Truth and Error or the Science of Intellection/Chapter 23

CHAPTER XXIII FALLACIES OF REFLECTION
Fallacies of reflection are fallacies of time and cause, and they may be classed as misreflections and myths. The misreflections are a fourth group of illusions and the myths a fourth group of delusions.

Fallacies concerning time are analogous to those concerning space. Time is persistence and change. It is not blank time, it is a time of something that exists, not the time of something that does not exist. It is the time in which all existence persists and in which it changes. The seed is developed on the apple-tree. Its time is the period of its existence as a germ, but the germ itself was developed by the incorporation of molecules. The molecules existing as particles in the air were transformed into the seed, but the molecules persisted before the seed was formed. The persistence is eternal in the atom so far as we know, but it is changeable from its state in the air or the water into its state in the seed, so its persistence is partly taken up while in the seed state. The seed is planted and becomes a tree by addition of other particles from the air and the water, and the eternal persistence of all the particles is occupied for a period in the state of the tree. Now, the existence of the molecules in the air and the water, and their existence in the seed, and their existence in the tree, and finally their existence as water and air, when the tree is reduced to another state by decay, is a permanent existence, while the temporary existence is in the seed and the tree.

Before man knew that the seed was a continued existence of particles, and that the tree was a continued existence of particles, it was supposed that the time of these existences was limited, and that there was a blank time. Out of this nothing, something was created, and these creations were in continual change, which were called fluxes or becomings. The real nature of persistence not being understood there was assumed to be a persistence which was blank, and the blank was called time. But persistence, not being known, though called time, was held to be the thing-in-itself, which indeed it was in part, and it was called noumenon. When the noumenon was discovered, the idea of blank time was still retained and it was still noumenon, while the real persistence was called a phenomenon. Now it is apparent that this blank time is a fallacy. It was thus, as in this case, that all unknown things, when they came to be known, were transferred to the things which were called phenomena; and the blank things were still called noumena. Thus noumenon was a word originally valid, an x in logical computation, whose value was to be determined; but ultimately it came to mean a something which could not be determined—not only an unknown but an unknowable thing, and a knowable thing was held to be only appearance and was called phenomenon.

My horse is stolen, by whom I know not, and I say there is a thief, but as I do not know this thief I call him a noumenon. But the detectives capture him and he is sent to prison; now the thief becomes a phenomenon, for he is apparent—he may be seen in the jail. Now, suppose that I had talked about this noumenon, when he was unknown, in a conglomeration of attributes—as an uncanny man, as a vicious man seeking- another that he may devour him, as a man of seven heads and ten horns; but now I find him only a poor misguided man with the vice of cleptomania or the greed for possession which made him a criminal, but without multiple heads or multiple horns. Having discovered my fallacy in this case I still retain the notion of existence of such a thing as I had imagined, and I continue to believe in it and still call it a noumenon. In the same manner every noumenon of metaphysics can be traced back to the original fallacy- entertained by mankind and still supposed to exist as a reality in the universe. When all of these illusions are considered we have the world of occult noumena—the theater of idealism.

Kant explained his occult space, not as a property of physical nature, but as a form of the mind, whatever that may be. In the same manner his occult time was not an existence in physical nature, but also was a form of the mind. He had not the insight to discover that such forms are fallacies, like the dome of the sky in the mind of an ignorant man; still, he had the logical integrity to see that such space and time are incongruous with a space of extension and position and a time of persistence and change, and he boldly followed his logic in formulating a set of antinomies, or contradictions, both of which he seems to have believed as valid.

