The Analysis of Matter

of attention a number of other elements can be observed. We can observe the feelings which are interpreted as meaning muscular adjustment to a heavy load; we can observe the visual appearance described as the can coming up with a jerk; we can observe the sudden change in what, for short, we may call muscular feelings. It is impossible[Pg 184] to describe all this without circumlocution, since the natural words to use presuppose physiology; but it is clear that there is a great deal that can be directly observed, without invoking any theory. In such a process, what comes earlier may be described as "error" because of the emotion of surprise which follows. Where the activity which has been begun runs its course without leading to this emotion, we shall say that there is not error. I hesitate to ascribe "truth" to something pre-intellectual, but at any rate we may say that there is "correctness," or that what has succeeded to the sensation (or perception) which came at the beginning of the process has been "correct." We may shorten this by saying that the response to a stimulus may be "correct" or "erroneous." But the longer phrase has the merit of not assuming so much knowledge of causal relations. In the situations to which the above analysis applies, we have the advantage of a perfectly definite criterion of correctness or error. The feeling of surprise marks error, and the absence of this feeling marks correctness. It must not be supposed that we have normally an explicit prevision, still less an explicit inference; all that can be said is that we are in such a condition that one sort of event will cause surprise while another sort will not. Consider the experience we have all had, of "thinking" we were at the bottom of a staircase when in fact there was another step to go down. In such a case, when we "think" we are at the bottom, we do not think at all, for if we did we should not make such a silly mistake. Indeed, we might say (or an Irishman might): "I thought I was at the bottom because I wasn't thinking." It is fairly clear that all our elementary intellectual processes have pre-intellectual analogues. The analogue of a general causal belief is a reflex or a habit. A dog goes to the dining-room when he hears the dinner-bell, and so do we. In the case of the dog, it is easy to suppose that he has merely[Pg 185] acquired a habit, without having formulated the induction: "Dinner-bells are a cause, or an effect, or an indispensable part of the cause, of dinner." We, however, can formulate this induction, and we shall then suppose that it is because we have done so that we go into the dining-room when we hear the bell. In fact, however, we may be just as merely habitual as the dog. The elementary inductions of common sense are first habits, and only subsequently beliefs. We may say that if, in our experience, is accompanied by either often or in some emotionally important manner, this fact causes first a habit which would be rational if were always accompanied by , and then a belief that is always accompanied by —the latter being a rationalization of the pre-existing habit. General propositions may thus form part of our thinking from the start. Such general propositions are merely the verbal expression of habits. The hand-eye co-ordination becomes firmly fixed as a motor habit, and then, when we think, we conclude that what can be seen can often be touched—in fact, that it can be touched in circumstances which we know in practice, though we might have difficulty in formulating them exactly. Such general propositions are synthetic, and are in a certain sense a priori; for, though experience has caused them, they are not obtained by inference from other propositions, but by rationalizing and verbalizing our habits; that is to say, their antecedents are pre-intellectual. The trouble with them is that they are never quite right. Common sense, do what it will, cannot avoid being surprised occasionally. The object of science is to spare it this emotion, and create mental habits which shall be in such close accord with the habits of the world as to secure that nothing shall be unexpected. Science has, of course, not yet achieved its ideal: the Great War and the earthquake of Tokyo took people by surprise. But it is hoped that in time such events will no longer[Pg 186] disturb us, because we shall have expected them. However, I do not wish at this stage to consider our knowledge of general propositions; it is particular matters of fact that concern us at present. Although, in our less intellectual moods, we act as the result of a sensation without stopping to think (e.g. when we blink because we see something approaching the eye), yet we can, when we choose, react to a stimulus in the way which is called "knowing" it, and we often react involuntarily in this way. It is not necessary, in an analysis of matter, to decide what "knowing" is; it is only necessary to decide what is known, in so far as this is relevant to our knowledge of physics. The list which I gave earlier in the present chapter was designed to be such as would exclude the risk of error, using "error" in the sense which I have been defining. Common sense is liable to err—of this we have already given instances. We cannot therefore include the common-sense notion of an "object" or "thing" as part of what we know. But the sensible qualities which can be analyzed out of the "thing" can be admitted without ever leading us into error. These, therefore, are to be accepted as genuinely known. It is a remarkable fact that all such knowledge, when not inferential, arises at about the same time as what is known, though it may survive for an indefinite time in the form of memory. This is the essential peculiarity, which we mentioned earlier, that distinguishes the empirical premisses of empirical knowledge. These consist of facts which become known spontaneously at about the time when they occur, and cannot be known sooner except by elaborate and more or less doubtful inferences from other such facts. The process of getting to know such facts without inference is called "perception," and knowledge derived wholly or partly from perception is said to be based on experience. A Greek could know the multiplication table as well as we do, but he could not know the biography of Napoleon.