An experimental philosophy differs from empirical philosophy as empiricism has been previously formulated. Historical empiricisms have been stated in terms of precedents; their generalizations have been summaries of what has previously happened. The truth and falsity of these generalizations depended then upon the accuracy with which they catalogued, under appropriate heads, a multiplicity of past occurrences. They were perforce lacking in directive power except so far as the future might be a routine repetition of the past. In an experimental philosophy of life, the question of the past, of precedents, of origins, is quite subordinate to prevision, to guidance and control amid future possibilities. Consequences rather than antecedents measure the worth of theories. Any scheme or project may have a fair hearing provided it promise amelioration in the future; and no theory or standard is so sacred that it may be accepted simply on the basis of past performance.
But this difference between a radically experimental philosophy and an empiristic philosophy only emphasizes the demand for careful and comprehensive reflection with respect to the ideas which are to be tested in practice. If an a priori philosophy has worked at all in Germany it is because it has been based on an a priori social constitution—that is to say, on a state whose organization is such as to determine in advance the main activities of classes of individuals, and to utilize their particular activities by linking them up with one another in definite ways. It is a commonplace to say that Germany is a monument to what can be done by means of conscious method and organization. An experimental philosophy of life in order to succeed must not set less store upon methodic and organized intelligence, but more. We must learn from Germany what methodic and organized work means. But instead of confining intelligence to the technical means of realizing ends which are predetermined by the State (or by something called the historic Evolution of the Idea), intelligence must, with us, devote itself as well to construction of the ends to be acted upon.
The method of trial and error or success is likely, if not directed by a trained and informed imagination, to score an undue proportion of failures. There is no possibility of disguising the fact that an experimental philosophy of life means a hit-and-miss philosophy in the end. But it means missing rather than hitting, if the aiming is done in a happy-go-lucky way instead of by bringing to bear all the resources of inquiry upon locating the target, constructing propulsive machinery and figuring out the curve of trajectory. That this work is, after all, but hypothetical and tentative till it issue from thought into action does not mean that it might as well be random guesswork; it means that we can do still better next time if we are sufficiently attentive to the causes of success and failure this time.
America is too new to afford a foundation for an a priori philosophy; we have not the requisite background of law, institutions and achieved social organization. America is too new to render congenial to our imagination an evolutionary philosophy of the German type. For our history is too obviously future. Our country is too big and too unformed, however, to enable us to trust to an empirical philosophy of muddling along, patching up here and there some old piece of machinery which has broken down by reason of its antiquity. We must have system, constructive method, springing from a widely inventive imagination, a method checked up at each turn by results achieved. We have said long enough that America means opportunity; we must now begin to ask: Opportunity for what, and how shall the opportunity be achieved? I can but think that the present European situation forces home upon us the need for constructive planning. I can but think that while it gives no reason for supposing that creative power attaches ex officio to general ideas, it does encourage us to believe that a philosophy which should articulate and consolidate the ideas to which our social practice commits us would clarify and guide our future endeavor.
Time permits of but one illustration. The present situation presents the spectacle of the breakdown of the whole philosophy of Nationalism, political, racial and cultural. It is by the accident of position rather than any virtue of our own that we are not sharers in the present demonstration of failure. We have borrowed the older philosophy of isolated national sovereignty and have lived upon it in a more or less half-hearted way. In our internal constitution we are actually interracial and international. It remains to see whether we have the courage to face this fact and the wisdom to think out the plan of action which it indicates. Arbitration treaties, international judicial councils, schemes of international disarmament, peace funds and peace movements, are all well in their way. But the situation calls for more radical thinking than that which terminates in such proposals. We have to recognize that furtherance of the depth and width of human intercourse is the measure of civilization; and we have to apply this fact without as well as within our national life. We must make the accident of our internal composition into an idea, an idea upon which we may conduct our foreign as well as our domestic policy. An international judicial tribunal will break in the end upon the principle of national sovereignty.
We have no right to cast stones at any warring nation till we have asked ourselves whether we are willing to forego this principle and to submit affairs which limited imagination and sense have led us to consider strictly national to an international legislature. In and of itself, the idea of peace is a negative idea; it is a police idea. There are things more important than keeping one's body whole and one's property intact. Disturbing the peace is bad, not because peace is disturbed, but because the fruitful processes of coöperation in the great experiment of living together are disturbed. It is futile to work for the negative end of peace unless we are committed to the positive ideal which it cloaks: Promoting the efficacy of human intercourse irrespective of class, racial, geographical and national limits. Any philosophy which should penetrate and particulate our present social practice would find at work the forces which unify human intercourse. An intelligent and courageous philosophy of practice would devise means by which the operation of these forces would be extended and assured in the future. An American philosophy of history must perforce be a philosophy for its future, a future in which freedom and fullness of human companionship is the aim, and intelligent coöperative experimentation the method.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
1. Bernhardi, "Germany and the Next War," pp. 73-74. Italics not in the original text.
2. Bernhardi, "Germany and the Next War," pp. 63-64.
3. Eucken, "The Meaning and Value of Life," translated by Gibson, p. 104.
4. He refers to the followers of Schelling, who as matter of fact had little vogue. But his words may not unjustly be transferred to the naturalistic schools, which have since affected German thought.
5. Chamberlain, for example, holds that Jesus must have been of Teutonic birth—a perfect logical conclusion from the received philosophy of the State and religion. Quite aware that there is much Slav blood in northern Germany and Romance blood in southern Germany, he explains that while with other peoples crossing produces a mongrel race, the potency of the German blood is such that cross-breeding strengthens it. While at one time he explains the historic strength of the Jew on the ground that he has kept his race pure, another place he allows his indignation at the Jews to lead him to include them among the most mongrel of all peoples. To one thing he remains consistent: By the very essence of race, the Semites represent a metaphysical principle inherently hostile to the grand Germanic principle. It perhaps seems absurd to dignify the vagaries of this garrulous writer, but according to all report the volumes in which such expressions occur, "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century," has had august approval and much vogue.
6. Marx said of the historic schools of politics, law and economics that to them, as Jehovah to Moses on Mt. Sinai, the divine showed but its posterior side.
Leibniz's