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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN VICTIMS
AND VICTIMOLOGY
Series Editors:
Matthew Hall and Pamela Davies

THE CRIMINAL
VICTIMIZATION
OF IMMIGRANTS

William F. McDonald
Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology

Series Editors
Matthew Hall
University of Lincoln
Lincoln, UK

Pamela Davies
Department of Social Sciences
Northumbria University
Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
In recent decades, a growing emphasis on meeting the needs and rights of
victims of crime in criminal justice policy and practice has fuelled the
development of research, theory, policy and practice outcomes stretching
across the globe. This growth of interest in the victim of crime has seen
victimology move from being a distinct subset of criminology in academia
to a specialist area of study and research in its own right. Palgrave Studies
in Victims and Victimology showcases the work of contemporary scholars
of victimological research and publishes some of the highest-quality
research in the field. The series reflects the range and depth of research
and scholarship in this burgeoning area, combining contributions from
both established scholars who have helped to shape the field and more
recent entrants. It also reflects both the global nature of many of the issues
surrounding justice for victims of crime and social harm and the interna-
tional span of scholarship researching and writing about them. Editorial
Board:- Antony Pemberton, Tilburg University, Netherlands; Jo-Anne
Wemmers, Montreal University, Canada; Joanna Shapland, Sheffield
University, UK; Jonathan Doak, Durham University, UK.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14571
 William F. McDonald

The Criminal
Victimization
of Immigrants
William F. McDonald
Department of Sociology
Georgetown University
Washington, DC, USA

Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology

ISBN 978-3-319-69061-2    ISBN 978-3-319-69062-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69062-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017963545

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Détail de la Tour Eiffel © nemesis2207/Fotolia.co.uk

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 To Irene,
for her love and support
 Acknowledgments

This book began as one chapter in a larger book about immigration and
crime. That larger book continues to be written. It is not limited to the
criminal victimization of immigrants. Rather, it includes all the research
that I have done over several years in connection with this topic. That
research began with grant 95-IJ-CX-0110 from the National Institute of
Justice, US Department of Justice to Georgetown University, and has
been supported by sabbatical funding. I want to express my sincere grati-
tude for the support, cooperation, and assistance I received from the
National Institute of Justice, Georgetown University, Carole Sargent,
Director of the Office of Scholarly Publications, Georgetown University,
and the many people who gave me the benefit of their time and experience
in the long course of this research. The views and opinions expressed
herein are mine and do not necessarily represent those of the US
Department of Justice, Georgetown University, or any of the people or
organizations I have acknowledged.

vii
 Contents

1 The Immigrant as Victim: The Minimal Research1

2 Theories of Criminal Victimization11

3 The Criminal Victimization of Immigrants: A Meta Survey29

4 Exploiting Immigrant Vulnerability47

5 Anti-Immigrant Hate Crime55

6 Domestic Violence/Intimate Partner Violence/Wife

Battering75

7 The Global Prohibition Regime Against Trafficking

in Persons: Understanding the Limited Results85

8 Conclusions105

References109

Index127

ix
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Crude death rates per 100,000 population per year for
homicide by race, birthplace, sex, and age: New York City,
1988–199232
Table 3.2 Race and ethnicity of killers and victims: New York City,
1750–187433
Table 3.3 Risk of victimization relative to Italians by foreign status and
type of crime: Italy, 1999 [Italians = 1] 34
Table 3.4 Immigrant status of victim and offender by type of crime:
Italy, 1999 35
Table 3.5 Ethnicity and Mariel status of homicide victims by ethnicity of
offenders: Miami, 1980–1990 37
Table 3.6 Differential ethnic risk of victimization by ethnic group 41

xi
 CHAPTER 1

The Immigrant as Victim:

The Minimal Research

Abstract Despite the common observation that immigrants are ­frequently

victims of crimes, research on the topic has been limited in part due to the
lack of good data and in part because claims makers have constructed the
problem in other, more socially and politically compelling terms: “modern
slaves;” trafficking victims; domestic violence; hate crime; child abuse and
elder abuse. Another aspect of the problem is that the concept “­immigrant”
over-aggregates, lumping into one category people with widely differing
characteristics. Victimologists have approached the subject from distinct
traditions: the humanistic/human rights vs. the positivist or “conservative.”

Keywords Social construction • Over-aggregate • Humanism • Positivism

• Claims makers • Hans von Hentig

Criminological research on immigrants has been primarily concerned with

the criminality of immigrants. Less concern has been paid to immigrants as
victims of crime In his review of the literature, for instance, Satyanshu
Mukherjee of the Australian Institute of Criminology concluded that “apart
from hate crime, there has been little concern in criminal victimization of
immigrants.”1 This comes as no surprise given that in 1967 the President’s
Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice declared
that “one of the most neglected subjects in the study of crime is its victims.”2

© The Author(s) 2018 1

W.F. McDonald, The Criminal Victimization
of Immigrants, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69062-9_1
2 W.F. MCDONALD

Although the pioneer victimologist Hans von Hentig, himself an

­immigrant, devoted substantial attention to the depredations inflicted
upon immigrants by criminal and unscrupulous predators,3 until recently
victimologists have not pursued that topic.4 Virtually nothing more was
done until the Fifth International Symposium on Victimology in 1985.
Even then there was not much about immigrant victims.5
The lack of interest in the topic is surprising given what was known
about immigrants and foreigners. For example, von Hentig observed that
“[t]here is a tendency all over the world to make the foreigner bear blame
for others. Their different appearance, their poverty, the life in the slums,
all render them suspect.”6 And Stephan Schafer, another early victimolo-
gist, explained that immigrants are like “ethnic minorities, and others who
are in a socially weak position [and so] are often exploited by the criminal
element.”7 By the time Biko Agozino of the School of Science, Liverpool,
began writing about the subject, the immigrant was seen in a more
­complex way. He wrote,

[T]he immigrant is not the typical criminal but the typical criminalised
­person, not the typical example of the individual offender being punished
but the model of the innocent being victimized as a member of a demonised
category.8

These days stories about the criminal victimization of immigrants are

daily fare in the media. A Maryland legislator tells the press, “[i]t bothers
me to see how our (immigrant) community is victimized by so many
fraudulent scams.”9 Similarly, a former German police officer says, “You
don’t find foreigners on the streets in eastern Germany past 6 or 8 p.m.
In the villages, it’s difficult for the police because often their own sons
are involved in the violence… And the rightists have some sympathizers
among the police. I’ve heard police say, ‘All foreigners are criminals, and
the young people help us keep the countryside clean.’”10
An article from a New York City paper reports that “assaults in which
perpetrators are people of color have become more common—and victims
tend to be immigrants from every imaginable origin. The change is a m ­ atter
of sheer demographics.”11 An article from the Head of the Forced Migration
Studies Program at Witswatersrand University, South Africa reads:
“Xenophobia is turning immigrants into ‘mobile ATMs’ for police and
criminals who see them as a source of instant cash.”12 A news service story
about illegal immigrants traveling from Central America through Mexico
 THE IMMIGRANT AS VICTIM: THE MINIMAL RESEARCH 3

to the USA describes the trip as like the running of a brutal gauntlet in
which everyone—good, bad, or indifferent—takes the opportunity to vic-
timize the immigrants.

The journey is extremely dangerous. The stories these seven men tell
­highlight the perils faced by the hundreds of Guatemalans, Hondurans,
Salvadorans and others who begin the trip every day. The men in the shanty
say that since they entered Mexico at the southern state of Chiapas a few
days earlier, they have seen or experienced just about everything: Some have
been beaten, forced to pay bribes, robbed by law enforcement officers,
ripped off by shopkeepers and bus drivers, cheated by smugglers, ambushed
and mugged by gun-toting bandits.13

Nowhere is free from the abuse of immigrants, even in a nation of immi-

grants. In 1957, for example, the Australian Commonwealth Immigration
Advisory Council wrote the following:

A not unimportant matter that was mentioned by a number of Police

Officers in each of the States was that, whilst undue publicity was given to
the offenses alleged to have been committed by migrants, little or nothing
was said of the many instances when European migrants had been assaulted
or robbed or otherwise ill-treated by the undesirable sections of our own
native-born populations.14

