Projection

“ Every point in the field of view ought, in truth, if the projection-theory were uniformly valid, to appear single, entirely irrespective of the varying positions of the eyes, for from every point of space two lines of visible direction pass to the two retinæ; and at the intersection of these lines, or just where the point is, there, according to the theory, it should appear. The objection to this theory is thus precisely the reverse of the objection to the identity-theory. ”

“ Believing they have blotted their projections from their own minds, they also believe their projections are trying to creep back in. Since the projections have not left their minds, they are forced to engage in constant activity in order not to recognize this. ”

“ You who discuss politics and decide affairs, are you not continually accusing each other of sophistry, inconsistency, and shying away from the point? Take up any political or religious newspaper, and see, if any faith is to be put in testimony, how deficient in logic are all these logic-mongers,—how all the learned and logical are accused by other learned and logical of false assumptions, of invalid reasoning, of foregone conclusions, of pride and prejudice and passion. ”

“ Finally, in the formation of an opinion as to the abstract preferableness of one course of action over another, or as to the truth or falsehood or right significance of a proposition, the fact that the majority of one’s contemporaries lean in the other direction is naught, and no more than dust in the balance. ”

“ I am not able, sir, to discern, why truth should be obscured; or why any man should take pleasure in heaping together all the arguments that his knowledge may supply, or his imagination suggest, against a proposition which he cannot deny. Nor can I assign any good purpose that can be promoted by perpetual renewals of debate, and by a repetition of objections, which have in former conferences, on the same occasion, been found of little force. ”

“ Useful in the discussion of a controversy, in the demonstration of a theory, in the uncertainties of a commentary, it possessed more than any other the authority needful to lay down, without discussion, the value of a doctrine. ”

“ So we pause with these arbitrary illustrations of the proposition that little common ground has been discovered between the factual phenomena of political behavior6 and the interpretation of the meaning of these phenomena. One way out of the impasse is to consign the whole matter of meaning and interpretation to political philosophy as distinguished from political science. Then it can be pointed out that futile speculation is a companion of all philosophy. The moral is to drop all doctrines of this kind overboard, and stick to facts verifiably ascertained. ”

“ Does not this difference of point of view indicate the real meaning of our political methods? There is so much free expression of opinion that we are hardened to it, and give it just so much attention as we think it deserves. ”

“ And if we reflect upon the distinctive form of unity thus exhibited by each department of being—upon the dominant character pervading the differences within it and their cohesion—we may formulate certain 'Axioms', condensing once more into isolated judgements truth for which the evidence is overwhelming. Such 'truths' are stable, not because they, as judgements, hang together of themselves, but because they are but the concentrated expression of a whole of knowledge. ”

“ As a spectator in close enough contact with present social problems to understand all the points under discussion, yet at the same time sufficiently removed from them to analyse them coolly and judge them without prejudice, I bring forward my evidence unshackled by conventions. It has seemed to me that such fair, exact evidence might interest those who seek to glean, amongst all classes of society, the thousand dissimilar and contradictory elements whence proceed the lessons needed both for the present and the future. ”

“ What we carry away from following such a history is something far higher and more solemn than any controversial inferences; and it seems almost like a desecration to make, as we say, capital out of it, to strengthen mere argument, to confirm a theory, or to damage an opponent. ”

“ We are practical men, which you are not; you look into books, but we look into the living, active business of the country; we trust the evidences of our senses; we open our eyes, and we see what is going on, and from what we see we draw our conclusions, and upon what we see we build our ideas as to remedies.” Well, sir, the contempt of these practical statesmen for theories is of the very loftiest nature. ”

“ I would ask those critics who stand on the ground of traditional opinion, not too rashly by hard words to attempt to stop the inquiry which this experiment may suggest. The facts are too strong to be put aside by any opinion. If all who are anxious for the truth will only seek it, there is little doubt that we may approach, if we do not reach it. ”

“ There must be discussion, to show how experience is to be interpreted. Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it. ”

“ Now the question is put, as every political and moral question ought to be, upon the issue of fact; and mankind are directed into the only true track of investigation which can afford instruction or hope of rational argument, the track of experiment and observation. ”

“ If, then, respecting facts of so simple and so easily-verifiable a kind, where no obvious motive for misrepresentations exists, we cannot count on true representations, how shall we count on true representations of social facts, which, being so diffused and so complex, are so difficult to observe, and in respect of which the perceptions are so much perverted by interests, and prepossessions, and party feelings? ”

“ You invariably lead me into the realms of speculation, and then throw me upon the defensive by asking me to prove my own theories, or with apparent sincerity, you advance an unreasonable hypothesis, and then, before I am aware of your purpose, force me to acquiesce because I can not find facts to confute you. ”

“ Into this categorical assertion of a concrete experience embodying a plan, our whole series of hypothetically valid assertions of the realm of Critical Rationalism have now resolved themselves. A will concretely embodied in a life, — and these meanings identical with the very purposes that our poor fleeting finite ideas are even now so fragmentarily seeking, amidst all their flickerings and their conflicts, to express, — this, I say, is the reality. ”

“ If you carefully study these forms of argument, and can estimate the value of opinions and circumstantial evidence, you will not only be able to build up a bomb proof argument of your own but you will be able to detect fallacies in your opponent’s discussion. ”

“ And by this aggregation of truths and elimination of errors, there must eventually be developed a correct and complete body of doctrine. Of the three phases through which human opinion passes—the unanimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring, and the unanimity of the wise—it is manifest that the second is the parent of the third. They are not sequences in time only, they are sequences in causation. ”

