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Pragmatism - William James · Classic Philosophy Library

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  Speaker 1: Pragmatism, a new name for some old ways of thinking,
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  Speaker 1: to the memory of John Stuart Mill, from whom I
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  Speaker 1: first learned the pragmatic openness of mind, and whom my
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  Speaker 1: fancy likes to picture as our leader, were he alive
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  Speaker 1: to day. Preface the lectures that follow were delivered at
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  Speaker 1: the Lowell Institute in Boston in November and December nineteen
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  Speaker 1: hundred and six, and in January nineteen hundred seven at
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  Speaker 1: Columbia University in New York. They are printed as delivered,
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  Speaker 1: without developments or notes. The pragmatic movement so called. I
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  Speaker 1: do not like the name, but apparently it is too
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  Speaker 1: late to change. It seems to have rather suddenly precipitated
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  Speaker 1: itself out of the air. A number of tendencies that
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  Speaker 1: have always existed in philosophy have all at once become
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  Speaker 1: conscious of themselves collectively and of their combined mission. And
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  Speaker 1: this has occurred in so many countries and from so
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  Speaker 1: many different points of view, that much unconcerted statement has resulted.
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  Speaker 1: I have sought to unify the picture as it presents
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  Speaker 1: itself to my own eyes, dealing in broad strokes and
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  Speaker 1: avoiding minute controversy, much futile controversy might have been avoided.
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  Speaker 1: I believe if our critics had been willing to wait
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  Speaker 1: until we got our message fairly out. If my lectures
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  Speaker 1: interest any reader in the general subject, he will doubtless
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  Speaker 1: wish to read Father. I therefore give him a few references.
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  Speaker 1: In America, John Jewis studies in logical theory are the
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  Speaker 1: foundation read also by Jewy the articles in the Philosophical
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  Speaker 1: Review Volume fifteen, page one hundred thirteen and four hundred
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  Speaker 1: and sixty five, in Mind volume fifteen, page two hundred
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  Speaker 1: ninety three, and in the Journal of Philosophy, Volume four,
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  Speaker 1: page one hundred ninety seven. Probably the best statements to
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  Speaker 1: begin with, however, are F. C. S. Schillers in his
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  Speaker 1: studies in humanism, especially the essays numbered one, five, six, seven, eighteen,
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  Speaker 1: and nineteen. His previous essays and in general the polemic
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  Speaker 1: literature of the subject are fully referred to in his footnotes. Furthermore, C. G.
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  Speaker 1: Milhod Lerachenelle eighteen hundred ninety eight, and the fine articles
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  Speaker 1: by LeRoi in the Revi de Metaphysic Volumes seven, eight
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  Speaker 1: and nine. Also articles by Blondelle and Dessali in the
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  Speaker 1: Annal de Philosophy, Catienne, fourth Series, Volumes two and three.
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  Speaker 1: Pappini announces a book on pragmatism in the French language
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  Speaker 1: to be published very soon. To avoid ene misunderstandings, at least,
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  Speaker 1: let me say that there is no logical connection between
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  Speaker 1: pragmatism as I understand it and a doctrine which I
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  Speaker 1: have recently set forth as radical empiricism. The latter stands
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  Speaker 1: on its own feet. One may entirely reject it and
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  Speaker 1: still be a pragmatist. Harvard University, April nineteen hundred and seven,
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  Speaker 1: end of preface, Lecture one, The Present Dilemma in Philosophy.
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  Speaker 1: In the preface to that admirable collection of essays of
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  Speaker 1: his called Heretics, mister Chesterton writes these words, there are
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  Speaker 1: some people, and I am one of them, who think
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  Speaker 1: that the most practical and important thing about a man
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  Speaker 1: is still his view of the universe. We think that
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  Speaker 1: for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to
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  Speaker 1: know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy.
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  Speaker 1: We think that for a general about to fight an enemy,
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  Speaker 1: it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still
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  Speaker 1: more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the
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  Speaker 1: question is not whether the theory of the cosmos effects matters,
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  Speaker 1: but whether in the long run anything else affects them.
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  Speaker 1: I think with the Messachesterton in this matter. I know
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  Speaker 1: that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and
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  Speaker 1: all of you, and that the most interesting and important
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  Speaker 1: thing about you is the way in which it determines
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  Speaker 1: the perspective in your several worlds. You know the same
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  Speaker 1: of me, And yet I confess to a certain tremor
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  Speaker 1: at the audacity of the enterprise which I am about
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  Speaker 1: to begin. For the philosophy which is so important in
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  Speaker 1: each of us is not a technical matter. It is
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  Speaker 1: our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly
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  Speaker 1: and deeply means. It is only partly got from books.
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  Speaker 1: It is our individual way of just seeing and feeling
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  Speaker 1: the total push and pressure of the cosmos. I have
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  Speaker 1: no right to assume that many of you are students
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  Speaker 1: of the cosmos in the classroom sense. Yet here I
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  Speaker 1: stand desirous of interesting you in a philosophy which to
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  Speaker 1: no small extent has to be technically treated. I wish
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  Speaker 1: to fill you with sympathy, with a contemporanoust tendency in
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  Speaker 1: which I profoundly believe, And yet I have to talk
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  Speaker 1: like a professor to you, who are not students. Whatever
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  Speaker 1: universe a professor believes in must at any rate be
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  Speaker 1: a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe
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  Speaker 1: definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial
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  Speaker 1: intellect has no use, no faith in anything of that
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  Speaker 1: cheap kind. I have heard friends and colleagues try to
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  Speaker 1: popularize philosophy in this very hall, but they soon grew
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  Speaker 1: dry and then technical, and the results were only partially encouraging.
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  Speaker 1: So my enterprise is a bold on the founder of
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  Speaker 1: pragmatism himself recently gave a course of lectures at the
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  Speaker 1: Lowell Institute with that very word in its title, flashes
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  Speaker 1: of Brilliant Light revealed against Simerian darkness. None of us,
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  Speaker 1: I fancy, understood all that he said. Yet here I
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  Speaker 1: stand making a very similar venture. I risk it because
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  Speaker 1: the very lectures, as speak of dru they brought good audiences.
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  Speaker 1: There is, it must be confessed, a curious fashionation in
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  Speaker 1: hearing deep things talked about, even though neither we nor
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  Speaker 1: the disputants understand them, we get the problematic thrill. We
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  Speaker 1: feel the presence of the vastness. Let a controversy begin
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  Speaker 1: in a smoking room anywhere about free will, or God's omniscience,
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  Speaker 1: or good and evil, and see how everyone in the
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  Speaker 1: place pricks up his ears. Philosophy's results concern us all
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  Speaker 1: most vitally, and philosopher's queerest arguments tickle agreeably our sense
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  Speaker 1: of subtlety and ingenuity. Believing in philosophy myself devoutly, and
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  Speaker 1: believing also that a kind of new dawn is breaking
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  Speaker 1: upon us philosophers, I feel impelled periphas et nephas, to
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  Speaker 1: try to impart to you some use of the situation.
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  Speaker 1: Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most
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  Speaker 1: trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minightest crannus,
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  Speaker 1: and it opens up the widest vistas. It bakes no bread,
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  Speaker 1: as has been said, but it can inspire our souls
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  Speaker 1: with courage and repugnant as its manners, its doubting and challenging,
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  Speaker 1: its quibbling and dialectics of an art to common people.
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  Speaker 1: No one of us can get along without the far
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  Speaker 1: flashing beams of lighted sense of the world's perspectives. These
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  Speaker 1: illuminations at least, and the contrast effects of darkness and
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  Speaker 1: mystery that accompany them, give to what it says, an
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  Speaker 1: interest that is much more than professional. The history of
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  Speaker 1: philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain
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  Speaker 1: clash of human temperaments. Undignified, as such a treatment may
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  Speaker 1: seem to some of my colleagues, I shall have to
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  Speaker 1: take account of this clash and explain a good many
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  Speaker 1: of the divergences of philosophers by it. Of whatever temperament
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  Speaker 1: a professional philosopher is, he tries, when philosophizing, to sink
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  Speaker 1: the fact of his temperament. Temperament is no conventionally recognized reason,
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  Speaker 1: so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet
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  Speaker 1: his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any
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  Speaker 1: of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence
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  Speaker 1: for him one way or the other, making for a
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  Speaker 1: more sentimental or a more hardhearted view of the universe,
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  Speaker 1: just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts
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  Speaker 1: his temperament, wanting a universe that suits it. He believes
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  Speaker 1: in any representation of the universe that does suit it.
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  Speaker 1: He feels men of opposite temper to be out of
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  Speaker 1: key with the world's character, and in his heart considers
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  Speaker 1: them incompetent and not in it in the philosophic business,
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  Speaker 1: even though they may far excel him in dialectical ability.
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  Speaker 1: Yet in the forum he can make no claim on
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  Speaker 1: the bare ground of his temperament to superior discernment or authority.
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  Speaker 1: There arises. Thus there's a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions.
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  Speaker 1: The potent test of all our premises is never mentioned.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure it would contribute to clearness if in these
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  Speaker 1: lectures we should break this rule and mention it, and
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  Speaker 1: I accordingly feel free to do so. Of course, I'm
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  Speaker 1: talking here of very positively marked men, men of radical idiosyncrasy,
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  Speaker 1: who have set their stamp and likeness of philosophy and
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  Speaker 1: figure in its history. Plato, Locke, Hegel, Spencer are such
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  Speaker 1: temperamental thinkers. Most of us have, of course, no very
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  Speaker 1: definite intellectual temperament. We are a mixture of opposite ingredients,
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  Speaker 1: each one present very moderately. We hardly know our own
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  Speaker 1: preferences in abstract matters. Some of us are easily talked
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  Speaker 1: out of them and end by following the fashion or
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  Speaker 1: taking up with the beliefs of the most impressive philosopher
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  Speaker 1: in our neighborhood, whoever he may be. But the one
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  Speaker 1: thing that has counted so far in philosophy is that
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  Speaker 1: a man should see things, see them straight in his
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  Speaker 1: own peculiar way, and be dissatisfied with any opposite way
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  Speaker 1: of seeing them. There is no reason to suppose that
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  Speaker 1: this strong temperamental vision is from now onward to count
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  Speaker 1: no longer in the history of man's beliefs. Now, the
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  Speaker 1: particular difference of temperament that I have in mind in
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  Speaker 1: making these remarks is one that has counted in literature, art, government,
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  Speaker 1: and manners, as well as in philosophy. In manners we
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  Speaker 1: find formalists and free and easy persons. In government, authoritarians
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  Speaker 1: and honarchists. In literature, purests or academicals and realists. In art,
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  Speaker 1: classics and romantics, you recognize these contrasts as familiar. Well.
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  Speaker 1: In philosophy we have a very similar contrast expressed in
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  Speaker 1: the pair of terms rationalist and empiricist. Empiricist meaning your
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  Speaker 1: lover of facts in all the crude variety, rationalist meaning
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  Speaker 1: your devotee to abstract and eternal principles. No one can
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  Speaker 1: live an hour without both facts and principles. So it
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  Speaker 1: is a difference rather of emphasis. Yet it breeds and
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  Speaker 1: typathies of the most pugnant character between those who lay
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  Speaker 1: the emphasis differently. And we shall find it extraordinarily convenient
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  Speaker 1: to express a certain contrast in men's ways of taking
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  Speaker 1: the universe by talking of the empiricist and of the rationalist.
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  Speaker 1: Temper these terms make the contrast simple and massive, more
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  Speaker 1: simple and massive than are usually the men of whom
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  Speaker 1: the terms are predicated for every sort of permutation and
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  Speaker 1: combination is possible in human nature. And if I now
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  Speaker 1: proceed to define more fully what I have in mind
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  Speaker 1: when I speak of rationalists and empiricists, by adding to
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  Speaker 1: each of those titles some secondary qualifying characteristics, I beg
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  Speaker 1: you to regard my conduct as to a certain extent arbitrary.
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  Speaker 1: I select types of combination that nature offers very frequently,
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  Speaker 1: but by no means uniformly, and I select them solely
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  Speaker 1: for their convenience in helping me to my alterior purpose
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  Speaker 1: of characterizing pragmatism. Historically, we find the terms intellectualism and
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  Speaker 1: sensationalism used as synonyms of rationalism and empiricism. Well, nature
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  Speaker 1: seems to combine most frequently with intellectualism and idealistic and
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  Speaker 1: optimistic tendency. Empiricists, on the other hand, are not uncommonly materialistic,
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  Speaker 1: and their optimism is apt to be decidedly conditional and tremulous.
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  Speaker 1: Rationalism is always monistic. It starts from holes and universals,
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  Speaker 1: and makes much of the unity of things. Empiricism starts
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  Speaker 1: from the parts and makes of the whole a collection.
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  Speaker 1: It's not averse, therefore, to calling itself pluralistic. Rationalism usually
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  Speaker 1: considers itself more religious than empiricism, but there is much
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  Speaker 1: to say about this claim, so I merely mention it. It
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  Speaker 1: is a true claim when the individual rationalist is what
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  Speaker 1: is called a man of feeling, and when the individual
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  Speaker 1: empiricist pries himself on being hard headed. In that case,
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  Speaker 1: the rationalist will usually also be in favor of what
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  Speaker 1: is called free will, and the empiricist will be a fatalist.
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  Speaker 1: I use the terms most popularly current. The rationalist, finally,
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  Speaker 1: will be of dogmatic temper in its affirmations, while the
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  Speaker 1: empiricist may be more skeptical and open to discussion. I
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  Speaker 1: will write these traits down in two columns. I think
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  Speaker 1: you will practically recognize the two types of mental make
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  Speaker 1: up that I mean, if I had the columns by
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  Speaker 1: the titles tender minded and tough minded, respectively. The tender
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  Speaker 1: minded rationalistic going by principles, intellectualistic, idealistic, optimistic, religious, free willist, monistic, dogmatical,
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  Speaker 1: the tough minded empiricist going by facts, sensationalistic, materialistic, pessimistic, irreligious, fatalistic, pluralistic, skeptical.
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  Speaker 1: Pray postpone for a moment. They question whether the two
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  Speaker 1: contrasted mixtures which I have written down are each inwardly
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  Speaker 1: coherent and self consistent or not. I shall very soon
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  Speaker 1: have a good deal to say on that point. It
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  Speaker 1: suffices for our immediate purpose that tender minded and tough
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  Speaker 1: minded people characterized as I have written them down, do
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  Speaker 1: both exist. Each of you probably knows some well marked
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  Speaker 1: example of each type, and you know what each example
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  Speaker 1: thinks of the example on the other side of the line.
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  Speaker 1: They have a low opinion of each other. Their antagonism,
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  Speaker 1: whatever as individuals their temperaments have been intense, has formed
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  Speaker 1: in all ages a part of the philosophic atmosphere of
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  Speaker 1: the time. It forms a part of the philosophic atmosphere. Today.
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  Speaker 1: The tough think of the tender as sentimentalists and soft heads.
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  Speaker 1: The tender feel the tough to be unrefined, callous, or brutal.
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  Speaker 1: Their mutual reaction is very much like that that takes
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  Speaker 1: place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population like that
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  Speaker 1: of a cripple creek. Each type believes the other to
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  Speaker 1: be inferior to itself, but disdain in the one case
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  Speaker 1: is mingled with amusement. In the other, it has a
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  Speaker 1: dash of fear. Now, as I have already insisted, few
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: of us are tenderfoot Bostonians, pure and simple, and few
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  Speaker 1: are typically rocky mountain tufts in Flasca. Most of us
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  Speaker 1: have a hankering for the good things on both sides
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  Speaker 1: of the line. Facts are good, of course, give us
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  Speaker 1: lots of facts. Principles are good. Give us plenty of principles.
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  Speaker 1: The world is injupidily one if you look at it
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  Speaker 1: in one way, But as injupiterily is it many if
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  Speaker 1: you look at it in another. It is both one
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  Speaker 1: and many. Let us adopt a sort of pluralistic monism. Everything,
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  Speaker 1: of course, is necessarily determined, and yet of course our
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  Speaker 1: wills are free. A sort of free will determinism is
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  Speaker 1: the true philosophy. The evil of the parts is undeniable,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: but the whole can't be evil. So practical pessimism may
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: be combined with metaphysical optimism, and so forth your ordinary
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: philosophic laymen, never being a radical, never straightening out his system,
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  Speaker 1: but living vaguely in one plausible compartment of it or
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  Speaker 1: another to suit the temptations of successive hours. But some
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  Speaker 1: of us are more than mere laymen in philosophy. We
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  Speaker 1: are worthy of the name of amateur athletes, and are
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  Speaker 1: vexed by too much inconsistency and vacillation in our creed.
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  Speaker 1: We cannot preserve a good intellectual conscience so long as
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  Speaker 1: we keep mixing incompatibles from opposite signs of the line.
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  Speaker 1: And now I come to the first positively important point
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  Speaker 1: which I wish to make. Never were as many men
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  Speaker 1: of our decidedly empiricist proclivity in existence as there are
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  Speaker 1: at the present day. Our children, one may say, are
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  Speaker 1: almost born scientific, but our esteem for facts has not
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  Speaker 1: neutralized in us our religiousness. It is itself almost religious.
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  Speaker 1: Our scientific temper is devoute. Now take a man of
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  Speaker 1: this type and let him be also a philosophic amateur,
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  Speaker 1: unwilling to mix a hodgepodge system after the fashion of
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  Speaker 1: a common layman. And what does he find his situation
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  Speaker 1: to be in this blessed year of our Lord nineteen
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  Speaker 1: hundred and six. He wants facts, he wants science, but
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  Speaker 1: he also wants a religion. And being an amateur and
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: not an independent originator in philosophy, he naturally looks for
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  Speaker 1: guidance to the experts and professionals, whom he finds already
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  Speaker 1: in the field. A very large number of you here present,
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  Speaker 1: possibly a majority of you, are amateurs of just this sort.
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  Speaker 1: Now what kinds of philosophy do you find actually offered
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: to meet your need? You find an empirical philosophy that
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: is not religious enough, and a religious philosophy that is
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  Speaker 1: not empirical enough for your purpose. If you look to
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  Speaker 1: the quarter where facts are most considered, you find the
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  Speaker 1: whole tough minded program in operation, and the conflict between
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  Speaker 1: science and religion in full blast. Either it is the
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  Speaker 1: rocky mountain tuff of a Heckel, with his materialistic monism,
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  Speaker 1: his ether god in his jest at our God as
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: a gaseous vertebrate, or it is Spencer treating the world's
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: history as a redistribution of matter and motion solely, and
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: bowing religion politely out at the front door. She may
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: indeed continue to exist, but she must never show her
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  Speaker 1: face inside the temple. For one hundred and fifty years past,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: the progress of science has seemed to mean the enlargement
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  Speaker 1: of the material universe and the diminution of man's importance.
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  Speaker 1: The result is what one may call the growth of
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  Speaker 1: naturalistic or positivistic feeling. Man is no lawgiver to nature.
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  Speaker 1: He is an absorber. She it is who stands firm.
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  Speaker 1: He it is who must accommodate himself. Let him record
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  Speaker 1: truth in human though it be, and submit to it.
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  Speaker 1: The romantic, spontaneity and courage are gone. The vision is
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  Speaker 1: materialistic and depressing. Ideals appear as inert by products of physiology.
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  Speaker 1: What is higher is explained by what is lower, and
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  Speaker 1: treated forever as a case of nothing but nothing but
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  Speaker 1: something else of a quite inferior sort. You get, in short,
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  Speaker 1: a matrialistic universe in which only the tough minded find
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  Speaker 1: themselves congenially at home. If now, on the other hand,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: you turn to the religious quarter for consolation and take
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  Speaker 1: counsel of the tender minded philosophies. What do you find
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  Speaker 1: religious philosophy in our day and the generation is among
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: us English reading people of two main types. One of
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  Speaker 1: these is more radical and aggressive. The other has more
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  Speaker 1: the air of fighting a slow retreat. By the more
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: radical wing of religious philosophy, I mean the so called
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: transcendental idealism of the Anglo Hegelian school, the philosophy of
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: such men as Green, the Cards, Bozanki and Royce. This
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: philosophy has greatly influenced the more studious members of our
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Protestant ministry. It is pantheistic, and undoubtedly it has already
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: blunted the edge of the traditional theism in Protestantism at large.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: That feels the remains. However, it is the lineal descendant,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: through one stage of concession after another, of the dogmatic
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: scholastic theism still taught rigorously in the seminaries of the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Catholic Church. For a long time it used to be
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  Speaker 1: called among us the philosophy of the Scottish school. It
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  Speaker 1: is what I meant by the philosophy that has the
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  Speaker 1: air of fighting a slow retreat between the encroachments of
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the Hegelians and other philosophers of the absolute on the
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  Speaker 1: one hand, and those of the scientific evolutionists and agnostics
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: on the other. The man that gives this kind of philosophy,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: James Martineau, Professor Baun, Professor Ladd, and others, must feel
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: themselves rather tightly squeezed. Fair minded, and candid as you like,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: this philosophy is not radical in temper. It is a
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: thing of compromises that seeks a modus vivendi above all things.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: It accepts the facts of Darwinism, the facts of cerebral physiology,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: but it does nothing active or enthusiastic rhm. It lacks
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the victorious and aggressive note. It lacks prestige in consequence,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: whereas absolutism has a certain prestige due to the more
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: radical style of it. These two systems are what you
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: have to choose between. If you turn to the tender
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: minded school, and if you are the lovers of facts
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: I have supposed you to be, you find the trail
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: of the serpent of rationalism, of intellectualism over everything that
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: lies on that side of the line you escape. Indeed,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the materialism that goes with the reigning empiricism. But you
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: pay for your escape by losing contact with the concrete
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: parts of life. The more absolutistic philosophers dwell on so
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: high a level of abstraction that they never even try
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: to come down the absolute mind which they offer us,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the mind that makes our universe. By thinking it might
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: for aught, they show us, to the contrary, have made
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: any one of a million other universes just as well
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: as this. You can deduce no single actual particular from
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the notion of it. It is compatible with any state
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: of things, whatever being true here below. And the theistic
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: God is almost as sterile a principle. You have to
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: go to the world which he has created to get
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: any inkling of his actual character. He is the kind
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: of God that has once for all made that kind
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: of a world. The God of the theistic writers lives
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: on as purely abstract heights as does the absolute. Absolutism
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: has a certain sweep and dash about it, while the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: usual theism is more insipid, But both are equally remote
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: and vacuous. What you want is a philosophy that will
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: not only exercise your powers of intellectual abstraction, but that
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: will make some positive connection with this actual world of
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: finite human lives. You want a system that will combine
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: both things, the scientific loyalty to facts and willingness to
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: take account of them, the spirit of adaptation and accommodation
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: in short, but also the old confidence in human values
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and the resultant spontaneity, whether of the religious or of
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the romantic type. And this is then your dilemma. You
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: find the two parts of your cactom hopelessly separated. You
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: find empiricism with inhumanism and irreligion, or else you find
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: a rationalistic philosophy that indeed may call itself religious, but
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: that keeps out of all definite touch with concrete facts
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: and joys and sorrows. I'm not sure how many of
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: you lived close enough to philosophy to realize fully what
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I mean by this last reproach. So I will dwell
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: a little longer on that unreality in all rationalistic systems
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: by which your serious believer in facts is so apt
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: to feel repelled. I wish that i'd saved the first
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: couple of pages of a thesis which a student handed
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: me a year or two ago. They illustrated my points
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: so clearly that I am sorry I cannot read them
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to you. Now, this young man, who was a graduate
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: of some western college, began by saying that he had
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: always taken for granted that when you entered a philosophic classroom,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: you had to open relationship with a universe entirely distinct
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: from the one you left behind you in the street.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: The two were supposed, he said, to have so little
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: to do with each other that you could not possibly
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: occupy your mind with them. At the same time, the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: world of concrete personal experiences to which the street belongs
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: is multitudinous, beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful, and perplexed. The
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: world to which your philosophy professor introduces you is simple, clean,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: and noble. The contradictions of real life are absent from it.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Its architecture is classic principles of recent trace. Its outlines,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: logical necessities, cement its parts. Purity and dignity are what
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: it most expresses. It is a kind of marble temple
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: shining on a hill. End of Lecture one, Part one.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: In point of fact, it is far less an account
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: of this actual world than a clear addition built upon it.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: A classic sanctuary in which the rationalist fancy may take
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: refuge from the intolerably confused and gothic character which mere
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: facts present. It is no explanation of our concrete universe.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: It is another thing altogether, a substitute for it, a remedy,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: a way of escape. Its temperament, if I may use
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the word temperament here, is utterly alien to the temperament
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: of existence in the concrete. Refinement is what characterizes our
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: intellectualist philosophies. They exquisitely satisfy that craving for a refined
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: object of contemplation, which is so powerful and apt tight
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: of the mind. But I ask you, in all seriousness
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: to look abroad on this colossal universe of concrete facts,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: on their awful bewilderments, their surprises and cruelties, on the
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: wildness which they show, and then to tell me whether
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: refined is the one inevitable descriptive adjective that springs to
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: your lips. Refinement has its place in things, true enough,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: But a philosophy that breathes out nothing but refinement will
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: never satisfy the empiricist temper of mind. It will seem
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: rather a monument of artificiality. So we find men of
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: science preferring to turn their backs on metaphysics as on
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: something altogether cloistered and spectral, and practical, men shaking philosophis
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: dust off their feet and following the call of the wild. Truly,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: there's something a little ghastly in the satisfaction with which
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: a pure but unreal system will fill a rationalist mind.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Leibniz was a rationalist mind, with infinitely more interest in
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: facts than most rationalist minds can show. Yet, if you
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: wish for superficiality incarnate, we have only to read that
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: charmingly written theodicy of his, in which he sought to
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: justify the ways of God to man and to prove
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: that the world we live in is the best of
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: possible worlds. Let me quote a specimen of what I mean.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Among other obstacles to his optimistic philosophy, it falls to
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Leibniz to consider the number of the eternally damned, that
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: it is infinitely greater in our human case than that
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: of those saved. He assumes as a premise from the Theologians,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: and then proceeds to argue in this way. Even then
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: he says, the evil will here as almost nothing in
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: comparison with the good if we once consider the real
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: magnitude of the city of God. Quelius Secundos Courio has
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: written a little book De Amplitudine Reigni Celestis, which was
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: reprinted not long ago, but he failed to compose the
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: extent of the Kingdom of the heavens. The ancients had
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: small ideas of the works of God. It seemed to
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: them that only our Earth had inhabitants, and even the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: notion of our antipodes gave them pause. The rest of
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: the world, for them consisted of some shining globes and
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: a few crystalline spheres. But today, whatever be the limits
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: that we may grant refuse to the universe, we must
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: recognize in it a countless number of globes as big
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: as ours or bigger, which have just as much right
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: as it has to support rational inhabitants, though it does
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: not follow that these need all be men. Our Earth
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: is only one among the six principal satellites of our son.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: As all the fixed stars are suns, one sees how
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: small a place among visible things our Earth takes up,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: since it is only a satellite of one among them. Now,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: all these suns may be inhabited by no one but
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: happy creatures, And nothing obliges to believe that the number
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: of damned persons is very great, for a very few
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: instances and samples suffice for the utility which good draws
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: from evil. Moreover, since there is no reason to suppose
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: that there are stars everywhere, may there not be a
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: great space beyond the region of the stars, And this
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: immense space surrounding all this region may be replete with
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: happiness and glory. What now becomes of the consideration of
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: our earth and of its denizens? Does it not dwindle
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: to something incomparably less than a physical point, Since our
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Earth is but a point compared with the distance of
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the fixed stars. Thus, the part of the universe which
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: we know being almost lost in nothing, as compared with
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: that which is unknown to us, but which we are
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: yet obliged to admit, and all the evils that we
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: know lying in this almost nothing, it follows that the
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: evils may be almost nothing in comparison with the goods
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: that the universe contains. Leibniz continues, elsewhere, there is a
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: kind of justice which aims neither at the amendment of
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: the criminal nor at furnishing an example to others, nor
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: at the reparation of the injury. This justice is founded
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: in pure fitness, which finds a certain satisfaction in expiation
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: of a wicked deed. The Socinians and Hobbes objected to
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: this punitive justice, which is properly vindictive justice, and which
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: God has reserved for himself at many junctures. It is
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: always founded in the fitness of things, and satisfies not
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: only the offended party, but all wise lookers on, even
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: as beautiful music or a fine piece of architecture satisfies
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: a well constituted mind. It is thus that the torments
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: of the damned continue even though they serve no longer
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: to turn anyone away from sin, and that the rewards
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: of the blessed continue even though they confirm no one
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: in good ways. The damned draw to themselves ever new
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: penalties by their continuing sins, and the blessed attract every
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: fresh joice by their unceasing progress in good Both facts
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: are founded on the principle of fitness. For God has
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: made all things harmonious in perfection. As I have already
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: said Leibniz, feeble grasp of reality is too obvious to
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: need comment from me. It is evident that no realistic
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: image of the experience of a damned soul had ever
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: approached the portals of his mind, nor had it occurred
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: to him that the smaller is the number of samples
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: of the genus lost soul, whom God throws as a
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: sop to the eternal fitness, the more unequitably grounded is
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: the glory of the blessed. What it gives us is
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: a cold literary exercise whose cheerful substance, even health fire,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: does not warm. And do not tell me that to
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: show the shallowness of rationalist philosophizing, I have had to
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: go back to a shallow, wigpited age. The optimism of
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: present day rationalism sounds just as shallow to the fact
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: loving mind. The actual universe is a thing wide open,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: but rationalism makes systems, and systems must be closed for
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: men in practical life. Perfection is something far off and
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: still in process of achievement. This, for rationalism, is but
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: the illusion of the finite and relative. The absolute ground
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: of things is a perfection eternally complete. I find a
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: fine example of revolt against this airy and shallow optimism
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: of current religious philosophy in a publication of that valiant
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: anarchistic writer, Morrison I. Swift. Mister Swift's anarchism goes a
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: little farther than mind us, But I confess that I
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: sympathize a good deal, and some of you I know
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: will sympathize heartily. With his dissatisfaction with the idea ballistic
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: optimisms now in vogue, he begins his pamphlet on Human
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Submission with a series of city reporters items from newspapers, suicides,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: deaths from starvation and the like as specimens of our
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: civilized regime. For instance, after trudging through the snow from
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: one end of the city to the other in the
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: vain hope of securing employment, and with his wife and
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: six children without food, and ordered to leave their home
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: in an upper east side tenement house because of non
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: payment of rent, John Krcoran, a clerk today, ended his
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: life by drinking carbolic acid. Corcoran lost his position three
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: weeks ago through illness, and during the period of idleness,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: his scanty savings disappeared. Yesterday he obtained work with a
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: gang of city snow shovelers, but he was too weak
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: from illness and was forced to quit after an hour's
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: trial with a shovel. Then the weary task of looking
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: for employment was again resumed. Thoroughly discouraged, Corcoran returned to
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: his home last night to find his wife and children
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: without food and the notice of dispossession on the door.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: On the following morning, he drank the poison. The records
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: of many more such cases lie before me. Mister Swift
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: goes on. An encyclopedia might easily be filled with her kind.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: These few I cite as an interpretation of the universe.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: We are aware of the presence of God in his world,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: says a writing in a recent English review. The very
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: presence of ill in the temporal order is the condition
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: of the perfection of the eternal order, writes Professor Royce
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: The World and the Individual, Part two, page three hundred
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: eighty five. The absolute is the richer for every discord
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: and for all diversity which it embraces, says F. H.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Bradley Appearance and Reality, page two hundred four. He means
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that these slain men make the universe richer, and that
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: is philosophy. But while Professes Royson, Bradley and a whole
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: host of guileless thoroughfed thinkers are unveiling reality and the absolute,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: and explaining away evil and pain. This is the condition
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: of the only beings known to us anywhere in the
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: universe with a developed consciousness of what the universe is.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: What these people experience is reality. It gives us an
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: absolute phase of the universe. It is the personal experience
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: of those most qualified in all our circle of knowledge
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: to have experience to tell us what is now what
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: us thinking about the experience of these persons come to
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: compared with directly personally feeling it as they feel it.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: The philosophers are dealing in shades, while those who live
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: and feel no truth, and the mind of mankind, not
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: yet the mind of philosophers and of the propriety class,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: but of the great mass of the silently thinking and
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: feeling men, is coming to this view. They are judging
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: the universe as they have heretofore permitted the hierophants of
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: religion and learning to judge them. This cleveland workingman killing
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: his children and himself, another of the cited cases, is
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: one of the elemental, stupendous facts of this modern world
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: and of this universe. It cannot be glossed over or
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: minimized away by all the treatises on God and love
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: and being helplessly existing in their haughty monumental vacuity. This
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: is one of the simple, irreducible elements of this world's life,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: after millions of years of divine opportunity and twenty centuries
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: of christ. It is in the moral world, like atoms
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: or subatoms in the physical, primary, indestructible, and what it
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: blazons to man is the imposture of all philosophy which
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: does not see in such events the consummate factor of
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: conscious experience. These facts invincibly prove religion annullity. Man will
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: not give religion two thousand centuries or twenty centuries more
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: to try itself and waste human time. Its time is up,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: its probation is ended, its own record ends it. Mankind
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: has not sons and eternities to spare for trying out
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: discredited systems. Footnote Morrison I. Swift Human Submission, Part second,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia Liberty Press, nineteen hundred five, pages four to ten.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Such is the reaction of an empiricist mind upon the
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: rationalist bill of fare. It is an absolute no. I
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: thank you religion, says Missus Swift, is like a sleep walker,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: to whom actual things are blank. And such, though possibly
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: less tensely charged with feeling, is the verdict of every
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: seriously inquiring amateur in philosophy to day who turns to
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: the philosophy professors for the wherewith to satisfy the fullness
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: of his nature's needs. Empiricist writers give him a materialism.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Rationalists give him something religious, but to that religion, actual
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: things are blank. He becomes thus the judge of us philosophers,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: tender or tough he finds us wanting. None of us
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: may treat his verdicts disdainfully, for after all, he is
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: the typically perfect mind, the mind the sum of whose
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: demands is greatest, the mind whose criticisms and dissatisfactions are
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: fatal in the long run. It is at this point
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: that my own solution begins to appear. I offer the
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: oddly named thing pragmatism, as a philosophy that can satisfy
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: both kinds of demand. It can remain religious, like the rationalisms,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: but at the same time, like the empiricisms, it can
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: pursus observe the richest intimacy with facts. I hope I
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: may be able to leave many of you with as
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: favorable an opinion of it as I preserve myself. Yet,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: as I am near the end of my hour, I
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: will not introduce pragmatism bodily. Now. I will begin with
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: it on the stroke of the clock next time. I
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: prefer at the present moment to return a little on
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: what I have said. If any of you here are
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: professional philosophers, and some of you I know to be such,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: you will doubtless have felt my discourse so far to
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: have been crude in an unpardonable, nay, in an almost
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: incredible degree, tender minded and tough minded. What a barbaric disjunction?