The minimal research on the victimization of immigrants is u ­ ndoubtedly

related in part to the difficulty of obtaining valid data on the immigration
status of crime victims. Information about crimes against immigrants is
mostly anecdotal coming from media reports or the experiences of immi-
grant service providers. There are virtually no official crime statistics on
this matter of the criminal victimization of immigrants in the USA15 or
Australia.16 Such data are available in several European countries. However,
their validity and reliability are open to question.17
Another reason for the lack of a focus on immigrants qua immigrants
as victims is what researchers working within the social constructionist
­tradition would describe as the process of defining victim categories and
of “making claims”18 on behalf of those categories. Victim-activists have
been remarkably successful at placing a variety of victim categories and
victim issues on the public agenda, including elder abuse,19 hate crime,20
child abuse,21 domestic abuse,22 and crime against the elderly.23 The fact
that they have not cast “immigrants” in the role of “star victim”24 does
not necessarily mean that concern about immigrant victimization does
not exist at all. Rather, it is because certain immigrant troubles have
4 W.F. MCDONALD

been ­ subsumed under politically hotter topics, such as hate crime,

domestic violence and human trafficking.25
Indeed, one of the most successful claims-making campaigns on behalf
of victims of crime ever mounted is about an “immigration” issue.
However, it has been packaged under the far more politically potent rubric
of “the trafficking of human beings.” The star role in this campaign has
been a classic example of what Nils Christie called the “ideal victim,” i.e.,
“a person or category of individuals who—when hit by crime—most
­readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim.”26
Like Hiram Powers’ famous sculpture, The Greek Slave,27 the image of the
innocent girl abducted to a foreign land and forced into sexual slavery by
depraved and lustful men became a household icon, the image of the
innocent girl being trafficked off to a foreign land to be debauched has
been used to successfully galvanize support for the anti-trafficking cause.28
Related to this second reason for the lack of research on immigrants as
victims of crime is the fact that the concept “immigrant” over-aggregates
matters. Unlike traditional demographic variables such as gender, age,
race/ethnicity, social class, and urban vs. rural residence, the status of
being an immigrant does not represent a singular dimension of social
­status or experience. Any review of what is known about the victimization
of immigrants by necessity must expect to find the literature subdivided
into more specialized categories such as hate crime, domestic violence and
trafficking of humans.
It must also be recognized that since the 1960s much research related
to immigrants no longer focuses upon immigrant status as it did in the
early twentieth century in the United States. These days the terms, race,
ethnicity, and immigrant are used virtually interchangeably. Thus, in
Europe and Australia official data on hate crime and crime victimization
surveys that ask about race and ethnic information are presumed to be
proxy measures for crimes against immigrants—even though the victims
may be second or third generation. It also bears mentioning that since
the war in Yugoslavia and the collapse of Soviet communism, the term
“­immigrant” (especially in Europe) is often used synonymously with that
of refugee or asylum seeker.
When victimologists/criminologists have focused on immigrants as
­victims of crime, they have sometimes followed the humanistic/human
rights (as opposed to the positivist or so-called “conservative”) tradition
in ­victimology.29 They have not limited their analyses solely to victimiza-
tions involving crimes in the technical, legal sense.30 Rather they define
 THE IMMIGRANT AS VICTIM: THE MINIMAL RESEARCH 5

“victimization” broadly to include civil matters, such as unfair business or

labor practices31; discriminatory behavior by the police and the criminal
justice system32; discriminatory labor standards and laws that put
farm workers and illegal immigrants at high risk of physical injuries or
loss of wages33; harsh and stingy asylum and refugee policies34; and “the
criminalization of immigration controls.”35
It should be noted that the American lack of research on immigrants as
victims of crime is unlikely to be reversed by the Donald Trump adminis-
tration. Actually at his first address to Congress, President Trump prom-
ised to have immigrants studied as the cause of crime.36 In addition to
describing the development of victimology and its ­reasons for not focus-
ing much on immigrants, this chapter describes the endless types of crimes
and injuries which immigrants suffer. It also reviews theories of victimiza-
tion at both the macro and micro levels, showing that they fit the patterns
in the data rather well. However, it also highlights an inconsistency
between the macro-level explanation which emphases h ­ eterogeneity (eth-
nic differences among groups as a cause of conflict) and the micro-level
explanations that stress homogeneity (the lifestyles shared in common
and the fact that immigrants are usually ­victimized by their own kind).
These two perspectives and the data behind them seem to both support
and challenge at the same time the popular idea that ethnic enclaves ­protect
immigrants from victimization. Yes, enclaves do seem to protect immigrants
from victimization by outsiders but not by insiders. That is, enclaves reduce
heterogeneity within them and thereby reduce the chance of so-called “hate
crime” (victimization motivated by differences in ­culture, religion, national-
ity, ethnicity). But enclaves also increase homogeneity which means that
immigrants are living together with other immigrants and co-ethnics. That
situation increases the risk of being v­ ictimized by fellow immigrants and co-
ethnics, which is precisely what the data show happening and what the
opportunity theories predict. This conclusion is supported below.

Notes
1. Mukherjee (1999).
2. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of
Justice (1967: 38).
3. Von Hentig (1945).
4. None of the following major books on victims of crime address “immi-
grants” as victims—although some do address racial minorities (Karmen
1990; Fattah 1991; Elias 1993; Sgarzi and McDevitt 2003; Kennedy and
Sacco 1998; Shichor and Tibbetts 2002; Goodey 2005). But see Coston
6 W.F. MCDONALD

(2004). The problems of immigrants as victims have been featured in

various numbers of the International Review of Victimology.
5. Of the 43 presenters only three addressed the victimization of “the foreign
born and minorities.” In summarizing those presentations the rapporteurs
wrote: “Alien persons in a society often suffer extraordinary degrees of
victimization” (Geis et al. 1988: 199). The evidence presented amounted
to nothing more than examples of misunderstanding and mistreatment of
minorities; labor market exploitation; and the failure to translate legal con-
cepts into the languages familiar to certain minorities.
6. Von Hentig (1948: 414).
7. Schafer (1981: 23).
8. Agozino (1996: 103).
9. Williams (2005).
10. Moseley (1998).
11. City Limits (2004).
12. Templeton and Maphumulo (2005).
13. Graglia (2006).
14. Quoted in Mukherjee (1999: 23).
15. Hagan and Palloni (1998: 382). One important exception is homicide data
for immigrants available from death certificates (Sorenson and Shen 1996).
16. Mukherjee (1999).
17. A survey of the Member States of the European Union asked whether
when registering racist crimes the police recorded the ethnicity and/or
nationality (citizenship) of victims and/or offenders. Twenty-two coun-
tries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia,
Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and
Sweden) indicated that “nationality” was recorded. In some cases, this was
only for the victim, in others only for the offender. In most cases it seems
that “nationality” meant “citizenship status.” In a few countries the clas-
sification actually used was simply “citizen” or “foreigner” (Oakley 2005:
19). See also, for Germany (Albrecht 1987, 1997); Italy (Barbagli 1998;
Barbagli and Colombo 2009); Netherlands (Junger-Tas 1994); Sweden
(Martens 1997); and Switzerland (Killias 1997: 21).
18. Spector and Kitsuse (1977).
19. Baumann (1989).
20. Czajkoski (1992).
21. Best (1987).
22. Loseke (1991).
23. Cooke and Skogan (1990).
24. Elias (1993).
25. See, e.g., Abraham (2000), Raj et al. (2002).
 THE IMMIGRANT AS VICTIM: THE MINIMAL RESEARCH 7

26. Christie (1986: 18). For example, the ideal victim would be weak (sick,
old, very young); carrying out a respectable activity where she could not be
blamed for being (e.g., in a public sidewalk in daylight); and the offender
is big, bad, and in no personal relationship to the victim.
27. Powers (1844).
28. McDonald (2004).
29. Mawby and Walklate (1994).
30. Victimology has a long tradition of defining the scope of its field well
beyond violations of criminal law (Geis et al. 1988; Mendelsohn 1963;
Fattah 1991). Cressey notes that this renders the field unmanageable and
unscientific, albeit responsive to humanitarian and justice concerns (Cressey
1988).
31. Claghorn (1917).
32. Holdaway (2003), Mukherjee (1999: 112). Von Hentig would agree with
Holdaway and Mukherjee that immigrants who have been the object of
police prejudice are properly thought of as “victims.” He wrote: “One is
not allowed to speak of delinquents as ‘victims’ of criminal justice, with
one exception. If the treatment of many law-enforcing agencies is grossly
discriminatory, concept and term are justified” (von Hentig 1948: 417).
33. Jenks and Jenks (2004).
34. Jupp (2003).
35. Palidda (1996), Agozino (1996).
36. Hagen, Lisa. 2017. Democrats Groan as Trump Promotes New Immigration
Crime Office. The Hill, February 28. http://thehill.com/homenews/
administration/321717-democrats-groan-as-trump-promotes-new-immi-
gration-crime-office. Accessed 6 Apr 2017.

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Mukherjee, Satyanshu. 1999. Ethnicity and Crime. Trends and Issues in Crime
and Criminal Justice, No. 117. Australian Institute of Criminology. http://
www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/101-120/tandi117.
html. Accessed 9 Aug 2004.
Oakley, Robin. 2005. Policing Racial Crime and Violence: A Comparative Analysis.
Vienna: European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. http://
eumc.eu.int/eumc/material/pub/PRCV/PRCV-Final.pdf. Accessed 18 June
2006.
Palidda, Salvatore, ed. 1996. Délit d’Immigration/Immigrant Delinquency. EUR;
17472 FR/EN. Bruxelles: European Commission.
Powers, Hiram. 1844. A Small Collection of Powers’ Statues. Worcestor, MA:
Assumption College. http://www.assumption.edu/whw/IconsFemale/
TheGreekSlave.html. Accessed 17 Mar 2003.
President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.
1967. The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office.
Raj, Anita, Silverman Jay, J. McCleary-Sills, and R. Liu. 2002. Intimate Partner
Violence against South Asian Women: The Roles of Immigrant Culture,
Context and Legal Status. Violence Against Women 8 (3): 376–398.
Schafer, Stephen. 1981. The Beginning of Victimology. In Perspectives on Crime
Victims, ed. B. Galaway and J. Hudson, 15–26. St. Louis, MO: C.V. Mosby.
Sgarzi, Judith M., and Jack McDevitt, eds. 2003. Victimology: A Study of Crime
Victims and Their Roles. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Hall.
Shichor, David, and Stephen G. Tibbetts. 2002. Victims and Victimization.
Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
Sorenson, Susan B., and Haikang Shen. 1996. Homicide Risk Among Immigrants
in California, 1970 Through 1992. American Journal of Public Health 86 (1,
January): 97–101.
Spector, M., and J.I. Kitsuse. 1977. Constructing Social Problems. Menlo Park,
CA: Cummings.
Templeton, Alameen and Solly Maphumulo. 2005. Immigrants are Getting a
Raw Deal. Durban: IOL (South Africa). http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?
set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=vn20050620075927904C974853. Accessed 22
June 2005.
Von Hentig, Hans. 1945. The First Generation and a Half: Notes on the
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 CHAPTER 2

Theories of Criminal Victimization

Abstract There are two kinds of theories of criminal victimization:

­individual (micro) and aggregate/structural (macro) correlates. Victimologists
have focused upon the characteristics of victims and victim-precipitated
crime. Findings that young, unmarried males had higher rates of victim-
ization than their demographic counterparts led to theories about
­lifestyles/routine activities. The association between social structures and
aggregate victimization rates supported the theory of collective efficacy
and clarified the social disorganization theory advanced by Shaw and
McKay. Opportunity theory and Blau’s theory of heterogeneity help
explain the effects of heterogeneity and residential segregation.

