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 Shadowborn Academy Books 1–3
Shadowborn Academy © 2019 G. Bailey & Scarlett Snow
Formatting by Champagne Book Design
Edits by Fresh Eyes Editing

Shadowborn Academy Year Two © 2020 G. Bailey & Scarlett Snow

Formatting by Champagne Book Design www.champagnebookdesign.com
Editing by Niki Trento-Spencer

Shadowborn Academy Year Three © 2020

G. Bailey & Scarlett Snow
Formatting by Champagne Book Design www.champagnebookdesign.com
Editing by Niki Trento-Spencer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except
for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright
Map

Year One
About This Book
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
 Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Epilogue

Year Two
About This Book
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
 Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six

Year Three
About This Book
Prologue
Chapter One
 Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Bonus Epilogue

Thank You
 About G. Bailey
About Scarlett Snow
Appendix i—LOCATIONS
Appendix ii—CHARACTERS
Appendix iii—WARDEN RANKS
Appendix iv—THE BOOK OF ZORYA
 My fate is in the dark,
And my shadow there is real…

The darkness likes to play in this world.

It also likes to deceive.

In the Enchanted Forest, secrets thrive and one girl desperately

needs to find answers before it’s too late.

That girl is Corvina Charles, a powerful Shadowborn—a human who

touched dark magic and became something else.

Something dangerous.

At the age of eighteen, Corvina and her best friend are swept away
to the Shadowborn Academy, the one place where magic and
darkness coincide.

It’s also where pupils go missing, teachers don’t play by any rules,
the therapist is hot, and boys with dark magic love to seduce your
soul.

With death becoming a game at the academy that not even the Dark
or Light Fae seem capable of winning, Corvina’s love life should
really be the last thing on her mind…especially when one of the boys
just so happens to be her teacher!

Shadowborn Academy is a Dark Reverse Harem Paranormal

Fae Romance for 18+. In this world, not even the shadows
can be trusted…
“M irror, show me who will be the most powerful fae of all.” I
say the command softly, trailing my fingers over the surface
of the mirror, the crystalline glass like water beneath my fingertips.
The gold frame is stained with the blood of creatures who tried to
protect it from me, and the thought of the pain it took to deliver this
mirror to my palace simply warms my darkened heart.
The silver water shimmers ever so slightly before an image
appears of a newborn baby, held in the arms of the light fae king.
He places the baby on the ground and slowly its small body is
draped in a shadow that spreads into the shape of a woman. The
darkness fades to show a girl with electric-blue hair and silver eyes
that look like midnight itself kissed them.
She is beautiful, enchantingly so, and pride blossoms through my
body.

“One born of light and dark.

Royal down to the last drop.
Blue of hair, silver as night.
Your child will be the most powerful in the ever long night.”

I reach out to gently touch the image of my child, the heart of

the prophecy and heir to my throne, feeling a longing in my heart for
her that I have never before known. As the image fades, so does the
magic the mirror once held, but now I know what I must do.
 “Invite King Ulric, alone, to my court,” I order, staring at my
reflection.
“Yes, Queen of the Dark Fae,” my loyal servant replies behind me
before running out of the throne room.
Seduction is always a game I play well.
And this time my daughter will be the prize I win.
A princess of both the light and dark fae courts.
My weapon against the ever long night…
T he moonlight bleeding through the trees creates flickering
shadows that dance around me. I should be afraid of them like
all the other children are, but I’m not. These shadows are safe.
They’re not like the ones watching me from the treetops, waiting to
snatch me off the ground.
No, these shadows are different.
They’re my friends.
The faeries hiding in them follow me like they always do when I
come into the Enchanted Forest. I can’t see them but I can hear
them giggling and whispering in my ear. They flick my dark curly hair
over my shoulders and play with the ribbons on my light blue dress,
then the frills of my white socks with the little bunny rabbits on
them. It’s their way of saying hello and it makes me giggle as I skip
through the forest, humming to the song Mama always sings to me
before I go to sleep.
Mama and Papa warned me not to follow these faeries. They said
they’re not like the rest and I’ll be in deep trouble if I ever go out to
play after dark. That’s when the faeries come out. They sing to
children like me and promise us things beyond our wildest dreams,
but nobody ever sees them again once they follow the faeries into
the forest. Mama said it’s because they gobble them up for supper. I
don’t believe her. I mean, how horrible would that be? I don’t think
we taste very nice.
Pitch said the real reason the children don’t come back is
magical.
He told me that they grow wings and go to live with the faeries.
He said I can do that, too, once I make my wish. I’m so excited. I
can hear him singing to me and I start humming along to his
favourite song, the one about the raven and the wishing well. I
follow his voice, excited to play with him again and eat snacks and
tell each other stories. No one else can see or hear Pitch apart from
me and the faeries. Although we’re the same age, he doesn’t look
like any of the boys from my village. He’s extremely pale with
glowing amber eyes and long ebony hair that sways around him like
the shadows do in here. I know he’s different and that’s why I like
him.
That’s why I’m following him.
Now that it’s my eighth birthday, Pitch is going to let me make a
wish in the well he sings about. He says only special humans—the
chosen ones—get to make a wish here. Sometimes he says funny
things like that and I don’t understand him. All I want is a pair of
shiny blue shoes, the same ones as my dolly. Pitch says the faeries
are going to give them to me, and then I’ll finally have the same
outfit as my little dolly.
The faeries guide me to the edge of a clearing which is bright
from the moonlight shining down. I wave goodbye to them, even
though I can’t see where they are, then I continue humming and
skipping after Pitch.
I can see him now, sitting on top of the well, and my heart soars
as I race through the clearing. Once I reach the well, he lifts me
onto the stone with him. It’s wide enough that the two of us can
stand together without falling into the hole.
“It’s time to make your wish,” he says, and my stomach fills with
butterflies. “Are you ready to be born again?” I don’t know what he
means by that; I just want the lovely shoes. I nod anyway, and Pitch
smiles at me. “Then close your eyes.”
When I do this, I hold my breath, too excited to breathe.
My heart feels like it’s going to burst out from my chest. I feel
dizzy and sick and excited.
“Do you remember what we talked about?” Pitch asks quietly.
“What you do once you make your wish? It’s very important that you
don’t forget that part.”
“I won’t forget,” I tell him firmly, peeking through my eyelashes.
“Can I say it now? Can I make my wish?”