Kant himself was accustomed to speak of ideas as forms; that is, to speak of one abstract concomitant in terms of another abstract concomitant. For science this habit is fatal. Tropes are good as poetry, but vicious as terms in propositions of logic. Systems of cosmology originate in this manner. In tribal society the earth is made polar from east to west. About this Occidental and Oriental pole a system of worlds is projected—a world of the east, a world of the west, and, at right angles to these, a world of the north and a world of the south, a world of the zenith, and a world of the nadir, with a midworld which is a plane with sides and corners. All the lower tribes of mankind believe in such a world, and there are expressions used in civilized society which are survivals from this stage ‘of belief. To primitive man these worlds are the realities of his cosmology, and he uses these supposed realities as nuclei for many concepts. For example, he formulates social laws as the laws of the east, the laws of the west, the laws of the north, the laws of the south, the laws of the zenith, and the laws of the nadir. Crosses, swastikas, and formulated statements are alike made to conform to this scheme. In somewhat later culture, when a somewhat clearer concept of the midworld exists, and the east, west, north, and south have been explored, but the zenith and the nadir are yet unknown, there still remains a midworld, a heaven above and a hell beneath. Laws and principles are formulated as heavenly or hellish. The transformation of seven worlds into three constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in the history of human opinion. In the seven-world scheme, method of statement becomes a method of philosophy. This fact has abundant illustration. It is the primal vice of classification which was set forth in the chapter on classification.

By a curious mode of expression often, perhaps universally, found in savage society, time is considered to be four-cornered because we measure time in terms of space. We say the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and that at midday it is in the zenith and at midnight it is supposed to be in the nadir. Some savages will tell you that time is four-cornered, others will tell you that time is round, but that there are four cardinal points of time. Four-cornered time is a firmly established notion among savage and barbaric tribes. Thus time is formulated as if it were space. Many modern physicists mythologize in this manner about motion, being unable to distinguish motion as an abstract property, because motion is formulated in terms of space and force in terms of parallelograms.

Thus a scheme of expression becomes a scheme of reality. When a three- world scheme is substituted for the seven-world scheme, the four worlds are transformed into four substances, as earth, air, fire, and water. Hence the cardinal points of compass become the cardinal substances. The habit of relegating all animals, all plants, all properties, and all qualities to the seven worlds, is continued under the new scheme by making a something like a classification between properties and qualities, and transmuting the properties and qualities to substances or attributes of substances and qualities, to world beings and attributes of world beings. Properties are grouped in fours because there are four horizontal corners of the world, and qualities are grouped in fours because there are four vertical corners of the world as evidenced by time. Thus a scheme of expression becomes a scheme of philosophy. Wet and dry, cold and hot, constitute a scheme of cardinal properties; earth, air, fire, and water, a scheme of cardinal substances; justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude, a scheme of cardinal virtues.

It is an error of this nature into which Kant fell when he considered space and time as forms of thought. The habit of expressing thought in terms of form led him to the conclusion that space and time, as disparate properties, are identical with thought as a succession of judgments, instead of being concomitant with thought. But more than this, it was the void form and the void space which Kant supposed to be forms which we are compelled to use as a priori elements of reason when we consider form and state.

Fallacies of cause occur in every hour of waking life. We attribute effects to wrong causes. We are especially liable to this from the fact that both cause and effect are conditions, and causation is a change of condition from an antecedent to a consequent. The conditions of every causation are multifarious as we look at them in a regressus of causes or a progressus of effects, and as the mind of the individual can make but one judgment at a time, it may be that the one of the causes or effects which is considered, is in fact a trivial element in the causation, for in all our language we are accustomed to speak of one of the causes as the special cause, for it must be the special one in consideration.

Forces are often processes in which a multitude of unseen objects produce a seen effect, as when many molecules of air strike upon a tree which bends before the blast, or when many raindrops, that can scarcely be seen where they fall and are wholly unseen by the man who beholds the river, create a flood that endeluges a valley.

Some instances of this kind produce fallacies that are widely entertained; they are misreflections that substitute the effect for the cause. One illustration of this group of fallacies must suffice for us here. Some years ago there was published an interesting and well written book, the theme of which was the origin of deserts, giving a pessimistic view of the world, in which it was represented that desert conditions are increasing, and that wide regions of country have already been laid waste as deserts, because mankind interferes with the operations of nature by destroying the forests, and that if forests were restored rainfall would be increased. In this manner effect was taken for cause.

The most subtle fallacy about causation consists in mistaking it for another property, either as force on the one hand or as thought on the other. Force, cause, and conception—or motion, space, and judgment—are disparate properties but concomitant in every particle and body of the universe. This has been the burthen of our theme from the chapter on essentials, in which it was affirmed, to the present one, and all our demonstrations have had this end in view.

He who cannot clearly distinguish between abstract and concrete, or between body and property, is certain to fall into mysticism. Mill and Spencer in the late years, like Aristotle in ancient time, confounded causation with force or energy, while Kant and all the school of metaphysicians confound both cause and force with thought.