Keywords Heterogeneity • Victim-precipitated crime • Micro • Macro

• Theory • Opportunity • Lifestyles • Routine activities • Collective
efficacy • Social disorganization

Micro and Macro Approaches

Victimology—the systematic study of victims—began in the 1940s with
the work of Hans von Hentig1 and Benjamin Mendelsohn2; got a major
boost in the 1960s from the development of criminal victimization sur-
veys3; and has been a dynamic source of theorizing, research, and policy

© The Author(s) 2018 11

W.F. McDonald, The Criminal Victimization
of Immigrants, Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69062-9_2
12 W.F. MCDONALD

initiatives ever since.4 Theories of criminal victimization developed along

two distinct lines which emphasized either individual or aggregate/struc-
tural correlates of criminal victimization.5 Early theorizing by the pioneer
“victimologists” focused upon characteristics of individuals who became
victims—and particularly upon the interaction between victims and their
victimizers. With the advent of the large-scale victim surveys differences in
the risk of victimization across types of individuals and households were
established quantitatively. The individual approach moved beyond the
anecdotal ruminations of the early thinkers.
The consistent finding of the surveys that males, young people, and
unmarried people had higher rates of victimization than their demographic
counterparts led to theories about lifestyles and routine activities as
­explanations for victimization.6 The consistent finding that criminals gen-
erally resided in the same areas as their victims and shared many of the
same demographic characteristics suggested that the same factors that
are conducive to crime are conducive to victimization.7 Thus, it was
­recognized that existing criminological research and theorizing could be
­usefully integrated with the emerging victimological work. The possibility
of linking micro and macro explanations of crime and victimization was
particularly attractive for theorists seeking more robust explanations of the
two interrelated phenomena.8
The link between the risk of victimization for individuals (micro-level)
and the characteristics of neighborhoods (macro-level) provides a bridge
to the second line of victimological theorizing; namely, explanations based
upon social structures such as neighborhoods, communities, Standard
Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and cities. These explanations focus upon
the association between certain characteristics of these social structures
and their aggregate rates of ­criminal victimization. They represent a con-
tinuation and refinement of the long tradition of research and theory on
the social ecology of crime i­dentified with the classic work of Shaw and
McKay and the “Chicago School” of sociology.9
By coincidence, immigrants happened to play an important role as
causal forces in ecological research and theorizing. Two of the three
­structural factors which Shaw and McKay identified as keys to the disrup-
tion of social organization of a community, which in turn was responsible
for variations among communities in their crime (and victimization) rates,
were directly related to immigrants. The third was indirectly related.
Crime rates were associated with ethnic and racial heterogeneity, residen-
tial mobility, and low community economic status. Immigrants would
 THEORIES OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION 13

“invade” low-rent neighborhoods where they could afford to live, adding

to the ethnic and racial heterogeneity of the community. As their
economic situations improved, they moved on to higher social status
­
neighborhoods. Their aggregate crime rates were high while living in
“socially disorganized” neighborhoods, but decreased as they moved to
better neighborhoods. Thus, criminality was associated with neighbor-
hoods, not individuals. By the same token, criminal victimization was
associated with neighborhoods.
Conceptualizing “social disorganization” and obtaining measures
of it have been a continuing challenge. The problem has been to specify
the intervening variables that mediate between the macro-structural char-
acteristics of the community and the inability of neighborhood residents
to achieve their values and to maintain effective crime control at the
­micro-­individual level.10 While not attempting to define “social disorgani-
zation,” one early study captured one of its most important aspects, which
has since been elaborated upon by others—namely, the nature of the social
ties among residents. At the same time, it identified a condition which has
become recognized as an important potential buffer against criminal
­victimization—namely, residential segregation. Focusing upon Hungarian
immigrants in Detroit, Benyon noted that crime rates tended to be lower
among immigrant communities which maintained themselves in “­colonies”
or “enclaves” that were comparatively isolated from the s­urrounding,
larger community. By contrast, the rates were higher in communities in
which people did not gather together in tight-knit groups.11
The meaning of social disorganization has been much misunderstood
partly because—as Kornhauser12 explains—Shaw and McKay never
operationalized it. Currently, social disorganization research is based
on the idea that strong local networks reduce crime. This conceptual-
ization is grounded in the “systemic” model of community o ­ rganization
which views the local community as “an ongoing system of social ­networks
into which new generations and new residents are assimilated, while the
community itself passes through its own life-cycle.”13 The general
­
hypothesis is that formal and informal networks and associational ties
are the intervening variables between community social structure and
crime/victimization. A growing body of research suggests that the
“collective efficacy” of neighborhoods, “defined as social cohesion
among neighbors combined with their willingness to intervene on
behalf of the common good,”14 seems to be the key to lower rates of
violence in some neighborhoods.
14 W.F. MCDONALD

Immigrants remain a major focal point in the development and testing

of theories of criminal victimization. The ethnic heterogeneity of neigh-
borhoods—to which they contribute—continues to be a key structural
variable with predictive power.15 Residential segregation—particularly in
the form of ethnic enclaves—fits well not only with the data but also with
important theoretical developments. Both opportunity theory and
Peter Blau’s classic Inequality and Heterogeneity—described as “one of the
most important works ever written in sociology”16—take into account
these macrosociological factors: heterogeneity and residential segregation.
We shall return to them after describing in fuller detail the development of
the micro-level theorizing.

Pioneer Theorizing
From the beginning, victimologists theorized about the causes of criminal
victimization. The micro-level perspectives that developed can be broadly
grouped into three major categories: those concerned with the concept of
“victim proneness/vulnerability;” those concerned with the concept of
“victim-offender interactions;” and those that are concerned with the
concept of “opportunity.” The theorizing has assumed that traditional
offender-centered explanations of crime were inadequate precisely because
they omitted consideration of the victim, as had been stressed by Von
Hentig in 1940 when he wrote:

It is true, there are many criminal deeds with little or no contribution on

the part of the injured individual… On the other hand we can frequently
observe a real mutuality in the connection of perpetrator and victim, killer
and killed, duper and dupe. Although this reciprocal operation is one of
the most curious phenomena of criminal life it has escaped the attention
of socio-pathology.17

Von Hentig notes that the legal distinctions between offender and
v­ictim artificially simplify the complex interacting forces that precede
many crimes. They ignore the fact that oftentimes “the victim is one of the
causative elements” of the crime.18 Both von Hentig and Mendelsohn
were concerned with identifying attributes of victims that made them
prone to or vulnerable to victimization. Both created typologies to
­distinguish among victims. Mendelsohn’s interest was not just that of the
scientist seeking to understand victimization but also that of the lawyer
 THEORIES OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION 15

seeking to assign culpability. His typology classifies victims in accordance

with the degree of blameworthiness.19
Von Hentig’s typology uses biological, psychological, and social ­factors.
His has thirteen categories: the young, the female, the old, etc. One of his
types was “the immigrant,” a status which he, himself, once occupied.
Immigrants, he says, are vulnerable because of the difficulties of adjusting
to the new culture. He poignantly describes the experience of being an
immigrant as not simply an adjustment to a new country but also “a
­temporary reduction to an extreme degree of helplessness in vital human
relations.”20 In addition to the challenges of language and culture, the
immigrant often suffers from poverty, hostility from the native born, and
emotional distress. Von Hentig says it takes many painful years to adjust to
a new lifestyle and only then is it possible to escape victimization. He also
notes that the plight of the immigrant is obvious to people with criminal
and exploitative inclinations; and they frequently take advantage of it.21
While the development of typologies did not lead directly to theories,
some of their ideas showed up later in theoretically more refined and
empirically grounded statements—thanks in part to the advent of
­victimization surveys. The concepts of victim—offender interactions, of
situational explanations, of vulnerabilities or risk factors—concepts which
subsequently became central to more formal theorizing—are all to be
found in the typologies scattered among an assortment of less useful ideas
such as the “born victim.”

