{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_5116/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_5116","id":"gutenberg_5116","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5116","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Pragmatism"],"text":"Produced by Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPRAGMATISM\n\nA New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking\n\nBy William James\n\n\nTo the Memory of John Stuart Mill\n\nfrom whom I first learned the pragmatic openness of mind and whom my\nfancy likes to picture as our leader were he alive to-day.\n\n\n\n\nPreface\n\nThe lectures that follow were delivered at the Lowell Institute in\nBoston in November and December, 1906, and in January, 1907, at\nColumbia University, in New York. They are printed as delivered, without\ndevelopments or notes. The pragmatic movement, so-called--I do not like\nthe name, but apparently it is too late to change it--seems to have\nrather suddenly precipitated itself out of the air. A number of\ntendencies that have always existed in philosophy have all at once\nbecome conscious of themselves collectively, and of their combined\nmission; and this has occurred in so many countries, and from so many\ndifferent points of view, that much unconcerted statement has resulted.\nI have sought to unify the picture as it presents itself to my own eyes,\ndealing in broad strokes, and avoiding minute controversy. Much futile\ncontroversy might have been avoided, I believe, if our critics had been\nwilling to wait until we got our message fairly out.\n\nIf my lectures interest any reader in the general subject, he will\ndoubtless wish to read farther. I therefore give him a few references.\n\nIn America, John Dewey's 'Studies in Logical Theory' are the foundation.\nRead also by Dewey the articles in the Philosophical Review, vol.\nxv, pp. 113 and 465, in Mind, vol. xv, p. 293, and in the Journal of\nPhilosophy, vol. iv, p. 197.\n\nProbably the best statements to begin with however, are F. C. S.\nSchiller's in his 'Studies in Humanism,' especially the essays numbered\ni, v, vi, vii, xviii and xix. His previous essays and in general\nthe polemic literature of the subject are fully referred to in his\nfootnotes.\n\nFurthermore, see G. Milhaud: le Rationnel, 1898, and the fine articles\nby Le Roy in the Revue de Metaphysique, vols. 7, 8 and 9. Also articles\nby Blondel and de Sailly in the Annales de Philosophie Chretienne, 4me\nSerie, vols. 2 and 3. Papini announces a book on Pragmatism, in the\nFrench language, to be published very soon.\n\nTo avoid one misunderstanding at least, let me say that there is no\nlogical connexion between pragmatism, as I understand it, and a doctrine\nwhich I have recently set forth as 'radical empiricism.' The latter\nstands on its own feet. One may entirely reject it and still be a\npragmatist.\n\nHarvard University, April, 1907.\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\nLecture I\n\nThe Present Dilemma in Philosophy\n\nChesterton quoted. Everyone has a philosophy. Temperament is a factor in\nall philosophizing. Rationalists and empiricists. The tender-minded\nand the tough-minded. Most men wish both facts and religion. Empiricism\ngives facts without religion. Rationalism gives religion without facts.\nThe layman's dilemma. The unreality in rationalistic systems. Leibnitz\non the damned, as an example. M. I. Swift on the optimism of idealists.\nPragmatism as a mediating system. An objection. Reply: philosophies have\ncharacters like men, and are liable to as summary judgments. Spencer as\nan example.\n\nLecture II\n\nWhat Pragmatism Means\n\nThe squirrel. Pragmatism as a method. History of the method. Its\ncharacter and affinities. How it contrasts with rationalism and\nintellectualism. A 'corridor theory.' Pragmatism as a theory of truth,\nequivalent to 'humanism.' Earlier views of mathematical, logical, and\nnatural truth. More recent views. Schiller's and Dewey's 'instrumental'\nview. The formation of new beliefs. Older truth always has to be kept\naccount of. Older truth arose similarly. The 'humanistic' doctrine.\nRationalistic criticisms of it. Pragmatism as mediator between\nempiricism and religion. Barrenness of transcendental idealism. How far\nthe concept of the Absolute must be called true. The true is the good\nin the way of belief. The clash of truths. Pragmatism unstiffens\ndiscussion.\n\nLecture III\n\nSome Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered\n\nThe problem of substance. The Eucharist. Berkeley's pragmatic treatment\nof material substance. Locke's of personal identity. The problem of\nmaterialism. Rationalistic treatment of it. Pragmatic treatment. 'God'\nis no better than 'Matter' as a principle, unless he promise more.\nPragmatic comparison of the two principles. The problem of design.\n'Design' per se is barren. The question is WHAT design. The problem of\n'free-will.' Its relations to 'accountability.' Free-will a cosmological\ntheory. The pragmatic issue at stake in all these problems is what do\nthe alternatives PROMISE.\n\nLecture IV\n\nThe One and the Many\n\nTotal reflection. Philosophy seeks not only unity, but totality.\nRationalistic feeling about unity. Pragmatically considered, the world\nis one in many ways. One time and space. One subject of discourse. Its\nparts interact. Its oneness and manyness are co-ordinate. Question of\none origin. Generic oneness. One purpose. One story. One knower. Value\nof pragmatic method. Absolute monism. Vivekananda. Various types of\nunion discussed. Conclusion: We must oppose monistic dogmatism and\nfollow empirical findings.\n\nLecture V\n\nPragmatism and Common Sense\n\nNoetic pluralism. How our knowledge grows. Earlier ways of thinking\nremain. Prehistoric ancestors DISCOVERED the common sense concepts. List\nof them. They came gradually into use. Space and time. 'Things.' Kinds.\n'Cause' and 'law.' Common sense one stage in mental evolution, due\nto geniuses. The 'critical' stages: 1) scientific and 2) philosophic,\ncompared with common sense. Impossible to say which is the more 'true.'\n\nLecture VI\n\nPragmatism's Conception of Truth\n\nThe polemic situation. What does agreement with reality mean? It means\nverifiability. Verifiability means ability to guide us prosperously\nthrough experience. Completed verifications seldom needful. 'Eternal'\ntruths. Consistency, with language, with previous truths. Rationalist\nobjections. Truth is a good, like health, wealth, etc. It is expedient\nthinking. The past. Truth grows. Rationalist objections. Reply to them.\n\nLecture VII\n\nPragmatism and Humanism\n\nThe notion of THE Truth. Schiller on 'Humanism.' Three sorts of\nreality of which any new truth must take account. To 'take account' is\nambiguous. Absolutely independent reality is hard to find. The human\ncontribution is ubiquitous and builds out the given. Essence of\npragmatism's contrast with rationalism. Rationalism affirms a\ntransempirical world. Motives for this. Tough-mindedness rejects them. A\ngenuine alternative. Pragmatism mediates.\n\nLecture VIII\n\nPragmatism and Religion\n\nUtility of the Absolute. Whitman's poem 'To You.' Two ways of taking\nit. My friend's letter. Necessities versus possibilities. 'Possibility'\ndefined. Three views of the world's salvation. Pragmatism is\nmelioristic. We may create reality. Why should anything BE? Supposed\nchoice before creation. The healthy and the morbid reply. The 'tender'\nand the 'tough' types of religion. Pragmatism mediates.\n\n\n\n\nPRAGMATISM\n\n\n\n\nLecture I\n\nThe Present Dilemma in Philosophy\n\nIn the preface to that admirable collection of essays of his called\n'Heretics,' Mr. Chesterton writes these words: \"There are some\npeople--and I am one of them--who think that the most practical and\nimportant thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think\nthat for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his\nincome, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that\nfor a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know\nthe enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's\nphilosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the\ncosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else\naffects them.\"\n\nI think with Mr. Chesterton in this matter. I know that you, ladies and\ngentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most\ninteresting and important thing about you is the way in which it\ndetermines the perspective in your several worlds. You know the same\nof me. And yet I confess to a certain tremor at the audacity of the\nenterprise which I am about to begin. For the philosophy which is so\nimportant in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or\nless dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only\npartly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and\nfeeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos. I have no right to\nassume that many of you are students of the cosmos in the class-room\nsense, yet here I stand desirous of interesting you in a philosophy\nwhich to no small extent has to be technically treated. I wish to fill\nyou with sympathy with a contemporaneous tendency in which I profoundly\nbelieve, and yet I have to talk like a professor to you who are not\nstudents. Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be\na universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable\nin two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has\nno use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind! I have heard friends\nand colleagues try to popularize philosophy in this very hall, but they\nsoon grew dry, and then technical, and the results were only partially\nencouraging. So my enterprise is a bold one. The founder of pragmatism\nhimself recently gave a course of lectures at the Lowell Institute with\nthat very word in its title-flashes of brilliant light relieved\nagainst Cimmerian darkness! None of us, I fancy, understood ALL that he\nsaid--yet here I stand, making a very similar venture.\n\nI risk it because the very lectures I speak of DREW--they brought good\naudiences. There is, it must be confessed, a curious fascination in\nhearing deep things talked about, even tho neither we nor the disputants\nunderstand them. We get the problematic thrill, we feel the presence of\nthe vastness. Let a controversy begin in a smoking-room anywhere, about\nfree-will or God's omniscience, or good and evil, and see how everyone\nin the place pricks up his ears. Philosophy's results concern us all\nmost vitally, and philosophy's queerest arguments tickle agreeably our\nsense of subtlety and ingenuity.\n\nBelieving in philosophy myself devoutly, and believing also that a kind\nof new dawn is breaking upon us philosophers, I feel impelled, per fas\naut nefas, to try to impart to you some news of the situation.\n\nPhilosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human\npursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out the widest\nvistas. It 'bakes no bread,' as has been said, but it can inspire our\nsouls with courage; and repugnant as its manners, its doubting and\nchallenging, its quibbling and dialectics, often are to common people,\nno one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it\nsends over the world's perspectives. These illuminations at least, and\nthe contrast-effects of darkness and mystery that accompany them, give\nto what it says an interest that is much more than professional.\n\nThe history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash\nof human temperaments. Undignified as such a treatment may seem to some\nof my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain\na good many of the divergencies of philosophers by it. Of whatever\ntemperament a professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing\nto sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally\nrecognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his\nconclusions. Yet his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than\nany of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence\nfor him one way or the other, making for a more sentimental or a more\nhard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle\nwould. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he\nbelieves in any representation of the universe that does suit it.\nHe feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with the world's\ncharacter, and in his heart considers them incompetent and 'not in\nit,' in the philosophic business, even tho they may far excel him in\ndialectical ability.\n\nYet in the forum he can make no claim, on the bare ground of his\ntemperament, to superior discernment or authority. There arises thus a\ncertain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest of\nall our premises is never mentioned. I am sure it would contribute to\nclearness if in these lectures we should break this rule and mention it,\nand I accordingly feel free to do so.\n\nOf course I am talking here of very positively marked men, men\nof radical idiosyncracy, who have set their stamp and likeness on\nphilosophy and figure in its history. Plato, Locke, Hegel, Spencer,\nare such temperamental thinkers. Most of us have, of course, no\nvery definite intellectual temperament, we are a mixture of opposite\ningredients, each one present very moderately. We hardly know our own\npreferences in abstract matters; some of us are easily talked out of\nthem, and end by following the fashion or taking up with the beliefs of\nthe most impressive philosopher in our neighborhood, whoever he may be.\nBut the one thing that has COUNTED so far in philosophy is that a man\nshould see things, see them straight in his own peculiar way, and be\ndissatisfied with any opposite way of seeing them. There is no reason\nto suppose that this strong temperamental vision is from now onward to\ncount no longer in the history of man's beliefs.\n\nNow the particular difference of temperament that I have in mind\nin making these remarks is one that has counted in literature, art,\ngovernment and manners as well as in philosophy. In manners we find\nformalists and free-and-easy persons. In government, authoritarians and\nanarchists. In literature, purists or academicals, and realists. In art,\nclassics and romantics. You recognize these contrasts as familiar; well,\nin philosophy we have a very similar contrast expressed in the pair of\nterms 'rationalist' and 'empiricist,' 'empiricist' meaning your lover of\nfacts in all their crude variety, 'rationalist' meaning your devotee to\nabstract and eternal principles. No one can live an hour without both\nfacts and principles, so it is a difference rather of emphasis; yet it\nbreeds antipathies of the most pungent character between those who\nlay the emphasis differently; and we shall find it extraordinarily\nconvenient to express a certain contrast in men's ways of taking their\nuniverse, by talking of the 'empiricist' and of the 'rationalist'\ntemper. These terms make the contrast simple and massive.\n\nMore simple and massive than are usually the men of whom the terms are\npredicated. For every sort of permutation and combination is possible in\nhuman nature; and if I now proceed to define more fully what I have in\nmind when I speak of rationalists and empiricists, by adding to each\nof those titles some secondary qualifying characteristics, I beg you to\nregard my conduct as to a certain extent arbitrary. I select types\nof combination that nature offers very frequently, but by no means\nuniformly, and I select them solely for their convenience in helping\nme to my ulterior purpose of characterizing pragmatism. Historically we\nfind the terms 'intellectualism' and 'sensationalism' used as synonyms\nof 'rationalism' and 'empiricism.' Well, nature seems to combine most\nfrequently with intellectualism an idealistic and optimistic tendency.\nEmpiricists on the other hand are not uncommonly materialistic, and\ntheir optimism is apt to be decidedly conditional and tremulous.\nRationalism is always monistic. It starts from wholes and universals,\nand makes much of the unity of things. Empiricism starts from the parts,\nand makes of the whole a collection-is not averse therefore to calling\nitself pluralistic. Rationalism usually considers itself more religious\nthan empiricism, but there is much to say about this claim, so I merely\nmention it. It is a true claim when the individual rationalist is what\nis called a man of feeling, and when the individual empiricist prides\nhimself on being hard-headed. In that case the rationalist will usually\nalso be in favor of what is called free-will, and the empiricist will\nbe a fatalist--I use the terms most popularly current. The rationalist\nfinally will be of dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the\nempiricist may be more sceptical and open to discussion.\n\nI will write these traits down in two columns. I think you will\npractically recognize the two types of mental make-up that I mean if\nI head the columns by the titles 'tender-minded' and 'tough-minded'\nrespectively.\n\nTHE TENDER-MINDED\n\nRationalistic (going by 'principles'), Intellectualistic, Idealistic,\nOptimistic, Religious, Free-willist, Monistic, Dogmatical.\n\nTHE TOUGH-MINDED\n\nEmpiricist (going by 'facts'), Sensationalistic, Materialistic,\nPessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Sceptical.\n\nPray postpone for a moment the question whether the two contrasted\nmixtures which I have written down are each inwardly coherent and\nself-consistent or not--I shall very soon have a good deal to say on\nthat point. It suffices for our immediate purpose that tender-minded and\ntough-minded people, characterized as I have written them down, do both\nexist. Each of you probably knows some well-marked example of each type,\nand you know what each example thinks of the example on the other side\nof the line. They have a low opinion of each other. Their antagonism,\nwhenever as individuals their temperaments have been intense, has formed\nin all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of the time. It forms a\npart of the philosophic atmosphere to-day. The tough think of the tender\nas sentimentalists and soft-heads. The tender feel the tough to be\nunrefined, callous, or brutal. Their mutual reaction is very much like\nthat that takes place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population\nlike that of Cripple Creek. Each type believes the other to be inferior\nto itself; but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the\nother it has a dash of fear.\n\nNow, as I have already insisted, few of us are tender-foot Bostonians\npure and simple, and few are typical Rocky Mountain toughs, in\nphilosophy. Most of us have a hankering for the good things on both\nsides of the line. Facts are good, of course--give us lots of facts.\nPrinciples are good--give us plenty of principles. The world is\nindubitably one if you look at it in one way, but as indubitably is\nit many, if you look at it in another. It is both one and many--let us\nadopt a sort of pluralistic monism. Everything of course is necessarily\ndetermined, and yet of course our wills are free: a sort of free-will\ndeterminism is the true philosophy. The evil of the parts is undeniable;\nbut the whole can't be evil: so practical pessimism may be combined with\nmetaphysical optimism. And so forth--your ordinary philosophic layman\nnever being a radical, never straightening out his system, but living\nvaguely in one plausible compartment of it or another to suit the\ntemptations of successive hours.\n\nBut some of us are more than mere laymen in philosophy. We are worthy\nof the name of amateur athletes, and are vexed by too much inconsistency\nand vacillation in our creed. We cannot preserve a good intellectual\nconscience so long as we keep mixing incompatibles from opposite sides\nof the line.\n\nAnd now I come to the first positively important point which I wish to\nmake. Never were as many men of a decidedly empiricist proclivity in\nexistence as there are at the present day. Our children, one may say,\nare almost born scientific. But our esteem for facts has not neutralized\nin us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific\ntemper is devout. Now take a man of this type, and let him be also a\nphilosophic amateur, unwilling to mix a hodge-podge system after the\nfashion of a common layman, and what does he find his situation to be,\nin this blessed year of our Lord 1906? He wants facts; he wants\nscience; but he also wants a religion. And being an amateur and not an\nindependent originator in philosophy he naturally looks for guidance to\nthe experts and professionals whom he finds already in the field. A\nvery large number of you here present, possibly a majority of you, are\namateurs of just this sort.\n\nNow what kinds of philosophy do you find actually offered to meet your\nneed? You find an empirical philosophy that is not religious enough, and\na religious philosophy that is not empirical enough for your purpose.\nIf you look to the quarter where facts are most considered you find\nthe whole tough-minded program in operation, and the 'conflict between\nscience and religion' in full blast. Either it is that Rocky Mountain\ntough of a Haeckel with his materialistic monism, his ether-god and his\njest at your God as a 'gaseous vertebrate'; or it is Spencer treating\nthe world's history as a redistribution of matter and motion solely, and\nbowing religion politely out at the front door:--she may indeed continue\nto exist, but she must never show her face inside the temple. For a\nhundred and fifty years past the progress of science has seemed to mean\nthe enlargement of the material universe and the diminution of man's\nimportance. The result is what one may call the growth of naturalistic\nor positivistic feeling. Man is no law-giver to nature, he is an\nabsorber. She it is who stands firm; he it is who must accommodate\nhimself. Let him record truth, inhuman tho it be, and submit to it! The\nromantic spontaneity and courage are gone, the vision is materialistic\nand depressing. Ideals appear as inert by-products of physiology; what\nis higher is explained by what is lower and treated forever as a case of\n'nothing but'--nothing but something else of a quite inferior sort. You\nget, in short, a materialistic universe, in which only the tough-minded\nfind themselves congenially at home.\n\nIf now, on the other hand, you turn to the religious quarter for\nconsolation, and take counsel of the tender-minded philosophies, what do\nyou find?\n\nReligious philosophy in our day and generation is, among us\nEnglish-reading people, of two main types. One of these is more radical\nand aggressive, the other has more the air of fighting a slow retreat.\nBy the more radical wing of religious philosophy I mean the so-called\ntranscendental idealism of the Anglo-Hegelian school, the philosophy of\nsuch men as Green, the Cairds, Bosanquet, and Royce. This philosophy has\ngreatly influenced the more studious members of our protestant ministry.\nIt is pantheistic, and undoubtedly it has already blunted the edge of\nthe traditional theism in protestantism at large.\n\nThat theism remains, however. It is the lineal descendant, through one\nstage of concession after another, of the dogmatic scholastic theism\nstill taught rigorously in the seminaries of the catholic church. For a\nlong time it used to be called among us the philosophy of the Scottish\nschool. It is what I meant by the philosophy that has the air of\nfighting a slow retreat. Between the encroachments of the hegelians and\nother philosophers of the 'Absolute,' on the one hand, and those of the\nscientific evolutionists and agnostics, on the other, the men that\ngive us this kind of a philosophy, James Martineau, Professor Bowne,\nProfessor Ladd and others, must feel themselves rather tightly squeezed.\nFair-minded and candid as you like, this philosophy is not radical\nin temper. It is eclectic, a thing of compromises, that seeks a modus\nvivendi above all things. It accepts the facts of darwinism, the facts\nof cerebral physiology, but it does nothing active or enthusiastic with\nthem. It lacks the victorious and aggressive note. It lacks prestige in\nconsequence; whereas absolutism has a certain prestige due to the more\nradical style of it.\n\nThese two systems are what you have to choose between if you turn to the\ntender-minded school. And if you are the lovers of facts I have\nsupposed you to be, you find the trail of the serpent of rationalism, of\nintellectualism, over everything that lies on that side of the line. You\nescape indeed the materialism that goes with the reigning empiricism;\nbut you pay for your escape by losing contact with the concrete parts\nof life. The more absolutistic philosophers dwell on so high a level\nof abstraction that they never even try to come down. The absolute mind\nwhich they offer us, the mind that makes our universe by thinking it,\nmight, for aught they show us to the contrary, have made any one of a\nmillion other universes just as well as this. You can deduce no single\nactual particular from the notion of it. It is compatible with any state\nof things whatever being true here below. And the theistic God is almost\nas sterile a principle. You have to go to the world which he has created\nto get any inkling of his actual character: he is the kind of god that\nhas once for all made that kind of a world. The God of the theistic\nwriters lives on as purely abstract heights as does the Absolute.\nAbsolutism has a certain sweep and dash about it, while the usual theism\nis more insipid, but both are equally remote and vacuous. What you want\nis a philosophy that will not only exercise your powers of intellectual\nabstraction, but that will make some positive connexion with this actual\nworld of finite human lives.\n\nYou want a system that will combine both things, the scientific\nloyalty to facts and willingness to take account of them, the spirit of\nadaptation and accommodation, in short, but also the old confidence in\nhuman values and the resultant spontaneity, whether of the religious or\nof the romantic type. And this is then your dilemma: you find the two\nparts of your quaesitum hopelessly separated. You find empiricism with\ninhumanism and irreligion; or else you find a rationalistic philosophy\nthat indeed may call itself religious, but that keeps out of all\ndefinite touch with concrete facts and joys and sorrows.\n\nI am not sure how many of you live close enough to philosophy to realize\nfully what I mean by this last reproach, so I will dwell a little longer\non that unreality in all rationalistic systems by which your serious\nbeliever in facts is so apt to feel repelled.\n\nI wish that I had saved the first couple of pages of a thesis which\na student handed me a year or two ago. They illustrated my point so\nclearly that I am sorry I cannot read them to you now. This young man,\nwho was a graduate of some Western college, began by saying that he had\nalways taken for granted that when you entered a philosophic class-room\nyou had to open relations with a universe entirely distinct from the one\nyou left behind you in the street. The two were supposed, he said, to\nhave so little to do with each other, that you could not possibly occupy\nyour mind with them at the same time. The world of concrete personal\nexperiences to which the street belongs is multitudinous beyond\nimagination, tangled, muddy, painful and perplexed. The world to which\nyour philosophy-professor introduces you is simple, clean and noble.\nThe contradictions of real life are absent from it. Its architecture is\nclassic. Principles of reason trace its outlines, logical necessities\ncement its parts. Purity and dignity are what it most expresses. It is a\nkind of marble temple shining on a hill.\n\nIn point of fact it is far less an account of this actual world than\na clear addition built upon it, a classic sanctuary in which the\nrationalist fancy may take refuge from the intolerably confused and\ngothic character which mere facts present. It is no EXPLANATION of our\nconcrete universe, it is another thing altogether, a substitute for it,\na remedy, a way of escape.\n\nIts temperament, if I may use the word temperament here, is utterly\nalien to the temperament of existence in the concrete. REFINEMENT is\nwhat characterizes our intellectualist philosophies. They exquisitely\nsatisfy that craving for a refined object of contemplation which is so\npowerful an appetite of the mind. But I ask you in all seriousness to\nlook abroad on this colossal universe of concrete facts, on their awful\nbewilderments, their surprises and cruelties, on the wildness which\nthey show, and then to tell me whether 'refined' is the one inevitable\ndescriptive adjective that springs to your lips.\n\nRefinement has its place in things, true enough. But a philosophy that\nbreathes out nothing but refinement will never satisfy the empiricist\ntemper of mind. It will seem rather a monument of artificiality. So we\nfind men of science preferring to turn their backs on metaphysics as on\nsomething altogether cloistered and spectral, and practical men shaking\nphilosophy's dust off their feet and following the call of the wild.\n\nTruly there is something a little ghastly in the satisfaction with which\na pure but unreal system will fill a rationalist mind. Leibnitz was\na rationalist mind, with infinitely more interest in facts than\nmost rationalist minds can show. Yet if you wish for superficiality\nincarnate, you have only to read that charmingly written 'Theodicee' of\nhis, in which he sought to justify the ways of God to man, and to prove\nthat the world we live in is the best of possible worlds. Let me quote a\nspecimen of what I mean.\n\nAmong other obstacles to his optimistic philosophy, it falls to Leibnitz\nto consider the number of the eternally damned. That it is infinitely\ngreater, in our human case, than that of those saved he assumes as a\npremise from the theologians, and then proceeds to argue in this way.\nEven then, he says:\n\n\"The evil will appear as almost nothing in comparison with the good, if\nwe once consider the real magnitude of the City of God. Coelius Secundus\nCurio has written a little book, 'De Amplitudine Regni Coelestis,' which\nwas reprinted not long ago. But he failed to compass the extent of the\nkingdom of the heavens. The ancients had small ideas of the works of\nGod. ... It seemed to them that only our earth had inhabitants, and even\nthe notion of our antipodes gave them pause. The rest of the world for\nthem consisted of some shining globes and a few crystalline spheres.\nBut to-day, whatever be the limits that we may grant or refuse to the\nUniverse we must recognize in it a countless number of globes, as big\nas ours or bigger, which have just as much right as it has to support\nrational inhabitants, tho it does not follow that these need all be men.\nOur earth is only one among the six principal satellites of our sun. As\nall the fixed stars are suns, one sees how small a place among visible\nthings our earth takes up, since it is only a satellite of one among\nthem. Now all these suns MAY be inhabited by none but happy creatures;\nand nothing obliges us to believe that the number of damned persons is\nvery great; for a VERY FEW INSTANCES AND SAMPLES SUFFICE FOR THE UTILITY\nWHICH GOOD DRAWS FROM EVIL. Moreover, since there is no reason to\nsuppose that there are stars everywhere, may there not be a great space\nbeyond the region of the stars? And this immense space, surrounding all\nthis region, ... may be replete with happiness and glory. ... What now\nbecomes of the consideration of our Earth and of its denizens? Does it\nnot dwindle to something incomparably less than a physical point, since\nour Earth is but a point compared with the distance of the fixed stars.\nThus the part of the Universe which we know, being almost lost in\nnothingness compared with that which is unknown to us, but which we\nare yet obliged to admit; and all the evils that we know lying in this\nalmost-nothing; it follows that the evils may be almost-nothing in\ncomparison with the goods that the Universe contains.\"\n\nLeibnitz continues elsewhere: \"There is a kind of justice which aims\nneither at the amendment of the criminal, nor at furnishing an example\nto others, nor at the reparation of the injury. This justice is founded\nin pure fitness, which finds a certain satisfaction in the expiation\nof a wicked deed. The Socinians and Hobbes objected to this punitive\njustice, which is properly vindictive justice and which God has reserved\nfor himself at many junctures. ... It is always founded in the fitness\nof things, and satisfies not only the offended party, but all wise\nlookers-on, even as beautiful music or a fine piece of architecture\nsatisfies a well-constituted mind. It is thus that the torments of the\ndamned continue, even tho they serve no longer to turn anyone away from\nsin, and that the rewards of the blest continue, even tho they confirm\nno one in good ways. The damned draw to themselves ever new penalties\nby their continuing sins, and the blest attract ever fresh joys by their\nunceasing progress in good. Both facts are founded on the principle of\nfitness, ... for God has made all things harmonious in perfection as I\nhave already said.\"\n\nLeibnitz's feeble grasp of reality is too obvious to need comment from\nme. It is evident that no realistic image of the experience of a damned\nsoul had ever approached the portals of his mind. Nor had it occurred to\nhim that the smaller is the number of 'samples' of the genus 'lost-soul'\nwhom God throws as a sop to the eternal fitness, the more unequitably\ngrounded is the glory of the blest. What he gives us is a cold literary\nexercise, whose cheerful substance even hell-fire does not warm.\n\nAnd do not tell me that to show the shallowness of rationalist\nphilosophizing I have had to go back to a shallow wigpated age. The\noptimism of present-day rationalism sounds just as shallow to the\nfact-loving mind. The actual universe is a thing wide open, but\nrationalism makes systems, and systems must be closed. For men in\npractical life perfection is something far off and still in process of\nachievement. This for rationalism is but the illusion of the finite\nand relative: the absolute ground of things is a perfection eternally\ncomplete.\n\nI find a fine example of revolt against the airy and shallow optimism\nof current religious philosophy in a publication of that valiant\nanarchistic writer Morrison I. Swift. Mr. Swift's anarchism goes a\nlittle farther than mine does, but I confess that I sympathize a\ngood deal, and some of you, I know, will sympathize heartily with his\ndissatisfaction with the idealistic optimisms now in vogue. He begins\nhis pamphlet on 'Human Submission' with a series of city reporter's\nitems from newspapers (suicides, deaths from starvation and the like) as\nspecimens of our civilized regime. For instance:\n\n\"'After trudging through the snow from one end of the city to the other\nin the vain hope of securing employment, and with his wife and six\nchildren without food and ordered to leave their home in an upper east\nside tenement house because of non-payment of rent, John Corcoran, a\nclerk, to-day ended his life by drinking carbolic acid. Corcoran lost\nhis position three weeks ago through illness, and during the period of\nidleness his scanty savings disappeared. Yesterday he obtained work with\na gang of city snow shovelers, but he was too weak from illness and was\nforced to quit after an hour's trial with the shovel. Then the\nweary task of looking for employment was again resumed. Thoroughly\ndiscouraged, Corcoran returned to his home late last night to find his\nwife and children without food and the notice of dispossession on the\ndoor.' On the following morning he drank the poison.\n\n\"The records of many more such cases lie before me [Mr. Swift goes on];\nan encyclopedia might easily be filled with their kind. These few I cite\nas an interpretation of the universe. 'We are aware of the presence of\nGod in His world,' says a writer in a recent English Review. [The very\npresence of ill in the temporal order is the condition of the perfection\nof the eternal order, writes Professor Royce ('The World and the\nIndividual,' II, 385).] 'The Absolute is the richer for every discord,\nand for all diversity which it embraces,' says F. H. Bradley (Appearance\nand Reality, 204). He means that these slain men make the universe\nricher, and that is Philosophy. But while Professors Royce and Bradley\nand a whole host of guileless thoroughfed thinkers are unveiling\nReality and the Absolute and explaining away evil and pain, this is the\ncondition of the only beings known to us anywhere in the universe with\na developed consciousness of what the universe is. What these people\nexperience IS Reality. It gives us an absolute phase of the universe. It\nis the personal experience of those most qualified in all our circle\nof knowledge to HAVE experience, to tell us WHAT is. Now, what does\nTHINKING ABOUT the experience of these persons come to compared with\ndirectly, personally feeling it, as they feel it? The philosophers are\ndealing in shades, while those who live and feel know truth. And the\nmind of mankind-not yet the mind of philosophers and of the proprietary\nclass-but of the great mass of the silently thinking and feeling men,\nis coming to this view. They are judging the universe as they have\nheretofore permitted the hierophants of religion and learning to judge\nTHEM. ...\n\n\"This Cleveland workingman, killing his children and himself [another\nof the cited cases], is one of the elemental, stupendous facts of this\nmodern world and of this universe. It cannot be glozed over or minimized\naway by all the treatises on God, and Love, and Being, helplessly\nexisting in their haughty monumental vacuity. This is one of the simple\nirreducible elements of this world's life after millions of years of\ndivine opportunity and twenty centuries of Christ. It is in the moral\nworld like atoms or sub-atoms in the physical, primary, indestructible.\nAnd what it blazons to man is the ... imposture of all philosophy\nwhich does not see in such events the consummate factor of conscious\nexperience. These facts invincibly prove religion a nullity. Man will\nnot give religion two thousand centuries or twenty centuries more to try\nitself and waste human time; its time is up, its probation is ended.