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: And in general, when philosophy is all compacted of delicate
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: intellectualities and subtleties and scrupulosities, and when every possible sort
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: of combination and transition obtains within its bounds, what a
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: brutal caricature and reduction of highest things to the lowest
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: possible expression. Is it to represent its field of conflict
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: as a sort of rough and tumble fight between two
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: hostile temperaments. What a childishly external view. And again, how
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: stupid it is to treat the abstractness of rationalist systems
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: as a crime and to damn them because they offer
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: themselves as sanctuaries and places of escape rather than as
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: prolongations of the world of facts. Are not all our
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: theories just remedies and places of escape? And if philosophy
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: is to be religious, how can she be anything else
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: than a place of escape from the crassness of reality's surface.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: What better thing can she do than raises out of
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: our animal senses and show us another and a nobler
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: home for our minds in that great framework of ideal principles,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: subtending all reality which the intellect divines. How can principles
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: and general views ever be anything but abstract outlines? Was
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Colon Cathedral built without an architect's plan on paper? Its
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: refinement in itself an abomination is concrete rudeness the only
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: thing that's true. Believe me, I feel the full force
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: of the indictment. The picture I have given is indeed
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: monstrously oversimplified and rude, But like all abstractions, it will
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: prove to have its use. If philosophers can treat the
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: life of the universe abstractly, they must not complain of
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: an abstract treatment of the life of philosophy itself. In
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: point of fact. The picture I have given is, however
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: coarse and sketchy, literally true temperaments whither crez livings and
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: refusals do determine men in their philosophies, and always will.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: The details of systems may be reasoned out piecemeal, and
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: when the student is working at a system, he may
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: often forget the forest for the single tree. But when
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: labor is accomplished, the mind always performs its big summarizing act,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: and the system forthwith stands over against one like a
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: living thing, with that strange, simple note of individuality which
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: haunts our memory like the wraith of the man when
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: a friend or enemy of ours is dead. Not only
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Walt Whitman could write, who touches this book touches a man?
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: The books of all the great philosophers are like so
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: many men. Our sense of an essential personal flavor in
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: each one of them, typical but indescribable, is the finest
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: fruit of our own accomplished philosophic education. What the system
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: pretends to be is a picture of the great universe
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: of God. What it is, and also flagrantly, is the
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: revelation of how intensely odd the personal flavor of some
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: fellow creature is once reduced to these terms, and all
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: our philosophies get reduced to them in minds made critical
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: by learning, our commerce with the systems reverted to the informal,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: to the instinctive human reaction of satisfaction or dislike. We
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: grow as peremptory in our rejection or admission, as when
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: a person presents himself as a candidate for our favor.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Our verdicts are couched in as simple adjectives of praise
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: or dispraise. We measure the total character of the universe
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: as we feel it against the flavor of the philosophy
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: profit us, and one word is enough statt der lebedigen natur.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: We say tha got dimension, schuff henain that nebulous concoction,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: that wooden, that straight laced thing, that crabbed artificiality, that
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: musty schoolroom product, that sick man's dream, Our way with it,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: our way with all of them impossible impossible. Our work
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: over the details of his system is indeed what gives
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: us our resultant impression of the philosopher. But it is
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: on the resultant impression itself that we react. Expertness in
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: philosophy is measured by the definiteness of our summarizing reactions
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: by the immediate perceptive epithet with which the expert hits
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: such complex objects off. But great expertness is not necessary
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: for the epithet to come. Few people have definitely articulated
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: philosophies of their own, but almost everyone has his own
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: and of the inadequacy fully to match it of the
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: peculiar system that he knows. They don't just cover his world.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: One will be too dapper, another to pedantic, a third
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: too much of a job, lot of opinions, a fourth
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: to morbid, and a fifth to artificial or what not.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: At any rate, he and we know offhand that such
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: philosophers are out of plumb and out of key, and
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: out of whack, and have no businesses. Speak up in
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the universe's name. Plato, Locke, Spinoza, Mill, cared Hegel. I
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: prudently avoid names nearer home. I am sure that to
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: many of you, my hearers, these names are little more
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: than reminders of as many curious personal ways of falling short.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: It would be an obvious absurdity if such ways of
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: taking the universe were actually true. We philosophers have to
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: reckon with such feelings on our part. In the last resort,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I repeat, it will be by them that all our
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: philosophis shall ultimately be judged. The finally victorious way of
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: looking at things will be the most completely impressive way
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: to the normal run of minds. One word more, namely
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: about philosophis necessarily being abstract outlines. There are outlines and outlines.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: Outlines of buildings that are fat conceived in the cube
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: by their planner, and outlines of buildings invented flat on
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: paper with the aid of rule and compass. These remain
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: skinny and emaciated even when set up in stone and mortar,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: and the outline already suggests that results. An outline sine
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: in itself is meager, truly, but it does not necessarily
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: suggest a meager thing. It is the essential meagerness of
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: what is suggested by the usual rationalistic philosophists that moves
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: empiricists to their gesture of rejection. The case of Herbert
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Spencer's system is much to the point. Here rationalists feel
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: his fearful array of insufficiencies, his dry school master temperament,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: the hurdy gurdy monotony of him, his presence for cheap
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: makeshifts in argument, his lack of education even in mechanical principles,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: and in general, the vagueness of all his fundamental ideas,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: his whole system wooden, as if knocked together out of
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: cracked hemlock boards. And yet the hoof of England wants
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: to bury him in Westminster Abbey? Why why does Spencer
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: call out so much reverence in spite of his weakness
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: in rationalistic eyes? Why should so many educated men who
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: feel that weakness? You and I perhaps wish to see
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: him in the abbey, notwithstanding, simply because we feel his
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: heart to be in the right place philosophically. His principles
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: may be all skin and bone, but at any rate,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: his books try to mold themselves upon the particular shape
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: of this particular world's carcass. The noise of facts resounds
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: through all his chapters. The citations of fact never sees.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: He emphasizes facts, turns his face towards their quarter, and
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: that is enough. It means the right kind of thing
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: for the empiricist mind, the pragmatistic philosophy of which I
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: hope to begin talking in my next lecture preserves as
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: cordial a relation with facts, and unlike Spencer's philosophy, it
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: neither begins nor ends by turning positive religious constructions out
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: of doors. It treats them cordially as well. I hope
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: I may lead you to find it just the mediating
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: way of thinking that you require. End of Lecture one,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: Lecture two. What pragmatism means? Some years ago, being with
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: a camping party in the mountains, I returned from a
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: solitary ramble to find everyone engaged in a ferocious metaphysical dispute.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel, A live
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: tree trunk, while over against the other trees opposite side.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: A human being was imagined to stand this human whichness
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: round the tree. But no matter how fast he goes,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: always keeps the tree between himself and the man, so
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: metaphysical problem now is this, does the man go round
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: the squirrel or not he goes round the tree, sure enough,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: and the squirrel is on the tree. But does he
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: go round the squirrel in the unlimited leisure of the wilderness.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Discussion had been worn threadbare. Everyone had taken signs and
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: was obstinate, and the numbers on both signs were even
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: each side. When I appeared, therefore, appealed to me to
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: make it a majority. Mindful of the scholastic adage that
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: whenever you meet a contradiction, you must make a distinction,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: I immediately sought an found one. As follows which party
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: is right, I said, depends on what you practically mean
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: by going round the squirrel. If you mean passing from
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: the north of him to the east, then to the south,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: then to the west, and then to the north of
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: him again, obviously the man does go round him, for
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: he occupies these successive positions. But if, on the contrary,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: you mean being first in front of him, then on
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: the right of him, then behind him, then on his left,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: and finally front again, it is quite as obvious that
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: the man fails to go round him, for by the
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: compensating movements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: towards the man all the time. And his back turned away.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: Make the distinction, and there's no occasion for any further dispute.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: You are both right and both wrong, according as you
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: conceive the verb to go round in one press practical
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: fashion or the other. Although one or two of the
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: hotter disputants called my speech are shuffling evation, saying they
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: wanted no quibbling or scholastic hair splitting, but meant just
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: plain honest English round, the majority seemed to think that
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: the distinction had assuaged the dispute. I tell this trivial
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example of what
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: I wish now to speak of as the pragmatic method.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: dispute that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: or many? Fated or free? Material or spiritual? Here are notions,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: either of which may or may not hold good of
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: the world, and disputes over such notions are unending. The
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: each notion by tracing its respective practical p consequences. What
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: rather than that notion were true. If no practical difference
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: is serious, we ought to be able to show some
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: practical difference that must follow from one side or the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: other's being right. A glance at the history of the
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: idea will show you still better what pragmatism means. The
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: term is derived from the same Greek word pi row
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: alpha gamma mu alpha, meaning action from which our words
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: practice and practical come. It was first introduced into philosophy
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: by mister Charles Perce in eighteen hundred and seventy eight
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: in an article entitled how to Make Our Ideas Clear
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: in the Popular Science Monthly for January of that year.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: Footnote translated in The Review Philosophy for January eighteen hundred
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: and seventy nine, Volume seven. Mister Piers, after pointing out
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: that our beliefs are really rules for action, said that
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: to develop a thought's meaning, we need only determine what
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: conduct it is fitted to produce. That conduct is for
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: us its soul significance, and the tangible fact at the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: root of all our thought distinctions, however subtle, is that
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: there is no one of them so fine as to
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: kind the object may involve, what sensations we are to
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: for us the whole of our conception of the object,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: so far as that conception has positive significance at all.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: This is the principle of perse the principle of pragmatism.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: It lay entirely unnoticed by anyone for twenty years until I,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: in an address before Professor Howinson's Philosophical Union at the
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: University of California, brought it forward again and made a
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: special application of it to religion. By that date, eighteen
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: hundred and ninety eight, the time seemed ripe for its reception.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: The word pragmatism spread, and at present it fairly spots
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: the pages of philosophic journals. On all hands. We find
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: the pragmatic movement spoken of, sometimes with respect, sometimes with contumely,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: seldom with clear understanding. It is evident that the term
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: applies itself conveniently to a number of tendencies that hereto
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: have lacked a collective name, and that it has come
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: to stay. To take in the importance of Percy's principle,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: one must get accustomed to applying it to concrete cases.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: I found a few years ago that Ostwald, the illustrious
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Leipzig chemist, had been making perfectly distinct use of the
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: principle of pragmatism in his lectures on the philosophy of science,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: though he had not called it by that name. All
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: realities influence our practice, he wrote me, and that influence
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: is their meaning. For us. I am accustomed to put
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: questions to my classes in this way, in what respects
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: would the world be different if this alternative or that
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: were true? If I can find nothing that would become different,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: then the alternative has no sense. That is, the rival
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: views mean practically the same thing, and meaning other than practical,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: there is for us none. Ostwald, in a published lecture,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: gives this example of what he means. Chemists have long
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: wrangled over the inner constitution of certain bodies called totomeros
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: their properties seemed equally consistent with the notion that an
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: instable hydrogen atom oscillates inside of them, or that they
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: are instable mixtures of two bodies. Controversy raged, but never
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: was decided. It would never have begun, says Ostwald, if
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: the combatants had asked themselves what particular experimental fact could
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: have been made different by one or the other view
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: being correct, For it would then have appeared that no
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: difference of fact could possibly ensue, and the quarrel was
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: as unreal as if theorizing in primitive times about the
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: raising of dough by yeast one party should have invoked
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: a brownie, while another insisted in elf as the true
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: cause of the phenomenon footnote theory und praxis, zeit shift,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: dis uster raichichan echeneur On The Architect and Foreighness, nineteen
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: hundred and five, Number four, Volume six. I find a
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: still more radical pragmatism than Ostwald's in an address by
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Professor W. S. Franklin. I think that the sicklest notion
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: of physics, even if a student gets it, is that
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: it is the science of masses, molecules, and the ether.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: And I think that the healthiest notion, even if a
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: student does not wholly get it, is that physics is
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: the science of the ways of taking hold of bodies
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: and pushing them science. January two, nineteen hundred Tree. It
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: of tracing a concrete consequence. There can be no difference
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere, no difference in
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: abstract truth that doesn't express itself in a difference in
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: concrete fact, and in conduct consequence upon that fact imposed
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: on somebody, somehow, somewhere and some when the whole function
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: difference it will make to you and me a definite
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: instance of our life, if this world formula or that
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: world formula be the true one. There is absolutely nothing
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: new in the pragmatic method. Socrates was an adept at it,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: Aristotle used it methodically. Locke, Berkeley, and Hume made momentous
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: contributions to truth by its means. Shadworth Hodgen keeps insisting
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: that realities are only what they are known as. But
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: these forerunners of pragmatism used it in fragments. They were preluders.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Only not until in our time has it generalized itself,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: become conscious of our universal mission, pretended to a conquering destiny.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: I believe in that destiny, and I hope I may
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: end by inspiring you with my belief. Pragmatism represent a
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude. But it
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: represents it as it seems to me, both in a
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: more radical and in a less objectionable form than it
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: has ever yet assumed. A pragmatist turns it back resolutely
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: and once for all, upon a lot of invertate habits.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: Dear to professional philosophers. He turns away from abstraction and insufficiency,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns towards
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: That means the empiricist temper regnant and the rationalist temper
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: sincerely given up. It means the open air and possibilities
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: of nature as against dogma, artificiality, and the pretense of
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: finality in truth. At the same time, it does not
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: stand for any special results. It is a method only,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: but the general triumph of that method would mean an
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: enormous change in what I have called in my last
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: lecture the temperament of filosophy. Teachers of the ultra rationalistic
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: type would be frozen out, much as the courtier type
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: is frozen out in republics, as the ultramontane type of
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: priests is frozen out in Protestant lands. Science and metaphysics
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: would come much nearer together, would in fact work absolutely
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: hand in hand. Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: kind of quest. You know how men have always hanked
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: off the unlawful magic, and you know what a great
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: part in magic words have always played. If you have
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: his name or the formula of incantation that binds him,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: you can control the spirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: power may be. Solomon knew the names of all the spirits,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: and having their names, he held them subject to his will.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: as a kind of a enigma which the key must
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: bringing word or name. That word names the universe's principle,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: and to possess it is, after a fashion, to possess
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: the universe itself, God, matter, reason, the absolute energy. Are
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: so many solving names you can rest when you have them,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: you are at the end of your metaphysical quest. But
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: any such word as closing your quest. You must bring
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: out of each word its practical cache value, set it
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: at work within the stream of your experience. It appears
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: less as a solution, then, than as a program for
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: more work, and more particularly as an indication of the
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: ways in which exist realities may be changed. Theorists thus
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: become instruments, not answers to enigmas in which we can rest.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: We don't lie back upon them. We move forward, and
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: on occasion make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: unstiffens all our theorists, limbers them up, and sets each
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: one at work. Being nothing essentially new, it harmonizes with
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: many ancient philosophic tendencies. It agrees with nominalism, for instance,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: in always appealing to particulars with utilitarianism in emphasizing practical aspects,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: with positivism in its disdain for verbal solutions, useless questions,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: and metaphysical abstractions. All these you see are anti intellectualist
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: tendencies against rational as a pretension and a method. Pragmatism
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: is fully armed and militant, but at the outset, at
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: least it stands for no particular results. It has no
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: dogmas and no doctrines save its method. As the young
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: Italian pragmatist Papina has well said, it lies in the
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: midst of our theories, like a corridor in a hotel.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: Innumerable chambers open out of it. In one you may
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: find a man writing on an atheistic volume. In the next,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: someone on his knees praying for faith and strength. In
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: a third, a chemist investigating our body's properties. In a fourth,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: a system of idealistic metaphysics is being excogitated. In a fifth,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: the impossibility of metaphysics is being shown. But they all
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: own the corridor, and all must pause through it if
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: they want a practical way of getting into or out
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: of their respective rooms. No particular results then so far,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: but only an attitude of orientation is what the pragmatic
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: method means the attitude of looking away from first things principles, categories,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: supposed necessities, and of looking towards last things fruits, consequences, facts.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: So much for the pragmatic method. You may say that
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: I have been praising it rather than explaining it to you.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: But I shall presently explain it abundantly enough by showing
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: how it works on some familiar problems. Meanwhile, the word
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: pragmatism has come to be used in a still wider sense,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: as meaning also a certain theory of truth. I mean
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: to give a whole lecture to the statement of that theory,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: after first paving the way. So I can be very
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: brief now, But brevity is hard to follow. So I
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: ask for your redoubled attention for a quarter of an hour.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: If much remains obscure, I hope to make it clearer
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: in the later lectures. One of the most successfully cultivated
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: branches of philosophy in our time is what is called
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: inductive logic, the study of the condition under which our
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: sciences have evolved. Writers on this subject have begun to
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: show a singular unanimity as to what the laws of
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: nature and elements of fact mean. When formulated by mathematicians, physicists,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: and chemists. When the first mathematical, logical, and natural uniformities,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: the first laws were discovered, men were so carried away
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: by the clearness, beauty, and simplification that resulted that they
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: believed themselves to have deciphered authentically the eternal thoughts of
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: the almighty. His mind also thundered and reverberated in psyllogisms.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: He also thought in conic sections, squares, and roots and rats,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: and geometrized like Euclid. He made velocity increase proportionally to
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: the time in folding bodies. He made the law of
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: the science for light to obey when refracted. He established
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: the classes orders, families and genera, or plants and animals,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: and fixed the distances between them. He thought the archetypes
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: of all things, and devised their variations. And when we
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: rediscover any one of these, his wondrous institutions with size
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: his mind in its very literal intention. But as the
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: sciences have developed further, the notion has gained ground that most,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: perhaps all, of our laws, are only approximations. The laws themselves, moreover,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: have grown so numerous that there is no counting them,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: And so many rival formulations are proposed in all the
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: branches of science that investigators have become accustomed to the
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: notion that no theory is absolutely a transcript of reality,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: but that any one of them may, from some point
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: of view, be useful. Their great use is to summarize
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: old facts and to lead to new ones. They are
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: only a man made language, a conceptual shorthand, as someone
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: calls them, in which we write our reports of nature,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: and languages, as is well known, tolerate much choice of
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: expression and many dialects. Thus, human arbitrariness has driven divine
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: necessity from scientific logic. If I mention the names of Sigurd,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: mach Ostwald, Parson, Milhard, Poinkreduham Raisin, those of you who
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: are students will easily identify the tendency I speak of,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: and will think of additional names. Writing now on the
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: front of this wave of scientific logic, misters Schiller and
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: Dewey appear with their pragmatistic account of what truth everywhere signifies. Everywhere,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: these teachers say, truth in our ideas and believes means
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: the same thing that it means in science. It means
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: They say nothing but this that ideas which themselves are
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: but parts of our experience become true just in so
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: with other parts of our experience, to summarize them, and
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: get about among them by conceptual shortcuts. Instead of following
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: the interminable succession or particular phenomena, any idea that will
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: carry us prosperously from any one part or our experience
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: saving labor is true for just so much true, and
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: so far forth true. Instrumentally, this is the instrumental view
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: of truth taught so successfully at Chicago, the view that
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: truth in our ideas means their power to work, promulgated
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: so brilliantly at Oxford. Misters Dewey, Schiller and their Alice
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: in reaching this general conception of all truths, have only
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: followed the example of geologists, biologists, and philologists in the
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: establishment of these other sciences. This successful stroke was always
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: to take some simple process actually observable in operation as
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: denudation by weather, say, or variation from parental type, or
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: change of dialect by incorporation of new words and pronunciations,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: and then to generalize it, making it apply to all
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: times and produce great results by summating its effects through
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: the ages. The observable process which Schilder and Dewey particularly
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: singled out for generalization is the familiar one by which
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: any individual settles into new opinions. The process here is
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: always the same. The individual has a stock of old
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: opinions already, but it meets a new experience that puts
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: them to strain. Somebody contradicts them, or in a reflective moment,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: he discovers that they contradict each other, or he hears
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: of facts with which they are incompatible, or desires arise
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: in him which they cease to satisfy. The result is
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: an inward trouble to which his mind till then had
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: been a stranger, and from which it seeks to escape
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: by modified Eyeing his previous mass of opinions, he saves
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: as much of it as he can, for in this
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives. So he
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: tries to change first this opinion and then that, for
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: they resist change very variously, until at last some new
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: idea comes up which he can graft upon the ancient
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: stock with a minimum of disturbance of the latter, some
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: idea that mediates between the stock and the new experience
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: and runs them into one another, most felicitously and expediently.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: This new idea is then adopted as the true one.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: It preserves the older stock of truths with a minimum
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: of modification, stretching them just enough to make them admit
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: the novelty, but conceiving that in ways as familiar as
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: the case leaves possible an outry explanation, violating all our preconceptions.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: Would never pause. For a true account of a novelty.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: We should scratch round industriously till we found something less eccentric.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: of its old orders standing. Time and space, cause and effect,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: nature and history, and one's owned biography remain untouched. New
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: truth is always a go between, a smoother over of transitions.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: It marries old opinion to new facts. So as ever
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: to show a minimum of jolt a maximum of continuity,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: we hold the theory true just in proportion to his
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: success in solving this problem of maxima and minima. But
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: success in solving this problem is eminently a matter of approximation.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: We say this theory solves it on the whole more
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: satisfactorily than that theory, but that means more satisfactorily to ourselves,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: and individuals will emphasize their points of satisfaction differently to
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: a certain degree. Therefore, everything here is plastic. The point
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: I now urge you to observe, particularly, is the part
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: played by the older truths. Failure to take account of
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: it is the source of much of the unjust criticism
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: leveled against pragmatism. Their influence is absolutely controlling. Loyalty to
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: them is the first principle. In most cases, it is
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: the only principle. For by far, the most usual way
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: or to abuse those who bear witness for them. You
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: doubtless wish examples of this process of truths growth, and
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: the only trouble is their superabundance. The simplest case of
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: new truth is, of course, the mere numerical addition of
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: new kinds of facts, or a new single facts of
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: all kinds to our experience, an addition that involves no
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: alteration in the old beliefs. Day follows day and its
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: content are simply added. The new contents themselves are not true.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: They simply come and are. Truth is what we say
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: about them, And when we say that they have come,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: truth is satisfied by the plain additive formula. But often
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: the day's contents oblige a rearrangement. If I should now
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: utter piercing shrieks and act like a maniac on this platform,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: it would make many of you revise your ideas as
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: to the probable worth of my philosophy. Radium came the
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: other day as part of the day's content and seemed
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: for a moment to contradict our ideas of the whole
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: order of nature, that order having come to be identified
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: with what is called the conservation of energy. The mere
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: sight of ragion paying heat away indefinitely out of its
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: own pocket seemed to violate that conservation. What to think
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: if the radiations from it were nothing but an escape
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: of unsuspected potential energy pre existent inside of the atoms,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: the principle of conservation would be saved. The discovery of
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: helium as the radiation's outcome opened away to this belief,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: So Ramsay's view is generally held to be true, because
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: although it extends our old ideas of energy, it causes
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: a minimum of alteration in their nature. End of Lecture two,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: Part one. I need not multiply instances. A new opinion
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: his beliefs in stock. It must both lean on old
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: truth and grasp new fact and its success. As I
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: said a moment ago, in doing this is a matter
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: for the individual's appreciation. When old truth grows, then by
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: new truth's addition, it is for subjective reasons we are
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: in the process and obey the reasons that new idea
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: is truest, which performs most felicitously its function of satisfying
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: our double urgency. It makes itself true, get itself classed
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: as true by the way it works grafting itself, then
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: upon the ancient body of truth, which thus grows much
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: as a tree grows by the activity of a new
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: layer of cambium. Now Julie and Schiller proceed to generalize
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: this observation and to apply it to the most ancient
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: parts of truth. They also once were plastic, they also
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: were called truth for human reasons. They also mediated between
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: newer parts played no role. Whatever is nowhere to be found.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: The reasons why we call things true is the reason
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: why they are true, for to be true means only
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: to perform this marriage function. The trail of the human
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: serpent is thus over everything. Truth independent, truth that we
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: find merely truth, no longer malleable to human need, truth incorrigible.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: In a word, such truth exists indeed superabundantly, or is
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: supposed to exist by rationalistically minded thinkers. But then it
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: means only the dead heart of the living tree, and
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: its being there means only that truth also has its
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: paleontology and its prescription, and may grow stiff with years
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: of veteran service, and petrified in men's regard by sheer antiquity.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: But how plastic even the oldest truths nevertheless really are,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: has been vividly shown in our day by the transformation
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: of logical and mathematical ideas, a transformation which seems even
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: to be invading physics. The ancient formulas are reinterpreted as
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: special expressions of much wider principles, principles that our ancestors
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: never got a glimpse of in their present shape and formulation.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: Mister Schiller still gives to all this view of truth
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: the name of humanism. But for this doctrine too, the
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: name of pragmatism seems fairly to be in the ascendant,
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: so I will treat it under the name of pragmatism
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: in these lectures. Such then, would be the scope of pragmatism,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: first a method, and second a genetic theory of what
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: is meant by truth. And these two things must be
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: our future topics. What I've said of the theory of
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: truth will, I am sure, have appeared obscure and unsatisfactory
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: to most of you, by reason of us brevity. I
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: shall make amends for that. Hereafter, in a lecture on
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: common sense, I shall try to show what I mean
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: by truths growing petrified by antiquity. In another lecture, I
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: shall expatiate on the idea that our thoughts become true
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: in proportion as they successfully exert their go between function.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: In a third, I shall show how hard it is
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: to discriminate subjective from objective factors in truth's development. You
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: may not follow me wholly in these lectures, and if
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: you do, you may not wholly agree with me, but
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: you will, I know, regard me at least as serious
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: and treat my effort with respectful consideration. You will probably
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: be surprised to learn, then, that mister Schiller's and Jewish
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: theory have suffered a hailstorm of contempt and ridiculle all
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: rationalism has risen against them in influential quarters. Mister Schiller
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: in particular has been treated like an impudent schoolboy who
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: deserves as banking. I should not mention this but for
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: the fact that it throws so much side light upon
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: that rationalistic temper to which I have posed the temporal pragmatism.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: Pragmatism is uncomfortable away from facts. Rationalism is comfortable only
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: in the presence of abstractions. These pragmatists talk about truths
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: in the plural, about their utility and satisfactoriness, about the
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: success with which they work, etc. Suggest to the typical
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: intellectualist mind a sort of coarse, lame, second rate makeshift
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: article of truth. Such truths are not real truth. Such
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: tests are merely subjective. As against this objective truth must
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: be something non utilitarian, haughty, refined, remote, august exalted. It
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: must be an absolute correspondence of our thoughts with an
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: equally absolute reality. It must be what we ought to
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: think unconditionally. The conditioned ways in which we do think
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: are so much irrelevance and matter for psychology, down with psychology,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: up with logic. In all this question, see the exquisite
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: contrast of the type of mind. The pragmatist clings to
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: and generalizes truth for him become a class name for
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: all sorts of definite working values in experience. For the rationalist,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: it remains a pure abstraction to the bare name of
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: which we must differ. When the pragmatist undertakes to show
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: in detail just why we must differ, the rationalist is
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: unable to recognize the concretes from which his own abstraction
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: is taken. He accuses us of denying truth, Whereas we
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: have only sought to trace exactly why people follow it,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: and always ought to follow it. Your typical ultra abstractionist
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: fairly shudders at concreteness. Other things equal, he positively prefers
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, clearer, nobler.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: I hope that, as these lectures go on, the concreteness
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: and closeness to facts of the pragmatism which they advocate
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: may be what approves itself to you as its most
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: satisfactory peculiarity. It only follows here the example of the
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: sister sciences interpreting the unobserved by the observed. It brings
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: old and new harmoniously together. It converts the absolutely empty
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: notion of a static relation of correspondence. What that may mean,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: we must ask later between our minds and reality into
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: that of our rich and active commerce, that anyone may
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: follow in detail and understand between particular thoughts of ours
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: and the great universe of our experiences in which they
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: play their parts and have their uses. But enough of
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: this at present. The justification of what I say must
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: be postponed. I wish now to add a word in
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: further explanation of the claim I made at our last meeting,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: that pragmatism may be a happy harmonizer of empiricist ways
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: of thinking with the more religious demands of human beings.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: Men who are strongly of the fact loving temperament, you
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: may remember me to have said, are liable to be
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: kept at a distance by the small sympathy with facts
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: which that philosophy from the present day fashion of idealism
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: offers them. It is far too intellectualistic. Old fashioned theism
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: was bad enough with its notion of God as an
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: exalted monarch made up of a lot of unintelligible or
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: preposterous attributes, but so long as it held strongly by
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: their argument from design, it kept some touch with concrete realities. Since, however,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: Darwinism has once for all displaced design from the minds
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: of the scientific theism has lost that foothold, and some
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: kind of an imminent or pantheistic deity working in things
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: rather than above them, is, if any, the kind recommended
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: to our contemporary imagination. Asperance to a philosophic religion turn,
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: as a rule more hopefully nowadays towards idealistic pantheism than
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: towards the older dualistic theism, in spite of the fact
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: that the latter still counts able defenders. But as I
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: said in my first lecture, the brand of pantheism offered
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: is hard for them to assimilate if they are lovers
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: of facts or empirically minded. It is the absolutistic brand,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: spurning the dust and reared upon pure logic. It keeps
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: no connection whatever with concreteness, affirming the Absolute mind, which
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: is its substitute for God to be the rational presuposition
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: of all particulars of fact, whatever they may be. It
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: remains supremely indifferent to what the particular facts in our
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: world actually are. Be they what they may, the Absolute
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: will father them. Like the sick lion in Essep's fable,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: all footprints lead into his den But nulla vestigia retrusum.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: You cannot redescend into the world of particulars by the
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: absolutees aid, or deduce any necessary consequences of detail importance
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: for your life from your idea of His nature. He
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: gives you, indeed the assurance that all is well with
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: him and for his eternal way of thinking. But thereupon
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: he leaves you to be finitely saved by your own
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: temporal devices. Far be it from me to deny the
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: majesty of this conception or its capacity to yield religious
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: comfort to a most respectable class of minds. But from
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: the human point of view, no one can pretend that
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: it does not suffer from the faults of remoteness and abstractness.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: It is eminently a product of what I have ventured
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: to call the rationalistic temper. It disdains empiricism's needs. Its
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: substitutes a pallid outline for the real world's richness. It
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: is dapper. It is noble in the bad sense, in
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: the sense in which to be noble is to be
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: enapt for humble service in this real world of sweat
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: and dirt. It seems to me that when a view
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: of things is noble, that or to count as a
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: Prince of Darkness may be a gentleman, as we are
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: told is, but whatever the God of Earth and Heaven is,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: he can surely be no gentleman. His menial services are
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: needed in the dust of our human trials even more
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: than his dignity is needed in the imperium. Now, pragmatism
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: devoted those should be to facts, has no such materialistic
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: bias as ordinary empiricism labors under. Moreover, she has no
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: objection whatever to the realizing of abstractions, so long as
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: you get about among particulars with their aid, and they
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: actually carry you somewhere. Interested in no conclusions but those
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: which our minds and our experiences work out together, she
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: has no a priori prejudices against theology. If theological ideas
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: prove to have a value for a concrete life, they
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: will be true for pragmatism in the sense of being
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: good for so much. And for how much more they
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: are true will depend entirely on their relations to the
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: other truths that also have to be acknowledged. What I
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: have said just now about the absolute of transcendental idealism
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: is a case in point. First I called it majestic
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: and said it yielded religious comfort to a class of minds.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: And then I accused it of remoteness and sterility. But
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: so far as it affords such comfort, it surely is
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: not sterile. It has that amount of value. It performs
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: a concrete function as a good pragmatist, I myself ought
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: to call the absolute true in so far forth, then,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: and I unhesitatingly now do so. But what does true
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: in so far forth mean? In this case? To answer,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: we need only apply the pragmatic method. What do believers
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: in the absolute mean by saying that their belief affords
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: them comfort? They mean that, since in the absolute finite
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: evil is overruled already, we may, therefore, whenever we wish,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: treat the temporal as if it were potentially the eternal,
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: be sure that we can trust its outcome, and without sin,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: In short, they mean we have a right, ever and anon,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: in its own way, feeling that its issues are in
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: better hands than ours and are none of our business.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: The universe is a system of which the individual members
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: may relax their anxieties occasionally, in which they don't care.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: Mood is also right for men and moral holidays in
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: order that, if I mistake not is part at least
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: or why the Absolute is known as that is the
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: great difference in our particular experiences which his being true
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: makes for us, that is part of his cash value
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: when he is pragmatically interpreted farther than that. The ordinary
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: lay reader in philosophy who thinks favorably of absolute idolism
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: does not venture to sharpen his conceptions. He can use
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: the absolute for so much, and so much is very precious.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: He is pained at hearing you speak incredulously of the absolute, therefore,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: and disregards your criticisms, because they deal with aspects of
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: the conception that he fails to follow. If the absolute
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: means this, and means no more than this, who can
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: possibly deny the truth of it? To deny it would
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: be to insist that men should never relax, and that
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: holidays are never in order. I am well aware how
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: odd it must seem to some of you to hear
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: me say that an idea is true so long as
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: to believe it is profitable to our lives, that it
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: is good forasmuch as it profits. You will gladly admit
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: if what we do by its aid is good, you
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: will allow the idea itself to be good in so
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: far forth, for we are the better for possessing it.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: But is it not a strange misuse of the word truth,
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: you will say to call ideas also true. For this reason,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: to answer this difficulty fully is impossible at this stage.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: On my account, you touch here upon the very central
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: point of mister Schiller's and Jewish and my own doctrine
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: of truth, which I cannot discuss with detail until my
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: sixth lecture. Let me now say only this, that truth
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: a category distinct from good and co ordinate with it.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: The true is the name of whatever proves itself to
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: be good in the way of belief, and good too
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: for definite, assignable reasons. Surely you must admit this that
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: if there were no good for life in true ideas,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: or if the knowledge of them were positively disadvantages, and
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: false ideas their only useful ones, then the current notion
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: that truth is divine and precious and its pursuit of
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: duty could never have grown up or become a dogma.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: In a word like that, our duty would be to
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: shun truth. Rather, But in this world, just as certain
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: foods are not only agreeable to our taste, but good
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: for our teas, our stomach in our tissues, so certain
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: ideas are not only agreeable to think about or agreeable
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: as supporting other ideas that we are fond of, but
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: they are also helpful in life's practical struggles. If there
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: be any life that it is really better we should lead,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: and if there be any idea which, if I believed in,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: would help us to lead that life, then it would
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: be really better for us to believe in that idea,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: unless indeed belief in it incidentally clashed with other greater
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: vital benefits. What would be better for us to believe?