Victim—Offender Interactions
One fruitful, but controversial line of theorizing focused upon the social
interaction between victim and offender. The most renowned and
­controversial line of this work explored the belief that victims sometimes
precipitate their own victimization. This idea is found in Marvin Wolfgang’s
classic study, Patterns of Criminal Homicide (1968), in which he subjected
von Hentig’s and Mendelsohn’s speculations to systematic, empirical
­testing. Wolfgang defined victim-precipitated offenses as those “in which
the victim is a direct, positive precipitator in the crime.”22 Based upon an
analysis of the police records of 588 homicides in Philadelphia from 1948
to 1952, he calculated that in 26 percent of homicides the victim was the
first person to resort to violence.
16 W.F. MCDONALD

Wolfgang’s analysis validated three of the victimologists’ essential

points. Some crimes cannot be understood simply as the product of the
intent of the criminal. A full understanding requires that the situational
dynamic between the victim and the offender must be taken into account23;
and sometimes victims do indeed precipitate their own victimization.
Subsequently, the victim-precipitation logic was applied to other crimes.24
Its most controversial application was that conducted by Menachem Amir
in a study of forcible rape. He analyzed police records regarding 646
­forcible rapes in Philadelphia and concluded that 14 percent of them were
victim-precipitated.25 His definition of “precipitation,” however, was so
vague and ambiguous it invited criticism. It included all cases in which “the
victim actually—or so it was interpreted by the offender—agreed to sexual
relations but retracted… or did not resist strongly enough when the sugges-
tion was made by the offender. The term also [applied] to cases in which the
victim enters vulnerable situations charged sexually.”26
Amir’s study provoked controversy not primarily for its methodological
limitations27 but for its ideological implications. The newly emergent sec-
ond feminist movement tarred it as an example of “blaming the victim.”28
The hypothesis of victim-precipitation has been suspect ever since—
despite efforts to defend it.29 Fattah, for instance, argues that the criticism
involves a misunderstanding of the concept. He distinguishes between
treating victim precipitation as a moral blaming exercise as opposed to an
analytic framework for understanding the victim’s contribution to the sit-
uational dynamic which precedes a criminal event.30 Nevertheless, others
remain skeptical of the value of the concept or, at least, regard it as too
potentially misleading for use in connection with understanding rape.31

Opportunity Theories: Lifestyle-Exposure

and Routine Activities

In 1968 LeRoy Lamborn reviewed the victimology literature and drew

some conclusions. A decade later, several of his observations—stated in
somewhat more formal terms—became keys to the two closely related
versions of opportunity theory that are now regarded as important
­
­theoretical innovations—namely, “lifestyle exposure theory” published in
1978 by Michael Hindelang, Michael Gottfredson and James Garofalo32
and “routine activities theory” originally formulated by Lawrence Cohen
and Marcus Felson in 1979.33 Lamborn even anticipated “rational choice
 THEORIES OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION 17

theory” which has been formally stated in the 1980s and 1990s by Derek
Cornish, Ronald Clarke, and Marcus Felson.34
Lamborn concluded that it was possible to construct a vulnerability
index that would indicate the relative probability of an individual’s
­becoming the victim of crime. Additionally, he made several points which
have since become standard in opportunity theory and in the findings
of victim surveys. He wrote:

Although not all criminals act rationally, certainly the reasonable criminal,
upon contemplation, chooses the weaker of the otherwise two equal v­ ictims.
However, the ease of access to the potential victim is important in the evalu-
ation of the desirability of attacking him rather than another person. The
probability of two persons entering into a victim-criminal relationship is a
function of those factors that tend to bring persons into contact or to separate
them… The opportunity for a crime… must be sufficiently obvious as to
come to the attention of the criminal and to facilitate his taking advantage of
it. Because criminals generally reside in the same area as their victims, the
same factors that are conducive to crime are conducive to victimization.35

Opportunity theorists argue that there is more to crime than the o ­ ffender’s
criminal tendencies. There must also be opportunities to commit crime.
These opportunities are not randomly distributed. They are structured
and patterned in ways which are related to the probability of victimization.
Thus, victim behavior contributes to the supply of opportunities presented
to potential offenders. The two theories differ regarding how they
­conceptualize this contribution.
The “life-style-exposure theory” of Hindelang, Gottfredson, and
Garofalo is a “grounded theory”36 that emerged from attempts to explain
the patterns they found in victimization survey data.37 They sought to
explain the patterns that indicated a relationship between people’s
social and demographic characteristics and their risks of victimization.
Why were males, young adults and minorities consistently more likely
to be victimized than others? Their answer is “lifestyle.”
They defined lifestyle in terms of the routine leisure and occupational
activities (work, home-making, school, etc.) which structure the time and
the energies of people. Lifestyles differ in terms of the degree to which
they put people at risk of criminal victimization. To the extent that they
bring people into contact with individuals with a high likelihood of
­offending (e.g., young males) or puts them in places where crimes are
likely to occur (e.g., on the street), they increase the risk of victimization.
18 W.F. MCDONALD

Thus, young, black males have higher rates of victimization than elderly,
white females because their lifestyles are far riskier. Hindelang, Gottfredson,
and Garofalo did not address immigration issues but some of their eight
propositions about victimization that summarize the links between life-
style and certain demographic variables (e.g., age, sex, marital status, race)
could easily be adapted to fit common aspects of immigrant lifestyles.
The “routine activities theory” of Cohen and Felson also addresses
how people routinely live their lives and the associated victimization
risks. They theorize that for a crime to occur (involving direct predatory
behavior such as most violent crime and certain property crime) three
­elements must come together in time and space. There must be: a moti-
vated offender; a suitable target; and an absence of capable guardianship.
Cohen and Felson developed the theory to explain the anomaly of rising
crime rates in the 1960s—a time when social conditions believed to cause
crime (e.g., unemployment, poverty) were ameliorating. They argued that
this could be explained in terms of social changes that increased the supply
of criminal opportunities. Such changes involved a decrease in capable
guardianship and an increase in suitable targets. These changes were the
result of shifts in the pattern of routine activities since the end of World
War II. The concept of “routine activities” is similar to that of lifestyles.
They define it as “any recurrent and prevalent activities that provide
for basic population and individual needs, whatever their biological or
cultural origin.”38
According to Cohen and Felson, since the end of World War II there
has been a dramatic shift in routine activities. People spent much more
time away from the home: women in the labor force; families eating out;
traveling; vacationing longer. At the same time there was a major increase
in the number of durable goods in circulation and they were easier than
ever to steal: cars, televisions, radios. These changes in routine activities in
the 1950s and 1960s increased the likelihood that motivated offenders
would come together with suitable targets that were not under capable
guardianship. Even if the pool of motivated offenders remained constant,
the pool of opportunities for crime had increased.

A Structural-Choice Model: Integrating Offender,

Victim, and Social Context
Lifestyle-exposure and routine activity theories are the most frequently
used perspectives for explaining individuals’ risks as well as aggregate rates
of criminal victimization. Yet they have both limitations and unstated
 THEORIES OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION 19

assumptions.39 They do not address contextual effects, offender m ­ otivation,

or target selection. The theories explain that the risks of victimization vary
for different demographic groups (e.g., males, young people, non-­whites,
low income) due to differences in lifestyles and routine activities that
determine exposure to risky times, places, and possible offenders. However,
they do not explicitly link these macro-level patterns to micro-­level
­explanations that account for the selection of specific crime targets within
particular sociotemporal-spatial contexts.
Miethe and Meier attempt to overcome these inadequacies by
­integrating the two theories into a “structural-choice” theory of victimiza-
tion. Under their model, proximity to motivated offenders and exposure
to high-risk environments are considered “structural” features (which
pattern the social interaction and predispose individuals to high-risk
­
situations) while attractiveness (“expected utility of one target over
­
another”40) and guardianship (“the ability of persons or objects to prevent
the occurrence of a crime”41 constitute the “choice” component (the
­selection of the target within a particular context). Criminals are assumed
to make rational choices.42 They select “victims who offer high payoff with
little effort or risk of detection.”43 Victims/targets are therefore attractive
to offenders for their symbolic or economic value but also because of their
portability and inability to resist attack or removal.
In short, Miethe and Meier argue that a full understanding of a criminal
event requires an integrated understanding of three crucial components44:
the offender’s motivation (economic disadvantage, weak social bonds,
pro-crime values, psychological or biological attributes, generalized needs
such as money, sex, or excitement); the characteristics of victims that
­provide criminal opportunities (proximity, exposure, attractiveness, guard-
ianship); and the social context (physical location, interpersonal relation-
ship, and behavioral setting). The convergence of these three components
dramatically increases the likelihood of crime. Yet their theoretical model
also allows that under some circumstances criminal events might occur
even when the nexus of motivated offender, suitable victim, and facilitat-
ing social context is not optimal.
The widespread defrauding and exploitation of immigrants with antici-
pated impunity can be understood as the result of a convergence of facili-
tating social contexts together with victims who are attractive, accessible,
and so thoroughly unprotected as to be too good to pass up even by
people who have no prior criminal motivations. These are the kinds of
situations which von Hentig had in mind when he expressed astonishment
20 W.F. MCDONALD