\nIts own record ends it. Mankind has not sons and eternities to spare for\ntrying out discredited systems....\" [Footnote: Morrison I. Swift, Human\nSubmission, Part Second, Philadelphia, Liberty Press, 1905, pp. 4-10.]\n\nSuch is the reaction of an empiricist mind upon the rationalist bill of\nfare. It is an absolute 'No, I thank you.' \"Religion,\" says Mr. Swift,\n\"is like a sleep-walker to whom actual things are blank.\" And such,\ntho possibly less tensely charged with feeling, is the verdict of\nevery seriously inquiring amateur in philosophy to-day who turns to the\nphilosophy-professors for the wherewithal to satisfy the fulness of his\nnature's needs. Empiricist writers give him a materialism, rationalists\ngive him something religious, but to that religion \"actual things are\nblank.\" He becomes thus the judge of us philosophers. Tender or tough,\nhe finds us wanting. None of us may treat his verdicts disdainfully, for\nafter all, his is the typically perfect mind, the mind the sum of whose\ndemands is greatest, the mind whose criticisms and dissatisfactions are\nfatal in the long run.\n\nIt is at this point that my own solution begins to appear. I offer the\noddly-named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds\nof demand. It can remain religious like the rationalisms, but at the\nsame time, like the empiricisms, it can preserve the richest intimacy\nwith facts. I hope I may be able to leave many of you with as favorable\nan opinion of it as I preserve myself. Yet, as I am near the end of my\nhour, I will not introduce pragmatism bodily now. I will begin with it\non the stroke of the clock next time. I prefer at the present moment to\nreturn a little on what I have said.\n\nIf any of you here are professional philosophers, and some of you I know\nto be such, you will doubtless have felt my discourse so far to have\nbeen crude in an unpardonable, nay, in an almost incredible degree.\nTender-minded and tough-minded, what a barbaric disjunction! And, in\ngeneral, when philosophy is all compacted of delicate intellectualities\nand subtleties and scrupulosities, and when every possible sort of\ncombination and transition obtains within its bounds, what a brutal\ncaricature and reduction of highest things to the lowest possible\nexpression is it to represent its field of conflict as a sort of\nrough-and-tumble fight between two hostile temperaments! What a\nchildishly external view! And again, how stupid it is to treat the\nabstractness of rationalist systems as a crime, and to damn them because\nthey offer themselves as sanctuaries and places of escape, rather than\nas prolongations of the world of facts. Are not all our theories just\nremedies and places of escape? And, if philosophy is to be religious,\nhow can she be anything else than a place of escape from the crassness\nof reality's surface? What better thing can she do than raise us out of\nour animal senses and show us another and a nobler home for our minds in\nthat great framework of ideal principles subtending all reality, which\nthe intellect divines? How can principles and general views ever be\nanything but abstract outlines? Was Cologne cathedral built without an\narchitect's plan on paper? Is refinement in itself an abomination? Is\nconcrete rudeness the only thing that's true?\n\nBelieve me, I feel the full force of the indictment. The picture I\nhave given is indeed monstrously over-simplified and rude. But like all\nabstractions, it will prove to have its use. If philosophers can treat\nthe life of the universe abstractly, they must not complain of an\nabstract treatment of the life of philosophy itself. In point of fact\nthe picture I have given is, however coarse and sketchy, literally true.\nTemperaments with their cravings and refusals do determine men in their\nphilosophies, and always will. The details of systems may be reasoned\nout piecemeal, and when the student is working at a system, he may\noften forget the forest for the single tree. But when the labor is\naccomplished, the mind always performs its big summarizing act, and the\nsystem forthwith stands over against one like a living thing, with that\nstrange simple note of individuality which haunts our memory, like the\nwraith of the man, when a friend or enemy of ours is dead.\n\nNot only Walt Whitman could write \"who touches this book touches a man.\"\nThe books of all the great philosophers are like so many men. Our\nsense of an essential personal flavor in each one of them, typical but\nindescribable, is the finest fruit of our own accomplished philosophic\neducation. What the system pretends to be is a picture of the great\nuniverse of God. What it is--and oh so flagrantly!--is the revelation of\nhow intensely odd the personal flavor of some fellow creature is. Once\nreduced to these terms (and all our philosophies get reduced to them in\nminds made critical by learning) our commerce with the systems reverts\nto the informal, to the instinctive human reaction of satisfaction or\ndislike. We grow as peremptory in our rejection or admission, as when a\nperson presents himself as a candidate for our favor; our verdicts are\ncouched in as simple adjectives of praise or dispraise. We measure the\ntotal character of the universe as we feel it, against the flavor of the\nphilosophy proffered us, and one word is enough.\n\n\"Statt der lebendigen Natur,\" we say, \"da Gott die Menschen schuf\nhinein\"--that nebulous concoction, that wooden, that straight-laced\nthing, that crabbed artificiality, that musty schoolroom product, that\nsick man's dream! Away with it. Away with all of them! Impossible!\nImpossible!\n\nOur work over the details of his system is indeed what gives us our\nresultant impression of the philosopher, but it is on the resultant\nimpression itself that we react. Expertness in philosophy is measured\nby the definiteness of our summarizing reactions, by the immediate\nperceptive epithet with which the expert hits such complex objects\noff. But great expertness is not necessary for the epithet to come. Few\npeople have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost\neveryone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in\nthe universe, and of the inadequacy fully to match it of the peculiar\nsystems that he knows. They don't just cover HIS world. One will be too\ndapper, another too pedantic, a third too much of a job-lot of opinions,\na fourth too morbid, and a fifth too artificial, or what not. At any\nrate he and we know offhand that such philosophies are out of plumb and\nout of key and out of 'whack,' and have no business to speak up in the\nuniverse's name. Plato, Locke, Spinoza, Mill, Caird, Hegel--I prudently\navoid names nearer home!--I am sure that to many of you, my hearers,\nthese names are little more than reminders of as many curious personal\nways of falling short. It would be an obvious absurdity if such ways of\ntaking the universe were actually true. We philosophers have to reckon\nwith such feelings on your part. In the last resort, I repeat, it will\nbe by them that all our philosophies shall ultimately be judged. The\nfinally victorious way of looking at things will be the most completely\nIMPRESSIVE way to the normal run of minds.\n\nOne word more--namely about philosophies necessarily being abstract\noutlines. There are outlines and outlines, outlines of buildings\nthat are FAT, conceived in the cube by their planner, and outlines of\nbuildings invented flat on paper, with the aid of ruler and compass.\nThese remain skinny and emaciated even when set up in stone and mortar,\nand the outline already suggests that result. An outline in itself is\nmeagre, truly, but it does not necessarily suggest a meagre thing. It is\nthe essential meagreness of WHAT IS SUGGESTED by the usual rationalistic\nphilosophies that moves empiricists to their gesture of rejection. The\ncase of Herbert Spencer's system is much to the point here. Rationalists\nfeel his fearful array of insufficiencies. His dry schoolmaster\ntemperament, the hurdy-gurdy monotony of him, his preference for\ncheap makeshifts in argument, his lack of education even in mechanical\nprinciples, and in general the vagueness of all his fundamental ideas,\nhis whole system wooden, as if knocked together out of cracked hemlock\nboards--and yet the half of England wants to bury him in Westminster\nAbbey.\n\nWhy? Why does Spencer call out so much reverence in spite of his\nweakness in rationalistic eyes? Why should so many educated men who\nfeel that weakness, you and I perhaps, wish to see him in the Abbey\nnotwithstanding?\n\nSimply because we feel his heart to be IN THE RIGHT PLACE\nphilosophically. His principles may be all skin and bone, but at any\nrate his books try to mould themselves upon the particular shape of\nthis, particular world's carcase. The noise of facts resounds through\nall his chapters, the citations of fact never cease, he emphasizes\nfacts, turns his face towards their quarter; and that is enough. It\nmeans the right kind of thing for the empiricist mind.\n\nThe pragmatistic philosophy of which I hope to begin talking in my\nnext lecture preserves as cordial a relation with facts, and, unlike\nSpencer's philosophy, it neither begins nor ends by turning positive\nreligious constructions out of doors--it treats them cordially as well.\n\nI hope I may lead you to find it just the mediating way of thinking that\nyou require.\n\n\n\n\nLecture II\n\nWhat Pragmatism Means\n\nSome years ago, being with a camping party in the mountains, I\nreturned from a solitary ramble to find everyone engaged in a ferocious\nmetaphysical dispute. The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel--a live\nsquirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over\nagainst the tree's opposite side a human being was imagined to stand.\nThis human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly\nround the tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves\nas fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between\nhimself and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The\nresultant metaphysical problem now is this: DOES THE MAN GO ROUND THE\nSQUIRREL OR NOT? He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel\nis on the tree; but does he go round the squirrel? In the unlimited\nleisure of the wilderness, discussion had been worn threadbare. Everyone\nhad taken sides, and was obstinate; and the numbers on both sides were\neven. Each side, when I appeared, therefore appealed to me to make it\na majority. Mindful of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a\ncontradiction you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and\nfound one, as follows: \"Which party is right,\" I said, \"depends on what\nyou PRACTICALLY MEAN by 'going round' the squirrel. If you mean passing\nfrom the north of him to the east, then to the south, then to the west,\nand then to the north of him again, obviously the man does go round him,\nfor he occupies these successive positions. But if on the contrary you\nmean being first in front of him, then on the right of him, then behind\nhim, then on his left, and finally in front again, it is quite as\nobvious that the man fails to go round him, for by the compensating\nmovements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned towards the man\nall the time, and his back turned away. Make the distinction, and there\nis no occasion for any farther dispute. You are both right and both\nwrong according as you conceive the verb 'to go round' in one practical\nfashion or the other.\"\n\nAltho one or two of the hotter disputants called my speech a shuffling\nevasion, saying they wanted no quibbling or scholastic hair-splitting,\nbut meant just plain honest English 'round,' the majority seemed to\nthink that the distinction had assuaged the dispute.\n\nI tell this trivial anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example\nof what I wish now to speak of as THE PRAGMATIC METHOD. The pragmatic\nmethod is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that\notherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many?--fated or\nfree?--material or spiritual?--here are notions either of which may\nor may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are\nunending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each\nnotion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference\nwould it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that\nnotion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced,\nthen the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute\nis idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some\npractical difference that must follow from one side or the other's being\nright.\n\nA glance at the history of the idea will show you still better what\npragmatism means. The term is derived from the same Greek word [pi rho\nalpha gamma mu alpha], meaning action, from which our words 'practice'\nand 'practical' come. It was first introduced into philosophy by Mr.\nCharles Peirce in 1878. In an article entitled 'How to Make Our Ideas\nClear,' in the 'Popular Science Monthly' for January of that year\n[Footnote: Translated in the Revue Philosophique for January, 1879 (vol.\nvii).] Mr. Peirce, after pointing out that our beliefs are really rules\nfor action, said that to develope a thought's meaning, we need only\ndetermine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for\nus its sole significance. And the tangible fact at the root of all our\nthought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is no one of them so\nfine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice.\nTo attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need\nonly consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object\nmay involve--what sensations we are to expect from it, and what\nreactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether\nimmediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the\nobject, so far as that conception has positive significance at all.\n\nThis is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism. It lay\nentirely unnoticed by anyone for twenty years, until I, in an address\nbefore Professor Howison's philosophical union at the university of\nCalifornia, brought it forward again and made a special application\nof it to religion. By that date (1898) the times seemed ripe for its\nreception. The word 'pragmatism' spread, and at present it fairly\nspots the pages of the philosophic journals. On all hands we find the\n'pragmatic movement' spoken of, sometimes with respect, sometimes with\ncontumely, seldom with clear understanding. It is evident that the term\napplies itself conveniently to a number of tendencies that hitherto have\nlacked a collective name, and that it has 'come to stay.'\n\nTo take in the importance of Peirce's principle, one must get accustomed\nto applying it to concrete cases. I found a few years ago that Ostwald,\nthe illustrious Leipzig chemist, had been making perfectly distinct\nuse of the principle of pragmatism in his lectures on the philosophy of\nscience, tho he had not called it by that name.\n\n\"All realities influence our practice,\" he wrote me, \"and that influence\nis their meaning for us. I am accustomed to put questions to my classes\nin this way: In what respects would the world be different if this\nalternative or that were true? If I can find nothing that would become\ndifferent, then the alternative has no sense.\"\n\nThat is, the rival views mean practically the same thing, and meaning,\nother than practical, there is for us none. Ostwald in a published\nlecture gives this example of what he means. Chemists have long wrangled\nover the inner constitution of certain bodies called 'tautomerous.'\nTheir properties seemed equally consistent with the notion that an\ninstable hydrogen atom oscillates inside of them, or that they are\ninstable mixtures of two bodies. Controversy raged; but never was\ndecided. \"It would never have begun,\" says Ostwald, \"if the combatants\nhad asked themselves what particular experimental fact could have been\nmade different by one or the other view being correct. For it would then\nhave appeared that no difference of fact could possibly ensue; and the\nquarrel was as unreal as if, theorizing in primitive times about the\nraising of dough by yeast, one party should have invoked a 'brownie,'\nwhile another insisted on an 'elf' as the true cause of the phenomenon.\"\n[Footnote: 'Theorie und Praxis,' Zeitsch. des Oesterreichischen\nIngenieur u. Architecten-Vereines, 1905, Nr. 4 u. 6. I find a still\nmore radical pragmatism than Ostwald's in an address by Professor W.\nS. Franklin: \"I think that the sickliest notion of physics, even if a\nstudent gets it, is that it is 'the science of masses, molecules and the\nether.' And I think that the healthiest notion, even if a student does\nnot wholly get it, is that physics is the science of the ways of taking\nhold of bodies and pushing them!\" (Science, January 2, 1903.)]\n\nIt is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse\ninto insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of\ntracing a concrete consequence. There can BE no difference any-where\nthat doesn't MAKE a difference elsewhere--no difference in abstract\ntruth that doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact and\nin conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow,\nsomewhere and somewhen. The whole function of philosophy ought to be\nto find out what definite difference it will make to you and me,\nat definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that\nworld-formula be the true one.\n\nThere is absolutely nothing new in the pragmatic method. Socrates was\nan adept at it. Aristotle used it methodically. Locke, Berkeley and Hume\nmade momentous contributions to truth by its means. Shadworth Hodgson\nkeeps insisting that realities are only what they are 'known-as.'\nBut these forerunners of pragmatism used it in fragments: they were\npreluders only. Not until in our time has it generalized itself, become\nconscious of a universal mission, pretended to a conquering destiny. I\nbelieve in that destiny, and I hope I may end by inspiring you with my\nbelief.\n\nPragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the\nempiricist attitude, but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in\na more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet\nassumed. A pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once for all upon\na lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers. He turns\naway from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad\na priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended\nabsolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy,\ntowards facts, towards action, and towards power. That means the\nempiricist temper regnant, and the rationalist temper sincerely given\nup. It means the open air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma,\nartificiality and the pretence of finality in truth.\n\nAt the same time it does not stand for any special results. It is\na method only. But the general triumph of that method would mean an\nenormous change in what I called in my last lecture the 'temperament'\nof philosophy. Teachers of the ultra-rationalistic type would be frozen\nout, much as the courtier type is frozen out in republics, as the\nultramontane type of priest is frozen out in protestant lands. Science\nand metaphysics would come much nearer together, would in fact work\nabsolutely hand in hand.\n\nMetaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of quest. You\nknow how men have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know\nwhat a great part, in magic, WORDS have always played. If you have his\nname, or the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the\nspirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the\nnames of all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject\nto his will. So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as\na kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of\nsome illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the\nuniverse's PRINCIPLE, and to possess it is, after a fashion, to\npossess the universe itself. 'God,' 'Matter,' 'Reason,' 'the Absolute,'\n'Energy,' are so many solving names. You can rest when you have them.\nYou are at the end of your metaphysical quest.\n\nBut if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such word\nas closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its practical\ncash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience. It\nappears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more work,\nand more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing\nrealities may be CHANGED.\n\nTHEORIES THUS BECOME INSTRUMENTS, NOT ANSWERS TO ENIGMAS, IN WHICH\nWE CAN REST. We don't lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on\noccasion, make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all\nour theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work. Being nothing\nessentially new, it harmonizes with many ancient philosophic tendencies.\nIt agrees with nominalism for instance, in always appealing to\nparticulars; with utilitarianism in emphasizing practical aspects; with\npositivism in its disdain for verbal solutions, useless questions, and\nmetaphysical abstractions.\n\nAll these, you see, are ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST tendencies. Against\nrationalism as a pretension and a method, pragmatism is fully armed\nand militant. But, at the outset, at least, it stands for no particular\nresults. It has no dogmas, and no doctrines save its method. As the\nyoung Italian pragmatist Papini has well said, it lies in the midst of\nour theories, like a corridor in a hotel. Innumerable chambers open out\nof it. In one you may find a man writing an atheistic volume; in the\nnext someone on his knees praying for faith and strength; in a third\na chemist investigating a body's properties. In a fourth a system\nof idealistic metaphysics is being excogitated; in a fifth the\nimpossibility of metaphysics is being shown. But they all own the\ncorridor, and all must pass through it if they want a practicable way of\ngetting into or out of their respective rooms.\n\nNo particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation,\nis what the pragmatic method means. THE ATTITUDE OF LOOKING AWAY FROM\nFIRST THINGS, PRINCIPLES, 'CATEGORIES,' SUPPOSED NECESSITIES; AND OF\nLOOKING TOWARDS LAST THINGS, FRUITS, CONSEQUENCES, FACTS.\n\nSo much for the pragmatic method! You may say that I have been praising\nit rather than explaining it to you, but I shall presently explain it\nabundantly enough by showing how it works on some familiar problems.\nMeanwhile the word pragmatism has come to be used in a still wider\nsense, as meaning also a certain theory of TRUTH. I mean to give a whole\nlecture to the statement of that theory, after first paving the way,\nso I can be very brief now. But brevity is hard to follow, so I ask\nfor your redoubled attention for a quarter of an hour. If much remains\nobscure, I hope to make it clearer in the later lectures.\n\nOne of the most successfully cultivated branches of philosophy in our\ntime is what is called inductive logic, the study of the conditions\nunder which our sciences have evolved. Writers on this subject have\nbegun to show a singular unanimity as to what the laws of nature and\nelements of fact mean, when formulated by mathematicians, physicists and\nchemists. When the first mathematical, logical and natural uniformities,\nthe first LAWS, were discovered, men were so carried away by the\nclearness, beauty and simplification that resulted, that they believed\nthemselves to have deciphered authentically the eternal thoughts of the\nAlmighty. His mind also thundered and reverberated in syllogisms.\nHe also thought in conic sections, squares and roots and ratios, and\ngeometrized like Euclid. He made Kepler's laws for the planets to\nfollow; he made velocity increase proportionally to the time in falling\nbodies; he made the law of the sines for light to obey when refracted;\nhe established the classes, orders, families and genera of plants and\nanimals, and fixed the distances between them. He thought the archetypes\nof all things, and devised their variations; and when we rediscover any\none of these his wondrous institutions, we seize his mind in its very\nliteral intention.\n\nBut as the sciences have developed farther, the notion has gained ground\nthat most, perhaps all, of our laws are only approximations. The laws\nthemselves, moreover, have grown so numerous that there is no counting\nthem; and so many rival formulations are proposed in all the branches of\nscience that investigators have become accustomed to the notion that no\ntheory is absolutely a transcript of reality, but that any one of them\nmay from some point of view be useful. Their great use is to summarize\nold facts and to lead to new ones. They are only a man-made language,\na conceptual shorthand, as someone calls them, in which we write our\nreports of nature; and languages, as is well known, tolerate much choice\nof expression and many dialects.\n\nThus human arbitrariness has driven divine necessity from scientific\nlogic. If I mention the names of Sigwart, Mach, Ostwald, Pearson,\nMilhaud, Poincare, Duhem, Ruyssen, those of you who are students will\neasily identify the tendency I speak of, and will think of additional\nnames.\n\nRiding now on the front of this wave of scientific logic Messrs.\nSchiller and Dewey appear with their pragmatistic account of what truth\neverywhere signifies. Everywhere, these teachers say, 'truth' in our\nideas and beliefs means the same thing that it means in science. It\nmeans, they say, nothing but this, THAT IDEAS (WHICH THEMSELVES ARE BUT\nPARTS OF OUR EXPERIENCE) BECOME TRUE JUST IN SO FAR AS THEY HELP US TO\nGET INTO SATISFACTORY RELATION WITH OTHER PARTS OF OUR EXPERIENCE, to\nsummarize them and get about among them by conceptual short-cuts instead\nof following the interminable succession of particular phenomena. Any\nidea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us\nprosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part,\nlinking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying,\nsaving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true\nINSTRUMENTALLY. This is the 'instrumental' view of truth taught so\nsuccessfully at Chicago, the view that truth in our ideas means their\npower to 'work,' promulgated so brilliantly at Oxford.\n\nMessrs. Dewey, Schiller and their allies, in reaching this general\nconception of all truth, have only followed the example of geologists,\nbiologists and philologists. In the establishment of these other\nsciences, the successful stroke was always to take some simple process\nactually observable in operation--as denudation by weather, say, or\nvariation from parental type, or change of dialect by incorporation of\nnew words and pronunciations--and then to generalize it, making it apply\nto all times, and produce great results by summating its effects through\nthe ages.\n\nThe observable process which Schiller and Dewey particularly singled out\nfor generalization is the familiar one by which any individual settles\ninto NEW OPINIONS. The process here is always the same. The individual\nhas a stock of old opinions already, but he meets a new experience that\nputs them to a strain. Somebody contradicts them; or in a reflective\nmoment he discovers that they contradict each other; or he hears of\nfacts with which they are incompatible; or desires arise in him which\nthey cease to satisfy. The result is an inward trouble to which his\nmind till then had been a stranger, and from which he seeks to escape\nby modifying his previous mass of opinions. He saves as much of it as he\ncan, for in this matter of belief we are all extreme conservatives. So\nhe tries to change first this opinion, and then that (for they resist\nchange very variously), until at last some new idea comes up which he\ncan graft upon the ancient stock with a minimum of disturbance of the\nlatter, some idea that mediates between the stock and the new experience\nand runs them into one another most felicitously and expediently.\n\nThis new idea is then adopted as the true one. It preserves the older\nstock of truths with a minimum of modification, stretching them just\nenough to make them admit the novelty, but conceiving that in ways as\nfamiliar as the case leaves possible. An outree explanation, violating\nall our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a\nnovelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something\nless excentric. The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs\nleave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect,\nnature and history, and one's own biography remain untouched. New truth\nis always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old\nopinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of\ncontinuity. We hold a theory true just in proportion to its success in\nsolving this 'problem of maxima and minima.' But success in solving\nthis problem is eminently a matter of approximation. We say this theory\nsolves it on the whole more satisfactorily than that theory; but that\nmeans more satisfactorily to ourselves, and individuals will emphasize\ntheir points of satisfaction differently. To a certain degree,\ntherefore, everything here is plastic.\n\nThe point I now urge you to observe particularly is the part played by\nthe older truths. Failure to take account of it is the source of much\nof the unjust criticism leveled against pragmatism. Their influence is\nabsolutely controlling. Loyalty to them is the first principle--in\nmost cases it is the only principle; for by far the most usual way\nof handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious\nrearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to\nabuse those who bear witness for them.\n\nYou doubtless wish examples of this process of truth's growth, and the\nonly trouble is their superabundance. The simplest case of new truth is\nof course the mere numerical addition of new kinds of facts, or of new\nsingle facts of old kinds, to our experience--an addition that involves\nno alteration in the old beliefs. Day follows day, and its contents are\nsimply added. The new contents themselves are not true, they simply COME\nand ARE. Truth is what we say about them, and when we say that they have\ncome, truth is satisfied by the plain additive formula.\n\nBut often the day's contents oblige a rearrangement. If I should now\nutter piercing shrieks and act like a maniac on this platform, it\nwould make many of you revise your ideas as to the probable worth of my\nphilosophy. 'Radium' came the other day as part of the day's content,\nand seemed for a moment to contradict our ideas of the whole order of\nnature, that order having come to be identified with what is called\nthe conservation of energy. The mere sight of radium paying heat away\nindefinitely out of its own pocket seemed to violate that conservation.\nWhat to think? If the radiations from it were nothing but an escape of\nunsuspected 'potential' energy, pre-existent inside of the atoms, the\nprinciple of conservation would be saved. The discovery of 'helium' as\nthe radiation's outcome, opened a way to this belief. So Ramsay's view\nis generally held to be true, because, altho it extends our old ideas of\nenergy, it causes a minimum of alteration in their nature.\n\nI need not multiply instances. A new opinion counts as 'true' just in\nproportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the\nnovel in his experience to his beliefs in stock. It must both lean on\nold truth and grasp new fact; and its success (as I said a moment ago)\nin doing this, is a matter for the individual's appreciation. When\nold truth grows, then, by new truth's addition, it is for subjective\nreasons. We are in the process and obey the reasons. That new idea is\ntruest which performs most felicitously its function of satisfying our\ndouble urgency. It makes itself true, gets itself classed as true, by\nthe way it works; grafting itself then upon the ancient body of truth,\nwhich thus grows much as a tree grows by the activity of a new layer of\ncambium.\n\nNow Dewey and Schiller proceed to generalize this observation and\nto apply it to the most ancient parts of truth. They also once were\nplastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also\nmediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel\nobservations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the\nfunction of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of\nexperience with newer parts played no role whatever, is nowhere to be\nfound. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they ARE\ntrue, for 'to be true' MEANS only to perform this marriage-function.\n\nThe trail of the human serpent is thus over everything. Truth\nindependent; truth that we FIND merely; truth no longer malleable to\nhuman need; truth incorrigible, in a word; such truth exists indeed\nsuperabundantly--or is supposed to exist by rationalistically minded\nthinkers; but then it means only the dead heart of the living tree, and\nits being there means only that truth also has its paleontology and its\n'prescription,' and may grow stiff with years of veteran service and\npetrified in men's regard by sheer antiquity. But how plastic even the\noldest truths nevertheless really are has been vividly shown in our\nday by the transformation of logical and mathematical ideas, a\ntransformation which seems even to be invading physics. The ancient\nformulas are reinterpreted as special expressions of much wider\nprinciples, principles that our ancestors never got a glimpse of in\ntheir present shape and formulation.\n\nMr. Schiller still gives to all this view of truth the name of\n'Humanism,' but, for this doctrine too, the name of pragmatism seems\nfairly to be in the ascendant, so I will treat it under the name of\npragmatism in these lectures.\n\nSuch then would be the scope of pragmatism--first, a method; and second,\na genetic theory of what is meant by truth. And these two things must be\nour future topics.\n\nWhat I have said of the theory of truth will, I am sure, have appeared\nobscure and unsatisfactory to most of you by reason of us brevity. I\nshall make amends for that hereafter. In a lecture on 'common sense' I\nshall try to show what I mean by truths grown petrified by antiquity. In\nanother lecture I shall expatiate on the idea that our thoughts become\ntrue in proportion as they successfully exert their go-between function.\nIn a third I shall show how hard it is to discriminate subjective from\nobjective factors in Truth's development. You may not follow me wholly\nin these lectures; and if you do, you may not wholly agree with me. But\nyou will, I know, regard me at least as serious, and treat my effort\nwith respectful consideration.\n\nYou will probably be surprised to learn, then, that Messrs. Schiller's\nand Dewey's theories have suffered a hailstorm of contempt and ridicule.\nAll rationalism has risen against them. In influential quarters Mr.\nSchiller, in particular, has been treated like an impudent schoolboy who\ndeserves a spanking. I should not mention this, but for the fact that it\nthrows so much sidelight upon that rationalistic temper to which I have\nopposed the temper of pragmatism. Pragmatism is uncomfortable away from\nfacts. Rationalism is comfortable only in the presence of abstractions.\nThis pragmatist talk about truths in the plural, about their utility\nand satisfactoriness, about the success with which they 'work,' etc.,\nsuggests to the typical intellectualist mind a sort of coarse lame\nsecond-rate makeshift article of truth. Such truths are not real truth.\nSuch tests are merely subjective. As against this, objective truth must\nbe something non-utilitarian, haughty, refined, remote, august, exalted.\nIt must be an absolute correspondence of our thoughts with an equally\nabsolute reality. It must be what we OUGHT to think, unconditionally.\nThe conditioned ways in which we DO think are so much irrelevance and\nmatter for psychology. Down with psychology, up with logic, in all this\nquestion!\n\nSee the exquisite contrast of the types of mind! The pragmatist clings\nto facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular\ncases, and generalizes. Truth, for him, becomes a class-name for all\nsorts of definite working-values in experience. For the rationalist it\nremains a pure abstraction, to the bare name of which we must defer.\nWhen the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just WHY we must defer,\nthe rationalist is unable to recognize the concretes from which his own\nabstraction is taken. He accuses us of DENYING truth; whereas we have\nonly sought to trace exactly why people follow it and always ought\nto follow it. Your typical ultra-abstractionist fairly shudders at\nconcreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and\nspectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the\nskinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much\npurer, clearer, nobler.\n\nI hope that as these lectures go on, the concreteness and closeness to\nfacts of the pragmatism which they advocate may be what approves itself\nto you as its most satisfactory peculiarity. It only follows here the\nexample of the sister-sciences, interpreting the unobserved by the\nobserved. It brings old and new harmoniously together. It converts the\nabsolutely empty notion of a static relation of 'correspondence' (what\nthat may mean we must ask later) between our minds and reality, into\nthat of a rich and active commerce (that anyone may follow in detail and\nunderstand) between particular thoughts of ours, and the great universe\nof other experiences in which they play their parts and have their uses.\n\nBut enough of this at present? The justification of what I say must be\npostponed. I wish now to add a word in further explanation of the claim\nI made at our last meeting, that pragmatism may be a happy harmonizer\nof empiricist ways of thinking, with the more religious demands of human\nbeings.