Sex and Character/Part 2/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
LOGIC, ETHICS AND THE EGO
David Hume is well known to have abolished the conception of the ego by seeing in it only a bundle of different perceptions in continual ebb and flow. However completely Hume thought himself to have compromised the ego, at least he explained his view relatively moderately. He proposed to say nothing about a few metaphysicians who appeared to rejoice in another kind of ego; for himself he was quite certain that he had none, and he dared to suppose that the majority of mankind, leaving the few peculiar metaphysicians out of the question, were, like himself, mere bundles. So the polite man expressed himself. In the next chapter I shall show how his irony recoils on himself. That his view became so famous depends partly on the over-estimation in which Hume is held and which is largely due to Kant. Hume was a most distinguished empirical psychologist, but he cannot be regarded as a genius, the popular view notwithstanding. It is not very much to be the first of English philosophers, but Hume has not even a claim to that position. I do not think that Kant would have given so much praise to Hume if he had been fully acquainted with all Hume's work and not merely with the "Enquiry," as he certainly rejected the position of Spinoza, according to which men were not "substances," but merely accidents.
Lichtenberg, who took the field against the ego later than Hume, was still bolder. He is the philosopher of impersonality, and calmly corrects the conversational "I think" into an actual "it thinks"; he regards the ego as a creation of the grammarian. In this Hume had anticipated him, inasmuch as he also had declared, at the end of his analysis, all disputes as to the identity of the person to be merely a battle of words.
E. Mach has recently represented the universe as a coherent mass, and the egos as points in which the coherent mass has greater consistency. The only realities are the perceptions, which are connected in one individual strongly, but which are weaker in another individual who is thus differentiated from the first.
The contents of the perceptions are the realities, and they persist externally to the worthless personal recollections. The ego is not a real but only a practical entity and cannot be isolated, and, therefore, the idea of individual immortality must be rejected. None the less the idea of an ego is not wholly to be rejected; here and there, as, for instance, in Darwin's struggle for existence, it appears to have some validity.
It is extraordinary how an investigator who has accomplished so much, not only as a historian of his special branch and as a critic of ideas, but who is also fully equipped with knowledge of biology, should have paid no heed to the fact that every organic being is indivisible from the first, and is not composed of anything like atoms, monads, &c. The first distinctive mark of the living as opposed to inorganic matter is that the former is always differentiated into dissimilar, mutually dependent parts, and is not homogeneous like a crystal. And so it should have been borne in mind that it was at least possible that individuation, the fact that organic beings are not united, like Siamese twins, would prove to have importance in psychical matters, and the ego, therefore, was more than Mach's idea of it as a mere waiting-hall of perceptions.
It may be that there exists a psychical correlation even amongst animals. Everything that an animal feels and perceives has a different "note" or "colour" in every individual. This individual quality is not only characteristic of the class, genus, species, race, and family, but also is different in every individual of the same family, &c. The idioplasm is the physiological equivalent of this specific individual quality of the sensations and perceptions, and there are reasons analogous with those in favour of the supposition of an idioplasm for the supposition of an individual character amongst animals. The sportsman who has to do with dogs, the trainer with horses, and the keeper with animals will readily admit the existence of this individuality as a constant element. It is clear that we have to do here with something more than a mere rendezvous of perceptions.
But even if this psychical analogue of the idioplasm were proved to exist in the case of animals, it could not be ranked with the intelligible character, the existence of which in any living creature except man cannot be maintained. The intelligible character of men, their individuation, has the same relation to empirical character that memory has to the simple power of recognition. And finally we come to identity, by which the structure, form, law, and cosmos persist even through the change of contents. The considerations from which is drawn the proof of the existence in man of such a noumenal, trans-empirical subject must now be stated briefly. They come from logic and ethics.
Logic deals with the true significance of the principle of identity (also with that of contradiction; the exact relation of these two, and the various modes of stating it are controversial matters outside the present subject). The proposition A = A is axiomatic and self-evident. It is the primitive measure of truth for all other propositions; however much we may think over it we must return to this fundamental proposition. It is the principle of the distinction between truth and error; and he who regards it as meaningless tautology, as was the case with Hegel and many of the later empiricists (this being not the only surprising point of contact between two schools apparently so different) is right in a fashion, but has misunderstood the nature of the proposition. A = A, the principle of all truth, cannot itself be a special truth. He who finds the proposition of identity or that of non-identity meaningless does so by his own fault. He must have expected to find in these propositions special ideas, a source of positive knowledge. But they are not in themselves knowledge, separate acts of thought, but the common standard for all acts of thought. And so they cannot be compared with other acts of thought. The rule of the process of thought must be outside thought. The proposition of identity does not add to our knowledge; it does not increase but rather founds a kingdom. The proposition of identity is either meaningless or means everything. Upon what do the propositions of identity and of non-identity depend? The common view is that they are judgments. Sigwart, for instance, who has recently discussed the matter, puts it as follows: The two judgments A is B and A is not B cannot be true at the same time because the judgment "An unlearned man is learned" would involve a contradiction because the predicate "learned" is affirmed of a subject of which the judg- ment has been made implicitly that he is unlearned, so that in reality two judgments are made, X is learned and X is unlearned. The "psychologismus" of this method of argument is plain. It has recourse to a temporary judgment preceding the formation of the conception "unlearned man." The proposition, however, A is not A claims validity quite apart from the past, present, or future existence of other judgments. It depends on the conception "unlearned man." It makes the conception more certain by excluding contradictory instances.
