Michael Oakeshott Experience and Its Modes PDF
Michael Oakeshott Experience and Its Modes PDF
Michael Oakeshott Experience and Its Modes PDF
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EXPERIENCE
AND
ITS MODES
EXPERIENCE
ITS MODE
by
MICHAEL OAKESHOTT
Fellow of Gonville and Cuius College
in the University of Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1933
REPRINTED
1966
PUBLISHED BY
THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London, N.W.i
American Branch: 32 East 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022
West African Office: P.M.B. 5 181, Ibadan, Nigeria
Publisher's Note
August, 1933
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2010 with funding from
Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation
http://www.archive.org/details/experienceitsmodOOoake
1
CONTENTS
I. Introduction page i
I
VI. Conclusion 322
I . Theory of experience and its modes restated 322
2. Pseudo-philosophical experience ethics :
331
3. Philosophy again 346
INTRODUCTION
An interest in philosophy is often first aroused by an irrelevant
impulse to see the world and ourselves better than we find
them. We seek in philosophy what wiser men would look
for in a gospel, some guidance as to le prix des choses, some
convincing proof that there is nothing degrading in one's
being alive, something to make the mystery of human ex-
istence less incomprehensible. Thinking is at first associated
with an extraneous desire for action. And it is some time,
perhaps, before we discern that philosophy is without any
direct bearing upon the practical conduct of life, and that it
has certainly never offered its true followers anything which
could be mistaken for a gospel. Of course, some so-called
philosophers aff"ord pretext enough for this particular mis-
understanding. Nearly always a philosopher hides a secret
ambition, foreign to philosophy, and often it is that of the
preacher. But we must learn not to follow the philosophers
upon these holiday excursions.
Nor is this the only error to be avoided. The impulse of
mere curiosity is no less foreign to philosophy. When we are
consumed with a greed for information, philosophy appears
as universal knowledge. Nothing, it seems, should be alien
to the philosopher, who must hate ignorance more than he
loves discrimination. But this indiscriminate pursuit of uni-
versal knowledge is scarcely better than a romantic obsession.
And it is foreign to the character of philosophy, because
when we are intent upon what is a whole and complete we
must resign what is merely encyclopaedic. The savant as
such not a philosopher; there is little or nothing in
is
II
1
'Experience', of all the words in the philosophic vocabulary,
is the most difficult to manage and; must be the ambition
it
cover that the price ofit is nonentity. And the view I propose
2
The general character of experience I have taken to be
thought or judgment. And experience is, consequently, a
homogeneous whole within which distinctions and modifica-
tions may appear, but which knows no absolute division.
Experience is a world of ideas. And it remains now to
consider its character more in detail. I wish, however, at
this point to confine my attention to a single, abstract
aspect of experience, to consider it solely as a world of
ideas; to consider it, that is, from the standpoint of truth.
Ordinarily we believe that ideas are about something, that
they refer to a world of things or realities, but this is a belief
which I do not wish to consider at present I am concerned ;
achieved are both worlds, but not equally worlds and secondly, :
in itself.
Now, I am
aware that there are other views than this of
the criterion of experience, and I wish here to consider one
world of ideas. And this view may take either of two forms.
The criterion may be agreement with either the world of
ideas originally given in experience, or an already deter-
mined and perfectly satisfactory world of ideas. And it must
be considered in both these forms. The first suggestion is
that a satisfactory condition of experience is achieved where
the world of experience is seen to correspond with the world
of ideas originally given in experience, and it is satisfactory
on account of this correspondence. It is a dismal doctrine.
The given in experience, I have argued, is always a world
of ideas; that is, there is no given which is not experience.
And, if this be true, the chief difficulty the suggestion I am
considering must face is the lack of a world with which agree-
ment may be established. For, unless per impossibile the
originally given world be a genuinely immediate world, there
is no reason for selecting it (rather than any other world of
facts.'
3
Experience is always and everywhere a world of ideas. What
is given in experience is a world of ideas. But the given is
ledge about the real. To know that the leaf is green is to know that
the real (of which this leaf is the special focus) is, in this special
respect, green. Thus, once more, there is but one kind of knowledge
and reality is inseparable from it.
54 EXPERIENCE AND ITS MODES
acquainted with it must be stupid rather than presumptuous,
and to restrain a man from the undertaking would be not less
foolish than to prohibit his drinking the sea. While, if it be
inseparable from experience, and consequently knowable, it
bare, static units, but to what changes and yet remains some-
how the same. On the subject of identity I shall, however,
confine myself to a few remarks. A thing, we are told, must
preserve an identity: if it change, it must do so, not spora-
dically, but according to some regular plan. What merely
changes, is careless of continuity and gives no evidence of
permanence as well as change, has no identity and con-
sequently cannot be thought of as a thing. Wherever a thing
goes beyond a static unity with itself (as, it will be said, is
always the case), if it is to remain a thing, it must maintain
an identity. Now, whatever else the notion of identity may
imply, I take it, first, to signify a mode of behaviour, and
secondly, to be a matter of degree. That is to say, all identity
is qualitative, consists in the maintenance of a certain
existent. The real world is, therefore, not a world apart from
and independent of experience, it is the world of experience. It
is consequently a world of ideas yet not a world of mere ideas,
;
of ideas, and its coherence rests, in the end, upon its reality.