\n\nMen who are strongly of the fact-loving temperament, you may remember me\nto have said, are liable to be kept at a distance by the small sympathy\nwith facts which that philosophy from the present-day fashion of\nidealism offers them. It is far too intellectualistic. Old fashioned\ntheism was bad enough, with its notion of God as an exalted monarch,\nmade up of a lot of unintelligible or preposterous 'attributes'; but, so\nlong as it held strongly by the argument from design, it kept some touch\nwith concrete realities. Since, however, darwinism has once for all\ndisplaced design from the minds of the 'scientific,' theism has lost\nthat foothold; and some kind of an immanent or pantheistic deity working\nIN things rather than above them is, if any, the kind recommended to our\ncontemporary imagination. Aspirants to a philosophic religion turn, as a\nrule, more hopefully nowadays towards idealistic pantheism than towards\nthe older dualistic theism, in spite of the fact that the latter still\ncounts able defenders.\n\nBut, as I said in my first lecture, the brand of pantheism offered is\nhard for them to assimilate if they are lovers of facts, or empirically\nminded. It is the absolutistic brand, spurning the dust and reared upon\npure logic. It keeps no connexion whatever with concreteness. Affirming\nthe Absolute Mind, which is its substitute for God, to be the rational\npresupposition of all particulars of fact, whatever they may be, it\nremains supremely indifferent to what the particular facts in our world\nactually are. Be they what they may, the Absolute will father them. Like\nthe sick lion in Esop's fable, all footprints lead into his den,\nbut nulla vestigia retrorsum. You cannot redescend into the world of\nparticulars by the Absolute's aid, or deduce any necessary consequences\nof detail important for your life from your idea of his nature. He gives\nyou indeed the assurance that all is well with Him, and for his eternal\nway of thinking; but thereupon he leaves you to be finitely saved by\nyour own temporal devices.\n\nFar be it from me to deny the majesty of this conception, or its\ncapacity to yield religious comfort to a most respectable class of\nminds. But from the human point of view, no one can pretend that it\ndoesn't suffer from the faults of remoteness and abstractness. It is\neminently a product of what I have ventured to call the rationalistic\ntemper. It disdains empiricism's needs. It substitutes a pallid outline\nfor the real world's richness. It is dapper; it is noble in the bad\nsense, in the sense in which to be noble is to be inapt for humble\nservice. In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that\nwhen a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as a presumption\nagainst its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of\ndarkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the\nGod of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman. His menial\nservices are needed in the dust of our human trials, even more than his\ndignity is needed in the empyrean.\n\nNow pragmatism, devoted tho she be to facts, has no such materialistic\nbias as ordinary empiricism labors under. Moreover, she has no objection\nwhatever to the realizing of abstractions, so long as you get about\namong particulars with their aid and they actually carry you somewhere.\nInterested in no conclusions but those which our minds and our\nexperiences work out together, she has no a priori prejudices against\ntheology. IF THEOLOGICAL IDEAS PROVE TO HAVE A VALUE FOR CONCRETE LIFE,\nTHEY WILL BE TRUE, FOR PRAGMATISM, IN THE SENSE OF BEING GOOD FOR SO\nMUCH. FOR HOW MUCH MORE THEY ARE TRUE, WILL DEPEND ENTIRELY ON THEIR\nRELATIONS TO THE OTHER TRUTHS THAT ALSO HAVE TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED.\n\nWhat I said just now about the Absolute of transcendental idealism is a\ncase in point. First, I called it majestic and said it yielded religious\ncomfort to a class of minds, and then I accused it of remoteness and\nsterility. But so far as it affords such comfort, it surely is not\nsterile; it has that amount of value; it performs a concrete function.\nAs a good pragmatist, I myself ought to call the Absolute true 'in so\nfar forth,' then; and I unhesitatingly now do so.\n\nBut what does TRUE IN SO FAR FORTH mean in this case? To answer, we need\nonly apply the pragmatic method. What do believers in the Absolute mean\nby saying that their belief affords them comfort? They mean that since\nin the Absolute finite evil is 'overruled' already, we may, therefore,\nwhenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the\neternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and, without sin,\ndismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In\nshort, they mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral\nholiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that its issues\nare in better hands than ours and are none of our business.\n\nThe universe is a system of which the individual members may relax their\nanxieties occasionally, in which the don't-care mood is also right for\nmen, and moral holidays in order--that, if I mistake not, is part, at\nleast, of what the Absolute is 'known-as,' that is the great difference\nin our particular experiences which his being true makes for us, that\nis part of his cash-value when he is pragmatically interpreted. Farther\nthan that the ordinary lay-reader in philosophy who thinks favorably of\nabsolute idealism does not venture to sharpen his conceptions. He can\nuse the Absolute for so much, and so much is very precious. He is pained\nat hearing you speak incredulously of the Absolute, therefore, and\ndisregards your criticisms because they deal with aspects of the\nconception that he fails to follow.\n\nIf the Absolute means this, and means no more than this, who can\npossibly deny the truth of it? To deny it would be to insist that men\nshould never relax, and that holidays are never in order. I am well\naware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is\n'true' so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives. That it is\nGOOD, for as much as it profits, you will gladly admit. If what we do\nby its aid is good, you will allow the idea itself to be good in so far\nforth, for we are the better for possessing it. But is it not a strange\nmisuse of the word 'truth,' you will say, to call ideas also 'true' for\nthis reason?\n\nTo answer this difficulty fully is impossible at this stage of\nmy account. You touch here upon the very central point of Messrs.\nSchiller's, Dewey's and my own doctrine of truth, which I cannot discuss\nwith detail until my sixth lecture. Let me now say only this, that truth\nis ONE SPECIES OF GOOD, and not, as is usually supposed, a category\ndistinct from good, and co-ordinate with it. THE TRUE IS THE NAME OF\nWHATEVER PROVES ITSELF TO BE GOOD IN THE WAY OF BELIEF, AND GOOD, TOO,\nFOR DEFINITE, ASSIGNABLE REASONS. Surely you must admit this, that if\nthere were NO good for life in true ideas, or if the knowledge of them\nwere positively disadvantageous and false ideas the only useful ones,\nthen the current notion that truth is divine and precious, and its\npursuit a duty, could never have grown up or become a dogma. In a world\nlike that, our duty would be to SHUN truth, rather. But in this world,\njust as certain foods are not only agreeable to our taste, but good for\nour teeth, our stomach and our tissues; so certain ideas are not only\nagreeable to think about, or agreeable as supporting other ideas that we\nare fond of, but they are also helpful in life's practical struggles. If\nthere be any life that it is really better we should lead, and if there\nbe any idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life,\nthen it would be really BETTER FOR US to believe in that idea, UNLESS,\nINDEED, BELIEF IN IT INCIDENTALLY CLASHED WITH OTHER GREATER VITAL\nBENEFITS.\n\n'What would be better for us to believe'! This sounds very like a\ndefinition of truth. It comes very near to saying 'what we OUGHT to\nbelieve': and in THAT definition none of you would find any oddity.\nOught we ever not to believe what it is BETTER FOR US to believe? And\ncan we then keep the notion of what is better for us, and what is true\nfor us, permanently apart?\n\nPragmatism says no, and I fully agree with her. Probably you also agree,\nso far as the abstract statement goes, but with a suspicion that if\nwe practically did believe everything that made for good in our own\npersonal lives, we should be found indulging all kinds of fancies about\nthis world's affairs, and all kinds of sentimental superstitions about a\nworld hereafter. Your suspicion here is undoubtedly well founded, and it\nis evident that something happens when you pass from the abstract to the\nconcrete, that complicates the situation.\n\nI said just now that what is better for us to believe is true UNLESS THE\nBELIEF INCIDENTALLY CLASHES WITH SOME OTHER VITAL BENEFIT. Now in real\nlife what vital benefits is any particular belief of ours most liable\nto clash with? What indeed except the vital benefits yielded by OTHER\nBELIEFS when these prove incompatible with the first ones? In other\nwords, the greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest\nof our truths. Truths have once for all this desperate instinct of\nself-preservation and of desire to extinguish whatever contradicts them.\nMy belief in the Absolute, based on the good it does me, must run the\ngauntlet of all my other beliefs. Grant that it may be true in giving me\na moral holiday. Nevertheless, as I conceive it,--and let me speak now\nconfidentially, as it were, and merely in my own private person,--it\nclashes with other truths of mine whose benefits I hate to give up on\nits account. It happens to be associated with a kind of logic of which I\nam the enemy, I find that it entangles me in metaphysical paradoxes\nthat are inacceptable, etc., etc.. But as I have enough trouble in\nlife already without adding the trouble of carrying these intellectual\ninconsistencies, I personally just give up the Absolute. I just TAKE my\nmoral holidays; or else as a professional philosopher, I try to justify\nthem by some other principle.\n\nIf I could restrict my notion of the Absolute to its bare holiday-giving\nvalue, it wouldn't clash with my other truths. But we cannot easily thus\nrestrict our hypotheses. They carry supernumerary features, and these it\nis that clash so. My disbelief in the Absolute means then disbelief\nin those other supernumerary features, for I fully believe in the\nlegitimacy of taking moral holidays.\n\nYou see by this what I meant when I called pragmatism a mediator and\nreconciler and said, borrowing the word from Papini, that he unstiffens\nour theories. She has in fact no prejudices whatever, no obstructive\ndogmas, no rigid canons of what shall count as proof. She is completely\ngenial. She will entertain any hypothesis, she will consider any\nevidence. It follows that in the religious field she is at a great\nadvantage both over positivistic empiricism, with its anti-theological\nbias, and over religious rationalism, with its exclusive interest in\nthe remote, the noble, the simple, and the abstract in the way of\nconception.\n\nIn short, she widens the field of search for God. Rationalism sticks\nto logic and the empyrean. Empiricism sticks to the external senses.\nPragmatism is willing to take anything, to follow either logic or the\nsenses, and to count the humblest and most personal experiences. She\nwill count mystical experiences if they have practical consequences.\nShe will take a God who lives in the very dirt of private fact-if that\nshould seem a likely place to find him.\n\nHer only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading\nus, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity\nof experience's demands, nothing being omitted. If theological ideas\nshould do this, if the notion of God, in particular, should prove to do\nit, how could pragmatism possibly deny God's existence? She could see\nno meaning in treating as 'not true' a notion that was pragmatically so\nsuccessful. What other kind of truth could there be, for her, than all\nthis agreement with concrete reality?\n\nIn my last lecture I shall return again to the relations of pragmatism\nwith religion. But you see already how democratic she is. Her manners\nare as various and flexible, her resources as rich and endless, and her\nconclusions as friendly as those of mother nature.\n\n\n\n\nLecture III\n\nSome Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered\n\nI am now to make the pragmatic method more familiar by giving you some\nillustrations of its application to particular problems. I will begin\nwith what is driest, and the first thing I shall take will be the\nproblem of Substance. Everyone uses the old distinction between\nsubstance and attribute, enshrined as it is in the very structure\nof human language, in the difference between grammatical subject and\npredicate. Here is a bit of blackboard crayon. Its modes, attributes,\nproperties, accidents, or affections,--use which term you will,--are\nwhiteness, friability, cylindrical shape, insolubility in water,\netc., etc. But the bearer of these attributes is so much chalk,\nwhich thereupon is called the substance in which they inhere. So the\nattributes of this desk inhere in the substance 'wood,' those of my coat\nin the substance 'wool,' and so forth. Chalk, wood and wool, show again,\nin spite of their differences, common properties, and in so far forth\nthey are themselves counted as modes of a still more primal substance,\nmatter, the attributes of which are space occupancy and impenetrability.\nSimilarly our thoughts and feelings are affections or properties of our\nseveral souls, which are substances, but again not wholly in their own\nright, for they are modes of the still deeper substance 'spirit.'\n\nNow it was very early seen that all we know of the chalk is\nthe whiteness, friability, etc., all WE KNOW of the wood is the\ncombustibility and fibrous structure. A group of attributes is what each\nsubstance here is known-as, they form its sole cash-value for our actual\nexperience. The substance is in every case revealed through THEM; if we\nwere cut off from THEM we should never suspect its existence; and if\nGod should keep sending them to us in an unchanged order, miraculously\nannihilating at a certain moment the substance that supported them, we\nnever could detect the moment, for our experiences themselves would be\nunaltered. Nominalists accordingly adopt the opinion that substance is\na spurious idea due to our inveterate human trick of turning names\ninto things. Phenomena come in groups--the chalk-group, the wood-group,\netc.--and each group gets its name. The name we then treat as in a\nway supporting the group of phenomena. The low thermometer to-day,\nfor instance, is supposed to come from something called the 'climate.'\nClimate is really only the name for a certain group of days, but it is\ntreated as if it lay BEHIND the day, and in general we place the name,\nas if it were a being, behind the facts it is the name of. But the\nphenomenal properties of things, nominalists say, surely do not\nreally inhere in names, and if not in names then they do not inhere\nin anything. They ADhere, or COhere, rather, WITH EACH OTHER, and the\nnotion of a substance inaccessible to us, which we think accounts\nfor such cohesion by supporting it, as cement might support pieces of\nmosaic, must be abandoned. The fact of the bare cohesion itself is all\nthat the notion of the substance signifies. Behind that fact is nothing.\n\nScholasticism has taken the notion of substance from common sense and\nmade it very technical and articulate. Few things would seem to have\nfewer pragmatic consequences for us than substances, cut off as we are\nfrom every contact with them. Yet in one case scholasticism has proved\nthe importance of the substance-idea by treating it pragmatically. I\nrefer to certain disputes about the mystery of the Eucharist. Substance\nhere would appear to have momentous pragmatic value. Since the accidents\nof the wafer don't change in the Lord's supper, and yet it has become\nthe very body of Christ, it must be that the change is in the substance\nsolely. The bread-substance must have been withdrawn, and the divine\nsubstance substituted miraculously without altering the immediate\nsensible properties. But tho these don't alter, a tremendous difference\nhas been made, no less a one than this, that we who take the sacrament,\nnow feed upon the very substance of divinity. The substance-notion\nbreaks into life, then, with tremendous effect, if once you allow that\nsubstances can separate from their accidents, and exchange these latter.\n\nThis is the only pragmatic application of the substance-idea with\nwhich I am acquainted; and it is obvious that it will only be treated\nseriously by those who already believe in the 'real presence' on\nindependent grounds.\n\nMATERIAL SUBSTANCE was criticized by Berkeley with such telling effect\nthat his name has reverberated through all subsequent philosophy.\nBerkeley's treatment of the notion of matter is so well known as to need\nhardly more than a mention. So far from denying the external world which\nwe know, Berkeley corroborated it. It was the scholastic notion of a\nmaterial substance unapproachable by us, BEHIND the external world,\ndeeper and more real than it, and needed to support it, which Berkeley\nmaintained to be the most effective of all reducers of the external\nworld to unreality. Abolish that substance, he said, believe that God,\nwhom you can understand and approach, sends you the sensible world\ndirectly, and you confirm the latter and back it up by his divine\nauthority. Berkeley's criticism of 'matter' was consequently absolutely\npragmatistic. Matter is known as our sensations of colour, figure,\nhardness and the like. They are the cash-value of the term. The\ndifference matter makes to us by truly being is that we then get such\nsensations; by not being, is that we lack them. These sensations then\nare its sole meaning. Berkeley doesn't deny matter, then; he simply\ntells us what it consists of. It is a true name for just so much in the\nway of sensations.\n\nLocke, and later Hume, applied a similar pragmatic criticism to the\nnotion of SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE. I will only mention Locke's treatment\nof our 'personal identity.' He immediately reduces this notion to its\npragmatic value in terms of experience. It means, he says, so much\nconsciousness,' namely the fact that at one moment of life we remember\nother moments, and feel them all as parts of one and the same personal\nhistory. Rationalism had explained this practical continuity in our life\nby the unity of our soul-substance. But Locke says: suppose that God\nshould take away the consciousness, should WE be any the better\nfor having still the soul-principle? Suppose he annexed the same\nconsciousness to different souls, | should we, as WE realize OURSELVES,\nbe any the worse for that fact? In Locke's day the soul was chiefly a\nthing to be rewarded or punished. See how Locke, discussing it from this\npoint of view, keeps the question pragmatic:\n\nSuppose, he says, one to think himself to be the same soul that once was\nNestor or Thersites. Can he think their actions his own any more than\nthe actions of any other man that ever existed? But | let him once find\nhimself CONSCIOUS of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself\nthe same person with Nestor. ... In this personal identity is founded\nall the right and justice of reward and punishment. It may be reasonable\nto think, no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of,\nbut shall receive his doom, his consciousness accusing or excusing.\nSupposing a man punished now for what he had done in another life,\nwhereof he could be made to have no consciousness at all, what\ndifference is there between that punishment and being created miserable?\n\nOur personal identity, then, consists, for Locke, solely in\npragmatically definable particulars. Whether, apart from these\nverifiable facts, it also inheres in a spiritual principle, is a merely\ncurious speculation. Locke, compromiser that he was, passively tolerated\nthe belief in a substantial soul behind our consciousness. But his\nsuccessor Hume, and most empirical psychologists after him, have denied\nthe soul, save as the name for verifiable cohesions in our inner life.\nThey redescend into the stream of experience with it, and cash it into\nso much small-change value in the way of 'ideas' and their peculiar\nconnexions with each other. As I said of Berkeley's matter, the soul is\ngood or 'true' for just SO MUCH, but no more.\n\nThe mention of material substance naturally suggests the doctrine of\n'materialism,' but philosophical materialism is not necessarily knit\nup with belief in 'matter,' as a metaphysical principle. One may\ndeny matter in that sense, as strongly as Berkeley did, one may be a\nphenomenalist like Huxley, and yet one may still be a materialist in the\nwider sense, of explaining higher phenomena by lower ones, and leaving\nthe destinies of the world at the mercy of its blinder parts and forces.\nIt is in this wider sense of the word that materialism is opposed to\nspiritualism or theism. The laws of physical nature are what run things,\nmaterialism says. The highest productions of human genius might be\nciphered by one who had complete acquaintance with the facts, out of\ntheir physiological conditions, regardless whether nature be there only\nfor our minds, as idealists contend, or not. Our minds in any case would\nhave to record the kind of nature it is, and write it down as operating\nthrough blind laws of physics. This is the complexion of present day\nmaterialism, which may better be called naturalism. Over against it\nstands 'theism,' or what in a wide sense may be termed 'spiritualism.'\nSpiritualism says that mind not only witnesses and records things, but\nalso runs and operates them: the world being thus guided, not by its\nlower, but by its higher element.\n\nTreated as it often is, this question becomes little more than a\nconflict between aesthetic preferences. Matter is gross, coarse, crass,\nmuddy; spirit is pure, elevated, noble; and since it is more consonant\nwith the dignity of the universe to give the primacy in it to what\nappears superior, spirit must be affirmed as the ruling principle. To\ntreat abstract principles as finalities, before which our intellects\nmay come to rest in a state of admiring contemplation, is the great\nrationalist failing. Spiritualism, as often held, may be simply a\nstate of admiration for one kind, and of dislike for another kind,\nof abstraction. I remember a worthy spiritualist professor who always\nreferred to materialism as the 'mud-philosophy,' and deemed it thereby\nrefuted.\n\nTo such spiritualism as this there is an easy answer, and Mr. Spencer\nmakes it effectively. In some well-written pages at the end of the\nfirst volume of his Psychology he shows us that a 'matter' so infinitely\nsubtile, and performing motions as inconceivably quick and fine as those\nwhich modern science postulates in her explanations, has no trace of\ngrossness left. He shows that the conception of spirit, as we mortals\nhitherto have framed it, is itself too gross to cover the exquisite\ntenuity of nature's facts. Both terms, he says, are but symbols,\npointing to that one unknowable reality in which their oppositions\ncease.\n\nTo an abstract objection an abstract rejoinder suffices; and so far as\none's opposition to materialism springs from one's disdain of matter as\nsomething 'crass,' Mr. Spencer cuts the ground from under one. Matter is\nindeed infinitely and incredibly refined. To anyone who has ever looked\non the face of a dead child or parent the mere fact that matter COULD\nhave taken for a time that precious form, ought to make matter sacred\never after. It makes no difference what the PRINCIPLE of life may be,\nmaterial or immaterial, matter at any rate co-operates, lends itself\nto all life's purposes. That beloved incarnation was among matter's\npossibilities.\n\nBut now, instead of resting in principles after this stagnant\nintellectualist fashion, let us apply the pragmatic method to the\nquestion. What do we MEAN by matter? What practical difference can it\nmake NOW that the world should be run by matter or by spirit? I think we\nfind that the problem takes with this a rather different character.\n\nAnd first of all I call your attention to a curious fact. It makes not\na single jot of difference so far as the PAST of the world goes, whether\nwe deem it to have been the work of matter or whether we think a divine\nspirit was its author.\n\nImagine, in fact, the entire contents of the world to be once for all\nirrevocably given. Imagine it to end this very moment, and to have\nno future; and then let a theist and a materialist apply their rival\nexplanations to its history. The theist shows how a God made it; the\nmaterialist shows, and we will suppose with equal success, how it\nresulted from blind physical forces. Then let the pragmatist be asked to\nchoose between their theories. How can he apply his test if the world\nis already completed? Concepts for him are things to come back into\nexperience with, things to make us look for differences. But by\nhypothesis there is to be no more experience and no possible differences\ncan now be looked for. Both theories have shown all their consequences\nand, by the hypothesis we are adopting, these are identical. The\npragmatist must consequently say that the two theories, in spite of\ntheir different-sounding names, mean exactly the same thing, and that\nthe dispute is purely verbal. [I am opposing, of course, that the\ntheories HAVE been equally successful in their explanations of what is.]\n\nFor just consider the case sincerely, and say what would be the WORTH\nof a God if he WERE there, with his work accomplished and his world run\ndown. He would be worth no more than just that world was worth. To that\namount of result, with its mixed merits and defects, his creative power\ncould attain, but go no farther. And since there is to be no future;\nsince the whole value and meaning of the world has been already paid in\nand actualized in the feelings that went with it in the passing, and now\ngo with it in the ending; since it draws no supplemental significance\n(such as our real world draws) from its function of preparing something\nyet to come; why then, by it we take God's measure, as it were. He\nis the Being who could once for all do THAT; and for that much we\nare thankful to him, but for nothing more. But now, on the contrary\nhypothesis, namely, that the bits of matter following their laws could\nmake that world and do no less, should we not be just as thankful to\nthem? Wherein should we suffer loss, then, if we dropped God as an\nhypothesis and made the matter alone responsible? Where would any\nspecial deadness, or crassness, come in? And how, experience being what\nis once for all, would God's presence in it make it any more living or\nricher?\n\nCandidly, it is impossible to give any answer to this question. The\nactually experienced world is supposed to be the same in its details\non either hypothesis, \"the same, for our praise or blame,\" as Browning\nsays. It stands there indefeasibly: a gift which can't be taken back.\nCalling matter the cause of it retracts no single one of the items that\nhave made it up, nor does calling God the cause augment them. They are\nthe God or the atoms, respectively, of just that and no other world. The\nGod, if there, has been doing just what atoms could do--appearing in the\ncharacter of atoms, so to speak--and earning such gratitude as is due to\natoms, and no more. If his presence lends no different turn or issue to\nthe performance, it surely can lend it no increase of dignity. Nor would\nindignity come to it were he absent, and did the atoms remain the only\nactors on the stage. When a play is once over, and the curtain down,\nyou really make it no better by claiming an illustrious genius for its\nauthor, just as you make it no worse by calling him a common hack.\n\nThus if no future detail of experience or conduct is to be deduced from\nour hypothesis, the debate between materialism and theism becomes quite\nidle and insignificant. Matter and God in that event mean exactly the\nsame thing--the power, namely, neither more nor less, that could make\njust this completed world--and the wise man is he who in such a case\nwould turn his back on such a supererogatory discussion. Accordingly,\nmost men instinctively, and positivists and scientists deliberately,\ndo turn their backs on philosophical disputes from which nothing in the\nline of definite future consequences can be seen to follow. The verbal\nand empty character of philosophy is surely a reproach with which we\nare, but too familiar. If pragmatism be true, it is a perfectly sound\nreproach unless the theories under fire can be shown to have alternative\npractical outcomes, however delicate and distant these may be. The\ncommon man and the scientist say they discover no such outcomes, and if\nthe metaphysician can discern none either, the others certainly are\nin the right of it, as against him. His science is then but pompous\ntrifling; and the endowment of a professorship for such a being would be\nsilly.\n\nAccordingly, in every genuine metaphysical debate some practical issue,\nhowever conjectural and remote, is involved. To realize this, revert\nwith me to our question, and place yourselves this time in the world we\nlive in, in the world that HAS a future, that is yet uncompleted whilst\nwe speak. In this unfinished world the alternative of 'materialism or\ntheism?' is intensely practical; and it is worth while for us to spend\nsome minutes of our hour in seeing that it is so.\n\nHow, indeed, does the program differ for us, according as we consider\nthat the facts of experience up to date are purposeless configurations\nof blind atoms moving according to eternal laws, or that on the other\nhand they are due to the providence of God? As far as the past facts\ngo, indeed there is no difference. Those facts are in, are bagged, are\ncaptured; and the good that's in them is gained, be the atoms or be the\nGod their cause. There are accordingly many materialists about us\nto-day who, ignoring altogether the future and practical aspects of the\nquestion, seek to eliminate the odium attaching to the word materialism,\nand even to eliminate the word itself, by showing that, if matter could\ngive birth to all these gains, why then matter, functionally considered,\nis just as divine an entity as God, in fact coalesces with God, is what\nyou mean by God. Cease, these persons advise us, to use either of these\nterms, with their outgrown opposition. Use a term free of the clerical\nconnotations, on the one hand; of the suggestion of gross-ness,\ncoarseness, ignobility, on the other. Talk of the primal mystery, of the\nunknowable energy, of the one and only power, instead of saying either\nGod or matter. This is the course to which Mr. Spencer urges us; and if\nphilosophy were purely retrospective, he would thereby proclaim himself\nan excellent pragmatist.\n\nBut philosophy is prospective also, and, after finding what the world\nhas been and done and yielded, still asks the further question 'what\ndoes the world PROMISE?' Give us a matter that promises SUCCESS, that is\nbound by its laws to lead our world ever nearer to perfection, and any\nrational man will worship that matter as readily as Mr. Spencer\nworships his own so-called unknowable power. It not only has made for\nrighteousness up to date, but it will make for righteousness forever;\nand that is all we need. Doing practically all that a God can do, it is\nequivalent to God, its function is a God's function, and is exerted in\na world in which a God would now be superfluous; from such a world a God\ncould never lawfully be missed. 'Cosmic emotion' would here be the right\nname for religion.\n\nBut is the matter by which Mr. Spencer's process of cosmic evolution is\ncarried on any such principle of never-ending perfection as this? Indeed\nit is not, for the future end of every cosmically evolved thing or\nsystem of things is foretold by science to be death and tragedy; and\nMr. Spencer, in confining himself to the aesthetic and ignoring the\npractical side of the controversy, has really contributed nothing\nserious to its relief. But apply now our principle of practical results,\nand see what a vital significance the question of materialism or theism\nimmediately acquires.\n\nTheism and materialism, so indifferent when taken retrospectively,\npoint, when we take them prospectively, to wholly different outlooks of\nexperience. For, according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the\nlaws of redistribution of matter and motion, tho they are certainly to\nthank for all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded\nus and for all the ideals which our minds now frame, are yet fatally\ncertain to undo their work again, and to redissolve everything that they\nhave once evolved. You all know the picture of the last state of the\nuniverse which evolutionary science foresees. I cannot state it better\nthan in Mr. Balfour's words: \"The energies of our system will decay, the\nglory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert,\nwill no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its\nsolitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will\nperish. The uneasy, consciousness which in this obscure corner has for\na brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at\nrest. Matter will know itself no longer. 'Imperishable monuments' and\n'immortal deeds,' death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as\nthough they had never been. Nor will anything that is, be better or be\nworse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man\nhave striven through countless generations to effect.\" [Footnote: The\nFoundations of Belief, p. 30.]\n\nThat is the sting of it, that in the vast driftings of the cosmic\nweather, tho many a jeweled shore appears, and many an enchanted\ncloud-bank floats away, long lingering ere it be dissolved--even as our\nworld now lingers, for our joy-yet when these transient products are\ngone, nothing, absolutely NOTHING remains, of represent those particular\nqualities, those elements of preciousness which they may have enshrined.\nDead and gone are they, gone utterly from the very sphere and room of\nbeing. Without an echo; without a memory; without an influence on aught\nthat may come after, to make it care for similar ideals. This utter\nfinal wreck and tragedy is of the essence of scientific materialism\nas at present understood. The lower and not the higher forces are the\neternal forces, or the last surviving forces within the only cycle of\nevolution which we can definitely see. Mr. Spencer believes this as much\nas anyone; so why should he argue with us as if we were making silly\naesthetic objections to the 'grossness' of 'matter and motion,' the\nprinciples of his philosophy, when what really dismays us is the\ndisconsolateness of its ulterior practical results?\n\nNo the true objection to materialism is not positive but negative. It\nwould be farcical at this day to make complaint of it for what it IS for\n'grossness.' Grossness is what grossness DOES--we now know THAT. We make\ncomplaint of it, on the contrary, for what it is NOT--not a permanent\nwarrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our remotest\nhopes.\n\nThe notion of God, on the other hand, however inferior it may be\nin clearness to those mathematical notions so current in mechanical\nphilosophy, has at least this practical superiority over them, that it\nguarantees an ideal order that shall be permanently preserved. A world\nwith a God in it to say the last word, may indeed burn up or freeze,\nbut we then think of him as still mindful of the old ideals and sure to\nbring them elsewhere to fruition; so that, where he is, tragedy is\nonly provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution not the\nabsolutely final things. This need of an eternal moral order is one\nof the deepest needs of our breast. And those poets, like Dante and\nWordsworth, who live on the conviction of such an order, owe to that\nfact the extraordinary tonic and consoling power of their verse. Here\nthen, in these different emotional and practical appeals, in these\nadjustments of our concrete attitudes of hope and expectation, and all\nthe delicate consequences which their differences entail, lie the\nreal meanings of materialism and spiritualism--not in hair-splitting\nabstractions about matter's inner essence, or about the metaphysical\nattributes of God. Materialism means simply the denial that the moral\norder is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism\nmeans the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of\nhope. Surely here is an issue genuine enough, for anyone who feels\nit; and, as long as men are men, it will yield matter for a serious\nphilosophic debate.\n\nBut possibly some of you may still rally to their defence. Even whilst\nadmitting that spiritualism and materialism make different prophecies\nof the world's future, you may yourselves pooh-pooh the difference as\nsomething so infinitely remote as to mean nothing for a sane mind. The\nessence of a sane mind, you may say, is to take shorter views, and to\nfeel no concern about such chimaeras as the latter end of the world.\nWell, I can only say that if you say this, you do injustice to human\nnature. Religious melancholy is not disposed of by a simple flourish of\nthe word insanity. The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping\nthings, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel\nseriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the\nmind of the more shallow man.