484 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 378. 



threadbare fallacy of the iindistributed 

 middle. 



7. Philosophical agnosticism comes from 

 mistaking a part for a whole. 



When, for some purpose of our own, we 

 become interested in a part of nature, 

 neglecting, for the time, as of no interest 

 to us, its interrelations with other things, 

 we may fall unconsciously, from the very 

 nature of our minds, into the belief that 

 what we have treated as if it were inde- 

 pendent of the rest of nature, and com- 

 plete in itself, is really independent and 

 complete. Thus we come to regard mental 

 abstractions as independent things, and 

 then, finding that our abstractions have 

 no independent being outside our minds, 

 we ask the absurd question whether the 

 real world of nature is anything but an 

 abstraction and a chimera of our fancy, 

 and set ourselves to making systems of 

 philosophy to pull us out of the quagmire 

 of agnosticism into which we think we 

 have fallen. 



Berkeley shows that it is because we call 

 all sheep and all crows and all triangles 

 and all numbers by generic names, that we 

 think we can know a generic sheep and a 

 generic crow and a generic triangle and a 

 generic number— that is, a sheep and a 

 crow and a triangle and a number which 

 are not individual and particular sheep 

 and crows and triangles and numbers; 

 and he believes that it is nothing but lan- 

 guage which makes us so ready to mistake 

 abstractions for independent things, and 

 then to think that because no real thing 

 exists abstractly we can never know any- 

 thing as it really is; and he shows that 

 ' we need only draw the curtain of words 

 to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, 

 whose fruit is excellent, and -^'sathin the 

 reach of our hands.' So firmly rooted in 

 our minds is the notion that abstract words 

 stand for things as they really are, that 

 Berkeley, who only asks us to use our 



utmost endeavors to obtain a clear view of 

 the things we would consider, ' separated 

 from all that dress and encumbrance of 

 words which so much contributes to blind 

 the judgment and divide the attention,' is 

 commonly held to deny the reality of 

 things, because he denies that any real 

 thing exists abstractly. 



Tyler traces our habit of mistaking 

 abstractions for independent things, and 

 the doubt of the reality of things which 

 arises in the mind of the philosopher when 

 he discovers that no real thing exists 

 abstractly to the primitive culture of sav- 

 ages, and it is, no doubt, because there is 

 still much of the savage in us all, that we 

 try to distinguish the appearance of things 

 from those things in themselves of vs^hich the 

 appearances are thought to be the ghosts. 



May we not trace still farther back the 

 habit of mistaking abstractions for inde- 

 pendent things, and ask whether it may 

 not be an unfortunate incidental result of 

 that fitness of living beings for education 

 which is older than the trilobites? 



It is not the value nor the reality of 

 generalizations, but their independent, or 

 abstract, reality, that is called in question. 

 A generalization is as real as a pain, and, 

 like a pain, it may have the greatest value, 

 and call our attention to other real and 

 important things wliich might have es- 

 caped notice, and it may thus help us to 

 foresee or direct nature. 



If the pain were not my pain it would 

 not be at all; yet, while its being is rela- 

 tive to me, this relation to me is not all the 

 being it has. No fact is more certain than 

 that I do not make my pain, for if it were 

 my doing it could not call my attention to 

 unnoticed things, nor have any value as a 

 warning of danger. Is it not ignorance of 

 this simple truth which has led some to 

 think that our pain is our own doing, and 

 that we need only stop doing it to make an 

 end of it ? 



