The essay 'On some Hegelisms' doubtless needs an apology for the superficiality with which it treats a serious subject. It was written as a squib, to be read in a college-seminary in Hegel's logic, several of whose members, mature men, were devout champions of the dialectical method. My blows therefore were aimed almost entirely at that. I reprint the paper here (albeit with some misgivings), partly because I believe the dialectical method to be wholly abominable when worked by concepts alone, and partly because the essay casts some positive light on the pluralist-empiricist point of view.

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The paper on Psychical Research is added to the volume for convenience and utility. Attracted to this study some years ago by my love of sportsmanlike fair play in science, I have seen enough to convince me of its great importance, and I wish to gain for it what interest I can. The American Branch of the Society is in need of more support, and if my article draws some new associates thereto, it will have served its turn.

Apology is also needed for the repetition of the same passage in two essays (pp. 59-61 and 96-7, 100-1). My excuse is that one cannot always express the same thought in two ways that seem equally forcible, so one has to copy one's former words.

The Crillon-quotation on page 62 is due to Mr. W. M. Salter (who employed it in a similar manner in the 'Index' for August 24, 1882), and the dream-metaphor on p. 174 is a reminiscence from some novel of George Sand's--I forget which--read by me thirty years ago.

Finally, the revision of the essays has consisted almost entirely in excisions. Probably less than a page and a half in all of new matter has been added.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, December, 1896.

[1] B. P. Blood: The Flaw in Supremacy: Published by the Author, Amsterdam, N. Y., 1893.

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CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE WILL TO BELIEVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Hypotheses and options, 1. Pascal's wager, 5. Clifford's veto, 8. Psychological causes of belief, 9. Thesis of the Essay, 11. Empiricism and absolutism, 12. Objective certitude and its unattainability, 13. Two different sorts of risks in believing, 17. Some risk unavoidable, 19. Faith may bring forth its own verification, 22. Logical conditions of religious belief, 25.

IS LIFE WORTH LIVING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Temperamental Optimism and Pessimism, 33. How reconcile with life one bent on suicide? 38. Religious melancholy and its cure, 39. Decay of Natural Theology, 43. Instinctive antidotes to pessimism, 46. Religion involves belief in an unseen extension of the world, 51. Scientific positivism, 52. Doubt actuates conduct as much as belief does, 54. To deny certain faiths is logically absurd, for they make their objects true, 56. Conclusion, 6l.

THE SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Rationality means fluent thinking, 63. Simplification, 65. Clearness, 66. Their antagonism, 66. Inadequacy of the abstract, 68. The thought of nonentity, 71. Mysticism, 74. Pure theory cannot banish wonder, 75. The passage to practice may restore the feeling of rationality, 75. Familiarity and expectancy, 76. 'Substance,' 80. A rational world must appear

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congruous with our powers, 82. But these differ from man to man, 88. Faith is one of them, 90. Inseparable from doubt, 95. May verify itself, 96. Its rôle in ethics, 98. Optimism and pessimism, 101. Is this a moral universe?--what does the problem mean? 103. Anaesthesia versus energy, 107. Active assumption necessary, 107. Conclusion, 110.

REFLEX ACTION AND THEISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Prestige of Physiology, 112. Plan of neural action, 113. God the mind's adequate object, 116. Contrast between world as perceived and as conceived, 118. God, 120. The mind's three departments, 123. Science due to a subjective demand, 129. Theism a mean between two extremes, 134. Gnosticism, 137. No intellection except for practical ends, 140. Conclusion, 142.

THE DILEMMA OF DETERMINISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Philosophies seek a rational world, 146. Determinism and Indeterminism defined, 149. Both are postulates of rationality, 152. Objections to chance considered, 153. Determinism involves pessimism, 159. Escape via Subjectivism, 164. Subjectivism leads to corruption, 170. A world with chance in it is morally the less irrational alternative, 176. Chance not incompatible with an ultimate Providence, 180.

