Further, to enable me

Further, to enable me Post Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 10:45:57 +0000
But because I have essayed to expound the chief of these discoveries in a Treatise which certain considerations prevent me from publishing, I cannot make the results known more con veniently than by here giving a summary of the contents of this Treatise, It was my design to comprise in it all that, before I set myself to write it, I thought I knew of the nature of material ob jects. But like the painters who, finding themselves unable to represent equally well on a plain surface all the different faces of a solid body, select one of the chief, on which alone they make the light fall, and throwing the rest into the shade, allow them to ap pear only in so far as they can be seen while looking at the princi pal one; so, fearing lest I should not be able to comprise in my discourse all that was in my mind, I resolved to expound singly, though at considerable length, my opinions regarding light; then to take the opportunity of adding something on the sun and the fixed stars, since light almost wholly proceeds from them; on the heavens, since they transmit it; on the planets, comets, and earth, since they reflect it; and particularly on all the bodies that are upon the earth, since they are either coloured, or transparent, or luminous; and finally on man, since he is the spectator of these ob- jects. Further, to enable me to cast this variety of subjects some what into the shade, and to express my judgment regarding them with greater freedom, without being necessitated to adopt or refute the opinions of the learned, I resolved to leave all the people here to their disputes, and to speak only of what would happen in a new world if God were now to create somewhere in the imaginary spaces matter sufficient to compose one, and were to agitate vari ously and confusedly the different parts of this matter, so that there resulted a chaos as disordered as the poets ever feigned, and after that did nothing more than lend his ordinary concurrence to na ture, and allow her to act in accordance with the laws which he had established.

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1. - If, then, we permit ourselves Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:40:08 +0000
This agency would, no doubt, supply him with a norm for inference by means of which he would be led to posit a cause of his experience analogous to the self in his own conscious agency. If, then, we define an instinctive re- action as one that has its entire motive in repetition and habit, it is incumbent on us to regard the act in which the dog recognizes the real existent which his perceptions sym- bolize not as instinctive purely, but as one of spontaneous causal inference. If, then, we permit ourselves to say that the dog-con- sciousness is capable of a certain spontaneous use of the self-analogy and that this supplies him with the norm of construction in the processes by which he reaches the recognition of the real existences of his world, we shall, perhaps, be able to answer another interesting question; namely, Which kind of eject, the physical or the mental, is likely to meet with the first recognition in the dogs world? It is, of course, a debatable question how far an isolated puppy could go in the realization of a world.

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2. - But as its experience grew Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:24:19 +0000
But taking the ordinary puppy which grows up in the society of other pups and dogs and people, the two facts (1) that the form of agency of which it is immediately conscious is mental rather than physical, and (2) that the most inter- esting part of its environment would be the living beings with which it is associated, lead to the presumption that its first knowledge of ejects would be of the mental variety. Learning the real agency of other puppies and dogs and of its master as it grew older, its first experiences of reality would be of a world of one species of agency, that of the mental type. But as its experience grew larger it would be led by the great differences which arise between the reactions of the mental and the physical, to recognize a distinction of type in the causes that occasion them.

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3. - The processes are all functions Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:13:27 +0000
The recognition of the physical eject would thus appear later in the puppys experience than would that of the mental. The dogs experience has been taken here as a type because of its intimacy with the world it moves in and because little suspicion would arise here of the interference of higher powers of reflection. The processes are all functions of a spontaneous unreflecting consciousness, and we have found that the dog comes through them to the recognition of nearly all, if not quite all, the essential existents of the more advanced and reflective consciousness.

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4. - Taking the case we Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:54:03 +0000
The dog, it is true, knows his objects straight out without any definite conceptions of the nature of what he knows. Nevertheless, it is a real existence and not a bare symbol which he knows, a fact that is proved by his definite and appropriate reactions upon the world. Taking the case we have analyzed as a type, let us ask, then, how consciousness comes spontaneously to know (1) self, (2) objects which are symbols of the not-self, (3) ejects, (a) other selves, (b) physical ejects.

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5. - Thus, power, duty, love, hate Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:42:22 +0000
How does consciousness spontaneously know self ? At the very beginning of this inquiry we had occasion to draw a distinction between two species of knowledge, the picturable and the unpicturable, and the knowledge of self was classified with the unpicturable species. What we mean by unpicturable knowledge is the assurance, immediate or otherwise, which we have of real existences which neverthe- less have no definable form in which they can be repre- sented, otherwise than symbolically, to the imagination. Thus, power, duty, love, hate, patriotism, are realities which we know immediately, but they cannot be pictured and are capable only of symbolic representation.

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6. - The dog knows himself Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:27:42 +0000
The knowledge of self is of this unpicturable variety, for while it is true that there are certain subjective cate- gories, like individuality and personality, which help consciousness to conceive the self in specific ways, yet these are not picturable categories and do not represent the self to the imagination in any other sense than it is represented by calling it loving or dutiful. We have seen, too, that the knowledge of self is a function, primarily, of the sponta- neous consciousness and is possible below the level of reflection. The dog knows himself, and this serves him as a point of departure for some very important knowledge of the world.

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7. - Through this Sturm und Drang Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:09:53 +0000
If we ask what self it is the dog knows, we shall be led by the preceding analysis to say that it is his volitional self ; the self of his prime agency ; the self of that struggle of his to realize his destiny in his world. The very singular circumstance about the affair is that it is not the phenomenal self, the subject of mere perception, of which the dog becomes aware and which guides him in his reaction, but his deeper metaphysical self ; the self that energizes in the efforts he puts forth for survival ; the self of feeling and effort; the self that experiences the storm and stress of life. Through this Sturm und Drang, con- sciousness spontaneously apprehends itself in the form of a practical agent in pursuit of its own well-being.

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8. - The reflective consciousness builds Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:59:06 +0000
Its experience is thus metaphysical and it knows itself as a real existent rather than as a mere phenomenon. We say, then, that the self of the spontaneous consciousness is known immediately and metaphysically. The reflective consciousness builds on the foundation of spontaneity, and though its processes are mediate and its business to trans- late its whole available material into the idea or conception of self, yet this result of reflection carries with it much of the immediate force of the spontaneous intuition.

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9. - The general doctrine maintained throughout Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:45:30 +0000
The intimacy of the self-idea with the self -intuition is so per- fect that it is only when we compel ourselves to reflect critically that we are able to realize that the whole is not direct intuition. Secondly, how do we come to know objects which are not self? We do little more here than sum up the results of former discussion. The general doctrine maintained throughout this treatise is that the cognitive processes proper do not take the initiative, but are called forth by the exigen- cies of the real struggle of the agent for survival.

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10. - A dog does not know Post Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:27:44 +0000
The dog did not perceive the real tree or stone until he ran against it and experienced the painful consequences. His cognition of the object then unfolded as a symbol of a deeper reality fraught with momentous consequences, and its function was to render the collision with the deeper reality avoidable. A dog does not know all this, of course, but it all happens just in that way.

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