Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

Philosophy frees itself from the taint of ineffectiveness by its close relations with religion and with science, natural and sociological. It attains its chief importance by fusing the two, namely, religion and science, into one rational scheme of thought. Religion should connect the rational generality of philosophy with the emotions and purposes springing out of existence in a particular society, in a particular epoch, and conditioned by particular antecedents. Religion is the translation of general ideas into particular thoughts, particular emotions, and particular purposes; it is directed to the end of stretching individual interest beyond its self-defeating particularity. Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it; and conversely religion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own scheme. Religion is an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of emotion that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual thought alone. In the higher organisms the differences of tempo between the mere emotions and the conceptual experiences produce a lifetedium, unless this supreme fusion has been effected. The two sides of the organism require a reconciliation in which emotional experiences illustrate a conceptual justification, and conceptual experiences find an emotional illustration.

p. 24

This demand for an intellectual justification of brute experience has also been the motive power in the advance of European science. In this sense scientific interest is only a variant form of religious interest. Any survey of the scientific devotion to ‘truth,’ as an ideal, will confirm this statement. There is, however, a grave divergence between science and religion in respect to the phases of individual experience with which they are concerned.

Religion is centered upon the harmony of rational thought with the sensitive reaction to the percepta from which experience originates. Science is concerned with the harmony of rational thought with the percepta themselves. When science deals with emotions, the emo- Oe ee Seen oF is . .

tlons In question are percepta and not immediate passions—other people’s emotion and not our own; at least our own in recollection, and not in immediacy. Religion

deals with the formation of the experiencing subject; whereas science deals with the objects, which are the data forming the primary phase in this experience. The subject originates a =m amid, given conditions; science conciliates thought with this primary matter of fact; and religion conciliates the thought aT ohica in the process ar the sensitive reaction involved in that same process. The process is nothing else than the experiencing subject itself, In this explanation it 1s presumed that an experiencing subject is one occasion of sensitive reaction to an actual world. Science finds religious entific concepts among the conceptual experiences to be fused with particular sensitive reactions.

eC Is discussion 1s, first, the assertion of the old doctrine that breadth of thought reacting with intensity of sensitive experience stands out as an ultimate claim of existence; secondly, the assertion that empirically the development of self-justifying thoughts has been achieved by the complex process of generalizaing from particular topics, of imaginatively schematizing the generalizations, and finally by renewed comparisonDee ubaAdt tT VESRPHILOSORH Y 20 of the imagined scheme with the direct experience to which it should apply.

There is no justification for checking generalization at any particular stage, Iuach phase of generalization’ exhibits its own peculiar simplicities which stand out just at that stage, and at no other stage. There are simplicities connected with the motion of a bar of steel which are obscured if we refuse to abstract from the individual molecules; and there are certain simplicities concerning the behaviour of men which are obscured if we refuse to abstract from the individual peculiarities of particular specimens. In_the same way, there are

certain general truths, about the actual things in the common world of activity, which will be obscured whe attention is confined to some particular detailed mode of considering them. These general truths, involved in the meaning of every particular notion respecting the oan of things, are the subject matter for speculative Philosophy destroys its usefulness when it indulges in brilliant feats of explaining away. It is then trespassing with the wrong equipment upon the field of particular sciences. Its ultimate appeal is to the general consciousness of what in practice we experience. Whatever thread of presupposition characterizes social expression throughout the various epochs of rational society, must find its place in philosophic theory. Speculative boldness must be balanced by complete humility before logic, and before fact. It is a disease of philosophy when it is neither bold nor humble, but merely a reflection of the temperamental presuppositions of exceptional personalities. Analogously, we do not trust any recasting of scientific theory depending upon a single performance of an aberrant experiment, unrepeated. The ultimate test is always widespread, recurrent experience; and the more general the rationalistic scheme, the more important is this final appeal.

The useful function of philosophy is to promote thep. 26 most general systematization of civilized thought. There "sa constant reaction between specialism and common sense. It is the part of the special sciences to modify common. sense. Philosophy is the welding of imagination and common sense into a restraint upon specialists, and also into an enlargement of their imaginations. By providing the generic notions philosophy should make it easier to conceive the infinite variety of specific instances which rest unrealized in the womb of nature.

CHAPTER II
THE CATEGOREAL SCHEME
SECTION I