This, then, gives us the true function of the principles of identity and non-identity. They are materials for conceptions.
This function concerns only logical conceptions, but not what have been called psychological conceptions. The conception is always represented psychologically by a generalisation; and this presentation in a certain fashion is included in the conception. The generalisation represents the conception psychologically, but is not identical with it. It can, so to speak, be richer (as when 1 think of a triangle) or it can be poorer (the conception of a lion contains more than my generalisation of lions). The logical conception is the plumb-line which the attention tries to follow; it is the goal and pole-star of the psychological generalisation.
Pure logical thought cannot occur in the case of men; it would be an attribute of deity. A human being must always think partly psychologically because he possesses not only reason but also senses, and his thought cannot free itself from temporal experiences but must remain bound by them. Logic, however, is the supreme standard by which the individual can test his own psychological ideas and those of others. When two men are discussing anything it is the conception and not the varying individual presentations of it that they aim at. The conception, then, is the standard of value for the individual presentations. The mode in which the psychological generalisation comes into existence is quite independent of the conception and has no significance in respect to it. The logical character which invests the conception with dignity and power is not derived from experience, for experience can give only vague and wavering generalisations. Absolute constancy and absolute coherence which cannot come from experience are the essence of the conception of that power concealed in the depths of the human mind whose handiwork we try hard but in vain to see in nature. Conceptions are the only true realities, and the conception is not in nature; it is the rule of the essence not of the actual existence.
When I enunciate the proposition A = A, the meaning of the proposition is not that a special individual A of experience or of thought is like itself. The judgment of identity does not depend on the existence of an A. It means only that if an A exists, or even if it does not exist, then A = A. Something is posited, the existence of A = A whether or no A itself exists. It cannot be the result of experience, as Mill supposed, for it is independent of the existence of A. But an existence has been posited; it is not the existence of the object; it must be the existence of the subject. The reality of the existence is not in the first A or the second A, but in the simultaneous identity of the two. And so the proposition A = A is no other than the proposition "I am."
From the psychological point of view, the real meaning of the proposition of identity is not so difficult to interpret. It is clear that to be able to say A = A, to establish the per- manence of the conception through the changes of ex- perience, there must be something unchangeable, and this can be only the subject. Were I part of the stream of change I could not verify that the A had remained unchanged, had remained itself. Were I part of the change, I could not recognise the change. Fichte was right when he stated that the existence of the ego was to be found concealed in pure logic, inasmuch as the ego is the condition of intelligible existence.
The logical axioms are the principle of all truth. These posit an existence towards which all cognition serves. Logic is a law which must be obeyed, and man realises himself only in so far as he is logical. He finds himself in cognition.
All error must be felt to be crime. And so man must not err. He must find the truth, and so he can find it. The duty of cognition involves the possibility of cognition, the freedom of thought, and the hope of ascertaining truth. In the fact that logic is the condition of the mind lies the proof that thought is free and can reach its goal.
I can treat ethics briefly and in another fashion, inas- much as what I have to say is founded on Kant's moral philosophy. The deepest, the intelligible, part of the nature of man is that part which does not take refuge in causality, but which chooses in freedom the good or the bad. This is manifest in consciousness of sin and in repentance. No one has attempted to explain these facts otherwise ; and no one allows himself to be persuaded that he must commit this or that act. In the shall there lies the possibility of the can. The causal determining factors, the lower motives that act upon him, he is fully aware of, but he remains conscious of an intelligible ego free to act in a different way from other egos.
Truth, purity, faithfulness, uprightness, with reference to oneself; these give the only conceivable ethics. Duty is only duty to oneself, duty of the empirical ego to the intelligible ego. These appear in the form of two imperatives that will always put to shame every kind of psycho logismus—the logical law and the moral law. The internal direction, the categorical imperatives of logic and morality which dominate all the codes of social utilitarianism are factors that no empiricism can explain. All empiricism and scepticism, positivism and relativism, instinctively feel that their principal difficulties lie in logic and ethics. And so perpetually renewed and fruitless efforts are made to explain this inward discipline empirically and psychologically.
Logic and ethics are fundamentally the same, they are no more than duty to oneself. They celebrate their union by the highest service of truth, which is overshadowed in the one case by error, in the other by untruth. All ethics are possible only by the laws of logic, and logic is no more than the ethical side of law. Not only virtue, but also insight, not only sanctity but also wisdom, are the duties and tasks of mankind. Through the union of these alone comes perfection.
