52 HUMANISM m 



be immediately recognised, and the mediate knowledge- 

 about rests upon and returns into an immediate acquaint- 

 ance-with. 1 If, therefore, we call them respectively 

 thought and feeling, we shall have to say that an 

 element of feeling is bound up with and accompanies 

 every act of thought, and that no actual thought either 

 is or can be conceived as pure. 



Now if such be the state of the case, why on earth, 

 should it not be recognised in logic ? Logic, I presume, 

 in the very act of constituting norms for thought, pre 

 supposes the facts of thought, and if all actual thinking, 

 good, bad, or indifferent, is impelled by interest, then 

 interest ipso facto must become a factor in the logical 

 analysis of thought. Why, then, should we insist on 

 tortuous and complicated misdescriptions in terms of 

 pure thought of processes which are quite simple when 

 we consent to regard their full psychic nature ? 2 



(2) Mutatis mutandis, what has been said of the 

 logical system applies also to its coherence. The 

 coherence of judgments is a psychical fact which justifies, 

 nay demands, psychological treatment. We find accord 

 ingly that it is (a) a matter of immediate apprehension. 

 However we refine upon the logical concept of coherence, 

 we can do nothing without observing that de facto judg 

 ments stick together. (&) We observe also certain co 

 herence feelings, whose strength is best measured by 

 that of the feeling of (logical) necessity 3 which supervenes 

 when we try to part the coherent judgments. Truths 

 cohere when they afford us the peculiar satisfaction of 

 feeling that they belong together, and that it is impossible 

 to separate them. 4 



1 James, Princ. of Psych, i. p. 221. 



- All the squabbles about the activity or movement of thought are due 

 to perversities of this sort. Abstract thought is not active, or even alive ; it does 

 not exist. What is active is the thinking being with a certain psychical idio 

 syncrasy in consequence whereof he pursues his ends by various means, among 

 which thinking is one. The nature of his thought everywhere refers to the 

 purpose of his thinking. 



3 See Personal Idealism, p. 70, note. 



4 It is never strictly impossible to reject a truth, only in some cases the 

 cost is excessive. To accept, e.g. a formal contradiction, stultifies the assumption 

 of all thinking, and should consequently debar us from the further use of thinking. 



