the personalities, say, of Huss or Luther ”

“ In order to follow the reasoning of Fichte with any sort of sympathy, or even with any degree of real comprehension, it is necessary to realize that all that is directly given us, is a single moment in consciousness with whatever is actually contained in it. If one cannot fully accept this position, one must at least have it distinctly in mind, and must be able to understand how another might naturally and not unreasonably hold this position. It must be assumed, then, that this single moment of consciousness is the only fact that we hold in direct possession. ”

“ So we have escaped from this subjective imprisonment, and are free of the universe. By no effort of the imagination can we realize the limitation of which I have spoken. There is needed, however, a philosophy that shall deal with the rudiments, that shall start with an analysis of the consciousness itself. If we are at large, we need to know by what right, and especially under what conditions. If it should appear that we are disregarding the conditions under which we are made free of the world, that we are misinterpreting the tenure of our possession, it may be helpful that we should know it. ”

“ Analogy, however, when it is perfect, may produce a conviction as strong as can be produced by induction; and the resemblance in this case may, at first sight, seem so very perfect as to make the reasoning that is based upon it wholly convincing. There is, however, one great point of weakness which vitiates the whole argument. In the case from which we reason, it is the changes in our own consciousness that manifest themselves to our consciousness. We have a complete circle. Nothing is present that involves elements which are, in any strict sense, outside of our own minds. ”

“ We may indeed question, with some show of reason at least, the absolute certainty of the assumption that the belief in outward existence is so immovably fixed in the mind. We must recognize the fact that there are two kinds of belief, each real in its way: the one is an intellectual assent to a proposition which is supported by irresistible arguments; the other is that belief which we can make real to ourselves, of which we have, in the common phrase, a realizing sense. ”

“ All that is here insisted on is that only so far as it is possible can we have any satisfactory thought of our own spirits or of the universe in which we live. This consideration may make us, at least, regard the attempt to reach such a philosophy as an important one. It may prepare us to follow with interest the attempt which Fichte makes to formulate such a system. We must remember, however, that no failures can prove that the undertaking itself attempts the impossible. We must remember that each attempt, although in part a failure, may be, at the same time, in part successful ”

“ An example of the former, or purely intellectual, belief, is the assurance with which we accept the truth that sound and color are purely subjective experiences. We know that the tree is not green and that the rose is not red, in the only sense in which the terms green and red have any meaning to us; but of this we have no realizing sense—indeed, we cannot make; it real to us. We know, too, that the earth is round, and that it circles about the sun; this belief also, is, to most men, purely intellectual; it does not represent anything that is real to them. ”

“ If the science of mathematics has contributed anything to our knowledge of the phenomena to which it can be applied, so that the scientist does not feel that he understands them till he has subjected them to mathematical formulas; still more must speculative philosophy, supposing it to be in any degree attainable, contribute to our thought of the larger realities with which it has to do. ”

“ In the first place, philosophy is more inclusive than mathematics, having, in fact, to do with all that is. In the second place, for this very reason its results are more complete, and thus more transparent, than those of mathematics. This latter has to do with sensible elements which admit of no solution. The moments of a speculative philosophy are more closely allied with the processes of thought, and are more easily perceived to be merely the nodes in a movement of spontaneous development. ”

“ If, however, we grant that the world of visible and tangible objects is one of appearances, must we not recognize the fact that there is a world of reality beyond this, which manifests its existence by means of these appearances? ”

“ Indeed, the study of the history of philosophy fails of its true end when it is pursued merely as a matter of historical or curious interest. One might as well watch the changing forms in the kaleidoscope, or the shifting shadows of interlacing branches, as to study the changing forms of human thought, considered simply as changing forms. ”

“ Herbert Spencer properly denies that he is a materialist. The reality which he recognizes is something which lies back of the distinction of matter and mind, and manifests itself in both. He insists that the relations of which he speaks may be expressed equally well in terms of mind or in those of matter, according to the point from which we start. [6] He seems to forget for the moment that we have only terms that are derived from mental processes, and that we always start from the mind, which, indeed, we can never get beyond. ”

