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diff --git a/5116-h/5116-h.htm b/5116-h/5116-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..67de4f2 --- /dev/null +++ b/5116-h/5116-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6008 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + Pragmatism, by William James + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + .side { float: right; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em; + border-left: dashed thin; margin-left: 0.8em; text-align: left; + text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; + font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pragmatism, by William James + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Pragmatism + A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking + +Author: William James + + +Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5116] +This file was first posted on May 1, 2002 +Last Updated: July 2, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRAGMATISM *** + + + + +Text file produced by Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + +HTML file produced by David Widger + + + + +</pre> + + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + PRAGMATISM + </h1> + <h3> + A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking + </h3> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h2> + By William James + </h2> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h4> + To the Memory of John Stuart Mill <br /> <br /> from whom I first learned + the pragmatic openness of mind <br /> and whom my fancy likes to picture as + our leader were he alive to-day. + </h4> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Preface + </h2> + <p> + The lectures that follow were delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston + in November and December, 1906, and in January, 1907, at Columbia + University, in New York. They are printed as delivered, without + developments or notes. The pragmatic movement, so-called—I do not + like the name, but apparently it is too late to change it—seems to + have rather suddenly precipitated itself out of the air. A number of + tendencies that have always existed in philosophy have all at once become + conscious of themselves collectively, and of their combined mission; and + this has occurred in so many countries, and from so many different points + of view, that much unconcerted statement has resulted. I have sought to + unify the picture as it presents itself to my own eyes, dealing in broad + strokes, and avoiding minute controversy. Much futile controversy might + have been avoided, I believe, if our critics had been willing to wait + until we got our message fairly out. + </p> + <p> + If my lectures interest any reader in the general subject, he will + doubtless wish to read farther. I therefore give him a few references. + </p> + <p> + In America, John Dewey's 'Studies in Logical Theory' are the foundation. + Read also by Dewey the articles in the Philosophical Review, vol. xv, pp. + 113 and 465, in Mind, vol. xv, p. 293, and in the Journal of Philosophy, + vol. iv, p. 197. + </p> + <p> + Probably the best statements to begin with however, are F. C. S. + Schiller's in his 'Studies in Humanism,' especially the essays numbered i, + v, vi, vii, xviii and xix. His previous essays and in general the polemic + literature of the subject are fully referred to in his footnotes. + </p> + <p> + Furthermore, see G. Milhaud: le Rationnel, 1898, and the fine articles by + Le Roy in the Revue de Metaphysique, vols. 7, 8 and 9. Also articles by + Blondel and de Sailly in the Annales de Philosophie Chretienne, 4me Serie, + vols. 2 and 3. Papini announces a book on Pragmatism, in the French + language, to be published very soon. + </p> + <p> + To avoid one misunderstanding at least, let me say that there is no + logical connexion between pragmatism, as I understand it, and a doctrine + which I have recently set forth as 'radical empiricism.' The latter stands + on its own feet. One may entirely reject it and still be a pragmatist. + </p> + <p> + Harvard University, April, 1907. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + <b>CONTENTS</b> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_PREF"> Preface </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_TOC"> EXPANDED CONTENTS </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>PRAGMATISM</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> Lecture I. — The Present Dilemma in + Philosophy </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> Lecture II. — What Pragmatism Means </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> Lecture III. — Some Metaphysical Problems + Pragmatically Considered </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> Lecture IV. — The One and the Many </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> Lecture V. — Pragmatism and Common Sense + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> Lecture VI. — Pragmatism's Conception of + Truth </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> Lecture VII. — Pragmatism and Humanism + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> Lecture VIII. — Pragmatism and Religion + </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_TOC" id="link2H_TOC"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <div class="middle"> + <p> + CONTENTS + </p> + Lecture I <br /> The Present Dilemma in Philosophy <br /> Chesterton quoted. + Everyone has a philosophy. Temperament is a factor in <br /> all + philosophizing. Rationalists and empiricists. The tender-minded <br /> and + the tough-minded. Most men wish both facts and religion. Empiricism <br /> + gives facts without religion. Rationalism gives religion without facts. + <br /> The layman's dilemma. The unreality in rationalistic systems. + Leibnitz <br /> on the damned, as an example. M. I. Swift on the optimism + of idealists. <br /> Pragmatism as a mediating system. An objection. Reply: + philosophies have <br /> characters like men, and are liable to as summary + judgments. Spencer as <br /> an example. <br /> Lecture II <br /> What + Pragmatism Means <br /> The squirrel. Pragmatism as a method. History of + the method. Its <br /> character and affinities. How it contrasts with + rationalism and <br /> intellectualism. A 'corridor theory.' Pragmatism as + a theory of truth, <br /> equivalent to 'humanism.' Earlier views of + mathematical, logical, and <br /> natural truth. More recent views. + Schiller's and Dewey's 'instrumental' <br /> view. The formation of new + beliefs. Older truth always has to be kept <br /> account of. Older truth + arose similarly. The 'humanistic' doctrine. <br /> Rationalistic criticisms + of it. Pragmatism as mediator between <br /> empiricism and religion. + Barrenness of transcendental idealism. How far <br /> the concept of the + Absolute must be called true. The true is the good <br /> in the way of + belief. The clash of truths. Pragmatism unstiffens <br /> discussion. <br /> + Lecture III <br /> Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered + <br /> The problem of substance. The Eucharist. Berkeley's pragmatic + treatment <br /> of material substance. Locke's of personal identity. The + problem of <br /> materialism. Rationalistic treatment of it. Pragmatic + treatment. 'God' <br /> is no better than 'Matter' as a principle, unless + he promise more. <br /> Pragmatic comparison of the two principles. The + problem of design. <br /> 'Design' per se is barren. The question is WHAT + design. The problem of <br /> 'free-will.' Its relations to + 'accountability.' Free-will a cosmological <br /> theory. The pragmatic + issue at stake in all these problems is what do <br /> the alternatives + PROMISE. <br /> Lecture IV <br /> The One and the Many <br /> Total + reflection. Philosophy seeks not only unity, but totality. <br /> + Rationalistic feeling about unity. Pragmatically considered, the world + <br /> is one in many ways. One time and space. One subject of discourse. + Its <br /> parts interact. Its oneness and manyness are co-ordinate. + Question of <br /> one origin. Generic oneness. One purpose. One story. One + knower. Value <br /> of pragmatic method. Absolute monism. Vivekananda. + Various types of <br /> union discussed. Conclusion: We must oppose + monistic dogmatism and <br /> follow empirical findings. <br /> Lecture V + <br /> Pragmatism and Common Sense <br /> Noetic pluralism. How our + knowledge grows. Earlier ways of thinking <br /> remain. Prehistoric + ancestors DISCOVERED the common sense concepts. List <br /> of them. They + came gradually into use. Space and time. 'Things.' Kinds. <br /> 'Cause' + and 'law.' Common sense one stage in mental evolution, due <br /> to + geniuses. The 'critical' stages: 1) scientific and 2) philosophic, <br /> + compared with common sense. Impossible to say which is the more 'true.' + <br /> Lecture VI <br /> Pragmatism's Conception of Truth <br /> The polemic + situation. What does agreement with reality mean? It means <br /> + verifiability. Verifiability means ability to guide us prosperously <br /> + through experience. Completed verifications seldom needful. 'Eternal' + <br /> truths. Consistency, with language, with previous truths. + Rationalist <br /> objections. Truth is a good, like health, wealth, etc. + It is expedient <br /> thinking. The past. Truth grows. Rationalist + objections. Reply to them. <br /> Lecture VII <br /> Pragmatism and Humanism + <br /> The notion of THE Truth. Schiller on 'Humanism.' Three sorts of + <br /> reality of which any new truth must take account. To 'take account' + is <br /> ambiguous. Absolutely independent reality is hard to find. The + human <br /> contribution is ubiquitous and builds out the given. Essence + of <br /> pragmatism's contrast with rationalism. Rationalism affirms a + <br /> transempirical world. Motives for this. Tough-mindedness rejects + them. A <br /> genuine alternative. Pragmatism mediates. <br /> Lecture VIII + <br /> Pragmatism and Religion <br /> Utility of the Absolute. Whitman's + poem 'To You.' Two ways of taking <br /> it. My friend's letter. + Necessities versus possibilities. 'Possibility' <br /> defined. Three views + of the world's salvation. Pragmatism is <br /> melioristic. We may create + reality. Why should anything BE? Supposed <br /> choice before creation. + The healthy and the morbid reply. The 'tender' <br /> and the 'tough' types + of religion. Pragmatism mediates. <br /> + </div> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + PRAGMATISM + </h1> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Lecture I. — The Present Dilemma in Philosophy + </h2> + <p> + In the preface to that admirable collection of essays of his called + 'Heretics,' Mr. Chesterton writes these words: "There are some people—and + I am one of them—who think that the most practical and important + thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a + landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but + still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general + about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but + still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question + is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in + the long run, anything else affects them." + </p> + <p> + I think with Mr. Chesterton in this matter. I know that you, ladies and + gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most + interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it + determines the perspective in your several worlds. You know the same of + me. And yet I confess to a certain tremor at the audacity of the + enterprise which I am about to begin. For the philosophy which is so + important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less + dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got + from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total + push and pressure of the cosmos. I have no right to assume that many of + you are students of the cosmos in the class-room sense, yet here I stand + desirous of interesting you in a philosophy which to no small extent has + to be technically treated. I wish to fill you with sympathy with a + contemporaneous tendency in which I profoundly believe, and yet I have to + talk like a professor to you who are not students. Whatever universe a + professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to + lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for + which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that + cheap kind! I have heard friends and colleagues try to popularize + philosophy in this very hall, but they soon grew dry, and then technical, + and the results were only partially encouraging. So my enterprise is a + bold one. The founder of pragmatism himself recently gave a course of + lectures at the Lowell Institute with that very word in its title-flashes + of brilliant light relieved against Cimmerian darkness! None of us, I + fancy, understood ALL that he said—yet here I stand, making a very + similar venture. + </p> + <p> + I risk it because the very lectures I speak of DREW—they brought + good audiences. There is, it must be confessed, a curious fascination in + hearing deep things talked about, even tho neither we nor the disputants + understand them. We get the problematic thrill, we feel the presence of + the vastness. Let a controversy begin in a smoking-room anywhere, about + free-will or God's omniscience, or good and evil, and see how everyone in + the place pricks up his ears. Philosophy's results concern us all most + vitally, and philosophy's queerest arguments tickle agreeably our sense of + subtlety and ingenuity. + </p> + <p> + Believing in philosophy myself devoutly, and believing also that a kind of + new dawn is breaking upon us philosophers, I feel impelled, per fas aut + nefas, to try to impart to you some news of the situation. + </p> + <p> + Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human + pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out the widest + vistas. It 'bakes no bread,' as has been said, but it can inspire our + souls with courage; and repugnant as its manners, its doubting and + challenging, its quibbling and dialectics, often are to common people, no + one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends + over the world's perspectives. These illuminations at least, and the + contrast-effects of darkness and mystery that accompany them, give to what + it says an interest that is much more than professional. + </p> + <p> + The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of + human temperaments. Undignified as such a treatment may seem to some of my + colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain a good + many of the divergencies of philosophers by it. Of whatever temperament a + professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact + of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason, so + he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament + really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective + premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making for a + more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this + fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a + universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe + that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with + the world's character, and in his heart considers them incompetent and + 'not in it,' in the philosophic business, even tho they may far excel him + in dialectical ability. + </p> + <p> + Yet in the forum he can make no claim, on the bare ground of his + temperament, to superior discernment or authority. There arises thus a + certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of all + our premises is never mentioned. I am sure it would contribute to + clearness if in these lectures we should break this rule and mention it, + and I accordingly feel free to do so. + </p> + <p> + Of course I am talking here of very positively marked men, men of radical + idiosyncracy, who have set their stamp and likeness on philosophy and + figure in its history. Plato, Locke, Hegel, Spencer, are such + temperamental thinkers. Most of us have, of course, no very definite + intellectual temperament, we are a mixture of opposite ingredients, each + one present very moderately. We hardly know our own preferences in + abstract matters; some of us are easily talked out of them, and end by + following the fashion or taking up with the beliefs of the most impressive + philosopher in our neighborhood, whoever he may be. But the one thing that + has COUNTED so far in philosophy is that a man should see things, see them + straight in his own peculiar way, and be dissatisfied with any opposite + way of seeing them. There is no reason to suppose that this strong + temperamental vision is from now onward to count no longer in the history + of man's beliefs. + </p> + <p> + Now the particular difference of temperament that I have in mind in making + these remarks is one that has counted in literature, art, government and + manners as well as in philosophy. In manners we find formalists and + free-and-easy persons. In government, authoritarians and anarchists. In + literature, purists or academicals, and realists. In art, classics and + romantics. You recognize these contrasts as familiar; well, in philosophy + we have a very similar contrast expressed in the pair of terms + 'rationalist' and 'empiricist,' 'empiricist' meaning your lover of facts + in all their crude variety, 'rationalist' meaning your devotee to abstract + and eternal principles. No one can live an hour without both facts and + principles, so it is a difference rather of emphasis; yet it breeds + antipathies of the most pungent character between those who lay the + emphasis differently; and we shall find it extraordinarily convenient to + express a certain contrast in men's ways of taking their universe, by + talking of the 'empiricist' and of the 'rationalist' temper. These terms + make the contrast simple and massive. + </p> + <p> + More simple and massive than are usually the men of whom the terms are + predicated. For every sort of permutation and combination is possible in + human nature; and if I now proceed to define more fully what I have in + mind when I speak of rationalists and empiricists, by adding to each of + those titles some secondary qualifying characteristics, I beg you to + regard my conduct as to a certain extent arbitrary. I select types of + combination that nature offers very frequently, but by no means uniformly, + and I select them solely for their convenience in helping me to my + ulterior purpose of characterizing pragmatism. Historically we find the + terms 'intellectualism' and 'sensationalism' used as synonyms of + 'rationalism' and 'empiricism.' Well, nature seems to combine most + frequently with intellectualism an idealistic and optimistic tendency. + Empiricists on the other hand are not uncommonly materialistic, and their + optimism is apt to be decidedly conditional and tremulous. Rationalism is + always monistic. It starts from wholes and universals, and makes much of + the unity of things. Empiricism starts from the parts, and makes of the + whole a collection-is not averse therefore to calling itself pluralistic. + Rationalism usually considers itself more religious than empiricism, but + there is much to say about this claim, so I merely mention it. It is a + true claim when the individual rationalist is what is called a man of + feeling, and when the individual empiricist prides himself on being + hard-headed. In that case the rationalist will usually also be in favor of + what is called free-will, and the empiricist will be a fatalist—I + use the terms most popularly current. The rationalist finally will be of + dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the empiricist may be more + sceptical and open to discussion. + </p> + <p> + I will write these traits down in two columns. I think you will + practically recognize the two types of mental make-up that I mean if I + head the columns by the titles 'tender-minded' and 'tough-minded' + respectively. + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p> + THE TENDER-MINDED + </p> + <p> + Rationalistic (going by 'principles'), Intellectualistic, Idealistic, + Optimistic, Religious, Free-willist, Monistic, Dogmatical. + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p> + THE TOUGH-MINDED + </p> + <p> + Empiricist (going by 'facts'), Sensationalistic, Materialistic, + Pessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Sceptical. + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p> + Pray postpone for a moment the question whether the two contrasted + mixtures which I have written down are each inwardly coherent and + self-consistent or not—I shall very soon have a good deal to say on + that point. It suffices for our immediate purpose that tender-minded and + tough-minded people, characterized as I have written them down, do both + exist. Each of you probably knows some well-marked example of each type, + and you know what each example thinks of the example on the other side of + the line. They have a low opinion of each other. Their antagonism, + whenever as individuals their temperaments have been intense, has formed + in all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of the time. It forms a + part of the philosophic atmosphere to-day. The tough think of the tender + as sentimentalists and soft-heads. The tender feel the tough to be + unrefined, callous, or brutal. Their mutual reaction is very much like + that that takes place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population + like that of Cripple Creek. Each type believes the other to be inferior to + itself; but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the + other it has a dash of fear. + </p> + <p> + Now, as I have already insisted, few of us are tender-foot Bostonians pure + and simple, and few are typical Rocky Mountain toughs, in philosophy. Most + of us have a hankering for the good things on both sides of the line. + Facts are good, of course—give us lots of facts. Principles are good—give + us plenty of principles. The world is indubitably one if you look at it in + one way, but as indubitably is it many, if you look at it in another. It + is both one and many—let us adopt a sort of pluralistic monism. + Everything of course is necessarily determined, and yet of course our + wills are free: a sort of free-will determinism is the true philosophy. + The evil of the parts is undeniable; but the whole can't be evil: so + practical pessimism may be combined with metaphysical optimism. And so + forth—your ordinary philosophic layman never being a radical, never + straightening out his system, but living vaguely in one plausible + compartment of it or another to suit the temptations of successive hours. + </p> + <p> + But some of us are more than mere laymen in philosophy. We are worthy of + the name of amateur athletes, and are vexed by too much inconsistency and + vacillation in our creed. We cannot preserve a good intellectual + conscience so long as we keep mixing incompatibles from opposite sides of + the line. + </p> + <p> + And now I come to the first positively important point which I wish to + make. Never were as many men of a decidedly empiricist proclivity in + existence as there are at the present day. Our children, one may say, are + almost born scientific. But our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us + all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is + devout. Now take a man of this type, and let him be also a philosophic + amateur, unwilling to mix a hodge-podge system after the fashion of a + common layman, and what does he find his situation to be, in this blessed + year of our Lord 1906? He wants facts; he wants science; but he also wants + a religion. And being an amateur and not an independent originator in + philosophy he naturally looks for guidance to the experts and + professionals whom he finds already in the field. A very large number of + you here present, possibly a majority of you, are amateurs of just this + sort. + </p> + <p> + Now what kinds of philosophy do you find actually offered to meet your + need? You find an empirical philosophy that is not religious enough, and a + religious philosophy that is not empirical enough for your purpose. If you + look to the quarter where facts are most considered you find the whole + tough-minded program in operation, and the 'conflict between science and + religion' in full blast. Either it is that Rocky Mountain tough of a + Haeckel with his materialistic monism, his ether-god and his jest at your + God as a 'gaseous vertebrate'; or it is Spencer treating the world's + history as a redistribution of matter and motion solely, and bowing + religion politely out at the front door:—she may indeed continue to + exist, but she must never show her face inside the temple. For a hundred + and fifty years past the progress of science has seemed to mean the + enlargement of the material universe and the diminution of man's + importance. The result is what one may call the growth of naturalistic or + positivistic feeling. Man is no law-giver to nature, he is an absorber. + She it is who stands firm; he it is who must accommodate himself. Let him + record truth, inhuman tho it be, and submit to it! The romantic + spontaneity and courage are gone, the vision is materialistic and + depressing. Ideals appear as inert by-products of physiology; what is + higher is explained by what is lower and treated forever as a case of + 'nothing but'—nothing but something else of a quite inferior sort. + You get, in short, a materialistic universe, in which only the + tough-minded find themselves congenially at home. + </p> + <p> + If now, on the other hand, you turn to the religious quarter for + consolation, and take counsel of the tender-minded philosophies, what do + you find? + </p> + <p> + Religious philosophy in our day and generation is, among us + English-reading people, of two main types. One of these is more radical + and aggressive, the other has more the air of fighting a slow retreat. By + the more radical wing of religious philosophy I mean the so-called + transcendental idealism of the Anglo-Hegelian school, the philosophy of + such men as Green, the Cairds, Bosanquet, and Royce. This philosophy has + greatly influenced the more studious members of our protestant ministry. + It is pantheistic, and undoubtedly it has already blunted the edge of the + traditional theism in protestantism at large. + </p> + <p> + That theism remains, however. It is the lineal descendant, through one + stage of concession after another, of the dogmatic scholastic theism still + taught rigorously in the seminaries of the catholic church. For a long + time it used to be called among us the philosophy of the Scottish school. + It is what I meant by the philosophy that has the air of fighting a slow + retreat. Between the encroachments of the hegelians and other philosophers + of the 'Absolute,' on the one hand, and those of the scientific + evolutionists and agnostics, on the other, the men that give us this kind + of a philosophy, James Martineau, Professor Bowne, Professor Ladd and + others, must feel themselves rather tightly squeezed. Fair-minded and + candid as you like, this philosophy is not radical in temper. It is + eclectic, a thing of compromises, that seeks a modus vivendi above all + things. It accepts the facts of darwinism, the facts of cerebral + physiology, but it does nothing active or enthusiastic with them. It lacks + the victorious and aggressive note. It lacks prestige in consequence; + whereas absolutism has a certain prestige due to the more radical style of + it. + </p> + <p> + These two systems are what you have to choose between if you turn to the + tender-minded school. And if you are the lovers of facts I have supposed + you to be, you find the trail of the serpent of rationalism, of + intellectualism, over everything that lies on that side of the line. You + escape indeed the materialism that goes with the reigning empiricism; but + you pay for your escape by losing contact with the concrete parts of life. + The more absolutistic philosophers dwell on so high a level of abstraction + that they never even try to come down. The absolute mind which they offer + us, the mind that makes our universe by thinking it, might, for aught they + show us to the contrary, have made any one of a million other universes + just as well as this. You can deduce no single actual particular from the + notion of it. It is compatible with any state of things whatever being + true here below. And the theistic God is almost as sterile a principle. + You have to go to the world which he has created to get any inkling of his + actual character: he is the kind of god that has once for all made that + kind of a world. The God of the theistic writers lives on as purely + abstract heights as does the Absolute. Absolutism has a certain sweep and + dash about it, while the usual theism is more insipid, but both are + equally remote and vacuous. What you want is a philosophy that will not + only exercise your powers of intellectual abstraction, but that will make + some positive connexion with this actual world of finite human lives. + </p> + <p> + You want a system that will combine both things, the scientific loyalty to + facts and willingness to take account of them, the spirit of adaptation + and accommodation, in short, but also the old confidence in human values + and the resultant spontaneity, whether of the religious or of the romantic + type. And this is then your dilemma: you find the two parts of your + quaesitum hopelessly separated. You find empiricism with inhumanism and + irreligion; or else you find a rationalistic philosophy that indeed may + call itself religious, but that keeps out of all definite touch with + concrete facts and joys and sorrows. + </p> + <p> + I am not sure how many of you live close enough to philosophy to realize + fully what I mean by this last reproach, so I will dwell a little longer + on that unreality in all rationalistic systems by which your serious + believer in facts is so apt to feel repelled. + </p> + <p> + I wish that I had saved the first couple of pages of a thesis which a + student handed me a year or two ago. They illustrated my point so clearly + that I am sorry I cannot read them to you now. This young man, who was a + graduate of some Western college, began by saying that he had always taken + for granted that when you entered a philosophic class-room you had to open + relations with a universe entirely distinct from the one you left behind + you in the street. The two were supposed, he said, to have so little to do + with each other, that you could not possibly occupy your mind with them at + the same time. The world of concrete personal experiences to which the + street belongs is multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, + painful and perplexed. The world to which your philosophy-professor + introduces you is simple, clean and noble. The contradictions of real life + are absent from it. Its architecture is classic. Principles of reason + trace its outlines, logical necessities cement its parts. Purity and + dignity are what it most expresses. It is a kind of marble temple shining + on a hill. + </p> + <p> + In point of fact it is far less an account of this actual world than a + clear addition built upon it, a classic sanctuary in which the rationalist + fancy may take refuge from the intolerably confused and gothic character + which mere facts present. It is no EXPLANATION of our concrete universe, + it is another thing altogether, a substitute for it, a remedy, a way of + escape. + </p> + <p> + Its temperament, if I may use the word temperament here, is utterly alien + to the temperament of existence in the concrete. REFINEMENT is what + characterizes our intellectualist philosophies. They exquisitely satisfy + that craving for a refined object of contemplation which is so powerful an + appetite of the mind. But I ask you in all seriousness to look abroad on + this colossal universe of concrete facts, on their awful bewilderments, + their surprises and cruelties, on the wildness which they show, and then + to tell me whether 'refined' is the one inevitable descriptive adjective + that springs to your lips. + </p> + <p> + Refinement has its place in things, true enough. But a philosophy that + breathes out nothing but refinement will never satisfy the empiricist + temper of mind. It will seem rather a monument of artificiality. So we + find men of science preferring to turn their backs on metaphysics as on + something altogether cloistered and spectral, and practical men shaking + philosophy's dust off their feet and following the call of the wild. + </p> + <p> + Truly there is something a little ghastly in the satisfaction with which a + pure but unreal system will fill a rationalist mind. Leibnitz was a + rationalist mind, with infinitely more interest in facts than most + rationalist minds can show. Yet if you wish for superficiality incarnate, + you have only to read that charmingly written 'Theodicee' of his, in which + he sought to justify the ways of God to man, and to prove that the world + we live in is the best of possible worlds. Let me quote a specimen of what + I mean. + </p> + <p> + Among other obstacles to his optimistic philosophy, it falls to Leibnitz + to consider the number of the eternally damned. That it is infinitely + greater, in our human case, than that of those saved he assumes as a + premise from the theologians, and then proceeds to argue in this way. Even + then, he says: + </p> + <p> + "The evil will appear as almost nothing in comparison with the good, if we + once consider the real magnitude of the City of God. Coelius Secundus + Curio has written a little book, 'De Amplitudine Regni Coelestis,' which + was reprinted not long ago. But he failed to compass the extent of the + kingdom of the heavens. The ancients had small ideas of the works of God. + ... It seemed to them that only our earth had inhabitants, and even the + notion of our antipodes gave them pause. The rest of the world for them + consisted of some shining globes and a few crystalline spheres. But + to-day, whatever be the limits that we may grant or refuse to the Universe + we must recognize in it a countless number of globes, as big as ours or + bigger, which have just as much right as it has to support rational + inhabitants, tho it does not follow that these need all be men. Our earth + is only one among the six principal satellites of our sun. As all the + fixed stars are suns, one sees how small a place among visible things our + earth takes up, since it is only a satellite of one among them. Now all + these suns MAY be inhabited by none but happy creatures; and nothing + obliges us to believe that the number of damned persons is very great; for + a VERY FEW INSTANCES AND SAMPLES SUFFICE FOR THE UTILITY WHICH GOOD DRAWS + FROM EVIL. Moreover, since there is no reason to suppose that there are + stars everywhere, may there not be a great space beyond the region of the + stars? And this immense space, surrounding all this region, ... may be + replete with happiness and glory. ... What now becomes of the + consideration of our Earth and of its denizens? Does it not dwindle to + something incomparably less than a physical point, since our Earth is but + a point compared with the distance of the fixed stars. Thus the part of + the Universe which we know, being almost lost in nothingness compared with + that which is unknown to us, but which we are yet obliged to admit; and + all the evils that we know lying in this almost-nothing; it follows that + the evils may be almost-nothing in comparison with the goods that the + Universe contains." + </p> + <p> + Leibnitz continues elsewhere: "There is a kind of justice which aims + neither at the amendment of the criminal, nor at furnishing an example to + others, nor at the reparation of the injury. This justice is founded in + pure fitness, which finds a certain satisfaction in the expiation of a + wicked deed. The Socinians and Hobbes objected to this punitive justice, + which is properly vindictive justice and which God has reserved for + himself at many junctures. ... It is always founded in the fitness of + things, and satisfies not only the offended party, but all wise + lookers-on, even as beautiful music or a fine piece of architecture + satisfies a well-constituted mind. It is thus that the torments of the + damned continue, even tho they serve no longer to turn anyone away from + sin, and that the rewards of the blest continue, even tho they confirm no + one in good ways. The damned draw to themselves ever new penalties by + their continuing sins, and the blest attract ever fresh joys by their + unceasing progress in good. Both facts are founded on the principle of + fitness, ... for God has made all things harmonious in perfection as I + have already said." + </p> + <p> + Leibnitz's feeble grasp of reality is too obvious to need comment from me. + It is evident that no realistic image of the experience of a damned soul + had ever approached the portals of his mind. Nor had it occurred to him + that the smaller is the number of 'samples' of the genus 'lost-soul' whom + God throws as a sop to the eternal fitness, the more unequitably grounded + is the glory of the blest. What he gives us is a cold literary exercise, + whose cheerful substance even hell-fire does not warm. + </p> + <p> + And do not tell me that to show the shallowness of rationalist + philosophizing I have had to go back to a shallow wigpated age. The + optimism of present-day rationalism sounds just as shallow to the + fact-loving mind. The actual universe is a thing wide open, but + rationalism makes systems, and systems must be closed. For men in + practical life perfection is something far off and still in process of + achievement. This for rationalism is but the illusion of the finite and + relative: the absolute ground of things is a perfection eternally + complete. + </p> + <p> + I find a fine example of revolt against the airy and shallow optimism of + current religious philosophy in a publication of that valiant anarchistic + writer Morrison I. Swift. Mr. Swift's anarchism goes a little farther than + mine does, but I confess that I sympathize a good deal, and some of you, I + know, will sympathize heartily with his dissatisfaction with the + idealistic optimisms now in vogue. He begins his pamphlet on 'Human + Submission' with a series of city reporter's items from newspapers + (suicides, deaths from starvation and the like) as specimens of our + civilized regime. For instance: + </p> + <p> + "'After trudging through the snow from one end of the city to the other in + the vain hope of securing employment, and with his wife and six children + without food and ordered to leave their home in an upper east side + tenement house because of non-payment of rent, John Corcoran, a clerk, + to-day ended his life by drinking carbolic acid. Corcoran lost his + position three weeks ago through illness, and during the period of + idleness his scanty savings disappeared. Yesterday he obtained work with a + gang of city snow shovelers, but he was too weak from illness and was + forced to quit after an hour's trial with the shovel. Then the weary task + of looking for employment was again resumed. Thoroughly discouraged, + Corcoran returned to his home late last night to find his wife and + children without food and the notice of dispossession on the door.' On the + following morning he drank the poison. + </p> + <p> + "The records of many more such cases lie before me [Mr. Swift goes on]; an + encyclopedia might easily be filled with their kind. These few I cite as + an interpretation of the universe. 