\n\nThe issues of fact at stake in the debate are of course vaguely enough\nconceived by us at present. But spiritualistic faith in all its forms\ndeals with a world of PROMISE, while materialism's sun sets in a sea of\ndisappointment. Remember what I said of the Absolute: it grants us moral\nholidays. Any religious view does this. It not only incites our more\nstrenuous moments, but it also takes our joyous, careless, trustful\nmoments, and it justifies them. It paints the grounds of justification\nvaguely enough, to be sure. The exact features of the saving future\nfacts that our belief in God insures, will have to be ciphered out\nby the interminable methods of science: we can STUDY our God only by\nstudying his Creation. But we can ENJOY our God, if we have one, in\nadvance of all that labor. I myself believe that the evidence for God\nlies primarily in inner personal experiences. When they have once given\nyou your God, his name means at least the benefit of the holiday. You\nremember what I said yesterday about the way in which truths clash and\ntry to 'down' each other. The truth of 'God' has to run the gauntlet of\nall our other truths. It is on trial by them and they on trial by it.\nOur FINAL opinion about God can be settled only after all the truths\nhave straightened themselves out together. Let us hope that they shall\nfind a modus vivendi!\n\nLet me pass to a very cognate philosophic problem, the QUESTION of\nDESIGN IN NATURE. God's existence has from time immemorial been held to\nbe proved by certain natural facts. Many facts appear as if expressly\ndesigned in view of one another. Thus the woodpecker's bill, tongue,\nfeet, tail, etc., fit him wondrously for a world of trees with grubs hid\nin their bark to feed upon. The parts of our eye fit the laws of light\nto perfection, leading its rays to a sharp picture on our retina. Such\nmutual fitting of things diverse in origin argued design, it was held;\nand the designer was always treated as a man-loving deity.\n\nThe first step in these arguments was to prove that the design existed.\nNature was ransacked for results obtained through separate things being\nco-adapted. Our eyes, for instance, originate in intra-uterine darkness,\nand the light originates in the sun, yet see how they fit each other.\nThey are evidently made FOR each other. Vision is the end designed,\nlight and eyes the separate means devised for its attainment.\n\nIt is strange, considering how unanimously our ancestors felt the force\nof this argument, to see how little it counts for since the triumph\nof the darwinian theory. Darwin opened our minds to the power of\nchance-happenings to bring forth 'fit' results if only they have time\nto add themselves together. He showed the enormous waste of nature in\nproducing results that get destroyed because of their unfitness. He also\nemphasized the number of adaptations which, if designed, would argue\nan evil rather than a good designer. Here all depends upon the point\nof view. To the grub under the bark the exquisite fitness of the\nwoodpecker's organism to extract him would certainly argue a diabolical\ndesigner.\n\nTheologians have by this time stretched their minds so as to embrace\nthe darwinian facts, and yet to interpret them as still showing divine\npurpose. It used to be a question of purpose AGAINST mechanism, of\none OR the other. It was as if one should say \"My shoes are evidently\ndesigned to fit my feet, hence it is impossible that they should have\nbeen produced by machinery.\" We know that they are both: they are made\nby a machinery itself designed to fit the feet with shoes. Theology need\nonly stretch similarly the designs of God. As the aim of a football-team\nis not merely to get the ball to a certain goal (if that were so, they\nwould simply get up on some dark night and place it there), but to get\nit there by a fixed MACHINERY OF CONDITIONS--the game's rules and the\nopposing players; so the aim of God is not merely, let us say, to make\nmen and to save them, but rather to get this done through the sole\nagency of nature's vast machinery. Without nature's stupendous laws and\ncounterforces, man's creation and perfection, we might suppose, would be\ntoo insipid achievements for God to have designed them.\n\nThis saves the form of the design-argument at the expense of its old\neasy human content. The designer is no longer the old man-like deity.\nHis designs have grown so vast as to be incomprehensible to us humans.\nThe WHAT of them so overwhelms us that to establish the mere THAT of a\ndesigner for them becomes of very little consequence in comparison.\nWe can with difficulty comprehend the character of a cosmic mind whose\npurposes are fully revealed by the strange mixture of goods and evils\nthat we find in this actual world's particulars. Or rather we cannot by\nany possibility comprehend it. The mere word 'design' by itself has,\nwe see, no consequences and explains nothing. It is the barrenest of\nprinciples. The old question of WHETHER there is design is idle.\nThe real question is WHAT is the world, whether or not it have a\ndesigner--and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's\nparticulars.\n\nRemember that no matter what nature may have produced or may be\nproducing, the means must necessarily have been adequate, must have been\nFITTED TO THAT PRODUCTION. The argument from fitness to design would\nconsequently always apply, whatever were the product's character. The\nrecent Mont-Pelee eruption, for example, required all previous history\nto produce that exact combination of ruined houses, human and animal\ncorpses, sunken ships, volcanic ashes, etc., in just that one hideous\nconfiguration of positions. France had to be a nation and colonize\nMartinique. Our country had to exist and send our ships there. IF God\naimed at just that result, the means by which the centuries bent their\ninfluences towards it, showed exquisite intelligence. And so of any\nstate of things whatever, either in nature or in history, which we\nfind actually realized. For the parts of things must always make SOME\ndefinite resultant, be it chaotic or harmonious. When we look at what\nhas actually come, the conditions must always appear perfectly designed\nto ensure it. We can always say, therefore, in any conceivable world, of\nany conceivable character, that the whole cosmic machinery MAY have been\ndesigned to produce it.\n\nPragmatically, then, the abstract word 'design' is a blank cartridge. It\ncarries no consequences, it does no execution. What sort of design? and\nwhat sort of a designer? are the only serious questions, and the study\nof facts is the only way of getting even approximate answers. Meanwhile,\npending the slow answer from facts, anyone who insists that there is a\ndesigner and who is sure he is a divine one, gets a certain pragmatic\nbenefit from the term--the same, in fact which we saw that the terms\nGod, Spirit, or the Absolute, yield us 'Design,' worthless tho it be\nas a mere rationalistic principle set above or behind things for our\nadmiration, becomes, if our faith concretes it into something theistic,\na term of PROMISE. Returning with it into experience, we gain a more\nconfiding outlook on the future. If not a blind force but a seeing\nforce runs things, we may reasonably expect better issues. This vague\nconfidence in the future is the sole pragmatic meaning at present\ndiscernible in the terms design and designer. But if cosmic confidence\nis right not wrong, better not worse, that is a most important meaning.\nThat much at least of possible 'truth' the terms will then have in them.\n\nLet me take up another well-worn controversy, THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM.\nMost persons who believe in what is called their free-will do so after\nthe rationalistic fashion. It is a principle, a positive faculty or\nvirtue added to man, by which his dignity is enigmatically augmented. He\nought to believe it for this reason. Determinists, who deny it, who say\nthat individual men originate nothing, but merely transmit to the\nfuture the whole push of the past cosmos of which they are so small\nan expression, diminish man. He is less admirable, stripped of this\ncreative principle. I imagine that more than half of you share our\ninstinctive belief in free-will, and that admiration of it as a\nprinciple of dignity has much to do with your fidelity.\n\nBut free-will has also been discussed pragmatically, and, strangely\nenough, the same pragmatic interpretation has been put upon it by both\ndisputants. You know how large a part questions of ACCOUNTABILITY have\nplayed in ethical controversy. To hear some persons, one would suppose\nthat all that ethics aims at is a code of merits and demerits. Thus does\nthe old legal and theological leaven, the interest in crime and sin and\npunishment abide with us. 'Who's to blame? whom can we punish? whom\nwill God punish?'--these preoccupations hang like a bad dream over man's\nreligious history.\n\nSo both free-will and determinism have been inveighed against and called\nabsurd, because each, in the eyes of its enemies, has seemed to prevent\nthe 'imputability' of good or bad deeds to their authors. Queer antinomy\nthis! Free-will means novelty, the grafting on to the past of something\nnot involved therein. If our acts were predetermined, if we merely\ntransmitted the push of the whole past, the free-willists say, how could\nwe be praised or blamed for anything? We should be 'agents' only, not\n'principals,' and where then would be our precious imputability and\nresponsibility?\n\nBut where would it be if we HAD free-will? rejoin the determinists. If a\n'free' act be a sheer novelty, that comes not FROM me, the previous\nme, but ex nihilo, and simply tacks itself on to me, how can _I_, the\nprevious I, be responsible? How can I have any permanent CHARACTER that\nwill stand still long enough for praise or blame to be awarded? The\nchaplet of my days tumbles into a cast of disconnected beads as soon\nas the thread of inner necessity is drawn out by the preposterous\nindeterminist doctrine. Messrs. Fullerton and McTaggart have recently\nlaid about them doughtily with this argument.\n\nIt may be good ad hominem, but otherwise it is pitiful. For I ask you,\nquite apart from other reasons, whether any man, woman or child, with a\nsense for realities, ought not to be ashamed to plead such principles\nas either dignity or imputability. Instinct and utility between them\ncan safely be trusted to carry on the social business of punishment and\npraise. If a man does good acts we shall praise him, if he does bad acts\nwe shall punish him--anyhow, and quite apart from theories as to whether\nthe acts result from what was previous in him or are novelties in a\nstrict sense. To make our human ethics revolve about the question of\n'merit' is a piteous unreality--God alone can know our merits, if we\nhave any. The real ground for supposing free-will is indeed pragmatic,\nbut it has nothing to do with this contemptible right to punish which\nhad made such a noise in past discussions of the subject.\n\nFree-will pragmatically means NOVELTIES IN THE WORLD, the right to\nexpect that in its deepest elements as well as in its surface phenomena,\nthe future may not identically repeat and imitate the past. That\nimitation en masse is there, who can deny? The general 'uniformity\nof nature' is presupposed by every lesser law. But nature may be only\napproximately uniform; and persons in whom knowledge of the world's past\nhas bred pessimism (or doubts as to the world's good character, which\nbecome certainties if that character be supposed eternally fixed) may\nnaturally welcome free-will as a MELIORISTIC doctrine. It holds up\nimprovement as at least possible; whereas determinism assures us that\nour whole notion of possibility is born of human ignorance, and that\nnecessity and impossibility between them rule the destinies of the\nworld.\n\nFree-will is thus a general cosmological theory of PROMISE, just like\nthe Absolute, God, Spirit or Design. Taken abstractly, no one of these\nterms has any inner content, none of them gives us any picture, and\nno one of them would retain the least pragmatic value in a world\nwhose character was obviously perfect from the start. Elation at mere\nexistence, pure cosmic emotion and delight, would, it seems to me,\nquench all interest in those speculations, if the world were nothing but\na lubberland of happiness already. Our interest in religious metaphysics\narises in the fact that our empirical future feels to us unsafe, and\nneeds some higher guarantee. If the past and present were purely good,\nwho could wish that the future might possibly not resemble them? Who\ncould desire free-will? Who would not say, with Huxley, \"let me be wound\nup every day like a watch, to go right fatally, and I ask no better\nfreedom.\" 'Freedom' in a world already perfect could only mean\nfreedom to BE WORSE, and who could be so insane as to wish that? To be\nnecessarily what it is, to be impossibly aught else, would put the\nlast touch of perfection upon optimism's universe. Surely the only\nPOSSIBILITY that one can rationally claim is the possibility that things\nmay be BETTER. That possibility, I need hardly say, is one that, as the\nactual world goes, we have ample grounds for desiderating.\n\nFree-will thus has no meaning unless it be a doctrine of RELIEF. As\nsuch, it takes its place with other religious doctrines. Between them,\nthey build up the old wastes and repair the former desolations. Our\nspirit, shut within this courtyard of sense-experience, is always saying\nto the intellect upon the tower: 'Watchman, tell us of the night, if it\naught of promise bear,' and the intellect gives it then these terms of\npromise.\n\nOther than this practical significance, the words God, free-will,\ndesign, etc., have none. Yet dark tho they be in themselves, or\nintellectualistically taken, when we bear them into life's thicket with\nus the darkness THERE grows light about us. If you stop, in dealing with\nsuch words, with their definition, thinking that to be an intellectual\nfinality, where are you? Stupidly staring at a pretentious sham! \"Deus\nest Ens, a se, extra et supra omne genus, necessarium, unum, infinite\nperfectum, simplex, immutabile, immensum, aeternum, intelligens,\"\netc.,--wherein is such a definition really instructive? It means less,\nthan nothing, in its pompous robe of adjectives. Pragmatism alone can\nread a positive meaning into it, and for that she turns her back upon\nthe intellectualist point of view altogether. 'God's in his heaven;\nall's right with the world!'--THAT'S the heart of your theology, and for\nthat you need no rationalist definitions.\n\nWhy shouldn't we all of us, rationalists as well as pragmatists, confess\nthis? Pragmatism, so far from keeping her eyes bent on the immediate\npractical foreground, as she is accused of doing, dwells just as much\nupon the world's remotest perspectives.\n\nSee then how all these ultimate questions turn, as it were, up\ntheir hinges; and from looking backwards upon principles, upon an\nerkenntnisstheoretische Ich, a God, a Kausalitaetsprinzip, a Design, a\nFree-will, taken in themselves, as something august and exalted above\nfacts,--see, I say, how pragmatism shifts the emphasis and looks forward\ninto facts themselves. The really vital question for us all is, What is\nthis world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself? The\ncentre of gravity of philosophy must therefore alter its place. The\nearth of things, long thrown into shadow by the glories of the upper\nether, must resume its rights. To shift the emphasis in this way means\nthat philosophic questions will fall to be treated by minds of a\nless abstractionist type than heretofore, minds more scientific and\nindividualistic in their tone yet not irreligious either. It will be\nan alteration in 'the seat of authority' that reminds one almost of the\nprotestant reformation. And as, to papal minds, protestantism has\noften seemed a mere mess of anarchy and confusion, such, no doubt, will\npragmatism often seem to ultra-rationalist minds in philosophy. It will\nseem so much sheer trash, philosophically. But life wags on, all the\nsame, and compasses its ends, in protestant countries. I venture to\nthink that philosophic protestantism will compass a not dissimilar\nprosperity.\n\n\n\n\nLecture IV\n\nThe One and the Many\n\nWe saw in the last lecture that the pragmatic method, in its dealings\nwith certain concepts, instead of ending with admiring contemplation,\nplunges forward into the river of experience with them and prolongs the\nperspective by their means. Design, free-will, the absolute mind, spirit\ninstead of matter, have for their sole meaning a better promise as to\nthis world's outcome. Be they false or be they true, the meaning of them\nis this meliorism. I have sometimes thought of the phenomenon called\n'total reflexion' in optics as a good symbol of the relation between\nabstract ideas and concrete realities, as pragmatism conceives it. Hold\na tumbler of water a little above your eyes and look up through the\nwater at its surface--or better still look similarly through the flat\nwall of an aquarium. You will then see an extraordinarily brilliant\nreflected image say of a candle-flame, or any other clear object,\nsituated on the opposite side of the vessel. No candle-ray, under these\ncircumstances gets beyond the water's surface: every ray is totally\nreflected back into the depths again. Now let the water represent the\nworld of sensible facts, and let the air above it represent the world of\nabstract ideas. Both worlds are real, of course, and interact; but they\ninteract only at their boundary, and the locus of everything that lives,\nand happens to us, so far as full experience goes, is the water. We are\nlike fishes swimming in the sea of sense, bounded above by the superior\nelement, but unable to breathe it pure or penetrate it. We get our\noxygen from it, however, we touch it incessantly, now in this part, now\nin that, and every time we touch it we are reflected back into the water\nwith our course re-determined and re-energized. The abstract ideas of\nwhich the air consists, indispensable for life, but irrespirable by\nthemselves, as it were, and only active in their re-directing function.\nAll similes are halting but this one rather takes my fancy. It shows\nhow something, not sufficient for life in itself, may nevertheless be an\neffective determinant of life elsewhere.\n\nIn this present hour I wish to illustrate the pragmatic method by one\nmore application. I wish to turn its light upon the ancient problem\nof 'the one and the many.' I suspect that in but few of you has this\nproblem occasioned sleepless nights, and I should not be astonished if\nsome of you told me it had never vexed you. I myself have come, by long\nbrooding over it, to consider it the most central of all philosophic\nproblems, central because so pregnant. I mean by this that if you know\nwhether a man is a decided monist or a decided pluralist, you perhaps\nknow more about the rest of his opinions than if you give him any other\nname ending in IST. To believe in the one or in the many, that is the\nclassification with the maximum number of consequences. So bear with\nme for an hour while I try to inspire you with my own interest in the\nproblem.\n\nPhilosophy has often been defined as the quest or the vision of the\nworld's unity. We never hear this definition challenged, and it is true\nas far as it goes, for philosophy has indeed manifested above all things\nits interest in unity. But how about the VARIETY in things? Is that such\nan irrelevant matter? If instead of using the term philosophy, we talk\nin general of our intellect and its needs we quickly see that unity\nis only one of these. Acquaintance with the details of fact is always\nreckoned, along with their reduction to system, as an indispensable\nmark of mental greatness. Your 'scholarly' mind, of encyclopedic,\nphilological type, your man essentially of learning, has never lacked\nfor praise along with your philosopher. What our intellect really aims\nat is neither variety nor unity taken singly but totality.[Footnote:\nCompare A. Bellanger: Les concepts de Cause, et l'activite intentionelle\nde l'Esprit. Paris, Alcan, 1905, p. 79 ff.] In this, acquaintance with\nreality's diversities is as important as understanding their connexion.\nThe human passion of curiosity runs on all fours with the systematizing\npassion.\n\nIn spite of this obvious fact the unity of things has always been\nconsidered more illustrious, as it were, than their variety. When a\nyoung man first conceives the notion that the whole world forms\none great fact, with all its parts moving abreast, as it were, and\ninterlocked, he feels as if he were enjoying a great insight, and looks\nsuperciliously on all who still fall short of this sublime conception.\nTaken thus abstractly as it first comes to one, the monistic insight is\nso vague as hardly to seem worth defending intellectually. Yet probably\neveryone in this audience in some way cherishes it. A certain abstract\nmonism, a certain emotional response to the character of oneness, as\nif it were a feature of the world not coordinate with its manyness, but\nvastly more excellent and eminent, is so prevalent in educated circles\nthat we might almost call it a part of philosophic common sense. Of\nCOURSE the world is one, we say. How else could it be a world at all?\nEmpiricists as a rule, are as stout monists of this abstract kind as\nrationalists are.\n\nThe difference is that the empiricists are less dazzled. Unity doesn't\nblind them to everything else, doesn't quench their curiosity for\nspecial facts, whereas there is a kind of rationalist who is sure to\ninterpret abstract unity mystically and to forget everything else, to\ntreat it as a principle; to admire and worship it; and thereupon to come\nto a full stop intellectually.\n\n'The world is One!'--the formula may become a sort of number-worship.\n'Three' and 'seven' have, it is true, been reckoned sacred numbers; but,\nabstractly taken, why is 'one' more excellent than 'forty-three,'\nor than 'two million and ten'? In this first vague conviction of the\nworld's unity, there is so little to take hold of that we hardly know\nwhat we mean by it.\n\nThe only way to get forward with our notion is to treat it\npragmatically. Granting the oneness to exist, what facts will be\ndifferent in consequence? What will the unity be known-as? The world is\none--yes, but HOW one? What is the practical value of the oneness for\nUS?\n\nAsking such questions, we pass from the vague to the definite, from the\nabstract to the concrete. Many distinct ways in which oneness predicated\nof the universe might make a difference, come to view. I will note\nsuccessively the more obvious of these ways.\n\n1. First, the world is at least ONE SUBJECT OF DISCOURSE. If its\nmanyness were so irremediable as to permit NO union whatever of it\nparts, not even our minds could 'mean' the whole of it at once: the\nwould be like eyes trying to look in opposite directions. But in point\nof fact we mean to cover the whole of it by our abstract term 'world' or\n'universe,' which expressly intends that no part shall be left out. Such\nunity of discourse carries obviously no farther monistic specifications.\nA 'chaos,' once so named, has as much unity of discourse as a cosmos.\nIt is an odd fact that many monists consider a great victory scored for\ntheir side when pluralists say 'the universe is many.' \"'The universe'!\"\nthey chuckle--\"his speech bewrayeth him. He stands confessed of monism\nout of his own mouth.\" Well, let things be one in that sense! You can\nthen fling such a word as universe at the whole collection of them, but\nwhat matters it? It still remains to be ascertained whether they are one\nin any other sense that is more valuable.\n\n2. Are they, for example, CONTINUOUS? Can you pass from one to another,\nkeeping always in your one universe without any danger of falling out?\nIn other words, do the parts of our universe HANG together, instead of\nbeing like detached grains of sand?\n\nEven grains of sand hang together through the space in which they are\nembedded, and if you can in any way move through such space, you can\npass continuously from number one of them to number two. Space and\ntime are thus vehicles of continuity, by which the world's parts hang\ntogether. The practical difference to us, resultant from these forms of\nunion, is immense. Our whole motor life is based upon them.\n\n3. There are innumerable other paths of practical continuity among\nthings. Lines of INFLUENCE can be traced by which they together.\nFollowing any such line you pass from one thing to another till you\nmay have covered a good part of the universe's extent. Gravity and\nheat-conduction are such all-uniting influences, so far as the physical\nworld goes. Electric, luminous and chemical influences follow similar\nlines of influence. But opaque and inert bodies interrupt the continuity\nhere, so that you have to step round them, or change your mode of\nprogress if you wish to get farther on that day. Practically, you have\nthen lost your universe's unity, SO FAR AS IT WAS CONSTITUTED BY THOSE\nFIRST LINES OF INFLUENCE. There are innumerable kinds of connexion that\nspecial things have with other special things; and the ENSEMBLE of any\none of these connexions forms one sort of system by which things are\nconjoined. Thus men are conjoined in a vast network of ACQUAINTANCESHIP.\nBrown knows Jones, Jones knows Robinson, etc.; and BY CHOOSING YOUR\nFARTHER INTERMEDIARIES RIGHTLY you may carry a message from Jones to the\nEmpress of China, or the Chief of the African Pigmies, or to anyone\nelse in the inhabited world. But you are stopped short, as by a\nnon-conductor, when you choose one man wrong in this experiment. What\nmay be called love-systems are grafted on the acquaintance-system. A\nloves (or hates) B; B loves (or hates) C, etc. But these systems are\nsmaller than the great acquaintance-system that they presuppose.\n\nHuman efforts are daily unifying the world more and more in definite\nsystematic ways. We found colonial, postal, consular, commercial\nsystems, all the parts of which obey definite influences that propagate\nthemselves within the system but not to facts outside of it. The result\nis innumerable little hangings-together of the world's parts within the\nlarger hangings-together, little worlds, not only of discourse but of\noperation, within the wider universe. Each system exemplifies one type\nor grade of union, its parts being strung on that peculiar kind of\nrelation, and the same part may figure in many different systems, as\na man may hold several offices and belong to various clubs. From this\n'systematic' point of view, therefore, the pragmatic value of the\nworld's unity is that all these definite networks actually and\npractically exist. Some are more enveloping and extensive, some less so;\nthey are superposed upon each other; and between them all they let no\nindividual elementary part of the universe escape. Enormous as is the\namount of disconnexion among things (for these systematic influences and\nconjunctions follow rigidly exclusive paths), everything that exists is\ninfluenced in SOME way by something else, if you can only pick the way\nout rightly Loosely speaking, and in general, it may be said that all\nthings cohere and adhere to each other SOMEHOW, and that the universe\nexists practically in reticulated or concatenated forms which make of\nit a continuous or 'integrated' affair. Any kind of influence whatever\nhelps to make the world one, so far as you can follow it from next\nto next. You may then say that 'the world IS One'--meaning in these\nrespects, namely, and just so far as they obtain. But just as definitely\nis it NOT one, so far as they do not obtain; and there is no species of\nconnexion which will not fail, if, instead of choosing conductors for\nit, you choose non-conductors. You are then arrested at your very\nfirst step and have to write the world down as a pure MANY from that\nparticular point of view. If our intellect had been as much interested\nin disjunctive as it is in conjunctive relations, philosophy would have\nequally successfully celebrated the world's DISUNION.\n\nThe great point is to notice that the oneness and the manyness are\nabsolutely co-ordinate here. Neither is primordial or more essential or\nexcellent than the other. Just as with space, whose separating of things\nseems exactly on a par with its uniting of them, but sometimes one\nfunction and sometimes the other is what come home to us most, so,\nin our general dealings with the world of influences, we now need\nconductors and now need non-conductors, and wisdom lies in knowing which\nis which at the appropriate moment.\n\n4. All these systems of influence or non-influence may be listed under\nthe general problem of the world's CAUSAL UNITY. If the minor causal\ninfluences among things should converge towards one common causal origin\nof them in the past, one great first cause for all that is, one might\nthen speak of the absolute causal unity of the world. God's fiat on\ncreation's day has figured in traditional philosophy as such an absolute\ncause and origin. Transcendental Idealism, translating 'creation' into\n'thinking' (or 'willing to' think') calls the divine act 'eternal'\nrather than 'first'; but the union of the many here is absolute, just\nthe same--the many would not BE, save for the One. Against this notion\nof the unity of origin of all there has always stood the pluralistic\nnotion of an eternal self-existing many in the shape of atoms or even of\nspiritual units of some sort. The alternative has doubtless a pragmatic\nmeaning, but perhaps, as far as these lectures go, we had better leave\nthe question of unity of origin unsettled.\n\n5. The most important sort of union that obtains among things,\npragmatically speaking, is their GENERIC UNITY. Things exist in kinds,\nthere are many specimens in each kind, and what the 'kind' implies for\none specimen, it implies also for every other specimen of that kind. We\ncan easily conceive that every fact in the world might be singular,\nthat is, unlike any other fact and sole of its kind. In such a world of\nsingulars our logic would be useless, for logic works by predicating\nof the single instance what is true of all its kind. With no two\nthings alike in the world, we should be unable to reason from our past\nexperiences to our future ones. The existence of so much generic unity\nin things is thus perhaps the most momentous pragmatic specification of\nwhat it may mean to say 'the world is One.' ABSOLUTE generic unity would\nobtain if there were one summum genus under which all things without\nexception could be eventually subsumed. 'Beings,' 'thinkables,'\n'experiences,' would be candidates for this position. Whether the\nalternatives expressed by such words have any pragmatic significance or\nnot, is another question which I prefer to leave unsettled just now.\n\n6. Another specification of what the phrase 'the world is One' may mean\nis UNITY OF PURPOSE. An enormous number of things in the world subserve\na common purpose. All the man-made systems, administrative, industrial,\nmilitary, or what not, exist each for its controlling purpose. Every\nliving being pursues its own peculiar purposes. They co-operate,\naccording to the degree of their development, in collective or tribal\npurposes, larger ends thus enveloping lesser ones, until an absolutely\nsingle, final and climacteric purpose subserved by all things without\nexception might conceivably be reached. It is needless to say that the\nappearances conflict with such a view. Any resultant, as I said in\nmy third lecture, MAY have been purposed in advance, but none of the\nresults we actually know in is world have in point of fact been purposed\nin advance in all their details. Men and nations start with a vague\nnotion of being rich, or great, or good. Each step they make brings\nunforeseen chances into sight, and shuts out older vistas, and the\nspecifications of the general purpose have to be daily changed. What is\nreached in the end may be better or worse than what was proposed, but it\nis always more complex and different.\n\nOur different purposes also are at war with each other. Where one can't\ncrush the other out, they compromise; and the result is again different\nfrom what anyone distinctly proposed beforehand. Vaguely and generally,\nmuch of what was purposed may be gained; but everything makes strongly\nfor the view that our world is incompletely unified teleologically and\nis still trying to get its unification better organized.\n\nWhoever claims ABSOLUTE teleological unity, saying that there is one\npurpose that every detail of the universe subserves, dogmatizes at\nhis own risk. Theologians who dogmalize thus find it more and more\nimpossible, as our acquaintance with the warring interests of the\nworld's parts grows more concrete, to imagine what the one climacteric\npurpose may possibly be like. We see indeed that certain evils minister\nto ulterior goods, that the bitter makes the cocktail better, and that\na bit of danger or hardship puts us agreeably to our trumps. We can\nvaguely generalize this into the doctrine that all the evil in the\nuniverse is but instrumental to its greater perfection. But the scale\nof the evil actually in sight defies all human tolerance; and\ntranscendental idealism, in the pages of a Bradley or a Royce, brings us\nno farther than the book of Job did--God's ways are not our ways, so let\nus put our hands upon our mouth. A God who can relish such superfluities\nof horror is no God for human beings to appeal to. His animal spirits\nare too high. In other words the 'Absolute' with his one purpose, is not\nthe man-like God of common people.\n\n7. AESTHETIC UNION among things also obtains, and is very analogous to\nideological union. Things tell a story. Their parts hang together so as\nto work out a climax. They play into each other's hands expressively.\nRetrospectively, we can see that altho no definite purpose presided\nover a chain of events, yet the events fell into a dramatic form, with\na start, a middle, and a finish. In point of fact all stories end; and\nhere again the point of view of a many is that more natural one to take.\nThe world is full of partial stories that run parallel to one another,\nbeginning and ending at odd times. They mutually interlace and interfere\nat points, but we cannot unify them completely in our minds. In\nfollowing your life-history, I must temporarily turn my attention from\nmy own. Even a biographer of twins would have to press them alternately\nupon his reader's attention.\n\nIt follows that whoever says that the whole world tells one story utters\nanother of those monistic dogmas that a man believes at his risk. It is\neasy to see the world's history pluralistically, as a rope of which each\nfibre tells a separate tale; but to conceive of each cross-section of\nthe rope as an absolutely single fact, and to sum the whole longitudinal\nseries into one being living an undivided life, is harder. We have\nindeed the analogy of embryology to help us. The microscopist makes a\nhundred flat cross-sections of a given embryo, and mentally unites them\ninto one solid whole. But the great world's ingredients, so far as\nthey are beings, seem, like the rope's fibres, to be discontinuous\ncross-wise, and to cohere only in the longitudinal direction. Followed\nin that direction they are many. Even the embryologist, when he follows\nthe DEVELOPMENT of his object, has to treat the history of each single\norgan in turn. ABSOLUTE aesthetic union is thus another barely abstract\nideal. The world appears as something more epic than dramatic.\n\nSo far, then, we see how the world is unified by its many systems,\nkinds, purposes, and dramas. That there is more union in all these ways\nthan openly appears is certainly true. That there MAY be one sovereign\npurpose, system, kind, and story, is a legitimate hypothesis. All I\nsay here is that it is rash to affirm this dogmatically without better\nevidence than we possess at present.\n\n8. The GREAT monistic DENKMITTEL for a hundred years past has been\nthe notion of THE ONE KNOWER. The many exist only as objects for his\nthought--exist in his dream, as it were; and AS HE KNOWS them, they have\none purpose, form one system, tell one tale for him. This notion of an\nALL-ENVELOPING NOETIC UNITY in things is the sublimest achievement of\nintellectualist philosophy. Those who believe in the Absolute, as the\nall-knower is termed, usually say that they do so for coercive reasons,\nwhich clear thinkers cannot evade. The Absolute has far-reaching\npractical consequences, some of which I drew attention in my second\nlecture. Many kinds of difference important to us would surely follow\nfrom its being true. I cannot here enter into all the logical proofs of\nsuch a Being's existence, farther than to say that none of them seem to\nme sound. I must therefore treat the notion of an All-Knower simply as\nan hypothesis, exactly on a par logically with the pluralist notion that\nthere is no point of view, no focus of information extant, from\nwhich the entire content of the universe is visible at once. \"God's\nconsciousness,\" says Professor Royce,[Footnote: The Conception of\nGod, New York, 1897, p. 292.] \"forms in its wholeness one luminously\ntransparent conscious moment\"--this is the type of noetic unity on which\nrationalism insists. Empiricism on the other hand is satisfied with the\ntype of noetic unity that is humanly familiar. Everything gets known by\nSOME knower along with something else; but the knowers may in the end be\nirreducibly many, and the greatest knower of them all may yet not know\nthe whole of everything, or even know what he does know at one single\nstroke:--he may be liable to forget. Whichever type obtained, the world\nwould still be a universe noetically. Its parts would be conjoined\nby knowledge, but in the one case the knowledge would be absolutely\nunified, in the other it would be strung along and overlapped.\n\nThe notion of one instantaneous or eternal Knower--either adjective\nhere means the same thing--is, as I said, the great intellectualist\nachievement of our time. It has practically driven out that conception\nof 'Substance' which earlier philosophers set such store by, and by\nwhich so much unifying work used to be done--universal substance which\nalone has being in and from itself, and of which all the particulars\nof experience are but forms to which it gives support. Substance has\nsuccumbed to the pragmatic criticisms of the English school. It appears\nnow only as another name for the fact that phenomena as they come are\nactually grouped and given in coherent forms, the very forms in which\nwe finite knowers experience or think them together. These forms of\nconjunction are as much parts of the tissue of experience as are the\nterms which they connect; and it is a great pragmatic achievement for\nrecent idealism to have made the world hang together in these directly\nrepresentable ways instead of drawing its unity from the 'inherence' of\nits parts--whatever that may mean--in an unimaginable principle behind\nthe scenes.