at the ready willingness of many ordinary people to take advantage of the

vulnerabilities of immigrants.
Miethe and Meier’s refinements still leave the concept of the “­motivated
offender” underdeveloped. Why do some people turn into motivated
offenders when they encounter “attractive,” vulnerable, gratifying, and/
or antagonistic targets while others do not? What is it about immigrants
that make it so easy for people to harm them? Many people find ­themselves
in situations where from a strictly rational point of view (high payoff,
low risk) it would make sense to commit a crime; yet, they do not. They
are constrained by values, self-concepts, and social norms.
Here, Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization is
­helpful. It describes how offenders use various rationalizing techniques
in order to neutralize the constrains of internalized norms before they
can engage in criminal behavior.45 These techniques are forms of justifi-
cation for crime that serve as rationalizations that precede the criminal/
deviant act and make it possible. The potential offender overcomes
internal ­normative ­controls by convincing himself that under the present
circumstances the injury is not wrong or is not a real injury or may even
be seen as a form of rightful retaliation or punishment. The techniques
described as “denial of the victim” and “denial of injury” are particu-
larly relevant to the ­victimization of immigrants.
The denial of injury is a form of neutralization that extrapolates from
the distinction made by many people between “real” crime wherein
­someone is clearly hurt and minor matters that are just technically illegal.
Joy riding may be viewed as merely “borrowing” a car, for example. Both
techniques of neutralization can easily erase compunctions about exploit-
ing immigrants. It is easy to think of foreigners as transgressors who
deserve what they get—especially if they are illegally in the country.
Miethe and Meier’s model is like a Lego toy. It allows us to understand
each of its three main components by plugging in relevant theories of
human social behavior. In attempting to understand why offenders might
be motivated to victimize immigrants, there are several individual and
group-level theories that are relevant. Most promising is the general
­theory of social or minority threat of which there are many renditions—
from Dollard and Miller’s frustration-aggression hypothesis to Blalock’s
theory of minority group relations and the many refinements of those
formulations.46
The theories in this line of thinking differ in important respects. Some
focus on individuals, others on groups. The types of outcome explained
Another random document with
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themselves finite and therefore only imperfectly real and individual,
they could not logically take the place which belongs only to the
completely and perfectly individual realisation of the ideal. That
would still fall partly outside them in the nature, as a whole, of the
system which harmoniously includes both ourselves and them. Thus
such beings would be “gods” in the sense of polytheism rather than
God in that of monotheism.
Further, I can see no means of deciding a priori that there could be
only one such being in the universe. Even supposing the series of
finite beings to be itself finite, it is not evident that it could contain
only one “best” member. And supposing it infinite, could there be a
“best” member at all?[224] Also it appears quite beyond the power of
Metaphysics to find either proof or disproof of the existence and
agency of such finite but exalted beings. We cannot say that our
general conception of Reality is such as to negative the suggestion,
and yet again that general conception gives us no positive evidence
in favour of taking it as true. It would certainly be the grossest
presumption to maintain that the Absolute can contain no higher
types of finite individuality than those presented by human society;
on the other hand, it would be equally presumptuous to assert that
we have reasoned knowledge of their existence and their direct
social relation with ourselves. Hence we must, I think, be content to
say that the hypothesis, so far as it seems to be suggested to any
one of us by the concrete facts of his own individual experience, is a
matter for the legitimate exercise of Faith.
§ 9. These reflections may naturally lead to some remarks, which
shall be made as brief as possible, about the so-called philosophical
“arguments for the existence of God,” which played a prominent part
in Metaphysics before their discrediting at the hands of Kant and
Hume.[225] Kant’s great achievement lies in having demonstrated that
the whole force of the “proofs” depends upon the famous ontological
argument, best known in modern Philosophy in the form adopted by
Descartes in the fifth Meditation. Descartes there argues thus:—By
“God” I mean a completely perfect being. Now, existence is a
perfection, and non-existence an imperfection. Hence I cannot think
of a non-existing perfect being without self-contradiction. Hence
God, because by hypothesis perfect, must exist, and is the only
being whose existence logically follows from its definition.
Kant’s even more famous criticism of this famous inference turns
upon the principle which he had learned from his study of Hume, that
logical necessity is “subjective.” If I think of a logical subject as
defined by certain properties, he argues in effect, I am necessitated
to ascribe to it all the predicates implied in that definition. That is, I
must affirm them or contradict myself. Hence, if “existence” is
originally included among the perfections by which the subject “God”
is defined, the proposition God exists is certainly necessary, but is
also tautological, and amounts, in fact, to the mere assertion that “an
existing perfect being is an existing perfect being.” But if the
“existence” spoken of in the predicate is something not included in
the definition of the subject, then you cannot infer it from that
definition. Now “real existence” is not a predicate which can be
included in the definition of a concept. The predicates by which an
imaginary hundred dollars are defined are the same as those of a
real hundred dollars. It is not by the possession of a new predicate,
but by being actually given in a concrete experience, that the real
coins differ from the imaginary. Hence all propositions asserting real
existence are synthetic, (i.e. assert of their subject something which
is not contained in the concept of it), and the real existence of God or
any other object can never be deduced from its definition.[226]
This Kantian criticism has itself been subjected to much criticism,
principally at the hands of Hegel and those subsequent philosophers
who have been specially affected by the Hegelian influence. What
appears to be the general principle of the Hegelian criticism has
been most clearly expressed in English philosophy by Mr. Bradley,
[227]
upon whose discussion the following remarks are chiefly
founded.
In estimating the worth of the ontological proof, we must
distinguish between the general principle implied in it and the
particular form in which it presents that principle. It is manifest that
Kant is perfectly right when he contends that, taking existence to
mean presence in the space and time-order, you cannot reason from
my possession of any idea to the existence of a corresponding
object. You cannot say whatever I conceive must exist as I conceive
it. But the principle of the ontological proof is perhaps not necessarily
condemned by its failure to be thus universally applicable. The
principle involved appears to be simply this. The idea and the reality
outside its own existence as a fact in the time-order which it “means”
or “stands for” are mutually complementary aspects of a whole
Reality which include them both. For there is, on the one side, no
“idea” so poor and untrue as not to have some meaning or objective
reference beyond its own present existence.[228] And, on the other,
what has no significance for any subject of experience is nothing.
Hence in its most general form the ontological argument is simply a
statement that reality and meaning for a subject mutually imply one
another. But it does not follow that all thoughts are equally true and
significant. In other words, though every thought means something
beyond its own existence, different thoughts may represent the
structure of that which they mean with very different grades of
adequacy. That which my thought means may be far from being real
in the form in which I think it.
Now, we may surely say that the more internally harmonious and
systematic my thought is, the more adequately it represents the true
nature of that which it means. If thoroughly systematic coherent
thought may be mere misrepresentation, our whole criterion of
scientific truth is worthless. How freely we use this ontological
argument in practice will be readily seen by considering the way in
which, e.g., in the interpretation and reconstruction of historical facts,
the internal coherency of a systematic and comprehensive
interpretation is taken as itself the evidence of its truth.[229] Hence it
may be argued that if there is a systematic way of thinking about