Evolution is a succession of changes which are in time and require time for their accomplishment.

The ancients believed and the tribes believe that kinds, forms, and forces come out of nothing and return to nothing. This is the primal fallacy of causation. Modern science has demonstrated that kinds, forms, and forces come from something else and vanish into something else. It is only today that this is universally accepted by scientific men, while even at the present time millions of those who inhabit the earth still believe in creation from nothing. We shall not attempt to recount the multitude of fallacies which have existed and which still linger in scientific circles. We have already set forth the one most important to our argument, that is, that motion is created by or comes out of some occult force which is not itself motion, and the other form in which motion is supposed to leap or creep, or in some other manner to be transferred from one body to another. An acrobatic motion is the last ghost of force.

We now come to the second part of our chapter, the discussion of myths. Mythology is the history of ghosts. Ghosts are specters, and we have seen what strange acts they commit as phantasms, when they leave the body and travel abroad in the world and return again to the body, or when from abroad they enter the body to take possession of it in the absence of its owner. In savage society authority is wielded by the oldest man, who thus by superior age, natural or conventional, becomes the chief. In the same manner the dwellers in ghostland are ruled by tribes; the progenitor, prototype, or elder animal of the tribe is its chief.

Now we are to consider what it is that ghosts have done—how they have acted in the theater of the universe. Strange to say, we find it well recorded, for ghosts have had more complete recognition than men in all ancient history. Ghosts, as a race, have passed through interesting stages of history. All changes are in time and require time to become discrete quantities of change that may be recognized.

Hence it is that in the evolution of ghosts we have to consider their transmutation from one to another as it appears when we consider them separated by many centuries of time. We are unable to find the distinction in the race of ghosts, if we consider them yesterday and again today, or last year and again this year, or even last century and again this century; but when we consider them as they appear in the stages of culture which are designated as savagery, barbarism, monarchy, and democracy, we find discrete degrees of evolution.

It is only in such considerations that planes of demarcation can be discovered. I shall therefore consider ghosts as they appear in savagery, barbarism, monarchy, and democracy, or to use more common terms, civilization and enlightenment.

In savagery the ghosts are zoomorphic. All lower animals, stones, bodies of water, the sun, the moon, and all the stars are supposed to be animals. The universe is a universe of animals living in the seven regions. All of these animals have ghosts which can leave their bodies and journey through the world, and at will inhabit other bodies, when they find them vacated by their proper ghosts. It is thus that the primitive mythology is a theory of animal ghosts. What these ghosts can do in their proper bodies is easily seen, though it is very wonderful; but what they do when they leave their proper bodies is mysterious or occult.

To the savage, lower animals seem to have attributes and to perform deeds that are more wonderful than those of human beings. The serpent is swift without legs, the bird can revel where man cannot go—through void space with wings. The fish can inhabit the water and run with fins; no human being can do this. The spider can spin a thread and travel on it; all that he has to do is to spin the thread from his own body and travel wherever he wills as it is unwound. The rivers are born of rain and roll into the sea which never increases. The winds are created by the breath of beasts or rise from under the wings of birds from nothing. The stars can fly like birds and shine like fire. So the savage man considers the molar bodies of the world, which are all animals like himself, to have many magical or occult attributes which are very wonderful. But the wonderful things which they do are not attributed to their bodies, but to their ghosts. The body of a man lies inert when he sleeps, but his ghost cannot sleep, it travels about the world when his body is at rest. The bodies of the rocks are inert, but when they sleep at night their ghosts shine in the heaven as the aurora borealis. If you strike one rock with another you can see its ghost as a spark of fire. When the clouds gather they are the ghosts of water; when angry they shine with lightning light, and when pleased the clouds shine as rainbows. These illustrations will serve to show how thoroughly, in the notion of the savage, ghosts and bodies are differentiated.