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: This sounds very like a definition of truth. It comes
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: very near to saying what we ought to believe, and
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: in that definition none of you would find any oddity.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: Ought we, ever, not to believe? What is better for
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: us to believe? And can we then keep the notion
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: of what is better for us and what is true
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: for us permanently apart? Pragmatism says no, and I fully
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: agree with her. Probably you also agree so far as
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: the abstraction statement goes, but with a suspicion that if
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: we practically did believe everything that made for good in
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: our own personal lives, we should be found indulging all
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: kinds of fancies about the world's affairs and all kinds
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: of sentimental superstitions about a world hereafter Your suspicion here
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: is undoubtedly well founded, and it is evident that something
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: happens when you pass from the abstract to the concrete
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: that complicates the situation. I said just now that what
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: is better for us to believe is true unless the
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: belief incidentally clashes with some other vital benefit. Now, in
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: real life, what vital benefits is any particular belief of
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: ours most liable to clash with what? Indeed, except the
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: vital benefits yielded by other beliefs, when these prove incompatible
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: with the first ones. In other words, the greatest enemy
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: of any one of our truths may be the rest
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: of our truths. Truths have once for all, this desperate
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: instinct of self preservation and of desire to extinguish whatever
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: contradicts them. My belief in the absolute, based on the
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: good it does me, must run the gauntlet of all
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: my other beliefs. Grant that it may be true in
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: giving me a moral holiday. Nevertheless, as I conceive it,
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: and let me speak now confidentially as it were, and
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: merely in my own private person, it clashes with other
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: truths of mine, whose benefits I hate to give up
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: on its account. It happens to be associated with a
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: kind of logic of which I am the enemy. I
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: find that it entangles me in metaphysical paradoxes that are inacceptable,
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. But as I have enough trouble
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: in life already without adding the trouble of carrying these
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: intellectual inconsistencies, I personally just to give up the absolute.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: I just take my moral holidays or else. As a
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: professional philosopher, I try to justify them by some other principle.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: If I could restrict my notion of the absolute to
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: its bare holiday giving value, it wouldn't clash with my
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: other truths. But we cannot easily thus restrict our hypothesis.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: They carry supernumerary features, and these it is that clash.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: So my disbelief in the absolute means then disbelief in
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: those other supernumerary features, For I fully believe in the
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: legitimacy of taking moral holidays. You see by this what
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: I meant when I called pragmatism a mediator and reconcile it,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: and said, borrowing the word from Puppini, that he unstiffens
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: our theories. She has in fact no prejudices whatever, no
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: obstructive dogmas, no rigid canons, or what I shall count
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: as proof. She is completely genial. She will entertain any hypothesis,
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: She will consider any evidence. It follows that in the
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: religious field she is at a great advantage both of
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: a positivistic empiricism, which is anti theological bias, and over
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: religious rationalism, with its exclusive interest in the remote, the noble,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: the simple, and the abstract in the way of conception.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: In short, she widens the field of search for God.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: Rationalism sticks to logic and the emperium. Empiricism sticks to
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: the external senses. Pragmatism is willing to take anything to follow,
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: either logic or the senses, and to count the humblest
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: and most personal experiences. She will count mystical experiences if
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: they have practical consequences. She will take a God who
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: lives in the very dirt of private fact, if that
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: should seem a likely place to find Her only test
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: of probable truth is what works best in the way
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: of leading us, What fits every part of life best
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: and combines with the collectivity of experiences demands nothing being omitted.
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: If theological ideas should do this, if the notion of
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: God in particular should prove to do it, how should
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: pragmatism possibly deny God's existence? She should see no meaning
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: in treating as not true a notion that was pragmatically
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: so successful. What other kind of truth could there be
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: for her than all this agreement with concrete reality. In
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: my last lecture, I shall return again to the relations
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: of pragmatism with religion. But you see already how democratic
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: she is. Her manners are as various and flexible, her
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: resources as rich and endless, and her conclusions as friendly
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: as those of mother Nature. End of Lecture two. Lecture three,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: Some metaphysical problems pragmatically considered. I am now to make
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: the pragmatic method more familiar by giving you some illustrations
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: of its application to particular problems. I will begin with
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: what is driest, and the first thing I shall take
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: will be the problem of substance. Everyone uses the old
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: distinction between substance and attribute, enshrined as it is in
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: the very structure of human language, in the difference between
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: grammatical subject and predicate. Here is a bit of blackboard
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: crayon its modes attributes, properties, accidents, or affections. Use which
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: term you will are whiteness, friability, cylindrical shape, in solubility,
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: in water, et cetera, et cetera. But the bearer of
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: these attributes is so much shocked, which thereupon is called
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: the substance in which they inher. So the attributes of
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: this disk inhere in the substance, would those of my
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: coat in the substance wool. And so forth, Chalk, wood
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: and wool show again, in spite of their differences common properties,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: and in so far forth they are themselves counted as
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: modes of a still more primal substance, matter, the attributes
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: of which are space, occupancy, and impenetrability. Similarly, our thoughts
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: and feelings are affections or properties of our several souls,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: which are substances, but again not wholly in their own right,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: for they are modes of the still deeper substance spirit.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: Now it is very early seen that all we know
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: of the chalk is the whiteness, friability, et cetera. All
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: we know of the wood is the combustibility and free
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: bra structure. A group of attributes is what each substance
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: here is known as they form its sole cash value
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: for our actual experience. The substance is in every case
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: revealed through them. If we were cut off from them,
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: we should never suspect its existence. And if God could
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: keep sending them to us in an unchanged order, miraculously
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: annihilating at a certain moment the substance that supported them,
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: we never could detect the moment, for our experiences themselves
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: would be unaltered. Nominalists accordingly adopt the opinion that substance
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: is a spurious idea due to our inveterate human trick
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: of turning names into things. Phenomena coming groups, the shark group,
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: the wood group, et cetera, and each group gets its
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: name the name we then treat us in a way
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: supporting the group of phenomena. That load thermometer today, for instance,
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: is supposed to come from something called the climate. Climate
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: is really only the name for a certain group of days,
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: but it is treated as if it lay behind the day,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: And in general, we place the name as if it
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: were a being behind the facts it is the name of.
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: But the phenomenal properties of things, nominalists say, surely do
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: not really inhere in names, and if not in names
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: then they do not inhere in anything. They adhere or
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: cohere rather with each other. And the notion of a
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: substance inaccessible to us, which we think accounts for such
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: cohesion by supporting it as cemant might support pieces of mosaic,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: must be abandoned. The fact of the bare cohesion itself
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: is all that the notion of the substance signifies. Behind
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: that fact is nothing. Wristicism has taken the notion of
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: substance from common sense and made it very technical and articulate.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: Few things would seem to have fewer pragmatic consequences for
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: us than substances, cut off, as we are, from every
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: contact with them. Yet in one case, Scholasticism has proved
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: the importance of the substance idea by treating it pragmatically.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: I refer to certain disputes about the mystery of the Eucharist.
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: Substance here would appear to have momentous pragmatic value. Since
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: the accidents of the wafer don't change in the Lord's Supper,
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: and yet it has become the very body of Christ,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: it must be that the change is in the substance solely.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: The bread substance must have been withdrawn, and the divine
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: substance substituted miraculously without altering the immediate sensible properties. But
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: though these don't alter, a tremendous difference has been made
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: no lesser one than this, that we who take the
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: sacrament now feed upon the very substance of divinity. The
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: substance notion breaks into life than with tremendous effect if
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: once you allow that substances can separate from their accidents
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: and exchange these latter. This is the only pragmatic application
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: of the substance idea with which I am acquainted, and
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: it is obvious that it will only be treated seriously
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: by those who already believe in the real presence on
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: independent grounds. Material substance was criticized by Berkeley with such
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: telling effect that his name has reverberated through all subsequent philosophy.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: Berkeley's treatment of the notion of matter is so well
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: known as to need hardly more than a mention. So
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: far from denying the external world which we know, Berkeley
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: corroborated it. It was the scholastic notion of a material
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: substance unapproachable by us, behind the external world, deeper and
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: more real than it, and needed to support it, which
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: Berkeley maintained to be the most effective of all reducers
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: of the external world. To unreality abolish that substance, he said,
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: believe that God, whom you can understand and approach, sends
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: you the sensible world directly, and you confirm the latter
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: and back it up by his divine authority. Berkeley's criticism
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: of matter was consequently absolutely pragmatistic. Matter is known as
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: our sensations of color, figure, hardness, and the like. They
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: are the cash value of the term. The difference matter
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: makes to us by truly being is that we then
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: get such sensations. By not being is that we lack them.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: These sensations, then, are its sole meaning. Berkeley doesn't deny matter,
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: then he simply tells us what it consists of. It
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: is a true name for just so much in the
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: way of sensations. Locke and later Hume applied a similarly
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: pragmatic criticism to the notion of spiritual substance. I will
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: only mention Locke's treatment of our personal identity. He immediately
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: reduces this notion to its pragmatic value in terms of experience.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: It means, he says, so much consciousness, namely the fact
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: that at one moment of life we remember other moments
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: and feel them all as part of one and the
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: same personal history. Rationalism had explained this practical continuity in
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: our life by the unity of our soul's substance. But
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: Locke says, supposed that God should take away the consciousness,
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: should we be any the better for having still the
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: soul principle? Suppose he annexed the same consciousness to different souls,
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: Should we, as we realize ourselves, be any the worse
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: for that fact. In Locke's days, the soul was chiefly
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: a thing to be rewarded or punished. See how Locke,
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: discussing it from this point of view, keeps the question pragmatic.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: Suppose he says one to think of himself to be
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: the same soul that once was Nestor or Thirsitis. Can
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: he think their actions his own any more than the
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: actions of any other man that ever existed. But let
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: him once find himself conscious of any of the actions
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: of Nestor. He then finds himself the same person with Nestor.
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: In this personal identity is founded all the right and
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: justice of reward and punishment. It may be reasonable to think,
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: no one shall be made to answer for what he
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: knows nothing of, but shall receive his doom his consciousness
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: accusing or excusing. Supposing a man punished now for what
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: he had done in another life, whereof he could be
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: there between that punishment and being created miserable. Our personal
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: identity then consists, for Locke solely in pragmatically definable particulars.
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: Whether apart from these verifiable facts it also inheres in
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: a spiritual principle is a merely curious speculation. Locke compromises
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: that he was passively tolerated the belief in a substantial
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: soul behind our consciousness. But his successor, Hume, and most
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: empirically psychologists after him, have denied the soul, save as
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: the name for verifiable cohesions in our inner life. They
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: red and into the stream of experience with it, and
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: cash it into so much small change value in the
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: way of ideas and their peculiar connections with each other.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: As I said of Berkeley's matter, the soul is good
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: or true for just so much, but no more. The
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: mention of the material substance naturally suggests the doctrine of materialism.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: But philosophical materialism is not necessarily knit up with belief
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: in the matter as a metaphysical principle. One may deny
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: matter in that sense as strongly as Berkeley did. One
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: may be a phenomenalist like Huxley, and yet one may
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: still be a materialist in the wider sense of explaining
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: higher phenomena by lower ones and leaving the destinies of
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: the world at the mercy of its blinder parts and forces.
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: It is in this wider sense of the word that
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: materialism is opposed to spiritualism or theism, the law of
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: physical nature, or what run things. Materialism says the highest
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: productions of human genius might be ciphered by one who
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: had complete acquaintance with the facts out of their physiological conditions,
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: regardless whether nature be there only for our minds, as
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: idealists contend or not. Our minds in any case would
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: have to record the kind of nature it is and
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: write it down as operating through blind laws of physics.
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: This is the complexion of present day materialism, which may
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: better be called naturalism. Over against it stands theism, or
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: what in a wide sense may be termed spiritualism. Spiritualism
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: says that mind not only witnesses and records things, but
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: also runs and operates them, the world being thus guided
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: not by its lower but by its higher element. Treated
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: as it often is, the question becomes little more than
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: a conflict between esthetic preferences. Matter is gross, coarse, crass, muddy.
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: Spirit is pure, elevated, noble, and since it is more
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: consonant with the dignity of the universe, to give the
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: primacy in it to what appears superior Spirit must be
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: affirmed as the ruling principle. To treat abstract principles as
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: finalities before which our intellects may come to rest in
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: a state of admiring contemplation is the great rationalist. Failing spiritualism,
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: as often held, may be simply a state of admiration
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: for one kind and of dislike for another kind of abstraction.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: I remember a worthy spiritualist professor who always referred to
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: materialism as the mud philosophy, and deemed it thereby refuted
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: to such spiritualism as this. There is an easy answer,
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: and Missus Spencer makes it effectively in some well written
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: pages at the end of the first volume of his psychology.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: He shows us that matter, so infinitely subtle and performing
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: motions as inconceivably quick and fine as those which modern
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: science postulates in her explanations, has no trace of grossness left.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: He shows that the conception of spirit, as we immortals
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: he here to have framed it, is itself too gross
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: to cover the exquisite tenuity of nature's facts. Both terms,
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: he says, are but symbols pointing to that one unknowable
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: reality in which their oppositions cease to an abstract objection,
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: an abstract rejoinder suffices, and so far as one's opposition
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: to materialism springs from one's disdain of matter as something crass,
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: Missus Spencer cuts the ground from under one. Matter is
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: indeed infinitely and incredibly refined. To anyone who has ever
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: looked on the face of a dead child or parent,
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: the mere fact that matter could have taken for a
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: time that precious form, or to make matter sacred ever after,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: it makes no difference what the principle of life may be,
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: material or immaterial. Matter at any rate corporates lends itself
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: to all life's purposes. That beloved incarnation was among matters
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: possibilities But now, instead of resting in principles after this
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: stagnant intellectualist fashion, let us apply the pragmatic method to
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: the question what do we mean by matter? What practical
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: difference can it make now that the world should be
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: run by matter or by spirit? I think we find
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: that the problem takes with this a rather different character.
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: And first of all, I call your ten to a
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: curious fact. It makes not a single jot of difference
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: so far as the post of the world goes, whether
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: we deem it to have been the work of matter,
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: or whether we think a divine spirit was its author.
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: Imagine in fact, the entire contents of the world to
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: be once for all, irrevocably given. Imagine it to end
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: this very moment and to have no future. And then
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: let a theist and a materialist apply their rivel explanations
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: to its history. The theist shows how a god made it,
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: the materialist shows, and we will suppose with equal success,
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: how it resulted from blind physical forces. Then let the
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: pragmatist be asked to choose between their theories. How can
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: he apply his test if the world is already completed? Concepts?
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: For him are things to come back into experience with
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: things to make us look for difference. But by hypothesis
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: there is to be no more experiences, and no possible
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: differences can now be looked. For both theorists have shown
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: all their consequences, and by the hypothesis we are adopting
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: these are identical. The pragmatist must consequently say that the
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: two theoriess, in spite of their different sounding names, mean
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: exactly the same thing, and that the dispute is purely verbal.
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: I am opposing, of course, that the theorists have been equally
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: successful in their explanations of what is fujas. Consider the
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: case sincerely and say, what would be the worth of
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: a god? If he were there, with his work accomplished,
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: a rid his world run down, he would be worth
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: no more than just that world was worth to that
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: amount of result, with its mixed merits and defects his
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: creative power could attain, but go no farther. And since
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: there is to be no future, since the whole value
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: and meaning of the world has been already paid in
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: and actualized in the feelings that went with it in
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: the passing, and now go with it in the ending,
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: since it draws no supplemental significance, such as our real
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: world draws from its function of preparing something yet to come.
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: Why then, by it we take God's measure as it were.
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: He is the being who could, once for all do that,
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: and for that much we are thankful to him, But
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: for nothing more. But now, on the contrary hypothesis, namely,
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: that the bits of matter, following their laws could make
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: that world and do no less, should we not be
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: just as thankful to them? Wherein should we suffer loss
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: than if we dropped God as an hypothesis and made
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: the matter alone responsible. Where would any special deadness or
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: crassness come in? And how experience, being what is once
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: for all, would God's presence in it make it any
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: more living or richer? Candidly, it is impossible to give
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: any answer to this question. The actually experienced world is
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: supposed to be the same in its details on either hypothesis,
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: the same for our praise or blame. As Browning says,
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: it stands there indefeasibly a gift which can't be taken back.
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: Calling matter the cause of it retracts no single one
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: of the items that are made it up, nor does
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: calling God the cause augment them. They are the God
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: or the atoms, respectively, of just that and no other world.
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: The God, if there has been doing just what atoms
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: could do, appearing in the character of atoms, so to speak,
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: and earning such gratitude as is due to atoms, and
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: no more. If his presence lends no different turn or
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: it to the performance, It surely can lend it no
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: increase of dignity, nor would indignity come to it were
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: he absent, and did the atoms remain the only actors
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: on the stage. When a play is once over and
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: the curtained down, you really make it no better by
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: claiming an illustrious genius for its author, just as you
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: make it no worse by calling him a common hack. Thus,
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: if no future detail of experience or conduct is to
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: be deduced from our hypothesis, the debate between materialism and
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: theism becomes quite idle and insignificant. Matter and God, in
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: that event mean exactly the same thing. The power, namely,
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: neither more nor less that could make just this completed world.
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: And the wise man is he who, in such a
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: case would turn his back on such a supe iragatory discussion. Accordingly,
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: most men instinctively and positivists. In such scientists deliberately do
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: turn their backs on philosophical disputes from which nothing in
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: the line of definite future consequences can be seen to follow.
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: The verbal and empty character of philosophy is surely a
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: reproach with which we are but too familiar. If pragmatism
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: be true, it is a perfectly sound reproach unless the
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: theories under fire can be shown to have alternative practical outcomes,
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: however delicate and distant these may be. The common man
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: and the scientists say they discover no such outcomes, and
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: if their metaphysician can discern none either, the others certainly
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: are in the right of it. As against him, his
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: science is then but pompous, trifling, and the endowment of
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: a professorship for such a being would be silly. Accordingly,
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: in every genuine metaphysical debate, some practical issue, however conjectural
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: and remote, is involved. To realize this, revert with me
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: to our question and place ourselves this time in the
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: world we live in, in the world that has a
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: future that is yet uncompleted. Whilst we speak in this
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: unfinished world. The alternative of materialism or theism is intensely practical,
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: and it is worthwhile for us to spend some minutes
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: over our hour in seeing that it is so. How
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: indeed does the program differ for us according as we
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: consider that the facts of experience up to date are
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: purposeless configurations of blind atoms moving accordingly to eternal laws,
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: or that, on the other hand, they are due to
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: the providence of God. As far as the past fact go, indeed,
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: there is no difference. Those facts are in are backed
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: or captured, and the good that's in them is gained.
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: Be the atoms or be the God their cause are
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: accordingly many materialists about us to day, who, ignoring altogether
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: the future and practical aspects of the question, seek to
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: eliminate the odium attaching to the word materialism, and even
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: to eliminate the word itself by showing that if matter
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: could give birth to all these gains, why then matter,
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: functionally considered is just as divine an entity as God.
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: In fact, coalicious with God is what you mean by God.
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: Cease these persons advices to use either of these terms,
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: whether outgrown or position, use a term free of the
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: clerical connotations. On the one hand, of the suggestion of
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: grossness coarseness ignobility. On the other talk of the primal
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: mystery of the unknowable energy of the one and only power,
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: instead of saying either God or matter. This is the
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: course to which Missus Spencer urges us. And if philosophy
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: were purely retrospective, he would thereby proclaim himself an excellent pragmatist.
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: But philosophy is prospective also, and after finding what the
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: world has been and done and yielded, still asks the
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: further question, what does the world promise? Give us? A
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: matter that promises success, that is bound by its laws
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: to lead our world ever nearer to perfection? And any
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: rational man will worship that matter as readily as mister
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: Spencer worships his own so called unknowable power. It not
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: only has made for righteousness up to date, but it
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: will make for righteousness forever, as that is all we need,
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: doing practically all that a God can do. It is
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: equivalent to God. Its function is a god's function, and
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: is exerted in a world in which a God would
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: now be super purfluous. From such a world, a God
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: would never lawfully be missed. Cosmic emotion would here be
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: the right name for religion. But is the matter by
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: which mister Spencer's process of cosmic evolution is carried on
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: any such principle of never ending perfection as this? Indeed,
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: it is not for the future end of every cosmically
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: evolved thing or system of things is foretold by science
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: to be death and tragedy. And missus Spencer, in confining
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: himself to the esthetic and ignoring the practical side of
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: the controversy, has really contributed nothing serious to its relief.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: But apply now our principle of practical results, and see
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: what a vital significance the question of materialism or theism
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: immediately acquires. End of Lecture three, Part one. And materialism
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: so indifferent when taking retrospectively, point when we take them
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: prospectively to wholly different outlooks of experience. For according to
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: the theory of mechanical evolution, the laws of redistribution of
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: matter and motion, though they are certainly to thank for
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded us,
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: and for all the ideals which our minds now frame,
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: are yet fatally certain to undo their work again and
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: to redissolve everything that they have once evolved. You all
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: know the picture of the last state of the universe
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: which evolutionary science foresees. I cannot state it better than
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: in mister belfour's words. The energies of our system will decay.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: The glory of the Sun will be dimmed, and the earth,
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 1: tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race, which
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish.
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 1: a brief space broken, The contented silence of the universe
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: imperishable monuments and immortal deeds, death itself, and love stronger
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: than death will be as though they had never been.
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: Nor will anything that is be better or be worse
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: for all that that the labor, genius, devotion, and suffering
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 1: of man have striven through countless generations to effect. Footnote
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: the Foundations of Belief, page thirty. That is the sting
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: of it that in the vast driftings of the cosmic weather,
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: though many a jeweled shore appears, and many an enchanted
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: cloud bank floats away, long lingering, ere it be dissolved,
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: even as our world now lingers for our joy. Yet
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: when these transient products are gun, nothing, absolutely nothing remains
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: of represent those particular qualities, those elements of preciousness which
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 1: they may have enshrined, gun utterly from the very sphere
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: and room of being, without an echo, without a memory,
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: without an influence on aught that may come after to
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: make it care for similar ideals. This utter, final wreck
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: and tragedy is of the essence of scientific materialism as
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: at present understood. The lower and not the higher forces
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: are the eternal forces or the last surviving forces, within
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: the only cycle of evolution which we can definitely see.
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: Missus Spencer believes this as much as any one, So
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: why should he argue with us as if we were
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: making sillisthetic objections to the grossness of matter and motion
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: the principles of his philosophy, when what really dismisses is
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: the disconsolateness of its ulterior practical results. No, the true
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: objection to materialism is not positive but negative. It would
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: be forcical at this state to make complaint of it
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: for what it is. For grossness. Grossness is what grossness
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: does we now know that we make complaint of it.
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: On the contrary, for what it is not, not a
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: of our remotest hopes. The notion of God, on the
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: other hand, however inferior it may be in clearness to
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: those mathematical notions so current in mechanical philosophy, has at
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: least this practical superiority over them, that it guarantees an
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: ideal order that shall be permanently preserved. A world with
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: a guard in it, to say the last word, may
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: indeed burn up or freeze, But we then think of
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: him as still mindful of the old ideals and sure
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: to bring them elsewhere to fruition, so that where he is,
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: strategy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution,
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: not the absolutely final things. This need of an eternal
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: moral order is one of the deepest needs of our breast,
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: and those poets like Dante and Wordsworth who lived on
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: the conviction of such an order owe to that fact
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: the extraordinary tonic and consoling power of their verse. Here, then,
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 1: in these different emotional and practical appeals, in these adjustments
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: of our concrete attitudes of hope and expectation, and all
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: the delicate consequences which their differences entail lie the real
• 2:18:59
  Speaker 1: meanings of materialism and spiritualism, not in hair splitting abstractions
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: about matters inner essence or about the metaphysical attributes of God.
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: eternal and the cutting off of ultimate hopes. Spiritualism means
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 1: the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: loose of hope. Surely here is an issue genuine enough
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: for any one who feels it, and as long as
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: men are men, it will yield matter for a serious
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: philosophic debate. But possibly some of you may still rally
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: to their defense. Even whilst admitting that spiritualism and materialism
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 1: make different prophecies of the world's future. You may yourselves
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: poo poo the difference as something so infinitely remote as
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: to mean nothing for a sane mind. The essence of
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: a sane mind, you may say, is to take shorter
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: views and to feel no concern about such cameras as
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: the latter end of the world. Well, I can only
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: say that if you say this, you do injustice to
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: human nature. Religious melancholy is not disposed of by a
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: simple flourish of the word insanity. The absolute things, the
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: last things, that overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns.
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: All superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: with the shortest views is simply the mind of the
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: more shallow man. The issues of fact at stake in
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: the debate are, of course vaguely enough conceived by us
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: at present. But spiritualistic faith in all its forms, deals
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: with a world of promise, while materialism's sun sets in
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: a sea of disappointment. Remember what I said of the absolute.
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: It grants us moral holidays. Any religious view does this.
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: It not only incites our more strenuous moments, but it
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: also takes our joyous, careless, trustful moments, and it justifies them.
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: It paints the grounds of justification vaguely enough to be sure.
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: The exact features of the saving future facts that our
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: belief in God ensures will have to be ciphered out
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: by the interminable methods of science. We can study our
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: God only by studying his creation. But we can enjoy
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 1: our God if we have one in advance of all
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: that labor. I myself believe that the evidence for God
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: lies primarily in inner personal experiences. When they have once
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 1: given you your God, his name means at least the
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: benefit of the holiday. You remember what I said yesterday
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: about the way in which truths flash and try to
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: down each other. The truth of God has to run
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: the gauntlet of all our other truths. It is on
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: trial by them, and they on trial by it. Our
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: final opinion about God can be settled only after all
• 2:22:15
  Speaker 1: the truths have straightened themselves out together. Let us hope
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: that they shall find a modus vivendi. Let me pause
• 2:22:24
  Speaker 1: to a very cognate philosophic problem, the question of design
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: in nature. God's existence has from time immorial been held
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: to be proved by certain natural facts. Many facts appear
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: as if expressly designed in view of one another. Thus
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: the woodpecker's bill, tongue, feet, tail, et cetera, fit him
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: wondrously for a world of trees with grubs hid in
• 2:22:51
  Speaker 1: their bark to feed upon. The parts of our eye
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: fit the laws of light to perfection, leading its rays
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 1: to a show picture on our retina. Such mutual fitting
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: of things diverse in origin, argued design. It was held,
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: and the designer was always treated as a man loving deity.
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: The first step in these arguments was to prove that
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: the design existed. Nature was ransacked for results obtained through
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: separate things being co adapted. Our eyes, for instance, originate
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: in intrajuterine darkness, and the light originates in the sun.