He giggles and lets go of my hand. “Go on, Corvina. Make your
wish and make it count.”
I let out an excited squeal, then I scrunch up my little face and
think really hard because I don’t want to mess this up.
—Hello faeries! Please can I have the same shoes as my dolly?
You know, the sparkly blue shoes with the pretty bows on the silver
buckles? I would like them very much. Thank you.—
With my wish uttered, I open my eyes. Pitch is gone just like he
said he would be and I’m alone on the well. I look down into the
tunnel of darkness stretching before me. A loose pebble falls away
from the edge and drops into the well. It takes forever to splash
through the water at the bottom, and I gulp, my palms turning
sweaty against my dress.
For my wish to come true, I need to go down there.
Pitch said he’ll be waiting for me and that the faeries will even
give me wings so that I don’t hurt myself. I’ll be just like the other
children who followed the faeries into the woods and lived happily
ever after. Maybe I’ll even be able to see my friends, Bella and
Michael and Agnes.
We’ll all be faeries together, like we used to talk about.
I turn around and spread my arms out like wings, smiling at the
thought of seeing my friends from school again. Taking a deep
breath and holding it in my chest, I close my eyes and fall down into
the well, praying that Mama and Papa were wrong about the faeries,
and about Pitch, the monster hiding under my bed…
 Before I plunge to my death, I wake up with a gasp for air,
clutching my thin bedsheets in my hands. Pitch wasn’t waiting for
me. There was nothing but pain and misery at the bottom of that
stupid well and my innocent ass didn’t know any better back then.
I fell into magical darkness, and as everyone here tells me, that’s
when I became a shadowborn.
But that’s not the part that haunts me every night in my dreams.
Oh, no. It’s what happened after the pain and misery—after I
drowned in all the magical water, my eight-year-old body absorbing
it like it was sugar and I was a starving kid. When my heart started
beating again and I opened my eyes, I lay floating on my back as
the moon drew closer and closer to me. I remember crying and
thinking I had been turned into a bug instead of a faery, but it was
just the water healing my shattered bones and floating me up to the
surface.
The second my feet touched the earth again, my power exploded
and I destroyed everything in a five-mile radius, including all the
houses and the people inside them.
Including my parents.
And the only living thing was me, covered in ash, lying on the
forest floor as the sun rose into a blood-red sky.
Talk about a birthday to remember.
After that, I was picked up by the Shadow Wardens, protectors
of the magical world, and thrown in a shadowborn foster home with
all the other children that are like me. Only they didn’t kill hundreds
of people and not one of them in here see their powers like the
curses they really are.
“You having those dreams again?” Sage asks, sitting up on her
bed next to me and staring at me, the moonlight highlighting her
beige skin and curly pink hair that isn’t at all messy even though she
just woke up. Sage Millhouse is the only bit of this foster home that
I’ve ever cared about and I’m certain it’s the same way for her. We
came here on the same day, two scared kids who wanted nothing
more than to escape this hellhole and the new powers we have.
Sage got her power the way most of the kids here did, by being
bitten by a shadowborn in their animal state. One bite is enough to
infuse any soul with shadow magic, and all it took for Sage was a
bite from a fox in her garden.
The fox was never seen again, and Sage nearly died, only to
survive and be taken from her parents to come and live here.
The foster home is full of those stories, and it’s the main reason I
don’t talk about my past.
“Always.”
It’s all I need to say for Sage to get off her bed and head out of
the room. I follow her, the old wooden floorboards creaking under
my bare feet with each step. Sage holds the timber door open and
we head outside into the garden. The cool air is refreshing for only a
second before it’s nothing but cold nipping at my skin.
“Ready?” I ask her as I stare up, the darkness and shadows
comforting me like they always do.
Sage doesn’t reply, though I’m unsurprised as she isn’t one for
words. That’s why I like her. I watch her bright purple eyes as she
disappears in a cloud of black smoke. The darkness. It’s become a
blanket of sorts to people like us. As the blackness fades away, there
is nothing more than a hawk sitting on the ground, its lavender eyes
staring up at me. I grin as I close my own silver eyes and do the
next best thing in the world.
I let the darkness take me, creating me into something more.
Something so much better than I already am.
My body disappears into the darkness but my mind always stays,
loving the comfort as I shift into a raven and follow Sage into the
skies of Blackpool.
“W e should head back,” Sage suggests around a spoonful of
ice cream.
I watch the sea lap at the steps beside the shore and the
sandbags lined at the top of them. The skies are grey, eerily so, like
they can sense what a crap day this is going to be for us. The sea
smells of salt and I can almost taste it over the bubblegum lollipop
I’ve just finished off. Over the sounds of the waves, the seagulls
make themselves known with loud squeaks, and in the distance,
some children ride bikes down the front.
“Why? I have nothing to pack and neither do you. The wardens
aren’t coming until nightfall,” I remind her. She eyes me carefully
and I try to pick up on her emotions. Is she as nervous as me?
Unlikely. The Shadowborn Academy is our next home, starting from
tonight. We both have known we would attend this year, on the year
we turn eighteen, since we aren’t classed as kids anymore. The
academy is meant to teach us control and endurance, to accept our
new life and fit into their society of normal magics.
What if you don’t want to fit in?
 I asked our warden that once, and she laughed like it was the
funniest thing in the world.
“They might not come for us at all. Wouldn’t that be nice?” she
replies, and I smirk at her, leaning back on the bench. I chuck the
stick of my ice lolly in the bin and go back to people watching the
streets.
I love people watching, and so does Sage. We have spent days
on this bench, making up stories for random strangers we spot. Our
stories are unlikely to be right, but it gives us an escape into a
normal world—a world where our nightmares cannot reach us. We
can almost pretend we’re just two teenagers skipping school instead
of what we really are.
“Do you think Keeper Maddox will miss us?” Sage asks, her voice
dripping with humour.
The Light Warden runs our foster home and she’s the fourth one
since I came here, as all the others quit. No one likes looking after
dozens of kids with shadow powers, and all of whom want their
parents back. These poor wardens would literally prefer any other
assignment in the magics world. It’s depressing, but Keeper Maddox
isn’t the worst of the lot.
“I doubt she will even notice us leave. She prefers the younger
ones,” I reply.
They’re easier to control.
As for me and Sage?
We’re damaged goods and a waste of air. Or so we’ve been told
by previous wardens. Sometimes late at night, when my demons
catch up with me, I almost believe them.