The universe being considered as bodies and ghosts, and the bodies being considered as inert and the ghosts as active principles, we have the fundamental theory of savage reasoning. We can do nothing except as it is done by our ghosts. We cannot cause anything to be done by others except by controlling their ghosts. Words cause other human beings to do things, and their words cause us to act. The words of the mother cause action in the babe; the voice of the babe causes the mother to act. The voice of the bird brings its mate to its side, or the voice of its mate takes the bird to its side. The primeval concept of causation is the notion that words produce effects, and that effects are caused by words. The bird flies to its mate; the flying of the bird is considered the action of the bird, but when it flies in response to the call of its mate the call seems to be the cause of its flight. It is the special cause; primitive man has no insight into the many causes that are involved. It is from this primeval concept of cause as some special condition, that is developed through the ages, when in a higher civilization we consider the special cause as if it was the total cause. Now mythology, having ghosts as actors, secures their action by causes, and explains the phenomena of the universe as the activities of ghosts acting through body by verbal causation. In savagery words are the ordinary observable causes and constitute the primal cause.

We do not know the languages of the other animals, we can speak to them only through signs or symbols. Great is that man who can talk to ghosts. The symbol which he uses is called a mystery. In the Ute language it is pokunt; in the Siouan language it is wakanda; in the Algonquian it is manito. All tribal languages have a word which signifies the mystery, which can be used as a symbol to cause the action of ghosts. The concept is born in savagery of a mysterious cause which has power over ghosts, which again have powers over bodies, and so the universe is a realm of bodies, ghosts, and mysteries, or unknown tongues.

The mystery, called by various names among American tribes, is usually translated “medicine,” for the early missionaries found the people appealing to the mystery to heal disease, for diseases are supposed to be ghosts of animals. As the mystery is something which must act as a word, it must be something which will suggest to the ghost that which is wanted. Hence there arises the doctrine of signatures, which means among the tribesmen much more than the signatures of medicines, by which we are to learn what medicines are good for diseases—it primarily means what signatures can be made to convey our commands to ghosts. As ghosts are all animals in savagery, how can we talk to the ghosts of animals? This leads in savagery to the symbols which constitute the paraphernalia of altars. In savagery every object on the altar is a sign to ghosts of what men wish when they perform ceremonies. They pray to the ghosts for rain, and to make sure that the ghosts will understand what they mean, they refer them to cloud symbols. When they pray for corn they place ears of corn upon the altar. When they pray that the corn shall ripen and become hard they place crystals of quartz upon the altar. In various ways signatures are used by the priests in invoking the aid of ghosts. Those persons who have power over ghosts are medicine men or priests, and attain great influence and sometimes are greatly feared. If they use their power for evil, they are wizards and are killed. If they use their power for good, they may be made chiefs.

Primarily the name given to a body designates some property of that body. After a time the name itself becomes the property of the body, and finally the name becomes a mythical body. These stages in the development of words can be discovered in many of the languages of America, doubtless in them all; it is the transmutation which Max Müller calls a disease of language.

In the second stage of culture, called barbarism, animals have been domesticated and thus by more intimate acquaintance with animals the lower animals are dethroned and human animals are exalted. All animals and other molar beings which are supposed to be bodies movable by human beings, are still held to have ghosts, but their rulers are ghosts of human beings and the great phenomena of nature are personified as human beings; the sun, moon, and stars are exalted in this manner; the seas, the rivers and the mountains are likewise personified. All the most important phenomena of the universe as they are known to man are personified. The rising and the setting of the sun, or the dawning and the gloaming, are personified as well as the sun itself. The rainbow also is personified. Fire is personified. The ghosts are no less multitudinous, but some are exalted above the others, and those promoted in this manner are deities of higher rank. To these deities are attributed the important events of the worlds. But there are many minor ghosts; the worlds are full of them, born of the ages.

Now, in barbarism ghosts are still the actors in the worlds and they are caused to act by signs, and tribesmen still continue to ransack the earth for signatures. Men still hold in love or fear those who have the lore of ghost science. The chiefs or head men or ancestors of the ghosts are greatly revered as gods, and common folk ghosts take part in the affairs of the worlds, and mythology is the history of their doings. These folk-talks elaborately portray the life of men and ghosts and the potency of signs.