Experience to be experience must be reality; truth to be
true must be true of reality. Experience, truth and reality
are inseparable.
4
Experience is a world of ideas. And the condition of a world
of ideas satisfactory in experience is a condition of coherence,
of unity and completeness. Further, the world of experience
is the real world; there is no reality outside experience.
Reality is the world of experience in so far as it is satisfactory,
in so far as it is coherent. These, such as they are, seem to
be our conclusions; but they seem also to be unsatisfactory.
And they appear likely to remain so until I have faced what
writers are now in the habit of calling 'the fact of diversity'.
I cannot, of course, admit that this so-called fact has been
left altogether on one side it has already been remarked, and
;
gives them unity. But since, at the same time, each particular set
of experiences is referred to a different faculty, the unity of the self
is disrupted.
EXPERIENCE AND ITS MODES 73
The first is no
of these propositions implies that there
direct relationship between any two of these modes of ex-
perience, for each abstract world of ideas is a specific organiza-
76 EXPERIENCE AND ITS MODES
tion of the whole of experience, exclusive of every other
organization. Consequently, it is impossible to pass in argu-
ment from any one of these worlds of ideas to any other
without involving ourselves in a confusion. The fallacy
inherent in any such attempt is in the nature of ignoratio
elenchi. And the result of all such attempts is the most
subtle and insidious of all
forms of error irrelevance. This,
in an extreme example, seems clear enough. That what is
arithmetically true is morally neither true nor false, but
merely irrelevant, appears obvious. But, as we shall later
have occasion to observe, though it appears not to be so clear
in the case of some other abstract worlds of ideas, neverthe-
less this independence of one another lies in the character
of the worlds themselves and cannot be avoided. No one of
these modes of experience is, in any sense whatever, based
upon or dependent upon any other; no one is derived from
any other, and none directly related to any other. This does
not, of course, mean that these modes of experience are
merely separate and have place in no universe, for that is
impossible. They are abstractions from the single whole of
experience; they are separate, but misconceived, attempts to
give coherence to the totality of experience, and consequently
meet in the whole to which they belong. They arise from
arrests in experience, and they derive their significance from
their connexion with the totality of experience. My view is,
merely, that these abstract worlds of ideas are not, as such
and as worlds, in any way dependent upon or directly re-
lated to one another. And if the question were approached
from the opposite direction, every case of irrelevance would
be found to be an example of this attempt to pass in argument
from one world of ideas to another, an attempt which,
because it ignores the character of the worlds concerned,
results only in error and confusion.
The second proposition, that each abstract world of ideas,
in so far as it is coherent, is true for itself, means little more
than that each of these worlds appears as, and is taken for,
a world. And this character belongs to every world of ideas
EXPERIENCE AND ITS MODES 77
' 'But', it will be objected, 'you have said already that it is too
5
There remain, of course, many important questions which
this brief statement of my view of experience and its modes
has left undiscussed, and to some of these I must return later.
But, since this chapter is designed to be a preface to the
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE
1
I intend here to consider the character of historical experience
from the standpoint of the totahty of experience, that is, to
consider the truth or vahdity of history as a form of ex-
perience. And this purpose, as I have aheady indicated, does
not include the attempt to determine the exact degree of
truth which belongs to history (as compared with other forms
of experience); it does not include the attempt to place
history in a hierarchy either genetic or logical of forms of
experience. On the one side, it may be the case that, in the
development of a civilization, an interest in history has been
more primitive than (for example) an interest in science. But
that belongs to the history of history, which is not what I
wish to discuss. It is no part of my plan to indicate the place
occupied by history in 'the development of human ex-
perience '. Nor, on the other side, am I able to discover the
means by which the exact logical status of history as a form
of experience might be determined. And consequently that
also must lie outside my plan. \My intentjon, precisely, is
to consider the character of history in "order to determine
whether be experience itself in its concrete totality or an
it
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE 87
the religious man science by the scientist, art by the artist and
;
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE 89
a '
miracle ' any of the gospels cannot remain
for the writer of
a miracle for the historian. History, like every other form
of experience, must make its material as well as determine
its method, for the two are inseparable. If, then, we conceive
the view that history is concerned with what is merely sue- -^ t4~^
cessive breaks down. What was taken for a mere series has ] t-i^f'O/^ )
thought that there was at least one kind of history which was
not "reflective". Historians such as Herodotus and Thucy-
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE 93
94 HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE
is something less than a form of experience, to
that recalling
suppose that we can recall anything but ideas. (To recall is
not merely to lay side by side in present consciousness rigid
particles of past event, it is to organize our present conscious-
ness, it is to think, to judge, to construct./ But even were it
possible to find a world of merely recalled, exhumed events,
it would not be a world satisfactory to the historian.
For it
is impossible to suppose that would be free from internal
it
this '
what has come to us ' separated from our interpretation
'
w.^^
i\j
^.
'
, all we have seen, a world of ideas, and |he
experience is,
98 HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE
character of history suffered from a radical defect. It neglected
to urge the necessity of\examining the iiypotheggs of the
historian, the given world of ideas in terms of which the
materials were xjnd,erstood, and into which new discoveries
were incorporated. And it failed to recognize the necessity
of transforming the hypotheses of the historian to meet new
demands. But, not to have examined system of
its initial
they presented, but that this past was not an historical past.
