Appearance and Meaning
Symbolism : Its Meaning and Effect. By A. N. Whitehead, F.R.S., Sc.D. (Cambridge University Press. 4s. 6d.) PROFESSOR WarrEnEar,'s remarkable study of " Religion in the Making " introduced him to a wide circle of readers outside the ranks of students of philosophy. These will doubtless hurry to obtain his Barbour Lectures on Symbolism, hoping to find there further light upon the mysteries which surround our human life. But those who come to this new book must be prepared not only to do some hard thinking on levels which the average reader is generally content to admire from below ; but also to follow a demonstration which makes considerable use of technical language, and does not concede over much to the disabilities of the untrained mind.
Symbolism, as here discussed, is that type of apprehension whereby an object or experience given by the senses is held to represent some other object or experience—its " meaning." We are familiar with such symbolism in art, poetry and religion. The Victorian " language of flowers " will do as a crude popular example. But the principle involved governs as a matter of fact all our human reactions to the external world, and is of profound philosophic importance. Man can apprehend his environment in two ways ; in terms of that " sense-show "—the visible world of form and colour—which we habitually treat as real, or in terms of cause and effect. Thus we have two distinct sources of information about the external universe ; connected, but giving different results. One is " presentational immediacy "—that which eye, ear and touch tell us is there. The other is " causal efficacy " ; a conception reached by symbolic reference from the data of sense. Even the least philosophic minds perpetually and easily make this symbolic reference ; for the data given by our senses, though nicely adapted to our powers of assimila- tion, do not in the end satisfy us unless they convey some content—even though this content be vague. They must point beyond themselves ; carry, in fact, symbolic reference.
This, for Professor Whitehead, does not mean that the symbol gives us some otherwise hidden, or transcendental, reality. There is, he says distinctly, no " mysterious element in our experience which is . . . behind the veil of direct perception." All components of experience are equally
given ; there can be none which are only symbols, or only meaning. Usually we refer from the more complex and arti- ficial to the more primitive and fundamental ; but not always. Thus for the average man words are symbols whereby we refer to things. But for the poet things may on occasion become symbols, whereby he achieves contact with the significant words which are the stuff of his art. This act of symbolic reference is performed almost automatically by us in respect of the ordinary constituents of our sense world ; all of which are of course in the strict sense symbolic. We easily attribute the correct causal meaning to the bundle of visual and auditory sensations which are the " immediate representation " of an on-coming motor car ; though we seldom think of tracing out the elaborate process by which this is done.
What we call the " actual world " is then the result of our general and habitual use of symbolic reference. Such reference is an important factor in human life ; though it needs criticism, and can make mistakes like that of lEsop's dog, when he dropped a real piece of meat in order to grasp the " immediate presentation " of its reflection in the water. That dog was not a pure intuitionist, but a poor thinker, who had made a mistaken symbolic reference from the sense data to their supposed cause.
These general considerations lead up to a final section upon the influence of symbolism on human affairs, especially in aesthetic and social action, in which Professor Whitehead once more discloses himself as the philosophic prophet of our age. Those who have read it will never forget the superb vision on which Religion in the Making closed. The last words of Symbolism, though less exalted in tone, have a grave wisdom which is not unworthy of their great predecessor, and is peculiarly appropriate to the needs of the present hour :- " The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code ; and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision must ultimately decay, either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows."
EVELYN UNDER-FMS..
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