Reality which is absolutely and entirely internally coherent, and from
its own nature must remain so, however the detailed content of our
ideas should grow in complexity, we may confidently say that such a
scheme of thought faithfully represents the Reality for which it
stands, so far as any thought can represent Reality. That is, while
the thought would not be the Reality because it still remains thought,
which means something beyond its own existence, it would require
no modification of structure but only supplementation in detail to
make it the truth.
 But if we have anywhere thought which is thus internally coherent,
and from its own nature must remain so, however knowledge may
extend, we have it surely in our metaphysical conception of the real
as the absolutely individual. Thus the ontological proof appears, in
any sense in which it is not fallacious, to amount merely to the
principle that significant thought gives us genuine knowledge; and
therefore, since the thoroughgoing individuality of structure of its
object is presupposed in all significant thought, Reality must be a
perfect individual. That this perfect individual must further be “God,”
i.e. must have the special character ascribed to it by beliefs based
upon specifically religious emotions, does not follow. How far the
“God” of religion is a correct conception of the metaphysical
Absolute, we can only learn from the analysis of typical expressions
of the religious experience itself. And it is obvious that if by “God” we
mean anything less than the Absolute whole, the ontological proof
ceases to have any cogency. It is impossible to show that the
possibility of significant thought implies the presence of a special
finite being, not empirically known to us, within the Absolute.
The “cosmological” proof, or “argument from the contingency of
the world,” unlike the ontological, has the appearance, at first sight,
of starting with given empirical fact. As summarised by Kant for
purposes of criticism, it runs thus:—“If anything at all exists, there
must be also an absolutely necessary being. Now, I exist myself;
ergo, the absolutely necessary being exists.” To make the proof quite
complete, it would be necessary to show that the being whose
existence is affirmed in the minor premisses, to wit, myself, is not
itself the “absolutely necessary being,” and the argument thus
completed would become in principle identical with the second of the
“proofs” given by Descartes in the third Meditation, where it is
inferred that if I, a dependent being, exist, there must be a God on
whom I and all things depend.[230] As Kant has pointed out, the whole
force of this inference rests upon the previous admission of the
ontological argument. By itself the cosmological proof only
establishes the conclusion that if any dependent existence is real,
independent existence of some kind must be real also. To convert
this into a “proof of the existence of God” you must further go on to
identify the “independent existence” thus reached with the “most
real” or “most perfect” being of the ontological proof. For otherwise it
might be suggested, as is done by one of the speakers in Hume’s
dialogue, that the series of phenomenal events itself, taken as an
aggregate, is the “necessary existence” upon which the “contingent
existence” of each several event depends. “Did I show you the
particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles
of matter, I should think it very unreasonable should you afterwards
ask me what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently
explained in explaining the cause of the parts.”
To avoid this objection, we must go on to maintain that only the
“most perfect being” can be an ultimately necessary being, and that
its “necessary existence” is a consequence of its character. This, as
we have seen, is the very assertion made in the ontological proof.
Hence our criticisms of the ontological proof will be equally
applicable to the cosmological. If we combine the two, restating them
in accord with our previous remodelling of the former, the argument
will take the following form. All propositions directly or indirectly refer
to real existence. Hence it would be self-contradictory to assert that
nothing exists. But existence itself is only conceivable as individual.
Hence the absolutely individual must be really existent. And this is
identical with the general principle of our own reasoning in Book II. of
the present work. Clearly, if valid, it is valid simply as an argument
for a metaphysical Absolute; it neither proves that Absolute itself to
be what we mean in religion by God, nor affords any ground for
asserting the existence of God as a finite individual within the
Absolute.[231]
The physico-theological argument, also known as the argument
from design, or the teleological proof, differs from the preceding two
in being in its current forms honestly empirical. In the shape of an
inference from the apparent presence of order and a regard for
human good in the structure of nature to the existence of a wise and
benevolent being or beings as the author or authors of nature, it has
been the most popular of all theistic arguments both in the ancient
world, where, according to Xenophon, it was specially insisted upon
by Socrates, and in the modern defences of theological beliefs
against rationalistic criticism. It must, however, be observed that the
criticisms of Hume and Kant are absolutely fatal to the “argument
from design,” when it is put forward as a proof of the existence of a
God of infinite goodness and wisdom. At best, as Kant says, the
observed order and harmony of Nature would enable us to infer a
finite degree of wisdom and goodness in its author. The assertion of
the absolute harmoniousness and goodness of Nature, which we
require to justify the inference to infinite wisdom and goodness in its
author, goes far beyond the limits of the empirically verifiable, and
can itself only be upheld by some form of the “ontological proof.”
Hence the “argument from design” could at best prove a God whose
wisdom and goodness are, so far as knowable, limited. As Hume
forcibly puts the same point, if the empirically known facts of the
partial adaptation of Nature to human purposes are valid, as they
stand, to prove a wise and good intelligence, are not the equally
well-ascertained facts of the partial want of adaptation equally valid
to prove defective goodness or defective wisdom?[232]
There is a deeper metaphysical reason for this difference between
the results of the physico-theological and of the other “proofs,” which
may be briefly pointed out. The whole conception of the order and
systematic unity of the world as due to preconceived “design” is only
intelligible if we suppose the author of that “design” to be finite, and
subject, like ourselves, to temporal mutability. For in the notion of
design itself are implied the severance of the mentally conceived
ideal from the actuality which waits to be brought into accord with it,
and consequently also the time-process, which we have already
found to be characteristic of all finitude. Hence the physico-
theological proof, by itself, can at best be used to establish the reality
of finite “gods,” not of “God,” because it works throughout with the
categories of finitude.
Upon the logical force of the argument, as thus limited by its initial
assumptions, only one observation need be made. What the
reasoning asserts is not merely that “Nature” is in reality a system
exhibiting individuality and purposive interest, or even “design,” but
that it reveals the particular design of assisting and fostering human
progress. Now, whether this is so or not would appear to be a
question of empirical fact only capable of determination by the
methods applicable to other problems of the same empirical kind.
Probably the lines along which it will have to be decided in the future
are of the following general kind. Evolutionary science seems clearly
to have shown that in the influences it knows, e.g., as “natural” and
again as “sexual selection,” we have processes which lead to
beneficial results without being, so far as we can see, in the least
directed by the conscious “design” of establishing those results.[233]
We should have to ask, then, whether there is actual ground for
holding that such influences are not of themselves sufficient to
account for the development of human civilisation, so far as it is due
to factors belonging to the “environment.” If they are so sufficient, the
“physico-theological” argument for benevolent super-human agency
in moulding the course of human development, becomes
superfluous; if they are not, their failure is, so far, good ground for
the recognition of finite “designing” intelligences of a non-human kind
as forming a factor in our environment. In either case the question
appears to be one of empirical fact, and to be incapable of
determination in advance on general metaphysical grounds.[234] Nor
are we justified in assuming that “design in nature,” supposing it to
exist, must always be directed to securing ends which are either
intelligible to us, or, if intelligible, “benevolent,” in the sense of
furthering our own special human interests. And here I must be
content to leave the subject.