'We are aware of the presence of God in + His world,' says a writer in a recent English Review. [The very presence + of ill in the temporal order is the condition of the perfection of the + eternal order, writes Professor Royce ('The World and the Individual,' II, + 385).] 'The Absolute is the richer for every discord, and for all + diversity which it embraces,' says F. H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality, + 204). He means that these slain men make the universe richer, and that is + Philosophy. But while Professors Royce and Bradley and a whole host of + guileless thoroughfed thinkers are unveiling Reality and the Absolute and + explaining away evil and pain, this is the condition of the only beings + known to us anywhere in the universe with a developed consciousness of + what the universe is. What these people experience IS Reality. It gives us + an absolute phase of the universe. It is the personal experience of those + most qualified in all our circle of knowledge to HAVE experience, to tell + us WHAT is. Now, what does THINKING ABOUT the experience of these persons + come to compared with directly, personally feeling it, as they feel it? + The philosophers are dealing in shades, while those who live and feel know + truth. And the mind of mankind-not yet the mind of philosophers and of the + proprietary class-but of the great mass of the silently thinking and + feeling men, is coming to this view. They are judging the universe as they + have heretofore permitted the hierophants of religion and learning to + judge THEM. ... + </p> + <p> + "This Cleveland workingman, killing his children and himself [another of + the cited cases], is one of the elemental, stupendous facts of this modern + world and of this universe. It cannot be glozed over or minimized away by + all the treatises on God, and Love, and Being, helplessly existing in + their haughty monumental vacuity. This is one of the simple irreducible + elements of this world's life after millions of years of divine + opportunity and twenty centuries of Christ. It is in the moral world like + atoms or sub-atoms in the physical, primary, indestructible. And what it + blazons to man is the ... imposture of all philosophy which does not see + in such events the consummate factor of conscious experience. These facts + invincibly prove religion a nullity. Man will not give religion two + thousand centuries or twenty centuries more to try itself and waste human + time; its time is up, its probation is ended. Its own record ends it. + Mankind has not sons and eternities to spare for trying out discredited + systems...." [Footnote: Morrison I. Swift, Human Submission, Part Second, + Philadelphia, Liberty Press, 1905, pp. 4-10.] + </p> + <p> + Such is the reaction of an empiricist mind upon the rationalist bill of + fare. It is an absolute 'No, I thank you.' "Religion," says Mr. Swift, "is + like a sleep-walker to whom actual things are blank." And such, tho + possibly less tensely charged with feeling, is the verdict of every + seriously inquiring amateur in philosophy to-day who turns to the + philosophy-professors for the wherewithal to satisfy the fulness of his + nature's needs. Empiricist writers give him a materialism, rationalists + give him something religious, but to that religion "actual things are + blank." He becomes thus the judge of us philosophers. Tender or tough, he + finds us wanting. None of us may treat his verdicts disdainfully, for + after all, his is the typically perfect mind, the mind the sum of whose + demands is greatest, the mind whose criticisms and dissatisfactions are + fatal in the long run. + </p> + <p> + It is at this point that my own solution begins to appear. I offer the + oddly-named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds + of demand. It can remain religious like the rationalisms, but at the same + time, like the empiricisms, it can preserve the richest intimacy with + facts. I hope I may be able to leave many of you with as favorable an + opinion of it as I preserve myself. Yet, as I am near the end of my hour, + I will not introduce pragmatism bodily now. I will begin with it on the + stroke of the clock next time. I prefer at the present moment to return a + little on what I have said. + </p> + <p> + If any of you here are professional philosophers, and some of you I know + to be such, you will doubtless have felt my discourse so far to have been + crude in an unpardonable, nay, in an almost incredible degree. + Tender-minded and tough-minded, what a barbaric disjunction! And, in + general, when philosophy is all compacted of delicate intellectualities + and subtleties and scrupulosities, and when every possible sort of + combination and transition obtains within its bounds, what a brutal + caricature and reduction of highest things to the lowest possible + expression is it to represent its field of conflict as a sort of + rough-and-tumble fight between two hostile temperaments! What a childishly + external view! And again, how stupid it is to treat the abstractness of + rationalist systems as a crime, and to damn them because they offer + themselves as sanctuaries and places of escape, rather than as + prolongations of the world of facts. Are not all our theories just + remedies and places of escape? And, if philosophy is to be religious, how + can she be anything else than a place of escape from the crassness of + reality's surface? What better thing can she do than raise us out of our + animal senses and show us another and a nobler home for our minds in that + great framework of ideal principles subtending all reality, which the + intellect divines? How can principles and general views ever be anything + but abstract outlines? Was Cologne cathedral built without an architect's + plan on paper? Is refinement in itself an abomination? Is concrete + rudeness the only thing that's true? + </p> + <p> + Believe me, I feel the full force of the indictment. The picture I have + given is indeed monstrously over-simplified and rude. But like all + abstractions, it will prove to have its use. If philosophers can treat the + life of the universe abstractly, they must not complain of an abstract + treatment of the life of philosophy itself. In point of fact the picture I + have given is, however coarse and sketchy, literally true. Temperaments + with their cravings and refusals do determine men in their philosophies, + and always will. The details of systems may be reasoned out piecemeal, and + when the student is working at a system, he may often forget the forest + for the single tree. But when the labor is accomplished, the mind always + performs its big summarizing act, and the system forthwith stands over + against one like a living thing, with that strange simple note of + individuality which haunts our memory, like the wraith of the man, when a + friend or enemy of ours is dead. + </p> + <p> + Not only Walt Whitman could write "who touches this book touches a man." + The books of all the great philosophers are like so many men. Our sense of + an essential personal flavor in each one of them, typical but + indescribable, is the finest fruit of our own accomplished philosophic + education. What the system pretends to be is a picture of the great + universe of God. What it is—and oh so flagrantly!—is the + revelation of how intensely odd the personal flavor of some fellow + creature is. Once reduced to these terms (and all our philosophies get + reduced to them in minds made critical by learning) our commerce with the + systems reverts to the informal, to the instinctive human reaction of + satisfaction or dislike. We grow as peremptory in our rejection or + admission, as when a person presents himself as a candidate for our favor; + our verdicts are couched in as simple adjectives of praise or dispraise. + We measure the total character of the universe as we feel it, against the + flavor of the philosophy proffered us, and one word is enough. + </p> + <p> + "Statt der lebendigen Natur," we say, "da Gott die Menschen schuf hinein"—that + nebulous concoction, that wooden, that straight-laced thing, that crabbed + artificiality, that musty schoolroom product, that sick man's dream! Away + with it. Away with all of them! Impossible! Impossible! + </p> + <p> + Our work over the details of his system is indeed what gives us our + resultant impression of the philosopher, but it is on the resultant + impression itself that we react. Expertness in philosophy is measured by + the definiteness of our summarizing reactions, by the immediate perceptive + epithet with which the expert hits such complex objects off. But great + expertness is not necessary for the epithet to come. Few people have + definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has + his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and + of the inadequacy fully to match it of the peculiar systems that he knows. + They don't just cover HIS world. One will be too dapper, another too + pedantic, a third too much of a job-lot of opinions, a fourth too morbid, + and a fifth too artificial, or what not. At any rate he and we know + offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb and out of key and out of + 'whack,' and have no business to speak up in the universe's name. Plato, + Locke, Spinoza, Mill, Caird, Hegel—I prudently avoid names nearer + home!—I am sure that to many of you, my hearers, these names are + little more than reminders of as many curious personal ways of falling + short. It would be an obvious absurdity if such ways of taking the + universe were actually true. We philosophers have to reckon with such + feelings on your part. In the last resort, I repeat, it will be by them + that all our philosophies shall ultimately be judged. The finally + victorious way of looking at things will be the most completely IMPRESSIVE + way to the normal run of minds. + </p> + <p> + One word more—namely about philosophies necessarily being abstract + outlines. There are outlines and outlines, outlines of buildings that are + FAT, conceived in the cube by their planner, and outlines of buildings + invented flat on paper, with the aid of ruler and compass. These remain + skinny and emaciated even when set up in stone and mortar, and the outline + already suggests that result. An outline in itself is meagre, truly, but + it does not necessarily suggest a meagre thing. It is the essential + meagreness of WHAT IS SUGGESTED by the usual rationalistic philosophies + that moves empiricists to their gesture of rejection. The case of Herbert + Spencer's system is much to the point here. Rationalists feel his fearful + array of insufficiencies. His dry schoolmaster temperament, the + hurdy-gurdy monotony of him, his preference for cheap makeshifts in + argument, his lack of education even in mechanical principles, and in + general the vagueness of all his fundamental ideas, his whole system + wooden, as if knocked together out of cracked hemlock boards—and yet + the half of England wants to bury him in Westminster Abbey. + </p> + <p> + Why? Why does Spencer call out so much reverence in spite of his weakness + in rationalistic eyes? Why should so many educated men who feel that + weakness, you and I perhaps, wish to see him in the Abbey notwithstanding? + </p> + <p> + Simply because we feel his heart to be IN THE RIGHT PLACE philosophically. + His principles may be all skin and bone, but at any rate his books try to + mould themselves upon the particular shape of this, particular world's + carcase. The noise of facts resounds through all his chapters, the + citations of fact never cease, he emphasizes facts, turns his face towards + their quarter; and that is enough. It means the right kind of thing for + the empiricist mind. + </p> + <p> + The pragmatistic philosophy of which I hope to begin talking in my next + lecture preserves as cordial a relation with facts, and, unlike Spencer's + philosophy, it neither begins nor ends by turning positive religious + constructions out of doors—it treats them cordially as well. + </p> + <p> + I hope I may lead you to find it just the mediating way of thinking that + you require. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Lecture II. — What Pragmatism Means + </h2> + <p> + Some years ago, being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned + from a solitary ramble to find everyone engaged in a ferocious + metaphysical dispute. The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel—a + live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while + over against the tree's opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. + This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly + round the tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast + in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and + the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant + metaphysical problem now is this: DOES THE MAN GO ROUND THE SQUIRREL OR + NOT? He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; + but does he go round the squirrel? In the unlimited leisure of the + wilderness, discussion had been worn threadbare. Everyone had taken sides, + and was obstinate; and the numbers on both sides were even. Each side, + when I appeared, therefore appealed to me to make it a majority. Mindful + of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a contradiction you must + make a distinction, I immediately sought and found one, as follows: "Which + party is right," I said, "depends on what you PRACTICALLY MEAN by 'going + round' the squirrel. If you mean passing from the north of him to the + east, then to the south, then to the west, and then to the north of him + again, obviously the man does go round him, for he occupies these + successive positions. But if on the contrary you mean being first in front + of him, then on the right of him, then behind him, then on his left, and + finally in front again, it is quite as obvious that the man fails to go + round him, for by the compensating movements the squirrel makes, he keeps + his belly turned towards the man all the time, and his back turned away. + Make the distinction, and there is no occasion for any farther dispute. + You are both right and both wrong according as you conceive the verb 'to + go round' in one practical fashion or the other." + </p> + <p> + Altho one or two of the hotter disputants called my speech a shuffling + evasion, saying they wanted no quibbling or scholastic hair-splitting, but + meant just plain honest English 'round,' the majority seemed to think that + the distinction had assuaged the dispute. + </p> + <p> + I tell this trivial anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example of + what I wish now to speak of as THE PRAGMATIC METHOD. The pragmatic method + is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise + might be interminable. Is the world one or many?—fated or free?—material + or spiritual?—here are notions either of which may or may not hold + good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The + pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by + tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it + practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were + true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the + alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. + Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical + difference that must follow from one side or the other's being right. + </p> + <p> + A glance at the history of the idea will show you still better what + pragmatism means. The term is derived from the same Greek word [pi rho + alpha gamma mu alpha], meaning action, from which our words 'practice' and + 'practical' come. It was first introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles + Peirce in 1878. In an article entitled 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear,' in + the 'Popular Science Monthly' for January of that year [Footnote: + Translated in the Revue Philosophique for January, 1879 (vol. vii).] Mr. + Peirce, after pointing out that our beliefs are really rules for action, + said that to develope a thought's meaning, we need only determine what + conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for us its sole + significance. And the tangible fact at the root of all our + thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is no one of them so + fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To + attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only + consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may + involve—what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions + we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or + remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far + as that conception has positive significance at all. + </p> + <p> + This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism. It lay + entirely unnoticed by anyone for twenty years, until I, in an address + before Professor Howison's philosophical union at the university of + California, brought it forward again and made a special application of it + to religion. By that date (1898) the times seemed ripe for its reception. + The word 'pragmatism' spread, and at present it fairly spots the pages of + the philosophic journals. On all hands we find the 'pragmatic movement' + spoken of, sometimes with respect, sometimes with contumely, seldom with + clear understanding. It is evident that the term applies itself + conveniently to a number of tendencies that hitherto have lacked a + collective name, and that it has 'come to stay.' + </p> + <p> + To take in the importance of Peirce's principle, one must get accustomed + to applying it to concrete cases. I found a few years ago that Ostwald, + the illustrious Leipzig chemist, had been making perfectly distinct use of + the principle of pragmatism in his lectures on the philosophy of science, + tho he had not called it by that name. + </p> + <p> + "All realities influence our practice," he wrote me, "and that influence + is their meaning for us. I am accustomed to put questions to my classes in + this way: In what respects would the world be different if this + alternative or that were true? If I can find nothing that would become + different, then the alternative has no sense." + </p> + <p> + That is, the rival views mean practically the same thing, and meaning, + other than practical, there is for us none. Ostwald in a published lecture + gives this example of what he means. Chemists have long wrangled over the + inner constitution of certain bodies called 'tautomerous.' Their + properties seemed equally consistent with the notion that an instable + hydrogen atom oscillates inside of them, or that they are instable + mixtures of two bodies. Controversy raged; but never was decided. "It + would never have begun," says Ostwald, "if the combatants had asked + themselves what particular experimental fact could have been made + different by one or the other view being correct. For it would then have + appeared that no difference of fact could possibly ensue; and the quarrel + was as unreal as if, theorizing in primitive times about the raising of + dough by yeast, one party should have invoked a 'brownie,' while another + insisted on an 'elf' as the true cause of the phenomenon." [Footnote: + 'Theorie und Praxis,' Zeitsch. des Oesterreichischen Ingenieur u. + Architecten-Vereines, 1905, Nr. 4 u. 6. I find a still more radical + pragmatism than Ostwald's in an address by Professor W. S. Franklin: "I + think that the sickliest notion of physics, even if a student gets it, is + that it is 'the science of masses, molecules and the ether.' And I think + that the healthiest notion, even if a student does not wholly get it, is + that physics is the science of the ways of taking hold of bodies and + pushing them!" (Science, January 2, 1903.)] + </p> + <p> + It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into + insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing + a concrete consequence. There can BE no difference any-where that doesn't + MAKE a difference elsewhere—no difference in abstract truth that + doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct + consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and + somewhen. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what + definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of + our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one. + </p> + <p> + There is absolutely nothing new in the pragmatic method. Socrates was an + adept at it. Aristotle used it methodically. Locke, Berkeley and Hume made + momentous contributions to truth by its means. Shadworth Hodgson keeps + insisting that realities are only what they are 'known-as.' But these + forerunners of pragmatism used it in fragments: they were preluders only. + Not until in our time has it generalized itself, become conscious of a + universal mission, pretended to a conquering destiny. I believe in that + destiny, and I hope I may end by inspiring you with my belief. + </p> + <p> + Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the + empiricist attitude, but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in a + more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet + assumed. A pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a + lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns away + from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a + priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended + absolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards + facts, towards action, and towards power. That means the empiricist temper + regnant, and the rationalist temper sincerely given up. It means the open + air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality and the + pretence of finality in truth. + </p> + <p> + At the same time it does not stand for any special results. It is a method + only. But the general triumph of that method would mean an enormous change + in what I called in my last lecture the 'temperament' of philosophy. + Teachers of the ultra-rationalistic type would be frozen out, much as the + courtier type is frozen out in republics, as the ultramontane type of + priest is frozen out in protestant lands. Science and metaphysics would + come much nearer together, would in fact work absolutely hand in hand. + </p> + <p> + Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of quest. You know + how men have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know what a + great part, in magic, WORDS have always played. If you have his name, or + the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, + genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all + the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his will. So + the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, + of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or + power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe's PRINCIPLE, and + to possess it is, after a fashion, to possess the universe itself. 'God,' + 'Matter,' 'Reason,' 'the Absolute,' 'Energy,' are so many solving names. + You can rest when you have them. You are at the end of your metaphysical + quest. + </p> + <p> + But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such word + as closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its practical + cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. It + appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work, and + more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities + may be CHANGED. + </p> + <p> + THEORIES THUS BECOME INSTRUMENTS, NOT ANSWERS TO ENIGMAS, IN WHICH WE CAN + REST. We don't lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make + nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, + limbers them up and sets each one at work. Being nothing essentially new, + it harmonizes with many ancient philosophic tendencies. It agrees with + nominalism for instance, in always appealing to particulars; with + utilitarianism in emphasizing practical aspects; with positivism in its + disdain for verbal solutions, useless questions, and metaphysical + abstractions. + </p> + <p> + All these, you see, are ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST tendencies. Against + rationalism as a pretension and a method, pragmatism is fully armed and + militant. But, at the outset, at least, it stands for no particular + results. It has no dogmas, and no doctrines save its method. As the young + Italian pragmatist Papini has well said, it lies in the midst of our + theories, like a corridor in a hotel. Innumerable chambers open out of it. + In one you may find a man writing an atheistic volume; in the next someone + on his knees praying for faith and strength; in a third a chemist + investigating a body's properties. In a fourth a system of idealistic + metaphysics is being excogitated; in a fifth the impossibility of + metaphysics is being shown. But they all own the corridor, and all must + pass through it if they want a practicable way of getting into or out of + their respective rooms. + </p> + <p> + No particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation, + is what the pragmatic method means. THE ATTITUDE OF LOOKING AWAY FROM + FIRST THINGS, PRINCIPLES, 'CATEGORIES,' SUPPOSED NECESSITIES; AND OF + LOOKING TOWARDS LAST THINGS, FRUITS, CONSEQUENCES, FACTS. + </p> + <p> + So much for the pragmatic method! You may say that I have been praising it + rather than explaining it to you, but I shall presently explain it + abundantly enough by showing how it works on some familiar problems. + Meanwhile the word pragmatism has come to be used in a still wider sense, + as meaning also a certain theory of TRUTH. I mean to give a whole lecture + to the statement of that theory, after first paving the way, so I can be + very brief now. But brevity is hard to follow, so I ask for your redoubled + attention for a quarter of an hour. If much remains obscure, I hope to + make it clearer in the later lectures. + </p> + <p> + One of the most successfully cultivated branches of philosophy in our time + is what is called inductive logic, the study of the conditions under which + our sciences have evolved. Writers on this subject have begun to show a + singular unanimity as to what the laws of nature and elements of fact + mean, when formulated by mathematicians, physicists and chemists. When the + first mathematical, logical and natural uniformities, the first LAWS, were + discovered, men were so carried away by the clearness, beauty and + simplification that resulted, that they believed themselves to have + deciphered authentically the eternal thoughts of the Almighty. His mind + also thundered and reverberated in syllogisms. He also thought in conic + sections, squares and roots and ratios, and geometrized like Euclid. He + made Kepler's laws for the planets to follow; he made velocity increase + proportionally to the time in falling bodies; he made the law of the sines + for light to obey when refracted; he established the classes, orders, + families and genera of plants and animals, and fixed the distances between + them. He thought the archetypes of all things, and devised their + variations; and when we rediscover any one of these his wondrous + institutions, we seize his mind in its very literal intention. + </p> + <p> + But as the sciences have developed farther, the notion has gained ground + that most, perhaps all, of our laws are only approximations. The laws + themselves, moreover, have grown so numerous that there is no counting + them; and so many rival formulations are proposed in all the branches of + science that investigators have become accustomed to the notion that no + theory is absolutely a transcript of reality, but that any one of them may + from some point of view be useful. Their great use is to summarize old + facts and to lead to new ones. They are only a man-made language, a + conceptual shorthand, as someone calls them, in which we write our reports + of nature; and languages, as is well known, tolerate much choice of + expression and many dialects. + </p> + <p> + Thus human arbitrariness has driven divine necessity from scientific + logic. If I mention the names of Sigwart, Mach, Ostwald, Pearson, Milhaud, + Poincare, Duhem, Ruyssen, those of you who are students will easily + identify the tendency I speak of, and will think of additional names. + </p> + <p> + Riding now on the front of this wave of scientific logic Messrs. Schiller + and Dewey appear with their pragmatistic account of what truth everywhere + signifies. Everywhere, these teachers say, 'truth' in our ideas and + beliefs means the same thing that it means in science. It means, they say, + nothing but this, THAT IDEAS (WHICH THEMSELVES ARE BUT PARTS OF OUR + EXPERIENCE) BECOME TRUE JUST IN SO FAR AS THEY HELP US TO GET INTO + SATISFACTORY RELATION WITH OTHER PARTS OF OUR EXPERIENCE, to summarize + them and get about among them by conceptual short-cuts instead of + following the interminable succession of particular phenomena. Any idea + upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us + prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, + linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving + labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true + INSTRUMENTALLY. This is the 'instrumental' view of truth taught so + successfully at Chicago, the view that truth in our ideas means their + power to 'work,' promulgated so brilliantly at Oxford. + </p> + <p> + Messrs. Dewey, Schiller and their allies, in reaching this general + conception of all truth, have only followed the example of geologists, + biologists and philologists. In the establishment of these other sciences, + the successful stroke was always to take some simple process actually + observable in operation—as denudation by weather, say, or variation + from parental type, or change of dialect by incorporation of new words and + pronunciations—and then to generalize it, making it apply to all + times, and produce great results by summating its effects through the + ages. + </p> + <p> + The observable process which Schiller and Dewey particularly singled out + for generalization is the familiar one by which any individual settles + into NEW OPINIONS. The process here is always the same. The individual has + a stock of old opinions already, but he meets a new experience that puts + them to a strain. Somebody contradicts them; or in a reflective moment he + discovers that they contradict each other; or he hears of facts with which + they are incompatible; or desires arise in him which they cease to + satisfy. The result is an inward trouble to which his mind till then had + been a stranger, and from which he seeks to escape by modifying his + previous mass of opinions. He saves as much of it as he can, for in this + matter of belief we are all extreme conservatives. So he tries to change + first this opinion, and then that (for they resist change very variously), + until at last some new idea comes up which he can graft upon the ancient + stock with a minimum of disturbance of the latter, some idea that mediates + between the stock and the new experience and runs them into one another + most felicitously and expediently. + </p> + <p> + This new idea is then adopted as the true one. It preserves the older + stock of truths with a minimum of modification, stretching them just + enough to make them admit the novelty, but conceiving that in ways as + familiar as the case leaves possible. An outree explanation, violating all + our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We + should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric. + The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his + old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, + and one's own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a + go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new + fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity. We + hold a theory true just in proportion to its success in solving this + 'problem of maxima and minima.' But success in solving this problem is + eminently a matter of approximation. We say this theory solves it on the + whole more satisfactorily than that theory; but that means more + satisfactorily to ourselves, and individuals will emphasize their points + of satisfaction differently. To a certain degree, therefore, everything + here is plastic. + </p> + <p> + The point I now urge you to observe particularly is the part played by the + older truths. Failure to take account of it is the source of much of the + unjust criticism leveled against pragmatism. Their influence is absolutely + controlling. Loyalty to them is the first principle—in most cases it + is the only principle; for by far the most usual way of handling phenomena + so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our + preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear + witness for them. + </p> + <p> + You doubtless wish examples of this process of truth's growth, and the + only trouble is their superabundance. The simplest case of new truth is of + course the mere numerical addition of new kinds of facts, or of new single + facts of old kinds, to our experience—an addition that involves no + alteration in the old beliefs. Day follows day, and its contents are + simply added. The new contents themselves are not true, they simply COME + and ARE. Truth is what we say about them, and when we say that they have + come, truth is satisfied by the plain additive formula. + </p> + <p> + But often the day's contents oblige a rearrangement. If I should now utter + piercing shrieks and act like a maniac on this platform, it would make + many of you revise your ideas as to the probable worth of my philosophy. + 'Radium' came the other day as part of the day's content, and seemed for a + moment to contradict our ideas of the whole order of nature, that order + having come to be identified with what is called the conservation of + energy. The mere sight of radium paying heat away indefinitely out of its + own pocket seemed to violate that conservation. What to think? If the + radiations from it were nothing but an escape of unsuspected 'potential' + energy, pre-existent inside of the atoms, the principle of conservation + would be saved. The discovery of 'helium' as the radiation's outcome, + opened a way to this belief. So Ramsay's view is generally held to be + true, because, altho it extends our old ideas of energy, it causes a + minimum of alteration in their nature. + </p> + <p> + I need not multiply instances. A new opinion counts as 'true' just in + proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel + in his experience to his beliefs in stock. It must both lean on old truth + and grasp new fact; and its success (as I said a moment ago) in doing + this, is a matter for the individual's appreciation. When old truth grows, + then, by new truth's addition, it is for subjective reasons. We are in the + process and obey the reasons. That new idea is truest which performs most + felicitously its function of satisfying our double urgency. It makes + itself true, gets itself classed as true, by the way it works; grafting + itself then upon the ancient body of truth, which thus grows much as a + tree grows by the activity of a new layer of cambium. + </p> + <p> + Now Dewey and Schiller proceed to generalize this observation and to apply + it to the most ancient parts of truth. They also once were plastic. They + also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still + earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely + objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human + satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts + played no role whatever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call + things true is the reason why they ARE true, for 'to be true' MEANS only + to perform this marriage-function. + </p> + <p> + The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything. Truth independent; + truth that we FIND merely; truth no longer malleable to human need; truth + incorrigible, in a word; such truth exists indeed superabundantly—or + is supposed to exist by rationalistically minded thinkers; but then it + means only the dead heart of the living tree, and its being there means + only that truth also has its paleontology and its 'prescription,' and may + grow stiff with years of veteran service and petrified in men's regard by + sheer antiquity. But how plastic even the oldest truths nevertheless + really are has been vividly shown in our day by the transformation of + logical and mathematical ideas, a transformation which seems even to be + invading physics. The ancient formulas are reinterpreted as special + expressions of much wider principles, principles that our ancestors never + got a glimpse of in their present shape and formulation. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Schiller still gives to all this view of truth the name of 'Humanism,' + but, for this doctrine too, the name of pragmatism seems fairly to be in + the ascendant, so I will treat it under the name of pragmatism in these + lectures. + </p> + <p> + Such then would be the scope of pragmatism—first, a method; and + second, a genetic theory of what is meant by truth. And these two things + must be our future topics. + </p> + <p> + What I have said of the theory of truth will, I am sure, have appeared + obscure and unsatisfactory to most of you by reason of us brevity. I shall + make amends for that hereafter. In a lecture on 'common sense' I shall try + to show what I mean by truths grown petrified by antiquity. In another + lecture I shall expatiate on the idea that our thoughts become true in + proportion as they successfully exert their go-between function. In a + third I shall show how hard it is to discriminate subjective from + objective factors in Truth's development. You may not follow me wholly in + these lectures; and if you do, you may not wholly agree with me. But you + will, I know, regard me at least as serious, and treat my effort with + respectful consideration. + </p> + <p> + You will probably be surprised to learn, then, that Messrs. Schiller's and + Dewey's theories have suffered a hailstorm of contempt and ridicule. All + rationalism has risen against them. In influential quarters Mr. Schiller, + in particular, has been treated like an impudent schoolboy who deserves a + spanking. I should not mention this, but for the fact that it throws so + much sidelight upon that rationalistic temper to which I have opposed the + temper of pragmatism. Pragmatism is uncomfortable away from facts. + Rationalism is comfortable only in the presence of abstractions. This + pragmatist talk about truths in the plural, about their utility and + satisfactoriness, about the success with which they 'work,' etc., suggests + to the typical intellectualist mind a sort of coarse lame second-rate + makeshift article of truth. Such truths are not real truth. Such tests are + merely subjective. As against this, objective truth must be something + non-utilitarian, haughty, refined, remote, august, exalted. It must be an + absolute correspondence of our thoughts with an equally absolute reality. + It must be what we OUGHT to think, unconditionally. The conditioned ways + in which we DO think are so much irrelevance and matter for psychology. + Down with psychology, up with logic, in all this question! + </p> + <p> + See the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings to + facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, + and generalizes. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all sorts of + definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it remains a + pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer. When the + pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just WHY we must defer, the + rationalist is unable to recognize the concretes from which his own + abstraction is taken. He accuses us of DENYING truth; whereas we have only + sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought to follow + it. Your typical ultra-abstractionist fairly shudders at concreteness: + other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the + two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline + rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, + nobler. + </p> + <p> + I hope that as these lectures go on, the concreteness and closeness to + facts of the pragmatism which they advocate may be what approves itself to + you as its most satisfactory peculiarity. It only follows here the example + of the sister-sciences, interpreting the unobserved by the observed. It + brings old and new harmoniously together. It converts the absolutely empty + notion of a static relation of 'correspondence' (what that may mean we + must ask later) between our minds and reality, into that of a rich and + active commerce (that anyone may follow in detail and understand) between + particular thoughts of ours, and the great universe of other experiences + in which they play their parts and have their uses. + </p> + <p> + But enough of this at present? The justification of what I say must be + postponed. I wish now to add a word in further explanation of the claim I + made at our last meeting, that pragmatism may be a happy harmonizer of + empiricist ways of thinking, with the more religious demands of human + beings. + </p> + <p> + Men who are strongly of the fact-loving temperament, you may remember me + to have said, are liable to be kept at a distance by the small sympathy + with facts which that philosophy from the present-day fashion of idealism + offers them. It is far too intellectualistic. Old fashioned theism was bad + enough, with its notion of God as an exalted monarch, made up of a lot of + unintelligible or preposterous 'attributes'; but, so long as it held + strongly by the argument from design, it kept some touch with concrete + realities. Since, however, darwinism has once for all displaced design + from the minds of the 'scientific,' theism has lost that foothold; and + some kind of an immanent or pantheistic deity working IN things rather + than above them is, if any, the kind recommended to our contemporary + imagination. Aspirants to a philosophic religion turn, as a rule, more + hopefully nowadays towards idealistic pantheism than towards the older + dualistic theism, in spite of the fact that the latter still counts able + defenders. + </p> + <p> + But, as I said in my first lecture, the brand of pantheism offered is hard + for them to assimilate if they are lovers of facts, or empirically minded. + It is the absolutistic brand, spurning the dust and reared upon pure + logic. It keeps no connexion whatever with concreteness. Affirming the + Absolute Mind, which is its substitute for God, to be the rational + presupposition of all particulars of fact, whatever they may be, it + remains supremely indifferent to what the particular facts in our world + actually are. Be they what they may, the Absolute will father them. Like + the sick lion in Esop's fable, all footprints lead into his den, but nulla + vestigia retrorsum. You cannot redescend into the world of particulars by + the Absolute's aid, or deduce any necessary consequences of detail + important for your life from your idea of his nature. He gives you indeed + the assurance that all is well with Him, and for his eternal way of + thinking; but thereupon he leaves you to be finitely saved by your own + temporal devices. + </p> + <p> + Far be it from me to deny the majesty of this conception, or its capacity + to yield religious comfort to a most respectable class of minds. But from + the human point of view, no one can pretend that it doesn't suffer from + the faults of remoteness and abstractness. It is eminently a product of + what I have ventured to call the rationalistic temper. It disdains + empiricism's needs. It substitutes a pallid outline for the real world's + richness. It is dapper; it is noble in the bad sense, in the sense in + which to be noble is to be inapt for humble service. In this real world of + sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that + ought to count as a presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic + disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are + told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be + no gentleman. His menial services are needed in the dust of our human + trials, even more than his dignity is needed in the empyrean. + </p> + <p> + Now pragmatism, devoted tho she be to facts, has no such materialistic + bias as ordinary empiricism labors under. Moreover, she has no objection + whatever to the realizing of abstractions, so long as you get about among + particulars with their aid and they actually carry you somewhere. + Interested in no conclusions but those which our minds and our experiences + work out together, she has no a priori prejudices against theology. IF + THEOLOGICAL IDEAS PROVE TO HAVE A VALUE FOR CONCRETE LIFE, THEY WILL BE + TRUE, FOR PRAGMATISM, IN THE SENSE OF BEING GOOD FOR SO MUCH. FOR HOW MUCH + MORE THEY ARE TRUE, WILL DEPEND ENTIRELY ON THEIR RELATIONS TO THE OTHER + TRUTHS THAT ALSO HAVE TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED. + </p> + <p> + What I said just now about the Absolute of transcendental idealism is a + case in point. First, I called it majestic and said it yielded religious + comfort to a class of minds, and then I accused it of remoteness and + sterility. But so far as it affords such comfort, it surely is not + sterile; it has that amount of value; it performs a concrete function. As + a good pragmatist, I myself ought to call the Absolute true 'in so far + forth,' then; and I unhesitatingly now do so. + </p> + <p> + But what does TRUE IN SO FAR FORTH mean in this case? To answer, we need + only apply the pragmatic method. What do believers in the Absolute mean by + saying that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since in the + Absolute finite evil is 'overruled' already, we may, therefore, whenever + we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal, be sure + that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin, dismiss our fear and drop + the worry of our finite responsibility. In short, they mean that we have a + right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its + own way, feeling that its issues are in better hands than ours and are + none of our business. + </p> + <p> + The universe is a system of which the individual members may relax their + anxieties occasionally, in which the don't-care mood is also right for + men, and moral holidays in order—that, if I mistake not, is part, at + least, of what the Absolute is 'known-as,' that is the great difference in + our particular experiences which his being true makes for us, that is part + of his cash-value when he is pragmatically interpreted. Farther than that + the ordinary lay-reader in philosophy who thinks favorably of absolute + idealism does not venture to sharpen his conceptions. He can use the + Absolute for so much, and so much is very precious. He is pained at + hearing you speak incredulously of the Absolute, therefore, and disregards + your criticisms because they deal with aspects of the conception that he + fails to follow. + </p> + <p> + If the Absolute means this, and means no more than this, who can possibly + deny the truth of it? To deny it would be to insist that men should never + relax, and that holidays are never in order. I am well aware how odd it + must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is 'true' so long as + to believe it is profitable to our lives. That it is GOOD, for as much as + it profits, you will gladly admit. If what we do by its aid is good, you + will allow the idea itself to be good in so far forth, for we are the + better for possessing it. But is it not a strange misuse of the word + 'truth,' you will say, to call ideas also 'true' for this reason? + </p> + <p> + To answer this difficulty fully is impossible at this stage of my account. + You touch here upon the very central point of Messrs. Schiller's, Dewey's + and my own doctrine of truth, which I cannot discuss with detail until my + sixth lecture. Let me now say only this, that truth is ONE SPECIES OF + GOOD, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and + co-ordinate with it. THE TRUE IS THE NAME OF WHATEVER PROVES ITSELF TO BE + GOOD IN THE WAY OF BELIEF, AND GOOD, TOO, FOR DEFINITE, ASSIGNABLE + REASONS. Surely you must admit this, that if there were NO good for life + in true ideas, or if the knowledge of them were positively disadvantageous + and false ideas the only useful ones, then the current notion that truth + is divine and precious, and its pursuit a duty, could never have grown up + or become a dogma. In a world like that, our duty would be to SHUN truth, + rather. But in this world, just as certain foods are not only agreeable to + our taste, but good for our teeth, our stomach and our tissues; so certain + ideas are not only agreeable to think about, or agreeable as supporting + other ideas that we are fond of, but they are also helpful in life's + practical struggles. If there be any life that it is really better we + should lead, and if there be any idea which, if believed in, would help us + to lead that life, then it would be really BETTER FOR US to believe in + that idea, UNLESS, INDEED, BELIEF IN IT INCIDENTALLY CLASHED WITH OTHER + GREATER VITAL BENEFITS. + </p> + <p> + 'What would be better for us to believe'! This sounds very like a + definition of truth. It comes very near to saying 'what we OUGHT to + believe': and in THAT definition none of you would find any oddity. Ought + we ever not to believe what it is BETTER FOR US to believe? And can we + then keep the notion of what is better for us, and what is true for us, + permanently apart? + </p> + <p> + Pragmatism says no, and I fully agree with her. Probably you also agree, + so far as the abstract statement goes, but with a suspicion that if we + practically did believe everything that made for good in our own personal + lives, we should be found indulging all kinds of fancies about this + world's affairs, and all kinds of sentimental superstitions about a world + hereafter. Your suspicion here is undoubtedly well founded, and it is + evident that something happens when you pass from the abstract to the + concrete, that complicates the situation. + </p> + <p> + I said just now that what is better for us to believe is true UNLESS THE + BELIEF INCIDENTALLY CLASHES WITH SOME OTHER VITAL BENEFIT. Now in real + life what vital benefits is any particular belief of ours most liable to + clash with? What indeed except the vital benefits yielded by OTHER BELIEFS + when these prove incompatible with the first ones? In other words, the + greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths. + Truths have once for all this desperate instinct of self-preservation and + of desire to extinguish whatever contradicts them. My belief in the + Absolute, based on the good it does me, must run the gauntlet of all my + other beliefs. Grant that it may be true in giving me a moral holiday. + Nevertheless, as I conceive it,—and let me speak now confidentially, + as it were, and merely in my own private person,—it clashes with + other truths of mine whose benefits I hate to give up on its account. It + happens to be associated with a kind of logic of which I am the enemy, I + find that it entangles me in metaphysical paradoxes that are inacceptable, + etc., etc.. But as I have enough trouble in life already without adding + the trouble of carrying these intellectual inconsistencies, I personally + just give up the Absolute. I just TAKE my moral holidays; or else as a + professional philosopher, I try to justify them by some other principle. + </p> + <p> + If I could restrict my notion of the Absolute to its bare holiday-giving + value, it wouldn't clash with my other truths. But we cannot easily thus + restrict our hypotheses. They carry supernumerary features, and these it + is that clash so. My disbelief in the Absolute means then disbelief in + those other supernumerary features, for I fully believe in the legitimacy + of taking moral holidays. + </p> + <p> + You see by this what I meant when I called pragmatism a mediator and + reconciler and said, borrowing the word from Papini, that he unstiffens + our theories. She has in fact no prejudices whatever, no obstructive + dogmas, no rigid canons of what shall count as proof. She is completely + genial. She will entertain any hypothesis, she will consider any evidence. + It follows that in the religious field she is at a great advantage both + over positivistic empiricism, with its anti-theological bias, and over + religious rationalism, with its exclusive interest in the remote, the + noble, the simple, and the abstract in the way of conception. + </p> + <p> + In short, she widens the field of search for God. Rationalism sticks to + logic and the empyrean. Empiricism sticks to the external senses. + Pragmatism is willing to take anything, to follow either logic or the + senses, and to count the humblest and most personal experiences. She will + count mystical experiences if they have practical consequences. She will + take a God who lives in the very dirt of private fact-if that should seem + a likely place to find him. + </p> + <p> + Her only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading + us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity + of experience's demands, nothing being omitted. If theological ideas + should do this, if the notion of God, in particular, should prove to do + it, how could pragmatism possibly deny God's existence? She could see no + meaning in treating as 'not true' a notion that was pragmatically so + successful. What other kind of truth could there be, for her, than all + this agreement with concrete reality? + </p> + <p> + In my last lecture I shall return again to the relations of pragmatism + with religion. But you see already how democratic she is. Her manners are + as various and flexible, her resources as rich and endless, and her + conclusions as friendly as those of mother nature. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Lecture III. — Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered + </h2> + <p> + I am now to make the pragmatic method more familiar by giving you some + illustrations of its application to particular problems. I will begin with + what is driest, and the first thing I shall take will be the problem of + Substance. Everyone uses the old distinction between substance and + attribute, enshrined as it is in the very structure of human language, in + the difference between grammatical subject and predicate. Here is a bit of + blackboard crayon. Its modes, attributes, properties, accidents, or + affections,—use which term you will,—are whiteness, + friability, cylindrical shape, insolubility in water, etc., etc. But the + bearer of these attributes is so much chalk, which thereupon is called the + substance in which they inhere. So the attributes of this desk inhere in + the substance 'wood,' those of my coat in the substance 'wool,' and so + forth. Chalk, wood and wool, show again, in spite of their differences, + common properties, and in so far forth they are themselves counted as + modes of a still more primal substance, matter, the attributes of which + are space occupancy and impenetrability. Similarly our thoughts and + feelings are affections or properties of our several souls, which are + substances, but again not wholly in their own right, for they are modes of + the still deeper substance 'spirit.' + </p> + <p> + Now it was very early seen that all we know of the chalk is the whiteness, + friability, etc., all WE KNOW of the wood is the combustibility and + fibrous structure. A group of attributes is what each substance here is + known-as, they form its sole cash-value for our actual experience. The + substance is in every case revealed through THEM; if we were cut off from + THEM we should never suspect its existence; and if God should keep sending + them to us in an unchanged order, miraculously annihilating at a certain + moment the substance that supported them, we never could detect the + moment, for our experiences themselves would be unaltered. Nominalists + accordingly adopt the opinion that substance is a spurious idea due to our + inveterate human trick of turning names into things. Phenomena come in + groups—the chalk-group, the wood-group, etc.—and each group + gets its name. The name we then treat as in a way supporting the group of + phenomena. The low thermometer to-day, for instance, is supposed to come + from something called the 'climate.' Climate is really only the name for a + certain group of days, but it is treated as if it lay BEHIND the day, and + in general we place the name, as if it were a being, behind the facts it + is the name of. But the phenomenal properties of things, nominalists say, + surely do not really inhere in names, and if not in names then they do not + inhere in anything. They ADhere, or COhere, rather, WITH EACH OTHER, and + the notion of a substance inaccessible to us, which we think accounts for + such cohesion by supporting it, as cement might support pieces of mosaic, + must be abandoned. The fact of the bare cohesion itself is all that the + notion of the substance signifies. Behind that fact is nothing. + </p> + <p> + Scholasticism has taken the notion of substance from common sense and made + it very technical and articulate. Few things would seem to have fewer + pragmatic consequences for us than substances, cut off as we are from + every contact with them. Yet in one case scholasticism has proved the + importance of the substance-idea by treating it pragmatically. I refer to + certain disputes about the mystery of the Eucharist. Substance here would + appear to have momentous pragmatic value. Since the accidents of the wafer + don't change in the Lord's supper, and yet it has become the very body of + Christ, it must be that the change is in the substance solely. The + bread-substance must have been withdrawn, and the divine substance + substituted miraculously without altering the immediate sensible + properties. But tho these don't alter, a tremendous difference has been + made, no less a one than this, that we who take the sacrament, now feed + upon the very substance of divinity. The substance-notion breaks into + life, then, with tremendous effect, if once you allow that substances can + separate from their accidents, and exchange these latter. + </p> + <p> + This is the only pragmatic application of the substance-idea with which I + am acquainted; and it is obvious that it will only be treated seriously by + those who already believe in the 'real presence' on independent grounds. + </p> + <p> + MATERIAL SUBSTANCE was criticized by Berkeley with such telling effect + that his name has reverberated through all subsequent philosophy. + Berkeley's treatment of the notion of matter is so well known as to need + hardly more than a mention. So far from denying the external world which + we know, Berkeley corroborated it. It was the scholastic notion of a + material substance unapproachable by us, BEHIND the external world, deeper + and more real than it, and needed to support it, which Berkeley maintained + to be the most effective of all reducers of the external world to + unreality. Abolish that substance, he said, believe that God, whom you can + understand and approach, sends you the sensible world directly, and you + confirm the latter and back it up by his divine authority. Berkeley's + criticism of 'matter' was consequently absolutely pragmatistic. Matter is + known as our sensations of colour, figure, hardness and the like. They are + the cash-value of the term. The difference matter makes to us by truly + being is that we then get such sensations; by not being, is that we lack + them. These sensations then are its sole meaning. Berkeley doesn't deny + matter, then; he simply tells us what it consists of. It is a true name + for just so much in the way of sensations. + </p> + <p> + Locke, and later Hume, applied a similar pragmatic criticism to the notion + of SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE. I will only mention Locke's treatment of our + 'personal identity.' He immediately reduces this notion to its pragmatic + value in terms of experience. It means, he says, so much consciousness,' + namely the fact that at one moment of life we remember other moments, and + feel them all as parts of one and the same personal history. Rationalism + had explained this practical continuity in our life by the unity of our + soul-substance. But Locke says: suppose that God should take away the + consciousness, should WE be any the better for having still the + soul-principle? Suppose he annexed the same consciousness to different + souls, | should we, as WE realize OURSELVES, be any the worse for that + fact? In Locke's day the soul was chiefly a thing to be rewarded or + punished. See how Locke, discussing it from this point of view, keeps the + question pragmatic: + </p> + <p> + Suppose, he says, one to think himself to be the same soul that once was + Nestor or Thersites. Can he think their actions his own any more than the + actions of any other man that ever existed? But | let him once find + himself CONSCIOUS of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself + the same person with Nestor. ... In this personal identity is founded all + the right and justice of reward and punishment. It may be reasonable to + think, no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of, but + shall receive his doom, his consciousness accusing or excusing. Supposing + a man punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could + be made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there between + that punishment and being created miserable? + </p> + <p> + Our personal identity, then, consists, for Locke, solely in pragmatically + definable particulars. Whether, apart from these verifiable facts, it also + inheres in a spiritual principle, is a merely curious speculation. Locke, + compromiser that he was, passively tolerated the belief in a substantial + soul behind our consciousness. But his successor Hume, and most empirical + psychologists after him, have denied the soul, save as the name for + verifiable cohesions in our inner life. They redescend into the stream of + experience with it, and cash it into so much small-change value in the way + of 'ideas' and their peculiar connexions with each other. As I said of + Berkeley's matter, the soul is good or 'true' for just SO MUCH, but no + more. + </p> + <p> + The mention of material substance naturally suggests the doctrine of + 'materialism,' but philosophical materialism is not necessarily knit up + with belief in 'matter,' as a metaphysical principle. One may deny matter + in that sense, as strongly as Berkeley did, one may be a phenomenalist + like Huxley, and yet one may still be a materialist in the wider sense, of + explaining higher phenomena by lower ones, and leaving the destinies of + the world at the mercy of its blinder parts and forces. It is in this + wider sense of the word that materialism is opposed to spiritualism or + theism. The laws of physical nature are what run things, materialism says. + The highest productions of human genius might be ciphered by one who had + complete acquaintance with the facts, out of their physiological + conditions, regardless whether nature be there only for our minds, as + idealists contend, or not. Our minds in any case would have to record the + kind of nature it is, and write it down as operating through blind laws of + physics. This is the complexion of present day materialism, which may + better be called naturalism. Over against it stands 'theism,' or what in a + wide sense may be termed 'spiritualism.' Spiritualism says that mind not + only witnesses and records things, but also runs and operates them: the + world being thus guided, not by its lower, but by its higher element. + </p> + <p> + Treated as it often is, this question becomes little more than a conflict + between aesthetic preferences. Matter is gross, coarse, crass, muddy; + spirit is pure, elevated, noble; and since it is more consonant with the + dignity of the universe to give the primacy in it to what appears + superior, spirit must be affirmed as the ruling principle. To treat + abstract principles as finalities, before which our intellects may come to + rest in a state of admiring contemplation, is the great rationalist + failing. Spiritualism, as often held, may be simply a state of admiration + for one kind, and of dislike for another kind, of abstraction. I remember + a worthy spiritualist professor who always referred to materialism as the + 'mud-philosophy,' and deemed it thereby refuted. + </p> + <p> + To such spiritualism as this there is an easy answer, and Mr. Spencer + makes it effectively. In some well-written pages at the end of the first + volume of his Psychology he shows us that a 'matter' so infinitely + subtile, and performing motions as inconceivably quick and fine as those + which modern science postulates in her explanations, has no trace of + grossness left. He shows that the conception of spirit, as we mortals + hitherto have framed it, is itself too gross to cover the exquisite + tenuity of nature's facts. Both terms, he says, are but symbols, pointing + to that one unknowable reality in which their oppositions cease. + </p> + <p> + To an abstract objection an abstract rejoinder suffices; and so far as + one's opposition to materialism springs from one's disdain of matter as + something 'crass,' Mr. Spencer cuts the ground from under one. Matter is + indeed infinitely and incredibly refined. To anyone who has ever looked on + the face of a dead child or parent the mere fact that matter COULD have + taken for a time that precious form, ought to make matter sacred ever + after. It makes no difference what the PRINCIPLE of life may be, material + or immaterial, matter at any rate co-operates, lends itself to all life's + purposes. That beloved incarnation was among matter's possibilities. + </p> + <p> + But now, instead of resting in principles after this stagnant + intellectualist fashion, let us apply the pragmatic method to the + question. What do we MEAN by matter? What practical difference can it make + NOW that the world should be run by matter or by spirit? I think we find + that the problem takes with this a rather different character. + </p> + <p> + And first of all I call your attention to a curious fact. It makes not a + single jot of difference so far as the PAST of the world goes, whether we + deem it to have been the work of matter or whether we think a divine + spirit was its author. + </p> + <p> + Imagine, in fact, the entire contents of the world to be once for all + irrevocably given. Imagine it to end this very moment, and to have no + future; and then let a theist and a materialist apply their rival + explanations to its history. The theist shows how a God made it; the + materialist shows, and we will suppose with equal success, how it resulted + from blind physical forces. Then let the pragmatist be asked to choose + between their theories. How can he apply his test if the world is already + completed? Concepts for him are things to come back into experience with, + things to make us look for differences. But by hypothesis there is to be + no more experience and no possible differences can now be looked for. Both + theories have shown all their consequences and, by the hypothesis we are + adopting, these are identical. The pragmatist must consequently say that + the two theories, in spite of their different-sounding names, mean exactly + the same thing, and that the dispute is purely verbal. [I am opposing, of + course, that the theories HAVE been equally successful in their + explanations of what is.] + </p> + <p> + For just consider the case sincerely, and say what would be the WORTH of a + God if he WERE there, with his work accomplished and his world run down. + He would be worth no more than just that world was worth. To that amount + of result, with its mixed merits and defects, his creative power could + attain, but go no farther. And since there is to be no future; since the + whole value and meaning of the world has been already paid in and + actualized in the feelings that went with it in the passing, and now go + with it in the ending; since it draws no supplemental significance (such + as our real world draws) from its function of preparing something yet to + come; why then, by it we take God's measure, as it were. He is the Being + who could once for all do THAT; and for that much we are thankful to him, + but for nothing more. But now, on the contrary hypothesis, namely, that + the bits of matter following their laws could make that world and do no + less, should we not be just as thankful to them? Wherein should we suffer + loss, then, if we dropped God as an hypothesis and made the matter alone + responsible? Where would any special deadness, or crassness, come in? And + how, experience being what is once for all, would God's presence in it + make it any more living or richer? + </p> + <p> + Candidly, it is impossible to give any answer to this question. The + actually experienced world is supposed to be the same in its details on + either hypothesis, "the same, for our praise or blame," as Browning says. + It stands there indefeasibly: a gift which can't be taken back. Calling + matter the cause of it retracts no single one of the items that have made + it up, nor does calling God the cause augment them. They are the God or + the atoms, respectively, of just that and no other world. The God, if + there, has been doing just what atoms could do—appearing in the + character of atoms, so to speak—and earning such gratitude as is due + to atoms, and no more. If his presence lends no different turn or issue to + the performance, it surely can lend it no increase of dignity. Nor would + indignity come to it were he absent, and did the atoms remain the only + actors on the stage. When a play is once over, and the curtain down, you + really make it no better by claiming an illustrious genius for its author, + just as you make it no worse by calling him a common hack. + </p> + <p> + Thus if no future detail of experience or conduct is to be deduced from + our hypothesis, the debate between materialism and theism becomes quite + idle and insignificant. Matter and God in that event mean exactly the same + thing—the power, namely, neither more nor less, that could make just + this completed world—and the wise man is he who in such a case would + turn his back on such a supererogatory discussion. Accordingly, most men + instinctively, and positivists and scientists deliberately, do turn their + backs on philosophical disputes from which nothing in the line of definite + future consequences can be seen to follow. The verbal and empty character + of philosophy is surely a reproach with which we are, but too familiar. If + pragmatism be true, it is a perfectly sound reproach unless the theories + under fire can be shown to have alternative practical outcomes, however + delicate and distant these may be. The common man and the scientist say + they discover no such outcomes, and if the metaphysician can discern none + either, the others certainly are in the right of it, as against him. His + science is then but pompous trifling; and the endowment of a professorship + for such a being would be silly. + </p> + <p> + Accordingly, in every genuine metaphysical debate some practical issue, + however conjectural and remote, is involved. To realize this, revert with + me to our question, and place yourselves this time in the world we live + in, in the world that HAS a future, that is yet uncompleted whilst we + speak. In this unfinished world the alternative of 'materialism or + theism?' is intensely practical; and it is worth while for us to spend + some minutes of our hour in seeing that it is so. + </p> + <p> + How, indeed, does the program differ for us, according as we consider that + the facts of experience up to date are purposeless configurations of blind + atoms moving according to eternal laws, or that on the other hand they are + due to the providence of God? As far as the past facts go, indeed there is + no difference. Those facts are in, are bagged, are captured; and the good + that's in them is gained, be the atoms or be the God their cause. There + are accordingly many materialists about us to-day who, ignoring altogether + the future and practical aspects of the question, seek to eliminate the + odium attaching to the word materialism, and even to eliminate the word + itself, by showing that, if matter could give birth to all these gains, + why then matter, functionally considered, is just as divine an entity as + God, in fact coalesces with God, is what you mean by God. Cease, these + persons advise us, to use either of these terms, with their outgrown + opposition. Use a term free of the clerical connotations, on the one hand; + of the suggestion of gross-ness, coarseness, ignobility, on the other. + Talk of the primal mystery, of the unknowable energy, of the one and only + power, instead of saying either God or matter. This is the course to which + Mr. Spencer urges us; and if philosophy were purely retrospective, he + would thereby proclaim himself an excellent pragmatist. + </p> + <p> + But philosophy is prospective also, and, after finding what the world has + been and done and yielded, still asks the further question 'what does the + world PROMISE?' Give us a matter that promises SUCCESS, that is bound by + its laws to lead our world ever nearer to perfection, and any rational man + will worship that matter as readily as Mr. Spencer worships his own + so-called unknowable power. It not only has made for righteousness up to + date, but it will make for righteousness forever; and that is all we need. + Doing practically all that a God can do, it is equivalent to God, its + function is a God's function, and is exerted in a world in which a God + would now be superfluous; from such a world a God could never lawfully be + missed. 'Cosmic emotion' would here be the right name for religion. + </p> + <p> + But is the matter by which Mr. Spencer's process of cosmic evolution is + carried on any such principle of never-ending perfection as this? Indeed + it is not, for the future end of every cosmically evolved thing or system + of things is foretold by science to be death and tragedy; and Mr. Spencer, + in confining himself to the aesthetic and ignoring the practical side of + the controversy, has really contributed nothing serious to its relief. But + apply now our principle of practical results, and see what a vital + significance the question of materialism or theism immediately acquires. + </p> + <p> + Theism and materialism, so indifferent when taken retrospectively, point, + when we take them prospectively, to wholly different outlooks of + experience. For, according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the laws + of redistribution of matter and motion, tho they are certainly to thank + for all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded us and for + all the ideals which our minds now frame, are yet fatally certain to undo + their work again, and to redissolve everything that they have once + evolved. You all know the picture of the last state of the universe which + evolutionary science foresees. I cannot state it better than in Mr. + Balfour's words: "The energies of our system will decay, the glory of the + sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer + tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will + go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy, + consciousness which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken + the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know + itself no longer. 