“And you have your book? In the name of Selena, do not forget that
book, child,” Keeper Maddox warns me later that day, giving my
opened trunk an assessing once over. Spotting the old, tattered book
beside my trunk, she nods. “Thank the Gods. You mustn’t forget it.
Always have your book with you—”
“—from the instant you enter the forest,” I tersely interject,
having endured this spiel many times before now. “The book is our
bible. We get it, Miss Maddox.”
We’ve had no choice but to.
I’ve read the Book of Zorya a million times already. I don’t know
why she’d think we’d leave here without it. It’s practically the map to
our new home. A home neither of us wants to be part of.
Well, Sage says she doesn’t, but I have a sneaky suspicion she’s
excited to use magic beyond the mediocre level we were taught
here. The wardens never wanted us to learn more than needed
since we were supposed to be part of the mortal world.
The mortal world.
After ten years, it still feels odd to not be quite human anymore.
I had human parents, lived in a human village, before I was…
changed. Now I’m just a shadowborn, and I must go to this
academy to learn the tricks of the trade. Part of me should at least
feel excited, but I’m not. I’m more terrified than anything else. The
last time I entered the Enchanted Forest, my whole world was taken
from me.
“Very well, then,” Maddox starts, gesturing to my trunk. “Your
luggage should arrive at the academy by the time you arrive. Why
don’t you go stand outside with the others?”
She leaves without waiting for a reply.
I look out the window above what used to be my rickety bed.
Sage is sitting on her tire swing in the back garden, looking down at
Little Nessa’s grave. She was a kid who used to stay here before she
lost control of her power. Sage and I shared a room with her, and we
always managed to calm her down when she had nightmares. But
that night we went out for a fly, and when we came back, they were
carrying Nessa’s small body out. I remember looking at her and
thinking how peaceful she looked, as if she were just sleeping. But
that’s the thing with shadowborns. Our magic feeds off the darkness
residing within us, and often it takes over.
 Our fears, our heartaches, our pain… anything that affects us
negatively, the magic pulsing through our veins latches on to them
and grows stronger with every fruitless effort we make to fight
them.
Some of us learn to control our dark sides, at least for a while.
Others, like Nessa, never stand a chance from the moment they
were turned into a shadowborn. This is why the academy exists: to
teach magics like me how to accept our demons instead of hiding
from them. Running, avoiding, suppressing, all these things merely
worsen our condition. I learned that a long time ago, and I managed
to accept my demons.
The darkest one of all is named Pitch, and he’s also my shadow.
Speaking of the devil, which he might be for all I know, Pitch
doesn’t always talk to me. I guess he doesn’t really need to. His
thoughts are my fears and my fears are his thoughts now. No matter
where he goes, I can always sense him without looking. It’s
inherent, not because I want it to be, but because we’re soul mates.
Literally.
The night that I died, I was the only light left within his swirling
darkness, and he latched on to me by tethering my soul to his so we
could both stay alive. He never meant for either of us to suffer and
die. Only a child himself, he merely wanted to grant my birthday
wish.
I never quite bought that either in the beginning. But despite all
the anger and pain I felt towards him for many years later, I’ve come
to accept that without him, without his darkness nestled around my
heart, my soul would be incomplete. He’s a part of me whether I
want him to be or not, and any time we’re apart, a gut-wrenching
longing takes over me, and it burns right through to my core.
I turn back, seeing a shadow of a figure in the corner of the
room, sitting on an empty bed. Sometimes Pitch looks like a man
with broad shoulders, thick black hair, and alluring amber eyes. And
sometimes, like this, he is just a shadow that blinks away before I
can ask why he’s even here.
Clearing my throat, I leave and head down the corridor, my navy
boots announcing every footstep in the dark, dimly lit hallway.
Pushing the door open, I step out into the moonlight as Sage stands
and turns to me, clutching her copy of the Book of Zorya in her
hands. This is how I know she’s excited to go to the academy—she’s
forever reading that damn book.
“Is it time?” she asks, and I simply nod. Hooking her arm in
mine, we leave the garden and head to the front of the house. We
walk outside, sitting on the brick wall, watching the stars in the sky.
“They say it’s so dark in the enchanted forest, and unless you
have the blessing of the sun and moon, you can’t see where you
walk,” she half-jokes, but I can tell she is nervous.
I roll my eyes at her. It can’t be that bad. “You need to stop
reading that book. Wait and see. We will be there soon.”
She opens her book and starts reading, ignoring me completely.
“In the beginning, Aphrodite and Persephone decided to create a
magical forest for all manner of creatures. They appeared in their
natural form, unearthly beautiful and fae-like, and brought with
them their favourite stars—the Morning Star and the Evening Star.
They each placed them in the sky, and one became the sun and the
other the moon,” she reads out, her voice being carried by the wind
to poor unsuspecting humans who don’t want to hear a fairy tale like
this.
A fairytale that quickly became a nightmare.
“I know, I know. Then monsters came to the forest. Blah, blah,
blah,” I drone but she ignores me once more and carries on reading.
“Aphrodite became known as Danica, Goddess of the Sun, and
she created the Throne of Helios where she would reign over her
part of the forest. Persephone became Selena, Goddess of the Moon,
and she created the Throne of Luna, again where she would rule her
half of the forest. To their kingdoms, they became known as the
Zorya Sisters…” She stops, turning the page and pausing in whatever
she’s reading.
“I’ve heard the thrones are cursed and that’s why all the royal fae
are crackers,” I whisper to her. Keeper Maddox and every keeper I’ve
met talk like fae are these holy creatures and to speak badly about
them is as forbidden as murder.
 “Rumours, all rumours, Corvina,” she sighs, snapping the book
shut. “Aren’t you excited to see a fae student? They’re meant to be
very alluring and beautiful.”
Alluring and beautiful is exactly how I would describe Pitch.
But often those things just hide a person’s true nature like a
cloud of smoke.
When I finally focus on Sage, her all too knowing eyes are
watching me closely. “I know you’re scared. It’s okay to admit it to
me, Corvina.”
“Since I became a shadowborn, I’ve been scared, Sage, but I’ve
learnt that running from it only gives the fear more power. It’s better
to face the darkness than run from it because one thing is for damn
sure…” I pause as I see something coming down the road. “In our
world, the darkness never lets you go.”
“G oodbye girls. I pray for your dark souls to be enlightened.”
Keeper Maddox’s words don’t make me or Sage feel any
better as a carriage with five black horses halts in front of the foster
home. The carriage door flickers open and metal stairs clink onto the
pavement. I look up at where there should be someone directing the
horses, but the seat is empty. The horses are huge, towering over
me and Sage as they stomp on the ground every so often.
I look to Sage and back at the door. “You’re older, you go first.”
Sage all but huffs as she steps forward and climbs into the
carriage.
I follow right after her, and the door slams shut behind me as I
realise the carriage is a lot bigger on the inside than it looks. About
fifteen students sit on leather seats that line the circular wall of the
carriage, and there is a keeper in the middle, standing up. The only
reason I know he is a keeper is because he wears their classic,
boring-as-heck uniform. Navy blue shirts and trousers, because
they’re completely still in fashion, black boots and a silver cloak that
hangs off their shoulders. They wear a thick belt through the
trousers where they always have a weapon, depending on what they
like to use. This guy has three daggers. The silver shines from the
spotlights of the carriage as I sit down next to Sage.
The keeper stares at me for a second too long before he pulls his
wrist to his mouth. I suspect they have some magic spell enchanted
into their wrists that allow them to talk to each other, but neither I
nor Sage have been brave enough to ask.
“Finally, the last one is on board. Take us home,” the keeper
orders.
Home. I wouldn’t exactly call the academy that.
The carriage lurches into motion, jolting everyone in our seats.
The keeper crosses his arms, the movement not bothering him at all
even though my ass slips off the seat every few jolts. I look around
at the other students. None of them are bothering to make small
talk and I’m not particularly inclined to start any. One of the girls
sitting opposite Sage is staring at me like I’ve got horns protruding
out from my skull. It’s a little unsettling, but even when I peel my
gaze from her and to another student, they’re all radiating their own
personal brand of sullenness. You could cut the tension in this
carriage with a knife.
In what feels like seconds, the carriage comes to a halt and the
keeper ducks by me, slamming open the door of the carriage, and
the stairs fall down. I climb out, knowing he isn’t going to wait for us
to be asked and I nearly trip on the stairs when I see where we are.
The edge of the enchanted forest.
The tall trees line the straight, barren road in the middle of
nowhere. It looks like any kind of forest, but to those that have been
