52 HUMANISM m 



the mediate inference has to be immediately recognized, 

 and the mediate knowledge-about rests upon and returns 

 into an immediate acquaintance-with. l 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. 

 Moreover the movement of thought would have in any 

 case to be pronounced psychological. For the selection 

 of the points in the self-subsistent system, between which 

 the thought mediated, could not be ascribed to the 

 intrinsic nature of the system, but only to the human 

 interest which effects the selection. 



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

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

 the very act of constituting norms for thought, presup 

 poses 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 and intelligible 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. (U] We observe also certain co 

 herence feelings, whose strength is best measured by 

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



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



2 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. 



