Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/45

Rh one’s interest in fitting into the world, one elaborates the notion, or studies philosophy. In this study, as in all others, there is opportunity to err. The error will tend to result in poor adjustment and so in unsatisfactory living, and so in a need of revision. This fact should warn us, that as our science is thus an economic device, we should be as careful as possible in our study.

Our study has led us to conclude that the world-whole is made up of interests or psychological realities, or else of systems of these interests or persons, and that it is a unity or natural federation of these persons. Our study has also let us to conclude that a person has the native power to awaken in other persons an awareness or experience of matter, space, time, cause, and motion. But the awareness of these simple realities, sundered from the accompanying awareness of the interests of persons in interaction with us is abstract and provisional. But every child, just as he begins with the idea that the world is flat and that the sun rises and sets, begins with the idea that the world is made up of such simple realities as matter, space, time, cause, and motions. The full psychological realities are so complex that they are difficult at first to recognize, and so the philosophy of us all is at first materialistic, and for most men materialism remains a permanent philosophy. As matter, space, etc., are dependent aspects of interacting interests it is only a matter of time when this philosophy will be modified, and ideas, feelings, and the power to do, other undoubted realities, will be recognized, first as coordinate with and then as superior to matter. But, until that modification has been made, materialism, like all other ideas, being an active process and one that works among other ideas, tends to depress life by subordinating it to lifeless and impersonal matter, space, etc. But even when men come to recognize a dependence of material objects on ideas of these objects, there arises a tendency to regard such undoubted and simple realities or ideas, as the stuff in terms of which the world-whole is to be understood, and thus men become idealists in philosophy. But ideas are abstract and no more independent realities than realities like matter. In fact we form ideas of material things and so ideas are dependen [sic] upon material things. Ideas as abstract aspects of interacting interests are of course inert and impersonal. Ignoring undoubted realities like will and feeling, and causes, and motions, idealism must also in time correct itself. But until that time, idealism, ignoring vital elements of personality, being an active process working in the midst of other active processes that constitute life, tends to depress life by subordinating it to lifeless and impersonal ideas.

Our study of philosophy has also led us to conclude that organic bodies are also but aspects of interacting interests or