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discord in existence." The final test of religion, then, is its promotion of "that perfect harmony of our whole life which forms our final aspiration." 1

Now such a view as this has very serious implications, and justifies a certain prejudice against pragmatism as a philosophy of caprice and wanton irrationalism. For if the test of truth is this general harmony with interests, the cognitive interest being only one among the rest, then verification in the narrow sense, and emotional congruity, must be regarded as commensurable. And it follows that in any given case the latter may outweigh the former. It is even conceivable that a religious belief should be so pleasing and inspiring as to be true, despite its being decisively disproved by theoretical means. With James the theoretical test is final and authoritative, in so far as it can be applied, and no amount of subjective satisfactoriness can overbalance it. The right to believe is limited to the cases in which evidence is lacking or indecisive. But were the full implications of the radical view to be accepted, there would be a right to believe despite evidence. There would be an end of discussion, and only a clash of desires; in which the desire for theoretical truth could be legitimately shouted down by the clamor of the rest.

Pragmatism

and the Spirit

of the Age

§ 10. Pragmatism, both of the more moderate type, represented by James, and in the main by his American allies and followers, or the more radical type, represented by Bergson, Schiller, Papini, and LeRoy, is peculiarly significant of the present age. Negatively, it is significant of the reaction against absolutism, long enthroned in academic and other orthodox circles. It signifies that the spell which absolutism has long wrought upon the minds of inquiring and youthful thinkers has lost its power. More positively, pragmatism marks the maturing and the express formulation of certain ideas that have long inspired European thought.

1 Schiller: Humanism, pp. 50, 61; cf. pp. 39 sq., 189. Cf. also above, pp. 209, 213.

In the first place, pragmatism employs for philosophical purposes what may be termed the 'biological' imagination, as distinguished from the logical, the physical, and the introspectively psychological. Pragmatism views knowledge and religion as modes of life; and life it conceives not in any vague eulogistic sense, but in the naturalistic sense, as an affair of forced adaptation to an indifferent and, at best, reluctantly plastic environment. Knowledge and religion arise from the exigencies of life, and the exigencies of life are real, perilous, and doubtful.

In the second place, pragmatism emphasizes the crucial importance of human efforts. It teaches that the spiritual life is in the making at the point of contact between man and the balance of nature-between the ideals of man, and the resistances, cruelties, and seductions with which they are forced to cope. The hope of better things lies in the continued operation of the forces that are even now yielding good things. Civilization, not the totality of nature, nor any higher synthetic harmony, is the work of God. This is the Baconian prophecy renewed. Through the knowledge that is power, and guided by his desire and hope of better things, man may conquer nature and subdue the insurrection of evil.

Thirdly, since man's efficiency lies in his collective and not in his individual action, pragmatism emphasizes society. It is non-pantheistic and non-mystical. It attaches less significance to the direct relation between man and a dynastic God, and more to that relation to his fellows which may make a man a servant of the collective life, and so lead him to a new conception of God as leader of common cause. And finally, pragmatism is melioristic. It speaks for the spirit of making better, and denounces alike the spirit of renunciation and the spirit of despair. It is the philosophy of impetuous youth, of protestantism, of democracy, of secular progress that blend of naïveté, vigor, and adventurous courage which proposes to possess the future, despite the present and the past.

PART V

REALISM

CHAPTER XII

A REALISTIC THEORY OF MIND

I. INTRODUCTORY

§ I. REALISM has thus far appeared in these pages mainly as a polemic. This polemic may conveniently be summaRealism as a rized in terms of the general errors of which it finds rival tendencies to be guilty.'

Polemic

'Argument from the ego-centric predicament,' that is, from the circumstantial presence of the knower in all cases of things known, is peculiar to idealism. 'Definition by initial predication,' the assumption of the priority of a familiar or accidental relationship, is based on the more fundamental error of 'exclusive particularity,' or the supposition that an identical term can figure in only one relationship. These two errors together appear in all exclusive philosophies, such as dualism, and monisms of matter or mind. The error of 'pseudo-simplicity,' which amounts virtually to the abandonment of analysis, and the notion of 'indefinite potentiality,' which is the sequel to the last, are characteristic of 'substance' philosophies, and especially of all forms of 'activism,' whether naturalistic, idealistic, or pragmatistic. The 'speculative dogma,' the assumption of an all-general, all-sufficient first principle, is the primary motive in 'absolutism.' Finally, the error of 'verbal suggestion,' or 'equivocation,' is the means through which the real fruitlessness of the other errors may be concealed, and the philosophy

1 The full statement of these errors will be found above, especially pp. 64-68, 126-132, 169-171.

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