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 1: Yet see how they fit each other. They are evidently
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: made for each other. Vision is the end designed light
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: and eyes the separate means devised for its attainment. It
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: is strange considering how unanimously our ancestors felt the force
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: of this argument, to see how little it counts for
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: since the triumph of the Darwinian theory. Darwin opened our
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 1: minds to the power of chance happenings to bring forth
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: fit results if only they have time to add themselves together.
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: He showed the enormous waste of nature in producing results
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 1: that get destroyed because of their unfitness. He also emphasized
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: the number of adaptations which, if designed, would argue an
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: evil rather than a good designer. Here all depends upon
• 2:24:22
  Speaker 1: the point of view to the grub under the bock.
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: The exquisite fitness of the woodpecker's organism to extract him
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: would certainly argue a diabolical designer. Theologians have by this
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: time stretched their minds so as to embrace the Darwinian facts,
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: and yet to interpret them as still showing divine purpose.
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: It used to be a question of purpose against mechanism
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 1: of one or the other. It was as if one
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: should say, my shoes are evidently designed to fit my feet.
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 1: Hence it is impossible that they should have been produced
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 1: by machinery. We know that they are both. They are
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: made by a machinery it self designed to fit the
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: feet with shoes. Theology need only stretch similarly the designs
• 2:25:12
  Speaker 1: of God. As the aim of a football team is
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 1: not merely to get the ball to a certain goal.
• 2:25:17
  Speaker 1: If that were so, they would simply get up on
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: some dark knight and place it there, but to get
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 1: it there by a fixed machinery of conditions, the game's rules,
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: and the opposing players. So the aim of God is
• 2:25:31
  Speaker 1: not merely, let us say, to make men and to
• 2:25:33
  Speaker 1: save them, but rather to get this done through the
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 1: sole agency of nature's vast machinery. Without nature's stupendous laws
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: and counterforces, Man's creation and perfection, we might suppose, would
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: be too insipid achievements for God to have designed them.
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: This saves the form of the design argument at the
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 1: expense of its old, easy human content. The designer is
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: no longer the old man like deity. His designs have
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: grown so vast as to be incomprehensible to us humans.
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: The what of them so overwhelms us that to establish
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: the mere that of a designer for them becomes a
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: very little consequence. In comparison, we can with difficulty comprehend
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 1: the character of a cosmic mind whose purposes are fully
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: revealed by the strange mixture of goods and evils that
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: we find in these actual world's particulars. Or rather, we cannot,
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: by any possibility comprehend it. The mere word design by
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: itself has we see no consequences, and explains nothing. It
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: is the barrenness of principles. The old question of whether
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 1: there is a design is idle. The real question is
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 1: what is the world, whether or not it have a designer,
• 2:26:57
  Speaker 1: And that can be revealed only by the study of
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 1: all nature's particulars. Remember that no matter what nature may
• 2:27:04
  Speaker 1: have produced or may be producing, the means must necessarily
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: have been adequate, must have been fitted to that production,
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: The argument from fitness to design would consequently always apply
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: whatever were their product's character. The recent Mount Pelie eruption,
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: for example, required all previous history to produce that exact
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: combination of ruined houses, human and animal corpses, sunken ships,
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: volcanic ashes, et cetera. In just that one hideous configuration oppositions,
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 1: France had to be a nation and colonize Martinique. Our
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 1: country had to exist and send our ships there. If
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 1: God aimed at just that result, the means by which
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 1: the centuries bent their influences towards it showed exquisite intelligence.
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: And so at any state of things, whatever, either in
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: nature or in history, which we find actually realized. For
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: the parts of things, must always make some definite resultant,
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: be it chaotic or harmonious. When we look at what
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: has actually come, the conditions must always appear perfectly designed
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 1: to ensure it. We can always say, therefore, in any
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: conceivable world, of any conceivable character, that the whole cosmic
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: machinery may have been designed to produce it. Pragmatically, Then
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: the abstract word design is a blank cartridge. It carries
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: no consequences, It does no execution. What sort of design
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 1: and what sort of a designer are the only serious questions,
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: and the study of facts is the only way of
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: getting even approximate answers. Meanwhile, pending the slow answer from facts,
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: anyone who insists that there is a designer, an who
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: is sure he is a divine one, gets a certain
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: pragmatic benefit from the term. The same in fact which
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: we saw that the terms God, spirit or the absolute
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: yieldless design worthless, though it be as a mere rationalistic
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 1: principle set above or behind things, for our admiration, becomes
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: if our faith concretes it into something theistic, a term
• 2:29:22
  Speaker 1: of promise. Returning with it into experience, we gain a
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: more confiding outlook on the future. If not a blind force,
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: but a seeing force runs things, we may reasonably expect
• 2:29:37
  Speaker 1: better issues. This vague confidence in the future is the
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: sole pragmatic meaning at the present discernible in the terms
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: design and designer. But if cosmic confidence is right, not wrong,
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 1: better not worse, that is a most important meaning that
• 2:29:55
  Speaker 1: much at least of possible truth the terms will then
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: have in them. Let me take up another well worn controversy,
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: the free will problem. Most persons who believe in what
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 1: is called their free will, do so after the rationalistic fashion.
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: It is a principle, a positive faculty or virtue added
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 1: to man by which his dignity is enigmatically augmented. He
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: ought to believe it for this reason. Determinists who deny it,
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: who say that individual men originate nothing but merely transmit
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: to the future the whole push of the past cosmos,
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: of which they are so small, an expression diminish man.
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 1: He is less admirable stripped of this creative principle. I
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: imagine that more than half of you share our instinctive
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 1: belief in free will, and that admiration of it as
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 1: a principle of dignity has much to do with our fidelity.
• 2:30:55
  Speaker 1: But free will has also been discussed pragmatically, and strangely enough,
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 1: of the same pragmatic interpretation has been put upon it
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 1: by both disputants. Do you know how large a part
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 1: questions of accountability have played in ethical controversy? To hear
• 2:31:13
  Speaker 1: some persons, one would suppose that all that ethics aims
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: at is a code of merits and demerits. Thus does
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: the old legal and theological leaven the interesting crime and
• 2:31:25
  Speaker 1: sin and punishment abide with us? Who's to blame? Whom
• 2:31:29
  Speaker 1: can we punish? Whom will God punish? These preoccupations hang
• 2:31:35
  Speaker 1: like a bad dream of a man's religious history. So
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 1: both free will and determinism have been invagued against and
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 1: called absurd, because each, in the eyes of its enemies,
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 1: has seemed to prevent the imputability of good or bad
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: deeds to their authors. Queer antinemyitiss free will means novelty,
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: the grafting on to the past of something not involved therein.
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 1: If our acts were predetermined, if we merely transmitted the
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: push of the whole past, the free willists say, how
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 1: could we be praised or blamed for anything? We should
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: be agents only, not principles. And where then would be
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 1: our precious imputability and responsibility? But where would it be
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: if we had free will? Rejoined the determinists. If a
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 1: free act be a sheer novelty that comes not from me,
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: the previous me, but ex nihilo, and simply tax itself
• 2:32:40
  Speaker 1: on to me, how can I, the previous eye, be responsible?
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: How can I have any permanent character that will stand
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 1: still enough for praise or blame to be awarded? The
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 1: chaplet of my days tumbles into a cost of disconnected
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: beads as soon as the thread of their necessity is
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 1: drawn out by the preposterous indeterminist doctrine misters Fullerton and
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: MacTaggart have recently laid about them. Doubtedly with this argument,
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 1: it may be good ad hominem, but otherwise it is pitiful.
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 1: For I ask you, quite apart from other reasons, whether
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: any man, woman or child with a sense for realities
• 2:33:25
  Speaker 1: ought not to be ashamed to plead such principles as
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: either dignity or imputability, instinct and utility between them can
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 1: safely be trusted to carry on the social business of
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: punishment and praise. If a man does good acts, we
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: shall praise him. If he does bad acts, we shall
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: punish him anyhow, And quite apart from theories as to
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: whether the acts result from what was previous in him
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: or our novelties in a strict sense, to make our
• 2:33:55
  Speaker 1: human ethics revolve about the question of merit is a
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 1: piteous Under reality, God alone can know our merits if
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 1: we have any. The real ground for supposing free will
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: is indeed pragmatic, for it has nothing to do with
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: this contemptible right to punish which had made such a
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: noise in past discussions of the subject. Free will pragmatically
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: means novelties in the world, the right to expect that
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: in its deepest elements as well as in its surface phenomena,
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: the future may not identically repeat and imitate the past
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: that imitation and moss is there who can deny the
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: general uniformity of nature is presupposed by every lesser law.
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 1: But nature may be only approximately uniform, And persons in
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 1: whom knowledge of the world's post has bred pessimism or
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 1: doubts as to the world's good character, which becomes certainties
• 2:34:57
  Speaker 1: if that character be supposed eternally fixed next, may naturally
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: welcome free will as a melioristic doctrine. It holds up
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 1: improvement as at least possible, whereas determinism assures us that
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: our whole notion of possibility is born of human ignorance,
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: and that necessity and impossibility, between them rule the destinies
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 1: of the world. Free will is thus a general cosmological
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 1: theory of promise, just like the absolute good, spirit or design.
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: Taking abstractly, no one of these terms has any inner content.
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: None of them gives us any picture, and no one
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: of them would retain the least pragmatic value in a
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: world whose character was obviously perfect from the start elation
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: at mere existence, pure cosmic emotion and delight, would it
• 2:35:56
  Speaker 1: seems to me quench all interest in those speculations if
• 2:36:00
  Speaker 1: the world were nothing but a labor land of happiness.
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: Already Our interest in religious metaphysics arise in the fact
• 2:36:09
  Speaker 1: that our empirical future feels to us unsafe and needs
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 1: some higher guarantee. If the past and present were purely good,
• 2:36:19
  Speaker 1: who could wish that the future might possibly not resemble them?
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 1: Who could desire free will? Who would not say, with Huxley,
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: let me be wound up every day like a watch
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 1: to go right fatally, and I ask no better freedom.
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 1: Freedom in a world already perfect could only mean freedom
• 2:36:41
  Speaker 1: to be worse. And who could be so insane as
• 2:36:45
  Speaker 1: to wish that to be necessarily what it is to
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: be impossibly ought elsewhere? Would put the last touch of
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 1: perfection upon Optimism's universe. Surely the only possibility that that
• 2:37:00
  Speaker 1: one can rationally claim is the possibility that things may
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 1: be better. That possibility, I need hardly say, is one that,
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 1: as the actual world goes, we have ample grounds for desiderating.
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 1: Free will thus has no meaning unless it be a
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 1: doctrine of relief. As such, it takes its place with
• 2:37:22
  Speaker 1: other religious doctrines. Between them, they build up the old
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: wastes and repair the former desolations. Our spirit shut within
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: this courtyard of sense, experience is always saying to the intellect,
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: upon the tower watchmen, tell us of the night. If
• 2:37:40
  Speaker 1: it ought to promise bare, and the intellect gives it,
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 1: then these terms of promise, other than this practical significance,
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: the words God, free will, design, et cetera, have none yet,
• 2:37:54
  Speaker 1: dark though they be in themselves or intellectualistically taken. When
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: we bear them into life's thicket with us, the darkness
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: there grows light about us. If you stop in dealing
• 2:38:08
  Speaker 1: with such words, with their definition, thinking what to be
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 1: an intellectual finality? Where are you stupidly staring at a
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 1: pretentious sham? Thus ast ends assay extra et supra omnegenus
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 1: necessarium oum infinite perfectum, simplex, immotabile immensum a taranum intelligence,
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: et cetera. Wherein is such a definition really instructive? It
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 1: means less than nothing in its pompous robe of adjectives,
• 2:38:46
  Speaker 1: pragmatism alone can read a positive meaning into it, and
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 1: for that she turns her back upon the intellectualist point
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 1: of view. Altogether, God's in his heaven, all's right with
• 2:38:59
  Speaker 1: the world. That's the heart of your theology. And for
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: that you need no rationalist definitions. Why shouldn't we all
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 1: of us rationalists as well as pragmatists confess this pragmatism
• 2:39:14
  Speaker 1: so far from keeping her eyes bent on the immediate
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: practical foreground, as she is accused of doing, dwells just
• 2:39:21
  Speaker 1: as much upon the world's remotest perspectives. See then, how
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 1: all these ultimate questions turn, as it were, up their hinges,
• 2:39:31
  Speaker 1: and from looking backwards upon principles upon an Eerkindnist THEORETI
• 2:39:36
  Speaker 1: shei ish a god a causalitates princip a design a
• 2:39:42
  Speaker 1: free will taken in themselves as something august and exalted
• 2:39:46
  Speaker 1: about facts. See I say, how pragmatism shifts the emphasis
• 2:39:52
  Speaker 1: and looks forward into facts themselves. The really vital question
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 1: for us all is what is this world going to be?
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: What is life eventually? To make of itself? The center
• 2:40:07
  Speaker 1: of gravity of philosophy must therefore alter its place the
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 1: earth of things long thrown into shadow by the glories
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 1: of the upper ether, must resume its rights to shift
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: the emphasis in this way means that philosophic questions will
• 2:40:24
  Speaker 1: fall to be treated by minds of a less abstractionist
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 1: type than heretofore, minds more scientific and individualistic in their tone,
• 2:40:34
  Speaker 1: yet not irreligious either. It will be an alteration in
• 2:40:38
  Speaker 1: the seat of authority that reminds one almost of the
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 1: Protestant Reformation, and as to papal minds, Protestantism has often
• 2:40:47
  Speaker 1: seemed a mere mess of honarchy and confusion. Such, no
• 2:40:52
  Speaker 1: doubt will pragmatism often seem to ultra rationalist minds in philosophy,
• 2:40:57
  Speaker 1: it will seem so much sheer trash philosophically. But life
• 2:41:03
  Speaker 1: wags on all the same and composes its ends in
• 2:41:06
  Speaker 1: Protestant countries. I venture to think that philosophic Protestantism will
• 2:41:11
  Speaker 1: compose a not dissimilar prosperity. End of Lecture three, Lecture four,
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: The One and the Many. We saw in the last
• 2:41:24
  Speaker 1: lecture that the pragmatic method, in its dealings with certain concepts,
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 1: instead of ending with admiring contemplation, plunges forward into the
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 1: river of experience with them and prolongs the perspective. By
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 1: their means design, free will, the absolute mind, spirit instead
• 2:41:42
  Speaker 1: of matter, have for their sole meaning a better promise
• 2:41:45
  Speaker 1: as to this world's outcome. Be they false or be
• 2:41:49
  Speaker 1: they true, The meaning of them is this meliorism. I
• 2:41:53
  Speaker 1: have sometimes thought of the phenomenon called total reflection in
• 2:41:57
  Speaker 1: optics as a good symbol of the relation betis between
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: abstract ideas and concrete realities, as pragmatism conceives it. Hold
• 2:42:06
  Speaker 1: a tumbler of water a little above your eyes and
• 2:42:09
  Speaker 1: look up through the water at its surface, or better still,
• 2:42:13
  Speaker 1: look similarly through the flat wall of an aquarium. You
• 2:42:17
  Speaker 1: will then see an extraordinarily brilliant reflected image, say of
• 2:42:22
  Speaker 1: our candle, flame, or any other clear object situated on
• 2:42:26
  Speaker 1: the opposite side of the vessel. No candle ray, under
• 2:42:30
  Speaker 1: these circumstances gets beyond the water's surface. Every ray is
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: totally reflected back into the depths. Again. Now, let the
• 2:42:40
  Speaker 1: water represent the world of sensible facts, and let the
• 2:42:44
  Speaker 1: air above it represent the world of abstract ideas. Both
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 1: worlds are real, of course, and interact, but they interact
• 2:42:53
  Speaker 1: only at their boundary and the locus of everything that
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 1: lives and happens to us, so far as full experience goes.
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 1: Is the water. We are like fishes swimming in the
• 2:43:03
  Speaker 1: sea of sense, bounded above by the superior element, but
• 2:43:07
  Speaker 1: unable to breathe it pure or penetrated. We get our
• 2:43:11
  Speaker 1: oxygen from it, however, We touch it incestantly, now in
• 2:43:16
  Speaker 1: this part, now in that, and every time we touch
• 2:43:18
  Speaker 1: it we are reflected back into the water, with our
• 2:43:21
  Speaker 1: course redetermined and re energized. The abstract ideas of which
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 1: the air consists, indispensable for life, but irrespirable by themselves,
• 2:43:32
  Speaker 1: as it were, and only active in their redirecting function.
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 1: All seamals are halting. But this one rather takes my fancy.
• 2:43:41
  Speaker 1: It shows how something not sufficient for life in itself
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: may nevertheless be an effective determinant of life elsewhere. In
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 1: this present hour, I wish to illustrate the pragmatic method
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 1: by one more application. I wish to turn its light
• 2:43:57
  Speaker 1: upon the ancient problem of the one and the many.
• 2:44:01
  Speaker 1: I suspect that in but few of you has this
• 2:44:04
  Speaker 1: problem occasioned sleepless nights. And I should not be astonished
• 2:44:07
  Speaker 1: if some of you told me it had never vexed
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 1: you I myself have come, by long brooding over it
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 1: to consider it the most central of all philosophic problems.
• 2:44:19
  Speaker 1: Central because so pregnant. I mean by this that if
• 2:44:23
  Speaker 1: you know whether man is a decided monist or a
• 2:44:27
  Speaker 1: decided pluralist, you perhaps know more about the rest of
• 2:44:30
  Speaker 1: his opinions than if you give him any other name
• 2:44:33
  Speaker 1: ending in ist to believe in the one or in
• 2:44:37
  Speaker 1: the many. That is the classification with the maximum number
• 2:44:41
  Speaker 1: of consequences. So bear with me for an hour while
• 2:44:45
  Speaker 1: I try to inspire you with my own interest in
• 2:44:48
  Speaker 1: the problem. Philosophy has often been defined as the quest
• 2:44:53
  Speaker 1: or the vision of world's unity. We never hear this
• 2:44:57
  Speaker 1: definition challenged, and it is true as far as goes,
• 2:45:00
  Speaker 1: for philosophy has indeed manifested above all things its interest
• 2:45:04
  Speaker 1: in unity. But how about the variety in things? Is
• 2:45:10
  Speaker 1: that such an irrelevant matter? If instead of using the
• 2:45:14
  Speaker 1: term philosophy, we talk in general of our intellect and
• 2:45:18
  Speaker 1: its needs, we quickly see that unity is only one
• 2:45:21
  Speaker 1: of these. Acquaintance with the details of fact is always reckoned,
• 2:45:26
  Speaker 1: along with a reduction to system as an indispensable mark
• 2:45:30
  Speaker 1: of mental greatness. Your scholarly mind of encyclopedic philological type.
• 2:45:37
  Speaker 1: Your man, essentially of learning has never lacked for praise
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 1: along with your philosopher. What our intellect really aims at
• 2:45:46
  Speaker 1: is neither variety nor unity, taking singly but totality footnote
• 2:45:53
  Speaker 1: Compare a bellanger less concepts the cause at lactivity intentionelle
• 2:45:58
  Speaker 1: de l'esperite, Paris, Alcan, nineteen hundred five, page seventy nine,
• 2:46:04
  Speaker 1: f f. In this, acquaintance with reality's diversities is as
• 2:46:10
  Speaker 1: important as understanding their connection. The human passion of curiosity
• 2:46:16
  Speaker 1: runs on all fours, with a systematizing passion. In spite
• 2:46:21
  Speaker 1: of this obvious fact, the unity of things has always
• 2:46:24
  Speaker 1: been considered more illustrious, as it were, than their variety.
• 2:46:29
  Speaker 1: When a young man first conceives the notion that the
• 2:46:32
  Speaker 1: whole world forms one great fact, with all its parts
• 2:46:36
  Speaker 1: moving abreast as it were, and interlocked, he feels as
• 2:46:40
  Speaker 1: if he were enjoying a great insight, and looks superciliously
• 2:46:45
  Speaker 1: on all who still fall short of this sublime conception.
• 2:46:50
  Speaker 1: Taken thus abstractly as it first comes to one, the
• 2:46:53
  Speaker 1: first monistic insight is so vague as hardly to seem
• 2:46:57
  Speaker 1: worth defending intellectually, yet probably everyone in this audience in
• 2:47:02
  Speaker 1: some way cherishes it a certain abstract monism, a certain
• 2:47:07
  Speaker 1: emotional response to the character of oneness, as if it
• 2:47:12
  Speaker 1: were a feature of the world, not coordinate with its manyness,
• 2:47:16
  Speaker 1: but vastly more excellent and eminent. Is so prevalent in
• 2:47:21
  Speaker 1: educated circles that we might almost call it a part
• 2:47:24
  Speaker 1: of philosophic common sense. Of course, the world is one,
• 2:47:29
  Speaker 1: we say, how else could it be a world at all?
• 2:47:34
  Speaker 1: Empiricists as a rule are as stout monists of this
• 2:47:38
  Speaker 1: abstract kind as rationalists are. The difference is that the
• 2:47:43
  Speaker 1: empiricists are less dazzled. Unity doesn't blind them to everything else,
• 2:47:49
  Speaker 1: doesn't quench their curiosity for special facts, whereas there is
• 2:47:53
  Speaker 1: a kind of rationalist who is sure to interpret abstract
• 2:47:57
  Speaker 1: unity mystically and to forget get everything else, to treat
• 2:48:01
  Speaker 1: it as a principle, to admire and worship it, and
• 2:48:05
  Speaker 1: thereupon to come to a full stop intellectually. The world
• 2:48:10
  Speaker 1: is one. The formula may become a sort of number worship.
• 2:48:16
  Speaker 1: Three and seven have, it is true, been reckoned sacred numbers,
• 2:48:20
  Speaker 1: but abstractly taken. Why is one more excellent than forty three,
• 2:48:26
  Speaker 1: or than two million and ten. In this first vague
• 2:48:31
  Speaker 1: conviction of the world's unity, there is so little to
• 2:48:34
  Speaker 1: take hold of that we hardly know what we mean
• 2:48:37
  Speaker 1: by it. The only way to get forward with our
• 2:48:41
  Speaker 1: notion is to treat it pragmatically. Granting the oneness to exist,
• 2:48:46
  Speaker 1: what facts will be different? In consequence? What will the
• 2:48:50
  Speaker 1: unity be known as? The world is one? Yes? But
• 2:48:54
  Speaker 1: how one? What is the practical value of the oneness?
• 2:48:58
  Speaker 1: For us asking such questions, we pause from the vague
• 2:49:03
  Speaker 1: to the definite, from the abstract to the concrete. Many
• 2:49:07
  Speaker 1: distinct ways in which one has predicated of the universe
• 2:49:10
  Speaker 1: might make a difference come to view. I will note
• 2:49:14
  Speaker 1: successively the more obvious of these ways. One. First, the
• 2:49:19
  Speaker 1: world is at least one subject of discourse. If its
• 2:49:24
  Speaker 1: manness were so irremediable as to permit no union whatever
• 2:49:29
  Speaker 1: of its parts, not even our mind could mean the
• 2:49:32
  Speaker 1: whole of it at once. There would be like eyes
• 2:49:37
  Speaker 1: trying to look in opposite directions. But in point of fact,
• 2:49:41
  Speaker 1: we mean to cover the whole of it by our
• 2:49:44
  Speaker 1: abstract term world or universe, which expressly intends that no
• 2:49:49
  Speaker 1: part shall be left out. Such unity of discourse carries
• 2:49:54
  Speaker 1: obviously no farther monistic specifications. A chaos one so named,
• 2:49:59
  Speaker 1: has so much unity of discourse as a cosmos. It
• 2:50:03
  Speaker 1: is an odd fact that many monists consider a great
• 2:50:06
  Speaker 1: victory scored for their side. When pluralists say the universe
• 2:50:10
  Speaker 1: is many, the universe, the chuckle his speech bewrayeth him.
• 2:50:16
  Speaker 1: He stands confessed of monism out of his own mouth. Well,
• 2:50:20
  Speaker 1: let things be one in that sense. You can then
• 2:50:24
  Speaker 1: fling such a word as universe at the whole collection
• 2:50:28
  Speaker 1: of them. But what matters it? It still remains to
• 2:50:32
  Speaker 1: be ascertain whether they are one in any other sense
• 2:50:35
  Speaker 1: that is more valuable. Two are they, for example, continuous?
• 2:50:43
  Speaker 1: Can you pause from one to another, keeping always in
• 2:50:46
  Speaker 1: your one universe without any danger of falling out? In
• 2:50:51
  Speaker 1: other words, do the parts of our universe hang together
• 2:50:56
  Speaker 1: instead of being like detached grains of sand? Even grains
• 2:51:00
  Speaker 1: of sand, hang together through the space in which they
• 2:51:03
  Speaker 1: are embedded. And if you can in any way move
• 2:51:06
  Speaker 1: through such space, you can pass continuously from number one
• 2:51:10
  Speaker 1: of them to number two. Space and time are thus
• 2:51:14
  Speaker 1: vehicles of continuity by which the world's parts hang together.
• 2:51:19
  Speaker 1: The practical difference to us resultant from these forms of
• 2:51:23
  Speaker 1: union is immense. Our whole motor life is based upon them. Three.
• 2:51:32
  Speaker 1: There are innumerable other paths of practical continuity among things.
• 2:51:38
  Speaker 1: Lines of influence can be traced by which they together.
• 2:51:42
  Speaker 1: Following any such line, you pause from one thing to
• 2:51:45
  Speaker 1: another till you may have covered a good part of
• 2:51:48
  Speaker 1: the universe's extent. Gravity and heat conduction are such all
• 2:51:53
  Speaker 1: uniting influences so far as the physical world goes. Electric, luminous,
• 2:51:59
  Speaker 1: and chemical in influences follow similar lines of influence. But
• 2:52:03
  Speaker 1: upaq and inert bodies interrupt the continuity here, so that
• 2:52:08
  Speaker 1: you have to step round them or change your mode
• 2:52:10
  Speaker 1: of progress if you wish to get farther on that day. Practically,
• 2:52:15
  Speaker 1: you have then lost your universe's unity, so far as
• 2:52:19
  Speaker 1: it was constituted by those first lines of influence. There
• 2:52:24
  Speaker 1: are innumerable kinds of connection that special things have with
• 2:52:28
  Speaker 1: other special things, and the ensemble of any one of
• 2:52:32
  Speaker 1: these connections form one sort of system by which things
• 2:52:36
  Speaker 1: are conjoined. Thus, men are conjoined in a vast network
• 2:52:41
  Speaker 1: of acquaintanceship Brown Nose, Jones, Jones, Knows, Robinson, et cetera.
• 2:52:48
  Speaker 1: And by choosing your father intermediaries rightly, you may carry
• 2:52:53
  Speaker 1: a message from Jones to the Empress of China, or
• 2:52:57
  Speaker 1: the chief of African Pigmies, or to anyone else in
• 2:53:01
  Speaker 1: the inhabited world. But you are stopped short, as by
• 2:53:05
  Speaker 1: a non conductor, when you choose one man wrong. In
• 2:53:09
  Speaker 1: this experiment, what may be called love systems are grafted
• 2:53:14
  Speaker 1: on the acquaintance system. A loves or hates B, B
• 2:53:20
  Speaker 1: loves or hates, c et cetera. But these systems are
• 2:53:24
  Speaker 1: smaller than the great acquaintance system that they presuppose. Human
• 2:53:30
  Speaker 1: efforts are daily unifying the world more and more in
• 2:53:34
  Speaker 1: definite systematic ways. We found colonial, postal, consular, commercial systems,
• 2:53:42
  Speaker 1: all the parts of which they obey definite influences that
• 2:53:46
  Speaker 1: propagate themselves within the system, but not to facts outside
• 2:53:50
  Speaker 1: of it. The result is innumerable little hangings together of
• 2:53:55
  Speaker 1: the world's parts within the larger hangings together, worlds not
• 2:54:01
  Speaker 1: only of discourse but of operation within the wider universe.
• 2:54:06
  Speaker 1: Each system exemplifies one type or grade of union, its
• 2:54:10
  Speaker 1: parts being strung on that peculiar kind of relation, and
• 2:54:15
  Speaker 1: the same part may figure in many different systems, as
• 2:54:18
  Speaker 1: a man may hold several offices and belong to various clubs.
• 2:54:23
  Speaker 1: From this systematic point of view. Therefore, the pragmatic value
• 2:54:28
  Speaker 1: of the world's unity is that all these definite networks
• 2:54:32
  Speaker 1: actually and practically exist. Some are more enveloping and extensive,
• 2:54:38
  Speaker 1: some less. So they are superposed upon each other, and
• 2:54:42
  Speaker 1: between them all they let no individual elementary part of
• 2:54:46
  Speaker 1: the universe escape enormous, as is the amount of disconnection
• 2:54:51
  Speaker 1: among things. For these systematic influences and conjunctions follow rigidly
• 2:54:56
  Speaker 1: exclusive paths. Everything that exists is influenced in some way
• 2:55:02
  Speaker 1: by something else, if you can only pick the way
• 2:55:05
  Speaker 1: out rightly. Loosely speaking, and in general, it may be
• 2:55:09
  Speaker 1: said that all things cohere and adhere to each other somehow,
• 2:55:14
  Speaker 1: and that the universe exists practically in reticulated or concatenated
• 2:55:19
  Speaker 1: forms which make of it a continuous or integrated affair.
• 2:55:25
  Speaker 1: Any kind of influence whatever, helps to make the world
• 2:55:28
  Speaker 1: one so far as you can follow it from next
• 2:55:31
  Speaker 1: to next. You may then say that the world is one,
• 2:55:37
  Speaker 1: meaning in these respects, namely, and just so far as
• 2:55:40
  Speaker 1: they obtain, but just as definitely is it not one
• 2:55:45
  Speaker 1: so far as they do not obtain. And there is
• 2:55:48
  Speaker 1: no species of connection which will not fail. If instead
• 2:55:52
  Speaker 1: of choosing conductors. For it you choose non conductors, you
• 2:55:57
  Speaker 1: are then arrested at your very first step, and have
• 2:56:01
  Speaker 1: to write the world down as a pure many. From
• 2:56:04
  Speaker 1: that particular point of view, if our intellect had been
• 2:56:08
  Speaker 1: as much interested in disjunctive as it is in conjunctive relations,
• 2:56:14
  Speaker 1: philosophy would have equally successfully celebrated the world's disunion. The
• 2:56:20
  Speaker 1: great point is to notice that the oneness and the
• 2:56:23
  Speaker 1: manness are absolutely coordinate. Here. Neither is primordial or more
• 2:56:29
  Speaker 1: essential or excellent than the other, just as with space,
• 2:56:34
  Speaker 1: whose separating of things seems exactly on a par with
• 2:56:37
  Speaker 1: its uniting of them. But sometimes one function and sometimes
• 2:56:41
  Speaker 1: the other is what come home to us most so
• 2:56:45
  Speaker 1: in our general dealings with the world of influences. We
• 2:56:49
  Speaker 1: now need conductors and now need non conductors, and wisdom
• 2:56:54
  Speaker 1: lies in knowing which is which at the appropriate moment.
• 2:57:01
  Speaker 1: All these systems of influence or non influence may be
• 2:57:05
  Speaker 1: listed under the general problem of the world's causial unity.
• 2:57:09
  Speaker 1: If the minor caucial influences among things should converge towards
• 2:57:14
  Speaker 1: one common cautial origin of them in the past, one
• 2:57:19
  Speaker 1: great first cause for all that is, one might then
• 2:57:22
  Speaker 1: speak of the absolute cautial unity of the world. God's
• 2:57:27
  Speaker 1: filed on Creation's day has figured in traditional philosophy as
• 2:57:31
  Speaker 1: such an absolute cause and origin. Transcendental idealism translating creation
• 2:57:38
  Speaker 1: into thinking or willing to think, calls the divine act
• 2:57:44
  Speaker 1: eternal rather than first. But the union of the many
• 2:57:48
  Speaker 1: here is absolute. Just the same the many would not
• 2:57:52
  Speaker 1: be save for the one. Against this notion of unity
• 2:57:57
  Speaker 1: of origin of all, there has always stood the pluralistic
• 2:58:01
  Speaker 1: notion of an eternal self existing many in the shape
• 2:58:04
  Speaker 1: of atoms, or even of spiritual units of some sort.