in it, like me, it’s impossible to forget. The only noticeable difference
is the row of torches pierced into the ground by the arched
entrance, their green fire flickering against the softly rustling leaves.
The trees tower so high you’d imagine that they hit the sky, or at
least I did as a child. I used to think that if I climbed high enough I
would be able to touch the stars.
“Blimey. This is really happening,” Sage muses as I cautiously
step closer.
I stop right at the edge of the road, feeling that draw to the
forest that I always have done. Sage’s hand grips my arm, dragging
me back down to reality. The rest of the students climb out of the
carriage, which disappears into a puff of black smoke, leaving only
the keeper and the horses. The black smoke spreads across the
stallions, engulfing them until they are lost to us, and then as the
smoke disappears, four keepers are standing where the horses were.
Of course the horses were keepers. I should have seen that
coming. We can shift to anything, after all. But once you shift into a
certain creature so many times, it starts to become addictive. You
feel more comfortable in one form as opposed to many.
My raven is my main shift, but then my wolf does like to come
out and play sometimes, especially on a full moon.
“As it is in life, you do not have a guide. Find your own way or
you won’t survive.”
Before I can even guess which keeper spoke, they all disappear
into another cloud of smoke, leaving nothing behind apart from an
old, endless road and the enchanted forest overshadowing us.
“It must be some kind of test,” Sage murmurs as everyone bursts
into loud conversations. “We should just head into the forest and
stick together.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agree, turning back to the forest that calls
to me.
I can already hear the whispers of the faeries—the creatures that
led me to my death. Pitch’s remorse for what happened cleaves
through my train of thoughts, momentarily silencing the whispers.
He doesn’t say anything through our telepathic link. He doesn’t need
to. We’ve had the same discussion a million times before.
He never meant for me to die.
He also never meant to be so severely injured that he had no
choice but to latch on to my soul. It was the only way for him to
survive the explosion of dark magic, and when he’s not outside my
body as a shadow or a man, he’s nestled quite literally around my
heart, the tendrils of his darkness entwining with my own. Not many
shadowborns can say their demons are tethered to them in such a
way. To think that his presence used to torment me.
For years, I naturally blamed him for what happened. I even
tried to claw him out from under my skin to the point that I was
hospitalised. But over time, I’ve grown to accept that he never truly
meant to hurt me or my family, and I managed to forgive him. My
mother used to say that forgiving someone even when we don’t
want to is a strength unlike any other. I never realised how strong I
was until I forgave him. Now that Pitch is a part of me, I can’t
imagine my life without him, even if he is fae.
Even if I’m only here, at the beginning of this stupid forest again,
because of him.
“Ready to go?” Sage asks, linking my arm with hers.
“As I’ll ever be,” I can’t help but mutter.
We’re the first to grab a torch and step into the forest. I’m not
sure if that’s a good thing or not, but Sage practically drags me
inside, a child-like skip to her walk. As I hold the torch for us and
follow in her wake, I catch the opened book in her hand and the
blood drains from my face.
“Dammit! I left my book back with my trunk,” I tell her, stopping
at the entrance. “I’ll never hear the end of this if Keeper Maddox
finds out.”
Sage snorts. “Well, she has been reminding you for the past ten
years to always carry it with you.” She lets go of my arm and holds
her own book with two hands, stroking her fingers over the scuffed
leather. “Don’t worry. We can just use mine.”
I nod. “Now we really can’t get lost or I’m royally screwed.”
Another snort from Sage. “You know the spells in this book better
than I do.”
She does have a point: there’s not one ounce of magic in the
Book of Zorya I haven’t already memorised. But there’s a big
difference between memorising them and actually being able to cast
every single one of them. That’s the only reason I’m going to this
academy instead of running for the hills. I want to learn how to
harness my darkness and cast the most difficult of spells known to
magics.
“Does the book tell us where to go?” I ask Sage, continuing to
walk again.
“Nope. The only clue we have is to look for the Evening Star.”
 “Figures. The Keepers don’t want to help us navigate this
cesspit.”
Sage falls into step with me, and asks quietly, “Why do you hate
the forest so much?”
I blink at her question, searching through my garbled thoughts
for an answer. Sage knows I hate this forest but she’s never once
questioned me about it. I don’t want to lie to her but I also don’t
want to talk about what I did. If I confess that I accidentally killed all
those innocent people and children, including my own parents, she
might never look at me the same way again.
I might be a monster, and I deserve to rot for eternity for what I
did, but I don’t want to lose the only person I’ve got left. Without
Sage, all I would have left are the demons feasting off the darkness
growing stronger within me. Not even Pitch would be able to save
me then.
“I came here when I was a kid,” I answer honestly, ducking
under the branches curving over our heads. “This is where I died
and got my powers. It’s just…hard for me to be here, you know?
Makes me remember things I’d rather not.”
Sage reaches out and squeezes my free hand reassuringly, her
lilac eyes glowing like amethyst jewels. “You don’t have to face this
alone.”
Tears prick my eyes and I quickly blink them away. “Thanks. So,
all we’ve gotta do is find the Evening Star and follow it to the
academy? That sounds too easy.”
“Yeah, there’s got to be a catch,” she agrees, letting go of my
hand to flick through her book.
“Isn’t there something about a starlight fountain? I remember
reading about it and that it’s supposed to sit right under the Evening
Star, reflecting its light for people to use as a guide. Maybe look for
that,” I suggest.
Sage pauses and flicks through her book, the shards of
moonlight bathing her face in a soft, silvery hue. “Oh, my gosh, yes!
The Mirror Fountain…” She points to one of the cream pages, and
reads the text aloud: “As the Almighty Goddess of the Moon, Selena,
walked through the forest at twilight, admiring her many creations,
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 174
interested. (4) In the spirit of the empirical philosophy generally its
main anxiety is to do the fullest justice to all the aspects of our so-
called human experience, looking upon theories and systems as but
points of view for the interpretation of this experience, and of the
great universal life that transcends it. And proceeding upon the
theory that a true metaphysic must become a true “dynamic” or a
true incentive to human motive, it seeks the relationships and
affiliations that have been pointed out with all the different liberating
and progressive tendencies in the history of human thought. (5) It
would “consult moral experience directly,” finding in the world of our
175
ordinary moral and social effort a spiritual reality that raises the
individual out of and above and beyond himself. And it bears
testimony in its own more or less imperfect manner to the
176
autonomous element in our human personality that, in the moral
life, and in such things as religious aspiration and creative effort and
social service, transcends the merely theoretical descriptions of the
world with which we are familiar in the generalizations of science and
of history.
Without attempting meanwhile to probe at all deeply into this
pragmatist glorification of “action” and its importance to philosophy,
let us think of a few of the considerations that may be urged in
support of this idea from sources outside those of the mere practical
tendencies and the affiliations of Pragmatism itself.
There is first of all the consideration that it is the fact of action
that unites or brings together what we call “desire” and what we call
“thought,” the world of our desires and emotions and the world of our
thoughts and our knowledge. This is really a consideration of the
utmost importance to us when we think of what we have allowed
177
ourselves to call the characteristic dualism of modern times, the
discrepancy that seems to exist between the world of our desires
and the impersonal world of science—which latter world educated
people are apt to think of as the world before which everything else
must bend and break, or at least bow. Our point here is not merely
that of the humiliating truth of the wisdom of the wiseacres who used
to tell us in our youth that we will anyhow have to act in spite of all
our unanswered questions about things, but the plain statement of
the fact that (say or think what we will) it is in conscious action that
our desires and our thoughts do come together, and that it is there
that they are both seen to be but partial expressions of the one
reality—the life that is in things and in ourselves, and that engenders
in us both emotions and thoughts, even if the latter do sometimes
seem to lie “too deep for tears.” It is with this life and with the objects
and aims and ends and realities that develop and sustain it that all
our thoughts, as well as all our desires, are concerned. If action,
therefore, could only be properly understood, if it can somehow be
seen in its universal or its cosmic significance, there would be no
discrepancy and no gap between the world of our ideals and the
178