“ His idea was that a philosophy should be a system deduced from a single principle. It should thus possess an organic unity, and this unity should be the result of a priori reasoning. This constructive method is that which properly receives the name Speculative. Now this whole form of procedure is totally at variance with the methods most prized at present. The reliance of the present thought of the world is placed almost wholly upon induction. The systems that have been constructed according to the deductive method seem to many, at the present day, no more substantial than air castles. ”

“ To most the external universe is the most certain of realities.
A slight observation does something to disturb the completeness of the notion of the outward universe. Perhaps to few is it wholly rounded and complete. Among the first elements to be transferred from the outer to the inner world are heat and cold. We learn that a body which we call hot simply heats. What we call heat is simply our sensation. ”

“ All that remains, then, would seem to be to say with Herbert Spencer, that the belief in a reality outside ourselves is something absolute and final; that it can neither be proved nor disproved; [10] for either proof or disproof would involve the idea of something which we believe more strongly than we do the fact of external existence, whereas this latter belief is stronger than any other. The phenomena of dreams would not disturb this position, for we have to do with no fact except that of belief. We cannot help believing in our dreams while they last ”

“ We are like one who seems to himself to be sitting in a lofty and pillared hall, looking from it out upon the landscape that stretches beyond. Of the pillars that seem to rise near him, some he has been able to discover to be frescoed imitations upon a plain surface. ”

“ The appearance seems to us superficial, it has to do with surfaces; but behind these there is the solid reality. What do we mean by this, he asks, in effect, but that we should, could we examine, find ever new surfaces, the process of infinite divisibility being only the possibility of an infinitude of surfaces? Thus, from whatever point we start, we find it impossible to get beyond the world of mental feelings and processes. It is impossible, because we cannot get out of ourselves. ”

“ The arbitrariness which is found in philosophy has also its counterpart in mathematics. This, also, out of many possible lines of movement, chooses that which will lead to a given point. In philosophy, often, a given course of reasoning can be with difficulty understood till we have looked forward and seen the point to which it is aiming. ”

“ For one who feels no need of an answer to the questions with which a system of philosophy deals, that system has no significance. We have now, therefore, to ask what is the permanent human interest which is involved in the problems which Fichte undertakes to solve. ”

“ Physiology has proved the phenomenal character of the elements that make up the world of objects, in the midst of which we seem to live. It does not always remember that, thereby, it has taken the solid basis from beneath its own feet. It attempts to construct mental out of physical processes, feeling that thereby it has sufficiently explained them. ”

“ It docs not always keep in mind that the physical facts upon which it bases its reasoning, are themselves a part of the phenomenal world; that is, that they are products of the mind itself. Herbert Spencer shows how absolutely nothing we know of the real things about us, by pointing out that they are at one end of the nerves, while our sensations are produced at the other. [5] The argument loses nothing in force, although its own basis is swept away by it; for the nerves themselves belong to that phenomenal world of which they prove our ignorance. ”

“ A stronger way of putting the argument would be to base it neither upon induction nor upon analogy, but upon the fact that the assumption of personalities outside ourselves is a hypothesis that has always worked well. ”

“ People often are sure that they remember something that never occurred. Their mental condition is precisely what it would be if the event had occurred. Make for a moment the supposition that of all that, we seem to remember, nothing ever occurred ”

“ Those more distant he cannot reach to determine whether they also are fictitious. Of the windows that seem to look out upon the world, some he has discovered to consist merely of painted screens. The others have been, thus far, inaccessible, so that he cannot test their real nature. ”

“ The argument of Mill is substantially as follows: In our consciousness we find certain groups of sensations, each of which remains substantially the same, subject only to slight variations. One of these groups we learn to regard as representing ourself. We call it our body. ”

“ Fichte deduces the position which woman holds in the family, according to the German notion, as confidently as he deduces any more fundamental and universal relation. [2] A Frenchman or an American might have reached, with the same confidence, quite different results. The difficulty of an undertaking does not, however, prove its impossibility. ”