• 2:58:09
  Speaker 1: The alternative has doubtless a pragmatic meaning. But perhaps as
• 2:58:14
  Speaker 1: far as these lectures go, we had better leave the
• 2:58:17
  Speaker 1: question of unity over which and unsettled. Five. The most
• 2:58:22
  Speaker 1: important sort of union that obtains among things, pragmatically speaking,
• 2:58:26
  Speaker 1: is their generic unity. Things exist in kinds. There are
• 2:58:31
  Speaker 1: many specimens in each kind, and what the kind implies
• 2:58:35
  Speaker 1: for one specimen it implies also for every other specimen
• 2:58:39
  Speaker 1: of that kind. We can easily conceive that every fact
• 2:58:43
  Speaker 1: in the world might be singular, that is, unlike any
• 2:58:47
  Speaker 1: other fact and soul of its kind. In such a
• 2:58:51
  Speaker 1: world of singulars our logic would be useless for logic
• 2:58:55
  Speaker 1: works by predicating of the single instance, what is true
• 2:58:59
  Speaker 1: of all its kind. Min with no two things alike
• 2:59:03
  Speaker 1: in the world, we should be unable to reason from
• 2:59:06
  Speaker 1: our past experiences to our future ones. The existence of
• 2:59:11
  Speaker 1: so much generic unity in things is thus perhaps the
• 2:59:15
  Speaker 1: most momentous pragmatic specification or what it may mean to
• 2:59:20
  Speaker 1: say the world is one. Absolute generic unity would obtain
• 2:59:25
  Speaker 1: if there were one soumomigenus under which all things without
• 2:59:30
  Speaker 1: exception could be eventually subsumed. Beings, thinkables, experiences would be
• 2:59:37
  Speaker 1: candidates for this position. Whether their alternatives expressed by such
• 2:59:42
  Speaker 1: words have any pragmatic significance or not is another question
• 2:59:47
  Speaker 1: which I prefer to leave unsettled just now. Six. Another
• 2:59:53
  Speaker 1: specification of what the phrase the world is one may
• 2:59:57
  Speaker 1: mean is unity or purpose. An enormous number of things
• 3:00:02
  Speaker 1: in the world subserve a common purpose. All the man
• 3:00:06
  Speaker 1: made systems, administrative, industrial, military, or what not exist, each
• 3:00:12
  Speaker 1: for its controlling purpose. Every living being pursues its own
• 3:00:17
  Speaker 1: peculiar purposes. They cooperate according to the degree of their
• 3:00:23
  Speaker 1: development in collective or tribal purposes. Larger ends thus enveloping
• 3:00:29
  Speaker 1: lesser ones, until an absolutely single final and climacteric purpose
• 3:00:34
  Speaker 1: subserved by all things without exception, might conceivably be reached.
• 3:00:40
  Speaker 1: It is needless to say that their appearances conflict with
• 3:00:44
  Speaker 1: such a view. Any resultant, as I said in my
• 3:00:47
  Speaker 1: third lecture, may have been purposed in advance, but none
• 3:00:51
  Speaker 1: of the results we actually know in this world have,
• 3:00:54
  Speaker 1: in point of fact, been purposed in advance. In all
• 3:00:57
  Speaker 1: their details, men and nation start with a vague notion
• 3:01:02
  Speaker 1: of being rich or great or good. Each step they
• 3:01:06
  Speaker 1: make brings unforeseen chances into sight and shuts out older vistas,
• 3:01:11
  Speaker 1: and the specifications of the general purpose have to be
• 3:01:14
  Speaker 1: daily changed. What is reached in the end may be
• 3:01:19
  Speaker 1: better or worse than what was proposed, but it is
• 3:01:22
  Speaker 1: always more complex and different. Our different purposes also are
• 3:01:28
  Speaker 1: at war with each other. Where one can't crush the
• 3:01:31
  Speaker 1: other out, they compromise, and the result is again different
• 3:01:35
  Speaker 1: from what anyone distinctly proposed beforehand. Vaguely and generally, much
• 3:01:41
  Speaker 1: of what was purposed may be gained, but everything makes
• 3:01:45
  Speaker 1: strongly for the view that our world is incompletely unified teleologically,
• 3:01:51
  Speaker 1: and is still trying to get its unification better organized.
• 3:01:56
  Speaker 1: Whoever claims absolute teleological unity saying that there is one
• 3:02:02
  Speaker 1: purpose that every detail of the universe subserves dogmatizes at
• 3:02:08
  Speaker 1: his own risk. Theologians who dogmatize thus find it more
• 3:02:13
  Speaker 1: and more impossible, as our acquaintance with the warring interests
• 3:02:18
  Speaker 1: of the world's parts grows more concrete, to imagine what
• 3:02:22
  Speaker 1: the one climactic purpose may possibly be like. We see, indeed,
• 3:02:27
  Speaker 1: that certain evils minister to alterior goods, that the bitter
• 3:02:32
  Speaker 1: makes the cocktail better, and that a bit of danger
• 3:02:36
  Speaker 1: or hardship puts us agreeably to our trumps. We can
• 3:02:41
  Speaker 1: vaguely generalize this into the doctrine that all the evil
• 3:02:45
  Speaker 1: in the universe is but instrumental to its greater perfection.
• 3:02:50
  Speaker 1: But the scale of the evil actually in sight defies
• 3:02:53
  Speaker 1: all human tolerance and transcendental idealism. In the pages of
• 3:02:58
  Speaker 1: a Bradley or a Royce bring rings us no farther
• 3:03:01
  Speaker 1: than the Book of job did. God's ways are not
• 3:03:04
  Speaker 1: our ways, so let us put our hands upon our mouth.
• 3:03:09
  Speaker 1: A God who can relish such superfluitoues of horror is
• 3:03:13
  Speaker 1: no god for human beings to appeal to. His animal
• 3:03:17
  Speaker 1: spirits are too high. In other words, the absolute, with
• 3:03:22
  Speaker 1: his own purpose is not the manlike god of common people. Seven.
• 3:03:29
  Speaker 1: Esthetic union among things also obtains, and is very analogous
• 3:03:34
  Speaker 1: to the ideological union. Things tell a story, their parts
• 3:03:40
  Speaker 1: hang together so as to work out a climax. They
• 3:03:44
  Speaker 1: play into each other's hands expressibly. Retrospectively, we can see
• 3:03:49
  Speaker 1: that although no definite purpose presided over a chain of events,
• 3:03:53
  Speaker 1: yet the events fell into a dramatic form, with a start,
• 3:03:57
  Speaker 1: a middle, and a finish. In point of fact, all
• 3:04:01
  Speaker 1: stories end, and here again, the point of view of
• 3:04:04
  Speaker 1: a many is that more natural one to take the
• 3:04:08
  Speaker 1: world is full of partial stories that run parallel to
• 3:04:12
  Speaker 1: one another, beginning and ending at odd times. They mutually
• 3:04:17
  Speaker 1: interlace and interfere at points. But we cannot unify them
• 3:04:22
  Speaker 1: completely in our minds. In following our life history, I
• 3:04:26
  Speaker 1: must temporarily turn my attention from my own. Even a
• 3:04:30
  Speaker 1: biographer of twins would have to press them alternately upon
• 3:04:34
  Speaker 1: his reader's attention. It follows that whoever says that the
• 3:04:39
  Speaker 1: whole world tells one story utters another of those monistic
• 3:04:44
  Speaker 1: dogmas that a man believes at his risk. It is
• 3:04:48
  Speaker 1: easy to see the world's history pluralistically, as a rope
• 3:04:52
  Speaker 1: of which each fiber tells a separate tale. But to
• 3:04:56
  Speaker 1: conceive of each cross section of the rope as an
• 3:04:59
  Speaker 1: absolutely single fact, and to sum the whole longitudinal series
• 3:05:04
  Speaker 1: into one being living an undivided life, is harder. We have, indeed,
• 3:05:10
  Speaker 1: the analogy of embryology to help us. The microscopist makes
• 3:05:15
  Speaker 1: a hundred flat cross sections of a given embryo and
• 3:05:19
  Speaker 1: mentally unites them into one solid whole. But the great
• 3:05:23
  Speaker 1: world's ingredients, so far as they are beings, seem, like
• 3:05:28
  Speaker 1: the robes fibers, to be discontinuous crosswise, and to cohere
• 3:05:33
  Speaker 1: only in the longitudinal direction followed in that direction, they
• 3:05:38
  Speaker 1: are many. Even the embryologists, when he follows the development
• 3:05:43
  Speaker 1: of his object, has to treat the history of each
• 3:05:47
  Speaker 1: single organ in turn. Absolute esthetic union is thus another
• 3:05:52
  Speaker 1: barely abstract ideal. The world appears as something more epic
• 3:05:58
  Speaker 1: than dramatic. So far then we see how the world
• 3:06:02
  Speaker 1: is unified by its many systems, kinds, purposes, and dramas.
• 3:06:07
  Speaker 1: That there is more union in all these ways than
• 3:06:10
  Speaker 1: openly appears. Is certainly true. That there may be one
• 3:06:14
  Speaker 1: sovereign purpose, system, kind, and story is a legitimate hypothesis.
• 3:06:20
  Speaker 1: All I say here is that it is rash to
• 3:06:23
  Speaker 1: affirm this dogmatically without better evidence than we possess at
• 3:06:27
  Speaker 1: present end of Lecture four, Part one. The great monistic
• 3:06:35
  Speaker 1: denk mittal for a hundred years past has been the
• 3:06:37
  Speaker 1: notion of the one Nowhere. The many exist only as
• 3:06:42
  Speaker 1: objects for his thought, exist in his dreams, as it were,
• 3:06:46
  Speaker 1: and as he knows them. They have one purpose, form
• 3:06:49
  Speaker 1: one system, tell one tale. For him, this notion of
• 3:06:54
  Speaker 1: an all enveloping noetic unity in things is the sublimest
• 3:06:58
  Speaker 1: achievement of india lecturalist philosophy. Those who believe in the absolute,
• 3:07:04
  Speaker 1: as the all Knower is termed, usually say that they
• 3:07:07
  Speaker 1: do so for coursive reasons which clear thinkers cannot evade.
• 3:07:13
  Speaker 1: The absolute has far reaching practical consequences, some of which
• 3:07:17
  Speaker 1: I drew attention in my second lecture. Many kinds of
• 3:07:21
  Speaker 1: difference important to us would surely follow from its being true.
• 3:07:25
  Speaker 1: I cannot here enter into all the logical proofs of
• 3:07:28
  Speaker 1: such a being's existence farther than to say that none
• 3:07:31
  Speaker 1: of them seem to me sound. I must therefore treat
• 3:07:35
  Speaker 1: the notion of an all knower simply as an hypothesis
• 3:07:38
  Speaker 1: exactly on a par logically with a pluralist notion that
• 3:07:43
  Speaker 1: there is no point of view, no focus of information
• 3:07:46
  Speaker 1: extant from which the entire content of the universe is
• 3:07:50
  Speaker 1: visible at once. God's consciousness, says Professor Royce, would note
• 3:07:57
  Speaker 1: the conception of God New York, eighteen hundred and nine
• 3:08:00
  Speaker 1: to seven, page two hundred and ninety two, forms in
• 3:08:03
  Speaker 1: its wholeness, one luminously transparent conscious moment. This is the
• 3:08:10
  Speaker 1: type of nuetic unity on which rationalism insists. Empiricism, on
• 3:08:15
  Speaker 1: the other hand, is satisfied with the type of nuetic
• 3:08:18
  Speaker 1: unity that is humanly familiar. Everything gets known by some
• 3:08:24
  Speaker 1: knower along with something else, But the knowers may in
• 3:08:28
  Speaker 1: the end be irreducibly many, and the greatest knower of
• 3:08:32
  Speaker 1: them all may yet not know the whole of everything,
• 3:08:35
  Speaker 1: or even know what he does know. At one single stroke,
• 3:08:40
  Speaker 1: he may be liable to forget. Whichever type obtained, the
• 3:08:45
  Speaker 1: world would still be a universe enuetically. Its parts would
• 3:08:49
  Speaker 1: be conjoined by knowledge, But in the one case the
• 3:08:53
  Speaker 1: knowledge would be absolutely unified. In the other, it would
• 3:08:56
  Speaker 1: be strung along and overlapped. The notion of one instantaneous
• 3:09:01
  Speaker 1: or eternal knower. Either adjective here means the same thing is,
• 3:09:06
  Speaker 1: as I said, the great intellectualist achievement of our time.
• 3:09:11
  Speaker 1: It has practically driven out that conception of substance which
• 3:09:14
  Speaker 1: earlier philosophers set such store by, and by which so
• 3:09:18
  Speaker 1: much unifying work used to be done. Universal substance, which
• 3:09:23
  Speaker 1: alone has being in and from itself, and of which
• 3:09:27
  Speaker 1: all the particulars of experience are but forms to which
• 3:09:30
  Speaker 1: it gives support. Substance has succumbed to the pragmatic criticisms
• 3:09:36
  Speaker 1: of the English school. It appears now only as another
• 3:09:41
  Speaker 1: name for the fact that phenomena, as they come are
• 3:09:44
  Speaker 1: actually grouped and given incoherent forms, the very forms in
• 3:09:49
  Speaker 1: which we finite Knower's experience or think them together. These
• 3:09:54
  Speaker 1: forms of conjunction are as much parts of the tissue
• 3:09:57
  Speaker 1: of experience as are the two terms which they connect.
• 3:10:02
  Speaker 1: And it is a great pragmatic achievement for recent idealism
• 3:10:06
  Speaker 1: to have made the world hang together in these directly
• 3:10:10
  Speaker 1: representable ways, instead of drawing its unity from the inherence
• 3:10:15
  Speaker 1: of its parts, whatever that may mean in an unimaginable
• 3:10:19
  Speaker 1: principle behind the scenes. The world is one, therefore, just
• 3:10:25
  Speaker 1: so far as we experience it to be concatenated one
• 3:10:30
  Speaker 1: by as many definite conjunctions as appear, but then also
• 3:10:35
  Speaker 1: not one by just as many definite disjunctions as we find.
• 3:10:41
  Speaker 1: The oneness and the maninness of it thus obtain in
• 3:10:44
  Speaker 1: respects which can be separately named. It is neither a
• 3:10:48
  Speaker 1: universe pure and simple, nor a multiverse pure and simple,
• 3:10:53
  Speaker 1: and its various manners of being one suggests for their
• 3:10:57
  Speaker 1: accurate assertment so many distinct programs of scientific work. Thus,
• 3:11:03
  Speaker 1: the pragmatic question what is the oneness, known as what
• 3:11:08
  Speaker 1: practical difference will it make? Saves us from all feverish
• 3:11:12
  Speaker 1: excitement over it as a principle of sublimity, and carries
• 3:11:16
  Speaker 1: us forward into the stream of experience with a cool head.
• 3:11:21
  Speaker 1: The stream may indeed reveal far more connection and union
• 3:11:25
  Speaker 1: than we now suspect, but we are not entitled, on
• 3:11:28
  Speaker 1: pragmatic principles to claim absolute oneness in any respect in advance.
• 3:11:35
  Speaker 1: It is so difficult to see definitely what absolute oneness
• 3:11:38
  Speaker 1: can mean that probably the majority of you are satisfied
• 3:11:42
  Speaker 1: with the sober attitude which we have reached. Nevertheless, there
• 3:11:46
  Speaker 1: are possibly some radically monistic souls among you who are
• 3:11:50
  Speaker 1: not content to leave the one and the many on
• 3:11:53
  Speaker 1: a par union of various grades, union of diverse types,
• 3:11:59
  Speaker 1: union that stops at non conductors, union that merely goes
• 3:12:04
  Speaker 1: from next to next, and means in many cases outer
• 3:12:09
  Speaker 1: nextness only, and not a more internal bond, union of concatenation.
• 3:12:14
  Speaker 1: In short, all that sort of things seem to you
• 3:12:18
  Speaker 1: a half way stage of thought. The oneness of things
• 3:12:23
  Speaker 1: superior to their manyness, you think, must also be more
• 3:12:26
  Speaker 1: deeply true, must be the more real aspect of the world.
• 3:12:31
  Speaker 1: The pragmatic view you are sure gives us a universe
• 3:12:35
  Speaker 1: imperfectly rational. The real universe must form an unconditional unit
• 3:12:41
  Speaker 1: of being, something consolidated with its parts co implicated through
• 3:12:47
  Speaker 1: and through. Only then could we consider our state completely rational.
• 3:12:53
  Speaker 1: There is no doubt whatever that this ultra monistic way
• 3:12:56
  Speaker 1: of thinking means a great deal to many minds. One life,
• 3:13:02
  Speaker 1: one truth, one love, one principle, one good, one God.
• 3:13:09
  Speaker 1: I quote from a Christian science leflet, which the day's
• 3:13:12
  Speaker 1: male brings into my hands. Beyond doubt, such a confession
• 3:13:16
  Speaker 1: of faith has pragmatically an emotional value, and beyond doubt,
• 3:13:21
  Speaker 1: the word one contributes to the value quite as much
• 3:13:25
  Speaker 1: as the other words. But If we try to realize
• 3:13:29
  Speaker 1: intellectually what we can possibly mean by such a glut
• 3:13:33
  Speaker 1: of oneness, we are thrown right back upon our pragmatistic determinations. Again.
• 3:13:40
  Speaker 1: It means either the mere name one the universe of discourse,
• 3:13:46
  Speaker 1: or it means the sum total of all the ascertainable
• 3:13:49
  Speaker 1: particular conjunctions and concatenations. Or finally, it means some one
• 3:13:56
  Speaker 1: vehicle of conjunction treated as all inclusive, like one origin,
• 3:14:02
  Speaker 1: one purpose, or one nowhere. In point of fact, it
• 3:14:06
  Speaker 1: always means one know where. To those who take it
• 3:14:10
  Speaker 1: intellectually today, the one nowhere involves, they think, the other
• 3:14:16
  Speaker 1: forms of conjunction. His world must have all its parts
• 3:14:20
  Speaker 1: co implicated in the one logical, esthetical teleological unit picture,
• 3:14:26
  Speaker 1: which is his eternal dream. The character of the absolute
• 3:14:31
  Speaker 1: Knower's picture is, however, so impossible for us to represent
• 3:14:35
  Speaker 1: clearly that we may fairly suppose that the authority which
• 3:14:39
  Speaker 1: absolute monism undoubtedly possesses and probably always will possess over
• 3:14:45
  Speaker 1: some persons draws its strength far less from intellectual than
• 3:14:50
  Speaker 1: from mystical grounds. To interpret absolute monism worthily be a mystic,
• 3:14:57
  Speaker 1: Mystical states of mind in every degree are shown by history,
• 3:15:01
  Speaker 1: usually though not always, to make for the monistic view.
• 3:15:04
  Speaker 1: This is no proper occasion to enter upon the general
• 3:15:07
  Speaker 1: subject of mysticism, But I will quote one mystical pronouncement
• 3:15:12
  Speaker 1: to show just what I mean. The paragon of all
• 3:15:16
  Speaker 1: monistic systems is the Vedanta philosophy of Hindustan, and the
• 3:15:21
  Speaker 1: paragon of Vedantist missionaries was the late Swami Vivekandanda, who
• 3:15:26
  Speaker 1: visited our shores some years ago. The method of Vedantism
• 3:15:31
  Speaker 1: is the mystical method. You do not reason, but after
• 3:15:35
  Speaker 1: going through a certain discipline, you see, and having seen,
• 3:15:39
  Speaker 1: you can report the truth. Vivikandanda thus reports the truth
• 3:15:44
  Speaker 1: in one of his lectures. Here where is any more
• 3:15:51
  Speaker 1: misery for him who sees this oneness in the universe,
• 3:15:54
  Speaker 1: This oneness of life, oneness of everything. This separation between
• 3:16:00
  Speaker 1: man and man, man and woman, man and child, nation
• 3:16:05
  Speaker 1: from nation, Earth, from moon, moon from sun. This separation
• 3:16:09
  Speaker 1: between atom and atom is the cause really of all
• 3:16:12
  Speaker 1: the misery. And the Vedanta says this separation does not exist,
• 3:16:18
  Speaker 1: it is not real. It is merely apparent on the surface.
• 3:16:22
  Speaker 1: In the heart of things, there is unity. Still, if
• 3:16:26
  Speaker 1: you go inside, you find that unity between man and man,
• 3:16:30
  Speaker 1: women and children, races and races, high and low, rich
• 3:16:34
  Speaker 1: and poor. The gods and men all are one, and
• 3:16:39
  Speaker 1: animals too, if you go deep enough, and he who
• 3:16:42
  Speaker 1: has attained to that has no more delusion. Where is
• 3:16:47
  Speaker 1: any more delusion for him? What can delude him? Who
• 3:16:50
  Speaker 1: knows the reality of everything, the secret of everything? Where
• 3:16:54
  Speaker 1: is there any more misery for him? What does he desire?
• 3:16:58
  Speaker 1: He has traced the reality of everything unto the Lord,
• 3:17:02
  Speaker 1: that center, that unity of everything, and that is eternal bliss,
• 3:17:06
  Speaker 1: eternal knowledge, eternal existence. Neither death nor disease, nor sorrow,
• 3:17:14
  Speaker 1: nor misery nor discontent is there in the center the reality.
• 3:17:20
  Speaker 1: There is no one to be mourned for, no one
• 3:17:23
  Speaker 1: to be sorry for. He has penetrated everything, the pure one,
• 3:17:28
  Speaker 1: the formless, the bodiless, the stainless. He the knower, he
• 3:17:32
  Speaker 1: the great poet, the self existent, He who is giving
• 3:17:36
  Speaker 1: to everyone what he deserves. Observe how radical the character
• 3:17:42
  Speaker 1: of the monism here is. Separation is not simply overcome
• 3:17:47
  Speaker 1: by the one. It is denied to exist. There is
• 3:17:51
  Speaker 1: no many. We are not parts of the one. It
• 3:17:55
  Speaker 1: has no parts. And since in a sense we undeniably are,
• 3:18:01
  Speaker 1: it must be that each of us is the one,
• 3:18:04
  Speaker 1: indivisibly and totally an absolute one, and I that one.
• 3:18:10
  Speaker 1: Surely we have here a religion which emotionally considered has
• 3:18:15
  Speaker 1: a high pragmatic value. It imparts a perfect sumptuousity of security.
• 3:18:22
  Speaker 1: As our Swami says in another place, when man has
• 3:18:27
  Speaker 1: seen himself as one with the infinite being of the universe,
• 3:18:31
  Speaker 1: when all separateness has ceased, when all men, all women,
• 3:18:35
  Speaker 1: all angels, all gods, all animals, all plants, the whole
• 3:18:39
  Speaker 1: universe has been melted into that oneness, then all fear disappears.
• 3:18:46
  Speaker 1: Whom to fear? Can I hurt myself? Can I kill myself?
• 3:18:51
  Speaker 1: Can I injure myself? Do you fear yourself? Then will
• 3:18:56
  Speaker 1: all sorrow disappear? What can cause me sorrow? I am
• 3:19:02
  Speaker 1: the one existence of the universe. Then all jealousies will disappear.
• 3:19:08
  Speaker 1: Of whom to be jealous of myself? Then all bad
• 3:19:12
  Speaker 1: feelings disappear? Against whom Will I have this bad feeling
• 3:19:18
  Speaker 1: against myself? There is none in the universe but me.
• 3:19:23
  Speaker 1: Kill out this differentiation, kill out this superstition that there
• 3:19:27
  Speaker 1: are many, He who in this world of many sees
• 3:19:31
  Speaker 1: that one he who in this mass of insentiency, sees
• 3:19:36
  Speaker 1: that one sentient being, he who in this world of shadow,
• 3:19:41
  Speaker 1: catches that reality unto him, belongs eternal peace, unto none else,
• 3:19:48
  Speaker 1: unto none else. We all have some ear for this
• 3:19:53
  Speaker 1: monistic music. It elevates and reassures we all have at
• 3:19:58
  Speaker 1: least the germ of a misssticism in us. And when
• 3:20:02
  Speaker 1: our idealists recite their arguments for the absolute saying that
• 3:20:07
  Speaker 1: the slightest union admitted anywhere charies logically absolute oneness with it,
• 3:20:13
  Speaker 1: and that the slightest separation admitted anywhere logically carries disunion
• 3:20:18
  Speaker 1: remediless and complete, I cannot help suspecting that the palpable
• 3:20:22
  Speaker 1: weak places in the intellectual reasonings they use are protected
• 3:20:27
  Speaker 1: from their own criticism by a mystical feeling that logic
• 3:20:32
  Speaker 1: or no logic, absolute oneness must, somehow, at any cost
• 3:20:36
  Speaker 1: be true. Oneness overcomes moral separateness at any rate. In
• 3:20:42
  Speaker 1: the passion of love. We have the mystic germ of
• 3:20:46
  Speaker 1: what might mean a total union of all sentient life.
• 3:20:51
  Speaker 1: This mystical germ wakes up in us on hearing the
• 3:20:54
  Speaker 1: monistic utterances acknowledges their authority and assigns to intellectual considerations
• 3:21:01
  Speaker 1: a secondary place. I will dwell no longer on these
• 3:21:06
  Speaker 1: religious and moral aspects of the question in this lecture.
• 3:21:10
  Speaker 1: When I come to my final lecture, there will be
• 3:21:12
  Speaker 1: something more to say. Leave them out of consideration for
• 3:21:17
  Speaker 1: the moment. The authority which mystical insights may be conjectured
• 3:21:21
  Speaker 1: eventually to possess, treat the problem of the one and
• 3:21:25
  Speaker 1: the many in a purely intellectual way. And we see
• 3:21:29
  Speaker 1: clearly enough where pragmatism stands. With her criterion of the
• 3:21:34
  Speaker 1: practical differences that theories make, we see that she must
• 3:21:38
  Speaker 1: equally abjure absolute monism and absolute pluralism. The world is
• 3:21:44
  Speaker 1: one just so far as its parts hang together by
• 3:21:47
  Speaker 1: any definite connection. It is many just so far as
• 3:21:51
  Speaker 1: any definite connection fails to obtain. And finally, it is
• 3:21:55
  Speaker 1: growing more and more unified by those systems of connection,
• 3:22:00
  Speaker 1: at least which human energy keeps framing. As time goes on.
• 3:22:05
  Speaker 1: It is possible to imagine alternative universes to the one
• 3:22:09
  Speaker 1: we know, in which the most various grades and types
• 3:22:13
  Speaker 1: of union should be embodied. Thus, the lowest grade of
• 3:22:18
  Speaker 1: universe would be a world of mere widness, of which
• 3:22:22
  Speaker 1: the parts were only strung together by the conjunction. And
• 3:22:27
  Speaker 1: such a universe is even now the collection of our
• 3:22:30
  Speaker 1: several inner lives, The spaces and times of our imagination.
• 3:22:35
  Speaker 1: The objects and events of your day dreams are not
• 3:22:38
  Speaker 1: only more or less incoherent inter say, but are wholly
• 3:22:42
  Speaker 1: out of definite relation with the similar contents of any
• 3:22:45
  Speaker 1: one else's mind. Our various reveries, now as we sit here,
• 3:22:51
  Speaker 1: compenetrate each other idly, without influencing or interfering. They coexist,
• 3:22:58
  Speaker 1: but in no order and in no way receptacle, being
• 3:23:01
  Speaker 1: the nearest approach to an absolute many that we can conceive,
• 3:23:05
  Speaker 1: We cannot even imagine any reason why they should be
• 3:23:09
  Speaker 1: known altogether, and we can imagine even less if they
• 3:23:12
  Speaker 1: were known together, how they could be known as one
• 3:23:16
  Speaker 1: systematic whole. But add our sensations and bodily actions, and
• 3:23:22
  Speaker 1: the union mounts to a much higher grade. Our audita
• 3:23:26
  Speaker 1: at Lisa and our acts fall into those receptacles of
• 3:23:30
  Speaker 1: time and space in which each event finds its date
• 3:23:34
  Speaker 1: and place. They form things, and are of kinds too,
• 3:23:39
  Speaker 1: and can be classed. Yet we can imagine a world
• 3:23:43
  Speaker 1: of things and of kinds in which the cautial interactions
• 3:23:46
  Speaker 1: with which we are so familiar should not exist. Everything
• 3:23:51
  Speaker 1: there might be inert towards everything else and refuse to
• 3:23:55
  Speaker 1: propagate its influence, or gross mechanical influence might pause, but
• 3:24:01
  Speaker 1: no chemical action. Such worlds would be far less unified
• 3:24:06
  Speaker 1: than ours. Again, there might be complete physical chemical interaction,
• 3:24:13
  Speaker 1: but no minds or minds, but altogether private ones with
• 3:24:18
  Speaker 1: no social life, or social life limited to acquaintance, but
• 3:24:22
  Speaker 1: no love or love, but no customs or institutions that
• 3:24:26
  Speaker 1: should systematize it. No one of these grades of universe
• 3:24:31
  Speaker 1: would be absolutely irrational or disintegrated in ferior, though it
• 3:24:36
  Speaker 1: might appear when looked at from the higher grades. For instance,
• 3:24:40
  Speaker 1: if our minds should ever become telepathetically connected so that
• 3:24:44
  Speaker 1: we knew immediately, or should, under certain conditions, know immediately
• 3:24:49
  Speaker 1: each what the other was thinking, the world we now
• 3:24:52
  Speaker 1: live in would appear to the thinkers in that world
• 3:24:55
  Speaker 1: to have been of any faerior grade. With the whole
• 3:24:59
  Speaker 1: of Paul most eternity open for our conjectures to range in,
• 3:25:04
  Speaker 1: it may be lawful to wonder whether the various kinds
• 3:25:07
  Speaker 1: of union now realized in the universe that we inhabit
• 3:25:11
  Speaker 1: may not possibly have been successively evolved after the fashion
• 3:25:16
  Speaker 1: in which we now see human systems involving in consequence
• 3:25:20
  Speaker 1: of human needs. If such an hypothesis were legitimate, total
• 3:25:26
  Speaker 1: oneness would appear at the end of things rather than
• 3:25:30
  Speaker 1: at their origin. In other words, the notion of the
• 3:25:33
  Speaker 1: absolute would have to be replaced by that of the ultimate.
• 3:25:38
  Speaker 1: The two notions would have the same content, the maximally
• 3:25:42
  Speaker 1: unified content of fact, namely, but their time relations would
• 3:25:47
  Speaker 1: be positively reversed. Footnote compare on the Ultimate mister Schiller's
• 3:25:53
  Speaker 1: essay Activity and Substance in his book entitled Humanism, page
• 3:25:58
  Speaker 1: two hundred four. After discussing the unity of the universe
• 3:26:02
  Speaker 1: in this pragmatic way, you ought to see why I
• 3:26:05
  Speaker 1: said in my second lecture, borrowing the word from my
• 3:26:08
  Speaker 1: friend G. Pappini, that pragmatism tends to unstiffen all our theories.
• 3:26:14
  Speaker 1: The world's oneness has generally been affirmed abstractly only, and
• 3:26:20
  Speaker 1: as if anyone who question it must be an idiot.
• 3:26:24
  Speaker 1: The temper of monest has been so vehement as almost
• 3:26:27
  Speaker 1: at times to be convulsive, and this way of holding
• 3:26:30
  Speaker 1: a doctrine does not easily go with reasonable discussion, and
• 3:26:34
  Speaker 1: the drawing of distinctions. The theory of the absolute, in particular,
• 3:26:39
  Speaker 1: has had to be an article of faith, affirmed dogmatically
• 3:26:43
  Speaker 1: and exclusively, the one and all, first in order of being,
• 3:26:48
  Speaker 1: and of knowing logically necessary itself, and uniting all lesser
• 3:26:53
  Speaker 1: things in the bonds of mutual necessity. How could it
• 3:26:56
  Speaker 1: allow of any mitigation of its inner rigidity. The slightest
• 3:27:01
  Speaker 1: suspicion of pluralism, the minutest wiggle of independence of any
• 3:27:06
  Speaker 1: one of its parts from the control of totality, would
• 3:27:10
  Speaker 1: ruin it absolute unity brooks no degrees. As well, might
• 3:27:14
  Speaker 1: you claim absolute purity for a glass of water because
• 3:27:17
  Speaker 1: it contains but a single little cholera germ. The independence,
• 3:27:23
  Speaker 1: however infinitiesmal of a part, however small, would be to
• 3:27:28
  Speaker 1: the absolute as fatal as a colera germ. Pluralism, on
• 3:27:33
  Speaker 1: the other hand, has no need of this dogmatic, rigoristic temper.