'Imperishable monuments' and 'immortal deeds,' death + itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never + been. Nor will anything that is, be better or be worse for all that the + labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through + countless generations to effect." [Footnote: The Foundations of Belief, p. + 30.] + </p> + <p> + That is the sting of it, that in the vast driftings of the cosmic weather, + tho many a jeweled shore appears, and many an enchanted cloud-bank floats + away, long lingering ere it be dissolved—even as our world now + lingers, for our joy-yet when these transient products are gone, nothing, + absolutely NOTHING remains, of represent those particular qualities, those + elements of preciousness which they may have enshrined. Dead and gone are + they, gone utterly from the very sphere and room of being. Without an + echo; without a memory; without an influence on aught that may come after, + to make it care for similar ideals. This utter final wreck and tragedy is + of the essence of scientific materialism as at present understood. The + lower and not the higher forces are the eternal forces, or the last + surviving forces within the only cycle of evolution which we can + definitely see. Mr. Spencer believes this as much as anyone; so why should + he argue with us as if we were making silly aesthetic objections to the + 'grossness' of 'matter and motion,' the principles of his philosophy, when + what really dismays us is the disconsolateness of its ulterior practical + results? + </p> + <p> + No the true objection to materialism is not positive but negative. It + would be farcical at this day to make complaint of it for what it IS for + 'grossness.' Grossness is what grossness DOES—we now know THAT. We + make complaint of it, on the contrary, for what it is NOT—not a + permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our + remotest hopes. + </p> + <p> + The notion of God, on the other hand, however inferior it may be in + clearness to those mathematical notions so current in mechanical + philosophy, has at least this practical superiority over them, that it + guarantees an ideal order that shall be permanently preserved. A world + with a God in it to say the last word, may indeed burn up or freeze, but + we then think of him as still mindful of the old ideals and sure to bring + them elsewhere to fruition; so that, where he is, tragedy is only + provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution not the absolutely + final things. This need of an eternal moral order is one of the deepest + needs of our breast. And those poets, like Dante and Wordsworth, who live + on the conviction of such an order, owe to that fact the extraordinary + tonic and consoling power of their verse. Here then, in these different + emotional and practical appeals, in these adjustments of our concrete + attitudes of hope and expectation, and all the delicate consequences which + their differences entail, lie the real meanings of materialism and + spiritualism—not in hair-splitting abstractions about matter's inner + essence, or about the metaphysical attributes of God. Materialism means + simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of + ultimate hopes; spiritualism means the affirmation of an eternal moral + order and the letting loose of hope. Surely here is an issue genuine + enough, for anyone who feels it; and, as long as men are men, it will + yield matter for a serious philosophic debate. + </p> + <p> + But possibly some of you may still rally to their defence. Even whilst + admitting that spiritualism and materialism make different prophecies of + the world's future, you may yourselves pooh-pooh the difference as + something so infinitely remote as to mean nothing for a sane mind. The + essence of a sane mind, you may say, is to take shorter views, and to feel + no concern about such chimaeras as the latter end of the world. Well, I + can only say that if you say this, you do injustice to human nature. + Religious melancholy is not disposed of by a simple flourish of the word + insanity. The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, + are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously + about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the + more shallow man. + </p> + <p> + The issues of fact at stake in the debate are of course vaguely enough + conceived by us at present. But spiritualistic faith in all its forms + deals with a world of PROMISE, while materialism's sun sets in a sea of + disappointment. Remember what I said of the Absolute: it grants us moral + holidays. Any religious view does this. It not only incites our more + strenuous moments, but it also takes our joyous, careless, trustful + moments, and it justifies them. It paints the grounds of justification + vaguely enough, to be sure. The exact features of the saving future facts + that our belief in God insures, will have to be ciphered out by the + interminable methods of science: we can STUDY our God only by studying his + Creation. But we can ENJOY our God, if we have one, in advance of all that + labor. I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner + personal experiences. When they have once given you your God, his name + means at least the benefit of the holiday. You remember what I said + yesterday about the way in which truths clash and try to 'down' each + other. The truth of 'God' has to run the gauntlet of all our other truths. + It is on trial by them and they on trial by it. Our FINAL opinion about + God can be settled only after all the truths have straightened themselves + out together. Let us hope that they shall find a modus vivendi! + </p> + <p> + Let me pass to a very cognate philosophic problem, the QUESTION of DESIGN + IN NATURE. God's existence has from time immemorial been held to be proved + by certain natural facts. Many facts appear as if expressly designed in + view of one another. Thus the woodpecker's bill, tongue, feet, tail, etc., + fit him wondrously for a world of trees with grubs hid in their bark to + feed upon. The parts of our eye fit the laws of light to perfection, + leading its rays to a sharp picture on our retina. Such mutual fitting of + things diverse in origin argued design, it was held; and the designer was + always treated as a man-loving deity. + </p> + <p> + The first step in these arguments was to prove that the design existed. + Nature was ransacked for results obtained through separate things being + co-adapted. Our eyes, for instance, originate in intra-uterine darkness, + and the light originates in the sun, yet see how they fit each other. They + are evidently made FOR each other. Vision is the end designed, light and + eyes the separate means devised for its attainment. + </p> + <p> + It is strange, considering how unanimously our ancestors felt the force of + this argument, to see how little it counts for since the triumph of the + darwinian theory. Darwin opened our minds to the power of + chance-happenings to bring forth 'fit' results if only they have time to + add themselves together. He showed the enormous waste of nature in + producing results that get destroyed because of their unfitness. He also + emphasized the number of adaptations which, if designed, would argue an + evil rather than a good designer. Here all depends upon the point of view. + To the grub under the bark the exquisite fitness of the woodpecker's + organism to extract him would certainly argue a diabolical designer. + </p> + <p> + Theologians have by this time stretched their minds so as to embrace the + darwinian facts, and yet to interpret them as still showing divine + purpose. It used to be a question of purpose AGAINST mechanism, of one OR + the other. It was as if one should say "My shoes are evidently designed to + fit my feet, hence it is impossible that they should have been produced by + machinery." We know that they are both: they are made by a machinery + itself designed to fit the feet with shoes. Theology need only stretch + similarly the designs of God. As the aim of a football-team is not merely + to get the ball to a certain goal (if that were so, they would simply get + up on some dark night and place it there), but to get it there by a fixed + MACHINERY OF CONDITIONS—the game's rules and the opposing players; + so the aim of God is not merely, let us say, to make men and to save them, + but rather to get this done through the sole agency of nature's vast + machinery. Without nature's stupendous laws and counterforces, man's + creation and perfection, we might suppose, would be too insipid + achievements for God to have designed them. + </p> + <p> + This saves the form of the design-argument at the expense of its old easy + human content. The designer is no longer the old man-like deity. His + designs have grown so vast as to be incomprehensible to us humans. The + WHAT of them so overwhelms us that to establish the mere THAT of a + designer for them becomes of very little consequence in comparison. We can + with difficulty comprehend the character of a cosmic mind whose purposes + are fully revealed by the strange mixture of goods and evils that we find + in this actual world's particulars. Or rather we cannot by any possibility + comprehend it. The mere word 'design' by itself has, we see, no + consequences and explains nothing. It is the barrenest of principles. The + old question of WHETHER there is design is idle. The real question is WHAT + is the world, whether or not it have a designer—and that can be + revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars. + </p> + <p> + Remember that no matter what nature may have produced or may be producing, + the means must necessarily have been adequate, must have been FITTED TO + THAT PRODUCTION. The argument from fitness to design would consequently + always apply, whatever were the product's character. The recent Mont-Pelee + eruption, for example, required all previous history to produce that exact + combination of ruined houses, human and animal corpses, sunken ships, + volcanic ashes, etc., in just that one hideous configuration of positions. + France had to be a nation and colonize Martinique. Our country had to + exist and send our ships there. IF God aimed at just that result, the + means by which the centuries bent their influences towards it, showed + exquisite intelligence. And so of any state of things whatever, either in + nature or in history, which we find actually realized. For the parts of + things must always make SOME definite resultant, be it chaotic or + harmonious. When we look at what has actually come, the conditions must + always appear perfectly designed to ensure it. We can always say, + therefore, in any conceivable world, of any conceivable character, that + the whole cosmic machinery MAY have been designed to produce it. + </p> + <p> + Pragmatically, then, the abstract word 'design' is a blank cartridge. It + carries no consequences, it does no execution. What sort of design? and + what sort of a designer? are the only serious questions, and the study of + facts is the only way of getting even approximate answers. Meanwhile, + pending the slow answer from facts, anyone who insists that there is a + designer and who is sure he is a divine one, gets a certain pragmatic + benefit from the term—the same, in fact which we saw that the terms + God, Spirit, or the Absolute, yield us 'Design,' worthless tho it be as a + mere rationalistic principle set above or behind things for our + admiration, becomes, if our faith concretes it into something theistic, a + term of PROMISE. Returning with it into experience, we gain a more + confiding outlook on the future. If not a blind force but a seeing force + runs things, we may reasonably expect better issues. This vague confidence + in the future is the sole pragmatic meaning at present discernible in the + terms design and designer. But if cosmic confidence is right not wrong, + better not worse, that is a most important meaning. That much at least of + possible 'truth' the terms will then have in them. + </p> + <p> + Let me take up another well-worn controversy, THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM. Most + persons who believe in what is called their free-will do so after the + rationalistic fashion. It is a principle, a positive faculty or virtue + added to man, by which his dignity is enigmatically augmented. He ought to + believe it for this reason. Determinists, who deny it, who say that + individual men originate nothing, but merely transmit to the future the + whole push of the past cosmos of which they are so small an expression, + diminish man. He is less admirable, stripped of this creative principle. I + imagine that more than half of you share our instinctive belief in + free-will, and that admiration of it as a principle of dignity has much to + do with your fidelity. + </p> + <p> + But free-will has also been discussed pragmatically, and, strangely + enough, the same pragmatic interpretation has been put upon it by both + disputants. You know how large a part questions of ACCOUNTABILITY have + played in ethical controversy. To hear some persons, one would suppose + that all that ethics aims at is a code of merits and demerits. Thus does + the old legal and theological leaven, the interest in crime and sin and + punishment abide with us. 'Who's to blame? whom can we punish? whom will + God punish?'—these preoccupations hang like a bad dream over man's + religious history. + </p> + <p> + So both free-will and determinism have been inveighed against and called + absurd, because each, in the eyes of its enemies, has seemed to prevent + the 'imputability' of good or bad deeds to their authors. Queer antinomy + this! Free-will means novelty, the grafting on to the past of something + not involved therein. If our acts were predetermined, if we merely + transmitted the push of the whole past, the free-willists say, how could + we be praised or blamed for anything? We should be 'agents' only, not + 'principals,' and where then would be our precious imputability and + responsibility? + </p> + <p> + But where would it be if we HAD free-will? rejoin the determinists. If a + 'free' act be a sheer novelty, that comes not FROM me, the previous me, + but ex nihilo, and simply tacks itself on to me, how can <i>I</i>, the + previous I, be responsible? How can I have any permanent CHARACTER that + will stand still long enough for praise or blame to be awarded? The + chaplet of my days tumbles into a cast of disconnected beads as soon as + the thread of inner necessity is drawn out by the preposterous + indeterminist doctrine. Messrs. Fullerton and McTaggart have recently laid + about them doughtily with this argument. + </p> + <p> + It may be good ad hominem, but otherwise it is pitiful. For I ask you, + quite apart from other reasons, whether any man, woman or child, with a + sense for realities, ought not to be ashamed to plead such principles as + either dignity or imputability. Instinct and utility between them can + safely be trusted to carry on the social business of punishment and + praise. If a man does good acts we shall praise him, if he does bad acts + we shall punish him—anyhow, and quite apart from theories as to + whether the acts result from what was previous in him or are novelties in + a strict sense. To make our human ethics revolve about the question of + 'merit' is a piteous unreality—God alone can know our merits, if we + have any. The real ground for supposing free-will is indeed pragmatic, but + it has nothing to do with this contemptible right to punish which had made + such a noise in past discussions of the subject. + </p> + <p> + Free-will pragmatically means NOVELTIES IN THE WORLD, the right to expect + that in its deepest elements as well as in its surface phenomena, the + future may not identically repeat and imitate the past. That imitation en + masse is there, who can deny? The general 'uniformity of nature' is + presupposed by every lesser law. But nature may be only approximately + uniform; and persons in whom knowledge of the world's past has bred + pessimism (or doubts as to the world's good character, which become + certainties if that character be supposed eternally fixed) may naturally + welcome free-will as a MELIORISTIC doctrine. It holds up improvement as at + least possible; whereas determinism assures us that our whole notion of + possibility is born of human ignorance, and that necessity and + impossibility between them rule the destinies of the world. + </p> + <p> + Free-will is thus a general cosmological theory of PROMISE, just like the + Absolute, God, Spirit or Design. Taken abstractly, no one of these terms + has any inner content, none of them gives us any picture, and no one of + them would retain the least pragmatic value in a world whose character was + obviously perfect from the start. Elation at mere existence, pure cosmic + emotion and delight, would, it seems to me, quench all interest in those + speculations, if the world were nothing but a lubberland of happiness + already. Our interest in religious metaphysics arises in the fact that our + empirical future feels to us unsafe, and needs some higher guarantee. If + the past and present were purely good, who could wish that the future + might possibly not resemble them? Who could desire free-will? Who would + not say, with Huxley, "let me be wound up every day like a watch, to go + right fatally, and I ask no better freedom." 'Freedom' in a world already + perfect could only mean freedom to BE WORSE, and who could be so insane as + to wish that? To be necessarily what it is, to be impossibly aught else, + would put the last touch of perfection upon optimism's universe. Surely + the only POSSIBILITY that one can rationally claim is the possibility that + things may be BETTER. That possibility, I need hardly say, is one that, as + the actual world goes, we have ample grounds for desiderating. + </p> + <p> + Free-will thus has no meaning unless it be a doctrine of RELIEF. As such, + it takes its place with other religious doctrines. Between them, they + build up the old wastes and repair the former desolations. Our spirit, + shut within this courtyard of sense-experience, is always saying to the + intellect upon the tower: 'Watchman, tell us of the night, if it aught of + promise bear,' and the intellect gives it then these terms of promise. + </p> + <p> + Other than this practical significance, the words God, free-will, design, + etc., have none. Yet dark tho they be in themselves, or + intellectualistically taken, when we bear them into life's thicket with us + the darkness THERE grows light about us. If you stop, in dealing with such + words, with their definition, thinking that to be an intellectual + finality, where are you? Stupidly staring at a pretentious sham! "Deus est + Ens, a se, extra et supra omne genus, necessarium, unum, infinite + perfectum, simplex, immutabile, immensum, aeternum, intelligens," etc.,—wherein + is such a definition really instructive? It means less, than nothing, in + its pompous robe of adjectives. Pragmatism alone can read a positive + meaning into it, and for that she turns her back upon the intellectualist + point of view altogether. 'God's in his heaven; all's right with the + world!'—THAT'S the heart of your theology, and for that you need no + rationalist definitions. + </p> + <p> + Why shouldn't we all of us, rationalists as well as pragmatists, confess + this? Pragmatism, so far from keeping her eyes bent on the immediate + practical foreground, as she is accused of doing, dwells just as much upon + the world's remotest perspectives. + </p> + <p> + See then how all these ultimate questions turn, as it were, up their + hinges; and from looking backwards upon principles, upon an + erkenntnisstheoretische Ich, a God, a Kausalitaetsprinzip, a Design, a + Free-will, taken in themselves, as something august and exalted above + facts,—see, I say, how pragmatism shifts the emphasis and looks + forward into facts themselves. The really vital question for us all is, + What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself? + The centre of gravity of philosophy must therefore alter its place. The + earth of things, long thrown into shadow by the glories of the upper + ether, must resume its rights. To shift the emphasis in this way means + that philosophic questions will fall to be treated by minds of a less + abstractionist type than heretofore, minds more scientific and + individualistic in their tone yet not irreligious either. It will be an + alteration in 'the seat of authority' that reminds one almost of the + protestant reformation. And as, to papal minds, protestantism has often + seemed a mere mess of anarchy and confusion, such, no doubt, will + pragmatism often seem to ultra-rationalist minds in philosophy. It will + seem so much sheer trash, philosophically. But life wags on, all the same, + and compasses its ends, in protestant countries. I venture to think that + philosophic protestantism will compass a not dissimilar prosperity. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Lecture IV. — The One and the Many + </h2> + <p> + We saw in the last lecture that the pragmatic method, in its dealings with + certain concepts, instead of ending with admiring contemplation, plunges + forward into the river of experience with them and prolongs the + perspective by their means. Design, free-will, the absolute mind, spirit + instead of matter, have for their sole meaning a better promise as to this + world's outcome. Be they false or be they true, the meaning of them is + this meliorism. I have sometimes thought of the phenomenon called 'total + reflexion' in optics as a good symbol of the relation between abstract + ideas and concrete realities, as pragmatism conceives it. Hold a tumbler + of water a little above your eyes and look up through the water at its + surface—or better still look similarly through the flat wall of an + aquarium. You will then see an extraordinarily brilliant reflected image + say of a candle-flame, or any other clear object, situated on the opposite + side of the vessel. No candle-ray, under these circumstances gets beyond + the water's surface: every ray is totally reflected back into the depths + again. Now let the water represent the world of sensible facts, and let + the air above it represent the world of abstract ideas. Both worlds are + real, of course, and interact; but they interact only at their boundary, + and the locus of everything that lives, and happens to us, so far as full + experience goes, is the water. We are like fishes swimming in the sea of + sense, bounded above by the superior element, but unable to breathe it + pure or penetrate it. We get our oxygen from it, however, we touch it + incessantly, now in this part, now in that, and every time we touch it we + are reflected back into the water with our course re-determined and + re-energized. The abstract ideas of which the air consists, indispensable + for life, but irrespirable by themselves, as it were, and only active in + their re-directing function. All similes are halting but this one rather + takes my fancy. It shows how something, not sufficient for life in itself, + may nevertheless be an effective determinant of life elsewhere. + </p> + <p> + In this present hour I wish to illustrate the pragmatic method by one more + application. I wish to turn its light upon the ancient problem of 'the one + and the many.' I suspect that in but few of you has this problem + occasioned sleepless nights, and I should not be astonished if some of you + told me it had never vexed you. I myself have come, by long brooding over + it, to consider it the most central of all philosophic problems, central + because so pregnant. I mean by this that if you know whether a man is a + decided monist or a decided pluralist, you perhaps know more about the + rest of his opinions than if you give him any other name ending in IST. To + believe in the one or in the many, that is the classification with the + maximum number of consequences. So bear with me for an hour while I try to + inspire you with my own interest in the problem. + </p> + <p> + Philosophy has often been defined as the quest or the vision of the + world's unity. We never hear this definition challenged, and it is true as + far as it goes, for philosophy has indeed manifested above all things its + interest in unity. But how about the VARIETY in things? Is that such an + irrelevant matter? If instead of using the term philosophy, we talk in + general of our intellect and its needs we quickly see that unity is only + one of these. Acquaintance with the details of fact is always reckoned, + along with their reduction to system, as an indispensable mark of mental + greatness. Your 'scholarly' mind, of encyclopedic, philological type, your + man essentially of learning, has never lacked for praise along with your + philosopher. What our intellect really aims at is neither variety nor + unity taken singly but totality.[Footnote: Compare A. Bellanger: Les + concepts de Cause, et l'activite intentionelle de l'Esprit. Paris, Alcan, + 1905, p. 79 ff.] In this, acquaintance with reality's diversities is as + important as understanding their connexion. The human passion of curiosity + runs on all fours with the systematizing passion. + </p> + <p> + In spite of this obvious fact the unity of things has always been + considered more illustrious, as it were, than their variety. When a young + man first conceives the notion that the whole world forms one great fact, + with all its parts moving abreast, as it were, and interlocked, he feels + as if he were enjoying a great insight, and looks superciliously on all + who still fall short of this sublime conception. Taken thus abstractly as + it first comes to one, the monistic insight is so vague as hardly to seem + worth defending intellectually. Yet probably everyone in this audience in + some way cherishes it. A certain abstract monism, a certain emotional + response to the character of oneness, as if it were a feature of the world + not coordinate with its manyness, but vastly more excellent and eminent, + is so prevalent in educated circles that we might almost call it a part of + philosophic common sense. Of COURSE the world is one, we say. How else + could it be a world at all? Empiricists as a rule, are as stout monists of + this abstract kind as rationalists are. + </p> + <p> + The difference is that the empiricists are less dazzled. Unity doesn't + blind them to everything else, doesn't quench their curiosity for special + facts, whereas there is a kind of rationalist who is sure to interpret + abstract unity mystically and to forget everything else, to treat it as a + principle; to admire and worship it; and thereupon to come to a full stop + intellectually. + </p> + <p> + 'The world is One!'—the formula may become a sort of number-worship. + 'Three' and 'seven' have, it is true, been reckoned sacred numbers; but, + abstractly taken, why is 'one' more excellent than 'forty-three,' or than + 'two million and ten'? In this first vague conviction of the world's + unity, there is so little to take hold of that we hardly know what we mean + by it. + </p> + <p> + The only way to get forward with our notion is to treat it pragmatically. + Granting the oneness to exist, what facts will be different in + consequence? What will the unity be known-as? The world is one—yes, + but HOW one? What is the practical value of the oneness for US? + </p> + <p> + Asking such questions, we pass from the vague to the definite, from the + abstract to the concrete. Many distinct ways in which oneness predicated + of the universe might make a difference, come to view. I will note + successively the more obvious of these ways. + </p> + <p> + 1. First, the world is at least ONE SUBJECT OF DISCOURSE. If its manyness + were so irremediable as to permit NO union whatever of it parts, not even + our minds could 'mean' the whole of it at once: the would be like eyes + trying to look in opposite directions. But in point of fact we mean to + cover the whole of it by our abstract term 'world' or 'universe,' which + expressly intends that no part shall be left out. Such unity of discourse + carries obviously no farther monistic specifications. A 'chaos,' once so + named, has as much unity of discourse as a cosmos. It is an odd fact that + many monists consider a great victory scored for their side when + pluralists say 'the universe is many.' "'The universe'!" they chuckle—"his + speech bewrayeth him. He stands confessed of monism out of his own mouth." + Well, let things be one in that sense! You can then fling such a word as + universe at the whole collection of them, but what matters it? It still + remains to be ascertained whether they are one in any other sense that is + more valuable. + </p> + <p> + 2. Are they, for example, CONTINUOUS? Can you pass from one to another, + keeping always in your one universe without any danger of falling out? In + other words, do the parts of our universe HANG together, instead of being + like detached grains of sand? + </p> + <p> + Even grains of sand hang together through the space in which they are + embedded, and if you can in any way move through such space, you can pass + continuously from number one of them to number two. Space and time are + thus vehicles of continuity, by which the world's parts hang together. The + practical difference to us, resultant from these forms of union, is + immense. Our whole motor life is based upon them. + </p> + <p> + 3. There are innumerable other paths of practical continuity among things. + Lines of INFLUENCE can be traced by which they together. Following any + such line you pass from one thing to another till you may have covered a + good part of the universe's extent. Gravity and heat-conduction are such + all-uniting influences, so far as the physical world goes. Electric, + luminous and chemical influences follow similar lines of influence. But + opaque and inert bodies interrupt the continuity here, so that you have to + step round them, or change your mode of progress if you wish to get + farther on that day. Practically, you have then lost your universe's + unity, SO FAR AS IT WAS CONSTITUTED BY THOSE FIRST LINES OF INFLUENCE. + There are innumerable kinds of connexion that special things have with + other special things; and the ENSEMBLE of any one of these connexions + forms one sort of system by which things are conjoined. Thus men are + conjoined in a vast network of ACQUAINTANCESHIP. Brown knows Jones, Jones + knows Robinson, etc.; and BY CHOOSING YOUR FARTHER INTERMEDIARIES RIGHTLY + you may carry a message from Jones to the Empress of China, or the Chief + of the African Pigmies, or to anyone else in the inhabited world. But you + are stopped short, as by a non-conductor, when you choose one man wrong in + this experiment. What may be called love-systems are grafted on the + acquaintance-system. A loves (or hates) B; B loves (or hates) C, etc. But + these systems are smaller than the great acquaintance-system that they + presuppose. + </p> + <p> + Human efforts are daily unifying the world more and more in definite + systematic ways. We found colonial, postal, consular, commercial systems, + all the parts of which obey definite influences that propagate themselves + within the system but not to facts outside of it. The result is + innumerable little hangings-together of the world's parts within the + larger hangings-together, little worlds, not only of discourse but of + operation, within the wider universe. Each system exemplifies one type or + grade of union, its parts being strung on that peculiar kind of relation, + and the same part may figure in many different systems, as a man may hold + several offices and belong to various clubs. From this 'systematic' point + of view, therefore, the pragmatic value of the world's unity is that all + these definite networks actually and practically exist. Some are more + enveloping and extensive, some less so; they are superposed upon each + other; and between them all they let no individual elementary part of the + universe escape. Enormous as is the amount of disconnexion among things + (for these systematic influences and conjunctions follow rigidly exclusive + paths), everything that exists is influenced in SOME way by something + else, if you can only pick the way out rightly Loosely speaking, and in + general, it may be said that all things cohere and adhere to each other + SOMEHOW, and that the universe exists practically in reticulated or + concatenated forms which make of it a continuous or 'integrated' affair. + Any kind of influence whatever helps to make the world one, so far as you + can follow it from next to next. You may then say that 'the world IS One'—meaning + in these respects, namely, and just so far as they obtain. But just as + definitely is it NOT one, so far as they do not obtain; and there is no + species of connexion which will not fail, if, instead of choosing + conductors for it, you choose non-conductors. You are then arrested at + your very first step and have to write the world down as a pure MANY from + that particular point of view. If our intellect had been as much + interested in disjunctive as it is in conjunctive relations, philosophy + would have equally successfully celebrated the world's DISUNION. + </p> + <p> + The great point is to notice that the oneness and the manyness are + absolutely co-ordinate here. Neither is primordial or more essential or + excellent than the other. Just as with space, whose separating of things + seems exactly on a par with its uniting of them, but sometimes one + function and sometimes the other is what come home to us most, so, in our + general dealings with the world of influences, we now need conductors and + now need non-conductors, and wisdom lies in knowing which is which at the + appropriate moment. + </p> + <p> + 4. All these systems of influence or non-influence may be listed under the + general problem of the world's CAUSAL UNITY. If the minor causal + influences among things should converge towards one common causal origin + of them in the past, one great first cause for all that is, one might then + speak of the absolute causal unity of the world. God's fiat on creation's + day has figured in traditional philosophy as such an absolute cause and + origin. Transcendental Idealism, translating 'creation' into 'thinking' + (or 'willing to' think') calls the divine act 'eternal' rather than + 'first'; but the union of the many here is absolute, just the same—the + many would not BE, save for the One. Against this notion of the unity of + origin of all there has always stood the pluralistic notion of an eternal + self-existing many in the shape of atoms or even of spiritual units of + some sort. The alternative has doubtless a pragmatic meaning, but perhaps, + as far as these lectures go, we had better leave the question of unity of + origin unsettled. + </p> + <p> + 5. The most important sort of union that obtains among things, + pragmatically speaking, is their GENERIC UNITY. Things exist in kinds, + there are many specimens in each kind, and what the 'kind' implies for one + specimen, it implies also for every other specimen of that kind. We can + easily conceive that every fact in the world might be singular, that is, + unlike any other fact and sole of its kind. In such a world of singulars + our logic would be useless, for logic works by predicating of the single + instance what is true of all its kind. With no two things alike in the + world, we should be unable to reason from our past experiences to our + future ones. The existence of so much generic unity in things is thus + perhaps the most momentous pragmatic specification of what it may mean to + say 'the world is One.' ABSOLUTE generic unity would obtain if there were + one summum genus under which all things without exception could be + eventually subsumed. 'Beings,' 'thinkables,' 'experiences,' would be + candidates for this position. Whether the alternatives expressed by such + words have any pragmatic significance or not, is another question which I + prefer to leave unsettled just now. + </p> + <p> + 6. Another specification of what the phrase 'the world is One' may mean is + UNITY OF PURPOSE. An enormous number of things in the world subserve a + common purpose. All the man-made systems, administrative, industrial, + military, or what not, exist each for its controlling purpose. Every + living being pursues its own peculiar purposes. They co-operate, according + to the degree of their development, in collective or tribal purposes, + larger ends thus enveloping lesser ones, until an absolutely single, final + and climacteric purpose subserved by all things without exception might + conceivably be reached. It is needless to say that the appearances + conflict with such a view. Any resultant, as I said in my third lecture, + MAY have been purposed in advance, but none of the results we actually + know in is world have in point of fact been purposed in advance in all + their details. Men and nations start with a vague notion of being rich, or + great, or good. Each step they make brings unforeseen chances into sight, + and shuts out older vistas, and the specifications of the general purpose + have to be daily changed. What is reached in the end may be better or + worse than what was proposed, but it is always more complex and different. + </p> + <p> + Our different purposes also are at war with each other. Where one can't + crush the other out, they compromise; and the result is again different + from what anyone distinctly proposed beforehand. Vaguely and generally, + much of what was purposed may be gained; but everything makes strongly for + the view that our world is incompletely unified teleologically and is + still trying to get its unification better organized. + </p> + <p> + Whoever claims ABSOLUTE teleological unity, saying that there is one + purpose that every detail of the universe subserves, dogmatizes at his own + risk. Theologians who dogmalize thus find it more and more impossible, as + our acquaintance with the warring interests of the world's parts grows + more concrete, to imagine what the one climacteric purpose may possibly be + like. We see indeed that certain evils minister to ulterior goods, that + the bitter makes the cocktail better, and that a bit of danger or hardship + puts us agreeably to our trumps. We can vaguely generalize this into the + doctrine that all the evil in the universe is but instrumental to its + greater perfection. But the scale of the evil actually in sight defies all + human tolerance; and transcendental idealism, in the pages of a Bradley or + a Royce, brings us no farther than the book of Job did—God's ways + are not our ways, so let us put our hands upon our mouth. A God who can + relish such superfluities of horror is no God for human beings to appeal + to. His animal spirits are too high. In other words the 'Absolute' with + his one purpose, is not the man-like God of common people. + </p> + <p> + 7. AESTHETIC UNION among things also obtains, and is very analogous to + ideological union. Things tell a story. Their parts hang together so as to + work out a climax. They play into each other's hands expressively. + Retrospectively, we can see that altho no definite purpose presided over a + chain of events, yet the events fell into a dramatic form, with a start, a + middle, and a finish. In point of fact all stories end; and here again the + point of view of a many is that more natural one to take. The world is + full of partial stories that run parallel to one another, beginning and + ending at odd times. They mutually interlace and interfere at points, but + we cannot unify them completely in our minds. In following your + life-history, I must temporarily turn my attention from my own. Even a + biographer of twins would have to press them alternately upon his reader's + attention. + </p> + <p> + It follows that whoever says that the whole world tells one story utters + another of those monistic dogmas that a man believes at his risk. It is + easy to see the world's history pluralistically, as a rope of which each + fibre tells a separate tale; but to conceive of each cross-section of the + rope as an absolutely single fact, and to sum the whole longitudinal + series into one being living an undivided life, is harder. We have indeed + the analogy of embryology to help us. The microscopist makes a hundred + flat cross-sections of a given embryo, and mentally unites them into one + solid whole. But the great world's ingredients, so far as they are beings, + seem, like the rope's fibres, to be discontinuous cross-wise, and to + cohere only in the longitudinal direction. Followed in that direction they + are many. Even the embryologist, when he follows the DEVELOPMENT of his + object, has to treat the history of each single organ in turn. ABSOLUTE + aesthetic union is thus another barely abstract ideal. The world appears + as something more epic than dramatic. + </p> + <p> + So far, then, we see how the world is unified by its many systems, kinds, + purposes, and dramas. That there is more union in all these ways than + openly appears is certainly true. That there MAY be one sovereign purpose, + system, kind, and story, is a legitimate hypothesis. All I say here is + that it is rash to affirm this dogmatically without better evidence than + we possess at present. + </p> + <p> + 8. The GREAT monistic DENKMITTEL for a hundred years past has been the + notion of THE ONE KNOWER. The many exist only as objects for his thought—exist + in his dream, as it were; and AS HE KNOWS them, they have one purpose, + form one system, tell one tale for him. This notion of an ALL-ENVELOPING + NOETIC UNITY in things is the sublimest achievement of intellectualist + philosophy. Those who believe in the Absolute, as the all-knower is + termed, usually say that they do so for coercive reasons, which clear + thinkers cannot evade. The Absolute has far-reaching practical + consequences, some of which I drew attention in my second lecture. Many + kinds of difference important to us would surely follow from its being + true. I cannot here enter into all the logical proofs of such a Being's + existence, farther than to say that none of them seem to me sound. I must + therefore treat the notion of an All-Knower simply as an hypothesis, + exactly on a par logically with the pluralist notion that there is no + point of view, no focus of information extant, from which the entire + content of the universe is visible at once. "God's consciousness," says + Professor Royce,[Footnote: The Conception of God, New York, 1897, p. 292.] + "forms in its wholeness one luminously transparent conscious moment"—this + is the type of noetic unity on which rationalism insists. Empiricism on + the other hand is satisfied with the type of noetic unity that is humanly + familiar. Everything gets known by SOME knower along with something else; + but the knowers may in the end be irreducibly many, and the greatest + knower of them all may yet not know the whole of everything, or even know + what he does know at one single stroke:—he may be liable to forget. + Whichever type obtained, the world would still be a universe noetically. + Its parts would be conjoined by knowledge, but in the one case the + knowledge would be absolutely unified, in the other it would be strung + along and overlapped. + </p> + <p> + The notion of one instantaneous or eternal Knower—either adjective + here means the same thing—is, as I said, the great intellectualist + achievement