A Pluralistic Universe | Page 2

of concepts, 219.
LECTURE VI
BERGSON AND HIS CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 223
Professor Bergson's personality, 225. Achilles and the tortoise, 228. Not a sophism, 229.
We make motion unintelligible when we treat it by static concepts, 233. Conceptual
treatment is nevertheless of immense practical use, 235. The traditional rationalism gives
an essentially static universe, 237. Intolerableness of the intellectualist view, 240. No
rationalist account is possible of action, change, or immediate life, 244. The function of
concepts is practical rather than theoretical, 247. Bergson remands us to intuition or
sensational experience for the understanding of how life makes itself go, 252. What
Bergson means by this, 255. Manyness in oneness must be admitted, 256. What really
exists is not things made, but things in the making, 263. Bergson's originality, 264.
Impotence of intellectualist logic to define a universe where change is continuous, 267.
Livingly, things are their own others, so that there is a sense in which Hegel's logic is
true, 270.
LECTURE VII
THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE 275
Green's critique of Sensationalism, 278. Relations are as immediately felt as terms are,
280. The union of things is given in the immediate flux, not in any conceptual reason that
overcomes the flux's aboriginal incoherence, 282. The minima of experience as vehicles
of continuity, 284. Fallacy of the objections to self-compounding, 286. The concrete units
of experience are 'their own others,' 287. Reality is confluent from next to next, 290.
Intellectualism must be sincerely renounced, 291. The Absolute is only an hypothesis,
292. Fechner's God is not the Absolute, 298. The Absolute solves no intellectualist
difficulty, 296. Does superhuman consciousness probably exist? 298.
LECTURE VIII
CONCLUSIONS 301
Specifically religious experiences occur, 303. Their nature, 304. They corroborate the
notion of a larger life of which we are a part, 308. This life must be finite if we are to
escape the paradoxes of monism, 310. God as a finite being, 311. Empiricism is a better
ally than rationalism, of religion, 313. Empirical proofs of larger mind may open the door
to superstitions, 315. But this objection should not be deemed fatal, 316. Our beliefs form
parts of reality, 317. In pluralistic empiricism our relation to God remains least foreign,
318. The word 'rationality' had better be replaced by the word 'intimacy,' 319. Monism
and pluralism distinguished and defined, 321. Pluralism involves indeterminism, 324. All
men use the 'faith-ladder' in reaching their decision, 328. Conclusion, 330.
NOTES 333
APPENDICES
A. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS 847
B. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 870
C. ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING 895
INDEX 401

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 seed-bed, 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 every one 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