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE 105
that if he slips, the past does not fall, iln short, the past
for history is what really happened
'
and until the historian
'
;
that past and for its own sake. Nevertheless, this view of the
historical past cannot, I think, be maintained unmodified. It
is what the historian is accustomed to believe, and it is difficult
events' sundered from 'our knowledge of it', we are back ^<2 ^^^
again with the view of history which makes it something ~%^-^
other than experience. For what is sundered from present r
experience is sundered from experience altogether. A fixed -Yr^ .
"
and finished past, a past divorced from and uninfluenced by -^^S^
the present, is a past divorced from evidence (for evidence is /
of experience in the form of the past and of the past for its
own sake. The historical past does not stand over against
the present world of experience, as a separate tract of ex-
perience ; on the contrary, it is a special organization of that
world, it is the organization of the totality of experience
suh specie praeteritorum. The historical past is always present;
and yet historical experience is always in the form of the past.
our belief, and to enter this world means, in every case, to '-""
.a
"A past judgment holds not because it was once made, nor
merely because it is not in actual conflict with our present.
It holds because, and so far as, we assume identity between
our present and our past, and because, and so far as, our past
judgment was made from the basis and on the principle
which stands at present. An assumption of the same kind,
I may add, is all that justifies our belief in testimony, and,
so far as you cannot infer in the witness a mental state
essentially one with your own, his evidence for you has no
logical worth." Thirdly, the real ground of our beliefs is
I
are not authoritative only because they are never the whole
ground of belief, because they are abstractions. Nor should
they be thought of as part of the ground of our historical
beliefs, for aground can have no parts. These 'authorities'
come to us from the past, written records, traditions, eye-
witness's accounts and the like; and in so far as they retain
their character as past, they remain strictly outside experience.
They may be in some sense original, they are certainly
necessary for history, but they are not, as they stand and by
themselves, authoritative. They are abstractions which, taken
by themselves, have no independent existence, and taken in
their place in theworld of experience must submit to criticism
and suffer transformation. The ground, the authority of a
belief in an historical event, is neither that it is recorded by
an historian, nor that it is asserted by a contemporary, nor
that it is attested by an eyewitness, but is an independent
judgment we make, based upon and guaranteed by our entire
world of experience, about the capacity of the event to
enhance or decrease the coherence of our world of experience
as a whole. The grounds of our historical belief are not two
conformity with our own experience and the testimony of
others' experience
they are our single world of experience
taken as a whole. Historical truth is certainly not independent
of evidence; but evidence is not something, coming to us
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE iij
Creighton, "is the good of evil." But the principle that nothing in
the world of history is non-contributory (or, if we choose to speak
the language of morality, evil) is not a "lesson of history", it is a
presupposition of historical thought. And this affords one more
example of the confusion which exists with regard to the presupposi-
tions of historical thinking. It is impossible to get more out of
history than has been put into it and if you learn from it the good
;
of evil, it means that you have built your world of events on that
principle.
' Bury, Selected Essays, p. 38.
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE 131
Visigoths
a new barbarian people
as a unit inside his
borders. The fact that he died at the age of fifty was 'a third
contingency', for had he lived longer his great ability might
' Bury, Later Roman Empire (1923), i, 311.
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE 135
with '
providence ' or a '
plan '
; it replaces accident with the
actual course of events which the evidence establishes.
For these reasons, then, I take it that the attempt to
establish historical explanation as explanation in terms of
cause and effect and of the conflux of coincidences must be
held to have failed. It is both self-contradictory and con-
tradictory of the postulated character of the historical past.
Nevertheless, it cannot be considered a wholly worthless
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE 141
not merely to recount it. And secondly, while many of the problems '
^
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE 145
3
My purpose, I have said, is to consider historical experience
from the standpoint of the totality of experience, to consider
(that is) History is the whole of reality
the truth of history.
from a and not a separable part of reality.
certain standpoint,
Historical thought belongs to the attempt to find a world
of experience satisfactory in itself, and history cannot be
dismissed as a "tissue of mere conjunctions". The under-
taking of Schopenhauer and others to thrust history outside
experience must be considered to have failed. The world of
historical fact is certainly true and history is certainly reality,
so far as it goes. But, beyond this general character, historical
experience is a specific, homogeneous world of experience,
an organized whole, and the problem of the character of this
world of historical ideas, taken by itself and as a self-contained
whole, remains. Is the world of historical ideas, taken as a
whole and by itself, satisfactory, or must a means be discovered
of superseding it in order to achieve what the character of
experience implies? Is the world of history the world of
concrete reality, or is it an arrest in experience? For we have
seen, whatever be the character of the world of historical
experience, it must be accepted or rejected as a whole. Either
it is, when taken as a world and by itself, abstract, defective,
have seen, is real so long as it is not taken for less than it is.
But mere designation is a mode of thought which consistently
takes everything for less than it is it is abstraction as a special
;
/^^
/ And consequently there is nothing in history which can be
supposed to provide what is ultimately satisfactory in ex-
Kj pprience.
