on history, psychology, economics, and morals, about which he also wrote in the same clear and entertaining style. Philosophy for Hume was fundamentally, like these other subjects, a medium for clever discussion, an instrument for the attainment of a literary reputation. Can we suppose for a minute that had this purpose been less prominent, and had Hume been dominated by the consuming passion for consistency of an Aquinas or a Hegel, he would have left with his readers such a disjointed and irrational universe as this? Which of these two philosophies is nearer the truth than the other? Both of them can hardly be true, if truth means anything in speculations of this kind at all. How can such a question be answered? How can How can we establish an objective standard, acceptable to all competent philosophers, by which we can test and measure contrasting doctrines, and definitely determine their validity or invalidity within a finite time? As yet it is clear that philosophy has discovered no such standard. Our general assumption in this chapter-that philosophical a standard thinking involves a process of evaluation-will not be accepted for meta- by all philosophers, for there is absolutely nothing upon which thinking all philosophers are agreed, save perhaps the desirability of be estab- philosophizing itself. But if this assumption is correct, one im How can physical lished? portant and positive point becomes clear, namely, that that philosophy is nearest the truth which most fully and appreciatively understands the valuations expressed in other philosophies, and includes them all, so far as possible, within its own valuation. But how is this to be done in such a way that the larger harmony of values attained in such a philosophy shall directly and objectively present itself as such to other philosophers, so that they shall recognize that in it their own philosophy finds its complete fulfillment? Philosophy is an age-old enterprise of the human mind, and there is no indication that the craving for a synthetic understanding of the baffling totality within which we live and have our being, of which philosophy is the expression, is diminishing or likely to diminish. But what does correct thinking in philoso phy mean? Who can point out an acceptable standard for the testing of speculations on these ultimate problems? EXERCISE.-Compare the convictions on the nature and criterion of truth expressed in James, The Meaning of Truth, with those affirmed in Bradley, Essays on Truth and Reality. Just what is the fundamental issue? What difficulties do you find in each position? How far do you think they appreciate each other's point of view? Do you see any way by which such positions can be reconciled? BIBLIOGRAPHY BERGSON, H., An Introduction to Metaphysics. An exposition and defense of the method of intuition as a way of grasping the essential nature of the universe. CALKINS, M. W., The Persistent Problems of Philosophy. A widely used introduction to the ultimate issues on which philosophers have differed. DEWEY, J, Reconstruction in Philosophy. An appeal for a return from academic and perhaps vain speculations in epistemology and ontology to the clarification of live social problems. DURANT, W., The Story of Philosophy. An exposition of some historically influential philosophers, so appealingly written that the book has won a wide popular audience. RUSSELL, B., The Problems of Philosophy. A popular treatment of certain metaphysical issues from the standpoint of atomic realism. son of beauty with other types of value CHAPTER NINETEEN PROBLEMS OF REFLECTION IN THE CREATION Compari- THAT the experience of beauty involves a process of evaluation probably no one would deny. That which makes an object beautiful is in large part its spontaneous harmony with the conditions set by a certain kind of desire or interest in the beholder; the feeling of satisfaction which we experience in our admiring contemplation of the beautiful object is witness to the achievement of such harmony. But beauty has a uniqueness which clearly differentiates it from other types of value, and with this uniqueness are connected unique difficulties for right thinking in æsthetics. When our attitude is that which we rather lamely term theoretical, as in the scientist's pursuit of truth, we are endeavoring, so far as in us lies, to conform our thinking and feeling to what is externally given, which we assume has a specific nature to be understood independent of the play of desire and interest in ourselves. We want to know, in short, what it really is, quite apart from anything else that we may propose to do about it. When our attitude is what we call practical, in its commonsense contrast to the term theoretical, the situation is reversed; we have an end of our own which we are striving to reach, and our relation to the concrete things with which we deal is one of bending them into conformity to a purpose which they would otherwise not serve. Instead of rendering our mental processes harmonious to what is happening in them we are harmonizing them to something which happens in us—they take the status of dependent means to our chosen end, so far as we can make them such. fered The unique character of the beautiful object lies in the fact The beauthat it seems to offer a spontaneous, unsought harmony between tiful is a our desire and the externally given. Without painful effort, such spontaneously ofas is normally involved both in the earnest quest for truth and the active molding of means to our ends, something suddenly harmony appears before us-a flower, a landscape, a majestic mountain between peak, the heaving sea, a lovely face-in the appreciative per- desire and ception of which we find, as it were, an unearned satisfaction, fact a joy emerging without precedent sorrow. Beauty is Nature's grace, the symbol of a superfluity of her goodness to the appreciative soul, affording a pleasure counterbalanced by no pain. coöpera ends The extent to which our evaluating processes penetrate the The beauæsthetic experience becomes evident if we examine for a moment tiful as a typical occasion on which we are surprised by the appearance external of beauty and stand lost for a while in admiring absorption. tion in We will discover that our attention, and indeed all our percep- our reflective faculties, are alive and alert; that they pass and repass tive delovingly from one part of the object to another, finding renewed terminadelight in each feature when we return to it enriched by the tion of meaning of the other parts, until finally satiety comes upon the entire experience and other tasks engage our attention. What is the explanation of this active and continued play of perception over the beautiful object? At first sight it seems wholly different from the clarifying observations with which we invest a problematic situation and which have been analyzed in the earlier part of our discussion. Such observations are controlled by the definite need of eliciting by their aid a hypothesized solution of the problem; an explanation of it if it be a scientific problem, a way of controlling it for our immediate end if it be a practical problem. Suppose, however, we think of this æsthetic enjoyment as a process of the active determination. of ends, in which, so to speak, the object both furnishes the stimulus for our thinking and coöperates with it for a time, continually offering in visible form the end we want as soon as that end gains clarity. In other words, let us view it as a process of valuation repeated over and over again, the separate steps in each unit almost telescoping in their rapidity, the key to the There is tive ele ment in æsthetic tion nature of the whole lying in the fact that as our imagination. is stimulated by our enjoyment of a part of the object to picture the larger whole which would satisfy more fully, it only needs to follow the play of attention to other parts of the object to see spread out before it exactly that desired whole. The conscious determination of our end is thus paralleled for a time by the revelation of that end in the scene spread out before us, so that even the features which first awakened attention are not exhausted by our preliminary valuation of them, but grow in satisfying meanings as we continually come back to them to help in objectifying the larger ends which the object provokes us to seek. If this in general be a correct analysis of the æsthetic experience, we may describe it as a piece of evaluation in which Nature and ourselves coöperate in a unique way, Nature in one and the same continued process provoking our thinking to reach out after a larger whole of imagined satisfaction and presenting that whole before it as a gracious and unearned reward. ment. But now it is evident that in the experience of beauty there an objec- is something which we feel to be objective rather than subjective, social rather than individual. The famous proverb, de gustibus non disputandum, applies over a wide range of apprecia- life, but not, we feel, in the realm of genuinely æsthetic enjoyIf Jack Sprat could eat no fat and his wife could eat no lean, they would not, if they were intelligent folk, upbraid each other for revealing invalid tastes, for it is admitted by all that in these matters the distinction between correctness and incorrectness has no application. In fact, if, as is usual in such cases, there is not enough lean or fat to satisfy both, the difference of taste becomes highly fortunate; the world would surely be a greater scene of struggle and disappointment than it is now if men's taste in relation to members of the opposite sex, for example, were uniform. But when we say not merely, "I like this," but, "This is beautiful," we seem to be asserting something that is not a matter of individual preference, but of conformity to a universal standard. We claim the assent of others; we insist that they, too, ought to find the same delight |