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It thus appears that the ambiguous or amphibious status which we find our epithets of value occupying is the most natural thing in the world. It would, however, be an unnatural status if the popular opinion which I cited at the outset were correct. If ‘physical’ and ‘mental’ meant two different kinds of intrinsic nature, immediately, intuitively, and infallibly discernible, and each fixed forever in whatever bit of experience it qualified, one does not see how there could ever have arisen any room for doubt or ambiguity. But if, on the contrary, these words are words of sorting, ambiguity is natural. For then, as soon as the relations of a thing are sufficiently various it can be sorted variously. Take a mass of carrion, for example, and the ‘disgustingness’ which for us is part of the experience. The sun caresses it, and the zephyr wooes it as if it were a bed of roses. So the disgustingness fails to operate within the realm of suns and breezes,–it does not function as a physical quality. But the carrion ‘turns our stomach’ by what seems a direct operation–it does function physically, therefore, in that limited part of physics. We can treat it as physical or as non-physical according as we take it in the narrower or in the wider context, and conversely, of course, we must treat it as non-mental or as mental.

Our body itself is the palmary instance of the ambiguous. Sometimes I treat my body purely as a part of outer nature. Sometimes, again, I think of it as ‘mine,’ I sort it with the ‘me,’ and then certain local changes and determinations in it pass for spiritual happenings. Its breathing is my ‘thinking,’ its sensorial adjustments are my ‘attention,’ its kinesthetic alterations are my ‘efforts,’ its visceral perturbations are my ’emotions.’ The obstinate controversies that have arisen over such statements as these (which sound so paradoxical, and which can yet be made so seriously) prove how hard it is to decide by bare introspection what it is in experiences that shall make them either spiritual or material. It surely can be nothing intrinsic in the individual experience. It is their way of behaving towards each other, their system of relations, their function; and all these things vary with the context in which we find it opportune to consider them.

I think I may conclude, then (and I hope that my readers are now ready to conclude with me), that the pretended spirituality of our emotions and of our attributes of value, so far from proving an objection to the philosophy of pure experience, does, when rightly discussed and accounted for, serve as one of its best corroborations.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] [Reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. II, No. 11, May 25, 1905.]

[76] It will be still better if he shall have also read the [essay] entitled ‘A World of Pure Experience,’ which follows [the first] and develops its ideas still farther.

[77] [Cf. The Principles of Psychology, vol. II, ch. XXV; and “The Physical Basis of Emotion,” The Psychological Review, vol. I, 1894, p. 516.]

[78] [See above, pp. 34, 35.]

[79] Page 102.

[80] [Cf. Janet and Seailles: History of the Problems of Philosophy, trans. by Monahan, part I, ch. III.]

[81] [Cf. Descartes: Meditation II; Principles of Philosophy, part I, XLVIII.]

[82] [Cf. A. E. Taylor: Elements of Metaphysics, bk. III, ch. IV.]

[83] [Cf. K. Pearson: Grammar of Science, ch. III.]

[84] It is enough for my present purpose if the appreciative characters but seem to act thus. Believers in an activity an sich, other than our mental experiences of activity, will find some farther reflections on the subject in my address on ‘The Experience of Activity.’ [The next essay. Cf. especially, p. 169. ED.]