The ceremonies of supplication which still continue from savagery, are believed to have still more potency by reason of the sacrifices that have become more and more important in the estimation of the people as time has advanced. In savagery the ceremonials are chiefly terpsichorean: music and dancing were the agencies by which the attention of the ghosts was obtained. While in savagery the pouring of oblations and the presentation of the corn were signs of what was desired, and all the paraphernalia of the altar that represented the thing for which men prayed were merely significant of the things men wanted, in this higher stage men have come to believe that the good things which men want are the good things which the ghosts want, only they want the ghosts of the good things, not their bodies. So the altar of signatures gradually becomes the altar of sacrifice. Hecatombs of beeves, bottles of wine, all the first fruits of the harvest, everything the ghost desires, even human beings, may be sacrificed upon the altar. If after this statement my reader will consult the Odyssey he will there find the most vivid portrayal of barbaric philosophy that has been preserved to us from antiquity.

In despotism, or the third stage of social organization, ghosts are still more exalted, in that the psychic characteristics of men are personified. Certain of the gods of barbarism gradually become representatives of certain psychic characteristics, and we have the stage of psychotheism, and there is a god of War, a god of Love, a god of Hate, a god of Commerce, and many other major deities; but there is a second class of deities representing what are supposed to be secondary attributes of human and divine ghosts. It is in this stage that we observe the transmutation of words into gods. The concepts of which words as signs are personified, as Max Müller has abundantly shown. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.” A development of cosmology which begins late in barbarism is more thoroughly carried out. The cardinal worlds are wholly thrown out of mythology and the midworld has a world above or a heaven, and a world below or a hell. The midworld becomes the sole theater for the development of ghosts by birth. These ghosts, born in the midworld of human beings, are the ghosts of the external world which ofttimes visit the earth. The three worlds of the stage of despotism constitute the fundamental schematism of the philosophy of the period. Institutions are of heaven or of hell, opinions are of heaven or of hell, and in all philosophy the schematism prevails. But in this midworld the ghosts of heaven and the ghosts of hell take part with the embodied ghosts of men in all of the affairs of the world. Everywhere there is a ruler, a despot—a commander-in-chief of the hosts of heaven and the hosts of hell; while on earth in the midworld it becomes the ambition of every despot or emperor to become the sole ruler. The ghosts born on earth depart to the upper or the lower regions, where they are forever separated by an impassable barrier, and life on earth is but a probation in which ghosts are selected for the other world; hence the chief purpose of life in the body is attained by securing a happy life in ghostland.

During all this stage in mythology the ghost-gods are affected by psychological considerations. The supreme being in every religion of despotism is especially influenced by the opinions of his followers. Their opinions of the supreme being must be sound, and worship is by faith in spirit and in truth. Thus worship is fiducial. The supreme being is supposed to take delight in the opinions of his followers and in the expression of those opinions as formulated in creed and especially as formulated in ceremony. This mythical stage gives rise to a vast body of folk-lore, which is distinguished from mythology proper by the belief in a ghostly, supreme being. The midworld is still the theater of ghosts who come from the world above and the world below and sometimes dwell for a time in this world and take part in the affairs of men. These ghosts are especially amenable to deeds of necromancy, the more refined form in which the doctrine of signatures is held. If my reader will carefully study Tasso in “Jerusalem Delivered,” he will there find recorded one of the best accounts extant of the necromancy of the despotic age. The publications of the various folk-lore societies of the world are rapidly putting these superstitions on record.

I shall refrain from discussing the fourth stage of ghost-lore. In very modern times it has assumed a special phase which is called spiritism, and attendant upon the theory of spiritism there is developed a claim for a scientific explanation of spiritism in the theory of telepathy, which I cannot wholly overlook and do not wish to ignore, but on that phase which is specially represented in religion I purposely remain silent, lest I should antagonize, with my own opinions, the views of others about religion, and thus enter a field of theological disputation. Yet without expressing personal opinions about the evolution of religion, which I have elsewhere done, I shall content myself with only one paragraph upon the subject.

From the doctrine of signatures there has grown the science of modern surgery and medicine. I do not despise the early efforts of mankind to relieve their sufferings, even though they entertained many fallacies; but I rejoice in the outcome of this effort as it is exhibited in modern medicine. Astrology was necromancy at one time, but has become astronomy in modern times, and I look upon the efforts which were made in former times by astrologists as the planting of the germs of the celestial science. So I look upon mythology with no feelings of hatred, for it seems to me to have made great strides in the science of religion or ethics, out of which shall come a purified science of God, Immortality, and Freedom.