\n\n'The world is one,' therefore, just so far as we experience it to be\nconcatenated, one by as many definite conjunctions as appear. But then\nalso NOT one by just as many definite DISjunctions as we find. The\noneness and the manyness of it thus obtain in respects which can\nbe separately named. It is neither a universe pure and simple nor\na multiverse pure and simple. And its various manners of being one\nsuggest, for their accurate ascertainment, so many distinct programs\nof scientific work. Thus the pragmatic question 'What is the oneness\nknown-as? What practical difference will it make?' saves us from all\nfeverish excitement over it as a principle of sublimity and carries us\nforward into the stream of experience with a cool head. The stream may\nindeed reveal far more connexion and union than we now suspect, but we\nare not entitled on pragmatic principles to claim absolute oneness in\nany respect in advance.\n\nIt is so difficult to see definitely what absolute oneness can mean,\nthat probably the majority of you are satisfied with the sober attitude\nwhich we have reached. Nevertheless there are possibly some radically\nmonistic souls among you who are not content to leave the one and the\nmany on a par. Union of various grades, union of diverse types, union\nthat stops at non-conductors, union that merely goes from next to next,\nand means in many cases outer nextness only, and not a more internal\nbond, union of concatenation, in short; all that sort of thing seems to\nyou a halfway stage of thought. The oneness of things, superior to their\nmanyness, you think must also be more deeply true, must be the more\nreal aspect of the world. The pragmatic view, you are sure, gives us\na universe imperfectly rational. The real universe must form an\nunconditional unit of being, something consolidated, with its parts\nco-implicated through and through. Only then could we consider our\nestate completely rational. There is no doubt whatever that this\nultra-monistic way of thinking means a great deal to many minds. \"One\nLife, One Truth, one Love, one Principle, One Good, One God\"--I quote\nfrom a Christian Science leaflet which the day's mail brings into my\nhands--beyond doubt such a confession of faith has pragmatically an\nemotional value, and beyond doubt the word 'one' contributes to the\nvalue quite as much as the other words. But if we try to realize\nINTELLECTUALLY what we can possibly MEAN by such a glut of oneness we\nare thrown right back upon our pragmatistic determinations again. It\nmeans either the mere name One, the universe of discourse; or it means\nthe sum total of all the ascertainable particular conjunctions and\nconcatenations; or, finally, it means some one vehicle of conjunction\ntreated as all-inclusive, like one origin, one purpose, or one knower.\nIn point of fact it always means one KNOWER to those who take it\nintellectually to-day. The one knower involves, they think, the other\nforms of conjunction. His world must have all its parts co-implicated\nin the one logical-aesthetical-teleological unit-picture which is his\neternal dream.\n\nThe character of the absolute knower's picture is however so impossible\nfor us to represent clearly, that we may fairly suppose that the\nauthority which absolute monism undoubtedly possesses, and probably\nalways will possess over some persons, draws its strength far less from\nintellectual than from mystical grounds. To interpret absolute monism\nworthily, be a mystic. Mystical states of mind in every degree are shown\nby history, usually tho not always, to make for the monistic view. This\nis no proper occasion to enter upon the general subject of mysticism,\nbut I will quote one mystical pronouncement to show just what I mean.\nThe paragon of all monistic systems is the Vedanta philosophy of\nHindostan, and the paragon of Vedantist missionaries was the late\nSwami Vivekananda who visited our shores some years ago. The method of\nVedantism is the mystical method. You do not reason, but after going\nthrough a certain discipline YOU SEE, and having seen, you can report\nthe truth. Vivekananda thus reports the truth in one of his lectures\nhere:\n\n\"Where is any more misery for him who sees this Oneness in the\nUniverse...this Oneness of life, Oneness of everything? ...This\nseparation between man and man, man and woman, man and child, nation\nfrom nation, earth from moon, moon from sun, this separation between\natom and atom is the cause really of all the misery, and the Vedanta\nsays this separation does not exist, it is not real. It is merely\napparent, on the surface. In the heart of things there is Unity still.\nIf you go inside you find that Unity between man and man, women and\nchildren, races and races, high and low, rich and poor, the gods and\nmen: all are One, and animals too, if you go deep enough, and he who has\nattained to that has no more delusion. ... Where is any more delusion\nfor him? What can delude him? He knows the reality of everything, the\nsecret of everything. Where is there any more misery for him? What does\nhe desire? He has traced the reality of everything unto the Lord, that\ncentre, that Unity of everything, and that is Eternal Bliss, Eternal\nKnowledge, Eternal Existence. Neither death nor disease, nor sorrow nor\nmisery, nor discontent is there ... in the centre, the reality, there\nis no one to be mourned for, no one to be sorry for. He has penetrated\neverything, the Pure One, the Formless, the Bodiless, the Stainless, He\nthe Knower, He the Great Poet, the Self-Existent, He who is giving to\neveryone what he deserves.\"\n\nObserve how radical the character of the monism here is. Separation is\nnot simply overcome by the One, it is denied to exist. There is no many.\nWe are not parts of the One; It has no parts; and since in a sense we\nundeniably ARE, it must be that each of us is the One, indivisibly and\ntotally. AN ABSOLUTE ONE, AND I THAT ONE--surely we have here a religion\nwhich, emotionally considered, has a high pragmatic value; it imparts a\nperfect sumptuosity of security. As our Swami says in another place:\n\n\"When man has seen himself as one with the infinite Being of the\nuniverse, when all separateness has ceased, when all men, all women, all\nangels, all gods, all animals, all plants, the whole universe has been\nmelted into that oneness, then all fear disappears. Whom to fear? Can\nI hurt myself? Can I kill myself? Can I injure myself? Do you fear\nyourself? Then will all sorrow disappear. What can cause me sorrow? I am\nthe One Existence of the universe. Then all jealousies will disappear;\nof whom to be jealous? Of myself? Then all bad feelings disappear.\nAgainst whom will I have this bad feeling? Against myself? There is none\nin the universe but me. ... Kill out this differentiation; kill out this\nsuperstition that there are many. 'He who, in this world of many, sees\nthat One; he who in this mass of insentiency sees that One Sentient\nBeing; he who in this world of shadow catches that Reality, unto him\nbelongs eternal peace, unto none else, unto none else.'\"\n\nWe all have some ear for this monistic music: it elevates and reassures.\nWe all have at least the germ of mysticism in us. And when our idealists\nrecite their arguments for the Absolute, saying that the slightest union\nadmitted anywhere carries logically absolute Oneness with it, and that\nthe slightest separation admitted anywhere logically carries disunion\nremediless and complete, I cannot help suspecting that the palpable weak\nplaces in the intellectual reasonings they use are protected from their\nown criticism by a mystical feeling that, logic or no logic, absolute\nOneness must somehow at any cost be true. Oneness overcomes MORAL\nseparateness at any rate. In the passion of love we have the mystic germ\nof what might mean a total union of all sentient life. This mystical\ngerm wakes up in us on hearing the monistic utterances, acknowledges\ntheir authority, and assigns to intellectual considerations a secondary\nplace.\n\nI will dwell no longer on these religious and moral aspects of the\nquestion in this lecture. When I come to my final lecture there will be\nsomething more to say.\n\nLeave then out of consideration for the moment the authority which\nmystical insights may be conjectured eventually to possess; treat the\nproblem of the One and the Many in a purely intellectual way; and we\nsee clearly enough where pragmatism stands. With her criterion of the\npractical differences that theories make, we see that she must equally\nabjure absolute monism and absolute pluralism. The world is one just\nso far as its parts hang together by any definite connexion. It is many\njust so far as any definite connexion fails to obtain. And finally it\nis growing more and more unified by those systems of connexion at least\nwhich human energy keeps framing as time goes on.\n\nIt is possible to imagine alternative universes to the one we know, in\nwhich the most various grades and types of union should be embodied.\nThus the lowest grade of universe would be a world of mere WITHNESS, of\nwhich the parts were only strung together by the conjunction 'and.' Such\na universe is even now the collection of our several inner lives. The\nspaces and times of your imagination, the objects and events of your\nday-dreams are not only more or less incoherent inter se, but are wholly\nout of definite relation with the similar contents of anyone else's\nmind. Our various reveries now as we sit here compenetrate each other\nidly without influencing or interfering. They coexist, but in no order\nand in no receptacle, being the nearest approach to an absolute 'many'\nthat we can conceive. We cannot even imagine any reason why they SHOULD\nbe known all together, and we can imagine even less, if they were known\ntogether, how they could be known as one systematic whole.\n\nBut add our sensations and bodily actions, and the union mounts to\na much higher grade. Our audita et visa and our acts fall into those\nreceptacles of time and space in which each event finds its date and\nplace. They form 'things' and are of 'kinds' too, and can be classed.\nYet we can imagine a world of things and of kinds in which the causal\ninteractions with which we are so familiar should not exist. Everything\nthere might be inert towards everything else, and refuse to propagate\nits influence. Or gross mechanical influences might pass, but no\nchemical action. Such worlds would be far less unified than ours. Again\nthere might be complete physico-chemical interaction, but no minds; or\nminds, but altogether private ones, with no social life; or social\nlife limited to acquaintance, but no love; or love, but no customs\nor institutions that should systematize it. No one of these grades of\nuniverse would be absolutely irrational or disintegrated, inferior tho\nit might appear when looked at from the higher grades. For instance, if\nour minds should ever become 'telepathically' connected, so that we knew\nimmediately, or could under certain conditions know immediately, each\nwhat the other was thinking, the world we now live in would appear to\nthe thinkers in that world to have been of an inferior grade.\n\nWith the whole of past eternity open for our conjectures to range in, it\nmay be lawful to wonder whether the various kinds of union now realized\nin the universe that we inhabit may not possibly have been successively\nevolved after the fashion in which we now see human systems evolving in\nconsequence of human needs. If such an hypothesis were legitimate, total\noneness would appear at the end of things rather than at their origin.\nIn other words the notion of the 'Absolute' would have to be replaced by\nthat of the 'Ultimate.' The two notions would have the same content--the\nmaximally unified content of fact, namely--but their time-relations\nwould be positively reversed. [Footnote: Compare on the Ultimate,\nMr. Schiller's essay \"Activity and Substance,\" in his book entitled\nHumanism, p. 204.]\n\nAfter discussing the unity of the universe in this pragmatic way, you\nought to see why I said in my second lecture, borrowing the word from my\nfriend G. Papini, that pragmatism tends to UNSTIFFEN all our theories.\nThe world's oneness has generally been affirmed abstractly only, and as\nif anyone who questioned it must be an idiot. The temper of monists has\nbeen so vehement, as almost at times to be convulsive; and this way of\nholding a doctrine does not easily go with reasonable discussion and the\ndrawing of distinctions. The theory of the Absolute, in particular, has\nhad to be an article of faith, affirmed dogmatically and exclusively.\nThe One and All, first in the order of being and of knowing, logically\nnecessary itself, and uniting all lesser things in the bonds of mutual\nnecessity, how could it allow of any mitigation of its inner\nrigidity? The slightest suspicion of pluralism, the minutest wiggle of\nindependence of any one of its parts from the control of the totality,\nwould ruin it. Absolute unity brooks no degrees--as well might you claim\nabsolute purity for a glass of water because it contains but a single\nlittle cholera-germ. The independence, however infinitesimal, of a part,\nhowever small, would be to the Absolute as fatal as a cholera-germ.\n\nPluralism on the other hand has no need of this dogmatic rigoristic\ntemper. Provided you grant SOME separation among things, some tremor of\nindependence, some free play of parts on one another, some real novelty\nor chance, however minute, she is amply satisfied, and will allow you\nany amount, however great, of real union. How much of union there may\nbe is a question that she thinks can only be decided empirically. The\namount may be enormous, colossal; but absolute monism is shattered if,\nalong with all the union, there has to be granted the slightest modicum,\nthe most incipient nascency, or the most residual trace, of a separation\nthat is not 'overcome.'\n\nPragmatism, pending the final empirical ascertainment of just what the\nbalance of union and disunion among things may be, must obviously range\nherself upon the pluralistic side. Some day, she admits, even total\nunion, with one knower, one origin, and a universe consolidated in\nevery conceivable way, may turn out to be the most acceptable of all\nhypotheses. Meanwhile the opposite hypothesis, of a world imperfectly\nunified still, and perhaps always to remain so, must be sincerely\nentertained. This latter hypothesis is pluralism's doctrine. Since\nabsolute monism forbids its being even considered seriously, branding it\nas irrational from the start, it is clear that pragmatism must turn its\nback on absolute monism, and follow pluralism's more empirical path.\n\nThis leaves us with the common-sense world, in which we find things\npartly joined and partly disjoined. 'Things,' then, and their\n'conjunctions'--what do such words mean, pragmatically handled? In\nmy next lecture, I will apply the pragmatic method to the stage of\nphilosophizing known as Common Sense.\n\n\n\n\nLecture V\n\nPragmatism and Common Sense\n\nIn the last lecture we turned ourselves from the usual way of talking\nof the universe's oneness as a principle, sublime in all its blankness,\ntowards a study of the special kinds of union which the universe\nenfolds. We found many of these to coexist with kinds of separation\nequally real. \"How far am I verified?\" is the question which each\nkind of union and each kind of separation asks us here, so as good\npragmatists we have to turn our face towards experience, towards\n'facts.'\n\nAbsolute oneness remains, but only as an hypothesis, and that hypothesis\nis reduced nowadays to that of an omniscient knower who sees all things\nwithout exception as forming one single systematic fact. But the knower\nin question may still be conceived either as an Absolute or as an\nUltimate; and over against the hypothesis of him in either form the\ncounter-hypothesis that the widest field of knowledge that ever was or\nwill be still contains some ignorance, may be legitimately held. Some\nbits of information always may escape.\n\nThis is the hypothesis of NOETIC PLURALISM, which monists consider so\nabsurd. Since we are bound to treat it as respectfully as noetic monism,\nuntil the facts shall have tipped the beam, we find that our pragmatism,\ntho originally nothing but a method, has forced us to be friendly to the\npluralistic view. It MAY be that some parts of the world are connected\nso loosely with some other parts as to be strung along by nothing but\nthe copula AND. They might even come and go without those other parts\nsuffering any internal change. This pluralistic view, of a world of\nADDITIVE constitution, is one that pragmatism is unable to rule out from\nserious consideration. But this view leads one to the farther hypothesis\nthat the actual world, instead of being complete 'eternally,' as the\nmonists assure us, may be eternally incomplete, and at all times subject\nto addition or liable to loss.\n\nIt IS at any rate incomplete in one respect, and flagrantly so. The very\nfact that we debate this question shows that our KNOWLEDGE is incomplete\nat present and subject to addition. In respect of the knowledge it\ncontains the world does genuinely change and grow. Some general remarks\non the way in which our knowledge completes itself--when it does\ncomplete itself--will lead us very conveniently into our subject for\nthis lecture, which is 'Common Sense.'\n\nTo begin with, our knowledge grows IN SPOTS. The spots may be large or\nsmall, but the knowledge never grows all over: some old knowledge always\nremains what it was. Your knowledge of pragmatism, let us suppose, is\ngrowing now. Later, its growth may involve considerable modification of\nopinions which you previously held to be true. But such modifications\nare apt to be gradual. To take the nearest possible example, consider\nthese lectures of mine. What you first gain from them is probably a\nsmall amount of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions,\nor points of view. But while these special ideas are being added, the\nrest of your knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you 'line\nup' your previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instil, and\nmodify to some slight degree their mass.\n\nYou listen to me now, I suppose, with certain prepossessions as to my\ncompetency, and these affect your reception of what I say, but were I\nsuddenly to break off lecturing, and to begin to sing 'We won't go home\ntill morning' in a rich baritone voice, not only would that new fact be\nadded to your stock, but it would oblige you to define me differently,\nand that might alter your opinion of the pragmatic philosophy, and in\ngeneral bring about a rearrangement of a number of your ideas. Your mind\nin such processes is strained, and sometimes painfully so, between its\nolder beliefs and the novelties which experience brings along.\n\nOur minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread.\nBut we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much\nof our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we\ncan. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it\nstains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it. Our\npast apperceives and co-operates; and in the new equilibrium in which\neach step forward in the process of learning terminates, it happens\nrelatively seldom that the new fact is added RAW. More usually it is\nembedded cooked, as one might say, or stewed down in the sauce of the\nold.\n\nNew truths thus are resultants of new experiences and of old truths\ncombined and mutually modifying one another. And since this is the case\nin the changes of opinion of to-day, there is no reason to assume that\nit has not been so at all times. It follows that very ancient modes\nof thought may have survived through all the later changes in men's\nopinions. The most primitive ways of thinking may not yet be wholly\nexpunged. Like our five fingers, our ear-bones, our rudimentary caudal\nappendage, or our other 'vestigial' peculiarities, they may remain as\nindelible tokens of events in our race-history. Our ancestors may at\ncertain moments have struck into ways of thinking which they might\nconceivably not have found. But once they did so, and after the fact,\nthe inheritance continues. When you begin a piece of music in a certain\nkey, you must keep the key to the end. You may alter your house ad\nlibitum, but the ground-plan of the first architect persists--you can\nmake great changes, but you cannot change a Gothic church into a Doric\ntemple. You may rinse and rinse the bottle, but you can't get the taste\nof the medicine or whiskey that first filled it wholly out.\n\nMy thesis now is this, that OUR FUNDAMENTAL WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT\nTHINGS ARE DISCOVERIES OF EXCEEDINGLY REMOTE ANCESTORS, WHICH HAVE BEEN\nABLE TO PRESERVE THEMSELVES THROUGHOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF ALL SUBSEQUENT\nTIME. They form one great stage of equilibrium in the human mind's\ndevelopment, the stage of common sense. Other stages have grafted\nthemselves upon this stage, but have never succeeded in displacing it.\nLet us consider this common-sense stage first, as if it might be final.\n\nIn practical talk, a man's common sense means his good judgment, his\nfreedom from excentricity, his GUMPTION, to use the vernacular word. In\nphilosophy it means something entirely different, it means his use of\ncertain intellectual forms or categories of thought. Were we lobsters,\nor bees, it might be that our organization would have led to our using\nquite different modes from these of apprehending our experiences. It\nMIGHT be too (we cannot dogmatically deny this) that such categories,\nunimaginable by us to-day, would have proved on the whole as serviceable\nfor handling our experiences mentally as those which we actually use.\n\nIf this sounds paradoxical to anyone, let him think of analytical\ngeometry. The identical figures which Euclid defined by intrinsic\nrelations were defined by Descartes by the relations of their points to\nadventitious co-ordinates, the result being an absolutely different and\nvastly more potent way of handling curves. All our conceptions are what\nthe Germans call denkmittel, means by which we handle facts by thinking\nthem. Experience merely as such doesn't come ticketed and labeled, we\nhave first to discover what it is. Kant speaks of it as being in\nits first intention a gewuehl der erscheinungen, a rhapsodie der\nwahrnehmungen, a mere motley which we have to unify by our wits. What\nwe usually do is first to frame some system of concepts mentally\nclassified, serialized, or connected in some intellectual way, and then\nto use this as a tally by which we 'keep tab' on the impressions that\npresent themselves. When each is referred to some possible place in the\nconceptual system, it is thereby 'understood.' This notion of parallel\n'manifolds' with their elements standing reciprocally in 'one-to-one\nrelations,' is proving so convenient nowadays in mathematics and logic\nas to supersede more and more the older classificatory conceptions.\nThere are many conceptual systems of this sort; and the sense\nmanifold is also such a system. Find a one-to-one relation for your\nsense-impressions ANYWHERE among the concepts, and in so far forth you\nrationalize the impressions. But obviously you can rationalize them by\nusing various conceptual systems.\n\nThe old common-sense way of rationalizing them is by a set of concepts\nof which the most important are these:\n\nThing;\n\nThe same or different;\n\nKinds;\n\nMinds;\n\nBodies;\n\nOne Time;\n\nOne Space;\n\nSubjects and attributes;\n\nCausal influences;\n\nThe fancied;\n\nThe real.\n\nWe are now so familiar with the order that these notions have woven for\nus out of the everlasting weather of our perceptions that we find it\nhard to realize how little of a fixed routine the perceptions follow\nwhen taken by themselves. The word weather is a good one to use here.\nIn Boston, for example, the weather has almost no routine, the only law\nbeing that if you have had any weather for two days, you will probably\nbut not certainly have another weather on the third. Weather-experience\nas it thus comes to Boston, is discontinuous and chaotic. In point of\ntemperature, of wind, rain or sunshine, it MAY change three times a\nday. But the Washington weather-bureau intellectualizes this disorder by\nmaking each successive bit of Boston weather EPISODIC. It refers it to\nits place and moment in a continental cyclone, on the history of which\nthe local changes everywhere are strung as beads are strung upon a cord.\n\nNow it seems almost certain that young children and the inferior animals\ntake all their experiences very much as uninstructed Bostonians take\ntheir weather. They know no more of time or space as world-receptacles,\nor of permanent subjects and changing predicates, or of causes,\nor kinds, or thoughts, or things, than our common people know of\ncontinental cyclones. A baby's rattle drops out of his hand, but the\nbaby looks not for it. It has 'gone out' for him, as a candle-flame goes\nout; and it comes back, when you replace it in his hand, as the flame\ncomes back when relit. The idea of its being a 'thing,' whose permanent\nexistence by itself he might interpolate between its successive\napparitions has evidently not occurred to him. It is the same with dogs.\nOut of sight, out of mind, with them. It is pretty evident that they\nhave no GENERAL tendency to interpolate 'things.' Let me quote here a\npassage from my colleague G. Santayana's book.\n\n\"If a dog, while sniffing about contentedly, sees afar off his master\narriving after long absence...the poor brute asks for no reason why\nhis master went, why he has come again, why he should be loved, or why\npresently while lying at his feet you forget him and begin to grunt and\ndream of the chase--all that is an utter mystery, utterly unconsidered.\nSuch experience has variety, scenery, and a certain vital rhythm;\nits story might be told in dithyrambic verse. It moves wholly by\ninspiration; every event is providential, every act unpremeditated.\nAbsolute freedom and absolute helplessness have met together: you\ndepend wholly on divine favour, yet that unfathomable agency is not\ndistinguishable from your own life. ...[But] the figures even of that\ndisordered drama have their exits and their entrances; and their cues\ncan be gradually discovered by a being capable of fixing his\nattention and retaining the order of events. ...In proportion as such\nunderstanding advances each moment of experience becomes consequential\nand prophetic of the rest. The calm places in life are filled with power\nand its spasms with resource. No emotion can overwhelm the mind, for\nof none is the basis or issue wholly hidden; no event can disconcert it\naltogether, because it sees beyond. Means can be looked for to escape\nfrom the worst predicament; and whereas each moment had been formerly\nfilled with nothing but its own adventure and surprised emotion, each\nnow makes room for the lesson of what went before and surmises what\nmay be the plot of the whole.\"[Footnote: The Life of Reason: Reason in\nCommon Sense, 1905, p. 59.]\n\nEven to-day science and philosophy are still laboriously trying to part\nfancies from realities in our experience; and in primitive times they\nmade only the most incipient distinctions in this line. Men believed\nwhatever they thought with any liveliness, and they mixed their dreams\nwith their realities inextricably. The categories of 'thought' and\n'things' are indispensable here--instead of being realities we now call\ncertain experiences only 'thoughts.' There is not a category, among\nthose enumerated, of which we may not imagine the use to have thus\noriginated historically and only gradually spread.\n\nThat one Time which we all believe in and in which each event has its\ndefinite date, that one Space in which each thing has its position,\nthese abstract notions unify the world incomparably; but in their\nfinished shape as concepts how different they are from the loose\nunordered time-and-space experiences of natural men! Everything that\nhappens to us brings its own duration and extension, and both are\nvaguely surrounded by a marginal 'more' that runs into the duration\nand extension of the next thing that comes. But we soon lose all our\ndefinite bearings; and not only do our children make no distinction\nbetween yesterday and the day before yesterday, the whole past being\nchurned up together, but we adults still do so whenever the times are\nlarge. It is the same with spaces. On a map I can distinctly see the\nrelation of London, Constantinople, and Pekin to the place where I am;\nin reality I utterly fail to FEEL the facts which the map symbolizes.\nThe directions and distances are vague, confused and mixed. Cosmic space\nand cosmic time, so far from being the intuitions that Kant said they\nwere, are constructions as patently artificial as any that science can\nshow. The great majority of the human race never use these notions, but\nlive in plural times and spaces, interpenetrant and DURCHEINANDER.\n\nPermanent 'things' again; the 'same' thing and its various 'appearances'\nand 'alterations'; the different 'kinds' of thing; with the 'kind' used\nfinally as a 'predicate,' of which the thing remains the 'subject'--what\na straightening of the tangle of our experience's immediate flux and\nsensible variety does this list of terms suggest! And it is only\nthe smallest part of his experience's flux that anyone actually does\nstraighten out by applying to it these conceptual instruments. Out of\nthem all our lowest ancestors probably used only, and then most vaguely\nand inaccurately, the notion of 'the same again.' But even then if\nyou had asked them whether the same were a 'thing' that had endured\nthroughout the unseen interval, they would probably have been at a\nloss, and would have said that they had never asked that question, or\nconsidered matters in that light.\n\nKinds, and sameness of kind--what colossally useful DENKMITTEL for\nfinding our way among the many! The manyness might conceivably have\nbeen absolute. Experiences might have all been singulars, no one of them\noccurring twice. In such a world logic would have had no application;\nfor kind and sameness of kind are logic's only instruments. Once we know\nthat whatever is of a kind is also of that kind's kind, we can travel\nthrough the universe as if with seven-league boots. Brutes surely never\nuse these abstractions, and civilized men use them in most various\namounts.\n\nCausal influence, again! This, if anything, seems to have been an\nantediluvian conception; for we find primitive men thinking that almost\neverything is significant and can exert influence of some sort. The\nsearch for the more definite influences seems to have started in the\nquestion: \"Who, or what, is to blame?\"--for any illness, namely, or\ndisaster, or untoward thing. From this centre the search for causal\ninfluences has spread. Hume and 'Science' together have tried to\neliminate the whole notion of influence, substituting the entirely\ndifferent DENKMITTEL of 'law.' But law is a comparatively recent\ninvention, and influence reigns supreme in the older realm of common\nsense.\n\nThe 'possible,' as something less than the actual and more than the\nwholly unreal, is another of these magisterial notions of common sense.\nCriticize them as you may, they persist; and we fly back to them the\nmoment critical pressure is relaxed. 'Self,' 'body,' in the substantial\nor metaphysical sense--no one escapes subjection to THOSE forms\nof thought. In practice, the common-sense DENKMITTEL are uniformly\nvictorious. Everyone, however instructed, still thinks of a 'thing' in\nthe common-sense way, as a permanent unit-subject that 'supports' its\nattributes interchangeably. No one stably or sincerely uses the more\ncritical notion, of a group of sense-qualities united by a law. With\nthese categories in our hand, we make our plans and plot together, and\nconnect all the remoter parts of experience with what lies before our\neyes. Our later and more critical philosophies are mere fads and fancies\ncompared with this natural mother-tongue of thought.\n\nCommon sense appears thus as a perfectly definite stage in our\nunderstanding of things, a stage that satisfies in an extraordinarily\nsuccessful way the purposes for which we think. 'Things' do exist, even\nwhen we do not see them. Their 'kinds' also exist. Their 'qualities' are\nwhat they act by, and are what we act on; and these also exist. These\nlamps shed their quality of light on every object in this room. We\nintercept IT on its way whenever we hold up an opaque screen. It is\nthe very sound that my lips emit that travels into your ears. It is the\nsensible heat of the fire that migrates into the water in which we boil\nan egg; and we can change the heat into coolness by dropping in a\nlump of ice. At this stage of philosophy all non-European men without\nexception have remained. It suffices for all the necessary practical\nends of life; and, among our own race even, it is only the highly\nsophisticated specimens, the minds debauched by learning, as Berkeley\ncalls them, who have ever even suspected common sense of not being\nabsolutely true.\n\nBut when we look back, and speculate as to how the common-sense\ncategories may have achieved their wonderful supremacy, no reason\nappears why it may not have been by a process just like that by which\nthe conceptions due to Democritus, Berkeley, or Darwin, achieved their\nsimilar triumphs in more recent times. In other words, they may have\nbeen successfully DISCOVERED by prehistoric geniuses whose names the\nnight of antiquity has covered up; they may have been verified by the\nimmediate facts of experience which they first fitted; and then from\nfact to fact and from man to man they may have SPREAD, until all\nlanguage rested on them and we are now incapable of thinking naturally\nin any other terms. Such a view would only follow the rule that has\nproved elsewhere so fertile, of assuming the vast and remote to conform\nto the laws of formation that we can observe at work in the small and\nnear.\n\nFor all utilitarian practical purposes these conceptions amply suffice;\nbut that they began at special points of discovery and only gradually\nspread from one thing to another, seems proved by the exceedingly\ndubious limits of their application to-day. We assume for certain\npurposes one 'objective' Time that AEQUABILITER FLUIT, but we don't\nlivingly believe in or realize any such equally-flowing time. 'Space'\nis a less vague notion; but 'things,' what are they? Is a constellation\nproperly a thing? or an army? or is an ENS RATIONIS such as space or\njustice a thing? Is a knife whose handle and blade are changed the\n'same'? Is the 'changeling,' whom Locke so seriously discusses, of the\nhuman 'kind'? Is 'telepathy' a 'fancy' or a 'fact'? The moment you pass\nbeyond the practical use of these categories (a use usually suggested\nsufficiently by the circumstances of the special case) to a merely\ncurious or speculative way of thinking, you find it impossible to say\nwithin just what limits of fact any one of them shall apply.\n\nThe peripatetic philosophy, obeying rationalist propensities, has\ntried to eternalize the common-sense categories by treating them very\ntechnically and articulately. A 'thing' for instance is a being, or\nENS. An ENS is a subject in which qualities 'inhere.' A subject is a\nsubstance. Substances are of kinds, and kinds are definite in number,\nand discrete. These distinctions are fundamental and eternal. As terms\nof DISCOURSE they are indeed magnificently useful, but what they mean,\napart from their use in steering our discourse to profitable issues,\ndoes not appear. If you ask a scholastic philosopher what a substance\nmay be in itself, apart from its being the support of attributes, he\nsimply says that your intellect knows perfectly what the word means.\n\nBut what the intellect knows clearly is only the word itself and its\nsteering function. So it comes about that intellects SIBI PERMISSI,\nintellects only curious and idle, have forsaken the common-sense level\nfor what in general terms may be called the 'critical' level of thought.\nNot merely SUCH intellects either--your Humes and Berkeleys and Hegels;\nbut practical observers of facts, your Galileos, Daltons, Faradays, have\nfound it impossible to treat the NAIFS sense-termini of common sense\nas ultimately real. As common sense interpolates her constant 'things'\nbetween our intermittent sensations, so science EXTRApolates her world\nof 'primary' qualities, her atoms, her ether, her magnetic fields, and\nthe like, beyond the common-sense world. The 'things' are now invisible\nimpalpable things; and the old visible common-sense things are supposed\nto result from the mixture of these invisibles. Or else the whole NAIF\nconception of thing gets superseded, and a thing's name is interpreted\nas denoting only the law or REGEL DER VERBINDUNG by which certain of our\nsensations habitually succeed or coexist.\n\nScience and critical philosophy thus burst the bounds of common sense.\nWith science NAIF realism ceases: 'Secondary' qualities become unreal;\nprimary ones alone remain. With critical philosophy, havoc is made of\neverything. The common-sense categories one and all cease to represent\nanything in the way of BEING; they are but sublime tricks of human\nthought, our ways of escaping bewilderment in the midst of sensation's\nirremediable flow.