V -jjP Historical experience, I conclude, is a modification of
^S .^' if we have been unable to avoid it, we can regain the path
experience is view
to distinguish individuality; but for this
there are modes of experience which are wholly without
a notion of individuality; the generalities of scientific
thought are not a modified form of individuality, they are
the mere denial of individuality. For me the only absolute
individual is the universe as a whole, for this alone is self-
4
From this review of the categories of historical thought and
the character of the world of historical experience, I will pass
now to consider briefly the relation of this world, as a world,
to other worlds of experience. In so far as these other worlds
are what I have called abstract, they are (of course) in no
sense whatever related to the world of history, and there can
be no passage from one to the other in argument without
is a principle I have already discussed.
ignoratio elenchi; that
Whenever they attempt an incursion into the world of
history, the result can be only the destruction of history;
and whenever history invades any other world of experience,
the result is always the general disintegration of experience.
Nevertheless, it is important to see what worlds of experience
are thus excluded from history and why in detail they are
excluded. Andwhat I have to say on this topic I shall
in
confine my attention to two worlds of experience which have,
on occasion, been confused with that of history, but which,
since they are different modifications of experience from
that of history, must be taken to fall outside the world of his-
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE 157
have contended that from neither can any thing but error arise.
The notion, however, is common that the aim in historical
thought is the elucidation of the world of practical experience.
"The understanding of the present is always the final goal
of history. History is just the whole life experience of our
race, in so far as we are able to remember it well and apply
it closely to our present existence." ^ The goal in history is,
in short, the elucidation of our world of practical ideas, the
organization of our present practical life. Two connected
notions appear to be involved in this view of the character
of history, and both of them I take to be false. First, it
is implied that "our present existence" can be isolated in
ideas, impossible.
The between history and science has appeared to
relation
some writers to be a matter merely of words. Freeman, for
example, takes this view. History is certainly knowledge;
'science' is merely Latin for the Teutonic 'knowledge';
therefore history is a science. ^ But since on this view all
knowledge whatever is also science, it cannot be considered
to have greatly extended our ideas on the subject. Few will
deny that history is knowledge; but the question for us
is, Does history belong to that subspecies of knowledge
in Anthropology.
There are not many points upon which anthropologists are
unanimous, but there seems to be tolerable agreement upon
the propositions that anthropology is an historical study, that
it is a science, and that "it is a science in whatever way
history is a science". And we may be excused for supposing
that some explanation beyond these assertions is required
before an intelligible world of ideas is even in sight.
Anthropology is
an historical study this is certainly in-
telligible. The men it is concerned with are historical persons,
* The
scientific or biological conception of evolution must, of
course, be distinguished from the historical (or pseudo-historical)
conception. To speak of the Darwinian theory as an invasion of
science by the historical method, the introduction of an historical '
What reforms
a full realization of the historical character
of anthropology (and the consequent rejection of the view
that it is a science) would produce in this study need not now
1
The purpose of this chapter is to consider the nature of
scientific experience from the standpoint of the totaUty of
experience. The world of science, I take it, is a world of
experience, and is consequently the world of reality. In all
experience, we have seen, there is an assertion of reality. And
we have seen also that no experience is a mere part or
department of the real world reality has no parts in this
;
C-^ are bound to this world what we are seeking must elude us.
'
vCScience may be said to begin only when the world of per-
^ ^ ceptible things has been left on one side, only when observa-
<^ ^ tion in terms of personal perception and sensation has been
^^ superseded!) For, although the attempt to discover a world
of absolutely stable experience must be considered to have
begun long before this decision is taken to abandon the world
of perception, it is only in virtue of this decision that scientific
" '
Natural history implies a modification of history which ends
'
in its destruction.
;
also from
The world
this extraneous practical interest.
of scientific experience is, then, created by a
^ -rfixjL,
uoc>"^<^
transformation of our familiar world in science there ; is no at-
tempt to elucidate the character of this world of perception in
which we live, what is attempted is the elucidation of a world
of absolutely stable experience And it is one of the signs of the
.
v^ '
v^ What is called (oddly enough) the 'subjective element' in
scientific knowledge is admitted, and the world is again
xp v
I
I have not distinguished between 'explanation' and 'descrip-
tion' because I believe them to be, in the end, indistinguishable.
And when we come to consider the matter of science, these words
will appear equally misleading.
178 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE
the reasons at all obscure why there remain sciences which
fall short of the condition of physics. Not only is it
3
I pass now from the method of science to the matter of
scientific knowledge. Science is distinguished, in this aspect,
by what it studies. And this I will call Nature. The word
*
nature has, of course, a variety of meanings and
' many associa-
tions, but if I am to adhere to the view I have already recom-
mended of the general character of scientific experience, I
state which appears to contradict this view of its character. But that,
in the main, arises from the fact that the present world of science
is imperfectly scientific. For example, if we were to believe what some
which has been applied and misapplied to many different ends, both
in science and out of it. But since the so-called evolutionary theories
of philosophy and history have nothing in common with the bio-
logical theory of evolution but a name, and since to argue from the
establishment of some kind of scientific law of evolution that the
'
'
appearance.
194 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE
mean the matter in scientific experience), or they are without
any direct or recognizable relation (if by nature we mean '
'
^ Future
'
' is here taken to mean something more than '
hitherto
unobserved '.
SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE 201
4
I come now to consider the logical structure of the world of
scientific experience, and hence its validity and the degree
of truth attributable to it. I do not, of course, think this
no contradiction or disagreement.