world of our thoughts. We would know what we want, and we
would want and desire what we know we can get—the complete
development of our personality.
Again there is the evidence that exists in the sciences of biology
and anthropology in support of the important role played in both
animal and human evolution by effort and choice and volition and
experimentation. “Already in the contractibility of protoplasm and in
179
the activities of typical protozoons do we find ‘activities’ that imply
volition of some sort or degree, for there appears to be some
selection of food and some spontaneity of movement: changes of
direction, the taking of a circuitous course in avoidance of an
obstruction, etc., indicate this.” Then again, “there are such things as
the diversities in secondary sexual characters (the ‘after-thoughts of
reproduction’ as they are called), the endless shift of parasites, the
power of animals to alter their coloration to suit environment, and the
complex ‘internal stimuli’ of the higher animals in their breeding
periods and activities, which make us see only too clearly what the
so-called struggle for life has been in the animal world.”...
Coming up to man let us think of what scientists point out as the
effects of man’s disturbing influence in nature, and then pass from
these on to the facts of anthropology in respect of the conquest of
environment by what we call invention and inheritance and free
initiative. “In placing invention,” says a writer of to-day in a recent
brilliant book, “at the bottom of the scale of conditions [i.e. of the
conditions of social development], I definitely break with the opinion
that human evolution is throughout a purely natural process.... It is
180
pre-eminently an artificial construction.” Now it requires but the
reflection of a moment or two upon considerations such as the
foregoing, and upon the attested facts of history as to the breaking
up of the tyranny of habit and custom by the force of reflection and
free action and free initiative, to grasp how really great should be the
significance to philosophy of the active and the volitional nature of
man that is thus demonstrably at the root not only of our progress,
but of civilization itself.
If it be objected that while there cannot, indeed, from the point of
view of the general culture and civilization of mankind, be any
question of the importance to philosophy of the active effort and of
the active thought that underlie this stupendous achievement, the
case is perhaps somewhat different when we try to think of the
pragmatist glorification of our human action from the point of view of
181
the (physical?) universe as a whole. To this reflection it is possible
here to say but one or two things. Firstly, there is apparently at
present no warrant in science for seeking to separate off this human
182
life of ours from the evolution of animal life in general. Equally
little is there any warrant for separating the evolution of living matter
from the evolution of what we call inanimate matter, not to speak of
the initial difficulty of accounting for things like energy and radio-
active matter, and the evolution and the devolution that are calmly
claimed by science to be involved in the various “systems” within the
universe—apart from an ordering and intelligent mind and will. There
is therefore, so far, no necessary presumption against the idea of
regarding human evolution as at least in some sense a continuation
or development of the life that seems to pervade the universe in
general. And then, secondly, there is the familiar reflection that
nearly all that we think we know about the universe as a whole is but
an interpretation of it in terms of the life and the energy that we
experience in ourselves and in terms of some of the apparent
conditions of this life and this energy. For as Bergson reminds us,
“As thinking beings we may apply the laws of our physics to our
world, and extend them to each of the worlds taken separately, but
nothing tells us that they apply to the entire universe nor even that
such affirmation has any meaning; for the universe is not made but is
being made continually. It is growing perhaps indefinitely by the
183
addition of new worlds.”
184
On the ground, then, both of science and of philosophy may it
be definitely said that this human action of ours, as apparently the
highest outcome of the forces of nature, becomes only too naturally
and only too inevitably the highest object of our reflective
consideration. As Schopenhauer put it long ago, the human body is
the only object in nature that we know “on the inside.” And do or
think what we will, it is this human life of ours and this mind of ours
that have peopled the world of science and the world of philosophy
with all the categories and all the distinctions that obtain there, with
concepts like the “(Platonic) Ideas,” “form,” “matter,” “energy,” “ether,”
“atom,” “substance,” “the individual,” “the universal,” “empty space,”
“eternity,” “the Absolute,” “value,” “final end,” and so on.
There is much doubtless in this action philosophy, and much too
in the matter of the reasons that may be brought forward in its
support, that can become credible and intelligible only as we
proceed. But it must all count, it would seem, in support of the idea
of the pragmatist rediscovery, for philosophy, of the importance of
our creative action and of our creative thought. And then there are
one or two additional general considerations of which we may well
think in the same connexion.
185
Pragmatism boasts, as we know, of being a highly democratic
doctrine, of contending for the emancipation of the individual and his
interests from the tyranny of all kinds of absolutism, and all kinds of
dogmatism (whether philosophical, or scientific, or social). No
system either of thought or of practice, no supposed “world-view” of
things, no body of scientific laws or abstract truths shall, as long as it
holds the field of our attention, entirely crush out of existence the
concrete interests and the free self-development of the individual
human being.
 A tendency in this direction exists, it must be admitted, in the
“determinism” both of natural science and of Hegelianism, and of the
social philosophy that has emanated from the one or from the other.
Pragmatism, on the contrary, in all matters of the supposed
determination, or the attempted limitation, of the individual by what
has been accomplished either in Nature or in human history, would
incline to what we generally speak of to-day as a “modernistic,” or a
“liberalistic,” or even a “revolutionary,” attitude. It would reinterpret
and reconstruct, in the light of the present and its needs, not only the
concepts and the methods of science and philosophy, but also the
186
various institutions and the various social practices of mankind.
Similarily Pragmatism would protest, as does the newer
education and the newer sociology, against any merely doctrinaire
(or “intellectualistic”) conception of education and culture,
187
substituting in its place the “efficiency” or the “social service”
conception. And even if we must admit that this more or less
practical ideal of education has been over-emphasized in our time, it
is still true, as with Goethe, that it is only the “actively-free” man, the
man who can work out in service and true accomplishment the ideal
of human life, whose production should be regarded as the aim of a
sound educational or social policy.
We shall later attempt to assign some definite reasons for the
failure of Pragmatism to make the most of all this apparently
justifiable insistence upon action and upon the creative activity of the
individual, along with all this sympathy that it seems to evince for a
progressive and a liberationist view of human policy.
Meantime, in view of all these considerations, we cannot avoid
making the reflection that it is surely something of an anomaly in
philosophy that a thinker’s “study” doubts about his actions and
about some of the main instinctive beliefs of mankind (in which he
himself shares) should have come to be regarded—as they have
been by Rationalism—as considerations of a greater importance
than the actions, and the beliefs, and the realities, of which they are
the expression. Far be it from the writer to suggest that the
188
suspension of judgment and the refraining from activity, in the
absence of adequate reason and motive, are not, and have not been
of the greatest value to mankind in the matter of the development of
the higher faculties and the higher ideals of the mind. There may well
be, however, for Pragmatism, or for any philosophy that can work it
out satisfactorily, in the free, creative, activity of man, in the duty that
lies upon us all of carrying on our lives to the highest expression, a
reason and a truth that must be estimated at their logical worth along
with the many other reasons and truths of which we are pleased to
think as the truth of things.
Short, however, of a more genuine attempt on the part of
Pragmatism than anything it has as yet given us in this connexion to
justify this higher reason and truth that are embodied in our
consciousness of ourselves as persons, as rational agents, all its
mere “practicalism” and all its “instrumentalism” are but the
workaday and the utilitarian philosophy of which we have already
189
complained in its earlier and cruder professions.
After some attention, then, to the matter of the outstanding
critical defects of Pragmatism, in its preliminary and cruder forms, we
shall again return to our topic of the relatively new subject-matter it
has been endeavouring to place before philosophy in its insistence
upon the importance of action, and upon the need of a “dynamic,”
instead of an intellectualistic and “spectator-like” theory of human
personality.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IV

