7. The process just described is the fundamental process of speculative reasoning. Each image as it is offered by spontaneous redintegration is tested, or compared with the gap in the set of images which forms the starting or rallying point of the reasoning, and every one is rejected which does not aid in filling the gap. In critical generalisation, the whole phenomena to be colligated, and the colligation itself is here the missing link or gap to be filled,—are passed in review and made to recall, by spontaneous redintegration, each feature belonging to them, each mode of connection with other images, each function. which they can perform; likenesses and unlikenesses are observed, order in time of their features or functions noted, until the whole mass is analysed, thrown as it were into the crucible, and again put together in a more logical order. In inductive processes, those phenomena are picked out of the trains of spontaneous redintegration which bear a perceived analogy or resemblance to the images or parts of them fixed on by volition; the causes, the effects, the accompaniments, of these phenomena are noted by continual repetition of the redintegrations; until the whole series of phenomena which bear a resemblance to the old images of the starting point have been passed in review and combined with them, so as to become the object-matter for a critical generalisation. In deduction, the general law or principle which it is sought to develop is a provisional image with certain outlines only filled in, similar cases to which are sought for in the phenomena offered by spontaneous redintegration; these redintegrations being made to start from the salient features of the provisional image, and the phenomena offered by them being rejected BOOK I. $ 55. Analysis of speculative reasoning. BOOK I. $ 55. Analysis of speculative reasoning. if they do not show the same salient features as those fixed on as the starting point; while those which do so are subsumed as parallel cases, or corresponding instances of the application of the original principle. 8. Two circumstances in speculative reasoning, and indeed in voluntary redintegration generally, are important to notice; the first is, that volition has no power of calling up images, but only of rejecting and selecting from those offered by spontaneous redintegration. But the rapidity with which this selection is made, owing to the familiarity of the ways in which spontaneous redintegration runs, gives the process of reasoning the appearance of evoking images that are foreseen to be conformable to the purpose. There is no seeing them before they are offered; there is no summoning them before they are seen. The other circumstance is, that every kind of reasoning is nothing, in its simplest form, but attention. In reasoning which precedes transeunt action, we attend to the last in the series of means, which is the first in practice, and the muscular action follows of itself. In distinguishing means from obstacles, we attend to the means and their connection with the end, and the choice of them follows of itself. In speculative reasoning again, comparison or judgment is nothing but attention to two moments or states of consciousness, in connection with the image which has interest for us, and the rejection of the one, the choice of the other, follows of itself. The likeness or unlikeness, the greater quantity or the less quantity, of two images is perceived by itself, when once the two are put together in the clear light of attention. Volition is the intensity of the interest counterbalancing the tendency which the images have to vanish or grow faint. Judgment is the perception of likeness or difference between two images attended to. The act is the sense of effort in attention. And the same will be found to hold true in the cases of practical reasoning which yet remain to be examined. § 56. 1. We are now at last entering on that part of the analysis in which we may expect, if anywhere, to discover the key to the Problem of Practice, the analysis namely of those processes in which motives determine choice and judgment on choice. In describing what the real problem in Ethic was, in § 2, it was said that the question of "ought" was a question of the nature of states of consciousness, whereas that of fact was a question of their history. We now come to the point where these two questions have their common source, the process of immanent practical volition; and the analysis of this process must disentangle the phenomena of the two questions, by showing what are the elements or moments in the process, the common source of both, from which each of the two streams flows. In § 54 it was shown that immanent voluntary redintegration had two branches, passion and judgment, corresponding to the two modes of spontaneous redintegration, the redintegration of feelings and that of images. Let us then first follow up the branch of judgment, which is properly called practical reasoning. 2. Practical reasoning differs from speculative in the motives which determine its redintegrations. There the reactive movements, the preponderance of which over the retentive constituted the reasoning process, were those which were evidenced by the pleasure of satisfying curiosity, or the logical VOL. I. DD Book I. $56. Analysis of practical reasoning. BOOK I. § 56. practical reasoning. instinct, and the pleasure of minimising effort; in other words, these pleasures were the motives of Analysis of speculative reasoning. But in practical reasoning pleasures and interests of all kinds, both general and specific, and solely in their character of pleasures or interests, take the place of the single more or less specific pleasure of satisfying curiosity, while the general pleasure of minimising effort remains common to both, inasmuch as both are modes of reasoning, expressed by the law of parcimony; but the one is the discovery of the truth of images, the other of the truth of feelings. Accordingly, practical reasoning abstracts from the images, the frameworks of emotions, except so far as they are requisite to embody clearly the emotions and feelings which are its own immediate object. The images are not the interest or the motive in practical reason, but the emotions and feelings, with their pleasures and interests, which pervade the images. Just however as we have found that pleasure of some kind or other is the evidence or exponent of the changing or reactive movements, so also is the case here. The reactive movements in practical reasoning are evidenced or expressed by pleasureable emotions and interests, with their images; the retentive by emotions which are either habitual or vivid but not pleasureable, and by the images which contain them; and the series of states of consciousness which form the redintegration is governed by the predominance, increased and sustained, of the reactive over the retentive movements. 3. The result of this distribution of the reactive and retentive movements, supposing this account of it to be correct, would be a continued comparison of pleasures and interests, as such; that is, it would be a process of practical reasoning. I do not profess that this analysis is final or capable of demonstration; it is an hypothetical analysis of the mode in which the familiar process known as practical reasoning may have been produced, of the nerve movements on which it may depend.. That pleasures are balanced against pleasures in comparison, that they are judged of as better or worse in kind than each other, as well as more or less intense in degree, are well known facts; and in endeavouring to discover how and by what means the comparison is carried on, we must bring the states of consciousness belonging to it into a systematic connection with those of other similar groups, and the movements which underlie these into similar connection with those which underlie the corresponding groups. 4. Now we must not assume that the process of practical reasoning begins with a desire to know which is the greatest or the best of two or more pleasures; this would be to cut the knot we have to untie. We must show how and by what movements, already discovered in spontaneous redintegration, that state of consciousness arises which is a desire to know this; in other words, how the voluntary redintegration of practical reasoning is set on foot, as well as how, continuing the same movements, it reaches its conclusion. I suppose, therefore, that the movements supporting the pleasureable emotion, and those supporting the emotions which are habitual or vivid but not pleasureable, are increased in energy, and their conflict evidenced in consciousness by a sense of effort. The increased energy of the movements supporting the emotion which is pleasureable makes this emotion the fixed point in the redinte Book I. $56. Analysis of practical reasoning. |