Nor, again, is it true to attribute to science inference in
the form of an argument from 'some' (or 'many') to 'all'.
There is, of course, no valid inference from some to all' ' ' '
generalization.
The fourth head under which I proposed to consider the
logical structure of scientific thinking was its alleged sup-
positional or hypothetical character. The question here is not
whether or not in scientific experience we begin with an
hypothesis, but whether or not scientific generalizations are
themselves hypothetical. In one sense, of course, it is clear
enough that any form of experience which begins with an
hypothesis can end in nothing more categorical than that
hypothesis amplified, unless it could be shown that it is the
only possible hypothesis. But scientific thought, by stating
its conclusions in terms of a probability, is able to surmount
of scientific experience.
212 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE
A (if A be supposed to be observed) will be x \ And secondly,
we must maintain the distinction between the hypotheses
with which in scientific experience we sometimes begin, and
the hypothetical generalizations with which science always
ends. It has been said that all supposal is ideal experiment,
the application of a particular idea to the world of scientific
ideas in order to observe the result. And, in a sense, this
appears true both of the hypotheses in science and of
initial
5
Let us consider the position we have reached. Scientific
judgment, like all judgment, is an assertion of reality. The
world of science is not a separable part of reality; it is the
whole of reality. And it demands to be judged as this,
SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE 213
rather than the original facts, are the raw material of philo-
sophy". And the results of scientific enquiry are spoken of
as "the anatomy of philosophy". But I trust it will require
no fresh argument on my part to show the absurdity of these
views. Where 'philosophy' stands for merely "the most
general synthesis of the special sciences", these propositions
are either false or tautologous. And a 'philosophy' such as
this (which I am unable to distinguish from science itself),
since it is something radically different from experience with-
out presupposition or arrest, is not what I have been con-
sidering. Why thought should be doomed to the fruitless
task of synthesising its own indiscretions; in what sense
knowledge can be said to depend upon what is seen to be a
deficient sub-species of itself; how thinking can hope to con-
struct a coherent world of ideas when it is obliged, not merely
to consider, but to adopt in toto, as a datum not to be changed,
a world of experience which is limited and defective from
end to end; and how a mere encyclopaedia of the sciences
can, as such, be conceived to be the same as, or to take the
place of, a critical examination of scientific experience are
SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE 219
6
What remains of this chapter I shall devote to a brief con-
sideration of those sciences which fall outside the so-called
'natural sciences', to the scientific study of man and of
society. be brief because I am not so much concerned
I shall
I
"If metaphysics is not to work with the data of the natural as
well as the philosophical sciences, subject, of course, to logical and
epistemological criticism, what is it to work with?" enquires a
scientific writer. And from another scientist we have the suggestion
that "the philosopher of the future may well be the historian of
science".
220 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE
new problems. In a sense, however, what I have now to
say will, I hope, result in the further determination of the
character of scientific experience, for it will emphasise the
view that science is one and that the so-called special sciences
are separated from one another neither on account of special
methods nor on account of special subject-matters, but
merely fortuitously and on account of present imperfections
in the elucidation of the world of scientific experience. And
I shall confine what I have to say on this topic to a considera-
it has freed itself also from what changes and from what is
'
Man man of any sort, is not an appropriate subject-matter
', a
for any science and economics has now come to conceive its
;
'
Or perhaps, more generally, the phenomena of scarcity in rela-
tion to demand.
SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE 231
7
The misconceptions which surround the character of psycho-
logy are numerous. A psychological analysis is believed to
be the high-road to unconditional truth, and a psychological
explanation is believed to be the last refinement of human
intelligence. An historian who is no psychologist stands
self-condemned, and a philosophy not founded upon the
deliverances of psychology requires no other evidence of its
futility. Along with these extravagant claims for psychology
has gone, however, a determined attempt to place it among
ternal '
world ; it is the attempt to elucidate the world under
the category of quantity, and it is this because it is the pursuit
of a world of experience above all else stable and com-
municable. psychology is to be a science
Consequently, if
concepts.
There are, however, other views about the relationship of
psychology and physiology. It is suggested that psychology
may be conceived as beginning with physiology and passing
beyond it. Psychological conceptions are gradually intro-
duced to eke out the shortcomings of the mechanical inter-
pretation which belongs to physiology. We begin with
mechanism, with physiology, and we end with mind, with
psychology. But it will be seen that this view, like the other
views, suffers from its reliance upon a distinction between
mind and matter which is irrelevant and misconceived, and
suffers also from the presupposition that what is 'mental'
cannot be conceived mechanically or quantitatively.