PHILOSOPHY AND THE ACTIVITY-EXPERIENCE

[In an article upon the above title in the International Journal of Ethics, p. 1898, I
attempted to deal with some aspects of the problem that I have just raised in the
preceding chapter. I venture to append here some of the statements that I made
then upon the importance of action and the “activity-experience” to the philosophy
of to-day. I am inclined to regard them (although I have not looked at them until the
present moment of passing this book through the press) as a kind of anticipation
and confirmation of many of my present pages. Part of my excuse, however, for
inserting them here is a hope that these references and suggestions may possibly
be of service to the general reader. The extracts follow as they were printed.]
I. It requires no very profound acquaintance with the trend of the literature of
general and specialized philosophy of the last twenty-five years to detect a
decidedly practical turn in the recent speculative tendencies of philosophy and
philosophers. The older conception of philosophy or metaphysics as an attempt to
state (more or less systematically) the value of the world for thought is being
slowly modified, if not altogether disappearing, into the attempt to explain or to
grasp the significance of the world from the stand-point of the moral and social
activity of man. The philosophical student must be to some extent conscious of the
difference in respect of both tone and subject-matter between such books as
Stirling’s Secret of Hegel, E. Caird’s Critical Philosophy of Kant (the first editions of
both works), Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics, and the most recent essays and
190 191 192 193
books of Professors A. Seth and James and Ward and Sidgwick and
194 195 196
Baldwin, and of Mr. Bosanquet and the late Mr. Nettleship, and between—
to turn to Germany—the writings of Erdmann and Kuno Fischer and Zeller and
F. A. Lange, and those of Gizycki, Paulsen, Windelband, Eucken, Hartmann,
Deussen, Simmel, and—in France—between the writings of Renouvier and Pillon
and Ravaisson, the “Neo-Kantianism” of the Critique Philosophique (1872–1877),
and those of Fouillée, Weber (of Strassburg), Séailles, Dunan, and others, and of
general writers like de Vogüé, Desjardins, and Brunetière, and of social
philosophers like Bouglé, Tarde, Izoulet, and so on. The change of venue in these
writers alone, not to speak of the change of the interest of the educated world from
such books as Huxley’s Hume and Renan’s L’Avenir de la Science and Du Bois
Reymond’s Die Sieben Welträthsel, and Tyndall’s Belfast Address, to the writings
of Herbert Spencer (the Sociology and the general essays on social evolution),
Kidd, Nordau, Nietzsche, Mr. Crozier (his important History of Civilization), and
197
Demolins, and the predominance of investigations into general biology and
comparative psychology and sociology over merely logical and conceptual
philosophy seem to afford us some warrant for trying to think of what might be
called a newer or ethical idealism, an idealism of the will, an idealism of life, in
contradistinction to the older or intellectual (epistemological, Neo-Kantian)
198
idealism, the idealism of the intellect. Professor A. Seth, in his recent volume on
Man’s Place in the Cosmos, suggests that Mr. Bradley’s treatise on Appearance
and Reality has closed the period of the absorption or assimilation of Kanto-
Hegelian principles by the English mind. And there is ample evidence in
contemporary philosophical literature to show that even the very men who have,
with the help of Stirling and Green and Caird and Bradley and Wallace, “absorbed
and assimilated” the principles of critical idealism are now bent upon applying
these principles to the solution of concrete problems of art and life and conduct.
Two things alone would constitute a difference between the philosophy of the last
199
few years and that of the preceding generation: An attempt (strongly
accentuated at the present moment) to include elements of feeling and will in our
final consciousness of reality, and a tendency (inevitable since Comte and Hegel’s
Philosophy of History) to extend the philosophical synthesis of the merely
“external,” or physical, universe so as to make it include the world of man’s action
200
and the world that is now glibly called the “social organism.” A good deal of the
epistemological and metaphysical philosophy of this century has been merely
cosmological, and at best psychological and individualistic. The philosophy of the
present is, necessarily, to a large extent, sociological and collectivistic and
historical. Renan once prophesied that this would be so. And many other men
perceived the same fact and acted upon their perception of it—Goethe and Victor
Hugo and Carlyle, for example.
To be sure, any attempt to draw lines of novel and absolute separation
between writers of to-day and their immediate predecessors would be absurd and
impossible, just as would be the attempt to force men who are still living and
thinking and developing, into Procrustean beds of system and nomenclature. The
history of the philosophy of the last half of this century constitutes a development
as continuous and as logical as the philosophy of any similar period of years
wherein men have thought persistently and truly upon the problems of life and
mind. There were in the ’sixties men like Ulrici and Lotze (Renouvier, too, to some
extent) who divined the limitations of a merely intellectual philosophy, and who saw
clearly that the only way to effect a reconciliation between philosophy and science
would be to apply philosophy itself to the problems of the life and thought of the
time, just as we find, in 1893, Dr. Edward Caird writing, in his Essays on Literature
and Philosophy, that “philosophy, in face of the increasing complexity of modern
life, has a harder task laid upon it than ever was laid upon it before. It must emerge
from the region of abstract principles and show itself able to deal with the manifold
results of empirical science, giving to each of them its proper place and value.”
Professor Campbell Fraser, while welcoming and sympathetically referring to (in
his books upon Berkeley and Locke) the elements of positive value in English and
German idealism, has throughout his life contended for the idea (expressed with
greatest definiteness in his Gifford Lectures on The Philosophy of Theism) that “in
man, as a self-conscious and self-determining agent,” is to be found the “best key
we possess to the solution of the ultimate problem of the universe”; while
Professor Sidgwick, by virtue of his captivating and ingenious pertinacity in
confining philosophical speculation to the lines of the traditional English
empiricism, and in keeping it free from the ensnaring subtleties of system and
methodology, has exercised a healthful and corrective influence against the
extremes alike of transcendentalism and naturalism. And it would be rash to
maintain that all the younger men in philosophy show an intention to act upon the
idea (expressed by Wundt, for instance, in his Ethik) that a metaphysic should
build upon the facts of the moral life of man; although we find a “Neo-Hegelian” like
201
Professor Mackenzie saying that “even the wealth of our inner life depends
rather on the width of our objective interests than on the intensity of our self-
contemplation”; and an expounder of the ethics of dialectic evolution like Professor
202
Muirhead quoting with approval the thought expressed by George Eliot in the
words, “The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually
foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections seeking a justification for love and
203
hope”; and a careful psychologist like Mr. Stout deliberately penning the
204
words, “Our existence as conscious beings is essentially an activity, and activity
is a process which, by its very nature, is directed towards an end, and can neither
exist nor be conceived apart from this end.” There are, doubtless, many
philosophers of to-day who are convinced that philosophy is purely an intellectual
matter, and can never be anything else than an attempt to analyze the world for
thought—an attempt to state its value in the terms of thought. Against all these and
many similar considerations it would be idle to set up a hard and fast codification
or characterization of the work of the philosophy or philosophers of to-day. Still, the
world will accord the name of philosopher to any man—Renan, for example, or
Spencer or Huxley or Nordau or Nietzsche—who comes before it with views upon
the universe and humanity that may, for any conceivable reason, be regarded as
fundamental. And on this showing of things, as well as from many indications in
the work of those who are philosophers by profession, it may be said that the
predominating note of the newer philosophy is its openness to the facts of the
volitional and emotional and moral and social aspects of man’s life, as things that
take us further along the path of truth than the mere categories of thought and their
manipulation by metaphysic and epistemology.
II. The Newer Idealism does not dream of questioning the positive work of the
Kantian and Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian idealists. It knows only too well that
even scientific men like Helmholtz and Du Bois Reymond, that “positive”
philosophers like Riehl and Laas and Feuerbach and others have, through the
influence of the Kantian philosophy, learned and accepted the fact of there being
“ideal” or psychical or “mind-supplied” factors in so-called external reality. There
are among the educated men of to-day very few Dr. Johnsons who ridicule the
psycho-physical, or the metaphysical, analysis of external reality, who believe in a
crass and crude and self-sufficient “matter” utterly devoid of psychical attributes or
characteristics. True, Herbert Spencer has written words to the effect that “If the
Idealist (Berkeley) is right, then the doctrine of Evolution is a dream”; but then
everything in Spencer’s philosophy about an “actuality lying behind appearances”
and about our being compelled “to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation
of some Power by which we are acted upon,” is against the possibility of our
believing that, according to that philosophy, an unconscious and non-spiritual
“matter” could evolve itself into conscious life and moral experience. The
philosophers of to-day have indeed rejoiced to see Kant’s lesson popularized by
such various phases and movements of human thought as psychophysical
research, art and æsthetic theory, the interest in Buddhism (with its idealistic
theory of the knowledge of the senses), and the speculative biology of Weismann
and others. That people generally should see that matter is, for many reasons,
something more than mere matter, is to the student of Kant a piece of fulfilled
prophecy. And by a plea for a return to reality and life and sociability from
conceptualism and criticism and speculative individualism no philosophical scholar
for one moment contemplates, as even conceivable, an overlooking of the
idealistic interpretation of the data of the senses supplied by Locke and Berkeley
and Hume, or of the idealistic interpretation of the data of science and
understanding supplied by Kant’s “Copernican” discovery. Any real view of the
universe must now presuppose the melting down of crass external reality into the
phenomena of sense and experience and the transformation of inorganic and
organic nature into so many planes or grades of being expressive of the different
forms (gravitation, cohesion, vital force, psychic force) in which cosmic energy
manifests itself.
Equally little does the Newer Idealism question the legitimacy or the actual
positive service of the “dialectic” of Hegel (as Archimedean a leverage to humanity
as was the “concept” of Socrates or the “apperception” of Kant) that has shown the
world to be a system in which everything is related to everything else, and shown,
too, that all ways of looking at reality that stop short of the truths of personality and
moral relationship are untrue and inadequate. To use the words of Professor
205
Howison, of California, in the preface to the first edition of Professor Watson’s
latest volume (a book that connects the idealism of Glasgow and Oxford with the
convictions of the youth of the “Pacific Coast”), the “dominant tone” of the militant
and representative philosophy of to-day, is “affirmative and idealistic. The decided
majority ... are animated by the conviction that human thought is able to solve the
riddle of life positively; to solve it in accord with the ideal hopes and interests of
human nature.”
 CHAPTER V
CRITICAL