of our time. It has practically driven out that conception of + 'Substance' which earlier philosophers set such store by, and by which so + much unifying work used to be done—universal substance which alone + has being in and from itself, and of which all the particulars of + experience are but forms to which it gives support. Substance has + succumbed to the pragmatic criticisms of the English school. It appears + now only as another name for the fact that phenomena as they come are + actually grouped and given in coherent forms, the very forms in which we + finite knowers experience or think them together. These forms of + conjunction are as much parts of the tissue of experience as are the terms + which they connect; and it is a great pragmatic achievement for recent + idealism to have made the world hang together in these directly + representable ways instead of drawing its unity from the 'inherence' of + its parts—whatever that may mean—in an unimaginable principle + behind the scenes. + </p> + <p> + 'The world is one,' therefore, just so far as we experience it to be + concatenated, one by as many definite conjunctions as appear. But then + also NOT one by just as many definite DISjunctions as we find. The oneness + and the manyness of it thus obtain in respects which can be separately + named. It is neither a universe pure and simple nor a multiverse pure and + simple. And its various manners of being one suggest, for their accurate + ascertainment, so many distinct programs of scientific work. Thus the + pragmatic question 'What is the oneness known-as? What practical + difference will it make?' saves us from all feverish excitement over it as + a principle of sublimity and carries us forward into the stream of + experience with a cool head. The stream may indeed reveal far more + connexion and union than we now suspect, but we are not entitled on + pragmatic principles to claim absolute oneness in any respect in advance. + </p> + <p> + It is so difficult to see definitely what absolute oneness can mean, that + probably the majority of you are satisfied with the sober attitude which + we have reached. Nevertheless there are possibly some radically monistic + souls among you who are not content to leave the one and the many on a + par. Union of various grades, union of diverse types, union that stops at + non-conductors, union that merely goes from next to next, and means in + many cases outer nextness only, and not a more internal bond, union of + concatenation, in short; all that sort of thing seems to you a halfway + stage of thought. The oneness of things, superior to their manyness, you + think must also be more deeply true, must be the more real aspect of the + world. The pragmatic view, you are sure, gives us a universe imperfectly + rational. The real universe must form an unconditional unit of being, + something consolidated, with its parts co-implicated through and through. + Only then could we consider our estate completely rational. There is no + doubt whatever that this ultra-monistic way of thinking means a great deal + to many minds. "One Life, One Truth, one Love, one Principle, One Good, + One God"—I quote from a Christian Science leaflet which the day's + mail brings into my hands—beyond doubt such a confession of faith + has pragmatically an emotional value, and beyond doubt the word 'one' + contributes to the value quite as much as the other words. But if we try + to realize INTELLECTUALLY what we can possibly MEAN by such a glut of + oneness we are thrown right back upon our pragmatistic determinations + again. It means either the mere name One, the universe of discourse; or it + means the sum total of all the ascertainable particular conjunctions and + concatenations; or, finally, it means some one vehicle of conjunction + treated as all-inclusive, like one origin, one purpose, or one knower. In + point of fact it always means one KNOWER to those who take it + intellectually to-day. The one knower involves, they think, the other + forms of conjunction. His world must have all its parts co-implicated in + the one logical-aesthetical-teleological unit-picture which is his eternal + dream. + </p> + <p> + The character of the absolute knower's picture is however so impossible + for us to represent clearly, that we may fairly suppose that the authority + which absolute monism undoubtedly possesses, and probably always will + possess over some persons, draws its strength far less from intellectual + than from mystical grounds. To interpret absolute monism worthily, be a + mystic. Mystical states of mind in every degree are shown by history, + usually tho not always, to make for the monistic view. This is no proper + occasion to enter upon the general subject of mysticism, but I will quote + one mystical pronouncement to show just what I mean. The paragon of all + monistic systems is the Vedanta philosophy of Hindostan, and the paragon + of Vedantist missionaries was the late Swami Vivekananda who visited our + shores some years ago. The method of Vedantism is the mystical method. You + do not reason, but after going through a certain discipline YOU SEE, and + having seen, you can report the truth. Vivekananda thus reports the truth + in one of his lectures here: + </p> + <p> + "Where is any more misery for him who sees this Oneness in the + Universe...this Oneness of life, Oneness of everything? ...This separation + between man and man, man and woman, man and child, nation from nation, + earth from moon, moon from sun, this separation between atom and atom is + the cause really of all the misery, and the Vedanta says this separation + does not exist, it is not real. It is merely apparent, on the surface. In + the heart of things there is Unity still. If you go inside you find that + Unity between man and man, women and children, races and races, high and + low, rich and poor, the gods and men: all are One, and animals too, if you + go deep enough, and he who has attained to that has no more delusion. ... + Where is any more delusion for him? What can delude him? He knows the + reality of everything, the secret of everything. Where is there any more + misery for him? What does he desire? He has traced the reality of + everything unto the Lord, that centre, that Unity of everything, and that + is Eternal Bliss, Eternal Knowledge, Eternal Existence. Neither death nor + disease, nor sorrow nor misery, nor discontent is there ... in the centre, + the reality, there is no one to be mourned for, no one to be sorry for. He + has penetrated everything, the Pure One, the Formless, the Bodiless, the + Stainless, He the Knower, He the Great Poet, the Self-Existent, He who is + giving to everyone what he deserves." + </p> + <p> + Observe how radical the character of the monism here is. Separation is not + simply overcome by the One, it is denied to exist. There is no many. We + are not parts of the One; It has no parts; and since in a sense we + undeniably ARE, it must be that each of us is the One, indivisibly and + totally. AN ABSOLUTE ONE, AND I THAT ONE—surely we have here a + religion which, emotionally considered, has a high pragmatic value; it + imparts a perfect sumptuosity of security. As our Swami says in another + place: + </p> + <p> + "When man has seen himself as one with the infinite Being of the universe, + when all separateness has ceased, when all men, all women, all angels, all + gods, all animals, all plants, the whole universe has been melted into + that oneness, then all fear disappears. Whom to fear? Can I hurt myself? + Can I kill myself? Can I injure myself? Do you fear yourself? Then will + all sorrow disappear. What can cause me sorrow? I am the One Existence of + the universe. Then all jealousies will disappear; of whom to be jealous? + Of myself? Then all bad feelings disappear. Against whom will I have this + bad feeling? Against myself? There is none in the universe but me. ... + Kill out this differentiation; kill out this superstition that there are + many. 'He who, in this world of many, sees that One; he who in this mass + of insentiency sees that One Sentient Being; he who in this world of + shadow catches that Reality, unto him belongs eternal peace, unto none + else, unto none else.'" + </p> + <p> + We all have some ear for this monistic music: it elevates and reassures. + We all have at least the germ of mysticism in us. And when our idealists + recite their arguments for the Absolute, saying that the slightest union + admitted anywhere carries logically absolute Oneness with it, and that the + slightest separation admitted anywhere logically carries disunion + remediless and complete, I cannot help suspecting that the palpable weak + places in the intellectual reasonings they use are protected from their + own criticism by a mystical feeling that, logic or no logic, absolute + Oneness must somehow at any cost be true. Oneness overcomes MORAL + separateness at any rate. In the passion of love we have the mystic germ + of what might mean a total union of all sentient life. This mystical germ + wakes up in us on hearing the monistic utterances, acknowledges their + authority, and assigns to intellectual considerations a secondary place. + </p> + <p> + I will dwell no longer on these religious and moral aspects of the + question in this lecture. When I come to my final lecture there will be + something more to say. + </p> + <p> + Leave then out of consideration for the moment the authority which + mystical insights may be conjectured eventually to possess; treat the + problem of the One and the Many in a purely intellectual way; and we see + clearly enough where pragmatism stands. With her criterion of the + practical differences that theories make, we see that she must equally + abjure absolute monism and absolute pluralism. The world is one just so + far as its parts hang together by any definite connexion. It is many just + so far as any definite connexion fails to obtain. And finally it is + growing more and more unified by those systems of connexion at least which + human energy keeps framing as time goes on. + </p> + <p> + It is possible to imagine alternative universes to the one we know, in + which the most various grades and types of union should be embodied. Thus + the lowest grade of universe would be a world of mere WITHNESS, of which + the parts were only strung together by the conjunction 'and.' Such a + universe is even now the collection of our several inner lives. The spaces + and times of your imagination, the objects and events of your day-dreams + are not only more or less incoherent inter se, but are wholly out of + definite relation with the similar contents of anyone else's mind. Our + various reveries now as we sit here compenetrate each other idly without + influencing or interfering. They coexist, but in no order and in no + receptacle, being the nearest approach to an absolute 'many' that we can + conceive. We cannot even imagine any reason why they SHOULD be known all + together, and we can imagine even less, if they were known together, how + they could be known as one systematic whole. + </p> + <p> + But add our sensations and bodily actions, and the union mounts to a much + higher grade. Our audita et visa and our acts fall into those receptacles + of time and space in which each event finds its date and place. They form + 'things' and are of 'kinds' too, and can be classed. Yet we can imagine a + world of things and of kinds in which the causal interactions with which + we are so familiar should not exist. Everything there might be inert + towards everything else, and refuse to propagate its influence. Or gross + mechanical influences might pass, but no chemical action. Such worlds + would be far less unified than ours. Again there might be complete + physico-chemical interaction, but no minds; or minds, but altogether + private ones, with no social life; or social life limited to acquaintance, + but no love; or love, but no customs or institutions that should + systematize it. No one of these grades of universe would be absolutely + irrational or disintegrated, inferior tho it might appear when looked at + from the higher grades. For instance, if our minds should ever become + 'telepathically' connected, so that we knew immediately, or could under + certain conditions know immediately, each what the other was thinking, the + world we now live in would appear to the thinkers in that world to have + been of an inferior grade. + </p> + <p> + With the whole of past eternity open for our conjectures to range in, it + may be lawful to wonder whether the various kinds of union now realized in + the universe that we inhabit may not possibly have been successively + evolved after the fashion in which we now see human systems evolving in + consequence of human needs. If such an hypothesis were legitimate, total + oneness would appear at the end of things rather than at their origin. In + other words the notion of the 'Absolute' would have to be replaced by that + of the 'Ultimate.' The two notions would have the same content—the + maximally unified content of fact, namely—but their time-relations + would be positively reversed. [Footnote: Compare on the Ultimate, Mr. + Schiller's essay "Activity and Substance," in his book entitled Humanism, + p. 204.] + </p> + <p> + After discussing the unity of the universe in this pragmatic way, you + ought to see why I said in my second lecture, borrowing the word from my + friend G. Papini, that pragmatism tends to UNSTIFFEN all our theories. The + world's oneness has generally been affirmed abstractly only, and as if + anyone who questioned it must be an idiot. The temper of monists has been + so vehement, as almost at times to be convulsive; and this way of holding + a doctrine does not easily go with reasonable discussion and the drawing + of distinctions. The theory of the Absolute, in particular, has had to be + an article of faith, affirmed dogmatically and exclusively. The One and + All, first in the order of being and of knowing, logically necessary + itself, and uniting all lesser things in the bonds of mutual necessity, + how could it allow of any mitigation of its inner rigidity? The slightest + suspicion of pluralism, the minutest wiggle of independence of any one of + its parts from the control of the totality, would ruin it. Absolute unity + brooks no degrees—as well might you claim absolute purity for a + glass of water because it contains but a single little cholera-germ. The + independence, however infinitesimal, of a part, however small, would be to + the Absolute as fatal as a cholera-germ. + </p> + <p> + Pluralism on the other hand has no need of this dogmatic rigoristic + temper. Provided you grant SOME separation among things, some tremor of + independence, some free play of parts on one another, some real novelty or + chance, however minute, she is amply satisfied, and will allow you any + amount, however great, of real union. How much of union there may be is a + question that she thinks can only be decided empirically. The amount may + be enormous, colossal; but absolute monism is shattered if, along with all + the union, there has to be granted the slightest modicum, the most + incipient nascency, or the most residual trace, of a separation that is + not 'overcome.' + </p> + <p> + Pragmatism, pending the final empirical ascertainment of just what the + balance of union and disunion among things may be, must obviously range + herself upon the pluralistic side. Some day, she admits, even total union, + with one knower, one origin, and a universe consolidated in every + conceivable way, may turn out to be the most acceptable of all hypotheses. + Meanwhile the opposite hypothesis, of a world imperfectly unified still, + and perhaps always to remain so, must be sincerely entertained. This + latter hypothesis is pluralism's doctrine. Since absolute monism forbids + its being even considered seriously, branding it as irrational from the + start, it is clear that pragmatism must turn its back on absolute monism, + and follow pluralism's more empirical path. + </p> + <p> + This leaves us with the common-sense world, in which we find things partly + joined and partly disjoined. 'Things,' then, and their 'conjunctions'—what + do such words mean, pragmatically handled? In my next lecture, I will + apply the pragmatic method to the stage of philosophizing known as Common + Sense. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Lecture V. — Pragmatism and Common Sense + </h2> + <p> + In the last lecture we turned ourselves from the usual way of talking of + the universe's oneness as a principle, sublime in all its blankness, + towards a study of the special kinds of union which the universe enfolds. + We found many of these to coexist with kinds of separation equally real. + "How far am I verified?" is the question which each kind of union and each + kind of separation asks us here, so as good pragmatists we have to turn + our face towards experience, towards 'facts.' + </p> + <p> + Absolute oneness remains, but only as an hypothesis, and that hypothesis + is reduced nowadays to that of an omniscient knower who sees all things + without exception as forming one single systematic fact. But the knower in + question may still be conceived either as an Absolute or as an Ultimate; + and over against the hypothesis of him in either form the + counter-hypothesis that the widest field of knowledge that ever was or + will be still contains some ignorance, may be legitimately held. Some bits + of information always may escape. + </p> + <p> + This is the hypothesis of NOETIC PLURALISM, which monists consider so + absurd. Since we are bound to treat it as respectfully as noetic monism, + until the facts shall have tipped the beam, we find that our pragmatism, + tho originally nothing but a method, has forced us to be friendly to the + pluralistic view. It MAY be that some parts of the world are connected so + loosely with some other parts as to be strung along by nothing but the + copula AND. They might even come and go without those other parts + suffering any internal change. This pluralistic view, of a world of + ADDITIVE constitution, is one that pragmatism is unable to rule out from + serious consideration. But this view leads one to the farther hypothesis + that the actual world, instead of being complete 'eternally,' as the + monists assure us, may be eternally incomplete, and at all times subject + to addition or liable to loss. + </p> + <p> + It IS at any rate incomplete in one respect, and flagrantly so. The very + fact that we debate this question shows that our KNOWLEDGE is incomplete + at present and subject to addition. In respect of the knowledge it + contains the world does genuinely change and grow. Some general remarks on + the way in which our knowledge completes itself—when it does + complete itself—will lead us very conveniently into our subject for + this lecture, which is 'Common Sense.' + </p> + <p> + To begin with, our knowledge grows IN SPOTS. The spots may be large or + small, but the knowledge never grows all over: some old knowledge always + remains what it was. Your knowledge of pragmatism, let us suppose, is + growing now. Later, its growth may involve considerable modification of + opinions which you previously held to be true. But such modifications are + apt to be gradual. To take the nearest possible example, consider these + lectures of mine. What you first gain from them is probably a small amount + of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions, or points of + view. But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your + knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you 'line up' your + previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instil, and modify to + some slight degree their mass. + </p> + <p> + You listen to me now, I suppose, with certain prepossessions as to my + competency, and these affect your reception of what I say, but were I + suddenly to break off lecturing, and to begin to sing 'We won't go home + till morning' in a rich baritone voice, not only would that new fact be + added to your stock, but it would oblige you to define me differently, and + that might alter your opinion of the pragmatic philosophy, and in general + bring about a rearrangement of a number of your ideas. Your mind in such + processes is strained, and sometimes painfully so, between its older + beliefs and the novelties which experience brings along. + </p> + <p> + Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But + we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our + old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We + patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the + ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it. Our past + apperceives and co-operates; and in the new equilibrium in which each step + forward in the process of learning terminates, it happens relatively + seldom that the new fact is added RAW. More usually it is embedded cooked, + as one might say, or stewed down in the sauce of the old. + </p> + <p> + New truths thus are resultants of new experiences and of old truths + combined and mutually modifying one another. And since this is the case in + the changes of opinion of to-day, there is no reason to assume that it has + not been so at all times. It follows that very ancient modes of thought + may have survived through all the later changes in men's opinions. The + most primitive ways of thinking may not yet be wholly expunged. Like our + five fingers, our ear-bones, our rudimentary caudal appendage, or our + other 'vestigial' peculiarities, they may remain as indelible tokens of + events in our race-history. Our ancestors may at certain moments have + struck into ways of thinking which they might conceivably not have found. + But once they did so, and after the fact, the inheritance continues. When + you begin a piece of music in a certain key, you must keep the key to the + end. You may alter your house ad libitum, but the ground-plan of the first + architect persists—you can make great changes, but you cannot change + a Gothic church into a Doric temple. You may rinse and rinse the bottle, + but you can't get the taste of the medicine or whiskey that first filled + it wholly out. + </p> + <p> + My thesis now is this, that OUR FUNDAMENTAL WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT THINGS + ARE DISCOVERIES OF EXCEEDINGLY REMOTE ANCESTORS, WHICH HAVE BEEN ABLE TO + PRESERVE THEMSELVES THROUGHOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF ALL SUBSEQUENT TIME. They + form one great stage of equilibrium in the human mind's development, the + stage of common sense. Other stages have grafted themselves upon this + stage, but have never succeeded in displacing it. Let us consider this + common-sense stage first, as if it might be final. + </p> + <p> + In practical talk, a man's common sense means his good judgment, his + freedom from excentricity, his GUMPTION, to use the vernacular word. In + philosophy it means something entirely different, it means his use of + certain intellectual forms or categories of thought. Were we lobsters, or + bees, it might be that our organization would have led to our using quite + different modes from these of apprehending our experiences. It MIGHT be + too (we cannot dogmatically deny this) that such categories, unimaginable + by us to-day, would have proved on the whole as serviceable for handling + our experiences mentally as those which we actually use. + </p> + <p> + If this sounds paradoxical to anyone, let him think of analytical + geometry. The identical figures which Euclid defined by intrinsic + relations were defined by Descartes by the relations of their points to + adventitious co-ordinates, the result being an absolutely different and + vastly more potent way of handling curves. All our conceptions are what + the Germans call denkmittel, means by which we handle facts by thinking + them. Experience merely as such doesn't come ticketed and labeled, we have + first to discover what it is. Kant speaks of it as being in its first + intention a gewuehl der erscheinungen, a rhapsodie der wahrnehmungen, a + mere motley which we have to unify by our wits. What we usually do is + first to frame some system of concepts mentally classified, serialized, or + connected in some intellectual way, and then to use this as a tally by + which we 'keep tab' on the impressions that present themselves. When each + is referred to some possible place in the conceptual system, it is thereby + 'understood.' This notion of parallel 'manifolds' with their elements + standing reciprocally in 'one-to-one relations,' is proving so convenient + nowadays in mathematics and logic as to supersede more and more the older + classificatory conceptions. There are many conceptual systems of this + sort; and the sense manifold is also such a system. Find a one-to-one + relation for your sense-impressions ANYWHERE among the concepts, and in so + far forth you rationalize the impressions. But obviously you can + rationalize them by using various conceptual systems. + </p> + <p> + The old common-sense way of rationalizing them is by a set of concepts of + which the most important are these: + </p> + <p> + Thing; + </p> + <p> + The same or different; + </p> + <p> + Kinds; + </p> + <p> + Minds; + </p> + <p> + Bodies; + </p> + <p> + One Time; + </p> + <p> + One Space; + </p> + <p> + Subjects and attributes; + </p> + <p> + Causal influences; + </p> + <p> + The fancied; + </p> + <p> + The real. + </p> + <p> + We are now so familiar with the order that these notions have woven for us + out of the everlasting weather of our perceptions that we find it hard to + realize how little of a fixed routine the perceptions follow when taken by + themselves. The word weather is a good one to use here. In Boston, for + example, the weather has almost no routine, the only law being that if you + have had any weather for two days, you will probably but not certainly + have another weather on the third. Weather-experience as it thus comes to + Boston, is discontinuous and chaotic. In point of temperature, of wind, + rain or sunshine, it MAY change three times a day. But the Washington + weather-bureau intellectualizes this disorder by making each successive + bit of Boston weather EPISODIC. It refers it to its place and moment in a + continental cyclone, on the history of which the local changes everywhere + are strung as beads are strung upon a cord. + </p> + <p> + Now it seems almost certain that young children and the inferior animals + take all their experiences very much as uninstructed Bostonians take their + weather. They know no more of time or space as world-receptacles, or of + permanent subjects and changing predicates, or of causes, or kinds, or + thoughts, or things, than our common people know of continental cyclones. + A baby's rattle drops out of his hand, but the baby looks not for it. It + has 'gone out' for him, as a candle-flame goes out; and it comes back, + when you replace it in his hand, as the flame comes back when relit. The + idea of its being a 'thing,' whose permanent existence by itself he might + interpolate between its successive apparitions has evidently not occurred + to him. It is the same with dogs. Out of sight, out of mind, with them. It + is pretty evident that they have no GENERAL tendency to interpolate + 'things.' Let me quote here a passage from my colleague G. Santayana's + book. + </p> + <p> + "If a dog, while sniffing about contentedly, sees afar off his master + arriving after long absence...the poor brute asks for no reason why his + master went, why he has come again, why he should be loved, or why + presently while lying at his feet you forget him and begin to grunt and + dream of the chase—all that is an utter mystery, utterly + unconsidered. Such experience has variety, scenery, and a certain vital + rhythm; its story might be told in dithyrambic verse. It moves wholly by + inspiration; every event is providential, every act unpremeditated. + Absolute freedom and absolute helplessness have met together: you depend + wholly on divine favour, yet that unfathomable agency is not + distinguishable from your own life. ...[But] the figures even of that + disordered drama have their exits and their entrances; and their cues can + be gradually discovered by a being capable of fixing his attention and + retaining the order of events. ...In proportion as such understanding + advances each moment of experience becomes consequential and prophetic of + the rest. The calm places in life are filled with power and its spasms + with resource. No emotion can overwhelm the mind, for of none is the basis + or issue wholly hidden; no event can disconcert it altogether, because it + sees beyond. Means can be looked for to escape from the worst predicament; + and whereas each moment had been formerly filled with nothing but its own + adventure and surprised emotion, each now makes room for the lesson of + what went before and surmises what may be the plot of the + whole."[Footnote: The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense, 1905, p. + 59.] + </p> + <p> + Even to-day science and philosophy are still laboriously trying to part + fancies from realities in our experience; and in primitive times they made + only the most incipient distinctions in this line. Men believed whatever + they thought with any liveliness, and they mixed their dreams with their + realities inextricably. The categories of 'thought' and 'things' are + indispensable here—instead of being realities we now call certain + experiences only 'thoughts.' There is not a category, among those + enumerated, of which we may not imagine the use to have thus originated + historically and only gradually spread. + </p> + <p> + That one Time which we all believe in and in which each event has its + definite date, that one Space in which each thing has its position, these + abstract notions unify the world incomparably; but in their finished shape + as concepts how different they are from the loose unordered time-and-space + experiences of natural men! Everything that happens to us brings its own + duration and extension, and both are vaguely surrounded by a marginal + 'more' that runs into the duration and extension of the next thing that + comes. But we soon lose all our definite bearings; and not only do our + children make no distinction between yesterday and the day before + yesterday, the whole past being churned up together, but we adults still + do so whenever the times are large. It is the same with spaces. On a map I + can distinctly see the relation of London, Constantinople, and Pekin to + the place where I am; in reality I utterly fail to FEEL the facts which + the map symbolizes. The directions and distances are vague, confused and + mixed. Cosmic space and cosmic time, so far from being the intuitions that + Kant said they were, are constructions as patently artificial as any that + science can show. The great majority of the human race never use these + notions, but live in plural times and spaces, interpenetrant and + DURCHEINANDER. + </p> + <p> + Permanent 'things' again; the 'same' thing and its various 'appearances' + and 'alterations'; the different 'kinds' of thing; with the 'kind' used + finally as a 'predicate,' of which the thing remains the 'subject'—what + a straightening of the tangle of our experience's immediate flux and + sensible variety does this list of terms suggest! And it is only the + smallest part of his experience's flux that anyone actually does + straighten out by applying to it these conceptual instruments. Out of them + all our lowest ancestors probably used only, and then most vaguely and + inaccurately, the notion of 'the same again.' But even then if you had + asked them whether the same were a 'thing' that had endured throughout the + unseen interval, they would probably have been at a loss, and would have + said that they had never asked that question, or considered matters in + that light. + </p> + <p> + Kinds, and sameness of kind—what colossally useful DENKMITTEL for + finding our way among the many! The manyness might conceivably have been + absolute. Experiences might have all been singulars, no one of them + occurring twice. In such a world logic would have had no application; for + kind and sameness of kind are logic's only instruments. Once we know that + whatever is of a kind is also of that kind's kind, we can travel through + the universe as if with seven-league boots. Brutes surely never use these + abstractions, and civilized men use them in most various amounts. + </p> + <p> + Causal influence, again! This, if anything, seems to have been an + antediluvian conception; for we find primitive men thinking that almost + everything is significant and can exert influence of some sort. The search + for the more definite influences seems to have started in the question: + "Who, or what, is to blame?"—for any illness, namely, or disaster, + or untoward thing. From this centre the search for causal influences has + spread. Hume and 'Science' together have tried to eliminate the whole + notion of influence, substituting the entirely different DENKMITTEL of + 'law.' But law is a comparatively recent invention, and influence reigns + supreme in the older realm of common sense. + </p> + <p> + The 'possible,' as something less than the actual and more than the wholly + unreal, is another of these magisterial notions of common sense. Criticize + them as you may, they persist; and we fly back to them the moment critical + pressure is relaxed. 'Self,' 'body,' in the substantial or metaphysical + sense—no one escapes subjection to THOSE forms of thought. In + practice, the common-sense DENKMITTEL are uniformly victorious. Everyone, + however instructed, still thinks of a 'thing' in the common-sense way, as + a permanent unit-subject that 'supports' its attributes interchangeably. + No one stably or sincerely uses the more critical notion, of a group of + sense-qualities united by a law. With these categories in our hand, we + make our plans and plot together, and connect all the remoter parts of + experience with what lies before our eyes. Our later and more critical + philosophies are mere fads and fancies compared with this natural + mother-tongue of thought. + </p> + <p> + Common sense appears thus as a perfectly definite stage in our + understanding of things, a stage that satisfies in an extraordinarily + successful way the purposes for which we think. 'Things' do exist, even + when we do not see them. Their 'kinds' also exist. Their 'qualities' are + what they act by, and are what we act on; and these also exist. These + lamps shed their quality of light on every object in this room. We + intercept IT on its way whenever we hold up an opaque screen. It is the + very sound that my lips emit that travels into your ears. It is the + sensible heat of the fire that migrates into the water in which we boil an + egg; and we can change the heat into coolness by dropping in a lump of + ice. At this stage of philosophy all non-European men without exception + have remained. It suffices for all the necessary practical ends of life; + and, among our own race even, it is only the highly sophisticated + specimens, the minds debauched by learning, as Berkeley calls them, who + have ever even suspected common sense of not being absolutely true. + </p> + <p> + But when we look back, and speculate as to how the common-sense categories + may have achieved their wonderful supremacy, no reason appears why it may + not have been by a process just like that by which the conceptions due to + Democritus, Berkeley, or Darwin, achieved their similar triumphs in more + recent times. In other words, they may have been successfully DISCOVERED + by prehistoric geniuses whose names the night of antiquity has covered up; + they may have been verified by the immediate facts of experience which + they first fitted; and then from fact to fact and from man to man they may + have SPREAD, until all language rested on them and we are now incapable of + thinking naturally in any other terms. Such a view would only follow the + rule that has proved elsewhere so fertile, of assuming the vast and remote + to conform to the laws of formation that we can observe at work in the + small and near. + </p> + <p> + For all utilitarian practical purposes these conceptions amply suffice; + but that they began at special points of discovery and only gradually + spread from one thing to another, seems proved by the exceedingly dubious + limits of their application to-day. We assume for certain purposes one + 'objective' Time that AEQUABILITER FLUIT, but we don't livingly believe in + or realize any such equally-flowing time. 'Space' is a less vague notion; + but 'things,' what are they? Is a constellation properly a thing? or an + army? or is an ENS RATIONIS such as space or justice a thing? Is a knife + whose handle and blade are changed the 'same'? Is the 'changeling,' whom + Locke so seriously discusses, of the human 'kind'? Is 'telepathy' a + 'fancy' or a 'fact'? The moment you pass beyond the practical use of these + categories (a use usually suggested sufficiently by the circumstances of + the special case) to a merely curious or speculative way of thinking, you + find it impossible to say within just what limits of fact any one of them + shall apply. + </p> + <p> + The peripatetic philosophy, obeying rationalist propensities, has tried to + eternalize the common-sense categories by treating them very technically + and articulately. A 'thing' for instance is a being, or ENS. An ENS is a + subject in which qualities 'inhere.' A subject is a substance. Substances + are of kinds, and kinds are definite in number, and discrete. These + distinctions are fundamental and eternal. As terms of DISCOURSE they are + indeed magnificently useful, but what they mean, apart from their use in + steering our discourse to profitable issues, does not appear. If you ask a + scholastic philosopher what a substance may be in itself, apart from its + being the support of attributes, he simply says that your intellect knows + perfectly what the word means. + </p> + <p> + But what the intellect knows clearly is only the word itself and its + steering function. So it comes about that intellects SIBI PERMISSI, + intellects only curious and idle, have forsaken the common-sense level for + what in general terms may be called the 'critical' level of thought. Not + merely SUCH intellects either—your Humes and Berkeleys and Hegels; + but practical observers of facts, your Galileos, Daltons, Faradays, have + found it impossible to treat the NAIFS sense-termini of common sense as + ultimately real. As common sense interpolates her constant 'things' + between our intermittent sensations, so science EXTRApolates her world of + 'primary' qualities, her atoms, her ether, her magnetic fields, and the + like, beyond the common-sense world. The 'things' are now invisible + impalpable things; and the old visible common-sense things are supposed to + result from the mixture of these invisibles. Or else the whole NAIF + conception of thing gets superseded, and a thing's name is interpreted as + denoting only the law or REGEL DER VERBINDUNG by which certain of our + sensations habitually succeed or coexist. + </p> + <p> + Science and critical philosophy thus burst the bounds of common sense. + With science NAIF realism ceases: 'Secondary' qualities become unreal; + primary ones alone remain. With critical philosophy, havoc is made of + everything. The common-sense categories one and all cease to represent + anything in the way of BEING; they are but sublime tricks of human + thought, our ways of escaping bewilderment in the midst of sensation's + irremediable flow. + </p> + <p> + But the scientific tendency in critical thought, tho inspired at first by + purely intellectual motives, has opened an entirely unexpected range of + practical utilities to our astonished view. Galileo gave us accurate + clocks and accurate artillery-practice; the chemists flood us with new + medicines and dye-stuffs; Ampere and Faraday have endowed us with the New + York subway and with Marconi telegrams. The hypothetical things that such + men have invented, defined as they have defined them, are showing an + extraordinary fertility in consequences verifiable by sense. Our logic can + deduce from them a consequence due under certain conditions, we can then + bring about the conditions, and presto, the consequence is there before + our eyes. The scope of the practical control of nature newly put into our + hand by scientific ways of thinking vastly exceeds the scope of the old + control grounded on common sense. Its rate of increase accelerates so that + no one can trace the limit; one may even fear that the BEING of man may be + crushed by his own powers, that his fixed nature as an organism may not + prove adequate to stand the strain of the ever increasingly tremendous + functions, almost divine creative functions, which his intellect will more + and more enable him to wield. He may drown in his wealth like a child in a + bath-tub, who has turned on the water and who cannot turn it off. + </p> + <p> + The philosophic stage of criticism, much more thorough in its negations + than the scientific stage, so far gives us no new range of practical + power. Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, have all been utterly sterile, + so far as shedding any light on the details of nature goes, and I can + think of no invention or discovery that can be directly traced to anything + in their peculiar thought, for neither with Berkeley's tar-water nor with + Kant's nebular hypothesis had their respective philosophic tenets anything + to do. The satisfactions they yield to their disciples are intellectual, + not practical; and even then we have to confess that there is a large + minus-side to the account. + </p> + <p> + There are thus at least three well-characterized levels, stages or types + of thought about the world we live in, and the notions of one stage have + one kind of merit, those of another stage another kind. It is impossible, + however, to say that any stage as yet in sight is absolutely more TRUE + than any other. Common sense is the more CONSOLIDATED stage, because it + got its innings first, and made all language into its ally. Whether it or + science be the more AUGUST stage may be left to private judgment. But + neither consolidation nor augustness are decisive marks of truth. If + common sense were true, why should science have had to brand the secondary + qualities, to which our world owes all its living interest, as false, and + to invent an invisible world of points and curves and mathematical + equations instead? Why should it have needed to transform causes and + activities into laws of 'functional variation'? Vainly did scholasticism, + common sense's college-trained younger sister, seek to stereotype the + forms the human family had always talked with, to make them definite and + fix them for eternity. Substantial forms (in other words our secondary + qualities) hardly outlasted the year of our Lord 1600. People were already + tired of them then; and Galileo, and Descartes, with his 'new philosophy,' + gave them only a little later their coup de grace. + </p> + <p> + But now if the new kinds of scientific 'thing,' the corpuscular and + etheric world, were essentially more 'true,' why should they have excited + so much criticism within the body of science itself? Scientific logicians + are saying on every hand that these entities and their determinations, + however definitely conceived, should not be held for literally real. It is + AS IF they existed; but in reality they are like co-ordinates or + logarithms, only artificial short-cuts for taking us from one part to + another of experience's flux. We can cipher fruitfully with them; they + serve us wonderfully; but we must not be their dupes. + </p> + <p> + There is no RINGING conclusion possible when we compare these types of + thinking, with a view to telling which is the more absolutely true. Their + naturalness, their intellectual economy, their fruitfulness for practice, + all start up as distinct tests of their veracity, and as a result we get + confused. Common sense is BETTER for one sphere of life, science for + another, philosophic criticism for a third; but whether either be TRUER + absolutely, Heaven only knows. Just now, if I understand the matter + rightly, we are witnessing a curious reversion to the common-sense way of + looking at physical nature, in the philosophy of science favored by such + men as Mach, Ostwald and Duhem. According to these teachers no hypothesis + is truer than any other in the sense of being a more literal copy of + reality. They are all but ways of talking on our part, to be compared + solely from the point of view of their USE. The only literally true thing + is REALITY; and the only reality we know is, for these logicians, sensible + reality, the flux of our sensations and emotions as they pass. 'Energy' is + the collective name (according to Ostwald) for the sensations just as they + present themselves (the movement, heat, magnetic pull, or light, or + whatever it may be) when they are measured in certain ways. So measuring + them, we are enabled to describe the correlated changes which they show + us, in formulas matchless for their simplicity and fruitfulness for human + use. They are sovereign triumphs of economy in thought. + </p> + <p> + No one can fail to admire the 'energetic' philosophy. But the + hypersensible entities, the corpuscles and vibrations, hold their own with + most physicists and chemists, in spite of its appeal. It seems too + economical to be all-sufficient. Profusion, not economy, may after all be + reality's key-note. + </p> + <p> + I am dealing here with highly technical matters, hardly suitable for + popular lecturing, and in which my own competence is small. All the better + for my conclusion, however, which at this point is this. The whole notion + of truth, which naturally and without reflexion we assume to mean the + simple duplication by the mind of a ready-made and given reality, proves + hard to understand clearly. There is no simple test available for + adjudicating offhand between the divers types of thought that claim to + possess it. Common sense, common science or corpuscular philosophy, + ultra-critical science, or energetics, and critical or idealistic + philosophy, all seem insufficiently true in some regard and leave some + dissatisfaction. It is evident that the conflict of these so widely + differing systems obliges us to overhaul the very idea of truth, for at + present we have no definite notion of what the word may mean. I shall face + that task in my next lecture, and will add but a few words, in finishing + the present one. + </p> + <p> + There are only two points that I wish you to retain from the present + lecture. The first one relates to common sense. We have seen reason to + suspect it, to suspect that in spite of their being so venerable, of their + being so universally used and built into the very structure of language, + its categories may after all be only a collection of extraordinarily + successful hypotheses (historically discovered or invented by single men, + but gradually communicated, and used by everybody) by which our + forefathers have from time immemorial unified and straightened the + discontinuity of their immediate experiences, and put themselves into an + equilibrium with the surface of nature so satisfactory for ordinary + practical purposes that it certainly would have lasted forever, but for + the excessive intellectual vivacity of Democritus, Archimedes, Galileo, + Berkeley, and other excentric geniuses whom the example of such men + inflamed. Retain, I pray you, this suspicion about common sense. + </p> + <p> + The other point is this. Ought not the existence of the various types of + thinking which we have reviewed, each so splendid for certain purposes, + yet all conflicting still, and neither one of them able to support a claim + of absolute veracity, to awaken a presumption favorable to the + pragmatistic view that all our theories are INSTRUMENTAL, are mental modes + of ADAPTATION to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic answers to + some divinely instituted world-enigma? I expressed this view as clearly as + I could in the second of these lectures. Certainly the restlessness of the + actual theoretic situation, the value for some purposes of each + thought-level, and the inability of either to expel the others decisively, + suggest this pragmatistic view, which I hope that the next lectures may + soon make entirely convincing. May there not after all be a possible + ambiguity in truth? + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Lecture VI. — Pragmatism's Conception of Truth + </h2> + <p> + When Clerk Maxwell was a child it is written that he had a mania for + having everything explained to him, and that when people put him off with + vague verbal accounts of any phenomenon he would interrupt them + impatiently by saying, "Yes; but I want you to tell me the PARTICULAR GO + of it!" Had his question been about truth, only a pragmatist could have + told him the particular go of it. I believe that our contemporary + pragmatists, especially Messrs. Schiller and Dewey, have given the only + tenable account of this subject. It is a very ticklish subject, sending + subtle rootlets into all kinds of crannies, and hard to treat in the + sketchy way that alone befits a public lecture. But the Schiller-Dewey + view of truth has been so ferociously attacked by rationalistic + philosophers, and so abominably misunderstood, that here, if anywhere, is + the point where a clear and simple statement should be made. + </p> + <p> + I fully expect to see the pragmatist view of truth run through the classic + stages of a theory's career. First, you know, a new theory is attacked as + absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; + finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they + themselves discovered it. Our doctrine of truth is at present in the first + of these three stages, with symptoms of the second stage having begun in + certain quarters. I wish that this lecture might help it beyond the first + stage in the eyes of many of you. + </p> + <p> + Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our + ideas. It means their 'agreement,' as falsity means their disagreement, + with 'reality.' Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this + definition as a matter of course. They begin to quarrel only after the + question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term + 'agreement,' and what by the term 'reality,' when reality is taken as + something for our ideas to agree with. + </p> + <p> + In answering these questions the pragmatists are more analytic and + painstaking, the intellectualists more offhand and irreflective. The + popular notion is that a true idea must copy its reality. Like other + popular views, this one follows the analogy of the most usual experience. + Our true ideas of sensible things do indeed copy them. Shut your eyes and + think of yonder clock on the wall, and you get just such a true picture or + copy of its dial. But your idea of its 'works' (unless you are a + clock-maker) is much less of a copy, yet it passes muster, for it in no + way clashes with the reality. Even tho it should shrink to the mere word + 'works,' that word still serves you truly; and when you speak of the + 'time-keeping function' of the clock, or of its spring's 'elasticity,' it + is hard to see exactly what your ideas can copy. + </p> + <p> + You perceive that there is a problem here. Where our ideas cannot copy + definitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean? Some + idealists seem to say that they are true whenever they are what God means + that we ought to think about that object. Others hold the copy-view all + through, and speak as if our ideas possessed truth just in proportion as + they approach to being copies of the Absolute's eternal way of thinking. + </p> + <p> + These views, you see, invite pragmatistic discussion. But the great + assumption of the intellectualists is that truth means essentially an + inert static relation. When you've got your true idea of anything, there's + an end of the matter. You're in possession; you KNOW; you have fulfilled + your thinking destiny. You are where you ought to be mentally; you have + obeyed your categorical imperative; and nothing more need follow on that + climax of your rational destiny. Epistemologically you are in stable + equilibrium. + </p> + <p> + Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or + belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true + make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What + experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief + were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential + terms?" + </p> + <p> + The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: TRUE IDEAS + ARE THOSE THAT WE CAN ASSIMILATE, VALIDATE, CORROBORATE AND VERIFY. FALSE + IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CANNOT. That is the practical difference it makes + to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it + is all that truth is known-as. + </p> + <p> + This thesis is what I have to defend. The truth of an idea is not a + stagnant property inherent in it. Truth HAPPENS to an idea. It BECOMES + true, is MADE true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: + the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-FICATION. Its + validity is the process of its valid-ATION. + </p> + <p> + But what do the words verification and validation themselves pragmatically + mean? They again signify certain practical consequences of the verified + and validated idea. It is hard to find any one phrase that characterizes + these consequences better than the ordinary agreement-formula—just + such consequences being what we have in mind whenever we say that our + ideas 'agree' with reality. They lead us, namely, through the acts and + other ideas which they instigate, into or up to, or towards, other parts + of experience with which we feel all the while-such feeling being among + our potentialities—that the original ideas remain in agreement. The + connexions and transitions come to us from point to point as being + progressive, harmonious, satisfactory. This function of agreeable leading + is what we mean by an idea's verification. Such an account is vague and it + sounds at first quite trivial, but it has results which it will take the + rest of my hour to explain. + </p> + <p> + Let me begin by reminding you of the fact that the possession of true + thoughts means everywhere the possession of invaluable instruments of + action; and that our duty to gain truth, so far from being a blank command + from out of the blue, or a 'stunt' self-imposed by our intellect, can + account for itself by excellent practical reasons. + </p> + <p> + The importance to human life of having true beliefs about matters of fact + is a thing too notorious. We live in a world of realities that can be + infinitely useful or infinitely harmful. Ideas that tell us which of them + to expect count as the true ideas in all this primary sphere of + verification, and the pursuit of such ideas is a primary human duty. The + possession of truth, so far from being here an end in itself, is only a + preliminary means towards other vital satisfactions. If I am lost in the + woods and starved, and find what looks like a cow-path, it is of the + utmost importance that I should think of a human habitation at the end of + it, for if I do so and follow it, I save myself. The true thought is + useful here because the house which is its object is useful. The practical + value of true ideas is thus primarily derived from the practical + importance of their objects to us. Their objects are, indeed, not + important at all times. I may on another occasion have no use for the + house; and then my idea of it, however verifiable, will be practically + irrelevant, and had better remain latent. Yet since almost any object may + some day become temporarily important, the advantage of having a general + stock of extra truths, of ideas that shall be true of merely possible + situations, is obvious. We store such extra truths away in our memories, + and with the overflow we fill our books of reference. Whenever such an + extra truth becomes practically relevant to one of our emergencies, it + passes from cold-storage to do work in the world, and our belief in it + grows active. You can say of it then either that 'it is useful because it + is true' or that 'it is true because it is useful.' Both these phrases + mean exactly the same thing, namely that here is an idea that gets + fulfilled and can be verified. True is the name for whatever idea starts + the verification-process, useful is the name for its completed function in + experience. True ideas would never have been singled out as such, would + never have acquired a class-name, least of all a name suggesting value, + unless they had been useful from the outset in this way. + </p> + <p> + From this simple cue pragmatism gets her general notion of truth as + something essentially bound up with the way in which one moment in our + experience may lead us towards other moments which it will be worth while + to have been led to. Primarily, and on the common-sense level, the truth + of a state of mind means this function of A LEADING THAT IS WORTH WHILE. + When a moment in our experience, of any kind whatever, inspires us with a + thought that is true, that means that sooner or later we dip by that + thought's guidance into the particulars of experience again and make + advantageous connexion with them. This is a vague enough statement, but I + beg you to retain it, for it is essential. + </p> + <p> + Our experience meanwhile is all shot through with regularities. One bit of + it can warn us to get ready for another bit, can 'intend' or be + 'significant of' that remoter object. The object's advent is the + significance's verification. Truth, in these cases, meaning nothing but + eventual verification, is manifestly incompatible with waywardness on our + part. Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which + realities follow in his experience: they will lead him nowhere or else + make false connexions. + </p> + <p> + By 'realities' or 'objects' here, we mean either things of common sense, + sensibly present, or else common-sense relations, such as dates, places, + distances, kinds, activities. Following our mental image of a house along + the cow-path, we actually come to see the house; we get the image's full + verification. SUCH SIMPLY AND FULLY VERIFIED LEADINGS ARE CERTAINLY THE + ORIGINALS AND PROTOTYPES OF THE TRUTH-PROCESS. Experience offers indeed + other forms of truth-process, but they are all conceivable as being + primary verifications arrested, multiplied or substituted one for another. + </p> + <p> + Take, for instance, yonder object on the wall. You and I consider it to be + a 'clock,' altho no one of us has seen the hidden works that make it one. + We let our notion pass for true without attempting to verify. If truths + mean verification-process essentially, ought we then to call such + unverified truths as this abortive? No, for they form the overwhelmingly + large number of the truths we live by. Indirect as well as direct + verifications pass muster. Where circumstantial evidence is sufficient, we + can go without eye-witnessing. Just as we here assume Japan to exist + without ever having been there, because it WORKS to do so, everything we + know conspiring with the belief, and nothing interfering, so we assume + that thing to be a clock. We USE it as a clock, regulating the length of + our lecture by it. The verification of the assumption here means its + leading to no frustration or contradiction. VerifiABILITY of wheels and + weights and pendulum is as good as verification. For one truth-process + completed there are a million in our lives that function in this state of + nascency. They turn us TOWARDS direct verification; lead us into the + SURROUNDINGS of the objects they envisage; and then, if everything runs on + harmoniously, we are so sure that verification is possible that we omit + it, and are usually justified by all that happens. + </p> + <p> + Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts + and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes + pass so long as nobody refuses them. But this all points to direct + face-to-face verifications somewhere, without which the fabric of truth + collapses like a financial system with no cash-basis whatever. You accept + my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade on each other's + truth. But beliefs verified concretely by SOMEBODY are the posts of the + whole superstructure. + </p> + <p> + Another great reason—beside economy of time—for waiving + complete verification in the usual business of life is that all things + exist in kinds and not singly. Our world is found once for all to have + that peculiarity. So that when we have once directly verified our ideas + about one specimen of a kind, we consider ourselves free to apply them to + other specimens without verification. A mind that habitually discerns the + kind of thing before it, and acts by the law of the kind immediately, + without pausing to verify, will be a 'true' mind in ninety-nine out of a + hundred emergencies, proved so by its conduct fitting everything it meets, + and getting no refutation. + </p> + <p> + INDIRECTLY OR ONLY POTENTIALLY VERIFYING PROCESSES MAY THUS BE TRUE AS + WELL AS FULL VERIFICATION-PROCESSES. They work as true processes would + work, give us the same advantages, and claim our recognition for the same + reasons. All this on the common-sense level of, matters of fact, which we + are alone considering. + </p> + <p> + But matters of fact are not our only stock in trade. RELATIONS AMONG + PURELY MENTAL IDEAS form another sphere where true and false beliefs + obtain, and here the beliefs are absolute, or unconditional. When they are + true they bear the name either of definitions or of principles. It is + either a principle or a definition that 1 and 1 make 2, that 2 and 1 make + 3, and so on; that white differs less from gray than it does from black; + that when the cause begins to act the effect also commences. Such + propositions hold of all possible 'ones,' of all conceivable 'whites' and + 'grays' and 'causes.' The objects here are mental objects. Their relations + are perceptually obvious at a glance, and no sense-verification is + necessary. Moreover, once true, always true, of those same mental objects. + Truth here has an 'eternal' character. If you can find a concrete thing + anywhere that is 'one' or 'white' or 'gray,' or an 'effect,' then your + principles will everlastingly apply to it. It is but a case of + ascertaining the kind, and then applying the law of its kind to the + particular object. You are sure to get truth if you can but name the kind + rightly, for your mental relations hold good of everything of that kind + without exception. If you then, nevertheless, failed to get truth + concretely, you would say that you had classed your real objects wrongly. + </p> + <p> + In this realm of mental relations, truth again is an affair of leading. We + relate one abstract idea with another, framing in the end great systems of + logical and mathematical truth, under the respective terms of which the + sensible facts of experience eventually arrange themselves, so that our + eternal truths hold good of realities also. This marriage of fact and + theory is endlessly fertile. What we say is here already true in advance + of special verification, IF WE HAVE SUBSUMED OUR OBJECTS RIGHTLY. Our + ready-made ideal framework for all sorts of possible objects follows from + the very structure of our thinking. We can no more play fast and loose + with these abstract relations than we can do so with our + sense-experiences. They coerce us; we must treat them consistently, + whether or not we like the results. The rules of addition apply to our + debts as rigorously as to our assets. The hundredth decimal of pi, the + ratio of the circumference to its diameter, is predetermined ideally now, + tho no one may have computed it. If we should ever need the figure in our + dealings with an actual circle we should need to have it given rightly, + calculated by the usual rules; for it is the same kind of truth that those + rules elsewhere calculate. + </p> + <p> + Between the coercions of the sensible order and those of the ideal order, + our mind is thus wedged tightly. Our ideas must agree with realities, be + such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, + under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration. So far, + intellectualists can raise no protest. They can only say that we have + barely touched the skin of the matter. + </p> + <p> + Realities mean, then, either concrete facts, or abstract kinds of things + and relations perceived intuitively between them. They furthermore and + thirdly mean, as things that new ideas of ours must no less take account + of, the whole body of other truths already in our possession. But what now + does 'agreement' with such three-fold realities mean?—to use again + the definition that is current. + </p> + <p> + Here it is that pragmatism and intellectualism begin to part company. + Primarily, no doubt, to agree means to copy, but we saw that the mere word + 'clock' would do instead of a mental picture of its works, and that of + many realities our ideas can only be symbols and not copies. 'Past time,' + 'power,' 'spontaneity'—how can our mind copy such realities? + </p> + <p> + To 'agree' in the widest sense with a reality, CAN ONLY MEAN TO BE GUIDED + EITHER STRAIGHT UP TO IT OR INTO ITS SURROUNDINGS, OR TO BE PUT INTO SUCH + WORKING TOUCH WITH IT AS TO HANDLE EITHER IT OR SOMETHING CONNECTED WITH + IT BETTER THAN IF WE DISAGREED. Better either intellectually or + practically! And often agreement will only mean the negative fact that + nothing contradictory from the quarter of that reality comes to interfere + with the way in which our ideas guide us elsewhere. To copy a reality is, + indeed, one very important way of agreeing with it, but it is far from + being essential. The essential thing is the process of being guided. Any + idea that helps us to DEAL, whether practically or intellectually, with + either the reality or its belongings, that doesn't entangle our progress + in frustrations, that FITS, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality's + whole setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the requirement. It will + hold true of that reality. + </p> + <p> + Thus, NAMES are just as 'true' or 'false' as definite mental pictures are. + They set up similar verification-processes, and lead to fully equivalent + practical results. + </p> + <p> + All human thinking gets discursified; we exchange ideas; we lend and + borrow verifications, get them from one another by means of social + intercourse. All truth thus gets verbally built out, stored up, and made + available for everyone. Hence, we must TALK consistently just as we must + THINK consistently: for both in talk and thought we deal with kinds. Names + are arbitrary, but once understood they must be kept to. We mustn't now + call Abel 'Cain' or Cain 'Abel.' If we do, we ungear ourselves from the + whole book of Genesis, and from all its connexions with the universe of + speech and fact down to the present time. We throw ourselves out of + whatever truth that entire system of speech and fact may embody. + </p> + <p> + The overwhelming majority of our true ideas admit of no direct or + face-to-face verification-those of past history, for example, as of Cain + and Abel. The stream of time can be remounted only verbally, or verified + indirectly by the present prolongations or effects of what the past + harbored. Yet if they agree with these verbalities and effects, we can + know that our ideas of the past are true. AS TRUE AS PAST TIME ITSELF WAS, + so true was Julius Caesar, so true were antediluvian monsters, all in + their proper dates and settings. That past time itself was, is guaranteed + by its coherence with everything that's present. True as the present is, + the past was also. + </p> + <p> + Agreement thus turns out to be essentially an affair of leading—leading + that is useful because it is into quarters that contain objects that are + important. True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters + as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to + consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse. They lead away from + excentricity and isolation, from foiled and barren thinking. The + untrammeled flowing of the leading-process, its general freedom from clash + and contradiction, passes for its indirect verification; but all roads + lead to Rome, and in the end and eventually, all true processes must lead + to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences SOMEWHERE, which + somebody's ideas have copied. + </p> + <p> + Such is the large loose way in which the pragmatist interprets the word + agreement. He treats it altogether practically. He lets it cover any + process of conduction from a present idea to a future terminus, provided + only it run prosperously. It is only thus that 'scientific' ideas, flying + as they do beyond common sense, can be said to agree with their realities. + It is, as I have already said, as if reality were made of ether, atoms or + electrons, but we mustn't think so literally. The term 'energy' doesn't + even pretend to stand for anything 'objective.' It is only a way of + measuring the surface of phenomena so as to string their changes on a + simple formula. + </p> + <p> + Yet in the choice of these man-made formulas we cannot be capricious with + impunity any more than we can be capricious on the common-sense practical + level. We must find a theory that will WORK; and that means something + extremely difficult; for our theory must mediate between all previous + truths and certain new experiences. It must derange common sense and + previous belief as little as possible, and it must lead to some sensible + terminus or other that can be verified exactly. To 'work' means both these + things; and the squeeze is so tight that there is little loose play for + any hypothesis. Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. + Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with + all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective + reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial; we + follow 'elegance' or 'economy.' Clerk Maxwell somewhere says it would be + "poor scientific taste" to choose the more complicated of two equally + well-evidenced conceptions; and you will all agree with him. Truth in + science is what gives us the maximum possible sum of satisfactions, taste + included, but consistency both with previous truth and with novel fact is + always the most imperious claimant. + </p> + <p> + I have led you through a very sandy desert. But now, if I may be allowed + so vulgar an expression, we begin to taste the milk in the cocoanut. Our + rationalist critics here discharge their batteries upon us, and to reply + to them will take us out from all this dryness into full sight of a + momentous philosophical alternative. + </p> + <p> + Our account of truth is an account of truths in the plural, of processes + of leading, realized in rebus, and having only this quality in common, + that they PAY. They pay by guiding us into or towards some part of a + system that dips at numerous points into sense-percepts, which we may copy + mentally or not, but with which at any rate we are now in the kind of + commerce vaguely designated as verification. Truth for us is simply a + collective name for verification-processes, just as health, wealth, + strength, etc., are names for other processes connected with life, and + also pursued because it pays to pursue them. Truth is MADE, just as + health, wealth and strength are made, in the course of experience. + </p> + <p> + Here rationalism is instantaneously up in arms against us. I can imagine a + rationalist to talk as follows: + </p> + <p> + "Truth is not made," he will say; "it absolutely obtains, being a unique + relation that does not wait upon any process, but shoots straight over the + head of experience, and hits its reality every time. Our belief that yon + thing on the wall is a clock is true already, altho no one in the whole + history of the world should verify it. The bare quality of standing in + that transcendent relation is what makes any thought true that possesses + it, whether or not there be verification. You pragmatists put the cart + before the horse in making truth's being reside in verification-processes. + These are merely signs of its being, merely our lame ways of ascertaining + after the fact, which of our ideas already has possessed the wondrous + quality. The quality itself is timeless, like all essences and natures. + Thoughts partake of it directly, as they partake of falsity or of + irrelevancy. It can't be analyzed away into pragmatic consequences." + </p> + <p> + The whole plausibility of this rationalist tirade is due to the fact to + which we have already paid so much attention. In our world, namely, + abounding as it does in things of similar kinds and similarly associated, + one verification serves for others of its kind, and one great use of + knowing things is to be led not so much to them as to their associates, + especially to human talk about them. The quality of truth, obtaining ante + rem, pragmatically means, then, the fact that in such a world innumerable + ideas work better by their indirect or possible than by their direct and + actual verification. Truth ante rem means only verifiability, then; or + else it is a case of the stock rationalist trick of treating the NAME of a + concrete phenomenal reality as an independent prior entity, and placing it + behind the reality as its explanation. Professor Mach quotes somewhere an + epigram of Lessing's: + </p> + <p> + Sagt Hanschen Schlau zu Vetter Fritz, "Wie kommt es, Vetter Fritzen, Dass + grad' die Reichsten in der Welt, Das meiste Geld besitzen?" + </p> + <p> + Hanschen Schlau here treats the principle 'wealth' as something distinct + from the facts denoted by the man's being rich. It antedates them; the + facts become only a sort of secondary coincidence with the rich man's + essential nature. + </p> + <p> + In the case of 'wealth' we all see the fallacy. We know that wealth is but + a name for concrete processes that certain men's lives play a part in, and + not a natural excellence found in Messrs. Rockefeller and Carnegie, but + not in the rest of us. + </p> + <p> + Like wealth, health also lives in rebus. It is a name for processes, as + digestion, circulation, sleep, etc., that go on happily, tho in this + instance we are more inclined to think of it as a principle and to say the + man digests and sleeps so well BECAUSE he is so healthy. + </p> + <p> + With 'strength' we are, I think, more rationalistic still, and decidedly + inclined to treat it as an excellence pre-existing in the man and + explanatory of the herculean performances of his muscles. + </p> + <p> + With 'truth' most people go over the border entirely, and treat the + rationalistic account as self-evident. But really all these words in TH + are exactly similar. Truth exists ante rem just as much and as little as + the other things do. + </p> + <p> + The scholastics, following Aristotle, made much of the distinction between + habit and act. Health in actu means, among other things, good sleeping and + digesting. But a healthy man need not always be sleeping, or always + digesting, any more than a wealthy man need be always handling money, or a + strong man always lifting weights. All such qualities sink to the status + of 'habits' between their times of exercise; and similarly truth becomes a + habit of certain of our ideas and beliefs in their intervals of rest from + their verifying activities. But those activities are the root of the whole + matter, and the condition of there being any habit to exist in the + intervals. + </p> + <p> + 'The true,' to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of + our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our + behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run + and on the whole of course; for what meets expediently all the experience + in sight won't necessarily meet all farther experiences equally + satisfactorily. Experience, as we know, has ways of BOILING OVER, and + making us correct our present formulas. + </p> + <p> + The 'absolutely' true, meaning what no farther experience will ever alter, + is that ideal vanishing-point towards which we imagine that all our + temporary truths will some day converge. It runs on all fours with the + perfectly wise man, and with the absolutely complete experience; and, if + these ideals are ever realized, they will all be realized together. + Meanwhile we have to live to-day by what truth we can get to-day, and be + ready to-morrow to call it falsehood. Ptolemaic astronomy, euclidean + space, aristotelian logic, scholastic metaphysics, were expedient for + centuries, but human experience has boiled over those limits, and we now + call these things only relatively true, or true within those borders of + experience. 'Absolutely' they are false; for we know that those limits + were casual, and might have been transcended by past theorists just as + they are by present thinkers. + </p> + <p> + When new experiences lead to retrospective judgments, using the past + tense, what these judgments utter WAS true, even tho no past thinker had + been led there. We live forwards, a Danish thinker has said, but we + understand backwards. The present sheds a backward light on the world's + previous processes. They may have been truth-processes for the actors in + them. They are not so for one who knows the later revelations of the + story. + </p> + <p> + This regulative notion of a potential better truth to be established + later, possibly to be established some day absolutely, and having powers + of retroactive legislation, turns its face, like all pragmatist notions, + towards concreteness of fact, and towards the future. Like the + half-truths, the absolute truth will have to be MADE, made as a relation + incidental to the growth of a mass of verification-experience, to which + the half-true ideas are all along contributing their quota. + </p> + <p> + I have already insisted on the fact that truth is made largely out of + previous truths. Men's beliefs at any time are so much experience funded. + But the beliefs are themselves parts of the sum total of the world's + experience, and become matter, therefore, for the next day's funding + operations. So far as reality means experienceable reality, both it and + the truths men gain about it are everlastingly in process of + mutation-mutation towards a definite goal, it may be—but still + mutation. + </p> + <p> + Mathematicians can solve problems with two variables. On the Newtonian + theory, for instance, acceleration varies with distance, but distance also + varies with acceleration. In the realm of truth-processes facts come + independently and determine our beliefs provisionally. But these beliefs + make us act, and as fast as they do so, they bring into sight or into + existence new facts which re-determine the beliefs accordingly. So the + whole coil and ball of truth, as it rolls up, is the product of a double + influence. Truths emerge from facts; but they dip forward into facts again + and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is + indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are + not TRUE. They simply ARE. