And then materialism. Here again we have two sorts, ethical and cosmic. I know of nothing more gross than ethical materialism. That since a thousand dollars, a roomy home or a tiny pearl is to be desired, a million dollars, a thirty-room house or a string of giant pearls is of so much the more value, is absurd reasoning. Nor is the idea that to furnish a modern home with Oriental rugs. medieval art, Greek statuary, colonial pillared porches, bungalow roof and Roman lions at the gate--a hodge-podge of things valuable in their proper atmosphere-much better. To know a lady by the quality and quantity of her dresses, to measure a man by his possessions, to measure joy by laughter, or song by volume-these are of the gross.

But cosmic materialism-that is a different thing. The scientific investigations of evolution have shown that man could rise from the ignoble ape-yes, even from the Protozoa, who trace a common ancestry with plants. Possibly some day it will be shown that man arose from no higher origin than a chemical reaction. Does it, then, seem unlikely that mind should evolve from pure sensitive matter-that the ideal, though higher than the material. should have evolved from it?

What there is of natural revolt against this now fairly established theory is due primarily to a repugnance toward those animals which trace a common ancestry with us. But this repugnance has its basis in the fact that these types are not evolving types, but decadent and static offshoots of the true agent of evolution. This very naturally raises the question, "Is man also a stationary, unevolving type?" If we cannot answer this with a strong negative, we shall not be able to wean the aspirational idealist away from cosmic idealism, and the efforts of this essay are useless. But if we have faith in a slow but steady human evolution, we need not despise our lowly material origin.

It may serve us well to take up the question of empiricism. In spite of the ethical, pragmatic, view against cosmic idealism, and the preponderance of reason in evolution against it, may we not still be wrong in denying it? How do we know that there are things-in-themselves? And if we know that, how are we sure we know them as they are? This seems to me well enough answered, by, for instance, the predictions of astronomy. The ability to foretell by science is certainly indicative of sufficient ability to know things as they are, to satisfy all our purposes. Of course, we cannot know what our world would mean to a fourth-dimension person, nor have we fathomed just its relation to the universe. But it is

absurd to believe with the idealist that God tags us around, placing illusions before us, which in accordance with divine law produce certain effects upon the mind, leading the mind to imagine in turn control over an illusory body, made for our mind's benefit by God. which in turn produces certain God-inspired illusory effects upon the illusions which God has located in our minds as ideas of matter. Nor can we even agree with Kant that our idea of matter and movement is but the synthesis of sensations of things-in-themselves by God-given categories of cause, time and space, for psychology has been able in some degree to trace these categories to empirical experience. Psychology tells us, and perhaps we can dimly recall, of a time when the world was to our infant mind one vast confusion. Impressions were made, strengthened by repetition, knit with others by coincidence and analogy of effect, connected with opposites by conflict of effect, and so on until our minds could grasp with less and less mystification the things of this world. This remarkable train of development seems to require no other buildingmaterial than a head filled with matter having a sensitive reaction. to ether-waves, air-waves and the grosser material bodies about us. Psychology has, in other words, practically accomplished what was once considered impossible-knowing the knower. The mind has practically been reduced to a structure evolved through the centuries (as the individual, so the phylum) from sensitive-reactive matter. Under this materialistic aspect our knowledge may be incomplete, fragmentary, and hence faulty, but it is not dubious in its foundation. It may be but a reflection, but it serves our purposes, and the only way to improve it is not to seek mystic interpretations of it, but to examine it more closely.

Nor even is a more radical materialism to be feared. (My discussion may be discounted from this point on without affecting my main contention as expressed in the conclusion. I am now merely adding my personal foibles to the possibilities.) Of course, all evolution may have been accomplished under the lash of a creatordriver a personality-a fixed, immovable and ideal God. But does this seem likely? And if so, whence full-fledged into being sprang God?

An acceptance of a materialistic basis for the world is bound at least to make unnecessary the belief in an all-powerful creative and guiding hand, either in the growth of the mind or the growth of the world. (Do not misinterpret me as denying a guiding Aspiration or Spirit, for that is the object of my deepest worship.) It is not belittling to the human race to think of it as evolving through

the millions of years from a simple reactive-sensitive mass until it bodied forth creatures with a soul for beauty, for sympathy and for sacrifice. Nor is it a libel upon God to think of God as an impersonal Aspiration and Will, growing gradually in us through this evolution—the Soul ideal—always a step in advance of the body.

A future life of the spirit is not inconsistent with materialism. That the spirit-the motive pulse of the body-may pass into a finer and more plastic body, as the ether, appeals to the scientific mind. If it does pass into such a transcendent medium, its influence in the world is multiplied-a sort of mental telepathy-and it is also possible that every thought, every moment, has its immortality or eternal punishment.