Enough has perhaps now been said by way of an indication of

some of the main characteristics of Pragmatism, and of the matter of
its relations to ordinary and to philosophical thinking. Its complexity
and some of its confusions and some of its difficulties have also
been referred to.
As for the affiliations and the associations of Pragmatism, it
would seem that it rests not so much upon its own mere
instrumentalism and practicalism as upon some of the many broader
and deeper tendencies in ancient and modern thought that have
aimed at a dynamic, instead of a static, interpretation of reality.
We have suggested, too, that there are evidently things in
traditional philosophy and in Rationalism of which it fails to take
cognizance, although it has evidently many things to give to
Rationalism in the way of a constructive philosophy of human life.
Now it would be easily possible to continue our study of
Pragmatism along some or all of those different lines and points of
view. In the matter, for example, of the affiliations and associations of
Pragmatism, we could show that, in addition to such things as the
“nominalism” and the utilitarianism, and the positivism, and the
“voluntarism” and the philosophy of hypotheses, and the “anti-
intellectualism” already referred to, Pragmatism has an affinity with
things as far apart and as different as the Scottish Philosophy of
Common-sense, the sociological philosophy of Comte and his
followers, the philosophy of Fichte with its great idea of the world as
the “sensualized sphere” of our duty, the “experience” philosophy of
Bacon and of the entire modern era, and so on. There is even a
“romantic” element in Pragmatism, and it has, in fact, been called
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“romantic utilitarianism.” We can understand this if we think of M.
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Berthelot’s association of it not only with Poincaré, but with
Nietzsche, or of Dr. Schiller’s famous declaration that the genius of a
man’s logical method should be loved and reverenced by him as is
“his bride.”
And there is always in it, to be sure, the important element of
sympathy with the religious instincts of mankind. And this is the
case, too, whether these instincts are contemplated in some of the
forms to which reference has already been made, or in the form, say,
expressed by such a typical modern thinker as the late Henry
Sidgwick, in his conviction that “Humanity will not, and cannot,
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acquiesce in a Godless world.”
Then again we might take up the point of the relations of
Pragmatism to doctrines new and old in the history of philosophy, to
the main points of departure of different schools of thought, or to
fundamental and important positions in many of the great
philosophers. The writer finds that he has noticed in this connexion
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the doctrines of Stoicism and Epicureanism, the “probability”
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philosophy of Locke and Butler, and Pascal, the ethics and the
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natural theology of Cicero, the “voluntarism” of Schopenhauer,
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Aristotle’s philosophy of the Practical Reason, Kant’s philosophy
of the same, the religious philosophy of theologians like Tertullian,
Augustine, Duns Scotus, and so on—to take only a few
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instances. The view of man and his nature represented by all
these names is, in the main, an essentially practical, a concrete, and
a moral view as opposed to an abstract and a rationalistic view. And
of course even to Plato knowledge was only an element in the total
spiritual philosophy of man, while his master, Socrates, never really
seemed to make any separation between moral and intellectual
inquiries.
And as for positions in the great philosophers between which
and some of the tendencies of Pragmatism there is more than a
merely superficial agreement, we might instance, for example, the
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tendency of Hume to reduce many of the leading categories of
our thought to mere habits of mind, to be explained on an instinctive
rather than a rationalistic basis; or Comte’s idea of the error of
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separating reason from instinct; or the idea of de Maistre and
Bain, and many others that “will” is implied in the notion of
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“exteriority”; or the idea of Descartes that the senses teach us not
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so much “what is in reality in things,” as “what is beneficial or
hurtful to the composite whole of mind and body”; or the declaration
of Kant that the chief end of metaphysic is God and immortality; or
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the idea of Spencer that the belief in the unqualified supremacy of
reason is a superstition of philosophers; or the idea of Plato in the
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Sophist that reality is the capacity for acting or of being acted
upon; and so on.
As for such further confirmation of pragmatist teaching as is to
be found in typical modern thinking and scholars, thought of almost
at random, it would be easy to quote in this connexion from writers
as diverse as Höffding, Fouillée, Simmel, Wundt, Mach, Huxley,
Hobhouse, and many others. It might be called a typically pragmatist
idea, for example, on the part of Mr. L. T. Hobhouse to hold that “The
higher conceptions by which idealism has so firmly held are not to be
‘scientifically’ treated in the sense of being explained away. What is
genuinely higher we have ... good reason to think must also be
truest,” and we “cannot permanently acquiesce in a way of thinking
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what would resolve it into what is lowest.” These last words
represent almost a commonplace of the thought of the day. It is held,
for example, by men as different and as far apart in their work, and
yet as typical of phases of our modern life, as Robert Browning and
Sir Oliver Lodge. The close dependence again of the doctrines of
any science upon the social life and the prevalent thought of the
generation is also essentially a pragmatist idea. Its truth is
recognized and insisted upon in the most explicit manner in the
recent serviceable manifesto of Professors Geddes and Thomson
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upon “Evolution,” and it obviously affects their whole philosophy
of life and mind. It figures too quite prominently in the valuable short
Introduction to Science by Professor Thomson in the same series of
manuals.
Another typical book of to-day, again (that of Professor Duncan
on the New Knowledge of the new physical science), definitely gives
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up, for example, the “correspondence” notion of truth, holding that
it is meaningless to think of reality as something outside our thought
and our experience of which our ideas might be a possible duplicate.
This again we readily recognize as an essentially pragmatist
contention. So also is the same writer’s rejection of the notion of
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“absolute truth,” and his confession of the “faith” that is always
involved in the thought of completeness or system in our scientific
knowledge. “We believe purely as an act of faith and not at all of
logic,” he says, “that the universe is essentially determinable
thousands of years hence, into some one system which will account
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for everything and which will be the truth.”
Nor would it be at all difficult to find confirmation for the
pragmatist philosophy of ideas and thoughts in what we may well
think of as the general reflective literature of our time, outside the
sphere, as it were, of strictly rational or academic philosophy—in
writers like F. D. Maurice, W. Pater, A. W. Benn (who otherwise
depreciates what he calls “ophelism”), J. H. Newman, Karl Pearson,
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Carlyle, and others. Take the following, for example, quoted with
approval from Herschel by Karl Pearson: “The grand and indeed the
only character of truth is its capability of enduring the test of
universal experience, and coming unchanged out of every possible
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form of fair discussion.” The idea again, for example, recently
expressed in a public article by such a widely read and cleverly
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perverse writer as Mr. Bernard Shaw, that “the will that moves us
is dogmatic: our brain is only the very imperfect instrument by which
we devise practical means for satisfying the will,” might only too
naturally be associated with the pragmatist-like anti-
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intellectualism of Bergson, or, for that part of it, with the deeper
“voluntarism” of Schopenhauer. The following quotation taken from
Mr. Pater reveals how great may be correspondence between the
independent findings of a finely sensitive mind like his, and the
positions to which the pragmatists are inclined in respect of the
psychology of religious belief. “The supposed facts on which
Christianity rests, utterly incapable as they have become of any
ordinary test, seem to me matter of very much the same sort of
assent as we give to any assumption in the strict and ultimate sense,
moral. The question whether these facts were real will, I think,
always continue to be what I should call one of those natural
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questions of the human mind.” Readers of Carlyle will easily
recognize what we might call a more generalized statement of this
same truth of Pater’s in the often-quoted words from Heroes and
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Hero-Worship: “By religion I do not mean the church creed which
a man professes, the articles of faith which.... But the thing a man
does practically believe (and this often enough without asserting it
even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does
practically lay to heart and know for certain concerning his vital
relations to the mysterious universe, and his duty and destiny there.”
It has long seemed to the writer that a similar thing to this might be
written (and James has certainly written it) about a man’s
“philosophy” as necessarily inclusive of his working beliefs as well as
of his mere reasoned opinions, although it is the latter that are
generally (by what right?) taken to be properly the subject-matter of
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philosophy. And it is this phase of the pragmatist philosophy that
could, I am inclined to think, be most readily illustrated from the
opinions of various living and dead writers upon the general working
philosophy of human nature as we find this revealed in human
history. We are told, for example, by Mr. Hobhouse, in his
monumental work upon Morals in Evolution, that in “Taoism the
supreme principle of things may be left undefined as something that
we experience in ourselves if we throw ourselves upon it, but which
we know rather by following or living it than by any process of
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ratiocination.” And “this mystical interpretation,” he adds, “is not
confined to Taoism, but in one form or another lies near to hand to all
spiritual religions, and expresses one mode of religious
consciousness, its aspiration to reach the heart of things and the
confidence that it has done so, and found rest there.”
