by supposing it to be one object of one mind, or realistically by supposing it to be one thing distinct from the many minds which think about it. The former alternative is false, the latter true. Personal idealism, therefore, must end in personal realism.
7.—Realism
1. Metaphysical and Psychological Realism.—Realism is the view that some known things are bodily, and some are mental. At its best, it is the Aristotelian view that both are substances. The modern misunderstanding of “substance” has been a main cause of the confusion of modern thought. Aristotle meant by it any distinct thing; e.g. I, you, an animal, a plant, the earth, the moon, the sun, God. He calls each of these, as existing apart, a thing per se (καθ’ αὑτό). It is true that, having divided a natural substance into form and matter, he called each element “substance.” But these are not primary meanings; and matter, or supposed substratum, in particular, he says, is not actually substance (Met. Ζ 3) or is only potentially substance (Met. Η 1–2). In modern times, Spinoza, by a mere mistake, changed the meaning of “substance” from “existing apart” to “existing alone,” and consistently concluded that there is only one. Locke mistook it to mean “substratum,” or support of qualities, and naturally concluded that it is unknown. Kant, taking it in the mistaken meaning of Locke, converted it into the a priori category of the permanent substrate beneath the changes of phenomena, and even went so far as to separate it from the thing in itself, as substantia phenomenon from noumenon. When it had thus lost every vestige of its true meaning, Kant’s successors naturally began to speak of things as being distinct without being substances. Fichte began this by saying that ego is activity, and being is life. Hegel said that spirit is not substance but subject, which to Aristotle would have meant that it is not a distinct thing, yet is a distinct thing. Fechner, Wundt and Paulsen have fixed the conclusion in psychology that soul is not substance but unity of mental life; and Wundt concludes from the modern history of the term that substance or “substrate” is only a secondary conception to that of causality, and that, while there is a physical causality distinct from that of substance, psychical causality requires no substance at all.
The result of this confusion is that the moderns have no name at all for a distinct thing, and, being mere slaves of abstract terms, constantly speak of mere attributes, such as activity, life, will, actuality, unity of mental operations, as if they were distinct things. But an attribute, though real, is not a distinct reality, but only a determinant of a substance, and has no being of its own apart from the substance so determined; whereas a substance, determined by all its attributes, is different from everything else in the world. Though, for simplicity and universality of thought, even in science, we must use the abstraction of attributes, and, by the necessity and weakness of language, must signify what are not substances by nouns substantive, we must guard against the over-abstraction of believing that a thing exists as we abstract it. The point of true realism is Aristotle’s point that the world consists of such distinct, though related, things, and therefore of substances, natural and supernatural. Again, the method of true realism is that of Aristotle, and consists in recognizing the independence of metaphysics. The contrary method is psychological metaphysics, which makes metaphysics dependent on psychology, on the ground that the origin of knowledge determines its limits. This is the method which, as we have seen, has led from psychological to metaphysical idealism, by the argument that what we begin by perceiving is mental, and, therefore, what we end by knowing is mental. Now, there is no principle of method superior to that of Aristotle—we must begin with what is known to us. The things best known to man are the things which he now knows as a man. About these known things there is some agreement: about the beginnings of knowledge there is nothing but controversy. We do not know enough about the origin of knowledge to determine its limits. Hence, to proceed from psychology to metaphysics is to proceed from the less to the more known; and the paradoxes of psychological have caused those of metaphysical idealism.
The realist, then, ought to begin with metaphysics without psychological prejudices. He must ask what are known things, and especially what has been discovered in the sciences; in mechanics, in order to find the essence of bodies which is neglected by idealism; in mental science, in order to understand consciousness which is neglected by materialism. With the conviction that the only fair way of describing metaphysics has been to avoid putting forward one system, and even to pay most attention to the dominant idealism, we have nevertheless been driven occasionally to test opinions by this independent metaphysical method. The chief results we have found against idealism are that bodies have not been successfully analysed except into bodies, as real matter; and that bodies are known to exert reciprocal pressure in reducing one another to a joint mass with a common velocity by being mutually impenetrable, as real forces. The chief results we have found against materialism are that bodies evolving account neither for the origin of themselves, their nature, and their fundamental order of resemblance and difference, nor for the nature and origin of consciousness, nor even as yet for their becoming good for conscious beings. Hence we come to the realistic conclusions that among known substances some are bodies, others are souls; that man is body and soul; and that God is a pure soul or spirit. At the same time, while the independence of metaphysics leads us to metaphysical realism, this is not to deny the value of psychology, still less of logic. Besides the duty of determining what we know, there is the duty of determining how we know it. But in order to discharge it, a reform of psychology as well as of metaphysics is required. Two psychological errors, among many others, constantly meet us in the history of idealism—the arbitrary hypothesis of a sense of sensations, or of ideas, and the intolerable neglect of logical inference. Logical inference from sense is a process from sensible to insensible existence. The former error needs something deeper than a Kantian critique of reason, or an Avenarian criticism of experience; it needs a criticism of the senses. We want an answer to this question—What must we know by the senses in order to enable us to know what we infer by reason in the sciences? Without here aiming at exhaustiveness, we may bring forward against the dominant idealism a psychological theory of sense and reason. By touch I perceive one bodily member reciprocally pressing another in myself, e.g. lip pressing lip; by touch again I perceive one bodily member similarly pressing but not another member in myself, e.g. only one lip pressing; by inference from touch I infer that it is reciprocally pressing another body similar to my other bodily member, i.e. another body similar to my other lip. On this theory, then, founded on the conscious facts of double and single pressure in touch, and on the logic of inference, we have at once a reason for our knowledge of external bodies, and an explanation of the early appearance of that knowledge. The child has only to have its mother’s nipple in its mouth in order to infer something very like the mutually pressing parts of its own mouth. Having thus begun by touch and tactile inference, we confirm and extend our inferences of bodies in Nature by using the rest of the senses. This is not to forget that the five senses are not our whole stock or to confine inference to body. We have also the inner sense of consciousness which is inexplicable by body alone. By combining, moreover, our knowledge of Nature with our consciousness of our own works, we can infer that Nature is a work of God. Next, finding that He gives signs of bodily works, but no signs of bodily organs, we can infer that God is a Spirit. Finally, returning to ourselves, we can conclude that, while the conscious in God is Spirit without Body, in us it is spirit with body. This final distinction between bodily and spiritual substances we owe to Descartes.
2. The Undercurrent of Modern Realism.—Coming after the long domination of Aristotelian realism, Descartes and Locke, though psychological idealists, were metaphysical realists. Their position was so illogical that it was easily turned into metaphysical idealism. But their psychological method and
