PRAGMATISM
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PRAGMATISM
only on the theory of chance, and Bergson seems to be
in no better case when he tries to explam what he calls
the devenir reel.
The gist of Pluralism is that "Things are 'with' one another in many ways, but nothing includes every- thing or dominates" over everj-thing" (ibid., p. 321). One of the consequences of this view is that, as Schil- lersays ("Personal Idealism", p. 60), "the world is what we make it". "Sick souls", and "tender- minded" people may, as James says, be content to take their places in a world already made according to law, divided off into categories by an Absolute Mind, and ready to be represented in the mind of the beholder, just as it is. This is the point of view of the ilonist. But, the "strenuous", and the "tough- minded" will not be content to take a readj'-made world as they find it; they will make it for themselves, overcoming "all difficulties, filling in the gaps, so to speak, and smoothing over the rough places by estab- Ushing actual and immediate connexions among the events as they occur in experience. The Monistic view, James confesses, has a majesty of its own and a capacity to j-ield rehgious comfort to a most respect- able class of minds. "But, from the human (prag- matic PluraUst) point of ^-iew, no one can pretend that it does not suffer from the faults of remoteness and abstractness. It is eminently a product of what I have ventured to call the RationaUstic temper. . . . It is dapper, it is noble in the bad sense, in the sense in which it is noble to be inapt for humble 3er\-ice. In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a \-iew of things is 'noble', that ought to coimt as a presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disquaUfication " (Pragmatism, pp. 71 and 72). Moreover, Monism is a species of spirit- ual laziness, of moral cowardice. '"They [the Mo- nists) mean that we have a right ever and anon to take a moral hoUday, to let the world wag its ov,-a way, feeUng that its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business" (ibid., p. 74). Pluralistic strenuosity suffers no such restraints; it recognizes no obstacle that cannot be overcome. The test of its audacity is its treatment of the idea of God. For the Plurahst, "God is not the absolute, but is Himself a part. . . . His functions can be taken as not wholly dissimilar to those of the other smaller parts — as similar to our functions, consequently, having an environment, being in time, and working out a historj" just like ourselves. He escapes from the foreignness from all that is human, of the static, timeless, perfect absolute" (.\ Pluralistic Universe, p. 318). God, then, is finite. We are, indeed, internal parts of God, and not external creations. God is not identical with the universe, but a Umited, conditioned, part of it. We have here a new kind of Pantheism, a Pantheism of the "strung-along" t>-pe, and if James is content to have his philosophical democratic strenuosity judged by this result, he has verj- effectively con- demned his own case, not only in the estimation of aristocratic .\bsolutists but also in that of every Christian philosopher.
V. Pr.^gm.^ti.sm .\xd Religion. — It has been pointed out that one of the secrets of the popularity of Pragmatism is the beUef that in the warfare be- tween religion and Agnosticism the Pragmatists have, somehow, come to the rescue on the side of rehgious truth (Pratt, "What is Pragmatism", p. 175). It should be admitted at once that, by temperamental disposition, rather than by force of logic, the Prag- matist is inclined to uphold the \-ital and social im- portance of positive religious faith. For him, religion is not a mere attitude of mind, an illumination thrown on facts already ascertained, or a state of feeling which disposes one to jjlace an emotional value on the truths revealed by science. It adds new facts and brings forwar<l new truths which make a difference, and lead to differences, especially in conduct. \Miether XII.— 22
reUgions are proved or not, they have approved them-
selves to the Pragmatist (Varieties of Rehgious Ex-
perience, p. 331). They should be judged by their
intent and not merely by their content. James says
expressly: "On Pragmatic principles, if the h^-pothesis
of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the
word, it is true" (Pragmatism, p. 299). This is open
to two objections. In the first place, what functions
or "works satisfactorily" is not the existence of God,
but behef in the existence of God. In the struggle
\\-ith Agnosticism and religious scepticism the task of
the Christian apologist is not to prove that men be-
heve in God but to justify that behef by proving that
God exists; and in this task the assistance which he
receives from the Pragmatist is of doubtful value. In
the second place, it ■nill be remembered that the
Pragmatist makes experience synonymous vriih real-
ity. The consequences, therefore, which follow from
the "h>-pothesis of God" must fall within actual or
possible human experience, not of the inferential or
deductive kind, but experience direct and intuitional.
But it is clear that if we attach any definite meaning
at aU to the idea of God, we must mean a Being whose
existence is not capable of direct intuitional experi-
ence, except in the supernatural order, an order which,
it need hardly be said, the Pragmatist does not admit.
We do not need the Pragmatist to tell us that belief in
God functions for good, that it brings order into our
intellectual chaos, that it sustains us bj- confidence in
the rationahty of things here, and buoys us up with
hope when we look towards the things that are be-
yond. What we need is assistance in the task of
showing that that behef is founded on inferential
e\"idence, and that the "hj-pothesis of God" may be
proved to be a fact.
VI. Estimate of Pragm.\tism. — In a well-known passage of his work entitled "Pragmatism", Professor James sums up the achievements of the Pragmatists and outhnes the future of the school. "The centre of gravity of philosophy must alter its place. The earth of things, long thrown into shadow by the glories of the upper ether, must resume its rights. ... It will be an alteration in the 'seat of authority' that reminds one almost of the Protestant Reformation. And as, to papal minds. Protestantism has often seemed a mere mess of anarchy and confusion, such, no doubt, will Pragmatism often seem to ultra- Rationalist minds in philosophy. It would seem so much trash, philosophically. But life wags on, all the same, and compasses its ends, in Protestant coun- tries. I venture to think that philosophic Protes- tantism will compass a not dissimilar prosperity" (Pragmatism, p. 123). It is, of course, too soon to judge the accuracy of this prophecy. Meantime, to minds papal, though not ultra-Rationalistic, the parallel here drawn seems quite just, historically and philosophically. Pragmatism is Individualistic. De- spite the disclaimers of some of its ex^ponents, it sets up the Protagorean principle, "Man is the measure of all things". For if Pragmatism means anything, it means that human consequences, '"consequences to you and me", are the test of the meaning and truth of our concepts, judgments, and reasonings. Prag- matism is Xominalistic. It denies the vahdity of content of universal concepts, and scornfully rejects the mere possibihty of universal, all-including or even many-including, reality. It is, by imphcation, Sen- sistic. For in describing the functional value of con- cepts it restricts that function to immediate or remote sense-ex-perience. It is Idealistic. For, despite its disclaimer of agreement with the intellectual Idealism of the Bradley t>-pe. it is guilty of the fundamental error of Idealism when it makes reality to be co- extensive with ex-perience, and describes its doctrine of perception in terms of Cartesian Subjectivism. It is, in a sense, .\narchistic. Discarding Intellectual- istic logic, it discards principles, and has no substitute