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start + and terminate among them. + </p> + <p> + The case is like a snowball's growth, due as it is to the distribution of + the snow on the one hand, and to the successive pushes of the boys on the + other, with these factors co-determining each other incessantly. + </p> + <p> + The most fateful point of difference between being a rationalist and being + a pragmatist is now fully in sight. Experience is in mutation, and our + psychological ascertainments of truth are in mutation—so much + rationalism will allow; but never that either reality itself or truth + itself is mutable. Reality stands complete and ready-made from all + eternity, rationalism insists, and the agreement of our ideas with it is + that unique unanalyzable virtue in them of which she has already told us. + As that intrinsic excellence, their truth has nothing to do with our + experiences. It adds nothing to the content of experience. It makes no + difference to reality itself; it is supervenient, inert, static, a + reflexion merely. It doesn't EXIST, it HOLDS or OBTAINS, it belongs to + another dimension from that of either facts or fact-relations, belongs, in + short, to the epistemological dimension—and with that big word + rationalism closes the discussion. + </p> + <p> + Thus, just as pragmatism faces forward to the future, so does rationalism + here again face backward to a past eternity. True to her inveterate habit, + rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction + once is named, we own an oracular solution. + </p> + <p> + The tremendous pregnancy in the way of consequences for life of this + radical difference of outlook will only become apparent in my later + lectures. I wish meanwhile to close this lecture by showing that + rationalism's sublimity does not save it from inanity. + </p> + <p> + When, namely, you ask rationalists, instead of accusing pragmatism of + desecrating the notion of truth, to define it themselves by saying exactly + what THEY understand by it, the only positive attempts I can think of are + these two: + </p> + <p> + 1. "Truth is just the system of propositions which have an un-conditional + claim to be recognized as valid." [Footnote: A. E. Taylor, Philosophical + Review, vol. xiv, p. 288.] + </p> + <p> + 2. Truth is a name for all those judgments which we find ourselves under + obligation to make by a kind of imperative duty. [Footnote: H. Rickert, + Der Gegenstand der Erkenntniss, chapter on 'Die Urtheilsnothwendigkeit.'] + </p> + <p> + The first thing that strikes one in such definitions is their unutterable + triviality. They are absolutely true, of course, but absolutely + insignificant until you handle them pragmatically. What do you mean by + 'claim' here, and what do you mean by 'duty'? As summary names for the + concrete reasons why thinking in true ways is overwhelmingly expedient and + good for mortal men, it is all right to talk of claims on reality's part + to be agreed with, and of obligations on our part to agree. We feel both + the claims and the obligations, and we feel them for just those reasons. + </p> + <p> + But the rationalists who talk of claim and obligation EXPRESSLY SAY THAT + THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR PRACTICAL INTERESTS OR PERSONAL REASONS. + Our reasons for agreeing are psychological facts, they say, relative to + each thinker, and to the accidents of his life. They are his evidence + merely, they are no part of the life of truth itself. That life transacts + itself in a purely logical or epistemological, as distinguished from a + psychological, dimension, and its claims antedate and exceed all personal + motivations whatsoever. Tho neither man nor God should ever ascertain + truth, the word would still have to be defined as that which OUGHT to be + ascertained and recognized. + </p> + <p> + There never was a more exquisite example of an idea abstracted from the + concretes of experience and then used to oppose and negate what it was + abstracted from. + </p> + <p> + Philosophy and common life abound in similar instances. The + 'sentimentalist fallacy' is to shed tears over abstract justice and + generosity, beauty, etc., and never to know these qualities when you meet + them in the street, because there the circumstances make them vulgar. Thus + I read in the privately printed biography of an eminently rationalistic + mind: "It was strange that with such admiration for beauty in the + abstract, my brother had no enthusiasm for fine architecture, for + beautiful painting, or for flowers." And in almost the last philosophic + work I have read, I find such passages as the following: "Justice is + ideal, solely ideal. Reason conceives that it ought to exist, but + experience shows that it can-not. ... Truth, which ought to be, cannot be. + ... Reason is deformed by experience. As soon as reason enters experience, + it becomes contrary to reason." + </p> + <p> + The rationalist's fallacy here is exactly like the sentimentalist's. Both + extract a quality from the muddy particulars of experience, and find it so + pure when extracted that they contrast it with each and all its muddy + instances as an opposite and higher nature. All the while it is THEIR + nature. It is the nature of truths to be validated, verified. It pays for + our ideas to be validated. Our obligation to seek truth is part of our + general obligation to do what pays. The payments true ideas bring are the + sole why of our duty to follow them. + </p> + <p> + Identical whys exist in the case of wealth and health. Truth makes no + other kind of claim and imposes no other kind of ought than health and + wealth do. All these claims are conditional; the concrete benefits we gain + are what we mean by calling the pursuit a duty. In the case of truth, + untrue beliefs work as perniciously in the long run as true beliefs work + beneficially. Talking abstractly, the quality 'true' may thus be said to + grow absolutely precious, and the quality 'untrue' absolutely damnable: + the one may be called good, the other bad, unconditionally. We ought to + think the true, we ought to shun the false, imperatively. + </p> + <p> + But if we treat all this abstraction literally and oppose it to its mother + soil in experience, see what a preposterous position we work ourselves + into. + </p> + <p> + We cannot then take a step forward in our actual thinking. When shall I + acknowledge this truth and when that? Shall the acknowledgment be loud?—or + silent? If sometimes loud, sometimes silent, which NOW? When may a truth + go into cold-storage in the encyclopedia? and when shall it come out for + battle? Must I constantly be repeating the truth 'twice two are four' + because of its eternal claim on recognition? or is it sometimes + irrelevant? Must my thoughts dwell night and day on my personal sins and + blemishes, because I truly have them?—or may I sink and ignore them + in order to be a decent social unit, and not a mass of morbid melancholy + and apology? + </p> + <p> + It is quite evident that our obligation to acknowledge truth, so far from + being unconditional, is tremendously conditioned. Truth with a big T, and + in the singular, claims abstractly to be recognized, of course; but + concrete truths in the plural need be recognized only when their + recognition is expedient. A truth must always be preferred to a falsehood + when both relate to the situation; but when neither does, truth is as + little of a duty as falsehood. If you ask me what o'clock it is and I tell + you that I live at 95 Irving Street, my answer may indeed be true, but you + don't see why it is my duty to give it. A false address would be as much + to the purpose. + </p> + <p> + With this admission that there are conditions that limit the application + of the abstract imperative, THE PRAGMATISTIC TREATMENT OF TRUTH SWEEPS + BACK UPON US IN ITS FULNESS. Our duty to agree with reality is seen to be + grounded in a perfect jungle of concrete expediencies. + </p> + <p> + When Berkeley had explained what people meant by matter, people thought + that he denied matter's existence. When Messrs. Schiller and Dewey now + explain what people mean by truth, they are accused of denying ITS + existence. These pragmatists destroy all objective standards, critics say, + and put foolishness and wisdom on one level. A favorite formula for + describing Mr. Schiller's doctrines and mine is that we are persons who + think that by saying whatever you find it pleasant to say and calling it + truth you fulfil every pragmatistic requirement. + </p> + <p> + I leave it to you to judge whether this be not an impudent slander. Pent + in, as the pragmatist more than anyone else sees himself to be, between + the whole body of funded truths squeezed from the past and the coercions + of the world of sense about him, who so well as he feels the immense + pressure of objective control under which our minds perform their + operations? If anyone imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its + commandment one day, says Emerson. We have heard much of late of the uses + of the imagination in science. It is high time to urge the use of a little + imagination in philosophy. The unwillingness of some of our critics to + read any but the silliest of possible meanings into our statements is as + discreditable to their imaginations as anything I know in recent + philosophic history. Schiller says the true is that which 'works.' + Thereupon he is treated as one who limits verification to the lowest + material utilities. Dewey says truth is what gives 'satisfaction.' He is + treated as one who believes in calling everything true which, if it were + true, would be pleasant. + </p> + <p> + Our critics certainly need more imagination of realities. I have honestly + tried to stretch my own imagination and to read the best possible meaning + into the rationalist conception, but I have to confess that it still + completely baffles me. The notion of a reality calling on us to 'agree' + with it, and that for no reasons, but simply because its claim is + 'unconditional' or 'transcendent,' is one that I can make neither head nor + tail of. I try to imagine myself as the sole reality in the world, and + then to imagine what more I would 'claim' if I were allowed to. If you + suggest the possibility of my claiming that a mind should come into being + from out of the void inane and stand and COPY me, I can indeed imagine + what the copying might mean, but I can conjure up no motive. What good it + would do me to be copied, or what good it would do that mind to copy me, + if farther consequences are expressly and in principle ruled out as + motives for the claim (as they are by our rationalist authorities) I + cannot fathom. When the Irishman's admirers ran him along to the place of + banquet in a sedan chair with no bottom, he said, "Faith, if it wasn't for + the honor of the thing, I might as well have come on foot." So here: but + for the honor of the thing, I might as well have remained uncopied. + Copying is one genuine mode of knowing (which for some strange reason our + contemporary transcendentalists seem to be tumbling over each other to + repudiate); but when we get beyond copying, and fall back on unnamed forms + of agreeing that are expressly denied to be either copyings or leadings or + fittings, or any other processes pragmatically definable, the WHAT of the + 'agreement' claimed becomes as unintelligible as the why of it. Neither + content nor motive can be imagined for it. It is an absolutely meaningless + abstraction. [Footnote: I am not forgetting that Professor Rickert long + ago gave up the whole notion of truth being founded on agreement with + reality. Reality, according to him, is whatever agrees with truth, and + truth is founded solely on our primal duty. This fantastic flight, + together with Mr. Joachim's candid confession of failure in his book The + Nature of Truth, seems to me to mark the bankruptcy of rationalism when + dealing with this subject. Rickert deals with part of the pragmatistic + position under the head of what he calls 'Relativismus.' I cannot discuss + his text here. Suffice it to say that his argumentation in that chapter is + so feeble as to seem almost incredible in so generally able a writer.] + </p> + <p> + Surely in this field of truth it is the pragmatists and not the + rationalists who are the more genuine defenders of the universe's + rationality. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Lecture VII. — Pragmatism and Humanism + </h2> + <p> + What hardens the heart of everyone I approach with the view of truth + sketched in my last lecture is that typical idol of the tribe, the notion + of THE Truth, conceived as the one answer, determinate and complete, to + the one fixed enigma which the world is believed to propound. For popular + tradition, it is all the better if the answer be oracular, so as itself to + awaken wonder as an enigma of the second order, veiling rather than + revealing what its profundities are supposed to contain. All the great + single-word answers to the world's riddle, such as God, the One, Reason, + Law, Spirit, Matter, Nature, Polarity, the Dialectic Process, the Idea, + the Self, the Oversoul, draw the admiration that men have lavished on them + from this oracular role. By amateurs in philosophy and professionals + alike, the universe is represented as a queer sort of petrified sphinx + whose appeal to man consists in a monotonous challenge to his divining + powers. THE Truth: what a perfect idol of the rationalistic mind! I read + in an old letter—from a gifted friend who died too young—these + words: "In everything, in science, art, morals and religion, there MUST be + one system that is right and EVERY other wrong." How characteristic of the + enthusiasm of a certain stage of youth! At twenty-one we rise to such a + challenge and expect to find the system. It never occurs to most of us + even later that the question 'what is THE truth?' is no real question + (being irrelative to all conditions) and that the whole notion of THE + truth is an abstraction from the fact of truths in the plural, a mere + useful summarizing phrase like THE Latin Language or THE Law. + </p> + <p> + Common-law judges sometimes talk about the law, and school-masters talk + about the latin tongue, in a way to make their hearers think they mean + entities pre-existent to the decisions or to the words and syntax, + determining them unequivocally and requiring them to obey. But the + slightest exercise of reflexion makes us see that, instead of being + principles of this kind, both law and latin are results. Distinctions + between the lawful and the unlawful in conduct, or between the correct and + incorrect in speech, have grown up incidentally among the interactions of + men's experiences in detail; and in no other way do distinctions between + the true and the false in belief ever grow up. Truth grafts itself on + previous truth, modifying it in the process, just as idiom grafts itself + on previous idiom, and law on previous law. Given previous law and a novel + case, and the judge will twist them into fresh law. Previous idiom; new + slang or metaphor or oddity that hits the public taste:—and presto, + a new idiom is made. Previous truth; fresh facts:—and our mind finds + a new truth. + </p> + <p> + All the while, however, we pretend that the eternal is unrolling, that the + one previous justice, grammar or truth is simply fulgurating, and not + being made. But imagine a youth in the courtroom trying cases with his + abstract notion of 'the' law, or a censor of speech let loose among the + theatres with his idea of 'the' mother-tongue, or a professor setting up + to lecture on the actual universe with his rationalistic notion of 'the + Truth' with a big T, and what progress do they make? Truth, law, and + language fairly boil away from them at the least touch of novel fact. + These things MAKE THEMSELVES as we go. Our rights, wrongs, prohibitions, + penalties, words, forms, idioms, beliefs, are so many new creations that + add themselves as fast as history proceeds. Far from being antecedent + principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract + names for its results. + </p> + <p> + Laws and languages at any rate are thus seen to be man-made: things. Mr. + Schiller applies the analogy to beliefs, and proposes the name of + 'Humanism' for the doctrine that to an unascertainable extent our truths + are man-made products too. Human motives sharpen all our questions, human + satisfactions lurk in all our answers, all our formulas have a human + twist. This element is so inextricable in the products that Mr. Schiller + sometimes seems almost to leave it an open question whether there be + anything else. "The world," he says, "is essentially [u lambda nu], it is + what we make of it. It is fruitless to define it by what it originally was + or by what it is apart from us; it IS what is made of it. Hence ... the + world is PLASTIC." [Footnote: Personal Idealism, p. 60.] He adds that we + can learn the limits of the plasticity only by trying, and that we ought + to start as if it were wholly plastic, acting methodically on that + assumption, and stopping only when we are decisively rebuked. + </p> + <p> + This is Mr. Schiller's butt-end-foremost statement of the humanist + position, and it has exposed him to severe attack. I mean to defend the + humanist position in this lecture, so I will insinuate a few remarks at + this point. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Schiller admits as emphatically as anyone the presence of resisting + factors in every actual experience of truth-making, of which the new-made + special truth must take account, and with which it has perforce to + 'agree.' All our truths are beliefs about 'Reality'; and in any particular + belief the reality acts as something independent, as a thing FOUND, not + manufactured. Let me here recall a bit of my last lecture. + </p> + <p> + 'REALITY' IS IN GENERAL WHAT TRUTHS HAVE TO TAKE ACCOUNT OF; [Footnote: + Mr. Taylor in his Elements of Metaphysics uses this excellent pragmatic + definition.] and the FIRST part of reality from this point of view is the + flux of our sensations. Sensations are forced upon us, coming we know not + whence. Over their nature, order, and quantity we have as good as no + control. THEY are neither true nor false; they simply ARE. It is only what + we say about them, only the names we give them, our theories of their + source and nature and remote relations, that may be true or not. + </p> + <p> + The SECOND part of reality, as something that our beliefs must also + obediently take account of, is the RELATIONS that obtain between our + sensations or between their copies in our minds. This part falls into two + sub-parts: 1) the relations that are mutable and accidental, as those of + date and place; and 2) those that are fixed and essential because they are + grounded on the inner natures of their terms—such as likeness and + unlikeness. Both sorts of relation are matters of immediate perception. + Both are 'facts.' But it is the latter kind of fact that forms the more + important sub-part of reality for our theories of knowledge. Inner + relations namely are 'eternal,' are perceived whenever their sensible + terms are compared; and of them our thought—mathematical and logical + thought, so-called—must eternally take account. + </p> + <p> + The THIRD part of reality, additional to these perceptions (tho largely + based upon them), is the PREVIOUS TRUTHS of which every new inquiry takes + account. This third part is a much less obdurately resisting factor: it + often ends by giving way. In speaking of these three portions of reality + as at all times controlling our belief's formation, I am only reminding + you of what we heard in our last hour. + </p> + <p> + Now however fixed these elements of reality may be, we still have a + certain freedom in our dealings with them. Take our sensations. THAT they + are is undoubtedly beyond our control; but WHICH we attend to, note, and + make emphatic in our conclusions depends on our own interests; and, + according as we lay the emphasis here or there, quite different + formulations of truth result. We read the same facts differently. + 'Waterloo,' with the same fixed details, spells a 'victory' for an + englishman; for a frenchman it spells a 'defeat.' So, for an optimist + philosopher the universe spells victory, for a pessimist, defeat. + </p> + <p> + What we say about reality thus depends on the perspective into which we + throw it. The THAT of it is its own; but the WHAT depends on the WHICH; + and the which depends on US. Both the sensational and the relational parts + of reality are dumb: they say absolutely nothing about themselves. We it + is who have to speak for them. This dumbness of sensations has led such + intellectualists as T.H. Green and Edward Caird to shove them almost + beyond the pale of philosophic recognition, but pragmatists refuse to go + so far. A sensation is rather like a client who has given his case to a + lawyer and then has passively to listen in the courtroom to whatever + account of his affairs, pleasant or unpleasant, the lawyer finds it most + expedient to give. + </p> + <p> + Hence, even in the field of sensation, our minds exert a certain arbitrary + choice. By our inclusions and omissions we trace the field's extent; by + our emphasis we mark its foreground and its background; by our order we + read it in this direction or in that. We receive in short the block of + marble, but we carve the statue ourselves. + </p> + <p> + This applies to the 'eternal' parts of reality as well: we shuffle our + perceptions of intrinsic relation and arrange them just as freely. We read + them in one serial order or another, class them in this way or in that, + treat one or the other as more fundamental, until our beliefs about them + form those bodies of truth known as logics, geometries, or arithmetics, in + each and all of which the form and order in which the whole is cast is + flagrantly man-made. + </p> + <p> + Thus, to say nothing of the new FACTS which men add to the matter of + reality by the acts of their own lives, they have already impressed their + mental forms on that whole third of reality which I have called 'previous + truths.' Every hour brings its new percepts, its own facts of sensation + and relation, to be truly taken account of; but the whole of our PAST + dealings with such facts is already funded in the previous truths. It is + therefore only the smallest and recentest fraction of the first two parts + of reality that comes to us without the human touch, and that fraction has + immediately to become humanized in the sense of being squared, + assimilated, or in some way adapted, to the humanized mass already there. + As a matter of fact we can hardly take in an impression at all, in the + absence of a pre-conception of what impressions there may possibly be. + </p> + <p> + When we talk of reality 'independent' of human thinking, then, it seems a + thing very hard to find. It reduces to the notion of what is just entering + into experience, and yet to be named, or else to some imagined aboriginal + presence in experience, before any belief about the presence had arisen, + before any human conception had been applied. It is what is absolutely + dumb and evanescent, the merely ideal limit of our minds. We may glimpse + it, but we never grasp it; what we grasp is always some substitute for it + which previous human thinking has peptonized and cooked for our + consumption. If so vulgar an expression were allowed us, we might say that + wherever we find it, it has been already FAKED. This is what Mr. Schiller + has in mind when he calls independent reality a mere unresisting [u lambda + nu], which IS only to be made over by us. + </p> + <p> + That is Mr. Schiller's belief about the sensible core of reality. We + 'encounter' it (in Mr. Bradley's words) but don't possess it. + Superficially this sounds like Kant's view; but between categories + fulminated before nature began, and categories gradually forming + themselves in nature's presence, the whole chasm between rationalism and + empiricism yawns. To the genuine 'Kantianer' Schiller will always be to + Kant as a satyr to Hyperion. + </p> + <p> + Other pragmatists may reach more positive beliefs about the sensible core + of reality. They may think to get at it in its independent nature, by + peeling off the successive man-made wrappings. They may make theories that + tell us where it comes from and all about it; and if these theories work + satisfactorily they will be true. The transcendental idealists say there + is no core, the finally completed wrapping being reality and truth in one. + Scholasticism still teaches that the core is 'matter.' Professor Bergson, + Heymans, Strong, and others, believe in the core and bravely try to define + it. Messrs. Dewey and Schiller treat it as a 'limit.' Which is the truer + of all these diverse accounts, or of others comparable with them, unless + it be the one that finally proves the most satisfactory? On the one hand + there will stand reality, on the other an account of it which proves + impossible to better or to alter. If the impossibility prove permanent, + the truth of the account will be absolute. Other content of truth than + this I can find nowhere. If the anti-pragmatists have any other meaning, + let them for heaven's sake reveal it, let them grant us access to it! + </p> + <p> + Not BEING reality, but only our belief ABOUT reality, it will contain + human elements, but these will KNOW the non-human element, in the only + sense in which there can be knowledge of anything. Does the river make its + banks, or do the banks make the river? Does a man walk with his right leg + or with his left leg more essentially? Just as impossible may it be to + separate the real from the human factors in the growth of our cognitive + experience. + </p> + <p> + Let this stand as a first brief indication of the humanistic position. + Does it seem paradoxical? If so, I will try to make it plausible by a few + illustrations, which will lead to a fuller acquaintance with the subject. + </p> + <p> + In many familiar objects everyone will recognize the human element. We + conceive a given reality in this way or in that, to suit our purpose, and + the reality passively submits to the conception. You can take the number + 27 as the cube of 3, or as the product of 3 and 9, or as 26 PLUS 1, or 100 + MINUS 73, or in countless other ways, of which one will be just as true as + another. You can take a chessboard as black squares on a white ground, or + as white squares on a black ground, and neither conception is a false one. + You can treat the adjoined figure [Figure of a 'Star of David'] as a star, + as two big triangles crossing each other, as a hexagon with legs set up on + its angles, as six equal triangles hanging together by their tips, etc. + All these treatments are true treatments—the sensible THAT upon the + paper resists no one of them. You can say of a line that it runs east, or + you can say that it runs west, and the line per se accepts both + descriptions without rebelling at the inconsistency. + </p> + <p> + We carve out groups of stars in the heavens, and call them constellations, + and the stars patiently suffer us to do so—tho if they knew what we + were doing, some of them might feel much surprised at the partners we had + given them. We name the same constellation diversely, as Charles's Wain, + the Great Bear, or the Dipper. None of the names will be false, and one + will be as true as another, for all are applicable. + </p> + <p> + In all these cases we humanly make an addition to some sensible reality, + and that reality tolerates the addition. All the additions 'agree' with + the reality; they fit it, while they build it out. No one of them is + false. Which may be treated as the more true, depends altogether on the + human use of it. If the 27 is a number of dollars which I find in a drawer + where I had left 28, it is 28 minus 1. If it is the number of inches in a + shelf which I wish to insert into a cupboard 26 inches wide, it is 26 plus + 1. If I wish to ennoble the heavens by the constellations I see there, + 'Charles's Wain' would be more true than 'Dipper.' My friend Frederick + Myers was humorously indignant that that prodigious star-group should + remind us Americans of nothing but a culinary utensil. + </p> + <p> + What shall we call a THING anyhow? It seems quite arbitrary, for we carve + out everything, just as we carve out constellations, to suit our human + purposes. For me, this whole 'audience' is one thing, which grows now + restless, now attentive. I have no use at present for its individual + units, so I don't consider them. So of an 'army,' of a 'nation.' But in + your own eyes, ladies and gentlemen, to call you 'audience' is an + accidental way of taking you. The permanently real things for you are your + individual persons. To an anatomist, again, those persons are but + organisms, and the real things are the organs. Not the organs, so much as + their constituent cells, say the histologists; not the cells, but their + molecules, say in turn the chemists. + </p> + <p> + We break the flux of sensible reality into things, then, at our will. We + create the subjects of our true as well as of our false propositions. + </p> + <p> + We create the predicates also. Many of the predicates of things express + only the relations of the things to us and to our feelings. Such + predicates of course are human additions. Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and + was a menace to Rome's freedom. He is also an American school-room pest, + made into one by the reaction of our schoolboys on his writings. The added + predicate is as true of him as the earlier ones. + </p> + <p> + You see how naturally one comes to the humanistic principle: you can't + weed out the human contribution. Our nouns and adjectives are all + humanized heirlooms, and in the theories we build them into, the inner + order and arrangement is wholly dictated by human considerations, + intellectual consistency being one of them. Mathematics and logic + themselves are fermenting with human rearrangements; physics, astronomy + and biology follow massive cues of preference. We plunge forward into the + field of fresh experience with the beliefs our ancestors and we have made + already; these determine what we notice; what we notice determines what we + do; what we do again determines what we experience; so from one thing to + another, altho the stubborn fact remains that there IS a sensible flux, + what is true of it seems from first to last to be largely a matter of our + own creation. + </p> + <p> + We build the flux out inevitably. The great question is: does it, with our + additions, rise or fall in value? Are the additions WORTHY or UNWORTHY? + Suppose a universe composed of seven stars, and nothing else but three + human witnesses and their critic. One witness names the stars 'Great + Bear'; one calls them 'Charles's Wain'; one calls them the 'Dipper.' Which + human addition has made the best universe of the given stellar material? + If Frederick Myers were the critic, he would have no hesitation in + 'turning-down' the American witness. + </p> + <p> + Lotze has in several places made a deep suggestion. We naively assume, he + says, a relation between reality and our minds which may be just the + opposite of the true one. Reality, we naturally think, stands ready-made + and complete, and our intellects supervene with the one simple duty of + describing it as it is already. But may not our descriptions, Lotze asks, + be themselves important additions to reality? And may not previous reality + itself be there, far less for the purpose of reappearing unaltered in our + knowledge, than for the very purpose of stimulating our minds to such + additions as shall enhance the universe's total value. "Die erhohung des + vorgefundenen daseins" is a phrase used by Professor Eucken somewhere, + which reminds one of this suggestion by the great Lotze. + </p> + <p> + It is identically our pragmatistic conception. In our cognitive as well as + in our active life we are creative. We ADD, both to the subject and to the + predicate part of reality. The world stands really malleable, waiting to + receive its final touches at our hands. Like the kingdom of heaven, it + suffers human violence willingly. Man ENGENDERS truths upon it. + </p> + <p> + No one can deny that such a role would add both to our dignity and to our + responsibility as thinkers. To some of us it proves a most inspiring + notion. Signer Papini, the leader of italian pragmatism, grows fairly + dithyrambic over the view that it opens, of man's divinely-creative + functions. + </p> + <p> + The import of the difference between pragmatism and rationalism is now in + sight throughout its whole extent. The essential contrast is that for + rationalism reality is ready-made and complete from all eternity, while + for pragmatism it is still in the making, and awaits part of its + complexion from the future. On the one side the universe is absolutely + secure, on the other it is still pursuing its adventures. + </p> + <p> + We have got into rather deep water with this humanistic view, and it is no + wonder that misunderstanding gathers round it. It is accused of being a + doctrine of caprice. Mr. Bradley, for example, says that a humanist, if he + understood his own doctrine, would have to "hold any end however perverted + to be rational if I insist on it personally, and any idea however mad to + be the truth if only some one is resolved that he will have it so." The + humanist view of 'reality,' as something resisting, yet malleable, which + controls our thinking as an energy that must be taken 'account' of + incessantly (tho not necessarily merely COPIED) is evidently a difficult + one to introduce to novices. The situation reminds me of one that I have + personally gone through. I once wrote an essay on our right to believe, + which I unluckily called the WILL to Believe. All the critics, neglecting + the essay, pounced upon the title. Psychologically it was impossible, + morally it was iniquitous. The "will to deceive," the "will to + make-believe," were wittily proposed as substitutes for it. + </p> + <p> + THE ALTERNATIVE BETWEEN PRAGMATISM AND RATIONALISM, IN THE SHAPE IN WHICH + WE NOW HAVE IT BEFORE US, IS NO LONGER A QUESTION IN THE THEORY OF + KNOWLEDGE, IT CONCERNS THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE ITSELF. + </p> + <p> + On the pragmatist side we have only one edition of the universe, + unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places where + thinking beings are at work. + </p> + <p> + On the rationalist side we have a universe in many editions, one real one, + the infinite folio, or edition de luxe, eternally complete; and then the + various finite editions, full of false readings, distorted and mutilated + each in its own way. + </p> + <p> + So the rival metaphysical hypotheses of pluralism and monism here come + back upon us. I will develope their differences during the remainder of + our hour. + </p> + <p> + And first let me say that it is impossible not to see a temperamental + difference at work in the choice of sides. The rationalist mind, radically + taken, is of a doctrinaire and authoritative complexion: the phrase 'must + be' is ever on its lips. The belly-band of its universe must be tight. A + radical pragmatist on the other hand is a happy-go-lucky anarchistic sort + of creature. If he had to live in a tub like Diogenes he wouldn't mind at + all if the hoops were loose and the staves let in the sun. + </p> + <p> + Now the idea of this loose universe affects your typical rationalists in + much the same way as 'freedom of the press' might affect a veteran + official in the russian bureau of censorship; or as 'simplified spelling' + might affect an elderly schoolmistress. It affects him as the swarm of + protestant sects affects a papist onlooker. It appears as backboneless and + devoid of principle as 'opportunism' in politics appears to an + old-fashioned french legitimist, or to a fanatical believer in the divine + right of the people. + </p> + <p> + For pluralistic pragmatism, truth grows up inside of all the finite + experiences. They lean on each other, but the whole of them, if such a + whole there be, leans on nothing. All 'homes' are in finite experience; + finite experience as such is homeless. Nothing outside of the flux secures + the issue of it. It can hope salvation only from its own intrinsic + promises and potencies. + </p> + <p> + To rationalists this describes a tramp and vagrant world, adrift in space, + with neither elephant nor tortoise to plant the sole of its foot upon. It + is a set of stars hurled into heaven without even a centre of gravity to + pull against. In other spheres of life it is true that we have got used to + living in a state of relative insecurity. The authority of 'the State,' + and that of an absolute 'moral law,' have resolved themselves into + expediencies, and holy church has resolved itself into 'meeting-houses.' + Not so as yet within the philosophic class-rooms. A universe with such as + US contributing to create its truth, a world delivered to OUR opportunisms + and OUR private judgments! Home-rule for Ireland would be a millennium in + comparison. We're no more fit for such a part than the Filipinos are 'fit + for self-government.' Such a world would not be RESPECTABLE, + philosophically. It is a trunk without a tag, a dog without a collar, in + the eyes of most professors of philosophy. + </p> + <p> + What then would tighten this loose universe, according to the professors? + </p> + <p> + Something to support the finite many, to tie it to, to unify and anchor + it. Something unexposed to accident, something eternal and unalterable. + The mutable in experience must be founded on immutability. Behind our de + facto world, our world in act, there must be a de jure duplicate fixed and + previous, with all that can happen here already there in posse, every drop + of blood, every smallest item, appointed and provided, stamped and + branded, without chance of variation. The negatives that haunt our ideals + here below must be themselves negated in the absolutely Real. This alone + makes the universe solid. This is the resting deep. We live upon the + stormy surface; but with this our anchor holds, for it grapples rocky + bottom. This is Wordsworth's "central peace subsisting at the heart of + endless agitation." This is Vivekananda's mystical One of which I read to + you. This is Reality with the big R, reality that makes the timeless + claim, reality to which defeat can't happen. This is what the men of + principles, and in general all the men whom I called tender-minded in my + first lecture, think themselves obliged to postulate. + </p> + <p> + And this, exactly this, is what the tough-minded of that lecture find + themselves moved to call a piece of perverse abstraction-worship. The + tough-minded are the men whose alpha and omega are FACTS. Behind the bare + phenomenal facts, as my tough-minded old friend Chauncey Wright, the great + Harvard empiricist of my youth, used to say, there is NOTHING. When a + rationalist insists that behind the facts there is the GROUND of the + facts, the POSSIBILITY of the facts, the tougher empiricists accuse him of + taking the mere name and nature of a fact and clapping it behind the fact + as a duplicate entity to make it possible. That such sham grounds are + often invoked is notorious. At a surgical operation I heard a bystander + ask a doctor why the patient breathed so deeply. "Because ether is a + respiratory stimulant," the doctor answered. "Ah!" said the questioner, as + if relieved by the explanation. But this is like saying that cyanide of + potassium kills because it is a 'poison,' or that it is so cold to-night + because it is 'winter,' or that we have five fingers because we are + 'pentadactyls.' These are but names for the facts, taken from the facts, + and then treated as previous and explanatory. The tender-minded notion of + an absolute reality is, according to the radically tough-minded, framed on + just this pattern. It is but our summarizing name for the whole spread-out + and strung-along mass of phenomena, treated as if it were a different + entity, both one and previous. + </p> + <p> + You see how differently people take things. The world we live in exists + diffused and distributed, in the form of an indefinitely numerous lot of + eaches, coherent in all sorts of ways and degrees; and the tough-minded + are perfectly willing to keep them at that valuation. They can stand that + kind of world, their temper being well adapted to its insecurity. Not so + the tender-minded party. They must back the world we find ourselves born + into by "another and a better" world in which the eaches form an All and + the All a One that logically presupposes, co-implicates, and secures each + EACH without exception. + </p> + <p> + Must we as pragmatists be radically tough-minded? or can we treat the + absolute edition of the world as a legitimate hypothesis? It is certainly + legitimate, for it is thinkable, whether we take it in its abstract or in + its concrete shape. + </p> + <p> + By taking it abstractly I mean placing it behind our finite life as we + place the word 'winter' behind to-night's cold weather. 