Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge | Page 8

a brain or cerebrum marks one important advance. The presence of this organ renders possible to the animal in varying degree what are called representations of objects, and the faculty of making such representations appears to be a condition precedent to the development of deliberation, volition, and purposive action as opposed to reflex or instinctive activity. The latter is specially characteristic of other orders of organic existence such as the Articulata--being remarkably exemplified in the activities of the social insects such as the bee.
The advent of man with his faculty of Discourse may be regarded as marking another distinct stage in the evolutionary movement--a stage, moreover, the operations of which throw light upon the whole nature of cerebral representations. The faculty of rational Discourse, as Max M��ller pointed out, is denominated in Greek by the word +logos+, applicable at once to the mental activity and to its appropriate expression in speech. Discourse is an instrument by means of which man has been enabled to construct his whole system of representations of the world in which he lives, the system of what is commonly called his Knowledge. Human Knowledge just is the body of man's representations of his Experience in the world of which he forms a part. It is not necessary to insist here on the gradual but remarkable growth and extension which Human Knowledge has undergone during the last two thousand years. Concurrently with its extension man's ability to control the forces of Nature has been enlarged and increased. At the same time, however, that extension has rendered possible false developments and aberrations to which the more limited representations of the brute are less liable.
With the faculty of rational Discourse constantly striving to extend the bounds of Knowledge, man came in time to attempt to give an account not only of the immediate objects which surround him, but of the whole choir of Heaven and furniture of Earth. In this advance the Greeks took a leading part.
When we first make acquaintance through historical records with the intellectual activity of the Greek mind, we find it engaged in the construction of various such schemes for an explanation of the world--usually called cosmogonies.
It was at this stage of intellectual progress that what we might call an interruption occurred in the normal process of evolution. Great intellectual activity had for some time prevailed in the Greek communities; several men of conspicuous genius--notably Heracleitus and Parmenides--had carried speculation as to the origin and nature of the world to a height hitherto undreamt of. These achievements and the consciousness of continual progress had engendered in Athens particularly what might be called an epidemic of intellectual pride.
On this scene Socrates appeared, plain, blunt, critical. His teaching was in effect an appeal to men to reflect: to turn their attention away from the world which they were supposed to be explaining to the contemplation of their own Minds by which the explanation was furnished. +gn?thi seauton+ was his motto. All explanations of the Universe or of Experience were, as he showed, vain unless the Cognitive Faculty by which they were constructed were operating truly. In particular, the process of Rational Discourse implied the use of concrete general terms, which were recognised to be the essential instruments of Cognition. Socrates therefore devoted his attention specially to a critical examination of these general terms and also of the abstract terms which were the familiar instruments of Discourse.
The Greeks of that day were endowed with a singular clearness of intellectual vision. They readily recognised that Knowledge was an intellectual process; they appreciated the activity of Thought or Rational Discourse as essential to its formation. They quite understood that Knowledge is not of the nature of a photograph--a resemblant pictorial reproduction of the data furnished by sensation. Only very casually and occasionally do we ever attempt to supply ourselves with a resemblant reproduction of our sensations. Obviously such a reproduction would only be of value memorially and could tell us nothing new.
These early Greeks realised this, and they appear to have realised also pretty clearly that it would be impossible by means of such pictorial impressions to establish any community of Knowledge. It is of the essence of Knowledge that it is something which can be communicated to, and which is the common possession of, several individuals. That can never be true of sensation. We can never tell whether our sensations are the same as those of other people--never at any rate by means of sensations themselves; never unless and until such sensations have been inter-related by some other instrument. A mere photographic reproduction of sensation is thus quite useless as a means of Knowledge.
In some way or other general terms supply the common bond. The recognition of this fact was one of the great results of the Socratic discussion.