• 3:27:38
  Speaker 1: Provided you grant some separation among things, some tremor of independence,
• 3:27:43
  Speaker 1: some free play of parts of one another, some real
• 3:27:48
  Speaker 1: novelty or chance, however minute, she is amply satisfied and
• 3:27:53
  Speaker 1: will allow you any amount, however great, of real union,
• 3:27:59
  Speaker 1: how much a un union there may be, is a
• 3:28:01
  Speaker 1: question that she thinks can only be decided empirically. The
• 3:28:05
  Speaker 1: amount may be enormous, colossal, but absolute monism is shattered
• 3:28:10
  Speaker 1: if along with all that union there has to be
• 3:28:13
  Speaker 1: granted the slightest modicum, the most incipient nascency, or the
• 3:28:18
  Speaker 1: most residual traits of a separation that is not overcome. Pragmatism,
• 3:28:25
  Speaker 1: pending the final empirical as attainment of just what the
• 3:28:29
  Speaker 1: balance of union at this union among things may be,
• 3:28:32
  Speaker 1: must obviously range yourself upon the pluralistic side. Someday, she admits,
• 3:28:38
  Speaker 1: even total union with one knower, one origin, and a
• 3:28:43
  Speaker 1: universe consolidated in every conceivable way, may turn out to
• 3:28:47
  Speaker 1: be the most acceptable of all hypotheses. Meanwhile, the opposite
• 3:28:53
  Speaker 1: hypothesis of a world imperfectly unified still and perhaps always
• 3:28:57
  Speaker 1: to remain so, must be sincerely entertained. This latter hypothesis
• 3:29:03
  Speaker 1: is pluralism's doctrine. Since absolute monism forbids its being even
• 3:29:09
  Speaker 1: considered seriously, branding it as irrational from the start, it
• 3:29:14
  Speaker 1: is clear that pragmatism must turn its back on absolute
• 3:29:18
  Speaker 1: monism and follow pluralism's more empirical path. This leaves us
• 3:29:24
  Speaker 1: with the common sense world in which we find things
• 3:29:28
  Speaker 1: partly joined and partly disjoined. Things then, and their conjunctions?
• 3:29:34
  Speaker 1: What do such words mean? Pragmatically handled? In my next lecture,
• 3:29:40
  Speaker 1: I will apply the pragmatic method to the stage of
• 3:29:43
  Speaker 1: philosophizing known as common sense. End of Lecture four. Lecture
• 3:29:51
  Speaker 1: five Pragmatism and common Sense. In the last lecture, we
• 3:29:57
  Speaker 1: turned ourselves from the usual way of talk, looking of
• 3:30:00
  Speaker 1: the universe's oneness as a principle, sublime in all its blankness,
• 3:30:05
  Speaker 1: towards a study of the special kinds of union which
• 3:30:09
  Speaker 1: the universe unfolds. We found many of these to coexist
• 3:30:14
  Speaker 1: with kinds of separation equally real. How far am I verified?
• 3:30:19
  Speaker 1: Is the question which each kind of union and each
• 3:30:22
  Speaker 1: kind of separation asks us. Here, So, as good pragmatists,
• 3:30:27
  Speaker 1: we have to turn our face toward experience, towards facts.
• 3:30:33
  Speaker 1: Absolute oneness remains, but only as a hypothesis, and that
• 3:30:37
  Speaker 1: hypothesis is reduced nowadays to that of an omniscient knower
• 3:30:42
  Speaker 1: who sees all things without exception, as forming one single
• 3:30:46
  Speaker 1: systematic fact. But the knower in question may still be
• 3:30:51
  Speaker 1: conceived either as an absolute or as an ultimate. And
• 3:30:55
  Speaker 1: over against the hypothesis of him in either form. The
• 3:30:58
  Speaker 1: counter hypothesis that the widest field of knowledge that ever
• 3:31:03
  Speaker 1: was or will be, still contains some ignorance may be
• 3:31:07
  Speaker 1: legitimately held, some bits of information always may escape. This
• 3:31:14
  Speaker 1: is the hypothesis of noetic pluralism, which monists consider so absurd,
• 3:31:19
  Speaker 1: since we are bound to treat it as respectfully as
• 3:31:22
  Speaker 1: pnuetic monism until the facts shall have tipped the beam.
• 3:31:27
  Speaker 1: We find that our pragmatism, though originally nothing but a method,
• 3:31:32
  Speaker 1: has forced us to be friendly to the pluralistic view.
• 3:31:36
  Speaker 1: It may be that some parts of the world are
• 3:31:38
  Speaker 1: connected so loosely with some other parts as to be
• 3:31:42
  Speaker 1: strung along by nothing but the copula, and they might
• 3:31:47
  Speaker 1: even come and go without those other parts suffering any
• 3:31:51
  Speaker 1: internal change. This pluralistic view of a world of additive
• 3:31:55
  Speaker 1: constitution is one that pragmatism is unable to rule out
• 3:31:59
  Speaker 1: from serious consideration. But this view leads one to the
• 3:32:04
  Speaker 1: father hypothesis that the actual world, instead of being complete
• 3:32:08
  Speaker 1: eternally as the monists assure us, may be eternally incomplete
• 3:32:13
  Speaker 1: and at all times subject to addition or liable to loss,
• 3:32:18
  Speaker 1: it is at any rate incomplete in one respect and flagrantly. So.
• 3:32:23
  Speaker 1: The very fact that we debate this question shows that
• 3:32:27
  Speaker 1: our knowledge is incomplete at present and subject to addition.
• 3:32:32
  Speaker 1: In respect of the knowledge it contains, the world does
• 3:32:35
  Speaker 1: generally change and grow. Some general remarks on the way
• 3:32:41
  Speaker 1: in which our knowledge completes itself, when it does complete itself,
• 3:32:45
  Speaker 1: will lead us very conveniently into our subject for this lecture,
• 3:32:49
  Speaker 1: which is common sense to begin with. Our knowledge grows
• 3:32:54
  Speaker 1: in spots. The spots may be large or small, but
• 3:32:59
  Speaker 1: the knowledge never grows all over. Some old knowledge always
• 3:33:03
  Speaker 1: remains what it was. Your knowledge of pragmatism, let us suppose,
• 3:33:09
  Speaker 1: is growing now later. Its growth may involve considerable modification
• 3:33:14
  Speaker 1: of opinions which you previously held to be true, But
• 3:33:17
  Speaker 1: such modifications are apt to be gradual. To take the
• 3:33:21
  Speaker 1: nearest possible example, consider these lectures of mine. What you
• 3:33:26
  Speaker 1: first gained from them is probably a small amount of
• 3:33:30
  Speaker 1: new information, a few new definitions or distinctions or points
• 3:33:35
  Speaker 1: of view. But while these special ideas are being added,
• 3:33:39
  Speaker 1: the rest of your knowledge stands still. And only gradually
• 3:33:43
  Speaker 1: will you line up your previous opinions with the novelties
• 3:33:46
  Speaker 1: I am trying to instill and modify. To some slight
• 3:33:50
  Speaker 1: degree their mass. You listen to me, now, I suppose
• 3:33:54
  Speaker 1: with certain prepossessions as to my competency, and these affect
• 3:33:58
  Speaker 1: your reception of what I say. But were I suddenly
• 3:34:02
  Speaker 1: to break off lecturing and to begin to sing, we
• 3:34:05
  Speaker 1: won't go home till morning in a rich baritone voice,
• 3:34:09
  Speaker 1: not only would that new fact be added to your stock,
• 3:34:12
  Speaker 1: but it would oblige you to define me differently, and
• 3:34:15
  Speaker 1: that might alter your opinion of the pragmatic philosophy, and
• 3:34:19
  Speaker 1: in general bring about a re arrangement of a number
• 3:34:22
  Speaker 1: of your ideas. Your mind, in such processes, is strained,
• 3:34:27
  Speaker 1: and sometimes painfully so, between its older beliefs and the
• 3:34:31
  Speaker 1: novelties which experience brings along. Our minds thus grow in spots,
• 3:34:37
  Speaker 1: and like grease spots, the spots spread, But we let
• 3:34:41
  Speaker 1: them spread as little as possible. We keep unaltered as
• 3:34:45
  Speaker 1: much of our old knowledge as many of our old
• 3:34:48
  Speaker 1: prejudices and beliefs as we can. We patch and tinker
• 3:34:52
  Speaker 1: more than we renew. The novelty soaks in it stains
• 3:34:57
  Speaker 1: the ancient moss, but it is also tingd. But what
• 3:35:00
  Speaker 1: absorbs it our past that perceives, incorporates, and in the
• 3:35:04
  Speaker 1: new equilibrium in which each step forward in the process
• 3:35:08
  Speaker 1: of learning terminates. It happens relatively seldom that the new
• 3:35:12
  Speaker 1: fact is added raw. More usually, it is embedded, cooked,
• 3:35:17
  Speaker 1: as one might say, or stewed down in the source
• 3:35:20
  Speaker 1: of the old. New truths thus are resultants of new
• 3:35:24
  Speaker 1: experiences and of old truths, combined and mutually modifying one another.
• 3:35:30
  Speaker 1: And since this is the case in the changes of
• 3:35:33
  Speaker 1: opinion of to day, there is no reason to assume
• 3:35:36
  Speaker 1: that it has not been so at all times. It
• 3:35:40
  Speaker 1: follows that very ancient modes of thought may have survived
• 3:35:44
  Speaker 1: through all the later changes in men's opinions. The most
• 3:35:48
  Speaker 1: primitive ways of thinking may not yet be wholly expunged.
• 3:35:52
  Speaker 1: Like our five fingers, our earbones are a rudimentary cordal appendage,
• 3:35:58
  Speaker 1: or our other vestigial peculiarities. They may remain as indelible
• 3:36:03
  Speaker 1: tokens of events in our race history. Our ancestors may
• 3:36:08
  Speaker 1: at certain moments have struck into ways of thinking which
• 3:36:12
  Speaker 1: they might conceivably not have found. But once they did so,
• 3:36:16
  Speaker 1: and after the fact, the inheritance continues. When you begin
• 3:36:21
  Speaker 1: a piece of music in a certain key, you must
• 3:36:24
  Speaker 1: keep the key to the end. You may alter your
• 3:36:27
  Speaker 1: house ad libitum, but the ground plan of the first
• 3:36:30
  Speaker 1: architect persists. You can make great changes, but you cannot
• 3:36:35
  Speaker 1: change a Gothic church into a Doric temple. You may
• 3:36:39
  Speaker 1: rinse and rinse the bottle, but you can't get the
• 3:36:42
  Speaker 1: taste of the medicine or whiskey that first filled it
• 3:36:45
  Speaker 1: wholly out. My thesis now is this that our fundamental
• 3:36:50
  Speaker 1: ways of thinking about things are discoveries of exceedingly remote ancestors,
• 3:36:56
  Speaker 1: which have been able to preserve themselves throughout their experience
• 3:37:00
  Speaker 1: of all subsequent time. They form one great stage of
• 3:37:05
  Speaker 1: equilibrium in the human mind's development, this stage of common sense.
• 3:37:11
  Speaker 1: Other stages have grafted themselves upon this stage, but have
• 3:37:14
  Speaker 1: never succeeded in displacing it. Let us consider this common
• 3:37:18
  Speaker 1: sense stage first, as if it might be final. In
• 3:37:22
  Speaker 1: practical talk, a man's common sense means his good judgment,
• 3:37:27
  Speaker 1: his freedom from eccentricity, his gumption to use the vernacular word.
• 3:37:33
  Speaker 1: In philosophy, it means something entirely different. It means his
• 3:37:37
  Speaker 1: use of certain intellectual forms or categorists of thought. Where
• 3:37:42
  Speaker 1: we lobsters or bees, it might be that our organization
• 3:37:45
  Speaker 1: would have led to our using quite different modes from
• 3:37:48
  Speaker 1: these of apprehending our experiences. It might be, too, we
• 3:37:53
  Speaker 1: cannot dogmatically deny this, that such categoris unimaginable by us today,
• 3:37:59
  Speaker 1: would have proved on the whole as serviceable for handling
• 3:38:02
  Speaker 1: our experiences mentally as those which we actually use. If
• 3:38:08
  Speaker 1: this sounds paradoxical to anyone, let him think of analytical geometry.
• 3:38:13
  Speaker 1: The identical figures which Euclid defined by intrinsic relations, were
• 3:38:18
  Speaker 1: defined by Discard by the relations of their points to
• 3:38:22
  Speaker 1: adventitious coordinates, the result being an absolutely different and vastly
• 3:38:26
  Speaker 1: more potent way of handling curves. All our conceptions are
• 3:38:31
  Speaker 1: what the Germans call Denkmittel, means by which we handle
• 3:38:35
  Speaker 1: facts by thinking them. Experience merely as such doesn't come
• 3:38:40
  Speaker 1: ticketed and labeled. We have first to discover what it is.
• 3:38:44
  Speaker 1: Kant speaks of it as being, in its first intention
• 3:38:47
  Speaker 1: a gueville der Erscheinungen, a rhapsody de Revarnemungen, a mere motley,
• 3:38:54
  Speaker 1: which we have to unify by our wits. What we
• 3:38:57
  Speaker 1: usually do is first to frame some system of concepts
• 3:39:01
  Speaker 1: mentally classified, serialized, or connected in some intellectual way, and
• 3:39:06
  Speaker 1: then to use this as a tally by which we
• 3:39:09
  Speaker 1: keep tab on the impressions that present themselves when each
• 3:39:13
  Speaker 1: is referred to some possible place in the conceptual system.
• 3:39:17
  Speaker 1: It is thereby understood. This notion of parallel manifolds, with
• 3:39:23
  Speaker 1: their elements standing reciprocally in one to one relations, is
• 3:39:27
  Speaker 1: proving so convenient nowadays in mathematics and logic as to
• 3:39:31
  Speaker 1: supersede more and more the older classificatory conceptions. There are
• 3:39:38
  Speaker 1: many conceptual systems of this sort, and the sense manifold
• 3:39:42
  Speaker 1: is also such a system. Find our one to one
• 3:39:45
  Speaker 1: relation for our sense impressions anywhere among the concepts, and
• 3:39:50
  Speaker 1: in so far forth you rationalize the impressions. But obviously
• 3:39:54
  Speaker 1: you can rationalize them by using various conceptual systems. Old
• 3:40:00
  Speaker 1: common sense way of rationalizing them is by a set
• 3:40:03
  Speaker 1: of concepts, of which the most important are these thing
• 3:40:09
  Speaker 1: the same or different kinds, minds, bodies, one time, one space, subjects,
• 3:40:18
  Speaker 1: and attributes, causial influences, the fancied the real. We are
• 3:40:25
  Speaker 1: now so familiar with the order that these notions have
• 3:40:28
  Speaker 1: woven for us out of the everlasting weather of our perceptions,
• 3:40:32
  Speaker 1: that we find it hard to realize how little of
• 3:40:35
  Speaker 1: a fixed routine. The perceptions follow when taken by themselves.
• 3:40:40
  Speaker 1: The word weather is a good one to use here.
• 3:40:44
  Speaker 1: In Boston, for example, the weather has almost no routine,
• 3:40:47
  Speaker 1: the only law being that if you have had any
• 3:40:50
  Speaker 1: weather for two days, she will probably, but not certainly,
• 3:40:53
  Speaker 1: have another weather on the third. Weather experience, as it
• 3:40:57
  Speaker 1: thus comes to Boston is discontinuous and chaotic in point
• 3:41:02
  Speaker 1: of temperature of wind, rain, or sunshine. It may change
• 3:41:06
  Speaker 1: three times a day. But the Washington Weather Bureau intellectualizes
• 3:41:11
  Speaker 1: this disorder by making each successive bit of Boston weather episodic.
• 3:41:17
  Speaker 1: It refers it to its place and moment in a
• 3:41:19
  Speaker 1: continental cyclone, on the history of which the local changes
• 3:41:24
  Speaker 1: everywhere are strung as beads are strung upon ac cord.
• 3:41:29
  Speaker 1: Now it seems almost certain that young children and the
• 3:41:32
  Speaker 1: inferior animals take all their experiences very much as uninstructed
• 3:41:37
  Speaker 1: Bostonians take their weather. They know no more of time
• 3:41:41
  Speaker 1: or space as world receptacles, or of permanent subjects in
• 3:41:45
  Speaker 1: changing predicates, or of courses or kinds or thoughts or things,
• 3:41:50
  Speaker 1: than our common people know of continental cyclones. A baby's
• 3:41:56
  Speaker 1: rattle drops out of his hand, but the baby looks
• 3:41:59
  Speaker 1: not for it. It has gone out for him, as
• 3:42:03
  Speaker 1: a candle flame goes out, and it comes back when
• 3:42:06
  Speaker 1: you replace it in his hand, as the flame comes
• 3:42:09
  Speaker 1: back when re lit. The idea of its being a
• 3:42:13
  Speaker 1: thing whose permanent existence by itself he might interpolate between
• 3:42:18
  Speaker 1: its successive apparitions has evidently not occurred to him. It
• 3:42:23
  Speaker 1: is the same with dogs, out of sight, out of mind.
• 3:42:27
  Speaker 1: With them, it is pretty evident that they have no
• 3:42:30
  Speaker 1: general tendency to interpolate things. Let me quote here a
• 3:42:34
  Speaker 1: passage from my colleague G. Santaiana's book. If a dog,
• 3:42:40
  Speaker 1: while sniffing about contentedly sees afar off his master, arriving
• 3:42:44
  Speaker 1: after long absence, the poor brute asks for no reason
• 3:42:49
  Speaker 1: why his master went, why he has come again, why
• 3:42:53
  Speaker 1: he should be loved, or why presently, while lying at
• 3:42:56
  Speaker 1: his feet, you forget him and begin to grunt and
• 3:42:59
  Speaker 1: dream of the chase. All that is in utter mystery,
• 3:43:04
  Speaker 1: utterly unconsidered. Such experience has variety, scenery, and a certain
• 3:43:09
  Speaker 1: vital rhythm. Its story might be told in dithyrambic verse.
• 3:43:14
  Speaker 1: It moves wholly by inspiration. Every event is providential, every
• 3:43:18
  Speaker 1: act unpremeditated, absolute freedom and absolute helplessness have met together.
• 3:43:25
  Speaker 1: You depend wholly on divine favor. Yet that unfathomable agency
• 3:43:30
  Speaker 1: is not distinguishable from our own life. But the figures,
• 3:43:35
  Speaker 1: even of that disordered trauma, have their exits and their entrances,
• 3:43:41
  Speaker 1: And the accused can be gradually discovered by a being
• 3:43:44
  Speaker 1: capable of fixing his attention and retaining the order of
• 3:43:48
  Speaker 1: events in proportion. As such, understanding advances, each moment of
• 3:43:53
  Speaker 1: experience becomes consequential and prophetic of the rest. The calm
• 3:43:59
  Speaker 1: plays in life are filled with power, and its sposoms
• 3:44:03
  Speaker 1: with resource. No emotion can overwhelm the mind, for of
• 3:44:08
  Speaker 1: none is the basis or issue wholly hidden. No event
• 3:44:12
  Speaker 1: can disconcert it altogether, because it sees beyond means can
• 3:44:18
  Speaker 1: be looked for to escape from the worst predicament. And
• 3:44:22
  Speaker 1: whereas each moment had been formally filled with nothing by
• 3:44:25
  Speaker 1: its own adventure and surprised emotion, each now makes room
• 3:44:30
  Speaker 1: for the lesson of what went before, and surmises what
• 3:44:33
  Speaker 1: may be the plot of the whole footnote The Life
• 3:44:37
  Speaker 1: of reason, Reason in Common Sense, nineteen hundred and five,
• 3:44:42
  Speaker 1: page fifty nine. Even today, science and philosophy are still
• 3:44:47
  Speaker 1: laboriously trying to part fancies from realities in our experience,
• 3:44:52
  Speaker 1: and in primitive times they made only the most incipient distinctions.
• 3:44:57
  Speaker 1: In this line. Men believed whatever they thought thought with
• 3:45:00
  Speaker 1: any liveliness, and they mix their dreams with realities inextricably.
• 3:45:06
  Speaker 1: The crateogories of thought and things are indispensable here, instead
• 3:45:10
  Speaker 1: of being realities, we now call certain experiences only thoughts.
• 3:45:15
  Speaker 1: There is not a category among those enumerated of which
• 3:45:19
  Speaker 1: we may not imagine the use to have thus originated historically,
• 3:45:24
  Speaker 1: and only gradually spread that one time which we believe in,
• 3:45:28
  Speaker 1: and in which each event has its definite date, that
• 3:45:31
  Speaker 1: one space in which each thing has its position. These
• 3:45:36
  Speaker 1: abstract notions unify the world incomparably, but in their finished
• 3:45:41
  Speaker 1: shape as concepts, how different they are from the loose,
• 3:45:45
  Speaker 1: unordered time and space experiences of natural men. Everything that
• 3:45:50
  Speaker 1: happens to us brings its own duration and extension, and
• 3:45:54
  Speaker 1: both are vaguely surrounded by a marginal more that runs
• 3:45:59
  Speaker 1: into the duration and extension of the next thing that comes.
• 3:46:03
  Speaker 1: But we soon lose all our definite bearings. And not
• 3:46:07
  Speaker 1: only do our children make no distinction between yesterday and
• 3:46:10
  Speaker 1: the day before, yesterday, the whole past being churned up together.
• 3:46:14
  Speaker 1: But we adults still do so whenever the times are large.
• 3:46:19
  Speaker 1: It is the same with spaces on a map. I
• 3:46:22
  Speaker 1: can distinctly see the relation of London Constantinople, and peek
• 3:46:26
  Speaker 1: in to the place where I am. In reality, I
• 3:46:29
  Speaker 1: utterly fail to feel the facts which the map symbolizes.
• 3:46:35
  Speaker 1: The directions and distances are vague, confused, and mixed. Cosmic
• 3:46:40
  Speaker 1: space and cosmic time, so far from being the intuitions
• 3:46:44
  Speaker 1: that kan't said, they were our constructions, as patently artificial
• 3:46:48
  Speaker 1: as any that science can show. The great majority of
• 3:46:53
  Speaker 1: the human race never use these notions, but live in
• 3:46:57
  Speaker 1: plural times and spaces, inter penetrant and dood shine under
• 3:47:04
  Speaker 1: permanent things again, the same thing and its various appearances
• 3:47:09
  Speaker 1: and alterations, the different kinds of thing, with the kind
• 3:47:13
  Speaker 1: used finally as a predicate of which the thing remains
• 3:47:17
  Speaker 1: the subject. What a straightening of the tangle of our experiences,
• 3:47:22
  Speaker 1: immediate flux and sensible variety does this list of terms suggest.
• 3:47:28
  Speaker 1: And it is only the smallest part of its experiences
• 3:47:31
  Speaker 1: flux that anyone actually does straighten out by applying to
• 3:47:35
  Speaker 1: it these conceptual instruments out of them all our lowest
• 3:47:40
  Speaker 1: ancestors probably used only in then, most vaguely and inaccurately,
• 3:47:45
  Speaker 1: the notion of the same. Again, but even if you
• 3:47:49
  Speaker 1: had asked them whether the same were a thing that
• 3:47:52
  Speaker 1: had endured throughout the unseen interval, they would probably have
• 3:47:56
  Speaker 1: been at a loss and would have said that they
• 3:47:58
  Speaker 1: had never asked that question or considered matters in that light.
• 3:48:06
  Speaker 1: End of Lecture five, part one, Kinds and the sameness
• 3:48:12
  Speaker 1: of kind, what colossally useful denkmittal for finding our way
• 3:48:17
  Speaker 1: among the many? The manyness might conceivably have been absolute
• 3:48:23
  Speaker 1: experiences might have all been singular, no one of them
• 3:48:27
  Speaker 1: occurring twice. In such a world, logic would have had
• 3:48:32
  Speaker 1: no application. For kind and sameness of kind are logic's
• 3:48:37
  Speaker 1: only instruments. Once we know that whatever is of a
• 3:48:42
  Speaker 1: kind is also of that kind's kind, we can travel
• 3:48:47
  Speaker 1: through the universe as if with seven league boots. Brutes
• 3:48:52
  Speaker 1: surely never use these abstractions, and civilized men used them
• 3:48:57
  Speaker 1: in most various amounts cautial influence. Again, this, if anything,
• 3:49:04
  Speaker 1: seems to have been an antediluvian conception, For we find
• 3:49:08
  Speaker 1: primitive men thinking that almost everything is significant and can
• 3:49:13
  Speaker 1: exert influence of some sort. The search for the more
• 3:49:17
  Speaker 1: definite influences seems to have started in the question who
• 3:49:22
  Speaker 1: or what is to blame for any illness, namely or
• 3:49:27
  Speaker 1: disaster or untoward thing. From this center, the search for
• 3:49:32
  Speaker 1: caucial influences has spread. Hume and science together have tried
• 3:49:38
  Speaker 1: to eliminate the whole notion of influence, substituting the entirely
• 3:49:43
  Speaker 1: different dencmital of law. But law is a comparatively recent invention.
• 3:49:49
  Speaker 1: An influence reigns supreme in the older realm of the
• 3:49:53
  Speaker 1: common sense. The possible as something less than the actual
• 3:49:58
  Speaker 1: and more than the Holy O is another of these
• 3:50:02
  Speaker 1: magisterial notions of common sense. Criticize them as you may.
• 3:50:08
  Speaker 1: They persist, and we fly back to them the moment
• 3:50:12
  Speaker 1: critical pressure is relaxed self body. In the substantial or
• 3:50:18
  Speaker 1: metaphysical sense, no one escapes subjection to those forms of thought.
• 3:50:25
  Speaker 1: In practice, the common sense dinkmittal are uniformly victorious. Everyone,
• 3:50:33
  Speaker 1: however instructed, still thinks of a thing in the common
• 3:50:37
  Speaker 1: sense way as a permanent unit subject that supports its
• 3:50:42
  Speaker 1: attributes interchangeably. No one stably or sincerely uses the more
• 3:50:48
  Speaker 1: critical notion of a group of sense qualities united by
• 3:50:52
  Speaker 1: a law. With these categories in our hand, we make
• 3:50:57
  Speaker 1: our plans and plot together, and connect all the remoter
• 3:51:01
  Speaker 1: parts of experience with what lies before our eyes. Our
• 3:51:06
  Speaker 1: later and more critical philosophies are mere fads and fancies
• 3:51:11
  Speaker 1: compared with this natural mother tongue of thought. Common sense
• 3:51:16
  Speaker 1: appears thus as a perfectly definite stage in our understanding
• 3:51:21
  Speaker 1: of things, a stage that satisfies in an extraordinarily successful way.
• 3:51:26
  Speaker 1: The purposes for which we think things do exist even
• 3:51:32
  Speaker 1: when we do not see them. Their kinds also exist.
• 3:51:36
  Speaker 1: Their qualities are what they act by, and are what
• 3:51:40
  Speaker 1: we act on, and these also exist. These lamps shed
• 3:51:45
  Speaker 1: their quality of light on every object in this room.
• 3:51:49
  Speaker 1: We intercept it on its way whenever we hold up
• 3:51:52
  Speaker 1: an opaque screen. It is the very sound that my
• 3:51:56
  Speaker 1: lips emit that travels into your ears. It is the
• 3:51:59
  Speaker 1: sense of heat of the fire that migrates into the
• 3:52:02
  Speaker 1: water in which we boil an egg, and we can
• 3:52:05
  Speaker 1: change the heat into coolness by dropping in a lump
• 3:52:09
  Speaker 1: of eyes. At this stage of philosophy, all non European men,
• 3:52:14
  Speaker 1: without exception, have remained. It suffices for all the necessary
• 3:52:19
  Speaker 1: practical ends of life, and among our own race even
• 3:52:24
  Speaker 1: it is only the highly sophisticated specimens the minds debauched
• 3:52:29
  Speaker 1: by learning, as Berkeley calls them, who have ever even
• 3:52:34
  Speaker 1: suspected common sense of not being absolutely true. But when
• 3:52:39
  Speaker 1: we look back and speculate as to how the common
• 3:52:43
  Speaker 1: sense categorists may have achieved their wonderful supremacy, no reason
• 3:52:49
  Speaker 1: appears why. It may not have been by a process
• 3:52:52
  Speaker 1: just like that by which the conceptions due to Democritus,
• 3:52:56
  Speaker 1: Berkeley or Darwin achieved their similar trial in more recent times.
• 3:53:02
  Speaker 1: In other words, they may have been successfully discovered by
• 3:53:07
  Speaker 1: prehistoric geniuses whose names the Knight of Antiquity has covered up.
• 3:53:13
  Speaker 1: They may have been verified by the immediate facts of
• 3:53:16
  Speaker 1: experience which they have first fitted, and then from fact
• 3:53:21
  Speaker 1: to fact and from man to man, they may have
• 3:53:24
  Speaker 1: spread until all language rested on them, and we are
• 3:53:29
  Speaker 1: now incapable of thinking naturally. In any other terms, such
• 3:53:35
  Speaker 1: a view would only follow the rule that has proved elsewhere,
• 3:53:38
  Speaker 1: so fertile of assuming the vast and remote to conform
• 3:53:43
  Speaker 1: to the laws of formation that we can observe at
• 3:53:45
  Speaker 1: work in the small and near. For all utilitarian practical purposes,
• 3:53:52
  Speaker 1: these conceptions amplicifie. But that they began at special points
• 3:53:57
  Speaker 1: of discovery and only gradually spread from one thing to
• 3:54:01
  Speaker 1: another seems proved by the exceedingly dubious limits of their application.
• 3:54:07
  Speaker 1: Today we assume, for certain purposes one objective time that
• 3:54:14
  Speaker 1: acphabilita flute, but we don't livingly believe in or realize
• 3:54:20
  Speaker 1: any such equally flowing time. Space is a less vague notion.
• 3:54:26
  Speaker 1: But things, what are they? Is a constellation properly a thing?
• 3:54:32
  Speaker 1: Or an army? Or is an ens razionist such as
• 3:54:36
  Speaker 1: space or justice? A thing is a knife whose handle
• 3:54:42
  Speaker 1: and blade are changed. The same is the changeling whom
• 3:54:47
  Speaker 1: Locke so seriously discusses of the human kind. Is telepathy
• 3:54:54
  Speaker 1: a fancy or a fact? The moment you pause beyond
• 3:54:58
  Speaker 1: the practical use of these catogoris are use usually suggested
• 3:55:03
  Speaker 1: sufficiently by the circumstances of the special case. To a
• 3:55:08
  Speaker 1: merely curious or speculative way of thinking, you find it
• 3:55:12
  Speaker 1: impossible to say within just what limits of fact any
• 3:55:16
  Speaker 1: one of them shall apply. The peripatetic philosophy, obeying rationalist propensities,
• 3:55:23
  Speaker 1: has tried to eternalize the common sense cateogoris by treating
• 3:55:27
  Speaker 1: them very technically and articulately. A thing, for instance, is
• 3:55:32
  Speaker 1: a being or ens. An ens is a subject in
• 3:55:37
  Speaker 1: which qualities. Inhere a subject is a substance. Substances are
• 3:55:43
  Speaker 1: of kinds, and kinds are definite in number and discreet.
• 3:55:49
  Speaker 1: These distinctions are fundamental and eternal. As terms of discourse.