To those who find a Reason for creation, we may say, find if you will the first reason for the universe. Then ask for the reason that lies back of that. And so on. Do you think you will ever find one that will explain itself?

And to those who seek a Cause for creation, we may say, find the Ultimate Cause, and then tell us how It sprang into being.

But to those who seek a Purpose pervading the world, we may say, Look at the universe as it was in the beginning, a causeless, reasonless, purposeless life. Then see through time a giant strength and purpose rising out of the mist-a will to the universal realization of fundamental impulses and to good will among men, beasts, birds, and growing herbs. This is the God in man-this is the soul. This is that which lives through death. This is that which will emancipate the earth from her terrible birth-pangs with an issue that shall comfort her as long as she lives. This is the idealism arising out of materialism to grasp pantheism.

So you see, we have materialism for the past, idealism for the present and pantheism for the future. We sought a truce of philosophies, but I fear we have stirred us up a fight.

CONCEPT OF SELF AND EXPERIENCED SELF.

I

BY JESSIE L. PREBLE.

HAVE recently been led to the study of the concept of self because of my search for a fundamental starting-point in philosophy which should unite in itself two classes of merits, (1) ability to hold important place in a logical system of thought, and (2) ability to call to the mind the concrete impressions which produced it.

The term "self" may be used in many senses. Those enumerated by Bradley and James cover all the uses I have been accustomed to notice until recently. And the forms of self under James's "spiritual" and "material me" certainly contain all the ideational data and senseimpressions which we need to choose between and to mass together for the formation of our full concept of self. Bradley's analysis breaks up this group of data and distinguishes several meanings which can be given to the term "self." (1) It may refer to the section of consciousness observed during any unit of time we may choose to select.2 (2) It may refer to certain aspects which most frequently occur throughout life, and which compose what he calls "the constant average man.' (3) Some more isolated factor-as memory or purpose-may be selected from the life stream and called the "essential self." Or (6) the self may be contrasted with the not-self, and regarded as that residue which is left after "the limit of exchange of content between self and not-self" has been reached." Bradley finds no difficulty in dismissing one and all of these conceptions of the self, as vague and untrustworthy because unclear and undefined. In this he is, to a certain extent, justified because in things psychical it is probably impossible to draw a rigid line 1 Principles of Psychology, Chapter X; Psychology, Briefer Course, Chapter XII.

2 Appearance and Reality, pp. 77-78.

3 Ibid., pp. 77-78.

Ibid., pp. 80ff.

of demarcation between the like and the unlike. This difficulty, however, is found also in the physical world. It is impossible to measure anything with utter exactness; it is impossible to place a plane between two portions of water, one at 51° C and one at 50° C, which I propose to add together. Some of the 51° molecules have lost heat, some of the 50° have gained it, before the addition can be made. Kinetic activities of the molecules cause them to mix with a suddenness and irregularity which prohibits theoretical or practical locating of cleavage lines. This indefiniteness of outline. is, of course, a feature of the concept of self, no matter what attempt to assemble all the images composing the concept might be made. Our question is, therefore, the following: Is it necessary to throw over the concept of self because of its indefiniteness? To this we may reply: All mental abstraction and generalization are based upon substitution of a word or a sign for a thing signified." "Smoke" is a general term which stands for a possible visual experience. Here we have what Taine calls a "couple," which may be written thus: Smoke (verbal percept or image)→→→ Visual experience, following, accompanying or preceding. One term in the couple is a word having a certain sound and a fixed usage in common experience. At the other end of the couple is the sense-experience.

From this consideration, as it now seems to me, a refutation may be evolved of Bradley's argument against the self-concept on the ground of its unclearness. For suppose that when you utter the word "self" and try to utter it in any one of Bradley's seven senses you are unable to have a clear mental mosaic for any one of them. Suppose that you become still further disconcerted and thrown into bewildering unclearness, because for his first concept of self (1) you have a different mosaic tomorrow from what you had to-day. Even so, this imaginal unclearness is not decisive proof that you did not clearly conceive the self. For no single concept is used in any natural science which always has a setting in precisely the same imaginal complex. If I explain to you to-day the formula for a complex lens, 1/u +1/v=1/f, I may very clearly image in my mind's eye the deduction as given in Duff's Physics, and the proof

5 Ibid., p. 91. The numeral (6) indicates the place of this concept in Bradley's unsystematic enumeration of seven uncoordinated and overlapping concepts of the self. Only the more important of these are here cited.

• On Intelligence (translation of T. D. Haye, 1872), Chapters I-III, passim. It should be noted that the argument of this paper, though written on the basis of a purely verbal theory of the concept, could equally well be carried through in terms of any one of the doctrines which uphold the view that a concept is more-than-verbal.