THE MORAL PHILOSOPHER AND THE MORAL LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

The moral philosopher postulates a unified system, 185. Origin of moral judgments, 185. Goods and ills are created by judgment?, 189. Obligations are created by demands, 192. The conflict of ideals, 198. Its solution, 205. Impossibility of an abstract system of Ethics, 208. The easy-going and the strenuous mood, 211. Connection between Ethics and Religion, 212.

GREAT MEN AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Solidarity of causes in the world, 216. The human mind abstracts in order to explain, 219. Different cycles of operation in Nature, 220. Darwin's distinction between causes that produce and causes that preserve a variation, 221. Physiological causes produce, the environment only adopts or preserves, great men, 225. When adopted they become social ferments, 226. Messrs.

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Spencer and Allen criticised, 232. Messrs. Wallace and Gryzanowski quoted, 239. The laws of history, 244. Mental evolution, 245. Analogy between original ideas and Darwin's accidental variations, 247. Criticism of Spencer's views, 251.

THE IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Small differences may be important, 256. Individual differences are important because they are the causes of social change, 259. Hero-worship justified, 261.

ON SOME HEGELISMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

The world appears as a pluralism, 264. Elements of unity in the pluralism, 268. Hegel's excessive claims, 273. He makes of negation a bond of union, 273. The principle of totality, 277. Monism and pluralism, 279. The fallacy of accident in Hegel, 280. The good and the bad infinite, 284. Negation, 286. Conclusion, 292.--Note on the Anaesthetic revelation, 294.

WHAT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH HAS ACCOMPLISHED . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

The unclassified residuum, 299. The Society for Psychical Research and its history, 303. Thought-transference, 308. Gurney's work, 309. The census of hallucinations, 312. Mediumship, 313. The 'subliminal self,' 315. 'Science' and her counter-presumptions, 317. The scientific character of Mr. Myers's work, 320. The mechanical-impersonal view of life versus the personal-romantic view, 324.

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

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ESSAYS

IN

POPULAR PHILOSOPHY.

THE WILL TO BELIEVE.[1]

In the recently published Life by Leslie Stephen of his brother, Fitz-James, there is an account of a school to which the latter went when he was a boy. The teacher, a certain Mr. Guest, used to converse with his pupils in this wise: "Gurney, what is the difference between justification and sanctification?--Stephen, prove the omnipotence of God!" etc. In the midst of our Harvard freethinking and indifference we are prone to imagine that here at your good old orthodox College conversation continues to be somewhat upon this order; and to show you that we at Harvard have not lost all interest in these vital subjects, I have brought with me to-night something like a sermon on justification by faith to read to you,--I mean an essay in justification of faith, a defence of our right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spite of the fact that our merely logical {2} intellect may not have been coerced. 'The Will to Believe,' accordingly, is the title of my paper.

I have long defended to my own students the lawfulness of voluntarily adopted faith; but as soon as they have got well imbued with the logical spirit, they have as a rule refused to admit my contention to be lawful philosophically, even though in point of fact they were personally all the time chock-full of some faith or other themselves. I am all the while, however, so profoundly convinced that my own position is correct, that your invitation has seemed to me a good occasion to make my statements more clear. Perhaps your minds will be more open than those with which I have hitherto had to deal. I will be as little technical as I can, though I must begin by setting up some technical distinctions that will help us in the end.

I.

Let us give the name of hypothesis to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either live or dead. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed. If I ask you to believe in the Mahdi, the notion makes no electric connection with your nature,--it refuses to scintillate with any credibility at all. As an hypothesis it is completely dead. To an Arab, however (even if he be not one of the Mahdi's followers), the hypothesis is among the mind's possibilities: it is alive. This shows that deadness and liveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties, but relations to the {3} individual thinker. They are measured by his willingness to act. The maximum of liveness in an hypothesis means willingness to act irrevocably. Practically, that means belief; but there is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all.