• 3:55:55
  Speaker 1: They are indeed magnificently useful. But what they mean, apart
• 3:56:00
  Speaker 1: from their use in steering our discourse to profitable issues,
• 3:56:05
  Speaker 1: does not appear. If you ask a scholastic philosopher what
• 3:56:10
  Speaker 1: a substance may be in itself, apart from its being
• 3:56:14
  Speaker 1: the support of attributes, it simpliciys that your intellect knows
• 3:56:19
  Speaker 1: perfectly what the word means. But what the intellect knows
• 3:56:24
  Speaker 1: clearly is only the word itself and its steering function.
• 3:56:29
  Speaker 1: So it comes about that intellects c. B. Permissi, intellects
• 3:56:34
  Speaker 1: only curious and idle, have forsaken the common sense level
• 3:56:39
  Speaker 1: for what, in general terms may be called the critical
• 3:56:43
  Speaker 1: level of thought. Not merely such intellects, either your Humes
• 3:56:49
  Speaker 1: and Berkeleys and Hegels, but practical observers of facts, your
• 3:56:54
  Speaker 1: Galileos Dalton's faradays have found it impossible to treat the
• 3:56:59
  Speaker 1: naive sense terimony of common sense as ultimately real. As
• 3:57:06
  Speaker 1: common sense interpolates her constant things between our intermittent sensations,
• 3:57:12
  Speaker 1: so science extrapolates her world of primary qualities, her atoms,
• 3:57:18
  Speaker 1: her ether, her magnetic fields, and the like. Beyond the
• 3:57:23
  Speaker 1: common sense world, the things are now invisible, impalpable things,
• 3:57:30
  Speaker 1: and the old visible common sense things are supposed to
• 3:57:33
  Speaker 1: result from the mixture of these invisibles, or else the
• 3:57:38
  Speaker 1: whole naive conception of things gets superseded, and a thing's
• 3:57:43
  Speaker 1: name is interpreted as denoting only the law or regal
• 3:57:47
  Speaker 1: de frabindo by which certain of our sensations habitually succeed
• 3:57:53
  Speaker 1: or coexist. Science and critical philosophy thus burst the bounds
• 3:57:59
  Speaker 1: of common sense. With science, naive realism ceases, secondary qualities
• 3:58:05
  Speaker 1: become unreal. Primary ones alone remain. With critical philosophy, havoc
• 3:58:12
  Speaker 1: is made of everything. The common sense categoris one and
• 3:58:16
  Speaker 1: all ceased to represent anything in the way of being.
• 3:58:20
  Speaker 1: They are but sublime tricks of human thought, our ways
• 3:58:24
  Speaker 1: of escaping bewilderment in the midst of sensations, irremediable flow.
• 3:58:31
  Speaker 1: But the scientific tendency in critical thought, though inspired at
• 3:58:35
  Speaker 1: first by purely intellectual motives, has opened an entirely unexpected
• 3:58:40
  Speaker 1: range of practical utilities to our astonished view. Galileo gave
• 3:58:46
  Speaker 1: us accurate clocks and accurate artillery practice. The chemists flued
• 3:58:51
  Speaker 1: us with new medicines and dyestuffs, and pre and Afaraday
• 3:58:56
  Speaker 1: have endowed us with the New York Subway, and with
• 3:59:00
  Speaker 1: Marconi telegrams. The hypothetical things that such men have invented,
• 3:59:07
  Speaker 1: defined as they have defined them, are showing an extraordinary
• 3:59:11
  Speaker 1: fertility in consequences verifiable by sense. Our logic can deduce
• 3:59:17
  Speaker 1: from them a consequence due under certain conditions. We can
• 3:59:22
  Speaker 1: then bring about the conditions and press them the consequences
• 3:59:26
  Speaker 1: there before our eyes. The scope of the practical control
• 3:59:30
  Speaker 1: of nature, newly put into our hand by scientific ways
• 3:59:33
  Speaker 1: of thinking, vastly exceeds the scope of the old control
• 3:59:38
  Speaker 1: grounded on common sense. Its rate of increase accelerates so
• 3:59:43
  Speaker 1: that no one can trace the limit. One may even
• 3:59:46
  Speaker 1: fear that the being of man may be crushed by
• 3:59:50
  Speaker 1: his own powers, that his fixed nature as an organism
• 3:59:54
  Speaker 1: may not prove adequate to stand the strain. Of the
• 3:59:58
  Speaker 1: ever increasingly tremendous functions, almost divine, creative functions, which his
• 4:00:05
  Speaker 1: intellect will more and more enable him to wield. He
• 4:00:10
  Speaker 1: may drown in his wealth like a child in a
• 4:00:13
  Speaker 1: bathtub who has turned on the water and who cannot
• 4:00:16
  Speaker 1: turn it off. The philosophic stage of criticism, much more
• 4:00:22
  Speaker 1: thorough in its negations than the scientific stage, so far
• 4:00:26
  Speaker 1: gives us no new range of practical power. Locke, Jume, Berkeley, Kant,
• 4:00:33
  Speaker 1: Hegel have all been utterly sterile so far as shedding
• 4:00:38
  Speaker 1: any light on the details of nature goes. And I
• 4:00:42
  Speaker 1: can think of no invention or discovery that can be
• 4:00:45
  Speaker 1: directly traced to anything in their peculiar thought. For neither
• 4:00:50
  Speaker 1: with Berkeley's tar water nor with Kant's nebular hypothesis had
• 4:00:56
  Speaker 1: their respective philosophic tenets anything to do. The satisfactions they
• 4:01:02
  Speaker 1: yield to their disciples are intellectual, not practical, and even
• 4:01:08
  Speaker 1: then we have to confess that there is a large
• 4:01:10
  Speaker 1: minus side to the account. There are thus at least
• 4:01:15
  Speaker 1: three well characterized levels, stages, or types of thought about
• 4:01:20
  Speaker 1: the world we live in, and the notions of one
• 4:01:23
  Speaker 1: stage have one kind of merit, those of another stage
• 4:01:27
  Speaker 1: another kind. It is impossible, however, to say that any stage,
• 4:01:33
  Speaker 1: as yet in sight is absolutely more true than any other.
• 4:01:37
  Speaker 1: Common Sense is the more consolidated stage, because it got
• 4:01:42
  Speaker 1: its innings first and made all language into its alley.
• 4:01:46
  Speaker 1: Whether it or science be the more august stage may
• 4:01:49
  Speaker 1: be left to private judgment. But neither consolidation nor augustness
• 4:01:54
  Speaker 1: has decisive marks of truth. If common sense were true,
• 4:02:00
  Speaker 1: why should science have had to brand the secondary qualities
• 4:02:04
  Speaker 1: to which our world owes all its living interest as
• 4:02:08
  Speaker 1: false and to invent an invisible world of points and
• 4:02:13
  Speaker 1: curves and mathematical equations instead? Why should it have needed
• 4:02:18
  Speaker 1: to transform causes and activities into laws of functional variation?
• 4:02:25
  Speaker 1: Vainly did scholasticism common senses college trained younger sister seek
• 4:02:31
  Speaker 1: to stereotypes the forms the human family had always talked with,
• 4:02:37
  Speaker 1: to make them definite and fix them for eternity substantial forms.
• 4:02:43
  Speaker 1: In other words, our secondary qualities hardly outlasted the year
• 4:02:48
  Speaker 1: of our Lord sixteen hundred. People were already tired of
• 4:02:53
  Speaker 1: them then, and Galileo and Discard, with its new philosophy,
• 4:02:57
  Speaker 1: gave them only a little later their coup de grass.
• 4:03:01
  Speaker 1: But now, if the new kinds of scientific thing, the
• 4:03:05
  Speaker 1: corpuscular and etheric world were essentially more true, why should
• 4:03:11
  Speaker 1: they have excited so much criticism within the body of
• 4:03:15
  Speaker 1: science itself. Scientific logicians are saying on every hand that
• 4:03:20
  Speaker 1: these entities and their determinations, however definitely conceived, should not
• 4:03:26
  Speaker 1: be held for literally real. It is as if they existed,
• 4:03:31
  Speaker 1: But in reality they are like coordinates or logarithms, only
• 4:03:37
  Speaker 1: artificial shortcuts for taking us from one part to another
• 4:03:41
  Speaker 1: of experience's flux. We can cipher fruitfully with them. They
• 4:03:46
  Speaker 1: serve us wonderfully, but we must not be their dupes.
• 4:03:51
  Speaker 1: There is no ring and conclusion possible when we compare
• 4:03:54
  Speaker 1: these types of thinking with a view to telling which
• 4:03:58
  Speaker 1: is the more absolutely true. Their naturalness, their intellectual economy,
• 4:04:03
  Speaker 1: their fruitfulness for practice, all start up as distinct tests
• 4:04:09
  Speaker 1: of their veracity, and as a result we get confused.
• 4:04:13
  Speaker 1: Common sense is better for one sphere of life, science
• 4:04:18
  Speaker 1: for another, philosophic criticism for a third. But whether either
• 4:04:24
  Speaker 1: be true or absolutely Heaven only knows. Just now, if
• 4:04:29
  Speaker 1: I understand the matter rightly, we are witnessing a curious
• 4:04:33
  Speaker 1: reversion to the common sense way of looking at physical
• 4:04:37
  Speaker 1: nature in the philosophy of science favored by such men
• 4:04:41
  Speaker 1: as marsh Oswald and Dewham. According to these teachers, no
• 4:04:47
  Speaker 1: hypothesis is truer than any other in the sense of
• 4:04:51
  Speaker 1: being a more literal copy of reality. They are all
• 4:04:56
  Speaker 1: but ways of talking on our part, to be compared
• 4:05:00
  Speaker 1: solely from the point of view of their use. The
• 4:05:04
  Speaker 1: only literarily true thing is reality, and the only reality
• 4:05:09
  Speaker 1: we know is for these logicians, sensible reality, the flux
• 4:05:15
  Speaker 1: of our sensations and emotions as they pause. Energy is
• 4:05:20
  Speaker 1: the collective name, according to Ostwald, for the sensations, just
• 4:05:24
  Speaker 1: as they present themselves the movement heat, magnetic pull, or light,
• 4:05:30
  Speaker 1: or whatever it may be, when they are measured in
• 4:05:33
  Speaker 1: certain ways. So measuring them we are enabled to describe
• 4:05:38
  Speaker 1: the correlated changes which they show us in formulas matchless
• 4:05:44
  Speaker 1: for their simplicity and fruitfulness for human use. They are
• 4:05:49
  Speaker 1: sovereign triumphs of economy in thought. No one can fail
• 4:05:54
  Speaker 1: to admire the energetic philosophy, but the hyper sensible entities,
• 4:06:00
  Speaker 1: the corpuscules and vibrations, hold their own with most physicists
• 4:06:05
  Speaker 1: and chemists. In spite of its appeal, it seems too
• 4:06:10
  Speaker 1: economical to be all sufficient profusion, not economy, may after
• 4:06:16
  Speaker 1: all be reality's keynote. I am dealing here with highly
• 4:06:22
  Speaker 1: technical matters, hardly suitable for popular lecturing, and in which
• 4:06:26
  Speaker 1: my own competence is small, All the better for my conclusion, however,
• 4:06:31
  Speaker 1: which at this point is this the whole notion of truth,
• 4:06:36
  Speaker 1: which naturally and without reflection we assume to mean the
• 4:06:39
  Speaker 1: simple duplication by the mind of our ready made and
• 4:06:42
  Speaker 1: given reality, proves hard to understand. Clearly, there is no
• 4:06:48
  Speaker 1: simple test available for judicating off hand between the diverse
• 4:06:52
  Speaker 1: types of thought that claim to possess it common sense,
• 4:06:58
  Speaker 1: common science or corpus sscular philosophy, ultra critical science or energetics,
• 4:07:04
  Speaker 1: and critical or idealistic philosophy all seem insufficiently true in
• 4:07:10
  Speaker 1: some regard and leave some dissatisfaction. It is evident that
• 4:07:15
  Speaker 1: the conflict of these so widely differing systems obliges us
• 4:07:20
  Speaker 1: to overhaul the very idea of truth, for at present
• 4:07:24
  Speaker 1: we have no definite notion of what the word may mean.
• 4:07:28
  Speaker 1: I shall face that task in my next lecture, and
• 4:07:32
  Speaker 1: will add but a few words in finishing the present one.
• 4:07:37
  Speaker 1: There are only two points that I wish to retain
• 4:07:39
  Speaker 1: from the present lecture. The first one relates to common sense.
• 4:07:44
  Speaker 1: We have seen reason to suspect it, to suspect that,
• 4:07:47
  Speaker 1: in spite of their being so venerable, of their being
• 4:07:51
  Speaker 1: so universally used and built into the very structure of
• 4:07:55
  Speaker 1: language its categories, may after all, be only a collection
• 4:07:59
  Speaker 1: of extreme, ordinarily successful hypothesis, historically discovered or invented by
• 4:08:05
  Speaker 1: single men, by gradually communicated in use by everybody, by
• 4:08:10
  Speaker 1: which our forefathers have, from time immemorial unified and straightened
• 4:08:16
  Speaker 1: the discontinuity of their immediate experiences, and put themselves into
• 4:08:21
  Speaker 1: an equilibrium with the surface of nature, so satisfactory for
• 4:08:25
  Speaker 1: ordinary practical purposes that it certainly would have lasted forever
• 4:08:31
  Speaker 1: but for the excessive intellectual vivacity of democrities Archimedes, Galileo Berkeley,
• 4:08:38
  Speaker 1: and other eccentric geniuses, whom the example of such men
• 4:08:41
  Speaker 1: inflamed retain. I pray you this suspicion about common sense.
• 4:08:48
  Speaker 1: The other point is this, what not the existence of
• 4:08:52
  Speaker 1: the various types of thinking which we have reviewed, each
• 4:08:55
  Speaker 1: so splendid for certain purposes, yet all conflicting still, and
• 4:09:00
  Speaker 1: neither one of them able to support a claim of
• 4:09:02
  Speaker 1: absolute veracity to awaken a presumption favorable to the pragmatic
• 4:09:07
  Speaker 1: view that all our theories are instrumental, are mental modes
• 4:09:12
  Speaker 1: of adaptation to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic answers
• 4:09:18
  Speaker 1: to some divinely instituted world enigma. I expressed this view
• 4:09:24
  Speaker 1: as clearly as I could in the second of these lectures. Certainly,
• 4:09:28
  Speaker 1: the restlessness of the actual theoretic situation, the value for
• 4:09:32
  Speaker 1: some purposes of each thought level, and the inability of
• 4:09:37
  Speaker 1: either to expel the others decisively suggest this pragmatistic view,
• 4:09:42
  Speaker 1: which I hope that the next lectures may soon make
• 4:09:45
  Speaker 1: entirely convincing. May there not, after all, be a possible
• 4:09:50
  Speaker 1: ambiguity in truth? End of Lecture five, Lecture six. When
• 4:10:00
  Speaker 1: Clerk Maxwell was a child, it is written that he
• 4:10:03
  Speaker 1: had a mania for having everything explained to him, and
• 4:10:06
  Speaker 1: that when people put him off with vague verbal accounts
• 4:10:10
  Speaker 1: of any phenomenon, he would interrupt them impatiently by saying, yes,
• 4:10:15
  Speaker 1: but I want you to tell me the particular go
• 4:10:18
  Speaker 1: of it. Had his question been about truth, only a
• 4:10:23
  Speaker 1: pragmatist could have told him the particular go of it.
• 4:10:27
  Speaker 1: I believe that our contemporary pragmatists, especially misterrs Schiller and Dewey,
• 4:10:33
  Speaker 1: have given the only tenable account of this subject. It
• 4:10:38
  Speaker 1: is a very ticklish subject, sending subtle rootlets into all
• 4:10:42
  Speaker 1: kinds of crannis and heart to treat in the sketchy
• 4:10:45
  Speaker 1: way that alone befits a public lecture. But the Schiller
• 4:10:50
  Speaker 1: Jewy view of truth has been so ferociously attacked by
• 4:10:53
  Speaker 1: rationalistic philosophers, and so abominably misunderstood that here, if any anywhere,
• 4:11:00
  Speaker 1: is the point where a clear and simple statement should
• 4:11:04
  Speaker 1: be made. I fully expect to see the pragmatist view
• 4:11:09
  Speaker 1: of truth run through the classic stages of a theory's career. First,
• 4:11:14
  Speaker 1: you know, our new theory is attacked as absurd. Then
• 4:11:18
  Speaker 1: it is admitted to be true but obvious and insignificant. Finally,
• 4:11:23
  Speaker 1: it is seen to be so important that its adversaries
• 4:11:27
  Speaker 1: claim that they themselves discovered it. Our doctrine of truth
• 4:11:33
  Speaker 1: is at present in the first of these three stages,
• 4:11:37
  Speaker 1: with symptoms of the second stage having begun in certain quarters.
• 4:11:42
  Speaker 1: I wish that this lecture might help it beyond the
• 4:11:45
  Speaker 1: first stage. In the eyes of many of you, truth,
• 4:11:50
  Speaker 1: as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of
• 4:11:53
  Speaker 1: certain of our ideas, it means their agreement, as falsity
• 4:12:00
  Speaker 1: means their disagreement with reality. Pragmatists an intellectualist both accept
• 4:12:07
  Speaker 1: this definition as a matter of course. They begin to
• 4:12:11
  Speaker 1: quarrel only after the question is raised as to what
• 4:12:15
  Speaker 1: may precisely be meant by the term agreement and what
• 4:12:19
  Speaker 1: by the term reality, when reality is taken as something
• 4:12:24
  Speaker 1: for our ideas to agree with. In answering these questions,
• 4:12:29
  Speaker 1: the pragmatists are more analytic and painstaking, the intellectualists more
• 4:12:35
  Speaker 1: offhand and irreflective. The popular notion is that a true
• 4:12:39
  Speaker 1: idea must copy its reality. Like other popular views, this
• 4:12:46
  Speaker 1: one follows the analogy of the most usual experience. Our
• 4:12:50
  Speaker 1: true ideas of sensible things do indeed copy them. Shut
• 4:12:55
  Speaker 1: our eyes and think of yonder clock on the wall,
• 4:12:59
  Speaker 1: and you get just such a true picture or copy
• 4:13:02
  Speaker 1: of its dial. But your idea of its works, unless
• 4:13:07
  Speaker 1: you are a clockmaker, is much less of a copy.
• 4:13:11
  Speaker 1: Yet it pauses muster, for it in no way clashes
• 4:13:15
  Speaker 1: with the reality. Even though it should shrink to the
• 4:13:19
  Speaker 1: mere word works, that word still serves you, truly. And
• 4:13:24
  Speaker 1: when you speak of the time keeping function of the clock,
• 4:13:28
  Speaker 1: or of its springs elispacity. It is hard to see
• 4:13:33
  Speaker 1: exactly what our ideas can copy. You perceive that there
• 4:13:38
  Speaker 1: is a problem here where our ideas cannot copy definitely
• 4:13:43
  Speaker 1: their object. What does agreement with that object mean? Some
• 4:13:48
  Speaker 1: idealists seem to say that they are true whenever they
• 4:13:52
  Speaker 1: are what God means that we ought to think about
• 4:13:56
  Speaker 1: that object. Others hold the copy of you you all
• 4:14:00
  Speaker 1: through and speak as if our ideas possessed truth, just
• 4:14:04
  Speaker 1: in proportion as they approach to being copies of their
• 4:14:08
  Speaker 1: absolute eternal way of thinking. These views, you see, invite
• 4:14:14
  Speaker 1: pragmatistic discussion. But the great assumption of the intellectualists is
• 4:14:20
  Speaker 1: that truth means essentially an inert static relation. When you've
• 4:14:25
  Speaker 1: got our true idea of anything, there's an end of
• 4:14:29
  Speaker 1: the matter. You're in possession. You know you have fulfilled
• 4:14:33
  Speaker 1: your thinking destiny. You are where you ought to be Mentally,
• 4:14:38
  Speaker 1: you have obeyed your categorical imperative, and nothing more need
• 4:14:43
  Speaker 1: follow on that climax of our rational destiny. Epistemologically, you
• 4:14:48
  Speaker 1: are in stable equilibrium. Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks
• 4:14:55
  Speaker 1: its usual question, grant an idea or believe to be true?
• 4:15:00
  Speaker 1: It says, what concrete difference will its being true make
• 4:15:04
  Speaker 1: in any one's actual life? How will the truth be realized?
• 4:15:10
  Speaker 1: What experiences will be different from those which would obtain
• 4:15:14
  Speaker 1: if the belief were false? What, in short, is the
• 4:15:18
  Speaker 1: truth's cash value in experiential terms. The moment pragmatism asks
• 4:15:25
  Speaker 1: this question, it sees the answer. True ideas are those
• 4:15:30
  Speaker 1: that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas
• 4:15:37
  Speaker 1: are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference
• 4:15:42
  Speaker 1: it makes to us to have true ideas. That therefore
• 4:15:47
  Speaker 1: is the meaning of truth, For it is all that
• 4:15:49
  Speaker 1: truth is known as This thesis is what I have
• 4:15:54
  Speaker 1: to defend. The truth of an idea is not a
• 4:15:57
  Speaker 1: stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea.
• 4:16:03
  Speaker 1: It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity
• 4:16:08
  Speaker 1: is in fact an event a process, the process namely
• 4:16:12
  Speaker 1: of its verifying itself, its very fication. Its validity is
• 4:16:19
  Speaker 1: the process of its validation. But what do the words
• 4:16:24
  Speaker 1: verification and validation themselves pragmatically mean? They again signify certain
• 4:16:32
  Speaker 1: practical consequences of the verified and validated idea. It is
• 4:16:37
  Speaker 1: hard to find any one phrase that characterizes these consequences
• 4:16:41
  Speaker 1: better than their ordinary agreement formula, just such consequences being
• 4:16:47
  Speaker 1: what we have in mind. Whenever we say that our
• 4:16:50
  Speaker 1: ideas agree with reality, they lead us, namely through the
• 4:16:55
  Speaker 1: acts and other ideas which they instigate into, or up to,
• 4:17:00
  Speaker 1: or towards other parts of experience with which we feel.
• 4:17:04
  Speaker 1: All the while such feeling being among our potentialities, that
• 4:17:10
  Speaker 1: the original ideas remain in agreement, the connections and transitions
• 4:17:17
  Speaker 1: come to us from point to point as being progressive, harmonious, satisfactory.
• 4:17:24
  Speaker 1: This function of agreeable leading is what we mean by
• 4:17:27
  Speaker 1: an ideas verification. Such an account is vague, and it
• 4:17:33
  Speaker 1: sounds at first quite trivial, but it has results which
• 4:17:37
  Speaker 1: it will take the rest of my hour to explain.
• 4:17:42
  Speaker 1: Let me begin by reminding you of the fact that
• 4:17:44
  Speaker 1: the possession of true thoughts means everywhere the possession of
• 4:17:49
  Speaker 1: invaluable instruments of action, and that our duty to gain truth,
• 4:17:54
  Speaker 1: so far from being a blank command from out of
• 4:17:57
  Speaker 1: the blue or a stunt self imposed post by our intellect,
• 4:18:01
  Speaker 1: can account for itself by excellent practical reasons. The importance
• 4:18:07
  Speaker 1: to human life of having true beliefs about matters of
• 4:18:11
  Speaker 1: fact is a thing too notorious. We live in a
• 4:18:15
  Speaker 1: world of realities that can be infinitely useful or infinitely harmful.
• 4:18:21
  Speaker 1: Ideas that tell us which of them to expect count
• 4:18:25
  Speaker 1: as the true ideas. In all this primary sphere of verification,
• 4:18:30
  Speaker 1: and the pursuit of such ideas is a primary human duty.
• 4:18:35
  Speaker 1: The possession of truth, so far from being here an
• 4:18:38
  Speaker 1: end in itself, is only a preliminary means towards other
• 4:18:43
  Speaker 1: vital satisfactions. If I am lost in the woods and
• 4:18:47
  Speaker 1: starved and find what looks like a cowpath, it is
• 4:18:51
  Speaker 1: of the utmost importance that I should think of a
• 4:18:54
  Speaker 1: human habitation at the end of it, for if I
• 4:18:57
  Speaker 1: do so and follow it, I save myself. The true
• 4:19:02
  Speaker 1: thought is useful here because the house, which is its object,
• 4:19:06
  Speaker 1: is useful. The practical value of true ideas is thus
• 4:19:10
  Speaker 1: primarily derived from the practical importance of their objects to us.
• 4:19:16
  Speaker 1: Their objects are indeed not important at all times. I may,
• 4:19:21
  Speaker 1: on other occasions, have no use for the house, and
• 4:19:25
  Speaker 1: then my idea of it, however verifiable, will be practically
• 4:19:30
  Speaker 1: irrelevant and had better remain latent. Yet, since almost any
• 4:19:35
  Speaker 1: object may someday become temporarily important. The advantage of having
• 4:19:41
  Speaker 1: a general stock of extra truths, of ideas that shall
• 4:19:44
  Speaker 1: be true of merely possible situations is obvious. We store
• 4:19:50
  Speaker 1: such extra truths away in our memories, and with the
• 4:19:54
  Speaker 1: overflow we fill our books of reference. Whenever such an
• 4:19:58
  Speaker 1: extra truth becomes pre practically relevant to one of our emergencies,
• 4:20:03
  Speaker 1: it passes from cold storage to do work in the world,
• 4:20:07
  Speaker 1: and our belief in it grows active. You can say
• 4:20:11
  Speaker 1: of it then, either that it is useful because it
• 4:20:14
  Speaker 1: is true, or that it is true because it is useful.
• 4:20:19
  Speaker 1: Both these phrases mean exactly the same thing, namely, that
• 4:20:23
  Speaker 1: there is an idea that gets fulfilled and can be verified.
• 4:20:28
  Speaker 1: True is the name for whatever ideas start the verification process.
• 4:20:33
  Speaker 1: Useful is the name for its completed function. In experience,
• 4:20:37
  Speaker 1: true ideas would never have been singled out as such,
• 4:20:41
  Speaker 1: would never have acquired a class name, least of all
• 4:20:45
  Speaker 1: a name suggesting value, unless they had been useful from
• 4:20:50
  Speaker 1: the outset. In this way, From this simple cue, pragmatism
• 4:20:55
  Speaker 1: gets her general notion of truth as something essentially bound
• 4:20:59
  Speaker 1: up with the way in which one moment in our
• 4:21:02
  Speaker 1: experience may lead us towards other moments which it will
• 4:21:06
  Speaker 1: be worthwhile to have been led to. Primarily, and on
• 4:21:11
  Speaker 1: the common sense level, the truth of a state of
• 4:21:14
  Speaker 1: mind means this function of a leading that is worthwhile.
• 4:21:20
  Speaker 1: When a moment in our experience of any kind whatever
• 4:21:24
  Speaker 1: inspires us with a thought that is true, that means
• 4:21:28
  Speaker 1: that sooner or later we dip by that thought guidance
• 4:21:32
  Speaker 1: into the particulars of experience again and make advantageous connection
• 4:21:37
  Speaker 1: with them. This is a vague enough statement, but I
• 4:21:40
  Speaker 1: beg you to retain it, for it is essential. Our experience, meanwhile,
• 4:21:46
  Speaker 1: is all shut through with regularities. One bit of it
• 4:21:50
  Speaker 1: can warn us to get ready for another bit can
• 4:21:53
  Speaker 1: intend or be significant of that remoter object. The object's
• 4:21:59
  Speaker 1: advent is the significance's verification. Truth in these cases meaning
• 4:22:05
  Speaker 1: nothing but eventual verification is manifestly incompatible with waywardness on
• 4:22:11
  Speaker 1: our part. Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and
• 4:22:15
  Speaker 1: loose with the order which realities follow in his experience.
• 4:22:19
  Speaker 1: They will lead him nowhere or else make false connections
• 4:22:25
  Speaker 1: by realities or objects. Here we mean either things of
• 4:22:30
  Speaker 1: common sense sensibly present, or else common sense relations such
• 4:22:36
  Speaker 1: as dates, places, distances, kinds, activities, following our mental image
• 4:22:42
  Speaker 1: of a house along the cowpath, we actually come to
• 4:22:46
  Speaker 1: see the house, we get the images full verification. Such
• 4:22:51
  Speaker 1: simply and fully verified leadings are certainly the originals and
• 4:22:55
  Speaker 1: prototypes of the truth process experience, of indeed other forms
• 4:23:01
  Speaker 1: of truth process. But they are all conceivable as being
• 4:23:05
  Speaker 1: primary verifications, arrested, multiplied, or substituted one for another. Take,
• 4:23:11
  Speaker 1: for instance, yonder object on the wall. You and I
• 4:23:15
  Speaker 1: consider it to be a clock, although no one of
• 4:23:18
  Speaker 1: us has seen the hidden works that make it one.
• 4:23:21
  Speaker 1: We let our notion pause for true without attempting to verify.
• 4:23:25
  Speaker 1: If truths mean a verification process essentially ought, we then
• 4:23:29
  Speaker 1: to call such unverified truths as this abortive no, for
• 4:23:35
  Speaker 1: they form the overwhelmingly large number of the truths we
• 4:23:39
  Speaker 1: live by indirect as well as direct verifications pause muster.
• 4:23:46
  Speaker 1: Where circumstantial evidence is sufficient, we can go without eye witnessing,
• 4:23:52
  Speaker 1: just as we here assume Japan to exist without ever
• 4:23:55
  Speaker 1: having been there, because it works to do so, everything
• 4:23:59
  Speaker 1: we know conspiring with the belief and nothing interfering. So
• 4:24:04
  Speaker 1: we assume that thing to be a clock. We use
• 4:24:08
  Speaker 1: it as a clock regulating the lengths of our lecture
• 4:24:12
  Speaker 1: by it. The verification of the assumption here means its
• 4:24:16
  Speaker 1: leading to no frustration or contradiction. Very fiability of wheels
• 4:24:22
  Speaker 1: and weights and pendulum is as good as verification. For
• 4:24:27
  Speaker 1: one truth process completed, there are a million in our
• 4:24:31
  Speaker 1: lives that function in this state of nacency. They turn
• 4:24:35
  Speaker 1: us towards direct verification, lead us into the surroundings of
• 4:24:40
  Speaker 1: the objects they envisage, and then, if everything runs on harmoniously,
• 4:24:45
  Speaker 1: we are so sure that verification is possible that we
• 4:24:49
  Speaker 1: omit it and are usually justified by all that happens.
• 4:24:54
  Speaker 1: Truth lives, in fact, for the most part, on a
• 4:24:58
  Speaker 1: credit system. Our thoughts and believes pause so long as
• 4:25:03
  Speaker 1: nothing challenges them, just as banknotes pause so long as
• 4:25:07
  Speaker 1: nobody refuses them. But this all points to direct face
• 4:25:12
  Speaker 1: to face verification somewhere, without which the fabric of truth collapses,
• 4:25:17
  Speaker 1: like a financial system with no cash basis. Whatever you
• 4:25:21
  Speaker 1: accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another.
• 4:25:26
  Speaker 1: We trade on each other's truth, but believes verified concretely
• 4:25:31
  Speaker 1: by somebody or the posts of the whole superstructure. Another
• 4:25:37
  Speaker 1: great reason beside economy of time, for waiving complete verification
• 4:25:41
  Speaker 1: in the usual business of life is that all things
• 4:25:45
  Speaker 1: exist in kinds and not singly. Our world is found
• 4:25:50
  Speaker 1: once for all to have that peculiarity, so that when
• 4:25:54
  Speaker 1: we have once directly verified our ideas about one specimen
• 4:25:58
  Speaker 1: of a kind, we consider ourselves free to apply them
• 4:26:02
  Speaker 1: to other specimens without verification. A mind that habitually discerns
• 4:26:08
  Speaker 1: the kind of thing before it and acts by the
• 4:26:11
  Speaker 1: law of the kind immediately, without pausing to verify, will
• 4:26:15
  Speaker 1: be a true mind in ninety nine out of one
• 4:26:18
  Speaker 1: hundred emergencies, proved so by its conduct, fitting everything it meets,
• 4:26:24
  Speaker 1: and getting no refutation indirectly or only potentially. Verifying processes
• 4:26:31
  Speaker 1: may thus be true as well as full verification processes.