\n\nBut the scientific tendency in critical thought, tho inspired at first\nby purely intellectual motives, has opened an entirely unexpected range\nof practical utilities to our astonished view. Galileo gave us accurate\nclocks and accurate artillery-practice; the chemists flood us with new\nmedicines and dye-stuffs; Ampere and Faraday have endowed us with the\nNew York subway and with Marconi telegrams. The hypothetical things that\nsuch men have invented, defined as they have defined them, are showing\nan extraordinary fertility in consequences verifiable by sense. Our\nlogic can deduce from them a consequence due under certain conditions,\nwe can then bring about the conditions, and presto, the consequence\nis there before our eyes. The scope of the practical control of nature\nnewly put into our hand by scientific ways of thinking vastly exceeds\nthe scope of the old control grounded on common sense. Its rate of\nincrease accelerates so that no one can trace the limit; one may even\nfear that the BEING of man may be crushed by his own powers, that his\nfixed nature as an organism may not prove adequate to stand the strain\nof the ever increasingly tremendous functions, almost divine creative\nfunctions, which his intellect will more and more enable him to wield.\nHe may drown in his wealth like a child in a bath-tub, who has turned on\nthe water and who cannot turn it off.\n\nThe philosophic stage of criticism, much more thorough in its negations\nthan the scientific stage, so far gives us no new range of practical\npower. Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, have all been utterly\nsterile, so far as shedding any light on the details of nature goes, and\nI can think of no invention or discovery that can be directly traced\nto anything in their peculiar thought, for neither with Berkeley's\ntar-water nor with Kant's nebular hypothesis had their respective\nphilosophic tenets anything to do. The satisfactions they yield to their\ndisciples are intellectual, not practical; and even then we have to\nconfess that there is a large minus-side to the account.\n\nThere are thus at least three well-characterized levels, stages or types\nof thought about the world we live in, and the notions of one stage\nhave one kind of merit, those of another stage another kind. It is\nimpossible, however, to say that any stage as yet in sight is absolutely\nmore TRUE than any other. Common sense is the more CONSOLIDATED stage,\nbecause it got its innings first, and made all language into its ally.\nWhether it or science be the more AUGUST stage may be left to private\njudgment. But neither consolidation nor augustness are decisive marks of\ntruth. If common sense were true, why should science have had to\nbrand the secondary qualities, to which our world owes all its living\ninterest, as false, and to invent an invisible world of points and\ncurves and mathematical equations instead? Why should it have needed\nto transform causes and activities into laws of 'functional variation'?\nVainly did scholasticism, common sense's college-trained younger sister,\nseek to stereotype the forms the human family had always talked with,\nto make them definite and fix them for eternity. Substantial forms (in\nother words our secondary qualities) hardly outlasted the year of our\nLord 1600. People were already tired of them then; and Galileo, and\nDescartes, with his 'new philosophy,' gave them only a little later\ntheir coup de grace.\n\nBut now if the new kinds of scientific 'thing,' the corpuscular and\netheric world, were essentially more 'true,' why should they have\nexcited so much criticism within the body of science itself? Scientific\nlogicians are saying on every hand that these entities and their\ndeterminations, however definitely conceived, should not be held for\nliterally real. It is AS IF they existed; but in reality they are like\nco-ordinates or logarithms, only artificial short-cuts for taking us\nfrom one part to another of experience's flux. We can cipher fruitfully\nwith them; they serve us wonderfully; but we must not be their dupes.\n\nThere is no RINGING conclusion possible when we compare these types\nof thinking, with a view to telling which is the more absolutely true.\nTheir naturalness, their intellectual economy, their fruitfulness for\npractice, all start up as distinct tests of their veracity, and as a\nresult we get confused. Common sense is BETTER for one sphere of life,\nscience for another, philosophic criticism for a third; but whether\neither be TRUER absolutely, Heaven only knows. Just now, if I understand\nthe matter rightly, we are witnessing a curious reversion to the\ncommon-sense way of looking at physical nature, in the philosophy of\nscience favored by such men as Mach, Ostwald and Duhem. According to\nthese teachers no hypothesis is truer than any other in the sense of\nbeing a more literal copy of reality. They are all but ways of talking\non our part, to be compared solely from the point of view of their USE.\nThe only literally true thing is REALITY; and the only reality we know\nis, for these logicians, sensible reality, the flux of our sensations\nand emotions as they pass. 'Energy' is the collective name (according\nto Ostwald) for the sensations just as they present themselves (the\nmovement, heat, magnetic pull, or light, or whatever it may be) when\nthey are measured in certain ways. So measuring them, we are enabled\nto describe the correlated changes which they show us, in formulas\nmatchless for their simplicity and fruitfulness for human use. They are\nsovereign triumphs of economy in thought.\n\nNo one can fail to admire the 'energetic' philosophy. But the\nhypersensible entities, the corpuscles and vibrations, hold their own\nwith most physicists and chemists, in spite of its appeal. It seems too\neconomical to be all-sufficient. Profusion, not economy, may after all\nbe reality's key-note.\n\nI am dealing here with highly technical matters, hardly suitable for\npopular lecturing, and in which my own competence is small. All the\nbetter for my conclusion, however, which at this point is this. The\nwhole notion of truth, which naturally and without reflexion we assume\nto mean the simple duplication by the mind of a ready-made and given\nreality, proves hard to understand clearly. There is no simple test\navailable for adjudicating offhand between the divers types of thought\nthat claim to possess it. Common sense, common science or corpuscular\nphilosophy, ultra-critical science, or energetics, and critical or\nidealistic philosophy, all seem insufficiently true in some regard and\nleave some dissatisfaction. It is evident that the conflict of these so\nwidely differing systems obliges us to overhaul the very idea of truth,\nfor at present we have no definite notion of what the word may mean. I\nshall face that task in my next lecture, and will add but a few words,\nin finishing the present one.\n\nThere are only two points that I wish you to retain from the present\nlecture. The first one relates to common sense. We have seen reason to\nsuspect it, to suspect that in spite of their being so venerable, of\ntheir being so universally used and built into the very structure\nof language, its categories may after all be only a collection of\nextraordinarily successful hypotheses (historically discovered or\ninvented by single men, but gradually communicated, and used by\neverybody) by which our forefathers have from time immemorial unified\nand straightened the discontinuity of their immediate experiences,\nand put themselves into an equilibrium with the surface of nature so\nsatisfactory for ordinary practical purposes that it certainly would\nhave lasted forever, but for the excessive intellectual vivacity of\nDemocritus, Archimedes, Galileo, Berkeley, and other excentric geniuses\nwhom the example of such men inflamed. Retain, I pray you, this\nsuspicion about common sense.\n\nThe other point is this. Ought not the existence of the various types of\nthinking which we have reviewed, each so splendid for certain purposes,\nyet all conflicting still, and neither one of them able to support a\nclaim of absolute veracity, to awaken a presumption favorable to the\npragmatistic view that all our theories are INSTRUMENTAL, are mental\nmodes of ADAPTATION to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic\nanswers to some divinely instituted world-enigma? I expressed this view\nas clearly as I could in the second of these lectures. Certainly the\nrestlessness of the actual theoretic situation, the value for some\npurposes of each thought-level, and the inability of either to expel the\nothers decisively, suggest this pragmatistic view, which I hope that the\nnext lectures may soon make entirely convincing. May there not after all\nbe a possible ambiguity in truth?\n\n\n\n\nLecture VI\n\nPragmatism's Conception of Truth\n\nWhen Clerk Maxwell was a child it is written that he had a mania for\nhaving everything explained to him, and that when people put him off\nwith vague verbal accounts of any phenomenon he would interrupt them\nimpatiently by saying, \"Yes; but I want you to tell me the PARTICULAR GO\nof it!\" Had his question been about truth, only a pragmatist could\nhave told him the particular go of it. I believe that our contemporary\npragmatists, especially Messrs. Schiller and Dewey, have given the only\ntenable account of this subject. It is a very ticklish subject, sending\nsubtle rootlets into all kinds of crannies, and hard to treat in the\nsketchy way that alone befits a public lecture. But the Schiller-Dewey\nview of truth has been so ferociously attacked by rationalistic\nphilosophers, and so abominably misunderstood, that here, if anywhere,\nis the point where a clear and simple statement should be made.\n\nI fully expect to see the pragmatist view of truth run through the\nclassic stages of a theory's career. First, you know, a new theory is\nattacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious\nand insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its\nadversaries claim that they themselves discovered it. Our doctrine of\ntruth is at present in the first of these three stages, with symptoms\nof the second stage having begun in certain quarters. I wish that this\nlecture might help it beyond the first stage in the eyes of many of you.\n\nTruth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our\nideas. It means their 'agreement,' as falsity means their disagreement,\nwith 'reality.' Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this\ndefinition as a matter of course. They begin to quarrel only after\nthe question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term\n'agreement,' and what by the term 'reality,' when reality is taken as\nsomething for our ideas to agree with.\n\nIn answering these questions the pragmatists are more analytic and\npainstaking, the intellectualists more offhand and irreflective. The\npopular notion is that a true idea must copy its reality. Like\nother popular views, this one follows the analogy of the most usual\nexperience. Our true ideas of sensible things do indeed copy them. Shut\nyour eyes and think of yonder clock on the wall, and you get just such\na true picture or copy of its dial. But your idea of its 'works' (unless\nyou are a clock-maker) is much less of a copy, yet it passes muster, for\nit in no way clashes with the reality. Even tho it should shrink to the\nmere word 'works,' that word still serves you truly; and when you\nspeak of the 'time-keeping function' of the clock, or of its spring's\n'elasticity,' it is hard to see exactly what your ideas can copy.\n\nYou perceive that there is a problem here. Where our ideas cannot copy\ndefinitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean?\nSome idealists seem to say that they are true whenever they are what\nGod means that we ought to think about that object. Others hold the\ncopy-view all through, and speak as if our ideas possessed truth just\nin proportion as they approach to being copies of the Absolute's eternal\nway of thinking.\n\nThese views, you see, invite pragmatistic discussion. But the great\nassumption of the intellectualists is that truth means essentially\nan inert static relation. When you've got your true idea of anything,\nthere's an end of the matter. You're in possession; you KNOW; you have\nfulfilled your thinking destiny. You are where you ought to be mentally;\nyou have obeyed your categorical imperative; and nothing more need\nfollow on that climax of your rational destiny. Epistemologically you\nare in stable equilibrium.\n\nPragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. \"Grant an idea\nor belief to be true,\" it says, \"what concrete difference will its being\ntrue make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized?\nWhat experiences will be different from those which would obtain if\nthe belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in\nexperiential terms?\"\n\nThe moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: TRUE IDEAS\nARE THOSE THAT WE CAN ASSIMILATE, VALIDATE, CORROBORATE AND VERIFY.\nFALSE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CANNOT. That is the practical difference\nit makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of\ntruth, for it is all that truth is known-as.\n\nThis thesis is what I have to defend. The truth of an idea is not a\nstagnant property inherent in it. Truth HAPPENS to an idea. It BECOMES\ntrue, is MADE true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process:\nthe process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-FICATION. Its\nvalidity is the process of its valid-ATION.\n\nBut what do the words verification and validation themselves\npragmatically mean? They again signify certain practical consequences of\nthe verified and validated idea. It is hard to find any one phrase\nthat characterizes these consequences better than the ordinary\nagreement-formula--just such consequences being what we have in mind\nwhenever we say that our ideas 'agree' with reality. They lead us,\nnamely, through the acts and other ideas which they instigate, into or\nup to, or towards, other parts of experience with which we feel all the\nwhile-such feeling being among our potentialities--that the original\nideas remain in agreement. The connexions and transitions come to us\nfrom point to point as being progressive, harmonious, satisfactory. This\nfunction of agreeable leading is what we mean by an idea's verification.\nSuch an account is vague and it sounds at first quite trivial, but it\nhas results which it will take the rest of my hour to explain.\n\nLet me begin by reminding you of the fact that the possession of true\nthoughts means everywhere the possession of invaluable instruments\nof action; and that our duty to gain truth, so far from being a\nblank command from out of the blue, or a 'stunt' self-imposed by our\nintellect, can account for itself by excellent practical reasons.\n\nThe importance to human life of having true beliefs about matters of\nfact is a thing too notorious. We live in a world of realities that can\nbe infinitely useful or infinitely harmful. Ideas that tell us which\nof them to expect count as the true ideas in all this primary sphere of\nverification, and the pursuit of such ideas is a primary human duty. The\npossession of truth, so far from being here an end in itself, is only a\npreliminary means towards other vital satisfactions. If I am lost in\nthe woods and starved, and find what looks like a cow-path, it is of the\nutmost importance that I should think of a human habitation at the end\nof it, for if I do so and follow it, I save myself. The true thought\nis useful here because the house which is its object is useful. The\npractical value of true ideas is thus primarily derived from the\npractical importance of their objects to us. Their objects are, indeed,\nnot important at all times. I may on another occasion have no use\nfor the house; and then my idea of it, however verifiable, will be\npractically irrelevant, and had better remain latent. Yet since almost\nany object may some day become temporarily important, the advantage of\nhaving a general stock of extra truths, of ideas that shall be true of\nmerely possible situations, is obvious. We store such extra truths away\nin our memories, and with the overflow we fill our books of reference.\nWhenever such an extra truth becomes practically relevant to one of our\nemergencies, it passes from cold-storage to do work in the world, and\nour belief in it grows active. You can say of it then either that 'it\nis useful because it is true' or that 'it is true because it is useful.'\nBoth these phrases mean exactly the same thing, namely that here is\nan idea that gets fulfilled and can be verified. True is the name for\nwhatever idea starts the verification-process, useful is the name for\nits completed function in experience. True ideas would never have been\nsingled out as such, would never have acquired a class-name, least of\nall a name suggesting value, unless they had been useful from the outset\nin this way.\n\nFrom this simple cue pragmatism gets her general notion of truth as\nsomething essentially bound up with the way in which one moment in our\nexperience may lead us towards other moments which it will be worth\nwhile to have been led to. Primarily, and on the common-sense level, the\ntruth of a state of mind means this function of A LEADING THAT IS WORTH\nWHILE. When a moment in our experience, of any kind whatever, inspires\nus with a thought that is true, that means that sooner or later we dip\nby that thought's guidance into the particulars of experience again and\nmake advantageous connexion with them. This is a vague enough statement,\nbut I beg you to retain it, for it is essential.\n\nOur experience meanwhile is all shot through with regularities. One\nbit of it can warn us to get ready for another bit, can 'intend' or\nbe 'significant of' that remoter object. The object's advent is the\nsignificance's verification. Truth, in these cases, meaning nothing but\neventual verification, is manifestly incompatible with waywardness on\nour part. Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order\nwhich realities follow in his experience: they will lead him nowhere or\nelse make false connexions.\n\nBy 'realities' or 'objects' here, we mean either things of common sense,\nsensibly present, or else common-sense relations, such as dates, places,\ndistances, kinds, activities. Following our mental image of a house\nalong the cow-path, we actually come to see the house; we get the\nimage's full verification. SUCH SIMPLY AND FULLY VERIFIED LEADINGS ARE\nCERTAINLY THE ORIGINALS AND PROTOTYPES OF THE TRUTH-PROCESS. Experience\noffers indeed other forms of truth-process, but they are all conceivable\nas being primary verifications arrested, multiplied or substituted one\nfor another.\n\nTake, for instance, yonder object on the wall. You and I consider it to\nbe a 'clock,' altho no one of us has seen the hidden works that make it\none. We let our notion pass for true without attempting to verify. If\ntruths mean verification-process essentially, ought we then to call such\nunverified truths as this abortive? No, for they form the overwhelmingly\nlarge number of the truths we live by. Indirect as well as direct\nverifications pass muster. Where circumstantial evidence is sufficient,\nwe can go without eye-witnessing. Just as we here assume Japan to exist\nwithout ever having been there, because it WORKS to do so, everything we\nknow conspiring with the belief, and nothing interfering, so we assume\nthat thing to be a clock. We USE it as a clock, regulating the length\nof our lecture by it. The verification of the assumption here means its\nleading to no frustration or contradiction. VerifiABILITY of wheels and\nweights and pendulum is as good as verification. For one truth-process\ncompleted there are a million in our lives that function in this state\nof nascency. They turn us TOWARDS direct verification; lead us into the\nSURROUNDINGS of the objects they envisage; and then, if everything runs\non harmoniously, we are so sure that verification is possible that we\nomit it, and are usually justified by all that happens.\n\nTruth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our\nthoughts and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them, just as\nbank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. But this all points to\ndirect face-to-face verifications somewhere, without which the fabric of\ntruth collapses like a financial system with no cash-basis whatever.\nYou accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade on\neach other's truth. But beliefs verified concretely by SOMEBODY are the\nposts of the whole superstructure.\n\nAnother great reason--beside economy of time--for waiving complete\nverification in the usual business of life is that all things exist\nin kinds and not singly. Our world is found once for all to have that\npeculiarity. So that when we have once directly verified our ideas about\none specimen of a kind, we consider ourselves free to apply them to\nother specimens without verification. A mind that habitually\ndiscerns the kind of thing before it, and acts by the law of the\nkind immediately, without pausing to verify, will be a 'true' mind\nin ninety-nine out of a hundred emergencies, proved so by its conduct\nfitting everything it meets, and getting no refutation.\n\nINDIRECTLY OR ONLY POTENTIALLY VERIFYING PROCESSES MAY THUS BE TRUE AS\nWELL AS FULL VERIFICATION-PROCESSES. They work as true processes would\nwork, give us the same advantages, and claim our recognition for the\nsame reasons. All this on the common-sense level of, matters of fact,\nwhich we are alone considering.\n\nBut matters of fact are not our only stock in trade. RELATIONS AMONG\nPURELY MENTAL IDEAS form another sphere where true and false beliefs\nobtain, and here the beliefs are absolute, or unconditional. When they\nare true they bear the name either of definitions or of principles. It\nis either a principle or a definition that 1 and 1 make 2, that 2 and 1\nmake 3, and so on; that white differs less from gray than it does from\nblack; that when the cause begins to act the effect also commences. Such\npropositions hold of all possible 'ones,' of all conceivable 'whites'\nand 'grays' and 'causes.' The objects here are mental objects.\nTheir relations are perceptually obvious at a glance, and no\nsense-verification is necessary. Moreover, once true, always true, of\nthose same mental objects. Truth here has an 'eternal' character. If you\ncan find a concrete thing anywhere that is 'one' or 'white' or 'gray,'\nor an 'effect,' then your principles will everlastingly apply to it. It\nis but a case of ascertaining the kind, and then applying the law of its\nkind to the particular object. You are sure to get truth if you can but\nname the kind rightly, for your mental relations hold good of everything\nof that kind without exception. If you then, nevertheless, failed to get\ntruth concretely, you would say that you had classed your real objects\nwrongly.\n\nIn this realm of mental relations, truth again is an affair of leading.\nWe relate one abstract idea with another, framing in the end great\nsystems of logical and mathematical truth, under the respective terms of\nwhich the sensible facts of experience eventually arrange themselves,\nso that our eternal truths hold good of realities also. This marriage of\nfact and theory is endlessly fertile. What we say is here already true\nin advance of special verification, IF WE HAVE SUBSUMED OUR OBJECTS\nRIGHTLY. Our ready-made ideal framework for all sorts of possible\nobjects follows from the very structure of our thinking. We can no more\nplay fast and loose with these abstract relations than we can do so with\nour sense-experiences. They coerce us; we must treat them consistently,\nwhether or not we like the results. The rules of addition apply to our\ndebts as rigorously as to our assets. The hundredth decimal of pi, the\nratio of the circumference to its diameter, is predetermined ideally\nnow, tho no one may have computed it. If we should ever need the figure\nin our dealings with an actual circle we should need to have it given\nrightly, calculated by the usual rules; for it is the same kind of truth\nthat those rules elsewhere calculate.\n\nBetween the coercions of the sensible order and those of the ideal\norder, our mind is thus wedged tightly. Our ideas must agree with\nrealities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be\nthey principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.\nSo far, intellectualists can raise no protest. They can only say that we\nhave barely touched the skin of the matter.\n\nRealities mean, then, either concrete facts, or abstract kinds of things\nand relations perceived intuitively between them. They furthermore and\nthirdly mean, as things that new ideas of ours must no less take account\nof, the whole body of other truths already in our possession. But what\nnow does 'agreement' with such three-fold realities mean?--to use again\nthe definition that is current.\n\nHere it is that pragmatism and intellectualism begin to part company.\nPrimarily, no doubt, to agree means to copy, but we saw that the mere\nword 'clock' would do instead of a mental picture of its works, and that\nof many realities our ideas can only be symbols and not copies. 'Past\ntime,' 'power,' 'spontaneity'--how can our mind copy such realities?\n\nTo 'agree' in the widest sense with a reality, CAN ONLY MEAN TO BE\nGUIDED EITHER STRAIGHT UP TO IT OR INTO ITS SURROUNDINGS, OR TO BE PUT\nINTO SUCH WORKING TOUCH WITH IT AS TO HANDLE EITHER IT OR SOMETHING\nCONNECTED WITH IT BETTER THAN IF WE DISAGREED. Better either\nintellectually or practically! And often agreement will only mean\nthe negative fact that nothing contradictory from the quarter of that\nreality comes to interfere with the way in which our ideas guide us\nelsewhere. To copy a reality is, indeed, one very important way of\nagreeing with it, but it is far from being essential. The essential\nthing is the process of being guided. Any idea that helps us to DEAL,\nwhether practically or intellectually, with either the reality or its\nbelongings, that doesn't entangle our progress in frustrations, that\nFITS, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality's whole setting, will\nagree sufficiently to meet the requirement. It will hold true of that\nreality.\n\nThus, NAMES are just as 'true' or 'false' as definite mental pictures\nare. They set up similar verification-processes, and lead to fully\nequivalent practical results.\n\nAll human thinking gets discursified; we exchange ideas; we lend and\nborrow verifications, get them from one another by means of social\nintercourse. All truth thus gets verbally built out, stored up, and made\navailable for everyone. Hence, we must TALK consistently just as we must\nTHINK consistently: for both in talk and thought we deal with kinds.\nNames are arbitrary, but once understood they must be kept to. We\nmustn't now call Abel 'Cain' or Cain 'Abel.' If we do, we ungear\nourselves from the whole book of Genesis, and from all its connexions\nwith the universe of speech and fact down to the present time. We throw\nourselves out of whatever truth that entire system of speech and fact\nmay embody.\n\nThe overwhelming majority of our true ideas admit of no direct or\nface-to-face verification-those of past history, for example, as of Cain\nand Abel. The stream of time can be remounted only verbally, or verified\nindirectly by the present prolongations or effects of what the past\nharbored. Yet if they agree with these verbalities and effects, we can\nknow that our ideas of the past are true. AS TRUE AS PAST TIME ITSELF\nWAS, so true was Julius Caesar, so true were antediluvian monsters,\nall in their proper dates and settings. That past time itself was, is\nguaranteed by its coherence with everything that's present. True as the\npresent is, the past was also.\n\nAgreement thus turns out to be essentially an affair of leading--leading\nthat is useful because it is into quarters that contain objects that are\nimportant. True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual\nquarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead\nto consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse. They lead away\nfrom excentricity and isolation, from foiled and barren thinking. The\nuntrammeled flowing of the leading-process, its general freedom from\nclash and contradiction, passes for its indirect verification; but all\nroads lead to Rome, and in the end and eventually, all true processes\nmust lead to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences\nSOMEWHERE, which somebody's ideas have copied.\n\nSuch is the large loose way in which the pragmatist interprets the word\nagreement. He treats it altogether practically. He lets it cover any\nprocess of conduction from a present idea to a future terminus, provided\nonly it run prosperously. It is only thus that 'scientific' ideas,\nflying as they do beyond common sense, can be said to agree with their\nrealities. It is, as I have already said, as if reality were made of\nether, atoms or electrons, but we mustn't think so literally. The term\n'energy' doesn't even pretend to stand for anything 'objective.' It is\nonly a way of measuring the surface of phenomena so as to string their\nchanges on a simple formula.\n\nYet in the choice of these man-made formulas we cannot be capricious\nwith impunity any more than we can be capricious on the common-sense\npractical level. We must find a theory that will WORK; and that means\nsomething extremely difficult; for our theory must mediate between all\nprevious truths and certain new experiences. It must derange common\nsense and previous belief as little as possible, and it must lead to\nsome sensible terminus or other that can be verified exactly. To 'work'\nmeans both these things; and the squeeze is so tight that there is\nlittle loose play for any hypothesis. Our theories are wedged and\ncontrolled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic\nformulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we\nchoose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory\nto which we are already partial; we follow 'elegance' or 'economy.'\nClerk Maxwell somewhere says it would be \"poor scientific taste\" to\nchoose the more complicated of two equally well-evidenced conceptions;\nand you will all agree with him. Truth in science is what gives us the\nmaximum possible sum of satisfactions, taste included, but consistency\nboth with previous truth and with novel fact is always the most\nimperious claimant.\n\nI have led you through a very sandy desert. But now, if I may be allowed\nso vulgar an expression, we begin to taste the milk in the cocoanut. Our\nrationalist critics here discharge their batteries upon us, and to reply\nto them will take us out from all this dryness into full sight of a\nmomentous philosophical alternative.\n\nOur account of truth is an account of truths in the plural, of processes\nof leading, realized in rebus, and having only this quality in common,\nthat they PAY. They pay by guiding us into or towards some part of a\nsystem that dips at numerous points into sense-percepts, which we may\ncopy mentally or not, but with which at any rate we are now in the kind\nof commerce vaguely designated as verification. Truth for us is simply\na collective name for verification-processes, just as health, wealth,\nstrength, etc., are names for other processes connected with life, and\nalso pursued because it pays to pursue them. Truth is MADE, just as\nhealth, wealth and strength are made, in the course of experience.\n\nHere rationalism is instantaneously up in arms against us. I can imagine\na rationalist to talk as follows:\n\n\"Truth is not made,\" he will say; \"it absolutely obtains, being a unique\nrelation that does not wait upon any process, but shoots straight over\nthe head of experience, and hits its reality every time. Our belief that\nyon thing on the wall is a clock is true already, altho no one in\nthe whole history of the world should verify it. The bare quality of\nstanding in that transcendent relation is what makes any thought true\nthat possesses it, whether or not there be verification. You pragmatists\nput the cart before the horse in making truth's being reside in\nverification-processes. These are merely signs of its being, merely our\nlame ways of ascertaining after the fact, which of our ideas already has\npossessed the wondrous quality. The quality itself is timeless, like all\nessences and natures. Thoughts partake of it directly, as they partake\nof falsity or of irrelevancy. It can't be analyzed away into pragmatic\nconsequences.\"\n\nThe whole plausibility of this rationalist tirade is due to the fact\nto which we have already paid so much attention. In our world,\nnamely, abounding as it does in things of similar kinds and similarly\nassociated, one verification serves for others of its kind, and one\ngreat use of knowing things is to be led not so much to them as to their\nassociates, especially to human talk about them. The quality of truth,\nobtaining ante rem, pragmatically means, then, the fact that in such a\nworld innumerable ideas work better by their indirect or possible than\nby their direct and actual verification. Truth ante rem means only\nverifiability, then; or else it is a case of the stock rationalist trick\nof treating the NAME of a concrete phenomenal reality as an independent\nprior entity, and placing it behind the reality as its explanation.\nProfessor Mach quotes somewhere an epigram of Lessing's:\n\nSagt Hanschen Schlau zu Vetter Fritz, \"Wie kommt es, Vetter Fritzen,\nDass grad' die Reichsten in der Welt, Das meiste Geld besitzen?\"\n\nHanschen Schlau here treats the principle 'wealth' as something distinct\nfrom the facts denoted by the man's being rich. It antedates them; the\nfacts become only a sort of secondary coincidence with the rich man's\nessential nature.\n\nIn the case of 'wealth' we all see the fallacy. We know that wealth is\nbut a name for concrete processes that certain men's lives play a\npart in, and not a natural excellence found in Messrs. Rockefeller and\nCarnegie, but not in the rest of us.\n\nLike wealth, health also lives in rebus. It is a name for processes,\nas digestion, circulation, sleep, etc., that go on happily, tho in this\ninstance we are more inclined to think of it as a principle and to say\nthe man digests and sleeps so well BECAUSE he is so healthy.\n\nWith 'strength' we are, I think, more rationalistic still, and decidedly\ninclined to treat it as an excellence pre-existing in the man and\nexplanatory of the herculean performances of his muscles.\n\nWith 'truth' most people go over the border entirely, and treat the\nrationalistic account as self-evident. But really all these words in TH\nare exactly similar. Truth exists ante rem just as much and as little as\nthe other things do.\n\nThe scholastics, following Aristotle, made much of the distinction\nbetween habit and act. Health in actu means, among other things, good\nsleeping and digesting. But a healthy man need not always be sleeping,\nor always digesting, any more than a wealthy man need be always handling\nmoney, or a strong man always lifting weights. All such qualities sink\nto the status of 'habits' between their times of exercise; and similarly\ntruth becomes a habit of certain of our ideas and beliefs in their\nintervals of rest from their verifying activities. But those activities\nare the root of the whole matter, and the condition of there being any\nhabit to exist in the intervals.\n\n'The true,' to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of\nour thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of\nour behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the\nlong run and on the whole of course; for what meets expediently all\nthe experience in sight won't necessarily meet all farther experiences\nequally satisfactorily. Experience, as we know, has ways of BOILING\nOVER, and making us correct our present formulas.\n\nThe 'absolutely' true, meaning what no farther experience will ever\nalter, is that ideal vanishing-point towards which we imagine that all\nour temporary truths will some day converge. It runs on all fours with\nthe perfectly wise man, and with the absolutely complete experience;\nand, if these ideals are ever realized, they will all be realized\ntogether. Meanwhile we have to live to-day by what truth we can\nget to-day, and be ready to-morrow to call it falsehood. Ptolemaic\nastronomy, euclidean space, aristotelian logic, scholastic metaphysics,\nwere expedient for centuries, but human experience has boiled over\nthose limits, and we now call these things only relatively true, or true\nwithin those borders of experience. 'Absolutely' they are false; for we\nknow that those limits were casual, and might have been transcended by\npast theorists just as they are by present thinkers.\n\nWhen new experiences lead to retrospective judgments, using the past\ntense, what these judgments utter WAS true, even tho no past thinker\nhad been led there. We live forwards, a Danish thinker has said, but we\nunderstand backwards. The present sheds a backward light on the world's\nprevious processes. They may have been truth-processes for the actors\nin them. They are not so for one who knows the later revelations of the\nstory.\n\nThis regulative notion of a potential better truth to be established\nlater, possibly to be established some day absolutely, and having powers\nof retroactive legislation, turns its face, like all pragmatist\nnotions, towards concreteness of fact, and towards the future. Like the\nhalf-truths, the absolute truth will have to be MADE, made as a relation\nincidental to the growth of a mass of verification-experience, to which\nthe half-true ideas are all along contributing their quota.\n\nI have already insisted on the fact that truth is made largely out\nof previous truths. Men's beliefs at any time are so much experience\nfunded. But the beliefs are themselves parts of the sum total of the\nworld's experience, and become matter, therefore, for the next day's\nfunding operations. So far as reality means experienceable reality,\nboth it and the truths men gain about it are everlastingly in process\nof mutation-mutation towards a definite goal, it may be--but still\nmutation.\n\nMathematicians can solve problems with two variables. On the Newtonian\ntheory, for instance, acceleration varies with distance, but distance\nalso varies with acceleration. In the realm of truth-processes facts\ncome independently and determine our beliefs provisionally. But these\nbeliefs make us act, and as fast as they do so, they bring into sight or\ninto existence new facts which re-determine the beliefs accordingly. So\nthe whole coil and ball of truth, as it rolls up, is the product of a\ndouble influence. Truths emerge from facts; but they dip forward into\nfacts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new\ntruth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts'\nthemselves meanwhile are not TRUE. They simply ARE. Truth is the\nfunction of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.