Or, again, psychology is taken for a kind of developed and
extended physiology it is the science, not of separate organs
;
8
The conclusions of this chapter which I take to be important
are, briefly, (i) that scientific experience is a single, specific
mode of experience, distinguished by a single method and
a single subject-matter, and the world of scientific ideas is
a single, homogeneous (but fortuitously divided) whole:
(ii) that scientific experience is defective experience, it is a
mode of experience which falls short of the totality of ex-
perience, and scientific knowledge is abstract, conditional,
incomplete, self-contained but not self-sufficient and : (iii) that
the characteristic of this modification of experience, in virtue
of which it must be considered incomplete, is its attempt
coherently to conceive the world, under the category of
quantity ; the explicit purpose in science is the elucidation of
a world of absolutely communicable experience. The second
and third (the more important) of these conclusions I have
2
The notion I am to defend that practical activity is a de-
fective mode of experience, an abstract world of ideas
implies, of course, the wider view that practice a world
is
but also the contrary contention that history (so far from
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE 251
mere opinions, what one asserts the other never denies. Yet
not only does this view of practical experience assert the
possibility of a difference of opinion, but it is obliged to
assert it. A
'mere opinion', in this sense, must fall outside
possible experience. Everywhere there is the possibility of
contradictory opinions, and where these are possible we
have left behind a collection of mere opinions and have, at
least, entered a world of opinions. Now, it is not denied that
3
The general character of practical activity (we have found)
compels us to accept it as a world of experience, and to
accept the world of practice as a determinate world of know-
ledge. Practical life (whatever it achieves or fails to achieve)
is an attempt to make coherent our world of experience as a
whole. Our business now is with the particular character of
practical experience which distinguishes it from other worlds
of experience. Our business is no longer with the implicit
character of practice as experience; but with its explicit
character as a determinate degree of experience. And I pro-
pose to offer a view of practice which, in spite of its defects,
has, I believe, something to be said in its favour. To present
it fully will require some space, but here (as elsewhere) what
And this is true not only when practice takes the form of
explicit change, but also when it appears to be confined to
the maintenance of 'what is'; because, in fact, practice is
strictly never so confined. Such maintenance is undertaken
always and only in the face of threatened or proposed change,
and this threat or proposal belongs no less to the situation,
to 'what is', than the existence which it is desired to main-
tain. To maintain is always to change. There is here, as
everywhere in practical activity, an unrealized idea, an un-
258 PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
fulfilled desire, a 'to be' discrepant from 'what is'. And
always in practical activity this discrepancy is felt and es-
sential. Action, then, implies change, and involves a world
in which change is both possible and significant, a mortal
world.
This view of the character of practice may, perhaps, be
presented in another form and from a different standpoint.
In experience there is always the pursuit of a coherent world
of ideas. But in practical experience what is distinctive is
not the end pursued, but the means followed to achieve this
end. In practice a coherent world of experience is achieved
by means of action, by the introduction of actual change into
existence. And the aspect of mind involved is the will.
Practice is the exercise of the will; practical thought is
volition ;
practical experience is the world sub specie voluntatis.
The elementary misconceptions of the character of volition
which might stand in the way of our accepting the view that
practice is experience and, at the same time, the world sub
specie voluntatis, need not at this stage be reconsidered.
Volition implies neither mere caprice, nor the exercise of an
isolated faculty; is a form of experience. And, in virtue
it
of the real world. But beyond this, there are to be found among
those who maintain the view we are considering, or any view
which brings together practice and volition, some who assert
concerned in all judgments whatsoever,
that, since the will is
it follows that all judgments are practical. It is contended
that by associating practice and volition we destroy practical
experience as a determinate form of experience. All ex-
perience, it presupposes and involves volition and
is said,
therefore all experience is practical. But it will be readily
observed that this line of argument is preposterous. To con-
clude that what is common to all judgments, for that reason,
constitutes the differentia of judgment, or to argue that what
is always present is, for that reason, constitutive, involves us
in some gross, if elementary, fallacies. Because volition is
but, in some sense, more coherent than 'what is'. And since,
in practice, coherence is conceived in terms of value, the
'to be' of practical experience is not merely that which is
'
to be ', but also that which it is believed is valuable or ought'
4
We have seen generally that practice is the alteration of
practical existence so as to agree with an idea of what ought
to be, it is the world sub specie voluntatis; and our business
now is to determine more precisely the character and content
of 'practical existence', this world of ideas presupposed
in activity.
be remembered that in considering the nature of
It will
scientific historical experience we discovered that each
and
was a mode of experience in which a world, or an existence
of a certain character was presupposed. Each, we found, was
confined within a world of conceptions which was neither
criticised nor modified. And in practical experience also a
world, or existence of a certain character is presupposed.
It would, of course, be a mistake to think of this presupposed
world as itself independent of and entirely unqualified by
practical activity. Practical activity and its world of presup-
positions (like science and its world of presuppositions) are
inseparable they constitute a single world of ideas. And in
;
world.
Now, the view that the truth or falsehood of an idea lies
in the consequences which follow from it has frequently
been held, not merely in respect of practical truth, but of all
truth. And those who have undertaken to defend it as a
general view of the character of truth have chosen the name
of Pragmatists. But in this wider aspect it does not concern
us here. At present we are considering neither the view that
the universal criterion of the truth of an idea lies in its con-
sequences, nor the view that the universal criterion of all
ideas lies in their practical consequences, but the view that
held. The view is, briefly, that the criterion of the truth or
falsehood of a practical idea lies not in the self-evidence of
the idea nor in any intuitive certainty or doubt we
itself,
' Here again, of course, there is mere designation and not defini-
tion. We have seen already that the will is certainly not isolated and
that the self as will cannot be a merely separate self.