We are reminded, of course, by all such considerations of the
philosophy of Bergson, and of its brilliant attempt to make a
synthesis of intuition or instinct with reflection or thought, and indeed
it may well be that the past difficulties of philosophy with intuition and
instinct are due to the fact of its error in unduly separating the
intellect from the “will to live,” and from the “creative” evolution that
have been such integral factors in the evolution of the life of
humanity.
This entire matter, however, of the comparison of pragmatist
doctrines to typical tendencies in the thought of the past and the
present must be treated by us as subordinate to our main purpose,
that of the estimation of the place of Pragmatism in the constructive
thought of the present time. With a view to this it will be necessary to
revert to the criticism of Pragmatism.
The criticism that has already been made is that in the main
Pragmatism is unsystematic and complex and confusing, that it has
no adequate theory of “reality,” and no unified theory of philosophy,
that it has no satisfactory criterion of the “consequences” by which it
proposes to test truth, and that it has not worked out its philosophy of
the contribution of the individual with his “activity” and his “purposes”
to “reality” generally, and that it is in danger of being a failure in the
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realm of ethics.
To all this we shall now seek to add a few words more upon (1)
the pragmatist criterion of truth, (2) the weakness of Pragmatism in
the realms of logic and theory of knowledge, (3) its failure to give
consistent account of the nature of reality, and (4) its
unsatisfactoriness in the realm of ethics.
(1) We have already expressed our agreement with the finding of
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Professor Pratt that the pragmatist theory of truth amounts to no
more than the harmless doctrine that the meaning of any conception
expresses itself in the past, present, or future conduct or
experiences of actual, or possible, sentient creatures. Taken literally,
however, the doctrine that truth should be tested by consequences is
not only harmless but also useless, seeing that Omniscience alone
could bring together in thought or in imagination all the
consequences of an assertion. Again, it is literally false for the
reason that the proof of truth is not in the first instance any kind of
“consequences,” not even the “verification” of which pragmatists are
so fond. If the truth of which we may happen to be thinking is truth of
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“fact,” its proof lies in its correspondence (despite the difficulties
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of the idea) with the results of observation or perception. And if it
be inferential truth, its proof is that of its deduction from previously
established truths, or facts, upon a certain plane of knowledge or
experience. In short, Pragmatists forget altogether the logical
doctrine of the existence (in the world of our human experience, of
course) of different established planes of reality, or planes of
ascertained knowledge in which all propositions that are not
nonsensical or trivial, are, from their very inception, regarded as
necessarily true or false. The existence of these various planes of
experience or of thought is in fact implied in the pragmatist doctrine
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of the fundamental character of belief. According to this perfectly
correct doctrine, the objectivity of truth (i.e. its reality or non-reality in
the world of fact or in the world of rational discourse) is the essential
thing about it, while the idea of its “consequences” is not. A truth is a
proposition whose validity has already been established by evidence
or by demonstration. It has then afterwards the immediate “utility” of
expressing in an intelligible and convenient manner the fact of
certain connexions among things or events. And its ultimate utility to
mankind is also at the same time assured, humanity being by its very
nature a society of persons who must act, and who act, upon what
they believe to be the truth or the reality of things. But a proposition
is by no means true because it is useful. Constantine believed
eminently in the concord-producing utility of certain confessions
enunciated at the Council of Nice, but his belief in this does not
prove their truth or reality outside the convictions of the faithful. Nor
does the pragmatist or utilitarian character of certain portions of the
writings of the Old Testament or of the Koran prove the matter of
their literal and factual truth in the ordinary sense of these terms. As
Hume said, “When any opinion leads us into absurdities ’tis certainly
false, but ’tis not certain that an opinion is false because it has
dangerous consequences.”
And then, apart from this conspicuous absence of logic in the
views of pragmatists upon “truth,” the expression of their doctrine is
so confusing that it is almost impossible to extract any consistent
meaning out of it. They are continually confounding conceptions and
ideas and propositions, forgetful of the fact that truth resides not in
concepts and ideas but only in propositions. While it may be indeed
true, as against Rationalism, that all human conceptions whatsoever
[and it is only in connexion with “conceptions” that Pragmatism is
defined even in such an official place as Baldwin’s Dictionary of
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Philosophy ] have, and must have, reference to actual or possible
human experience or consequences, it is by no means true that the
test of a proposition is anything other than the evidence of which we
have already spoken.
Then the pragmatists have never adequately defined terms that
are so essential to their purposes as “practical,” “truth,” “fact,”
“reality,” “consequences,” and they confound, too, “theories” with
“truths” and “concepts” just as they confound concepts and
propositions.
(2) That logic and the theory of proof is thus one of the weak
spots of Pragmatism has perhaps then been sufficiently indicated.
We have seen, in fact, the readiness of Pragmatism to confess its
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inability to prove its own philosophy—that is, to prove it in the
240
ordinary sense of the term. That it should have made this
confession is, of course, only in keeping with the fact that its interest
in logic is confined to such subordinate topics as the framing and
verification of hypotheses, the development of concepts and
judgments in the “thought-process,” and so on. Of complete proof, as
involving both deduction and induction, it takes but the scantiest
recognition. And it has made almost no effort to connect its
discoveries in “genetic logic” and in the theory of hypotheses with the
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traditional body of logical doctrine. Nor, as may perhaps be
inferred from the preceding paragraph, has it made any serious
attempt to consider the question of the discovery of new truth in
relation to the more or less perfectly formulated systems and
schemes of truth already in the possession of mankind.
The case is similar in regard to the “theory of knowledge” of the
pragmatists. While they have made many important suggestions
regarding the relation of all the main categories and principles of our
human thought to the theoretical and practical needs of mankind,
there is in their teachings little that is satisfactory and explicit in the
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matter of the systematization of first principles, and little too that
is satisfactory in respect of the relation of knowledge to reality. They
sometimes admit (with James) the importance of general points of
view like the “causal,” the “temporal,” “end,” and “purpose,” and so
on. At other times they confess with Schiller that questions about
ultimate truth and ultimate reality cannot be allowed to weigh upon
our spirits, seeing that “actual knowing” always starts from the
“existing situation.”
Now of course actual knowing certainly does start from the
particular case of the existing situation, but, as all thinkers from
Aristotle to Hume have seen, it is by no means explained by this
existing situation. In real knowledge this is always made intelligible
by references to points of view and to experiences that altogether
transcend it. The true theory of knowledge, in short, involves the
familiar Kantian distinction between the “origin” and the “validity” of
knowledge—a thing that the pragmatists seem continually and
deliberately to ignore. Schiller, to be sure, reminds us with justice
that we must endeavour to “connect,” rather than invariably
“contrast,” the two terms of this distinction. But this again is by no
means what the pragmatists themselves have done. They fail, in
fact, to connect their hints about the practical or experimental origin
of most of our points of view about reality with the problem of the
validity of first principles generally.
There is a suggestion here and there in their writings that, as
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Schiller puts it, there can be no coherent system of postulates
except as rooted in personality, and that there are postulates at
every stage of our development. What this statement means is that
there are “points of view” about reality that are incidental to the stage
of our natural life (as beings among other beings), others to the
stage of conscious sensations and feelings, still others to that of our
desires and thoughts, to our aesthetic appreciation, to our moral life,
and so on. But, as I have already said, there is little attempt on the
part of the pragmatists to distinguish these different stages or planes
of experience adequately from one another.
(3) References have already been made to the failures of our
Anglo-American pragmatists to attain to any intelligible and
consistent kind of reality, whether they conceive of this latter as the
sum-total of the efforts of aspiring and achieving human beings, or
with Schiller as an “original, plastic sub-stratum,” or as the reality
(whatever it is) that is gradually being brought into being by the
creative efforts of ourselves and of beings higher or lower than
ourselves in the scale of existence. Their deepest thought in the
matter seems to be that the universe (our universe?) is essentially
“incomplete,” and that the truth of God, as James puts it, “has to run
the gauntlet of other truths.” One student of this topic, Professor
Leighton, has arrived at the conclusion that pragmatism is essentially
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“acosmistic,” meaning, no doubt, and with good reason, that
Pragmatism has no place of any kind for objective order or system.
Now it is just this palpable lack of an “objective,” or rational, order
that renders the whole pragmatist philosophy liable to the charges of
(1) “subjectivism,” and (2) irrationality. There are in it, as we have
tried to point out, abundant hints of what reality must be construed to
be on the principles of any workable or credible philosophy, namely
something that stimulates both our thought and our endeavour. And
there is in it the great truth that in action we are not only in contact
with reality as such, but with a reality, moreover, that transcends the
imperfect reality of our lives as finite individuals and the imperfect
character of our limited effort and struggle. But beyond the vague
hints that our efforts must somehow count in the final tale of reality,
and that what the world of experience seems to be, it must somehow
be conceived ultimately to be, there is no standing-ground in the
entire pragmatist philosophy for want of what, in plain English, must