Consult further:—F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chaps.

25, 26; J. E. McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, chaps. 6, 8;
J. Royce, The World and the Individual, Second Series, lects. 9, 10.
 211. To take a couple of concrete illustrations. It may be—I do not
say it is—conducive to moral goodness that there should be a
general conviction that in the long run our individual happiness is
strictly proportionate to our degree of virtue. But there is no means
whatever of showing that this belief is true, and, as Mr. Bradley once
pertinently argued against Professor Sidgwick, no philosopher is
entitled to assert its truth on moral grounds unless he is prepared to
maintain that he could produce more goodness and less badness by
such an exact proportioning of happiness to merit than without it.
Again, most of us would probably admit that ordinary moral rules,
such as that against wilful lying, have exceptions. But we are not
bound to hold it conducive to moral goodness that every one should
be aware of this.
212. I have not taken into account the argument from origins,
because it does not appear relevant. That our intellectual interest in
“truth” is historically a derivative from an interest in the “useful,”
“science” an offshoot of the arts, is, as we have seen for ourselves,
true enough, but it does not follow that the truth which is the ideal of
the developed intellect is the same thing as the “useful” from which it
has arisen. We rejected the claims of the mechanical postulate to be
final truth, not because of their origin in the needs of industrial
science, but because, as tested by the standard of final self-
consistency, they were unsatisfactory to the intellect.
213. ἐν μεταιχμίῳ σκότου, to use the poet’s phrase.
214. Not, of course, pure progress. It does not require profound
insight to discover that moral progress, like everything else, has its
price, and that all “progressive evolution” implies “degeneration” as
one of its aspects. But the moral progress of society will be genuine
if, on the whole, our gain is—from the moralist’s special standpoint—
more than our loss. We have no reason to despair of our kind if the
impartial historian, comparing the facts—not the self-complacent
fictions of popular optimism—about our current social life with the
facts—not the fancies of Apologetics—about social life, say, in the
first century of the Roman Empire, can pronounce that there has
been advance on the whole.
215. The “religious” temperament is apparently shown by
experience to be, in its intenser manifestations, quite as much an
idiosyncrasy of congenital endowment as the “æsthetic.” There are
persons, not otherwise mentally defective, who seem to be almost
devoid of it, just as there are others who have little or no sense of
humour or feeling for beauty. As many of these persons are ethically
excellent, some of them exceptionally so, and as again the religious
temperament is often found strongly developed in persons of quite
inferior ethical development, there seems to be no direct connection
between religious sensibility and moral excellence, though, of
course, religious feeling is the most powerful of moral influences
when it is conjoined in the same person with ethical fervour. For a
masterly description of some typical forms of religious feeling and
belief the reader should consult Professor James’s Varieties of
Religious Experience. He will find my own views as to the
philosophical interpretation of religion, if he cares to know them, in
the final chapter of my Problem of Conduct.
216. So Hegel insisted that the fundamental significance of the
Christian religion lies neither in the historical career nor in the moral
teaching of Jesus (which indeed contained little that had not already
been uttered in the form of precept or principle), but in the
recognition by the Christian community of the union of God and Man
as a fact already realised in individual form in the person of Christ.
See Dr. McTaggart’s essay on “Hegelianism and Christianity” in
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology.
217. So Plato suggested in the second book of the Republic, that
God is not the cause of all that happens to us, but only of the good
things that befall us. Perhaps, however, Plato is here consciously
adapting his expression to current theological doctrine of which he
did not fully approve. For a modern defence of the same conception
of a finite God, see Dr. Rashdall’s essay in Personal Idealism. Other
reasons which have often led to the same view, such as the desire to
think of God as a mutable being like ourselves, capable of being
influenced in His attitude toward us by our attitude towards Him,
seem to rest too much upon idiosyncrasies of private feeling to be of
serious philosophical weight. If private feeling is to count at all, one
does not see why that of those who would feel outraged by such a
conception of a finite changeable God should not be allowed an
equal significance with that of their opponents. It is a palpable
mistake to treat private feeling, whatever its worth may be, as all on
one side in this matter.
218. For if we once suppose that we know the universe, in which
“God” is only one finite being among others, to be so constituted as
to correspond to this demand, it will be the whole of which “God” is
one factor, and not “God” by Himself, which will become the supreme
object of religious emotion. Thus we may say, until God is thought of
as the individual whole, He is not fully God.
219. It should be scarcely necessary to point out that the Absolute,
if it can be worshipped at all, can be worshipped only as conceived
as fully individual. When it is falsely thought of as a “collection” or
“aggregate” or “totality” of independent things, it is no more divine
than any other collection. This is the fatal objection to vulgar
“Pantheism.” How far any of the serious thinkers who are popularly
charged with “Pantheism” have countenanced this view of the
Absolute as a mere collection, is another matter.
220. I am afraid that this essentially irreligious feeling has a great
deal to do with the complaints sometimes urged against the Absolute
as a poor substitute for a “living God.” Partly these complaints
spring, no doubt, from the mistaken notion that the Absolute is not a
concrete individual but a mere “collective concept.” But they seem
also to be motived by a suspicion that a finite Deity might be more
amenable than the Absolute to our wish to have our ideals gratified
in our own fashion. And so far as this is the motive of them, such
complaints are essentially impious.
221. The reader will naturally think of the famous Socratic
paradox, that “wrong doing is error,” “vice is ignorance.” If we
interpret this to mean that the fundamental advantage of the good
man over the bad lies in his truer insight into what he seriously
wants, it seems to be true.
222. Enneads, I. 8, 15 (quoted and translated in Whittaker, the
Neoplatonists, p. 83). Plotinus had just previously made the correct
observation that to deny the existence of evil in any and every sense
means to deny the existence of good. (κακόν γε εἴ τις λέγοι τὸ
παράπαν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι μὴ εἶναι, ἀνάγκη αὐτῷ καὶ τὸ ἀφαθὸν ἀναιρεῖν
καὶ μηδὲ ὀπεκτὸν μηδὲν εἶναι.) We might thus say, if good is to be at
all, evil must have some kind of relative or phenomenal existence as
its antecedent condition. But, as thus serving as a condition for the
realisation of good, evil is itself, from a more universal point of view,
good, and therefore its existence as evil only apparent. On the whole
question of the position of evil in the world-order, see the admirable
essay on “Sin” in Dr. McTaggart’s Studies in Hegelian Cosmology.
223. When it is said that the Absolute, if it exists, must be morally
indifferent, there is often a conscious or unconscious confusion of
thought. The Absolute must certainly be “indifferent” in the sense
that it does not feel the internal discord of hatred and animosity
against any of its constituents. Deus, as Spinoza says, neminem
potest odio habere. For the Absolute is not one of the two
combatants; it is at once both combatants and the field of combat.
But to infer that the Absolute, because devoid of the feelings of
hatred and private partisanship, must be indifferent in the sense that
our goodness and badness make no difference to our place in it, is a
fallacy of equivocation for which unconsciousness and bona fides
are scarcely sufficient excuse.
224. Thus I do not understand why, apart from respect for the
traditions of Christianity, Dr. Rashdall should hold that God, in his
sense of the word, is one and not many. His argument appears to
me to identify God with the Absolute, where it is required to maintain
God’s unity, and to distinguish them as soon as it becomes a
question of proving God’s “Personality” (see his essay in Personal
Idealism). Professor James appears more logical in his obvious
readiness to reckon with polytheism as a possible consequence of
his denial of God’s infinity (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 524
ff.).
225. Kant’s famous onslaught will be found in the Kritik der Reinen
Vernunft, Transcendental Dialectic, bk. ii. div. 3 (“The Ideal of Pure
Reason”), §§ 3-7. Hume’s criticisms are contained in his posthumous
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.
226. Kant’s criticism had been in part anticipated on the first
circulation of the Meditations by both Mersenne and Gassendi. See
particularly Gassendi’s strictures on Descartes’ confusion of
existence with properties in the “Fifth Objections,” with Descartes’
unsatisfactory reply. Leibnitz repeated the same objection, and
proposed to amend the Cartesian proof by a formal demonstration
that God’s existence is possible, i.e. does not imply a formal
contradiction. He then argues—If God’s existence is possible, He
exists (by the Cartesian proof). But God’s existence is possible,
therefore God exists. See, e.g., Leibnitz, Works, ed. Erdmann, p.
177; and Latta, Monadology of Leibniz, p. 274. Hume’s comments
are even more akin to Kant’s. “Whatever we conceive as existent we
can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore,
whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is
no being whose existence is demonstrable.” (Dialogues concerning
Natural Religion, part 9.)
227. Appearance and Reality, chap. 24.
228. No thought can be merely and absolutely false, any more
than any act can be merely and without qualification bad. Though
words may be entirely meaningless, thoughts cannot be.
229. The appeal to experiment is no objection to the principle. For
in making the experiment we do not, of course, get out of the circle
of our thoughts, and the experiment only affords a criterion of truth in
so far as it leaves us with a new thought which can only be brought
into systematic harmony with our old ideas in one determinate way.
Except as interpreted by thought, the experiment has no bearing on
our knowledge.
230. This was also a favourite argument with Leibnitz, as Kant
notes. For an acute examination of Leibnitz’s use of it and the other
“proofs,” see B. Russell’s Philosophy of Leibniz chap. 15. For
Hume’s objections to it, see the already quoted part 9 of the
Dialogue concerning Natural Religion. The other “proof” of the Third
Meditation, namely, that my possession of an idea of God, which I
could not have derived from empirical sources, proves the reality of
the idea’s object, is only a special form of the ontological argument
from idea to existence.
231. As thus remodelled, the double ontologico-cosmological
argument might be attacked on two grounds—(1) That it only proves,
once more, that if we admit that all propositions are concerned with
real existence, either directly or remotely, we must admit the
existence of the Absolute, but does not demonstrate that all
propositions are so concerned. (2) That in saying that existence is
only conceivable as individual we fall back into the Cartesian
misconception of existence as a predicate. I should reply, (1) that the
validity of the premiss in question cannot be denied without being
confirmed in the act of denial. I.e. unless the suggested proposition
that “some propositions at least have no reference to a reality
beyond their own presence as psychical facts in my mind,” itself has
the very objective reference in question, it has no meaning, and is
therefore no genuine proposition; (2) that we must distinguish
between the what and the that of existence. The “that” of existence is
not conceivable at all, but our position is that this inconceivable that
is only logically, not really, separable from a what, and that it is
precisely this inseparability of the that and the what which we mean
by “individuality.”
232. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, part 11.
233. This is quite consistent with our own view, that all real
processes are teleological in the sense of being marked by
subjective interest. For (a) not by any means all teleological process
is actual “design” or “volition” (impulse, organic craving, habit, etc.,
are all cases in point); and (b) actual volition need not always be
volition for the result it actually produces. Sexual selection in man
would be an instance of a process which may take the form of actual
volition, but in that case is rarely, if ever, volition for that improvement
of the stock which de facto issues from it.
234. Cf. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, pp. 200, 496-497 (1st
ed.). Professor Flint’s attempted reply to the Humian and Kantian
criticism of the theistic “proofs” (Agnosticism, chap. 4) has not
induced me to modify any of the opinions expressed in this chapter.
 CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION
§ 1. Can our Absolute Experience be properly called the “union of Thought and
Will”? The Absolute is certainly the final realisation of our intellectual and our
practical ideals. But (1) it includes aspects, such as, e.g. æsthetic feeling,
pleasure, and pain, which are neither Thought nor Will. (2) And it cannot
possess either Thought or Will as such. Both Thought and Will, in their own
nature, presuppose a Reality which transcends mere Thought and mere Will.
§ 2. Our conclusion may in a sense be said to involve an element of
Agnosticism, and again of Mysticism. But it is only agnostic in holding that we
do not know the precise nature of the Absolute Experience. It implies no
distrust of the validity of knowledge, so far as it goes, and bases its apparently
agnostic result on the witness of knowledge itself. Similarly, it is mystical in
transcending, not in refusing to recognise, the constructions of understanding
and will. § 3. Metaphysics adds nothing to our information, and yields no fresh
springs of action. It is finally only justified by the persistency of the impulse to
speculate on the nature of things as a whole.

