Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/460

 446 W. CALDWELL : and tangibility? A criterion of consequences is provided, e.g., by the conception of Justice in Plato's Republic or by the idea of a Kingdom of Ends in Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics ; and these philosophers moreover offer us a metaphysic of being that tends to show how the existence of a moral kingdom of beauty and justice is implied not only in the simplest forms of human association but even in the constitution of External Nature. (4) The highest form of the Argument from Consequences is, if we think accurately, the argument known in logic and metaphysic as the dilemma. Prof. James might per- haps do well to think of strengthening his philosophy by connecting it with its true theoretical basis. But the strength of the dilemma or of Hypothetical Reasoning or of Indirect Proof lies in the claim to have an exhaustive knowledge of possibilities or alternatives. 1 To know with absolute exactitude and exhaustiveness about the possibilities for conduct afforded by different philosophical hypotheses would imply at least an exhaustive knowledge of the points of view from which conduct and the universe may be re- garded. This however implies the Transcendentalism or the Metaphysic of the Categories of which Prof. James has so sorry an opinion. It also implies the existence of ethical norms and conceptions and perhaps the teaching of history and the guiding force of heredity and the principle of con- tinuity. But of all this Prof. James in his practical contempt for Apriorism in all its forms takes very slight recognition. (5) It looks like a philosophical error for him to distinguish, as he does, between the future consequences and the past necessities of action, holding that the former alone are of vital and spiritual importance to us while the latter may or may not have had spiritual significance. "As far as the past facts go, indeed, there is no difference. These facts are bagged [is not the phraseology too recklessly sportive ?], are captured ; and the good that's in them is gained, be the atoms, be the God their cause." And again, " Theism and materialism, so indifferent when taken retrospectively, point when we take them prospectively to wholly different, prac- tical consequences, to opposite outlooks of experience ". And again, ..." But I say that such an alternation of feelings, reasonable enough in a consciousness that is pro- 1 The whole development of the dilemma as a logical argument seems to me to depend upon the fact that the alternatives in a disjunctive proposition (the minor premiss in a dilemma) should always be regarded as exhaustive. They are always such in a true " universe (or sphere) of thought," whatever they may be in a "universe of discourse".