234

X. MR. PITKIN'S REFUTATION OF 'RADICAL EMPIRICISM' 241

XI. HUMANISM AND TRUTH ONCE MORE 244

XII. ABSOLUTISM AND EMPIRICISM 266

INDEX 281

I

DOES 'CONSCIOUSNESS' EXIST?[2]

'Thoughts' and 'things' are names for two sorts of object, which common
sense will always find contrasted and will always practically oppose to
each other. Philosophy, reflecting on the contrast, has varied in the
past in her explanations of it, and may be expected to vary in the
future. At first, 'spirit and matter,' 'soul and body,' stood for a pair
of equipollent substances quite on a par in weight and interest. But one
day Kant undermined the soul and brought in the transcendental ego, and
ever since then the bipolar relation has been very much off its balance.
The transcendental ego seems nowadays in rationalist quarters to stand
for everything, in empiricist quarters for almost nothing. In the hands
of such writers as Schuppe, Rehmke, Natorp, Muensterberg--at any rate in
his earlier writings, Schubert-Soldern and others, the spiritual
principle attenuates itself to a thoroughly ghostly condition, being
only a name for the fact that the 'content' of experience _is known_. It
loses personal form and activity--these passing over to the content--and
becomes a bare _Bewusstheit_ or _Bewusstsein ueberhaupt_, of which in its
own right absolutely nothing can be said.

I believe that 'consciousness,' when once it has evaporated to this
estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of disappearing altogether.
It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place among first
principles. Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the
faint rumor left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of
philosophy. During the past year, I have read a number of articles whose
authors seemed just on the point of abandoning the notion of
consciousness,[3] and substituting for it that of an absolute experience
not due to two factors. But they were not quite radical enough, not
quite daring enough in their negations. For twenty years past I have
mistrusted 'consciousness' as an entity; for seven or eight years past I
have suggested its non-existence to my students, and tried to give them
its pragmatic equivalent in realities of experience. It seems to me that
the hour is ripe for it to be openly