A Pluralistic Universe

A Pluralistic Universe

By William James.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Lecture I: The Types of Philosophic Thinking
4. Lecture II: Monistic Idealism
5. Lecture III: Hegel and His Method
6. Lecture IV: Concerning Fechner
7. Lecture V: The Compounding of Consciousness
8. Lecture VI: Bergson and His Critique of Intellectualism
9. Lecture VII: The Continuity of Experience
10. Lecture VIII: Conclusions
11. Appendices
    1. Appendix A
       1. I
       2. II
       3. III
       4. IV
       5. V
       6. VI
    2. Appendix B
    3. Appendix C
12. Endnotes
13. Colophon
14. Uncopyright

Imprint

This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.

This particular ebook is based on a transcription from Project Gutenberg and on digital scans from the Internet Archive.

The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook.

Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org.

Lecture I

The Types of Philosophic Thinking

As these lectures are meant to be public, and so few, I have assumed all very special problems to be excluded, and some topic of general interest required. Fortunately, our age seems to be growing philosophical again⁠—still in the ashes live the wonted fires. Oxford, long the seedbed, for the English world, of the idealism inspired by Kant and Hegel, has recently become the nursery of a very different way of thinking. Even non-philosophers have begun to take an interest in a controversy over what is known as pluralism or humanism. It looks a little as if the ancient English empirism, so long put out of fashion here by nobler sounding Germanic formulas, might be repluming itself and getting ready for a stronger flight than ever. It looks as if foundations were being sounded and examined afresh.

Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying everyone we meet under some general head. As these heads usually suggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or other, the life of philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and complaints of being misunderstood. But there are signs of clearing up, and, on the whole, less acrimony in discussion, for which both Oxford and Harvard are partly to be thanked. As I look back into the sixties, Mill, Bain, and Hamilton were the only official philosophers in Britain. Spencer, Martineau, and Hodgson were just beginning. In France, the pupils of Cousin were delving into history only, and Renouvier alone had an original system. In Germany, the Hegelian impetus had spent itself, and, apart from historical scholarship, nothing but the materialistic controversy remained, with such men as Büchner and Ulrici as its champions. Lotze and Fechner were the sole original thinkers, and Fechner was not a professional philosopher at all.

The general impression made was of crude issues and oppositions, of small subtlety and of a widely spread ignorance. Amateurishness was rampant. Samuel Bailey’s Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, published in 1855, are one of the ablest expressions of English associationism, and a book of real power. Yet hear how he writes of Kant: “No one, after reading the extracts, etc., can be surprised to hear of a declaration by men of eminent abilities, that, after years of study, they had not succeeded in gathering one clear idea from the speculations of Kant. I should have been almost surprised if they had. In or about 1818, Lord Grenville, when visiting the Lakes of England, observed to Professor Wilson that, after five years’ study of Kant’s philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of my own. ‘I am endeavoring,’ exclaims Sir James Mackintosh, in the irritation, evidently, of baffled efforts, ‘to understand this accursed German philosophy.’ ”1

What Oxford thinker would dare to print such naive and provincial-sounding citations of authority today?

The torch of learning passes from land to land as the spirit bloweth the flame. The deepening of philosophic consciousness came to us English folk from Germany, as it will probably pass back ere long. Ferrier, J. H. Stirling, and, most of all, T. H. Green are to be thanked. If asked to tell in broad strokes what the main doctrinal change has been, I should call it a change from the crudity of the older English thinking, its ultra-simplicity of mind, both when it was religious and when it was anti-religious, toward a rationalism derived in the first instance from Germany, but relieved from German technicality and shrillness, and content to suggest, and to remain vague, and to be, in, the English fashion, devout.

By the time T. H. Green began at Oxford, the generation seemed to feel as if it had fed on the chopped straw of psychology and of associationism long enough, and as if a little vastness, even though it went with vagueness, as of some moist wind from far away, reminding us of our prenatal sublimity, would be welcome.

Green’s great point of attack was the disconnectedness of the reigning English sensationalism. Relating was the great intellectual activity for him, and