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE zTi
one does not require to have been a close reader of the poets
in order to have become aware of its truth. Mortality, I take
it, is the central fact of practical existence ; death is the central
fact of life. I do not, of course, mean merely human mortality,
the fact that we must one day cease to be; I mean the far
more devastating mortality of every element of practical
existence, the mortality of pleasures and pains, desires,
achievements, emotions and affections. Mortality is the pre-
siding category in practical experience. Some have gone
further and have seen this as a fatal defect in life, as a poison
polluting and making it insufferable; and perhaps this
life
5
We have seen that the be in practical judgment is always
'
to '
of value.
From the standpoint of the world of practical fact, then,
the world of value is what ought to be '. But this standpoint
'
not exist at all.^ And this view must be met before going
further. From the standpoint of the present argument it is
enough to say that, since it involves the separation of 'what
ought to be' from 'what is valuable', it must be dismissed
as untenable. What is valuable is, certainly, sometimes con-
sidered to exist; and if what is valuable is what ought to be,
what ought to be cannot mean merely that which does not
exist. But, from a wider standpoint also, the notion breaks
down. The idea of the merely non-existent is one to which no
meaning can be attached; it can enter experience only as an
idea of a mode of being, as "existence after a fashion ". This
I have discussed already. And any attempt to define (or
designate) a mode of thought, such as that implied in the
judgment, 'This ought to be', in terms of the bare and
absolute not-being of the 'this', involves the contradiction
of a this which nevertheless in no sense exists, of something
'
'
which both is and is not. I take it, then, that ought to be does ' '
not and cannot mean merely what does not in any sense exist.
The first observation to be made in considering the
character of the existence involved in the judgment, This '
that 'This is valuable' and that 'This is here and now', are
never identical. And it is, on the whole, more urgent that
we should observe this distinction between our judgments
of value and our judgments of practical existence, than that
we should insist upon the apparent identity of the subject
referred to in those judgments. What is important is that no
attempt should be made to substitute a judgment of practical
fact for a judgment of value, or a judgment of value for one
of practical fact.
In separating what ought to be as such from what is here
'
'
'
from one mode of being, but not from all modes of being. The
view has, indeed, been suggested that every attempt to define
the notion of ought to be in terms of any mode or concep-
'
'
6
The presuppositions of practice are before us. I have con-
sidered the world of practical fact which activity presupposes.
And I have undertaken, with considerable misgiving, an
may and does differ in detail and content from the given
world of practical fact, is a world of the same kind of fact
and this general character remains always unchanged.
(ii) That which practical activity attempts to realize is not
What is not finally true can neither guide nor console and what ;
7
I have now set out my view of the character of practice as
clearly as I can. Practical experience is the most familiar
reality
a life directed by an idea of fact, of system and of
coherence. The practical life is neither a mere miscellany of
disconnected desires, random hopes, and casual actions, nor
is it confined to the attempt to satisfy vulgar ambitions. The
' This may appear a hard saying; but it would be going out of
my way to attempt to amplify it here. Instead, I will put this
passage from Rilke. "Art is childhood. Art means not to know
that the world already exists, and to make a world not destroying :
taken for inherent chaos), but from the terms in which the
attempt in practice to achieve what is ultimately satisfactory
in experience is conceived and executed. Practice is the
and in practical fact, of 'what is here
reconciliation, in detail
and now and what ought to be it is this and all that it pre-
'
'
'
;
' " Generally speaking, the errors of religion are dangerous those ;
it, has claimed more. It has claimed that its truths are not
merely practical, but belong to the world of concrete truth.
But, were this so, their practical value would at once dis-
appear. And the business of establishing both the practical
and the ultimate truth of religious ideas is a task which any
one who is aware of the conflict involved is not likely to
undertake. If religion has anything to do with the conduct
of life,
then the ideas of religion ideas such as those of
deity, of salvation
and of immortality are practical ideas and
belong to the world of practice. And an idea which serves
thisworld can serve no other. So far from it being the case
3IO PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
that nothing less than ultimate, concrete truth will serve the
purpose of religion, those who have any conception of what
they mean by such truth know well enough that where it is
not irrelevant to religion it must be inimical.
My conclusion , then , is that the world of practical experience
turns out on consideration to be abstract and defective through-
out. The pursuit of coherence must lead us further from,
in it
8
It will not be necessary for me to consider in detail the rela-
tionship of the world of practical experience with the two
other worlds of abstract ideas the characters of which I have
of life ' is produced when they are connected with the world
of practical experience.
Now, the grounds of the confusion which attributes to
science the capacity to organize our world of practical ex-
perience lie equally, I think, in a false conception of science
and in a false conception of practical experience. For example,
the conception of science and the scientific method which
takes it to be the only gateway to a true knowledge of the
universe has been made the foundation of the view that the
world of practical experience can be made coherent only with
the aid of scientific thought. But this view is false both in
what it asserts and in what it implies. For we have seen
already that we grossly misrepresent the character of scien-
tific thinking when we
it to be the only gateway to a
take
knowledge of the universe. The world of scientific experience
is a world of abstract ideas; and scientific experience is a
not unlikely that some of our ideas about morality and religion
would require revision were we Those
to take it seriously.