\n\nThe case is like a snowball's growth, due as it is to the distribution\nof the snow on the one hand, and to the successive pushes of the boys on\nthe other, with these factors co-determining each other incessantly.\n\nThe most fateful point of difference between being a rationalist and\nbeing a pragmatist is now fully in sight. Experience is in mutation,\nand our psychological ascertainments of truth are in mutation--so much\nrationalism will allow; but never that either reality itself or truth\nitself is mutable. Reality stands complete and ready-made from all\neternity, rationalism insists, and the agreement of our ideas with it\nis that unique unanalyzable virtue in them of which she has already told\nus. As that intrinsic excellence, their truth has nothing to do with our\nexperiences. It adds nothing to the content of experience. It makes\nno difference to reality itself; it is supervenient, inert, static, a\nreflexion merely. It doesn't EXIST, it HOLDS or OBTAINS, it belongs to\nanother dimension from that of either facts or fact-relations, belongs,\nin short, to the epistemological dimension--and with that big word\nrationalism closes the discussion.\n\nThus, just as pragmatism faces forward to the future, so does\nrationalism here again face backward to a past eternity. True to her\ninveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that\nwhen an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.\n\nThe tremendous pregnancy in the way of consequences for life of this\nradical difference of outlook will only become apparent in my later\nlectures. I wish meanwhile to close this lecture by showing that\nrationalism's sublimity does not save it from inanity.\n\nWhen, namely, you ask rationalists, instead of accusing pragmatism\nof desecrating the notion of truth, to define it themselves by saying\nexactly what THEY understand by it, the only positive attempts I can\nthink of are these two:\n\n1. \"Truth is just the system of propositions which have an\nun-conditional claim to be recognized as valid.\" [Footnote: A. E.\nTaylor, Philosophical Review, vol. xiv, p. 288.]\n\n2. Truth is a name for all those judgments which we find ourselves under\nobligation to make by a kind of imperative duty. [Footnote: H.\nRickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntniss, chapter on 'Die\nUrtheilsnothwendigkeit.']\n\nThe first thing that strikes one in such definitions is their\nunutterable triviality. They are absolutely true, of course, but\nabsolutely insignificant until you handle them pragmatically. What do\nyou mean by 'claim' here, and what do you mean by 'duty'? As\nsummary names for the concrete reasons why thinking in true ways is\noverwhelmingly expedient and good for mortal men, it is all right to\ntalk of claims on reality's part to be agreed with, and of obligations\non our part to agree. We feel both the claims and the obligations, and\nwe feel them for just those reasons.\n\nBut the rationalists who talk of claim and obligation EXPRESSLY SAY\nTHAT THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR PRACTICAL INTERESTS OR PERSONAL\nREASONS. Our reasons for agreeing are psychological facts, they say,\nrelative to each thinker, and to the accidents of his life. They are his\nevidence merely, they are no part of the life of truth itself. That\nlife transacts itself in a purely logical or epistemological, as\ndistinguished from a psychological, dimension, and its claims antedate\nand exceed all personal motivations whatsoever. Tho neither man nor God\nshould ever ascertain truth, the word would still have to be defined as\nthat which OUGHT to be ascertained and recognized.\n\nThere never was a more exquisite example of an idea abstracted from the\nconcretes of experience and then used to oppose and negate what it was\nabstracted from.\n\nPhilosophy and common life abound in similar instances. The\n'sentimentalist fallacy' is to shed tears over abstract justice and\ngenerosity, beauty, etc., and never to know these qualities when you\nmeet them in the street, because there the circumstances make them\nvulgar. Thus I read in the privately printed biography of an eminently\nrationalistic mind: \"It was strange that with such admiration for beauty\nin the abstract, my brother had no enthusiasm for fine architecture, for\nbeautiful painting, or for flowers.\" And in almost the last philosophic\nwork I have read, I find such passages as the following: \"Justice\nis ideal, solely ideal. Reason conceives that it ought to exist, but\nexperience shows that it can-not. ... Truth, which ought to be, cannot\nbe. ... Reason is deformed by experience. As soon as reason enters\nexperience, it becomes contrary to reason.\"\n\nThe rationalist's fallacy here is exactly like the sentimentalist's.\nBoth extract a quality from the muddy particulars of experience, and\nfind it so pure when extracted that they contrast it with each and all\nits muddy instances as an opposite and higher nature. All the while it\nis THEIR nature. It is the nature of truths to be validated, verified.\nIt pays for our ideas to be validated. Our obligation to seek truth is\npart of our general obligation to do what pays. The payments true ideas\nbring are the sole why of our duty to follow them.\n\nIdentical whys exist in the case of wealth and health. Truth makes no\nother kind of claim and imposes no other kind of ought than health and\nwealth do. All these claims are conditional; the concrete benefits we\ngain are what we mean by calling the pursuit a duty. In the case of\ntruth, untrue beliefs work as perniciously in the long run as true\nbeliefs work beneficially. Talking abstractly, the quality 'true' may\nthus be said to grow absolutely precious, and the quality 'untrue'\nabsolutely damnable: the one may be called good, the other bad,\nunconditionally. We ought to think the true, we ought to shun the false,\nimperatively.\n\nBut if we treat all this abstraction literally and oppose it to its\nmother soil in experience, see what a preposterous position we work\nourselves into.\n\nWe cannot then take a step forward in our actual thinking. When shall\nI acknowledge this truth and when that? Shall the acknowledgment be\nloud?--or silent? If sometimes loud, sometimes silent, which NOW? When\nmay a truth go into cold-storage in the encyclopedia? and when shall it\ncome out for battle? Must I constantly be repeating the truth 'twice\ntwo are four' because of its eternal claim on recognition? or is\nit sometimes irrelevant? Must my thoughts dwell night and day on my\npersonal sins and blemishes, because I truly have them?--or may I sink\nand ignore them in order to be a decent social unit, and not a mass of\nmorbid melancholy and apology?\n\nIt is quite evident that our obligation to acknowledge truth, so far\nfrom being unconditional, is tremendously conditioned. Truth with a big\nT, and in the singular, claims abstractly to be recognized, of course;\nbut concrete truths in the plural need be recognized only when their\nrecognition is expedient. A truth must always be preferred to a\nfalsehood when both relate to the situation; but when neither does,\ntruth is as little of a duty as falsehood. If you ask me what o'clock it\nis and I tell you that I live at 95 Irving Street, my answer may indeed\nbe true, but you don't see why it is my duty to give it. A false address\nwould be as much to the purpose.\n\nWith this admission that there are conditions that limit the application\nof the abstract imperative, THE PRAGMATISTIC TREATMENT OF TRUTH SWEEPS\nBACK UPON US IN ITS FULNESS. Our duty to agree with reality is seen to\nbe grounded in a perfect jungle of concrete expediencies.\n\nWhen Berkeley had explained what people meant by matter, people thought\nthat he denied matter's existence. When Messrs. Schiller and Dewey\nnow explain what people mean by truth, they are accused of denying ITS\nexistence. These pragmatists destroy all objective standards, critics\nsay, and put foolishness and wisdom on one level. A favorite formula for\ndescribing Mr. Schiller's doctrines and mine is that we are persons who\nthink that by saying whatever you find it pleasant to say and calling it\ntruth you fulfil every pragmatistic requirement.\n\nI leave it to you to judge whether this be not an impudent slander. Pent\nin, as the pragmatist more than anyone else sees himself to be, between\nthe whole body of funded truths squeezed from the past and the coercions\nof the world of sense about him, who so well as he feels the immense\npressure of objective control under which our minds perform their\noperations? If anyone imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its\ncommandment one day, says Emerson. We have heard much of late of the\nuses of the imagination in science. It is high time to urge the use of\na little imagination in philosophy. The unwillingness of some of our\ncritics to read any but the silliest of possible meanings into our\nstatements is as discreditable to their imaginations as anything I know\nin recent philosophic history. Schiller says the true is that which\n'works.' Thereupon he is treated as one who limits verification to\nthe lowest material utilities. Dewey says truth is what gives\n'satisfaction.' He is treated as one who believes in calling everything\ntrue which, if it were true, would be pleasant.\n\nOur critics certainly need more imagination of realities. I have\nhonestly tried to stretch my own imagination and to read the best\npossible meaning into the rationalist conception, but I have to confess\nthat it still completely baffles me. The notion of a reality calling on\nus to 'agree' with it, and that for no reasons, but simply because\nits claim is 'unconditional' or 'transcendent,' is one that I can make\nneither head nor tail of. I try to imagine myself as the sole reality\nin the world, and then to imagine what more I would 'claim' if I were\nallowed to. If you suggest the possibility of my claiming that a mind\nshould come into being from out of the void inane and stand and COPY me,\nI can indeed imagine what the copying might mean, but I can conjure up\nno motive. What good it would do me to be copied, or what good it would\ndo that mind to copy me, if farther consequences are expressly and\nin principle ruled out as motives for the claim (as they are by our\nrationalist authorities) I cannot fathom. When the Irishman's admirers\nran him along to the place of banquet in a sedan chair with no bottom,\nhe said, \"Faith, if it wasn't for the honor of the thing, I might as\nwell have come on foot.\" So here: but for the honor of the thing, I\nmight as well have remained uncopied. Copying is one genuine mode\nof knowing (which for some strange reason our contemporary\ntranscendentalists seem to be tumbling over each other to repudiate);\nbut when we get beyond copying, and fall back on unnamed forms of\nagreeing that are expressly denied to be either copyings or leadings or\nfittings, or any other processes pragmatically definable, the WHAT of\nthe 'agreement' claimed becomes as unintelligible as the why of it.\nNeither content nor motive can be imagined for it. It is an absolutely\nmeaningless abstraction. [Footnote: I am not forgetting that Professor\nRickert long ago gave up the whole notion of truth being founded on\nagreement with reality. Reality, according to him, is whatever agrees\nwith truth, and truth is founded solely on our primal duty. This\nfantastic flight, together with Mr. Joachim's candid confession of\nfailure in his book The Nature of Truth, seems to me to mark the\nbankruptcy of rationalism when dealing with this subject. Rickert deals\nwith part of the pragmatistic position under the head of what he calls\n'Relativismus.' I cannot discuss his text here. Suffice it to say\nthat his argumentation in that chapter is so feeble as to seem almost\nincredible in so generally able a writer.]\n\nSurely in this field of truth it is the pragmatists and not the\nrationalists who are the more genuine defenders of the universe's\nrationality.\n\n\n\n\nLecture VII\n\nPragmatism and Humanism\n\nWhat hardens the heart of everyone I approach with the view of truth\nsketched in my last lecture is that typical idol of the tribe, the\nnotion of THE Truth, conceived as the one answer, determinate and\ncomplete, to the one fixed enigma which the world is believed to\npropound. For popular tradition, it is all the better if the answer\nbe oracular, so as itself to awaken wonder as an enigma of the second\norder, veiling rather than revealing what its profundities are supposed\nto contain. All the great single-word answers to the world's riddle,\nsuch as God, the One, Reason, Law, Spirit, Matter, Nature, Polarity, the\nDialectic Process, the Idea, the Self, the Oversoul, draw the admiration\nthat men have lavished on them from this oracular role. By amateurs in\nphilosophy and professionals alike, the universe is represented as\na queer sort of petrified sphinx whose appeal to man consists in a\nmonotonous challenge to his divining powers. THE Truth: what a perfect\nidol of the rationalistic mind! I read in an old letter--from a gifted\nfriend who died too young--these words: \"In everything, in science, art,\nmorals and religion, there MUST be one system that is right and EVERY\nother wrong.\" How characteristic of the enthusiasm of a certain stage of\nyouth! At twenty-one we rise to such a challenge and expect to find the\nsystem. It never occurs to most of us even later that the question 'what\nis THE truth?' is no real question (being irrelative to all conditions)\nand that the whole notion of THE truth is an abstraction from the fact\nof truths in the plural, a mere useful summarizing phrase like THE Latin\nLanguage or THE Law.\n\nCommon-law judges sometimes talk about the law, and school-masters talk\nabout the latin tongue, in a way to make their hearers think they mean\nentities pre-existent to the decisions or to the words and syntax,\ndetermining them unequivocally and requiring them to obey. But the\nslightest exercise of reflexion makes us see that, instead of being\nprinciples of this kind, both law and latin are results. Distinctions\nbetween the lawful and the unlawful in conduct, or between the\ncorrect and incorrect in speech, have grown up incidentally among the\ninteractions of men's experiences in detail; and in no other way do\ndistinctions between the true and the false in belief ever grow up.\nTruth grafts itself on previous truth, modifying it in the process, just\nas idiom grafts itself on previous idiom, and law on previous law. Given\nprevious law and a novel case, and the judge will twist them into fresh\nlaw. Previous idiom; new slang or metaphor or oddity that hits the\npublic taste:--and presto, a new idiom is made. Previous truth; fresh\nfacts:--and our mind finds a new truth.\n\nAll the while, however, we pretend that the eternal is unrolling, that\nthe one previous justice, grammar or truth is simply fulgurating, and\nnot being made. But imagine a youth in the courtroom trying cases with\nhis abstract notion of 'the' law, or a censor of speech let loose\namong the theatres with his idea of 'the' mother-tongue, or a professor\nsetting up to lecture on the actual universe with his rationalistic\nnotion of 'the Truth' with a big T, and what progress do they make?\nTruth, law, and language fairly boil away from them at the least touch\nof novel fact. These things MAKE THEMSELVES as we go. Our rights,\nwrongs, prohibitions, penalties, words, forms, idioms, beliefs, are so\nmany new creations that add themselves as fast as history proceeds.\nFar from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law,\nlanguage, truth are but abstract names for its results.\n\nLaws and languages at any rate are thus seen to be man-made: things.\nMr. Schiller applies the analogy to beliefs, and proposes the name of\n'Humanism' for the doctrine that to an unascertainable extent our truths\nare man-made products too. Human motives sharpen all our questions,\nhuman satisfactions lurk in all our answers, all our formulas have a\nhuman twist. This element is so inextricable in the products that Mr.\nSchiller sometimes seems almost to leave it an open question whether\nthere be anything else. \"The world,\" he says, \"is essentially [u lambda\nnu], it is what we make of it. It is fruitless to define it by what it\noriginally was or by what it is apart from us; it IS what is made of it.\nHence ... the world is PLASTIC.\" [Footnote: Personal Idealism, p. 60.]\nHe adds that we can learn the limits of the plasticity only by trying,\nand that we ought to start as if it were wholly plastic, acting\nmethodically on that assumption, and stopping only when we are\ndecisively rebuked.\n\nThis is Mr. Schiller's butt-end-foremost statement of the humanist\nposition, and it has exposed him to severe attack. I mean to defend the\nhumanist position in this lecture, so I will insinuate a few remarks at\nthis point.\n\nMr. Schiller admits as emphatically as anyone the presence of resisting\nfactors in every actual experience of truth-making, of which the\nnew-made special truth must take account, and with which it has perforce\nto 'agree.' All our truths are beliefs about 'Reality'; and in any\nparticular belief the reality acts as something independent, as a thing\nFOUND, not manufactured. Let me here recall a bit of my last lecture.\n\n'REALITY' IS IN GENERAL WHAT TRUTHS HAVE TO TAKE ACCOUNT OF; [Footnote:\nMr. Taylor in his Elements of Metaphysics uses this excellent pragmatic\ndefinition.] and the FIRST part of reality from this point of view is\nthe flux of our sensations. Sensations are forced upon us, coming we\nknow not whence. Over their nature, order, and quantity we have as good\nas no control. THEY are neither true nor false; they simply ARE. It is\nonly what we say about them, only the names we give them, our theories\nof their source and nature and remote relations, that may be true or\nnot.\n\nThe SECOND part of reality, as something that our beliefs must also\nobediently take account of, is the RELATIONS that obtain between our\nsensations or between their copies in our minds. This part falls into\ntwo sub-parts: 1) the relations that are mutable and accidental, as\nthose of date and place; and 2) those that are fixed and essential\nbecause they are grounded on the inner natures of their terms--such as\nlikeness and unlikeness. Both sorts of relation are matters of immediate\nperception. Both are 'facts.' But it is the latter kind of fact that\nforms the more important sub-part of reality for our theories of\nknowledge. Inner relations namely are 'eternal,' are perceived whenever\ntheir sensible terms are compared; and of them our thought--mathematical\nand logical thought, so-called--must eternally take account.\n\nThe THIRD part of reality, additional to these perceptions (tho largely\nbased upon them), is the PREVIOUS TRUTHS of which every new inquiry\ntakes account. This third part is a much less obdurately resisting\nfactor: it often ends by giving way. In speaking of these three portions\nof reality as at all times controlling our belief's formation, I am only\nreminding you of what we heard in our last hour.\n\nNow however fixed these elements of reality may be, we still have a\ncertain freedom in our dealings with them. Take our sensations. THAT\nthey are is undoubtedly beyond our control; but WHICH we attend to,\nnote, and make emphatic in our conclusions depends on our own interests;\nand, according as we lay the emphasis here or there, quite different\nformulations of truth result. We read the same facts differently.\n'Waterloo,' with the same fixed details, spells a 'victory' for an\nenglishman; for a frenchman it spells a 'defeat.' So, for an optimist\nphilosopher the universe spells victory, for a pessimist, defeat.\n\nWhat we say about reality thus depends on the perspective into which we\nthrow it. The THAT of it is its own; but the WHAT depends on the WHICH;\nand the which depends on US. Both the sensational and the relational\nparts of reality are dumb: they say absolutely nothing about themselves.\nWe it is who have to speak for them. This dumbness of sensations has\nled such intellectualists as T.H. Green and Edward Caird to shove them\nalmost beyond the pale of philosophic recognition, but pragmatists\nrefuse to go so far. A sensation is rather like a client who has given\nhis case to a lawyer and then has passively to listen in the courtroom\nto whatever account of his affairs, pleasant or unpleasant, the lawyer\nfinds it most expedient to give.\n\nHence, even in the field of sensation, our minds exert a certain\narbitrary choice. By our inclusions and omissions we trace the field's\nextent; by our emphasis we mark its foreground and its background; by\nour order we read it in this direction or in that. We receive in short\nthe block of marble, but we carve the statue ourselves.\n\nThis applies to the 'eternal' parts of reality as well: we shuffle our\nperceptions of intrinsic relation and arrange them just as freely. We\nread them in one serial order or another, class them in this way or\nin that, treat one or the other as more fundamental, until our beliefs\nabout them form those bodies of truth known as logics, geometries, or\narithmetics, in each and all of which the form and order in which the\nwhole is cast is flagrantly man-made.\n\nThus, to say nothing of the new FACTS which men add to the matter of\nreality by the acts of their own lives, they have already impressed\ntheir mental forms on that whole third of reality which I have called\n'previous truths.' Every hour brings its new percepts, its own facts of\nsensation and relation, to be truly taken account of; but the whole\nof our PAST dealings with such facts is already funded in the previous\ntruths. It is therefore only the smallest and recentest fraction of the\nfirst two parts of reality that comes to us without the human touch, and\nthat fraction has immediately to become humanized in the sense of being\nsquared, assimilated, or in some way adapted, to the humanized mass\nalready there. As a matter of fact we can hardly take in an impression\nat all, in the absence of a pre-conception of what impressions there may\npossibly be.\n\nWhen we talk of reality 'independent' of human thinking, then, it seems\na thing very hard to find. It reduces to the notion of what is just\nentering into experience, and yet to be named, or else to some imagined\naboriginal presence in experience, before any belief about the presence\nhad arisen, before any human conception had been applied. It is what is\nabsolutely dumb and evanescent, the merely ideal limit of our minds.\nWe may glimpse it, but we never grasp it; what we grasp is always some\nsubstitute for it which previous human thinking has peptonized and\ncooked for our consumption. If so vulgar an expression were allowed us,\nwe might say that wherever we find it, it has been already FAKED. This\nis what Mr. Schiller has in mind when he calls independent reality a\nmere unresisting [u lambda nu], which IS only to be made over by us.\n\nThat is Mr. Schiller's belief about the sensible core of reality.\nWe 'encounter' it (in Mr. Bradley's words) but don't possess it.\nSuperficially this sounds like Kant's view; but between categories\nfulminated before nature began, and categories gradually forming\nthemselves in nature's presence, the whole chasm between rationalism and\nempiricism yawns. To the genuine 'Kantianer' Schiller will always be to\nKant as a satyr to Hyperion.\n\nOther pragmatists may reach more positive beliefs about the sensible\ncore of reality. They may think to get at it in its independent nature,\nby peeling off the successive man-made wrappings. They may make theories\nthat tell us where it comes from and all about it; and if these theories\nwork satisfactorily they will be true. The transcendental idealists say\nthere is no core, the finally completed wrapping being reality and truth\nin one. Scholasticism still teaches that the core is 'matter.' Professor\nBergson, Heymans, Strong, and others, believe in the core and bravely\ntry to define it. Messrs. Dewey and Schiller treat it as a 'limit.'\nWhich is the truer of all these diverse accounts, or of others\ncomparable with them, unless it be the one that finally proves the most\nsatisfactory? On the one hand there will stand reality, on the other\nan account of it which proves impossible to better or to alter. If\nthe impossibility prove permanent, the truth of the account will be\nabsolute. Other content of truth than this I can find nowhere. If the\nanti-pragmatists have any other meaning, let them for heaven's sake\nreveal it, let them grant us access to it!\n\nNot BEING reality, but only our belief ABOUT reality, it will contain\nhuman elements, but these will KNOW the non-human element, in the only\nsense in which there can be knowledge of anything. Does the river make\nits banks, or do the banks make the river? Does a man walk with his\nright leg or with his left leg more essentially? Just as impossible may\nit be to separate the real from the human factors in the growth of our\ncognitive experience.\n\nLet this stand as a first brief indication of the humanistic position.\nDoes it seem paradoxical? If so, I will try to make it plausible by a\nfew illustrations, which will lead to a fuller acquaintance with the\nsubject.\n\nIn many familiar objects everyone will recognize the human element. We\nconceive a given reality in this way or in that, to suit our purpose,\nand the reality passively submits to the conception. You can take the\nnumber 27 as the cube of 3, or as the product of 3 and 9, or as 26 PLUS\n1, or 100 MINUS 73, or in countless other ways, of which one will be\njust as true as another. You can take a chessboard as black squares on\na white ground, or as white squares on a black ground, and neither\nconception is a false one. You can treat the adjoined figure [Figure of\na 'Star of David'] as a star, as two big triangles crossing each other,\nas a hexagon with legs set up on its angles, as six equal triangles\nhanging together by their tips, etc. All these treatments are true\ntreatments--the sensible THAT upon the paper resists no one of them. You\ncan say of a line that it runs east, or you can say that it runs west,\nand the line per se accepts both descriptions without rebelling at the\ninconsistency.\n\nWe carve out groups of stars in the heavens, and call them\nconstellations, and the stars patiently suffer us to do so--tho if they\nknew what we were doing, some of them might feel much surprised at the\npartners we had given them. We name the same constellation diversely, as\nCharles's Wain, the Great Bear, or the Dipper. None of the names will be\nfalse, and one will be as true as another, for all are applicable.\n\nIn all these cases we humanly make an addition to some sensible reality,\nand that reality tolerates the addition. All the additions 'agree' with\nthe reality; they fit it, while they build it out. No one of them is\nfalse. Which may be treated as the more true, depends altogether on\nthe human use of it. If the 27 is a number of dollars which I find in\na drawer where I had left 28, it is 28 minus 1. If it is the number of\ninches in a shelf which I wish to insert into a cupboard 26 inches wide,\nit is 26 plus 1. If I wish to ennoble the heavens by the constellations\nI see there, 'Charles's Wain' would be more true than 'Dipper.' My\nfriend Frederick Myers was humorously indignant that that prodigious\nstar-group should remind us Americans of nothing but a culinary utensil.\n\nWhat shall we call a THING anyhow? It seems quite arbitrary, for we\ncarve out everything, just as we carve out constellations, to suit our\nhuman purposes. For me, this whole 'audience' is one thing, which grows\nnow restless, now attentive. I have no use at present for its individual\nunits, so I don't consider them. So of an 'army,' of a 'nation.' But\nin your own eyes, ladies and gentlemen, to call you 'audience' is an\naccidental way of taking you. The permanently real things for you are\nyour individual persons. To an anatomist, again, those persons are but\norganisms, and the real things are the organs. Not the organs, so much\nas their constituent cells, say the histologists; not the cells, but\ntheir molecules, say in turn the chemists.\n\nWe break the flux of sensible reality into things, then, at our will. We\ncreate the subjects of our true as well as of our false propositions.\n\nWe create the predicates also. Many of the predicates of things express\nonly the relations of the things to us and to our feelings. Such\npredicates of course are human additions. Caesar crossed the Rubicon,\nand was a menace to Rome's freedom. He is also an American school-room\npest, made into one by the reaction of our schoolboys on his writings.\nThe added predicate is as true of him as the earlier ones.\n\nYou see how naturally one comes to the humanistic principle: you can't\nweed out the human contribution. Our nouns and adjectives are all\nhumanized heirlooms, and in the theories we build them into, the inner\norder and arrangement is wholly dictated by human considerations,\nintellectual consistency being one of them. Mathematics and logic\nthemselves are fermenting with human rearrangements; physics, astronomy\nand biology follow massive cues of preference. We plunge forward into\nthe field of fresh experience with the beliefs our ancestors and we have\nmade already; these determine what we notice; what we notice determines\nwhat we do; what we do again determines what we experience; so from\none thing to another, altho the stubborn fact remains that there IS a\nsensible flux, what is true of it seems from first to last to be largely\na matter of our own creation.\n\nWe build the flux out inevitably. The great question is: does it,\nwith our additions, rise or fall in value? Are the additions WORTHY or\nUNWORTHY? Suppose a universe composed of seven stars, and nothing else\nbut three human witnesses and their critic. One witness names the\nstars 'Great Bear'; one calls them 'Charles's Wain'; one calls them the\n'Dipper.' Which human addition has made the best universe of the given\nstellar material? If Frederick Myers were the critic, he would have no\nhesitation in 'turning-down' the American witness.\n\nLotze has in several places made a deep suggestion. We naively assume,\nhe says, a relation between reality and our minds which may be just the\nopposite of the true one. Reality, we naturally think, stands ready-made\nand complete, and our intellects supervene with the one simple duty\nof describing it as it is already. But may not our descriptions, Lotze\nasks, be themselves important additions to reality? And may not previous\nreality itself be there, far less for the purpose of reappearing\nunaltered in our knowledge, than for the very purpose of stimulating\nour minds to such additions as shall enhance the universe's total value.\n\"Die erhohung des vorgefundenen daseins\" is a phrase used by Professor\nEucken somewhere, which reminds one of this suggestion by the great\nLotze.\n\nIt is identically our pragmatistic conception. In our cognitive as well\nas in our active life we are creative. We ADD, both to the subject and\nto the predicate part of reality. The world stands really malleable,\nwaiting to receive its final touches at our hands. Like the kingdom of\nheaven, it suffers human violence willingly. Man ENGENDERS truths upon\nit.\n\nNo one can deny that such a role would add both to our dignity and to\nour responsibility as thinkers. To some of us it proves a most inspiring\nnotion. Signer Papini, the leader of italian pragmatism, grows fairly\ndithyrambic over the view that it opens, of man's divinely-creative\nfunctions.\n\nThe import of the difference between pragmatism and rationalism is now\nin sight throughout its whole extent. The essential contrast is that for\nrationalism reality is ready-made and complete from all eternity,\nwhile for pragmatism it is still in the making, and awaits part of its\ncomplexion from the future. On the one side the universe is absolutely\nsecure, on the other it is still pursuing its adventures.\n\nWe have got into rather deep water with this humanistic view, and it is\nno wonder that misunderstanding gathers round it. It is accused of being\na doctrine of caprice. Mr. Bradley, for example, says that a humanist,\nif he understood his own doctrine, would have to \"hold any end however\nperverted to be rational if I insist on it personally, and any idea\nhowever mad to be the truth if only some one is resolved that he will\nhave it so.\" The humanist view of 'reality,' as something resisting, yet\nmalleable, which controls our thinking as an energy that must be\ntaken 'account' of incessantly (tho not necessarily merely COPIED) is\nevidently a difficult one to introduce to novices. The situation reminds\nme of one that I have personally gone through. I once wrote an essay on\nour right to believe, which I unluckily called the WILL to Believe.\nAll the critics, neglecting the essay, pounced upon the title.\nPsychologically it was impossible, morally it was iniquitous. The\n\"will to deceive,\" the \"will to make-believe,\" were wittily proposed as\nsubstitutes for it.\n\nTHE ALTERNATIVE BETWEEN PRAGMATISM AND RATIONALISM, IN THE SHAPE IN\nWHICH WE NOW HAVE IT BEFORE US, IS NO LONGER A QUESTION IN THE THEORY OF\nKNOWLEDGE, IT CONCERNS THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE ITSELF.\n\nOn the pragmatist side we have only one edition of the universe,\nunfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places\nwhere thinking beings are at work.\n\nOn the rationalist side we have a universe in many editions, one real\none, the infinite folio, or edition de luxe, eternally complete; and\nthen the various finite editions, full of false readings, distorted and\nmutilated each in its own way.\n\nSo the rival metaphysical hypotheses of pluralism and monism here come\nback upon us. I will develope their differences during the remainder of\nour hour.\n\nAnd first let me say that it is impossible not to see a temperamental\ndifference at work in the choice of sides. The rationalist mind,\nradically taken, is of a doctrinaire and authoritative complexion: the\nphrase 'must be' is ever on its lips. The belly-band of its\nuniverse must be tight. A radical pragmatist on the other hand is a\nhappy-go-lucky anarchistic sort of creature. If he had to live in a tub\nlike Diogenes he wouldn't mind at all if the hoops were loose and the\nstaves let in the sun.\n\nNow the idea of this loose universe affects your typical rationalists\nin much the same way as 'freedom of the press' might affect a veteran\nofficial in the russian bureau of censorship; or as 'simplified\nspelling' might affect an elderly schoolmistress. It affects him as\nthe swarm of protestant sects affects a papist onlooker. It appears\nas backboneless and devoid of principle as 'opportunism' in politics\nappears to an old-fashioned french legitimist, or to a fanatical\nbeliever in the divine right of the people.\n\nFor pluralistic pragmatism, truth grows up inside of all the finite\nexperiences. They lean on each other, but the whole of them, if such a\nwhole there be, leans on nothing. All 'homes' are in finite experience;\nfinite experience as such is homeless. Nothing outside of the flux\nsecures the issue of it. It can hope salvation only from its own\nintrinsic promises and potencies.\n\nTo rationalists this describes a tramp and vagrant world, adrift in\nspace, with neither elephant nor tortoise to plant the sole of its foot\nupon. It is a set of stars hurled into heaven without even a centre of\ngravity to pull against. In other spheres of life it is true that we\nhave got used to living in a state of relative insecurity. The authority\nof 'the State,' and that of an absolute 'moral law,' have resolved\nthemselves into expediencies, and holy church has resolved itself into\n'meeting-houses.' Not so as yet within the philosophic class-rooms.\nA universe with such as US contributing to create its truth, a world\ndelivered to OUR opportunisms and OUR private judgments! Home-rule for\nIreland would be a millennium in comparison. We're no more fit for such\na part than the Filipinos are 'fit for self-government.' Such a world\nwould not be RESPECTABLE, philosophically. It is a trunk without a tag,\na dog without a collar, in the eyes of most professors of philosophy.\n\nWhat then would tighten this loose universe, according to the\nprofessors?\n\nSomething to support the finite many, to tie it to, to unify and anchor\nit. Something unexposed to accident, something eternal and unalterable.\nThe mutable in experience must be founded on immutability. Behind our de\nfacto world, our world in act, there must be a de jure duplicate fixed\nand previous, with all that can happen here already there in posse,\nevery drop of blood, every smallest item, appointed and provided,\nstamped and branded, without chance of variation. The negatives that\nhaunt our ideals here below must be themselves negated in the absolutely\nReal. This alone makes the universe solid. This is the resting deep.\nWe live upon the stormy surface; but with this our anchor holds, for it\ngrapples rocky bottom. This is Wordsworth's \"central peace subsisting at\nthe heart of endless agitation.\" This is Vivekananda's mystical One of\nwhich I read to you. This is Reality with the big R, reality that makes\nthe timeless claim, reality to which defeat can't happen. This is\nwhat the men of principles, and in general all the men whom I called\ntender-minded in my first lecture, think themselves obliged to\npostulate.\n\nAnd this, exactly this, is what the tough-minded of that lecture find\nthemselves moved to call a piece of perverse abstraction-worship. The\ntough-minded are the men whose alpha and omega are FACTS. Behind the\nbare phenomenal facts, as my tough-minded old friend Chauncey Wright,\nthe great Harvard empiricist of my youth, used to say, there is NOTHING.\nWhen a rationalist insists that behind the facts there is the GROUND of\nthe facts, the POSSIBILITY of the facts, the tougher empiricists accuse\nhim of taking the mere name and nature of a fact and clapping it behind\nthe fact as a duplicate entity to make it possible. That such sham\ngrounds are often invoked is notorious. At a surgical operation I heard\na bystander ask a doctor why the patient breathed so deeply. \"Because\nether is a respiratory stimulant,\" the doctor answered. \"Ah!