'Winter' is only + the name for a certain number of days which we find generally + characterized by cold weather, but it guarantees nothing in that line, for + our thermometer to-morrow may soar into the 70's. Nevertheless the word is + a useful one to plunge forward with into the stream of our experience. It + cuts off certain probabilities and sets up others: you can put away your + straw-hats; you can unpack your arctics. It is a summary of things to look + for. It names a part of nature's habits, and gets you ready for their + continuation. It is a definite instrument abstracted from experience, a + conceptual reality that you must take account of, and which reflects you + totally back into sensible realities. The pragmatist is the last person to + deny the reality of such abstractions. They are so much past experience + funded. + </p> + <p> + But taking the absolute edition of the world concretely means a different + hypothesis. Rationalists take it concretely and OPPOSE it to the world's + finite editions. They give it a particular nature. It is perfect, + finished. Everything known there is known along with everything else; + here, where ignorance reigns, far otherwise. If there is want there, there + also is the satisfaction provided. Here all is process; that world is + timeless. Possibilities obtain in our world; in the absolute world, where + all that is NOT is from eternity impossible, and all that IS is necessary, + the category of possibility has no application. In this world crimes and + horrors are regrettable. In that totalized world regret obtains not, for + "the existence of ill in the temporal order is the very condition of the + perfection of the eternal order." + </p> + <p> + Once more, either hypothesis is legitimate in pragmatist eyes, for either + has its uses. Abstractly, or taken like the word winter, as a memorandum + of past experience that orients us towards the future, the notion of the + absolute world is indispensable. Concretely taken, it is also + indispensable, at least to certain minds, for it determines them + religiously, being often a thing to change their lives by, and by changing + their lives, to change whatever in the outer order depends on them. + </p> + <p> + We cannot therefore methodically join the tough minds in their rejection + of the whole notion of a world beyond our finite experience. One + misunderstanding of pragmatism is to identify it with positivistic + tough-mindedness, to suppose that it scorns every rationalistic notion as + so much jabber and gesticulation, that it loves intellectual anarchy as + such and prefers a sort of wolf-world absolutely unpent and wild and + without a master or a collar to any philosophic class-room product, + whatsoever. I have said so much in these lectures against the over-tender + forms of rationalism, that I am prepared for some misunderstanding here, + but I confess that the amount of it that I have found in this very + audience surprises me, for I have simultaneously defended rationalistic + hypotheses so far as these re-direct you fruitfully into experience. + </p> + <p> + For instance I receive this morning this question on a post-card: "Is a + pragmatist necessarily a complete materialist and agnostic?" One of my + oldest friends, who ought to know me better, writes me a letter that + accuses the pragmatism I am recommending, of shutting out all wider + metaphysical views and condemning us to the most terre-a-terre naturalism. + Let me read you some extracts from it. + </p> + <p> + "It seems to me," my friend writes, "that the pragmatic objection to + pragmatism lies in the fact that it might accentuate the narrowness of + narrow minds. + </p> + <p> + "Your call to the rejection of the namby-pamby and the wishy-washy is of + course inspiring. But although it is salutary and stimulating to be told + that one should be responsible for the immediate issues and bearings of + his words and thoughts, I decline to be deprived of the pleasure and + profit of dwelling also on remoter bearings and issues, and it is the + TENDENCY of pragmatism to refuse this privilege. + </p> + <p> + "In short, it seems to me that the limitations, or rather the dangers, of + the pragmatic tendency, are analogous to those which beset the unwary + followers of the 'natural sciences.' Chemistry and physics are eminently + pragmatic and many of their devotees, smugly content with the data that + their weights and measures furnish, feel an infinite pity and disdain for + all students of philosophy and meta-physics, whomsoever. And of course + everything can be expressed—after a fashion, and 'theoretically'—in + terms of chemistry and physics, that is, EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE VITAL + PRINCIPLE OF THE WHOLE, and that, they say, there is no pragmatic use in + trying to express; it has no bearings—FOR THEM. I for my part refuse + to be persuaded that we cannot look beyond the obvious pluralism of the + naturalist and the pragmatist to a logical unity in which they take no + interest." + </p> + <p> + How is such a conception of the pragmatism I am advocating possible, after + my first and second lectures? I have all along been offering it expressly + as a mediator between tough-mindedness and tender-mindedness. If the + notion of a world ante rem, whether taken abstractly like the word winter, + or concretely as the hypothesis of an Absolute, can be shown to have any + consequences whatever for our life, it has a meaning. If the meaning + works, it will have SOME truth that ought to be held to through all + possible reformulations, for pragmatism. + </p> + <p> + The absolutistic hypothesis, that perfection is eternal, aboriginal, and + most real, has a perfectly definite meaning, and it works religiously. To + examine how, will be the subject of my next and final lecture. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + Lecture VIII. — Pragmatism and Religion + </h2> + <p> + At the close of the last lecture I reminded you of the first one, in which + I had opposed tough-mindedness to tender-mindedness and recommended + pragmatism as their mediator. Tough-mindedness positively rejects + tender-mindedness's hypothesis of an eternal perfect edition of the + universe coexisting with our finite experience. + </p> + <p> + On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences + useful to life flow from it. Universal conceptions, as things to take + account of, may be as real for pragmatism as particular sensations are. + They have indeed no meaning and no reality if they have no use. But if + they have any use they have that amount of meaning. And the meaning will + be true if the use squares well with life's other uses. + </p> + <p> + Well, the use of the Absolute is proved by the whole course of men's + religious history. The eternal arms are then beneath. Remember + Vivekananda's use of the Atman: it is indeed not a scientific use, for we + can make no particular deductions from it. It is emotional and spiritual + altogether. + </p> + <p> + It is always best to discuss things by the help of concrete examples. Let + me read therefore some of those verses entitled "To You" by Walt Whitman—"You" + of course meaning the reader or hearer of the poem whosoever he or she may + be. + </p> + <p> + Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem; I + whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, + but I love none better than you. + </p> + <p> + O I have been dilatory and dumb; I should have made my way straight to you + long ago; I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted + nothing but you. + </p> + <p> + I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you; None have understood + you, but I understand you; None have done justice to you—you have + not done justice to yourself; None but have found you imperfect—I + only find no imperfection in you. + </p> + <p> + O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known + what you are—you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life; What + you have done returns already in mockeries. + </p> + <p> + But the mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see you + lurk; I pursue you where none else has pursued you; Silence, the desk, the + flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine, if these conceal + you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me; The + shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk + others, they do not balk me, The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, + drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside. + </p> + <p> + There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; There is + no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you; No pluck, no + endurance in others, but as good is in you; No pleasure waiting for + others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. + </p> + <p> + Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! These shows of the east and + west are tame, compared to you; These immense meadows—these + interminable rivers—you are immense and interminable as they; You + are he or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in + your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution. + </p> + <p> + The hopples fall from your ankles—you find an unfailing sufficiency; + Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever + you are promulges itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the means + are provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition, + ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way. + </p> + <p> + Verily a fine and moving poem, in any case, but there are two ways of + taking it, both useful. + </p> + <p> + One is the monistic way, the mystical way of pure cosmic emotion. The + glories and grandeurs, they are yours absolutely, even in the midst of + your defacements. Whatever may happen to you, whatever you may appear to + be, inwardly you are safe. Look back, LIE back, on your true principle of + being! This is the famous way of quietism, of indifferentism. Its enemies + compare it to a spiritual opium. Yet pragmatism must respect this way, for + it has massive historic vindication. + </p> + <p> + But pragmatism sees another way to be respected also, the pluralistic way + of interpreting the poem. The you so glorified, to which the hymn is sung, + may mean your better possibilities phenomenally taken, or the specific + redemptive effects even of your failures, upon yourself or others. It may + mean your loyalty to the possibilities of others whom you admire and love + so, that you are willing to accept your own poor life, for it is that + glory's partner. You can at least appreciate, applaud, furnish the + audience, of so brave a total world. Forget the low in yourself, then, + think only of the high. Identify your life therewith; then, through + angers, losses, ignorance, ennui, whatever you thus make yourself, + whatever you thus most deeply are, picks its way. + </p> + <p> + In either way of taking the poem, it encourages fidelity to ourselves. + Both ways satisfy; both sanctify the human flux. Both paint the portrait + of the YOU on a gold-background. But the background of the first way is + the static One, while in the second way it means possibles in the plural, + genuine possibles, and it has all the restlessness of that conception. + </p> + <p> + Noble enough is either way of reading the poem; but plainly the + pluralistic way agrees with the pragmatic temper best, for it immediately + suggests an infinitely larger number of the details of future experience + to our mind. It sets definite activities in us at work. Altho this second + way seems prosaic and earthborn in comparison with the first way, yet no + one can accuse it of tough-mindedness in any brutal sense of the term. Yet + if, as pragmatists, you should positively set up the second way AGAINST + the first way, you would very likely be misunderstood. You would be + accused of denying nobler conceptions, and of being an ally of + tough-mindedness in the worst sense. + </p> + <p> + You remember the letter from a member of this audience from which I read + some extracts at our previous meeting. Let me read you an additional + extract now. It shows a vagueness in realizing the alternatives before us + which I think is very widespread. + </p> + <p> + "I believe," writes my friend and correspondent, "in pluralism; I believe + that in our search for truth we leap from one floating cake of ice to + another, on an infinite sea, and that by each of our acts we make new + truths possible and old ones impossible; I believe that each man is + responsible for making the universe better, and that if he does not do + this it will be in so far left undone. + </p> + <p> + "Yet at the same time I am willing to endure that my children should be + incurably sick and suffering (as they are not) and I myself stupid and yet + with brains enough to see my stupidity, only on one condition, namely, + that through the construction, in imagination and by reasoning, of a + RATIONAL UNITY OF ALL THINGS, I can conceive my acts and my thoughts and + my troubles as SUPPLEMENTED: BY ALL THE OTHER PHENOMENA OF THE WORLD, AND + AS FORMING—WHEN THUS SUPPLEMENTED—A SCHEME WHICH I APPROVE AND + ADOPT AS MY I OWN; and for my part I refuse to be persuaded that we cannot + look beyond the obvious pluralism of the naturalist and pragmatist to a + logical unity in which they take no interest or stock." + </p> + <p> + Such a fine expression of personal faith warms the heart of the hearer. + But how much does it clear his philosophic head? Does the writer + consistently favor the monistic, or the pluralistic, interpretation of the + world's poem? His troubles become atoned for WHEN THUS SUPPLEMENTED, he + says, supplemented, that is, by all the remedies that THE OTHER PHENOMENA + may supply. Obviously here the writer faces forward into the particulars + of experience, which he interprets in a pluralistic-melioristic way. + </p> + <p> + But he believes himself to face backward. He speaks of what he calls the + rational UNITY of things, when all the while he really means their + possible empirical UNIFICATION. He supposes at the same time that the + pragmatist, because he criticizes rationalism's abstract One, is cut off + from the consolation of believing in the saving possibilities of the + concrete many. He fails in short to distinguish between taking the world's + perfection as a necessary principle, and taking it only as a possible + terminus ad quem. + </p> + <p> + I regard the writer of this letter as a genuine pragmatist, but as a + pragmatist sans le savoir. He appears to me as one of that numerous class + of philosophic amateurs whom I spoke of in my first lecture, as wishing to + have all the good things going, without being too careful as to how they + agree or disagree. "Rational unity of all things" is so inspiring a + formula, that he brandishes it offhand, and abstractly accuses pluralism + of conflicting with it (for the bare names do conflict), altho concretely + he means by it just the pragmatistically unified and ameliorated world. + Most of us remain in this essential vagueness, and it is well that we + should; but in the interest of clear-headedness it is well that some of us + should go farther, so I will try now to focus a little more + discriminatingly on this particular religious point. + </p> + <p> + Is then this you of yous, this absolutely real world, this unity that + yields the moral inspiration and has the religious value, to be taken + monistically or pluralistically? Is it ante rem or in rebus? Is it a + principle or an end, an absolute or an ultimate, a first or a last? Does + it make you look forward or lie back? It is certainly worth while not to + clump the two things together, for if discriminated, they have decidedly + diverse meanings for life. + </p> + <p> + Please observe that the whole dilemma revolves pragmatically about the + notion of the world's possibilities. Intellectually, rationalism invokes + its absolute principle of unity as a ground of possibility for the many + facts. Emotionally, it sees it as a container and limiter of + possibilities, a guarantee that the upshot shall be good. Taken in this + way, the absolute makes all good things certain, and all bad things + impossible (in the eternal, namely), and may be said to transmute the + entire category of possibility into categories more secure. One sees at + this point that the great religious difference lies between the men who + insist that the world MUST AND SHALL BE, and those who are contented with + believing that the world MAY BE, saved. The whole clash of rationalistic + and empiricist religion is thus over the validity of possibility. It is + necessary therefore to begin by focusing upon that word. What may the word + 'possible' definitely mean? + </p> + <p> + To unreflecting men the possible means a sort of third estate of being, + less real than existence, more real than non-existence, a twilight realm, + a hybrid status, a limbo into which and out of which realities ever and + anon are made to pass. Such a conception is of course too vague and + nondescript to satisfy us. Here, as elsewhere, the only way to extract a + term's meaning is to use the pragmatic method on it. When you say that a + thing is possible, what difference does it make? + </p> + <p> + It makes at least this difference that if anyone calls it impossible you + can contradict him, if anyone calls it actual you can contradict HIM, and + if anyone calls it necessary you can contradict him too. But these + privileges of contradiction don't amount to much. When you say a thing is + possible, does not that make some farther difference in terms of actual + fact? + </p> + <p> + It makes at least this negative difference that if the statement be true, + it follows that there is nothing extant capable of preventing the possible + thing. The absence of real grounds of interference may thus be said to + make things not impossible, possible therefore in the bare or abstract + sense. + </p> + <p> + But most possibles are not bare, they are concretely grounded, or + well-grounded, as we say. What does this mean pragmatically? It means, not + only that there are no preventive conditions present, but that some of the + conditions of production of the possible thing actually are here. Thus a + concretely possible chicken means: (1) that the idea of chicken contains + no essential self-contradiction; (2) that no boys, skunks, or other + enemies are about; and (3) that at least an actual egg exists. Possible + chicken means actual egg—plus actual sitting hen, or incubator, or + what not. As the actual conditions approach completeness the chicken + becomes a better-and-better-grounded possibility. When the conditions are + entirely complete, it ceases to be a possibility, and turns into an actual + fact. + </p> + <p> + Let us apply this notion to the salvation of the world. What does it + pragmatically mean to say that this is possible? It means that some of the + conditions of the world's deliverance do actually exist. The more of them + there are existent, the fewer preventing conditions you can find, the + better-grounded is the salvation's possibility, the more PROBABLE does the + fact of the deliverance become. + </p> + <p> + So much for our preliminary look at possibility. + </p> + <p> + Now it would contradict the very spirit of life to say that our minds must + be indifferent and neutral in questions like that of the world's + salvation. Anyone who pretends to be neutral writes himself down here as a + fool and a sham. We all do wish to minimize the insecurity of the + universe; we are and ought to be unhappy when we regard it as exposed to + every enemy and open to every life-destroying draft. Nevertheless there + are unhappy men who think the salvation of the world impossible. Theirs is + the doctrine known as pessimism. + </p> + <p> + Optimism in turn would be the doctrine that thinks the world's salvation + inevitable. + </p> + <p> + Midway between the two there stands what may be called the doctrine of + meliorism, tho it has hitherto figured less as a doctrine than as an + attitude in human affairs. Optimism has always been the regnant DOCTRINE + in european philosophy. Pessimism was only recently introduced by + Schopenhauer and counts few systematic defenders as yet. Meliorism treats + salvation as neither inevitable nor impossible. It treats it as a + possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more + numerous the actual conditions of salvation become. + </p> + <p> + It is clear that pragmatism must incline towards meliorism. Some + conditions of the world's salvation are actually extant, and she cannot + possibly close her eyes to this fact: and should the residual conditions + come, salvation would become an accomplished reality. Naturally the terms + I use here are exceedingly summary. You may interpret the word 'salvation' + in any way you like, and make it as diffuse and distributive, or as + climacteric and integral a phenomenon as you please. + </p> + <p> + Take, for example, any one of us in this room with the ideals which he + cherishes, and is willing to live and work for. Every such ideal realized + will be one moment in the world's salvation. But these particular ideals + are not bare abstract possibilities. They are grounded, they are LIVE + possibilities, for we are their live champions and pledges, and if the + complementary conditions come and add themselves, our ideals will become + actual things. What now are the complementary conditions? They are first + such a mixture of things as will in the fulness of time give us a chance, + a gap that we can spring into, and, finally, OUR ACT. + </p> + <p> + Does our act then CREATE the world's salvation so far as it makes room for + itself, so far as it leaps into the gap? Does it create, not the whole + world's salvation of course, but just so much of this as itself covers of + the world's extent? + </p> + <p> + Here I take the bull by the horns, and in spite of the whole crew of + rationalists and monists, of whatever brand they be, I ask WHY NOT? Our + acts, our turning-places, where we seem to ourselves to make ourselves and + grow, are the parts of the world to which we are closest, the parts of + which our knowledge is the most intimate and complete. Why should we not + take them at their face-value? Why may they not be the actual + turning-places and growing-places which they seem to be, of the world—why + not the workshop of being, where we catch fact in the making, so that + nowhere may the world grow in any other kind of way than this? + </p> + <p> + Irrational! we are told. How can new being come in local spots and patches + which add themselves or stay away at random, independently of the rest? + There must be a reason for our acts, and where in the last resort can any + reason be looked for save in the material pressure or the logical + compulsion of the total nature of the world? There can be but one real + agent of growth, or seeming growth, anywhere, and that agent is the + integral world itself. It may grow all-over, if growth there be, but that + single parts should grow per se is irrational. + </p> + <p> + But if one talks of rationality and of reasons for things, and insists + that they can't just come in spots, what KIND of a reason can there + ultimately be why anything should come at all? Talk of logic and necessity + and categories and the absolute and the contents of the whole + philosophical machine-shop as you will, the only REAL reason I can think + of why anything should ever come is that someone wishes it to be here. It + is DEMANDED, demanded, it may be, to give relief to no matter how small a + fraction of the world's mass. This is living reason, and compared with it + material causes and logical necessities are spectral things. + </p> + <p> + In short the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, + the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled instanter, without + having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers. This is + the Absolute's own world. He calls upon the phenomenal world to be, and it + IS, exactly as he calls for it, no other condition being required. In our + world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition. Other + individuals are there with other wishes and they must be propitiated + first. So Being grows under all sorts of resistances in this world of the + many, and, from compromise to compromise, only gets organized gradually + into what may be called secondarily rational shape. We approach the + wishing-cap type of organization only in a few departments of life. We + want water and we turn a faucet. We want a kodak-picture and we press a + button. We want information and we telephone. We want to travel and we buy + a ticket. In these and similar cases, we hardly need to do more than the + wishing—the world is rationally organized to do the rest. + </p> + <p> + But this talk of rationality is a parenthesis and a digression. What we + were discussing was the idea of a world growing not integrally but + piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts. Take the hypothesis + seriously and as a live one. Suppose that the world's author put the case + to you before creation, saying: "I am going to make a world not certain to + be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the + condition being that each several agent does its own 'level best.' I offer + you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is + unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win + through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. + Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other + agents enough to face the risk?" + </p> + <p> + Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were + proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you say + that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and + irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of + nonentity from which you had been momentarily aroused by the tempter's + voice? + </p> + <p> + Of course if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the + sort. There is a healthy-minded buoyancy in most of us which such a + universe would exactly fit. We would therefore accept the offer—"Top! + und schlag auf schlag!" It would be just like the world we practically + live in; and loyalty to our old nurse Nature would forbid us to say no. + The world proposed would seem 'rational' to us in the most living way. + </p> + <p> + Most of us, I say, would therefore welcome the proposition and add our + fiat to the fiat of the creator. Yet perhaps some would not; for there are + morbid minds in every human collection, and to them the prospect of a + universe with only a fighting chance of safety would probably make no + appeal. There are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick of + self and tired of vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we fall + into the attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chances of things. + We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father's neck, + and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the + river or the sea. + </p> + <p> + The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments is security + against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana + means safety from this everlasting round of adventures of which the world + of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist, for this is essentially + their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of + life. + </p> + <p> + And to men of this complexion, religious monism comes with its consoling + words: "All is needed and essential—even you with your sick soul and + heart. All are one with God, and with God all is well. The everlasting + arms are beneath, whether in the world of finite appearances you seem to + fail or to succeed." There can be no doubt that when men are reduced to + their last sick extremity absolutism is the only saving scheme. + Pluralistic moralism simply makes their teeth chatter, it refrigerates the + very heart within their breast. + </p> + <p> + So we see concretely two types of religion in sharp contrast. Using our + old terms of comparison, we may say that the absolutistic scheme appeals + to the tender-minded while the pluralistic scheme appeals to the tough. + Many persons would refuse to call the pluralistic scheme religious at all. + They would call it moralistic, and would apply the word religious to the + monistic scheme alone. Religion in the sense of self-surrender, and + moralism in the sense of self-sufficingness, have been pitted against each + other as incompatibles frequently enough in the history of human thought. + </p> + <p> + We stand here before the final question of philosophy. I said in my fourth + lecture that I believed the monistic-pluralistic alternative to be the + deepest and most pregnant question that our minds can frame. Can it be + that the disjunction is a final one? that only one side can be true? Are a + pluralism and monism genuine incompatibles? So that, if the world were + really pluralistically constituted, if it really existed distributively + and were made up of a lot of eaches, it could only be saved piecemeal and + de facto as the result of their behavior, and its epic history in no wise + short-circuited by some essential oneness in which the severalness were + already 'taken up' beforehand and eternally 'overcome'? If this were so, + we should have to choose one philosophy or the other. We could not say + 'yes, yes' to both alternatives. There would have to be a 'no' in our + relations with the possible. We should confess an ultimate disappointment: + we could not remain healthy-minded and sick-minded in one indivisible act. + </p> + <p> + Of course as human beings we can be healthy minds on one day and sick + souls on the next; and as amateur dabblers in philosophy we may perhaps be + allowed to call ourselves monistic pluralists, or free-will determinists, + or whatever else may occur to us of a reconciling kind. But as + philosophers aiming at clearness and consistency, and feeling the + pragmatistic need of squaring truth with truth, the question is forced + upon us of frankly adopting either the tender or the robustious type of + thought. In particular THIS query has always come home to me: May not the + claims of tender-mindedness go too far? May not the notion of a world + already saved in toto anyhow, be too saccharine to stand? May not + religious optimism be too idyllic? Must ALL be saved? Is NO price to be + paid in the work of salvation? Is the last word sweet? Is all 'yes, yes' + in the universe? Doesn't the fact of 'no' stand at the very core of life? + Doesn't the very 'seriousness' that we attribute to life mean that + ineluctable noes and losses form a part of it, that there are genuine + sacrifices somewhere, and that something permanently drastic and bitter + always remains at the bottom of its cup? + </p> + <p> + I can not speak officially as a pragmatist here; all I can say is that my + own pragmatism offers no objection to my taking sides with this more + moralistic view, and giving up the claim of total reconciliation. The + possibility of this is involved in the pragmatistic willingness to treat + pluralism as a serious hypothesis. In the end it is our faith and not our + logic that decides such questions, and I deny the right of any pretended + logic to veto my own faith. I find myself willing to take the universe to + be really dangerous and adventurous, without therefore backing out and + crying 'no play.' I am willing to think that the prodigal-son attitude, + open to us as it is in many vicissitudes, is not the right and final + attitude towards the whole of life. I am willing that there should be real + losses and real losers, and no total preservation of all that is. I can + believe in the ideal as an ultimate, not as an origin, and as an extract, + not the whole. When the cup is poured off, the dregs are left behind + forever, but the possibility of what is poured off is sweet enough to + accept. + </p> + <p> + As a matter of fact countless human imaginations live in this moralistic + and epic kind of a universe, and find its disseminated and strung-along + successes sufficient for their rational needs. There is a finely + translated epigram in the greek anthology which admirably expresses this + state of mind, this acceptance of loss as unatoned for, even tho the lost + element might be one's self: + </p> + <p> + "A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast, Bids you set sail. Full many + a gallant bark, when we were lost, Weathered the gale." + </p> + <p> + Those puritans who answered 'yes' to the question: Are you willing to be + damned for God's glory? were in this objective and magnanimous condition + of mind. The way of escape from evil on this system is NOT by getting it + 'aufgehoben,' or preserved in the whole as an element essential but + 'overcome.' It is by dropping it out altogether, throwing it overboard and + getting beyond it, helping to make a universe that shall forget its very + place and name. + </p> + <p> + It is then perfectly possible to accept sincerely a drastic kind of a + universe from which the element of 'seriousness' is not to be expelled. + Whoso does so is, it seems to me, a genuine pragmatist. He is willing to + live on a scheme of uncertified possibilities which he trusts; willing to + pay with his own person, if need be, for the realization of the ideals + which he frames. + </p> + <p> + What now actually ARE the other forces which he trusts to co-operate with + him, in a universe of such a type? They are at least his fellow men, in + the stage of being which our actual universe has reached. But are there + not superhuman forces also, such as religious men of the pluralistic type + we have been considering have always believed in? Their words may have + sounded monistic when they said "there is no God but God"; but the + original polytheism of mankind has only imperfectly and vaguely sublimated + itself into monotheism, and monotheism itself, so far as it was religious + and not a scheme of class-room instruction for the metaphysicians, has + always viewed God as but one helper, primus inter pares, in the midst of + all the shapers of the great world's fate. + </p> + <p> + I fear that my previous lectures, confined as they have been to human and + humanistic aspects, may have left the impression on many of you that + pragmatism means methodically to leave the superhuman out. I have shown + small respect indeed for the Absolute, and I have until this moment spoken + of no other superhuman hypothesis but that. But I trust that you see + sufficiently that the Absolute has nothing but its superhumanness in + common with the theistic God. On pragmatistic principles, if the + hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it + is true. Now whatever its residual difficulties may be, experience shows + that it certainly does work, and that the problem is to build it out and + determine it, so that it will combine satisfactorily with all the other + working truths. I cannot start upon a whole theology at the end of this + last lecture; but when I tell you that I have written a book on men's + religious experience, which on the whole has been regarded as making for + the reality of God, you will perhaps exempt my own pragmatism from the + charge of being an atheistic system. I firmly disbelieve, myself, that our + human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe. + I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of + the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. + They inhabit our drawing-rooms and libraries. They take part in scenes of + whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves + of history the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond + their ken. So we are tangents to the wider life of things. But, just as + many of the dog's and cat's ideals coincide with our ideals, and the dogs + and cats have daily living proof of the fact, so we may well believe, on + the proofs that religious experience affords, that higher powers exist and + are at work to save the world on ideal lines similar to our own. + </p> + <p> + You see that pragmatism can be called religious, if you allow that + religion can be pluralistic or merely melioristic in type. But whether you + will finally put up with that type of religion or not is a question that + only you yourself can decide. Pragmatism has to postpone dogmatic answer, + for we do not yet know certainly which type of religion is going to work + best in the long run. The various overbeliefs of men, their several + faith-ventures, are in fact what are needed to bring the evidence in. You + will probably make your own ventures severally. If radically tough, the + hurly-burly of the sensible facts of nature will be enough for you, and + you will need no religion at all. If radically tender, you will take up + with the more monistic form of religion: the pluralistic form, with its + reliance on possibilities that are not necessities, will not seem to + afford you security enough. + </p> + <p> + But if you are neither tough nor tender in an extreme and radical sense, + but mixed as most of us are, it may seem to you that the type of + pluralistic and moralistic religion that I have offered is as good a + religious synthesis as you are likely to find. Between the two extremes of + crude naturalism on the one hand and transcendental absolutism on the + other, you may find that what I take the liberty of calling the + pragmatistic or melioristic type of theism is exactly what you require. + </p> + <p> + The End + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pragmatism, by William James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRAGMATISM *** + +***** This file should be named 5116-h.htm or 5116-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/1/5116/ + + +Text file produced by Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + +HTML file produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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