who have undertaken and grounds of
to consider the nature
our moral judgments have long ago faced this problem of
the relationship between the scientific and the moral world,
and with what success it is not for me to say. But those
responsible for our theological thought have not, I think,
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE 315
9
It may, perhaps, be thought that I have reached my con-
clusions in this chapter without taking sufficient account of
other and contradictory views. I am aware, of course, that
I have recommended,
there are views different from that which
but a detailed account of what I have thought about them
would be out of place here, where I am concerned to state
a view of my own rather than to give an account of what
others have thought. And besides, a theory cannot satis-
factorily be maintained merely by disposing of certain objec-
tions to it and I have thought it necessary to discuss objections
;
and have set their beUef in the finahty of the will over against
w^hat they call 'mere intellectuaUsm'. A rationalism of this
sort, it is true, is an abstract mode of experience. Indeed,
there is little or nothing to be said in its favour. Where it is
not a confusion of scientific, historical and practical thought,
it will be found to be an attempt to replace science, history
practical truth, that all thought is for the sake of action, and
that the real world is the world sub specie voluntatis. And
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE 319
he was not the first, nor will he be the last to commit this
ignoratio elenchi. It is committed daily not only in the name
of common-sense, but also in the names of religion and
morality. Indeed, it is still true that "there is no method of
reasoning more common, and
yet none more blameable, than,
in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any
hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to
religion and morality ".^ Nevertheless, it is meaningless alike
either to accept or to reject a philosophical proposition for
a practical reason.
But what I have to upon is, equally, the necessity
insist
of keeping philosophy unencumbered with the mood and
postulates of practical experience, and the necessity of a
world of practical experience without the interference of
philosophy. In its explicit character, practice is the tireless
pursuit of a more satisfying way of life and in serving this ;
sighted, not those who are fashioned for thought and the
' Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, viii.
PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE 321
ideas, then, on the one side, such modes depend for their
existence upon the totality from which they are abstracted,
severed from the concrete whole they are meaningless; and
on the other side, the concrete whole, as a whole, must,
where it recognizes such modes, supersede them, for as
modes they serve, not to fill out the totality, but merely to
disrupt it.
every mode
there is something present in different degrees, they
must in virtue of that sameness at least be relevant to one another
and to the whole.' Yes; all this is true, and I have said it myself.
But what remains is a bare abstract universal, experience in its pure
generality. When, for example, the modality of history and of
science has been superseded, there remains nothing to distinguish
the one from the other; and so long as there is anything to dis-
tinguish the one from the other, there is failure, modality and
mutual exclusion.
330 CONCLUSION
appears, and appears only when what is asserted in a mode
is beyond the mode, is asserted absolutely and
asserted also
without qualification. All this we have noticed already. But
what we have now to notice is that this actual error is, in
fact, unavoidable so long as the modes remain. It is one thing
to say that // a mode does not put itself in competition with
the concrete totality it is sovereign and unassailable; but it
2
I have nowhere pretended that the whole actual or possible
modification of experience is confined to the three modes
an arrest in experience.
Now, it is not my intention here to consider fully all
engage upon the other pursuit, the attempt to see the world
of practice from the standpoint of the totality of experience,
it will be a matter of complete indifference to us what in
philosophy
it must abandon, in short, what is strong and
this force. Not only, then, is the view false that the world
of moral concepts is absolute (nothing is absolute save what
is complete and we have seen already that the moral world
3
Experience, having superseded, put behind itself or merely
avoided whatever is abstract and incomplete, having freed
itself from whatever is seen to hinder the full realization of
its character,becomes philosophical experience. And I wish,
in conclusion, to consider briefly some further implica-
tions of this view of the character of experience and of
philosophy.
The view that philosophical experience is concrete ex-
perience, and that complete experience is philosophical does
not, of course, involve the belief that everything which sets
an impossibility.
Furthermore, it is implied in this view of the character of
philosophical experience that to philosophy place and time
are irrelevant. It is often said that no philosophy can escape
from its place and time, and that if we are to understand a
philosophy we must go to the biography of its author, we
must see it in its setting. Now, it is of course true that every
philosophy has, in this sense, a place and a time, a setting;
but the admission of this truth does not make relevant an
appeal to this aspect of its character. It has a place and a date,
but these are irrelevant to it as a philosophy. To consider a
philosophy with reference to its place and its time is to con-
sider it from a standpoint unknown in philosophy itself.
What we must ask about a philosophy is. Can it maintain
what it asserts? and its setting will certainly not help
us to answer this question. The fact that a philosophy
emanates from Oxford, or that it belongs to the nineteenth
century is no relevant ground for accepting, or indeed, for
rejecting it. From the standpoint of the totality of ex-
perience, all we want to know about a philosophy is whether
we can accept it or not, whether or not it is valid. Place
and time are, indeed, as irrelevant to a philosophical theory
as they are to a scientific observation. Each scientific obser-
vation has, of course, a date and a place, but these are not
relevant to its scientific character. As a specifically scien-
tific observation it has neither date nor place. And a reference
to date or place in scientific argument just one more is
or referee. And this also is true, but not the whole truth. For
here again, philosophical experience derives its capacity to
hold the ring from its completeness. Its function as critic
the field and the battle, the strength and what remains un-
defeated in every combatant, the promise and the criterion
of victory. And finally, the view of philosophy as self-
conscious experience, as experience turned back upon itself,
must be considered a view of this kind also. Without being
wholly false, it falls short of the complete truth. Philosophy
is self-conscious experience. But it is this because it is more
.
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