§ 1. It seems advisable, in bringing this work to a conclusion, to

bring together by way of recapitulation a few important
consequences of our general principle which could not receive all the
notice they deserve in the course of our previous exposition. Our
main contention, which it may be hoped our discussion of special
problems has now confirmed, was that the whole of Reality
ultimately forms a single infinite individual system, of which the
material is psychical matter of fact, and that the individuality of this
system lies ultimately in a teleological unity of subjective interest.
Further, we saw that all subordinate reality is again in its degree
individual, and that the contents of the Absolute thus form a
hierarchy of ascending orders of reality and individuality, and that in
this way, while all finite individual existence is, as finite, appearance
and not ultimate Reality, appearances, themselves are of varied
degrees of worth, and that, apart from the appearances, there is no
reality at all. And finally, we learned that all the aspirations of finite
individuals must be somehow met and made good in the ultimate
Reality, though not necessarily in the form in which they are
consciously entertained by the finite aspirant.
This last conclusion naturally suggests the question, whether it
would be a correct description of the ultimate Reality to call it the
“union of Thought and Will.” I will briefly indicate the reasons why
such a description appears to be misleading. (1) The Absolute may
no doubt be called the “union of Thought and Will,” in the sense that
its complete individual structure corresponds at once to our logical
ideal of systematic interconnection, and our ethico-religious ideal of
realised individual purpose. But it must be added that the Absolute
appears to possess aspects which cannot fairly be brought under
either of these heads. Æsthetic feeling, for instance, and the
æsthetic judgments based upon it, must somehow be included as an
integral aspect in the absolute whole of experience; yet æsthetic
feeling cannot properly be regarded either as thought or as will. And
the same objection might be raised in the case of pleasure. However
closely pleasure may be connected with conative efforts towards the
retention or renewal of the pleasant experience, it seems quite clear
that the “pure” pleasures[235] are not forms of conscious “conation,”
and that even in those “mixed” pleasures, which depend in part for
their pleasantness upon relief from the tension of precedent craving
or desire, analysis enables us to distinguish two elements, that of
direct pleasure in the new experience, and that of the feeling of relief
from the craving. Hence, if it be admitted that the Absolute contains
pleasure, it must also be admitted that it contains something which is
neither thought nor will. The same argument would hold good, I
think, even if we held with the pessimists, that the Absolute contains
a balance of pain over pleasure. For, intimate as the connection is
between pain and thwarted conation, it seems a psychological
monstrosity to maintain that felt pain is always and everywhere an
experience of the frustration of actual conscious effort; and unless
this monstrosity can be maintained, we must recognise in pain too a
fundamental experience-quality irreducible to thought or will. Thus, at
best, the description of the Absolute, as the union of thought and will,
would be incomplete.
(2) But, further, the description, if taken to mean that the Absolute
itself has thought and will, as such, would be not only incomplete but
false. For actual thought and actual will can easily be shown to be
essentially finite functions, neither of which could ever reach its goal
and become finally self-consistent, without ceasing to be mere
thought or mere will. Thus actual thought always involves an aspect
of discrepancy between its content and reference. It is always
thought about a reality which falls, in part, outside the thought itself,
is only imperfectly represented by the thought’s content, and for that
very reason is a not-self to the thought for which it is an object. And
the whole process of thinking may be described as a series of
attempts on the part of thought to transcend this limitation. So long
as the content of the thought is not adequate to the reality which it
thinks, so long, that is, as there is anything left to know about the
reality, thought restlessly presses forward towards an unreached
consummation. But if the correspondence ideae cum ideato ever
became perfect, thought’s object would cease to contain anything
which went beyond thought’s own content. It would no longer be an
“other” or “not-self” to the thought which knew it, and thus thought
and its object would have become a single thing. But in this
consummation thought would have lost its special character as an
actual process, just as the object would have lost its character of a
something, partly at least, “given” from without. Both mere thought
and mere existence, in becoming one, would cease to have the
character which belongs to them in finite experience precisely in
virtue of our failure completely to transcend the chasm between
them.
The same is the case with will. If, indeed, by will we mean a
genuine actual process of volition, this result is already included in
our criticism of the claim of thought as such to persist unchanged in
the Absolute. For all genuine will implies possession of and actuation
by an idea which is entertained explicitly as an unrealised idea, and
is thus inseparable from thought. (This, I may incidentally observe
once more, is why we carefully avoided speaking of the “subjective
interest” we found in all experience-processes as “will.”) But even if
we improperly widen the interpretation of the term “will” to include all
conative process, the general conclusion will remain the same. For
all such processes imply the contrast between existence as it comes
to us in the here and now of actual feeling, and existence as it
should be, and as we seek to make it, for the satisfaction of our
various impulses, cravings, and desires. It is the felt, even when not
explicitly understood, discrepancy between these two aspects of a
reality, which is ultimately one and harmonious under the
discrepancy, that supplies all actual conative process with its motive
force. And hence we seem driven to hold that conation as such, i.e.
as actual striving or effort, can find no place in an experience in
which the aspects of ideality and real existence are once for all
finally united.
If we cannot avoid speaking of such an experience in terms of our
own intellectual, and again of our own volitional processes, we must
at least remember that while such language is true in the sense that
the all-embracing harmonious experience of the Absolute is the
unattainable goal towards which finite intellect and finite volition are
alike striving, yet each in attaining its consummation, if it ever could
attain it, would cease to be itself as we know it, and pass into a
higher and directer form of apprehension, in which it could no longer
be distinguished from the other. In the old mediæval terminology, the
Absolute must be said to contain actual intellect and actual volition,
not formaliter but eminenter.[236]
§ 2. It follows from all this that, just because the absolute whole is
neither mere thought nor mere will, nor an artificial synthesis of the
two, mere truth for the intellect can never be quite the same thing as
ultimate Reality. For in mere truth we get Reality only in its
intellectual aspect as that which affords the highest satisfaction to
thought’s demand for consistency and systematic unity in its object.
And, as we have seen, this demand can never be quite satisfied by
thought itself. For thought, to remain thought, must always be
something less than the whole reality which it knows. The reality
must always contain a further aspect which is not itself thought, and
is not capable of being apprehended in the form of a thought-
content. Or, what is the same thing, while all reality is individual, all
the thought-constructions through which we know its character must
remain general. We are always trying in our thought to grasp the
individual as such, and always failing. As individual, the reality never
becomes the actual content of our thought, but remains a
“transcendent” object to which thought refers, or which it means. And
hence our truest thought can at best give us but an imperfect
satisfaction for its own demand of congruence, between thought’s
content and its object. The reality can never be ultimately merely
what it is for our thought. And this conclusion obviously lends a
certain justification both to the agnostic and to the mystic. It is
important to understand how far that justification extends.
First, then, a word as to the limits of justifiable Agnosticism. Our
conclusion warranted us in asserting that Reality must contain
aspects which are not thought, and again must combine thought with
these other aspects in a unity which is not itself merely intellectual. In
other words, we had to confess that we cannot understand the
concrete character of the Infinite Experience, or, to put it in a more
homely way, we do not know how it would feel to be “God.” And if
this is Agnosticism, we clearly shall have to own that we too are
agnostics. But our result gave us no ground for doubting our own
general conviction as to the place which intellect and truth hold in the
Absolute. On the other hand, it left us with every reason for trusting
that conviction. For our conclusion that mere truth cannot be the
same thing as ultimate Reality was itself based upon the principle
that only harmonious individuality is finally real, and this is the very
principle employed by the intellect itself whenever it judges one
thought-construction relatively higher and truer than another.
Thus our Agnosticism, if it is to be called so, neither discredits our
human estimate of the relative truth of different theories about the
real, nor lends any support to the notion that “Knowledge is relative”
in the sense that there may conceivably be no correspondence
between Reality and the scheme of human knowledge as a whole. It
is based not on the distrust of human reason, but upon the
determination to trust that reason implicitly, and it claims, in declaring
mere truth to fall short of Reality, to be expressing reason’s own
verdict upon itself. Hence it does not, like vulgar Agnosticism, leave
us in the end in pure uncertainty as to the ultimate structure and
upshot, so to say, of the world, but definitely holds that we have
genuine and trustworthy knowledge of the type of that structure and
the nature of its materials. And it is upon this positive knowledge,
and not upon an uncritical appeal to unknown possibilities, that it
rests its denial of the simple identity of Reality with thought itself. For
all we know, says the common Agnosticism, our thought is sheer
illusion, and therefore we must confess that we have in the end no
notion what the reality of the world may be. Thought is not illusory,
says our systematic Idealism, and therefore its own witness that
Reality is an individual whole of experience which is more than
thought is a positive contribution to our knowledge. Between these
two positions there may be a superficial resemblance, but there is an
essential difference in principle.
So again with the mystical element in our result. In holding that all
genuine individuality, finite or infinite,[237] involves a type of immediate
felt unity which transcends reduction to the relational categories of
thought and will, we may fairly be said to have reached a conclusion
which, in a sense, is mystical. But our result is not Mysticism, if by
Mysticism is meant a doctrine which seeks ultimate Reality in mere
unanalysed immediate feeling as such. The results of intellectual and
volitional construction have not been treated by us as illusory and as
a sort of intellectual and moral mistake. On the other hand, we urged
that the ultimate unity of the real must transcend, and not merely fall
short of, the rational scheme of thought and will. And we
consequently insisted that our result, so far as it is a mystical one,
can only be justified by following out the constructions of the logical
intellect and the ethical will to their final consequence, and showing
that each of them itself demands completion in an individual Reality
which includes and transcends both. To quote the admirable words
of Dr. McTaggart: “A Mysticism which ignored the claims of the
understanding would no doubt be doomed. None ever went about to
break logic, but in the end logic broke him. But there is a Mysticism
which starts from the standpoint of the understanding, and only
departs from it in so far as that standpoint shows itself not to be
ultimate, but to postulate something beyond itself. To transcend the
lower is not to ignore it.” And it is only in this sense that philosophy is
justified in asserting “above all knowledge and volition one all-
embracing unity, which is only not true, only not good, because all
truth and all goodness are but shadows of its absolute
perfection.”[238]
§ 3. The reader who has persevered to the conclusion of this
volume may perhaps, on laying it down, experience a certain feeling
of dissatisfaction. Our investigations, it might be complained, have
added nothing to our stock of scientific information about the
contents of the world, and have supplied no fresh practical incentives
towards the strenuous pursuit of an elevated moral or religious ideal.
I must at once admit the justice of this hypothetical criticism, and
dispute its relevancy. Quite apart from the defects due to personal
shortcomings and confusions, it is inherent in the nature of
metaphysical study that it can make no positive addition to our
information, and can of itself supply no motives for practical
endeavour. And the student who turns to our science as a substitute
for empirical Physics or Psychology, or for practical morality, is
bound to go away disappointed. The reason of this we have already
had occasion to see. Metaphysics has to presuppose the general
principles of the various sciences and the general forms of practical
experience as the materials upon which it works. Its object as a
study is not to add to or to modify these materials, but to afford some
coherent and systematic satisfaction for the intellectual curiosity
which we all feel at times as to the general nature of the whole to
which these various materials belong, and the relative truth and
clearness with which that general nature is expressed in the different
departments of experience. Its aim is the organisation, not the
enlargement of knowledge. Hence for the student whose interests lie
more in the enlargement of human knowledge by the discovery of
new facts and laws, than in its organisation into a coherent whole,
Metaphysics is probably undesirable, or desirable only as a
protection against the intrusion of unrecognised and uncriticised
metaphysical assumptions into the domain of empirical service. And
similarly for the practical man whose interests in life are
predominantly ethical, the main, if not the sole, value of metaphysical
study lies in its critical function of exposing false metaphysical
assumptions, which, if acted upon, might impair the vigour of
spontaneous moral effort.
But for those in whom the speculative desire to form some
coherent conception of the scheme of things to which we belong as
a whole is strong, Metaphysics has a higher importance. In such
minds the impulse to reflect on the nature of existence as a whole, if
debarred from systematic and thorough gratification, is certain to find