Ethics, however, the laws of which are postulates, cannot be made the basis of a logical proof of existence. Ethics are not logical in the same sense that logic is ethical. Logic proves the absolute actual existence of the ego; ethics control the form which the actuality assumes. Ethics dominate logic and make logic part of their contents.
In thinking of the famous passage in the "Critique of Practical Reason," where Kant introduces man as a part of the intelligible cosmos, it may be asked how Kant assured himself that the moral law was inherent in personality. The answer Kant gave was simply that no other and no nobler origin could be found for it. He goes no further than to say that the categorical imperative is the law of the noumenon, belonging to it and inherent in it from the beginning. That, however, is the nature of ethics. Ethics make it possible for the intelligible ego to act free from the shackles of empiricism, and so through ethics, the existence of whose possibilities logic assures us, is able to become actual in all its purity.
There remains a most important point in which the Kantian system is often misunderstood. It reveals itself plainly in every case of wrong-doing.
Duty is only towards oneself; Kant must have realised this in his earlier days when first he felt an impulse to lie. Except for a few indications in Nietzsche, and in Stirner, and a few others, Ibsen alone seems to have grasped the principle of the Kantian ethics (notably in "Brand" and "Peer Gynt"). The following two quotations also give the Kantian view in a general way:
First Nebbel's epigram, "Lies and Truth."
"Which do you pay dearer for, lies or the truth? The former costs you yourself, the latterat most your happiness."
Next, the well-known words of Sleika from the "Westöstlichen Diwan ":
All sorts go to make a world,
The crowd and the rogue and the hero;
But the highest fortune of earth's children
Is always in their own personality.
It matters little how a man lives
If only he is true to himself;
It matters nothing what a man may lose
If he remains what he really is.
It is certainly true that most men need some kind of a God. A few, and they are the men of genius, do not bow to an alien law. The rest try to justify their doings and misdoings, their thinking and existence (at least the mental side of it), to some one else, whether it be the personal God of the Jews, or a beloved, respected, and revered human being. It is only in this way that they can bring their lives under the social law.
Kant was permeated with his conviction, as is con- spicuous in the minutest details of his chosen life-work, that man was responsible only to himself, to such an extent that he regarded this side of his theory as self- evident and least likely to be disputed. This silence of Kant has brought about a misunderstanding of his ethics—the only ethics tenable from the psychologically introspective standpoint, the only system according to which the insistent strong inner voice of the one is to be heard through the noise of the many.
I gather from a passage in his "Anthropology" that even in the case of Kant some incident in his actual earthly life preceded the "formation of his character." The birth of the Kantian ethics, the noblest event in the history of the world, was the moment when for the first time the dazzling awful conception came to him, "I am responsible only to myself; I must follow none other; I must not forget myself even in my work; I am alone; I am free; I am lord of myself."
"Two things fill my mind with ever renewed wonder and awe the more often and the deeper I dwell on them—the starry vault above me and the moral law within me. I must not look on them both as veiled in mystery or think that their majesty places them beyond me. I see them before me, and they are part of the consciousness of my existence. The first arises from my position in the outer world of the senses, and links me with the immeasurable space in which worlds and worlds and systems and systems, although in immeasurable time, have their ebbs and flows, their beginnings and ends. The second arises from my invisible self, my personality, and places me in a world that has true infinity, but which is evident only to the reason and with which I recognise myself as being bound, not accidentally as in the other case but in a universal and necessarv union. On the one hand, the consciousness of an endless series of worlds destroys my sense of importance, making me only one of the animal creatures which must return its substance again to the planet (that, too, being no more than a point in space) from whence it came, after having been in some unknown way endowed with life for a brief space. The second point of view enhances my importance, makes me an intelligence, infinite and unconditioned through my personality, the moral law in which separates me from the animals and from the world of sense, removes me from the limits of time and space, and links me with infinity."
The secret of the critique of practical reason is that man is alone in the world, in tremendous eternal isolation.
He has no object outside himself; lives for nothing else; he is far removed from being the slave of his wishes, of his abilities, of his necessities; he stands far above social ethics; he is alone.
Thus he becomes one and all; he has the law in him, and so he himself is the law, and no mere changing caprice. The desire is in him to be only the law, to be the law that is himself, without afterthought or forethought. This is the awful conclusion, he has no longer the sense that there can be duty for him. Nothing is superior to him, to the isolated absolute unity. But there are no alternatives for him; he must respond to his own categorical imperatives, absolutely, impartially. "Freedom," he cries (for instance, Wagner, or Schopenhauer), "rest, peace from the enemy; peace, not this endless striving"; and he is terrified. Even in this wish for freedom there is cowardice; in the ignominious lament there is desertion as if he were too small for the fight. What is the use of it all, he cries to the universe; and is at once ashamed, for he is demanding happiness, and that his own burden should rest on other shoulders. Kant's lonely man does not dance or laugh; he neither brawls nor makes merry; he feels no need to make a noise, because the universe is so silent around him. To acquiesce in his loneliness is the splendid supremacy of the Kantian.