A Piece of Prof. Schiller's Mind
Must Philosophers Disagree ? By F. C. S. Schiller. (Macmillan. 12s. 6d.)
IN this look Profesbr Schiller has collected a number of essays which have appeared in various periodicals, mainly American, and addresses delivered to various societies, also mainly. American. The scope is .wide, the subjects hetero- geneous, ranging from Personalist Logic to Man's Future on the Earth, and from Herbert Spencer as a Moralist to the Psychology of Examinations. But while not " grossly popu- lar," all the essays satisfy the condition, so their author claims, of being " capable of appealing to others than merely professional philosophers." " I am aware of this defect and intended it," Professor Schiller continues ; the irony is also intentional, for one of the author's main themes, running like a kit-motif through the book, is the unnecessary obscurity and the pompous technicalities of professional philosophers. Philosophers he represents as constituting a close and very jealous Trade Union ; anyone who endeavours to explain to outsiders in simple non-technical terms the philosophical profundities on whose alleged mysteriousness the Union thrives is regarded as a blackleg, and ignored accordingly. Professor Schiller, too eminent to be ignored, does not hesitate to give the Trade Unionists a piece of his mind. Three- quarters of philosophy, he tells us, is essentially " verbalism, but not literature " ; it is, that is to say, the product of subtle but unperceived variations upon the meanings of well-known words. Philosophers " write obscurely in order to be respected by academic colleagues who dare not criticize what they are not sure they have understood, and in order not to be found out." I do not agree with Professor Schiller ; I believe that some philosophers write obscurely because they are dealing with obscure subjects—there is no necessary reason why the universe should be such as to be readily intelligible to a twentieth-century mind--Lothers because they have not the art to write clearly. But I think it is well that these things should be said, especially when they are said with as much verve and wit as Professor Schiller brings.to the saying of them.
He is, indeed, a very sprightly and vivacious writer, teeming with ideas, good, indifferent, but rarely bad, full of odd pieces of information, and breaking out continually into tropes and epigrams which are less the result of verbal dex- terity than of the logical drive of his thought seeking ex- pression. The reader is, for example, pleased to learn that E. H. Bradley, R. L. Nettleship and Moseley (? Sir Oswald) got Seconds in Greats and that A. E. Housman got a Plough ; intrigued to be let into such examinational secrets as that, if the examiner sets novel questions, he will never get them answered " at any rate in the year in which they are set. The next year you are pretty sure to get the answers, but they will then be answers to other questions."
The later and more popular essays, which deal largely with man, his past, his present and his future, contain enough ideas to set up the average sociologist in book- writing for a lifetime. The Swiss are praised as the only nation capable of dealing decently with their minorities, the Russians denounced because they have so suppressed and standardized the individual that he can no longer vary in any significant way. Hereby hangs one of the most distinctive of Professor Schiller's tales. " We have," he asserts, " been able to associate progress with the occurrence of certain intrusive novelties which have lifted life on to a higher plane at intervals." We cannot tell whether these are or are not due to pure chance, but they have been so numerous and have come so appositely in the nick of time to save the race from destruction that it is difficult to resist the suggestion that they are strictly " providential." The process of evolu- tion apparently proceeds according to its own inherent laws until it falls into a rut or comes to a dead end, when Provid- ence, a real deus ex maehina, intervenes, to give it a push in the shape of a new variation. It is to this element of novelty in the universe that we owe life, mind and consciousness. An intriguing view this, and not to be lightly dismissed, although, as Professor Schiller himself points out, it suffers from the drawback that " it is rooted rather in the exceptions than in the routine of nature."
But to return to the philosophers. " Must philosophers
disagree ? " Professor Schiller wants to know in the most interesting essay in the book. This question he answers in the negative. At least, he thinks, philosophers need not disagree as much as they do. If they would only consent to write .readably, to try to understand each other, to pla with their cards on the table, and to ask one another what they mean while they are still alive—why, complain, Professor Schiller, do we . always wait until philasoplim are safely dead and cannot tell us before trying to find out what they mean ?—then " they could clear up and clear away a majority of the questions which cast a slur on Philosophy in considerably less than five to ten years:* Philosophic issues, in fact, can to a large extent be settled, and university staffs are roundly denounced because they
do not settle them. - Possibly ; possibly not. Yet Professor Schiller's own philosophy is, I should have said, one, and perhaps the only one, whose establishment would make agreement really impossible. He is still an unrepentant Pragmatist. As such he emphasizes the personal element in philosophy, represents it as a guide to action rather than as a discoverer of truth, and regards philosophical conclusions as revelations of the psychology of the philosopher rather than of the features of the universe. Possibly, again ; and again, possibly not.
But if Professor Schiller is right, how on earth can he expect philosophers to agree ? For philosophers admittedly are different, even if the universe is one. If, then, philosophy is an expression of the philosopher, not an account of the universe, how can one philosopher expect to agree with
another ? Personally I see no reason to doubt that philo- sophers can agree, but only if philosophy can give us the absolute truth that Professor Schiller denies. I agree in
fact with Professor Schiller's conclusion that philosophers need not disagree, provided that I am allowed to deny his premises. But whether this avowal by a- philosopher proves that philosophers must disagree I leave Professor Schiller
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