\" said the\nquestioner, as if relieved by the explanation. But this is like saying\nthat cyanide of potassium kills because it is a 'poison,' or that it is\nso cold to-night because it is 'winter,' or that we have five fingers\nbecause we are 'pentadactyls.' These are but names for the facts,\ntaken from the facts, and then treated as previous and explanatory.\nThe tender-minded notion of an absolute reality is, according to the\nradically tough-minded, framed on just this pattern. It is but our\nsummarizing name for the whole spread-out and strung-along mass of\nphenomena, treated as if it were a different entity, both one and\nprevious.\n\nYou see how differently people take things. The world we live in exists\ndiffused and distributed, in the form of an indefinitely numerous lot of\neaches, coherent in all sorts of ways and degrees; and the tough-minded\nare perfectly willing to keep them at that valuation. They can stand\nthat kind of world, their temper being well adapted to its insecurity.\nNot so the tender-minded party. They must back the world we find\nourselves born into by \"another and a better\" world in which the eaches\nform an All and the All a One that logically presupposes, co-implicates,\nand secures each EACH without exception.\n\nMust we as pragmatists be radically tough-minded? or can we treat\nthe absolute edition of the world as a legitimate hypothesis? It is\ncertainly legitimate, for it is thinkable, whether we take it in its\nabstract or in its concrete shape.\n\nBy taking it abstractly I mean placing it behind our finite life as we\nplace the word 'winter' behind to-night's cold weather. 'Winter' is\nonly the name for a certain number of days which we find generally\ncharacterized by cold weather, but it guarantees nothing in that line,\nfor our thermometer to-morrow may soar into the 70's. Nevertheless\nthe word is a useful one to plunge forward with into the stream of our\nexperience. It cuts off certain probabilities and sets up others: you\ncan put away your straw-hats; you can unpack your arctics. It is a\nsummary of things to look for. It names a part of nature's habits,\nand gets you ready for their continuation. It is a definite instrument\nabstracted from experience, a conceptual reality that you must take\naccount of, and which reflects you totally back into sensible\nrealities. The pragmatist is the last person to deny the reality of such\nabstractions. They are so much past experience funded.\n\nBut taking the absolute edition of the world concretely means a\ndifferent hypothesis. Rationalists take it concretely and OPPOSE it to\nthe world's finite editions. They give it a particular nature. It is\nperfect, finished. Everything known there is known along with everything\nelse; here, where ignorance reigns, far otherwise. If there is want\nthere, there also is the satisfaction provided. Here all is process;\nthat world is timeless. Possibilities obtain in our world; in the\nabsolute world, where all that is NOT is from eternity impossible,\nand all that IS is necessary, the category of possibility has no\napplication. In this world crimes and horrors are regrettable. In that\ntotalized world regret obtains not, for \"the existence of ill in the\ntemporal order is the very condition of the perfection of the eternal\norder.\"\n\nOnce more, either hypothesis is legitimate in pragmatist eyes, for\neither has its uses. Abstractly, or taken like the word winter, as a\nmemorandum of past experience that orients us towards the future, the\nnotion of the absolute world is indispensable. Concretely taken, it is\nalso indispensable, at least to certain minds, for it determines them\nreligiously, being often a thing to change their lives by, and by\nchanging their lives, to change whatever in the outer order depends on\nthem.\n\nWe cannot therefore methodically join the tough minds in their rejection\nof the whole notion of a world beyond our finite experience. One\nmisunderstanding of pragmatism is to identify it with positivistic\ntough-mindedness, to suppose that it scorns every rationalistic notion\nas so much jabber and gesticulation, that it loves intellectual anarchy\nas such and prefers a sort of wolf-world absolutely unpent and wild\nand without a master or a collar to any philosophic class-room\nproduct, whatsoever. I have said so much in these lectures against\nthe over-tender forms of rationalism, that I am prepared for some\nmisunderstanding here, but I confess that the amount of it that I have\nfound in this very audience surprises me, for I have simultaneously\ndefended rationalistic hypotheses so far as these re-direct you\nfruitfully into experience.\n\nFor instance I receive this morning this question on a post-card: \"Is a\npragmatist necessarily a complete materialist and agnostic?\" One of my\noldest friends, who ought to know me better, writes me a letter that\naccuses the pragmatism I am recommending, of shutting out all wider\nmetaphysical views and condemning us to the most terre-a-terre\nnaturalism. Let me read you some extracts from it.\n\n\"It seems to me,\" my friend writes, \"that the pragmatic objection to\npragmatism lies in the fact that it might accentuate the narrowness of\nnarrow minds.\n\n\"Your call to the rejection of the namby-pamby and the wishy-washy is of\ncourse inspiring. But although it is salutary and stimulating to be told\nthat one should be responsible for the immediate issues and bearings\nof his words and thoughts, I decline to be deprived of the pleasure and\nprofit of dwelling also on remoter bearings and issues, and it is the\nTENDENCY of pragmatism to refuse this privilege.\n\n\"In short, it seems to me that the limitations, or rather the dangers,\nof the pragmatic tendency, are analogous to those which beset the unwary\nfollowers of the 'natural sciences.' Chemistry and physics are eminently\npragmatic and many of their devotees, smugly content with the data that\ntheir weights and measures furnish, feel an infinite pity and disdain\nfor all students of philosophy and meta-physics, whomsoever. And\nof course everything can be expressed--after a fashion, and\n'theoretically'--in terms of chemistry and physics, that is, EVERYTHING\nEXCEPT THE VITAL PRINCIPLE OF THE WHOLE, and that, they say, there is no\npragmatic use in trying to express; it has no bearings--FOR THEM. I for\nmy part refuse to be persuaded that we cannot look beyond the obvious\npluralism of the naturalist and the pragmatist to a logical unity in\nwhich they take no interest.\"\n\nHow is such a conception of the pragmatism I am advocating possible,\nafter my first and second lectures? I have all along been offering it\nexpressly as a mediator between tough-mindedness and tender-mindedness.\nIf the notion of a world ante rem, whether taken abstractly like the\nword winter, or concretely as the hypothesis of an Absolute, can be\nshown to have any consequences whatever for our life, it has a meaning.\nIf the meaning works, it will have SOME truth that ought to be held to\nthrough all possible reformulations, for pragmatism.\n\nThe absolutistic hypothesis, that perfection is eternal, aboriginal, and\nmost real, has a perfectly definite meaning, and it works religiously.\nTo examine how, will be the subject of my next and final lecture.\n\n\n\n\nLecture VIII\n\nPragmatism and Religion\n\nAt the close of the last lecture I reminded you of the first one,\nin which I had opposed tough-mindedness to tender-mindedness and\nrecommended pragmatism as their mediator. Tough-mindedness positively\nrejects tender-mindedness's hypothesis of an eternal perfect edition of\nthe universe coexisting with our finite experience.\n\nOn pragmatic principles we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences\nuseful to life flow from it. Universal conceptions, as things to take\naccount of, may be as real for pragmatism as particular sensations are.\nThey have indeed no meaning and no reality if they have no use. But if\nthey have any use they have that amount of meaning. And the meaning will\nbe true if the use squares well with life's other uses.\n\nWell, the use of the Absolute is proved by the whole course of\nmen's religious history. The eternal arms are then beneath. Remember\nVivekananda's use of the Atman: it is indeed not a scientific use,\nfor we can make no particular deductions from it. It is emotional and\nspiritual altogether.\n\nIt is always best to discuss things by the help of concrete examples.\nLet me read therefore some of those verses entitled \"To You\" by Walt\nWhitman--\"You\" of course meaning the reader or hearer of the poem\nwhosoever he or she may be.\n\nWhoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem; I\nwhisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men,\nbut I love none better than you.\n\n\nO I have been dilatory and dumb; I should have made my way straight\nto you long ago; I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have\nchanted nothing but you.\n\n\nI will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you; None have\nunderstood you, but I understand you; None have done justice to you--you\nhave not done justice to yourself; None but have found you imperfect--I\nonly find no imperfection in you.\n\n\nO I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! You have not known\nwhat you are--you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life; What you\nhave done returns already in mockeries.\n\n\nBut the mockeries are not you; Underneath them, and within them, I see\nyou lurk; I pursue you where none else has pursued you; Silence, the\ndesk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine, if\nthese conceal you from others, or from yourself, they do not conceal you\nfrom me; The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if\nthese balk others, they do not balk me, The pert apparel, the deform'd\nattitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside.\n\n\nThere is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; There\nis no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you; No\npluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you; No pleasure\nwaiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.\n\n\nWhoever you are! claim your own at any hazard! These shows of the\neast and west are tame, compared to you; These immense meadows--these\ninterminable rivers--you are immense and interminable as they; You are\nhe or she who is master or mistress over them, Master or mistress in\nyour own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.\n\n\nThe hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency;\nOld or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever\nyou are promulges itself; Through birth, life, death, burial, the means\nare provided, nothing is scanted; Through angers, losses, ambition,\nignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.\n\nVerily a fine and moving poem, in any case, but there are two ways of\ntaking it, both useful.\n\nOne is the monistic way, the mystical way of pure cosmic emotion. The\nglories and grandeurs, they are yours absolutely, even in the midst of\nyour defacements. Whatever may happen to you, whatever you may appear to\nbe, inwardly you are safe. Look back, LIE back, on your true principle\nof being! This is the famous way of quietism, of indifferentism. Its\nenemies compare it to a spiritual opium. Yet pragmatism must respect\nthis way, for it has massive historic vindication.\n\nBut pragmatism sees another way to be respected also, the pluralistic\nway of interpreting the poem. The you so glorified, to which the hymn\nis sung, may mean your better possibilities phenomenally taken, or the\nspecific redemptive effects even of your failures, upon yourself or\nothers. It may mean your loyalty to the possibilities of others whom you\nadmire and love so, that you are willing to accept your own poor life,\nfor it is that glory's partner. You can at least appreciate, applaud,\nfurnish the audience, of so brave a total world. Forget the low in\nyourself, then, think only of the high. Identify your life therewith;\nthen, through angers, losses, ignorance, ennui, whatever you thus make\nyourself, whatever you thus most deeply are, picks its way.\n\nIn either way of taking the poem, it encourages fidelity to ourselves.\nBoth ways satisfy; both sanctify the human flux. Both paint the portrait\nof the YOU on a gold-background. But the background of the first way\nis the static One, while in the second way it means possibles in the\nplural, genuine possibles, and it has all the restlessness of that\nconception.\n\nNoble enough is either way of reading the poem; but plainly the\npluralistic way agrees with the pragmatic temper best, for it\nimmediately suggests an infinitely larger number of the details of\nfuture experience to our mind. It sets definite activities in us at\nwork. Altho this second way seems prosaic and earthborn in comparison\nwith the first way, yet no one can accuse it of tough-mindedness in any\nbrutal sense of the term. Yet if, as pragmatists, you should positively\nset up the second way AGAINST the first way, you would very likely be\nmisunderstood. You would be accused of denying nobler conceptions, and\nof being an ally of tough-mindedness in the worst sense.\n\nYou remember the letter from a member of this audience from which I read\nsome extracts at our previous meeting. Let me read you an additional\nextract now. It shows a vagueness in realizing the alternatives before\nus which I think is very widespread.\n\n\"I believe,\" writes my friend and correspondent, \"in pluralism; I\nbelieve that in our search for truth we leap from one floating cake of\nice to another, on an infinite sea, and that by each of our acts we make\nnew truths possible and old ones impossible; I believe that each man is\nresponsible for making the universe better, and that if he does not do\nthis it will be in so far left undone.\n\n\"Yet at the same time I am willing to endure that my children should be\nincurably sick and suffering (as they are not) and I myself stupid\nand yet with brains enough to see my stupidity, only on one condition,\nnamely, that through the construction, in imagination and by reasoning,\nof a RATIONAL UNITY OF ALL THINGS, I can conceive my acts and my\nthoughts and my troubles as SUPPLEMENTED: BY ALL THE OTHER PHENOMENA\nOF THE WORLD, AND AS FORMING--WHEN THUS SUPPLEMENTED--A SCHEME WHICH I\nAPPROVE AND ADOPT AS MY I OWN; and for my part I refuse to be persuaded\nthat we cannot look beyond the obvious pluralism of the naturalist and\npragmatist to a logical unity in which they take no interest or stock.\"\n\nSuch a fine expression of personal faith warms the heart of the hearer.\nBut how much does it clear his philosophic head? Does the writer\nconsistently favor the monistic, or the pluralistic, interpretation of\nthe world's poem? His troubles become atoned for WHEN THUS SUPPLEMENTED,\nhe says, supplemented, that is, by all the remedies that THE OTHER\nPHENOMENA may supply. Obviously here the writer faces forward into\nthe particulars of experience, which he interprets in a\npluralistic-melioristic way.\n\nBut he believes himself to face backward. He speaks of what he calls\nthe rational UNITY of things, when all the while he really means their\npossible empirical UNIFICATION. He supposes at the same time that the\npragmatist, because he criticizes rationalism's abstract One, is cut\noff from the consolation of believing in the saving possibilities of\nthe concrete many. He fails in short to distinguish between taking the\nworld's perfection as a necessary principle, and taking it only as a\npossible terminus ad quem.\n\nI regard the writer of this letter as a genuine pragmatist, but as a\npragmatist sans le savoir. He appears to me as one of that numerous\nclass of philosophic amateurs whom I spoke of in my first lecture, as\nwishing to have all the good things going, without being too careful\nas to how they agree or disagree. \"Rational unity of all things\" is\nso inspiring a formula, that he brandishes it offhand, and abstractly\naccuses pluralism of conflicting with it (for the bare names do\nconflict), altho concretely he means by it just the pragmatistically\nunified and ameliorated world. Most of us remain in this essential\nvagueness, and it is well that we should; but in the interest of\nclear-headedness it is well that some of us should go farther, so I\nwill try now to focus a little more discriminatingly on this particular\nreligious point.\n\nIs then this you of yous, this absolutely real world, this unity that\nyields the moral inspiration and has the religious value, to be taken\nmonistically or pluralistically? Is it ante rem or in rebus? Is it a\nprinciple or an end, an absolute or an ultimate, a first or a last? Does\nit make you look forward or lie back? It is certainly worth while not to\nclump the two things together, for if discriminated, they have decidedly\ndiverse meanings for life.\n\nPlease observe that the whole dilemma revolves pragmatically about the\nnotion of the world's possibilities. Intellectually, rationalism invokes\nits absolute principle of unity as a ground of possibility for the\nmany facts. Emotionally, it sees it as a container and limiter of\npossibilities, a guarantee that the upshot shall be good. Taken in this\nway, the absolute makes all good things certain, and all bad things\nimpossible (in the eternal, namely), and may be said to transmute the\nentire category of possibility into categories more secure. One sees at\nthis point that the great religious difference lies between the men who\ninsist that the world MUST AND SHALL BE, and those who are contented\nwith believing that the world MAY BE, saved. The whole clash of\nrationalistic and empiricist religion is thus over the validity of\npossibility. It is necessary therefore to begin by focusing upon that\nword. What may the word 'possible' definitely mean?\n\nTo unreflecting men the possible means a sort of third estate of being,\nless real than existence, more real than non-existence, a twilight\nrealm, a hybrid status, a limbo into which and out of which realities\never and anon are made to pass. Such a conception is of course too\nvague and nondescript to satisfy us. Here, as elsewhere, the only way to\nextract a term's meaning is to use the pragmatic method on it. When you\nsay that a thing is possible, what difference does it make?\n\nIt makes at least this difference that if anyone calls it impossible you\ncan contradict him, if anyone calls it actual you can contradict HIM,\nand if anyone calls it necessary you can contradict him too. But these\nprivileges of contradiction don't amount to much. When you say a thing\nis possible, does not that make some farther difference in terms of\nactual fact?\n\nIt makes at least this negative difference that if the statement be\ntrue, it follows that there is nothing extant capable of preventing the\npossible thing. The absence of real grounds of interference may thus be\nsaid to make things not impossible, possible therefore in the bare or\nabstract sense.\n\nBut most possibles are not bare, they are concretely grounded, or\nwell-grounded, as we say. What does this mean pragmatically? It means,\nnot only that there are no preventive conditions present, but that some\nof the conditions of production of the possible thing actually are here.\nThus a concretely possible chicken means: (1) that the idea of chicken\ncontains no essential self-contradiction; (2) that no boys, skunks, or\nother enemies are about; and (3) that at least an actual egg exists.\nPossible chicken means actual egg--plus actual sitting hen, or\nincubator, or what not. As the actual conditions approach completeness\nthe chicken becomes a better-and-better-grounded possibility. When the\nconditions are entirely complete, it ceases to be a possibility, and\nturns into an actual fact.\n\nLet us apply this notion to the salvation of the world. What does it\npragmatically mean to say that this is possible? It means that some of\nthe conditions of the world's deliverance do actually exist. The more of\nthem there are existent, the fewer preventing conditions you can find,\nthe better-grounded is the salvation's possibility, the more PROBABLE\ndoes the fact of the deliverance become.\n\nSo much for our preliminary look at possibility.\n\nNow it would contradict the very spirit of life to say that our minds\nmust be indifferent and neutral in questions like that of the world's\nsalvation. Anyone who pretends to be neutral writes himself down here\nas a fool and a sham. We all do wish to minimize the insecurity of the\nuniverse; we are and ought to be unhappy when we regard it as exposed to\nevery enemy and open to every life-destroying draft. Nevertheless there\nare unhappy men who think the salvation of the world impossible. Theirs\nis the doctrine known as pessimism.\n\nOptimism in turn would be the doctrine that thinks the world's salvation\ninevitable.\n\nMidway between the two there stands what may be called the doctrine of\nmeliorism, tho it has hitherto figured less as a doctrine than as an\nattitude in human affairs. Optimism has always been the regnant DOCTRINE\nin european philosophy. Pessimism was only recently introduced by\nSchopenhauer and counts few systematic defenders as yet. Meliorism\ntreats salvation as neither inevitable nor impossible. It treats it as\na possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more\nnumerous the actual conditions of salvation become.\n\nIt is clear that pragmatism must incline towards meliorism. Some\nconditions of the world's salvation are actually extant, and she cannot\npossibly close her eyes to this fact: and should the residual conditions\ncome, salvation would become an accomplished reality. Naturally the\nterms I use here are exceedingly summary. You may interpret the\nword 'salvation' in any way you like, and make it as diffuse and\ndistributive, or as climacteric and integral a phenomenon as you please.\n\nTake, for example, any one of us in this room with the ideals which\nhe cherishes, and is willing to live and work for. Every such ideal\nrealized will be one moment in the world's salvation. But these\nparticular ideals are not bare abstract possibilities. They are\ngrounded, they are LIVE possibilities, for we are their live champions\nand pledges, and if the complementary conditions come and add\nthemselves, our ideals will become actual things. What now are the\ncomplementary conditions? They are first such a mixture of things as\nwill in the fulness of time give us a chance, a gap that we can spring\ninto, and, finally, OUR ACT.\n\nDoes our act then CREATE the world's salvation so far as it makes room\nfor itself, so far as it leaps into the gap? Does it create, not the\nwhole world's salvation of course, but just so much of this as itself\ncovers of the world's extent?\n\nHere I take the bull by the horns, and in spite of the whole crew of\nrationalists and monists, of whatever brand they be, I ask WHY NOT? Our\nacts, our turning-places, where we seem to ourselves to make ourselves\nand grow, are the parts of the world to which we are closest, the parts\nof which our knowledge is the most intimate and complete. Why should\nwe not take them at their face-value? Why may they not be the actual\nturning-places and growing-places which they seem to be, of the\nworld--why not the workshop of being, where we catch fact in the making,\nso that nowhere may the world grow in any other kind of way than this?\n\nIrrational! we are told. How can new being come in local spots and\npatches which add themselves or stay away at random, independently of\nthe rest? There must be a reason for our acts, and where in the last\nresort can any reason be looked for save in the material pressure or the\nlogical compulsion of the total nature of the world? There can be but\none real agent of growth, or seeming growth, anywhere, and that agent is\nthe integral world itself. It may grow all-over, if growth there be, but\nthat single parts should grow per se is irrational.\n\nBut if one talks of rationality and of reasons for things, and insists\nthat they can't just come in spots, what KIND of a reason can there\nultimately be why anything should come at all? Talk of logic and\nnecessity and categories and the absolute and the contents of the whole\nphilosophical machine-shop as you will, the only REAL reason I can think\nof why anything should ever come is that someone wishes it to be here.\nIt is DEMANDED, demanded, it may be, to give relief to no matter\nhow small a fraction of the world's mass. This is living reason, and\ncompared with it material causes and logical necessities are spectral\nthings.\n\nIn short the only fully rational world would be the world of\nwishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled\ninstanter, without having to consider or placate surrounding or\nintermediate powers. This is the Absolute's own world. He calls upon the\nphenomenal world to be, and it IS, exactly as he calls for it, no other\ncondition being required. In our world, the wishes of the individual are\nonly one condition. Other individuals are there with other wishes\nand they must be propitiated first. So Being grows under all sorts\nof resistances in this world of the many, and, from compromise to\ncompromise, only gets organized gradually into what may be called\nsecondarily rational shape. We approach the wishing-cap type of\norganization only in a few departments of life. We want water and we\nturn a faucet. We want a kodak-picture and we press a button. We want\ninformation and we telephone. We want to travel and we buy a ticket. In\nthese and similar cases, we hardly need to do more than the wishing--the\nworld is rationally organized to do the rest.\n\nBut this talk of rationality is a parenthesis and a digression. What\nwe were discussing was the idea of a world growing not integrally but\npiecemeal by the contributions of its several parts. Take the hypothesis\nseriously and as a live one. Suppose that the world's author put the\ncase to you before creation, saying: \"I am going to make a world\nnot certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be\nconditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its\nown 'level best.' I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world.\nIts safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real\ndanger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative\nwork genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust\nyourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?\"\n\nShould you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were\nproposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you\nsay that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic\nand irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of\nnonentity from which you had been momentarily aroused by the tempter's\nvoice?\n\nOf course if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the\nsort. There is a healthy-minded buoyancy in most of us which such a\nuniverse would exactly fit. We would therefore accept the offer--\"Top!\nund schlag auf schlag!\" It would be just like the world we practically\nlive in; and loyalty to our old nurse Nature would forbid us to say no.\nThe world proposed would seem 'rational' to us in the most living way.\n\nMost of us, I say, would therefore welcome the proposition and add our\nfiat to the fiat of the creator. Yet perhaps some would not; for there\nare morbid minds in every human collection, and to them the prospect of\na universe with only a fighting chance of safety would probably make no\nappeal. There are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick\nof self and tired of vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we\nfall into the attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chances\nof things. We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our\nfather's neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water\nmelts into the river or the sea.\n\nThe peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments is security\nagainst the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana\nmeans safety from this everlasting round of adventures of which the\nworld of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist, for this\nis essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more\nexperience, afraid of life.\n\nAnd to men of this complexion, religious monism comes with its consoling\nwords: \"All is needed and essential--even you with your sick soul and\nheart. All are one with God, and with God all is well. The everlasting\narms are beneath, whether in the world of finite appearances you seem to\nfail or to succeed.\" There can be no doubt that when men are reduced\nto their last sick extremity absolutism is the only saving scheme.\nPluralistic moralism simply makes their teeth chatter, it refrigerates\nthe very heart within their breast.\n\nSo we see concretely two types of religion in sharp contrast. Using our\nold terms of comparison, we may say that the absolutistic scheme appeals\nto the tender-minded while the pluralistic scheme appeals to the tough.\nMany persons would refuse to call the pluralistic scheme religious at\nall. They would call it moralistic, and would apply the word religious\nto the monistic scheme alone. Religion in the sense of self-surrender,\nand moralism in the sense of self-sufficingness, have been pitted\nagainst each other as incompatibles frequently enough in the history of\nhuman thought.\n\nWe stand here before the final question of philosophy. I said in my\nfourth lecture that I believed the monistic-pluralistic alternative to\nbe the deepest and most pregnant question that our minds can frame. Can\nit be that the disjunction is a final one? that only one side can be\ntrue? Are a pluralism and monism genuine incompatibles? So that, if\nthe world were really pluralistically constituted, if it really existed\ndistributively and were made up of a lot of eaches, it could only be\nsaved piecemeal and de facto as the result of their behavior, and its\nepic history in no wise short-circuited by some essential oneness in\nwhich the severalness were already 'taken up' beforehand and eternally\n'overcome'? If this were so, we should have to choose one philosophy or\nthe other. We could not say 'yes, yes' to both alternatives. There would\nhave to be a 'no' in our relations with the possible. We should confess\nan ultimate disappointment: we could not remain healthy-minded and\nsick-minded in one indivisible act.\n\nOf course as human beings we can be healthy minds on one day and sick\nsouls on the next; and as amateur dabblers in philosophy we may\nperhaps be allowed to call ourselves monistic pluralists, or free-will\ndeterminists, or whatever else may occur to us of a reconciling kind.\nBut as philosophers aiming at clearness and consistency, and feeling the\npragmatistic need of squaring truth with truth, the question is forced\nupon us of frankly adopting either the tender or the robustious type of\nthought. In particular THIS query has always come home to me: May not\nthe claims of tender-mindedness go too far? May not the notion of a\nworld already saved in toto anyhow, be too saccharine to stand? May not\nreligious optimism be too idyllic? Must ALL be saved? Is NO price to be\npaid in the work of salvation? Is the last word sweet? Is all 'yes,\nyes' in the universe? Doesn't the fact of 'no' stand at the very core of\nlife? Doesn't the very 'seriousness' that we attribute to life mean that\nineluctable noes and losses form a part of it, that there are genuine\nsacrifices somewhere, and that something permanently drastic and bitter\nalways remains at the bottom of its cup?\n\nI can not speak officially as a pragmatist here; all I can say is that\nmy own pragmatism offers no objection to my taking sides with this more\nmoralistic view, and giving up the claim of total reconciliation. The\npossibility of this is involved in the pragmatistic willingness to treat\npluralism as a serious hypothesis. In the end it is our faith and not\nour logic that decides such questions, and I deny the right of any\npretended logic to veto my own faith. I find myself willing to take\nthe universe to be really dangerous and adventurous, without therefore\nbacking out and crying 'no play.' I am willing to think that the\nprodigal-son attitude, open to us as it is in many vicissitudes, is not\nthe right and final attitude towards the whole of life. I am willing\nthat there should be real losses and real losers, and no total\npreservation of all that is. I can believe in the ideal as an ultimate,\nnot as an origin, and as an extract, not the whole. When the cup is\npoured off, the dregs are left behind forever, but the possibility of\nwhat is poured off is sweet enough to accept.\n\nAs a matter of fact countless human imaginations live in this moralistic\nand epic kind of a universe, and find its disseminated and strung-along\nsuccesses sufficient for their rational needs. There is a finely\ntranslated epigram in the greek anthology which admirably expresses this\nstate of mind, this acceptance of loss as unatoned for, even tho the\nlost element might be one's self:\n\n\"A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast, Bids you set sail. Full\nmany a gallant bark, when we were lost, Weathered the gale.\"\n\nThose puritans who answered 'yes' to the question: Are you willing to be\ndamned for God's glory? were in this objective and magnanimous condition\nof mind. The way of escape from evil on this system is NOT by getting\nit 'aufgehoben,' or preserved in the whole as an element essential but\n'overcome.' It is by dropping it out altogether, throwing it overboard\nand getting beyond it, helping to make a universe that shall forget its\nvery place and name.\n\nIt is then perfectly possible to accept sincerely a drastic kind of a\nuniverse from which the element of 'seriousness' is not to be expelled.\nWhoso does so is, it seems to me, a genuine pragmatist. He is willing to\nlive on a scheme of uncertified possibilities which he trusts; willing\nto pay with his own person, if need be, for the realization of the\nideals which he frames.\n\nWhat now actually ARE the other forces which he trusts to co-operate\nwith him, in a universe of such a type? They are at least his fellow\nmen, in the stage of being which our actual universe has reached. But\nare there not superhuman forces also, such as religious men of the\npluralistic type we have been considering have always believed in? Their\nwords may have sounded monistic when they said \"there is no God but\nGod\"; but the original polytheism of mankind has only imperfectly and\nvaguely sublimated itself into monotheism, and monotheism itself, so far\nas it was religious and not a scheme of class-room instruction for the\nmetaphysicians, has always viewed God as but one helper, primus inter\npares, in the midst of all the shapers of the great world's fate.\n\nI fear that my previous lectures, confined as they have been to human\nand humanistic aspects, may have left the impression on many of you that\npragmatism means methodically to leave the superhuman out. I have shown\nsmall respect indeed for the Absolute, and I have until this moment\nspoken of no other superhuman hypothesis but that. But I trust that you\nsee sufficiently that the Absolute has nothing but its superhumanness\nin common with the theistic God. On pragmatistic principles, if the\nhypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word,\nit is true. Now whatever its residual difficulties may be, experience\nshows that it certainly does work, and that the problem is to build it\nout and determine it, so that it will combine satisfactorily with all\nthe other working truths. I cannot start upon a whole theology at the\nend of this last lecture; but when I tell you that I have written a book\non men's religious experience, which on the whole has been regarded as\nmaking for the reality of God, you will perhaps exempt my own pragmatism\nfrom the charge of being an atheistic system. I firmly disbelieve,\nmyself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience\nextant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same\nrelation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets\ndo to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing-rooms and\nlibraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no\ninkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history the beginnings and\nends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangents\nto the wider life of things. But, just as many of the dog's and cat's\nideals coincide with our ideals, and the dogs and cats have daily living\nproof of the fact, so we may well believe, on the proofs that religious\nexperience affords, that higher powers exist and are at work to save the\nworld on ideal lines similar to our own.\n\nYou see that pragmatism can be called religious, if you allow that\nreligion can be pluralistic or merely melioristic in type. But whether\nyou will finally put up with that type of religion or not is a question\nthat only you yourself can decide. Pragmatism has to postpone dogmatic\nanswer, for we do not yet know certainly which type of religion is going\nto work best in the long run. The various overbeliefs of men, their\nseveral faith-ventures, are in fact what are needed to bring the\nevidence in. You will probably make your own ventures severally. If\nradically tough, the hurly-burly of the sensible facts of nature will\nbe enough for you, and you will need no religion at all. If radically\ntender, you will take up with the more monistic form of religion:\nthe pluralistic form, with its reliance on possibilities that are not\nnecessities, will not seem to afford you security enough.\n\nBut if you are neither tough nor tender in an extreme and radical\nsense, but mixed as most of us are, it may seem to you that the type\nof pluralistic and moralistic religion that I have offered is as good a\nreligious synthesis as you are likely to find. Between the two extremes\nof crude naturalism on the one hand and transcendental absolutism on\nthe other, you may find that what I take the liberty of calling the\npragmatistic or melioristic type of theism is exactly what you require.\n\n\nThe End","title":"Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":51984}