“ I speak of those who deduce political conclusions not from laws of nature, not from sequences of phenomena, real or imaginary, but from unbending practical maxims. Such, for example, are all who found their theory of politics on what is called abstract right, that is to say, on universal precepts ”

“ I never in my life perused any article more philosophical in spirit or more conclusive in argument; the scheme was clearly shown not only to be absurd but impracticable, and the projectors proved either to be presumptuous imitators, or men profligately speculating upon the ignorant credulity of their fellow-citizens. ”

“ It is base, it is vile, it is the lowest depth of immorality, to allow department Number Three to interpose its demands, and have any vote in the question of what is true and what is false; the mind must be a passive, reactionless sheet of white paper, on which reality will simply come and register its own philosophic definition, as the pen registers the curve on the sheet of a chronograph. ”

“ To the enthusiastic dialectician everything would seem to depend upon the turn of a debate; a challenge to a disputation was as serious as a challenge to the combat: logic became the centre round which all speculation revolved, and the question about its metaphysical basis became the absorbing one for all who pretended to share in the commonwealth of scholars. ”

“ When, for instance, ordinary persons predicate the words just or unjust of any action, noble or mean of any sentiment, expression, or demeanour, statesman or charlatan of any personage figuring in politics, do they mean to affirm of those various subjects any determinate attributes, of whatever kind? ”

“ Everything is bound in the leather of reasonableness, in the hide of method, and in the wooden boards of Logic. Instead of on the rich soup of sentiments, men and women in the States are fed on scientific tabloids containing sentiments reduced to their ultimate chemical essences. ”

“ The body politick being composed of many distinct minds, cannot compare its ideas, except by collecting them through the external mediums of speaking and writing, or by free discussion whereas an individual can compare his ideas, by the internal operation of thought. ”

“ For casual opinion, being the product of partial contact, of tradition, and personal interests, cannot in the nature of things take kindly to a method of political thought which is based on exact record, measurement, analysis and comparison. ”

“ Hence, these hasty, angry investigations of new facts, and the triumph with which failures are recorded; and hence the wilful overlooking of the axiom that a thousand negatives can not overthrow the evidence of one affirmative experiment. I always distrust those who have declared themselves strongly in the beginning of a controversy. ”

“ In this chapter I propose to consider the second assumption, and to inquire how far it is true that men, when they do form inferences as to the result of their political actions, always form them by a process of reasoning. ”

“ And first, let us contemplate a common fallacy in men's opinions about human affairs, which pervades the several fallacies fostered by the political bias.
Results are proportionate to appliances—see here the tacit assumption underlying many errors in the conduct of life, private and public. In private life every one discovers the untruth of this assumption, and yet continues to act as though he had not discovered its untruth. ”

“ Therefore he who wishes to use analysis with polemic intent must offer no objection if the person so analyzed will, in his turn, use analysis against him, and if the discussion merges into a state in which the awakening of a conviction in an impartial third party is entirely excluded. ”

“ Some candidate for the doctorate, hard put for a subject, might find it profitable to produce a thesis on American political phraseology. As a people we are much addicted to felicitous combinations of words that express large ideas in the smallest possible compass. Not only does political wisdom lend itself well to condensation, but the silliest fallacy will carry far if knocked into a fetching phrase. ”

“ Let us now pass to the second division of the argument, and dismissing the supposition that any of the received opinions may be false, let us assume them to be true, and examine into the worth of the manner in which they are likely to be held, when their truth is not freely and openly canvassed. ”

“ Again, but very few persons have leisure, or inclination, or power of mind enough to follow an elaborate argument through fifteen hundred pages, not to speak of other works on the same theme. Once more, only a minute minority are capable of testing and weighing the evidence, and criticising the tangled hypotheses on which the argument rests, or in which it is involved. ”

“ He must weigh all facts and deduct from them the truth. He must analyze, synthesize, organize, and generalize. He must absorb the spirit of the people of whom he writes and color the narrative as little as possible with his own prejudices. ”

“ Just as the speculative mind was tempted to model the real after the intelligible, and to raise the subjective laws of its imagination into laws constituting the existence of things, so the state spirit rushed into the opposite extreme, wished to make a particular and fragmentary experience the measure of all observation, and to apply without exception to all affairs the rules of its own particular craft. ”

“ They contest every point and make concessions only when they are confronted by indisputable facts. Some feeling, or even acrimony, may be generated in the course of the discussion, but this is always accounted a weakness and a substitute for valid argument. The recitation is rather more decorous than some of these other discussions, but, in principle, they are identical. Every one has freedom to express his convictions and to adduce contributory arguments or evidence. ”

“ How many projectors have gone mad in good earnest from incessantly harping on one idea, the discovery of the philosopher's stone, the finding out the longitude, or paying off the national debt! The disorder at length comes to a fatal crisis; but long before this, and while they were walking about and talking as usual, the derangement of the fancy, the loss of all voluntary power to control or alienate their ideas from the single subject that occupied them, was gradually taking place, and overturning the fabric of the understanding by wrenching it all on one side. ”

“ Whatever goes by the different names of the revolutionary, the radical, the democratic, the liberal, the free-thinking, the sceptical, or the negative and critical school or party in religion, politics, or philosophy, all passes with him under the designation of metaphysical, and whatever he has to say about it forms part of his description of the metaphysical school of social science. ”