• 4:26:36
  Speaker 1: They work as true processes would work, give us the
• 4:26:40
  Speaker 1: same advantages, and claim our recognition for the same reasons.
• 4:26:45
  Speaker 1: All this on the common sense level of matters of fact,
• 4:26:49
  Speaker 1: which we are alone considering. But matters of fact are
• 4:26:54
  Speaker 1: not our only stock in trade. Relations among purely mental
• 4:26:59
  Speaker 1: ideas form another sphere where true and false beliefs obtain,
• 4:27:03
  Speaker 1: and here the beliefs are absolute or unconditional. When they
• 4:27:08
  Speaker 1: are true, they bear the name either of definitions or
• 4:27:12
  Speaker 1: of principles. It is either a principle or a definition.
• 4:27:16
  Speaker 1: That one and one make two, that two and two
• 4:27:20
  Speaker 1: make three, and so on, That white differs less from
• 4:27:24
  Speaker 1: gray than it does from black, That when the cause
• 4:27:27
  Speaker 1: begins to act, the effect also commences. Such propositions hold
• 4:27:34
  Speaker 1: of all possible ones, of all conceivable whites and grays
• 4:27:38
  Speaker 1: and causes. The objects here are mental objects. Their relations
• 4:27:44
  Speaker 1: are perceptually obvious at a glance, and no sense verification
• 4:27:48
  Speaker 1: is necessary. Moreover, one's two always true of those same
• 4:27:54
  Speaker 1: mental objects. Truth here is an eternal character. If you
• 4:27:59
  Speaker 1: can find a concrete eat thing anywhere that is one,
• 4:28:02
  Speaker 1: or white, or gray, or in effect, then our principles
• 4:28:06
  Speaker 1: will everlastingly apply to it. It is but a case
• 4:28:11
  Speaker 1: of ascertaining the kind and then applying the law of
• 4:28:15
  Speaker 1: its kind to the particular object. You are sure to
• 4:28:18
  Speaker 1: get truth if you can but name the kind rightly,
• 4:28:22
  Speaker 1: for your mental relations, hold good of everything of that
• 4:28:25
  Speaker 1: kind without exception. If you then nevertheless fail to get
• 4:28:30
  Speaker 1: truth concretely, you would say that you had classed your
• 4:28:34
  Speaker 1: real objects wrongly. In this realm of mental relations, truth
• 4:28:40
  Speaker 1: again is an affair of leading. We relate one abstract
• 4:28:45
  Speaker 1: idea with another, framing in the end great systems of
• 4:28:49
  Speaker 1: logical and mathematical truth, under the respective terms of which
• 4:28:53
  Speaker 1: the sensible facts of experience eventually arranges themselves, so that
• 4:28:58
  Speaker 1: our eternal truth whole good of realities. Also, this marriage
• 4:29:04
  Speaker 1: of fact and theory is endlessly fertile. What we say
• 4:29:08
  Speaker 1: here is already true in advance of special verification. If
• 4:29:13
  Speaker 1: we have subsumed our objects rightly, Our ready made ideal
• 4:29:19
  Speaker 1: framework for all sorts of possible objects follows from the
• 4:29:23
  Speaker 1: very structure of our thinking. We can no more play
• 4:29:26
  Speaker 1: fast than loose with these abstract relations than we can
• 4:29:30
  Speaker 1: do so with our sense experiences. They querse us. We
• 4:29:34
  Speaker 1: must treat them consistently, whether or not we like the results.
• 4:29:39
  Speaker 1: The rules of addition apply to our debts as rigorously
• 4:29:43
  Speaker 1: as to our assets. The hundredth decimal of pi, the
• 4:29:48
  Speaker 1: ratio of the circumference to its diameter, is predetermined ideally now,
• 4:29:54
  Speaker 1: though no one may have computed it. If we should
• 4:29:57
  Speaker 1: ever need the figure in our dear feelings with an
• 4:30:00
  Speaker 1: actual circle, we should need to have it given rightly,
• 4:30:04
  Speaker 1: calculated by the usual rules. For it is the same
• 4:30:08
  Speaker 1: kind of truth that those rules elsewhere calculate. Between the
• 4:30:14
  Speaker 1: coercions of the sensible order and those of the ideal order.
• 4:30:19
  Speaker 1: Our mind is thus wedged tightly. Our ideas must agree
• 4:30:24
  Speaker 1: with realities. Be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts,
• 4:30:29
  Speaker 1: or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
• 4:30:37
  Speaker 1: So far intellectualists can raise no protest. They can only
• 4:30:41
  Speaker 1: say that we have badly touched the skin of the matter.
• 4:30:45
  Speaker 1: Realities mean then, either concrete facts or abstract kinds of things,
• 4:30:51
  Speaker 1: and relations perceived intuitively between them. They, furthermore, and thirdly
• 4:30:57
  Speaker 1: mean as things that new idea. Ideas of ours must
• 4:31:01
  Speaker 1: no less take account of the whole body of other
• 4:31:05
  Speaker 1: truths already in our possession. But what now does agreement
• 4:31:10
  Speaker 1: with such threefold realities mean? To use again the definition
• 4:31:15
  Speaker 1: that is current here, it is that pragmatism and intellectualism
• 4:31:21
  Speaker 1: begin to part company. Primarily, no doubt, to agree means
• 4:31:26
  Speaker 1: to copy. But we saw that the mere word clock
• 4:31:30
  Speaker 1: would do instead of a mental picture of its works,
• 4:31:33
  Speaker 1: and that of many realities. Our ideas can only be
• 4:31:37
  Speaker 1: symbols and not copies past time, power spontaneity. How can
• 4:31:45
  Speaker 1: our mind copy such realities? To agree in the widest
• 4:31:50
  Speaker 1: sense with a reality can only mean to be guided
• 4:31:55
  Speaker 1: either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or
• 4:31:58
  Speaker 1: to be put into some such workings touch with it,
• 4:32:02
  Speaker 1: as to handle either it or something connected with it
• 4:32:06
  Speaker 1: better than if we disagreed, better, either intellectually or practically.
• 4:32:13
  Speaker 1: And often agreement will only mean the negative fact that
• 4:32:16
  Speaker 1: nothing contradictory from the quarter of that reality comes to
• 4:32:21
  Speaker 1: interfere with the way in which our ideas guide us elsewhere.
• 4:32:25
  Speaker 1: To copy our reality is indeed one very important way
• 4:32:29
  Speaker 1: of agreeing with it, but it is far from being essential.
• 4:32:33
  Speaker 1: The essential thing is the process of being guided. Any
• 4:32:36
  Speaker 1: idea that helps us to deal, whether practically or intellectually,
• 4:32:41
  Speaker 1: with either the reality or its belongings, that doesn't entangle
• 4:32:45
  Speaker 1: our progress in frustrations, that fits in fact and adapts
• 4:32:50
  Speaker 1: our life to the reality's whole setting, will agree sufficiently
• 4:32:55
  Speaker 1: to meet the requirement it will hold true of that reality. Thus,
• 4:33:02
  Speaker 1: names are just as true or false as definite mental
• 4:33:06
  Speaker 1: pictures are. They set up similar verification processes and lead
• 4:33:11
  Speaker 1: to fully equivalent practical results. All human thinking gets discursified.
• 4:33:18
  Speaker 1: We exchange ideas, We lend and borrow verifications get them
• 4:33:23
  Speaker 1: from one another by means of social intercourse. All truth
• 4:33:28
  Speaker 1: thus gets verbally built out, stored up, and made available
• 4:33:33
  Speaker 1: for everyone. Hence we must talk consistently, just as we
• 4:33:38
  Speaker 1: must think consistently, For both in talk and thought we
• 4:33:42
  Speaker 1: deal with kinds. Names are arbitrary, but once understood, they
• 4:33:47
  Speaker 1: must be kept to. We must now call able kine
• 4:33:52
  Speaker 1: or kine able. If we do, we ungear ourselves from
• 4:33:56
  Speaker 1: the whole book of Genesis and from all its connections
• 4:34:00
  Speaker 1: with the universe of speech, in fact, down to the
• 4:34:03
  Speaker 1: present time, we throw ourselves out of whatever truth that
• 4:34:08
  Speaker 1: entire system of speech in fact may embody. The overwhelming
• 4:34:14
  Speaker 1: majority of our true ideas admit of no direct or
• 4:34:18
  Speaker 1: face to face verification. Those of past history, for example,
• 4:34:23
  Speaker 1: as of kind and able, the stream of time can
• 4:34:27
  Speaker 1: be remounted only verbally or verified indirectly by the present
• 4:34:32
  Speaker 1: prolongations or effects of what the past harbored. Yet if
• 4:34:37
  Speaker 1: they agree with these verbalities and effects, we can know
• 4:34:40
  Speaker 1: that our ideas of the past are true, as true
• 4:34:44
  Speaker 1: as past time itself was, so true, was Julius Caesar?
• 4:34:49
  Speaker 1: So true were antediluvian monsters all in their proper dates
• 4:34:54
  Speaker 1: and settings? That past time itself was is guaranteed by
• 4:35:00
  Speaker 1: its coherence with everything that's present, true as the present
• 4:35:05
  Speaker 1: is the past was also. Agreement thus turns out to
• 4:35:11
  Speaker 1: be essentially an affair of leading. Leading that is useful
• 4:35:15
  Speaker 1: because it is into quarters that contain objects that are important.
• 4:35:21
  Speaker 1: True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters,
• 4:35:25
  Speaker 1: as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They
• 4:35:30
  Speaker 1: lead to consistencies, stability, and flowing human intercourse. They lead
• 4:35:36
  Speaker 1: away from eccentricity and isolation, from foiled and barren thinking.
• 4:35:42
  Speaker 1: The untrammeled flowing of the leading process, its general freedom
• 4:35:47
  Speaker 1: from clash and contradiction, passes for its indirect verification. But
• 4:35:53
  Speaker 1: all roads lead to rome and in the end, and eventually,
• 4:35:57
  Speaker 1: all true processes must lead to the phase of directly
• 4:36:01
  Speaker 1: verifying sensible experiences somewhere which somebody's ideas have copied. Such
• 4:36:09
  Speaker 1: is the large, loose way in which the pragmatist interprets
• 4:36:14
  Speaker 1: the word agreement. He treats it altogether practically, he lets
• 4:36:18
  Speaker 1: it cover any process of conduction from a present idea
• 4:36:21
  Speaker 1: to a future terminus, provided only it run prosperously. It
• 4:36:26
  Speaker 1: is only thus that scientific ideas, flying as they do
• 4:36:29
  Speaker 1: beyond common sense, can be said to agree with the realities.
• 4:36:34
  Speaker 1: It is, as I have already said, as if reality
• 4:36:37
  Speaker 1: were made of ether, atoms or electrons. But we mustn't
• 4:36:41
  Speaker 1: think so literally. The term energy doesn't even pretend to
• 4:36:45
  Speaker 1: stand for anything objective. It is only a way of
• 4:36:49
  Speaker 1: measuring the surface of phenomena so as to string their
• 4:36:53
  Speaker 1: changes on a simple formula. End of Lecture six. Yet
• 4:37:02
  Speaker 1: in the choice of these man made formulas, we cannot
• 4:37:05
  Speaker 1: be capricious with impunity any more than we can be
• 4:37:09
  Speaker 1: capricious on the common sense, practical level. We must find
• 4:37:13
  Speaker 1: a theory that will work, and that means something extremely difficult.
• 4:37:18
  Speaker 1: For Our theory must mediate between all previous truths and
• 4:37:23
  Speaker 1: certain new experiences. It must derange common sense and previous
• 4:37:28
  Speaker 1: belief as little as possible, and it must lead to
• 4:37:31
  Speaker 1: some sensible terminus or other that can be verified exactly.
• 4:37:36
  Speaker 1: To work means both these things, and the squeeze is
• 4:37:41
  Speaker 1: so tight that there is little loose play for any hypothesis.
• 4:37:45
  Speaker 1: Our theories are witched and controlled as nothing else is.
• 4:37:50
  Speaker 1: Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all
• 4:37:56
  Speaker 1: the truths we know, and then we choose between them
• 4:38:00
  Speaker 1: for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to
• 4:38:04
  Speaker 1: which we are already partial. We follow elegance or economy.
• 4:38:10
  Speaker 1: Clerk Maxwell somewhere says it would be poor scientific taste
• 4:38:15
  Speaker 1: to choose the more complicated of two equally well evidenced conceptions,
• 4:38:21
  Speaker 1: and you will all agree with him. Truth in science
• 4:38:24
  Speaker 1: is what gives us the maximum possible sum of satisfactions
• 4:38:29
  Speaker 1: taste included, but consistency, both with previous truth and with
• 4:38:34
  Speaker 1: novel facts is always the most imperious claimant. I have
• 4:38:39
  Speaker 1: led you through a very sandy desert. But now, if
• 4:38:43
  Speaker 1: I may be allowed so vulgar an expression, we begin
• 4:38:46
  Speaker 1: to taste the milk in the coconut. Our rationalist critics
• 4:38:52
  Speaker 1: here discharged their batteries upon us, and replied to them,
• 4:38:56
  Speaker 1: will take us out from all this dryness into full
• 4:38:59
  Speaker 1: sight of a momentous philosophical alternative. Our account of truth
• 4:39:05
  Speaker 1: is an account of truths in the plural of processes
• 4:39:09
  Speaker 1: of leading realized in rebus, and have only this quality
• 4:39:13
  Speaker 1: in common that they pay. They pay by guiding us
• 4:39:18
  Speaker 1: into or towards some part of a system that dips
• 4:39:21
  Speaker 1: at numerous points into sense percepts which we may copy
• 4:39:26
  Speaker 1: mentally or not but with which, at any rate we
• 4:39:29
  Speaker 1: are now in the kind of commerce vaguely designated as verification.
• 4:39:35
  Speaker 1: Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes,
• 4:39:40
  Speaker 1: just as health, wealth, strength, et cetera are names for
• 4:39:44
  Speaker 1: other processes connected with life, and also pursued because it
• 4:39:49
  Speaker 1: pays to pursue them. Truth is made, just as health, wealth,
• 4:39:54
  Speaker 1: and strength are made in the course of experience. Here
• 4:40:00
  Speaker 1: is instantaneously up in arms against us. I can imagine
• 4:40:05
  Speaker 1: our rationalism to talk as follows truth is not made,
• 4:40:10
  Speaker 1: He will say, it absolutely obtains, being a unique relation
• 4:40:15
  Speaker 1: that does not wait upon any process, but shoots straight
• 4:40:19
  Speaker 1: over the head of experience and hits its reality every time.
• 4:40:24
  Speaker 1: Our belief that yon thing on the wall is a
• 4:40:26
  Speaker 1: clock is true already, although no one in the whole
• 4:40:30
  Speaker 1: history of the world should verify it. The bare quality
• 4:40:34
  Speaker 1: of standing in that transcendent relation is what makes any
• 4:40:38
  Speaker 1: thought true that possesses it, whether or not there be verification.
• 4:40:44
  Speaker 1: You pragmatists put the cart before the horse in making truths.
• 4:40:48
  Speaker 1: Being reside in verification processes, these are merely signs of
• 4:40:54
  Speaker 1: its being, merely our lame ways of ascertaining after the fact,
• 4:40:59
  Speaker 1: which of our ideas already has possessed the wondrous quality.
• 4:41:05
  Speaker 1: The quality itself is timeless, like all essences and natures.
• 4:41:11
  Speaker 1: Thoughts partake of it directly, as they partake of falsity
• 4:41:16
  Speaker 1: or of irrelevancy, it can't be analyzed a way into
• 4:41:20
  Speaker 1: pragmatic consequences. The whole plausibility of this rationalist tirade is
• 4:41:27
  Speaker 1: due to the fact to which we have already paid
• 4:41:30
  Speaker 1: so much attention in our world, namely abounding, as it
• 4:41:35
  Speaker 1: does in things of similar kinds and similarly associated, one
• 4:41:41
  Speaker 1: verification serves for others of its kind, and one great
• 4:41:45
  Speaker 1: use of knowing things is to be led not so
• 4:41:48
  Speaker 1: much to them as to their associates, especially to human
• 4:41:52
  Speaker 1: talk about them. The quality of truth obtaining anti riim
• 4:41:57
  Speaker 1: pragmatically means then the fact that in such a world
• 4:42:03
  Speaker 1: innumerable ideas work better by their indirect or possible than
• 4:42:08
  Speaker 1: by their direct and actual verification. Truth anti rem means
• 4:42:15
  Speaker 1: only verifiability then or else. It is a case of
• 4:42:19
  Speaker 1: the stock rationalist trick of treating the name of a
• 4:42:23
  Speaker 1: concrete phenomenal reality as an independent prior entity and placing
• 4:42:29
  Speaker 1: it behind the reality as its explanation. Professor Mack quotes
• 4:42:35
  Speaker 1: somewhere an epigram of blessings sacked haunshenschlau so feter fritz
• 4:42:42
  Speaker 1: vicomte s feter ritzen desgrat de reisten in dreveldt dosmist
• 4:42:47
  Speaker 1: guelt pisitzen hunshen Schlau here treats the principal wealth as
• 4:42:53
  Speaker 1: something distinct from the facts denoted by the man's being rich.
• 4:42:58
  Speaker 1: It antedates them. The facts become only a sort of
• 4:43:02
  Speaker 1: secondary coincidence with a rich man's essential nature. In the
• 4:43:07
  Speaker 1: case of wealth, we all see the fallacy. We know
• 4:43:11
  Speaker 1: that wealth is but a name for concrete processes that
• 4:43:14
  Speaker 1: certain men's lives play a part in, and not unnatural
• 4:43:19
  Speaker 1: excellence found in mister's Rockefeller and Carnegie, but not in
• 4:43:23
  Speaker 1: the rest of us. Like wealth, health also lives in rebus.
• 4:43:29
  Speaker 1: It is a named for processes as digestion, circulation, sleep,
• 4:43:34
  Speaker 1: et cetera, that go on happily. Though in this instance
• 4:43:38
  Speaker 1: we are more inclined to think of it as a principle,
• 4:43:41
  Speaker 1: and to say the man digests and sleeps so well
• 4:43:45
  Speaker 1: because he is so healthy with strength. We are I
• 4:43:50
  Speaker 1: think more rationalistic still and decidedly inclined to treat it
• 4:43:55
  Speaker 1: as an excellence pre existing in the man and explanatory
• 4:43:59
  Speaker 1: as the Hercule in performances of his muscles. With truth,
• 4:44:04
  Speaker 1: most people go over the border entirely and treat the
• 4:44:08
  Speaker 1: rationalistic account as self evident. But really all these words
• 4:44:13
  Speaker 1: in th are exactly similar. Truth exists an the rim
• 4:44:19
  Speaker 1: just as much and as little as the other things do.
• 4:44:23
  Speaker 1: The Scholastics following Aristotle made much of the distinction between
• 4:44:28
  Speaker 1: habit and act. Health in actu means, among other things,
• 4:44:33
  Speaker 1: good sleeping and digesting. But a healthy man need not
• 4:44:38
  Speaker 1: always be sleeping or always digesting, any more than a
• 4:44:42
  Speaker 1: wealthy man need be always handling money or a strong
• 4:44:46
  Speaker 1: man always lifting weights. All such qualities sink to the
• 4:44:51
  Speaker 1: status of habits between their times of exercise. And similarly,
• 4:44:55
  Speaker 1: truth becomes a habit of certain of our ideas and
• 4:44:59
  Speaker 1: beliefs in their intervals of rest from their verifying activities.
• 4:45:04
  Speaker 1: But those activities are the root of the whole matter,
• 4:45:07
  Speaker 1: and the condition of there being any habit to exist
• 4:45:10
  Speaker 1: in the intervals. The true, to put it very briefly,
• 4:45:15
  Speaker 1: is only the expedient in the way of our thinking,
• 4:45:19
  Speaker 1: just as the right is only the expedient in the
• 4:45:22
  Speaker 1: way of our behaving expedient in almost any fashion, and
• 4:45:28
  Speaker 1: expedient in the long run, and on the whole, of course,
• 4:45:32
  Speaker 1: for what meets expediently all the experience in sight won't
• 4:45:36
  Speaker 1: necessarily meet all further experiences equally satisfactorily. Experience, as we know,
• 4:45:44
  Speaker 1: has ways of boiling over and making us correct our
• 4:45:48
  Speaker 1: present formulas. The absolutely true meaning, what no farther experience
• 4:45:56
  Speaker 1: will ever alter is that ideal that point towards we
• 4:46:01
  Speaker 1: imagine that all our temporary truths will some day converge.
• 4:46:07
  Speaker 1: It runs on all fours with a perfectly wise man
• 4:46:11
  Speaker 1: and with the absolutely complete experience, And if these ideals
• 4:46:15
  Speaker 1: are ever realized, they will all be realized together. Meanwhile,
• 4:46:21
  Speaker 1: we have to live today by what truth we can
• 4:46:24
  Speaker 1: get today, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
• 4:46:30
  Speaker 1: Protolemaic astronomy, Euclidean space, Aristotelian logic, scholastic metaphysics were expedient
• 4:46:40
  Speaker 1: for centuries, but human experience has boiled over those limits,
• 4:46:46
  Speaker 1: and we now call these things only relatively true or
• 4:46:51
  Speaker 1: true within those borders of experience. Absolutely they are false,
• 4:46:58
  Speaker 1: for we know that those limits work and might have
• 4:47:01
  Speaker 1: been transcended by past theorists, just as they are by
• 4:47:05
  Speaker 1: present thinkers. When new experiences lead to retrospective judgments using
• 4:47:12
  Speaker 1: the post sense, what these judgments utter was true even
• 4:47:18
  Speaker 1: though no post thinker had been led there. We live forwards,
• 4:47:23
  Speaker 1: a Danish thinker has said, but we understand backwards. The
• 4:47:29
  Speaker 1: present sheds are backward light on the world's previous processes.
• 4:47:33
  Speaker 1: They may have been truth processes for the actors in them,
• 4:47:37
  Speaker 1: they are not so for one who knows the later
• 4:47:40
  Speaker 1: revelations of the story. This regulative notion of a potential
• 4:47:45
  Speaker 1: better truth to be established later, possibly to be established
• 4:47:50
  Speaker 1: some day absolutely and having powers of retroactive legislation, turns
• 4:47:56
  Speaker 1: its face like all pragmatist notions, towards concreteness of fact
• 4:48:02
  Speaker 1: and towards the future. Like the half truths, the absolute
• 4:48:07
  Speaker 1: truth will have to be made made as a relation
• 4:48:10
  Speaker 1: incidental to the growth of a mass of verification experience,
• 4:48:15
  Speaker 1: to which the half true ideas are all along contributing
• 4:48:19
  Speaker 1: their quota. I have already insisted on the fact that
• 4:48:24
  Speaker 1: truth is made largely out of previous truths. Men's beliefs
• 4:48:29
  Speaker 1: at any time are so much experience funded, but the
• 4:48:34
  Speaker 1: beliefs are themselves parts of the sum total of the
• 4:48:37
  Speaker 1: world's experience, and become matter, therefore for the next day's
• 4:48:42
  Speaker 1: funding operations. So far as reality means experienceable reality, both
• 4:48:49
  Speaker 1: it and the truths men gain about it are everlastingly
• 4:48:53
  Speaker 1: in process of mutation. Mutation towards definite goal it may be,
• 4:49:00
  Speaker 1: but still mutation. Mathematicians can solve problems with two variables
• 4:49:07
  Speaker 1: on the Newtonian theory. For instance, acceleration varies with distance,
• 4:49:12
  Speaker 1: but distance also varies with acceleration. In the realm of
• 4:49:17
  Speaker 1: truth processes, facts come independently and determine our beliefs provisionally.
• 4:49:24
  Speaker 1: But these beliefs make us act, and as fast as
• 4:49:28
  Speaker 1: they do so, they bring into sight or into existence,
• 4:49:32
  Speaker 1: new facts, which redetermine the beliefs accordingly. So the whole
• 4:49:37
  Speaker 1: coil and ball of truth as it rolls up, is
• 4:49:40
  Speaker 1: the product of a double influence. Truths emerge from facts,
• 4:49:46
  Speaker 1: but they dip forward into facts again and add to them,
• 4:49:50
  Speaker 1: which facts again create or reveal new truth. The word
• 4:49:54
  Speaker 1: is indifferent, and so on indefinitely. The facts themselves, meanwhile,
• 4:50:00
  Speaker 1: are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function
• 4:50:05
  Speaker 1: of the beliefs that start and terminate among them, the
• 4:50:09
  Speaker 1: cases like a snowball's growth, due as it is, to
• 4:50:13
  Speaker 1: the distribution of the snow on the one hand, and
• 4:50:16
  Speaker 1: to the successive pushes of the boys on the other.
• 4:50:20
  Speaker 1: With these factors co determining each other incessantly, the most
• 4:50:25
  Speaker 1: fateful point of a difference between being a rationalist and
• 4:50:29
  Speaker 1: being a pragmatist is now fully in sight. Experience is
• 4:50:34
  Speaker 1: in mutation, and our psychological ascertainments of truth are in mutation.
• 4:50:41
  Speaker 1: So much rationalism will allow, but never that either reality
• 4:50:45
  Speaker 1: itself or truth itself is mutable. Reality stands complete and
• 4:50:52
  Speaker 1: ready made from all eternity. Rationalism insists, and the agreement
• 4:50:58
  Speaker 1: of our ideas with it is that unique, unanalyzable virtue
• 4:51:03
  Speaker 1: in them of which she has already told us as
• 4:51:07
  Speaker 1: that intrinsic excellence. Their truth has nothing to do with
• 4:51:12
  Speaker 1: our experiences. It adds nothing to the content of experience.
• 4:51:18
  Speaker 1: It makes no difference to reality itself. It is supervenient, inert, static,
• 4:51:24
  Speaker 1: a reflection. Merely, it doesn't exist, it holds or obtains.
• 4:51:32
  Speaker 1: It belongs to another dimension from that of either facts
• 4:51:36
  Speaker 1: or fact relations. Belongs, in short, to the epistemological dimension.
• 4:51:42
  Speaker 1: And with that big word rationalism closes the discussion. Thus,
• 4:51:48
  Speaker 1: just as pragmatism faces forward to the future, so does
• 4:51:53
  Speaker 1: rationalism here again face backward to a pause eternity. To
• 4:52:00
  Speaker 1: her invertorate habit, Rationalism reverts to principles and thinks that
• 4:52:06
  Speaker 1: when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
• 4:52:13
  Speaker 1: The tremendous pregnancy in the way of consequences for life
• 4:52:16
  Speaker 1: of this radical difference of outlook will only become apparent
• 4:52:20
  Speaker 1: in my later lectures. I wish meanwhile to close this
• 4:52:25
  Speaker 1: lecture by showing that rationalism sublimity does not save it
• 4:52:29
  Speaker 1: from inanity when, namely, you ask rationalists, instead of accusing
• 4:52:35
  Speaker 1: pragmatis of desecrating the notional truth, to define it themselves
• 4:52:40
  Speaker 1: by saying exactly what they understand by it. The only
• 4:52:44
  Speaker 1: positive attempts I can think of are these two. One
• 4:52:49
  Speaker 1: truth is just the system of propositions which have an
• 4:52:53
  Speaker 1: unconditional claim to be recognized as valid. Footnote A. E.
• 4:52:59
  Speaker 1: Taylor Philosophical Review, Volume fourteen, page two hundred and eighty eight.
• 4:53:06
  Speaker 1: Two Truth is a name for all those judgments which
• 4:53:11
  Speaker 1: we find ourselves under obligation to make by a kind
• 4:53:15
  Speaker 1: of imperative duty. Footnote h Rickett der gegenstand der Erkantness
• 4:53:23
  Speaker 1: chapter on the Ortail not Vendihikite. The first thing that
• 4:53:29
  Speaker 1: strikes one in such definitions is their unutterable triviality. They
• 4:53:34
  Speaker 1: are absolutely true, of course, but absolutely insignificant until you
• 4:53:39
  Speaker 1: handle them pragmatically. What you mean by claim here and
• 4:53:44
  Speaker 1: what you mean by duty as summary names for the
• 4:53:48
  Speaker 1: concrete reasons why thinking in true ways is overwhelmingly expedient
• 4:53:54
  Speaker 1: and good for mortal men. It is all right to
• 4:53:57
  Speaker 1: talk of claims on reality's part to be agreed with,
• 4:54:00
  Speaker 1: and of obligations on our part to agree. We feel
• 4:54:05
  Speaker 1: both the claims and the obligations, and we feel them
• 4:54:08
  Speaker 1: for just those reasons. But the rationalists to talk of
• 4:54:13
  Speaker 1: claim and obligation expressly say that they have nothing to
• 4:54:17
  Speaker 1: do with our practical interests or personal reasons. Our reasons
• 4:54:23
  Speaker 1: for agreeing are psychological facts, they say, relative to each
• 4:54:27
  Speaker 1: thinker and to the accidents of his life, they are
• 4:54:31
  Speaker 1: his evidence. Merely, they are no part of the life
• 4:54:34
  Speaker 1: of truth itself. That life transacts itself in a purely
• 4:54:39
  Speaker 1: logical or epistemological as distinguished from a psychological dimension, and
• 4:54:45
  Speaker 1: its claims antedate and exceed all personal motivations whatsoever. Though
• 4:54:51
  Speaker 1: neither man nor God should ever ascertain truth, the word
• 4:54:56
  Speaker 1: would still have to be defined as that which ought
• 4:54:59
  Speaker 1: to be as certain and recognized. There never was a
• 4:55:03
  Speaker 1: more exquisite example of an idea abstracted from the concretes
• 4:55:08
  Speaker 1: of experience and then used to oppose and negate what
• 4:55:11
  Speaker 1: it was abstracted from. Philosophy and common life abound in
• 4:55:16
  Speaker 1: similar instances. The sentimentalist fallacy is to shed tears over
• 4:55:22
  Speaker 1: abstract justice and generosity, beauty, et cetera, and never to
• 4:55:27
  Speaker 1: know these qualities when you meet them in the street,
• 4:55:30
  Speaker 1: because there the circumstances make them vulgar. Thus I read
• 4:55:36
  Speaker 1: in the privately printed Biography of an eminently rationalistic Mind,
• 4:55:41
  Speaker 1: it was strange that, with such admiration for beauty in
• 4:55:45
  Speaker 1: the abstract, my brother had no enthusiasm for fine architecture,
• 4:55:50
  Speaker 1: for beautiful painting, or for flowers. And in almost the
• 4:55:55
  Speaker 1: last philosophic work I have read, I find such passages
• 4:55:59
  Speaker 1: as the follow Justice is ideal solely ideal. Reason conceives
• 4:56:07
  Speaker 1: that it ought to exist, but experience shows that it cannot.
• 4:56:12
  Speaker 1: Truth which ought to be cannot be. Reason is deformed
• 4:56:18
  Speaker 1: by experience. As soon as reason enters experience, it becomes
• 4:56:25
  Speaker 1: contrary to reason. The rationalist fallacy here is exactly like
• 4:56:30
  Speaker 1: the sentimentalists. Both extract a quality from the muddy particulars
• 4:56:36
  Speaker 1: of experience and find it so pure when extracted that
• 4:56:40
  Speaker 1: they contrasted with each and all its muddy instances as
• 4:56:44
  Speaker 1: an opposite and higher nature. All the while it is
• 4:56:48
  Speaker 1: their nature. It is the nature of truth to be
• 4:56:51
  Speaker 1: validated verified, it pays for our ideas to be validated.
• 4:56:57
  Speaker 1: Our obligation to seek truth is part of our general
• 4:57:00
  Speaker 1: obligation to do what pays. The payment's true ideas bring
• 4:57:06
  Speaker 1: are the sole why of our duty to follow them.
• 4:57:10
  Speaker 1: Identical wise exist In the case of wealth and health,
• 4:57:16
  Speaker 1: truth makes no other kind of claim and imposes no
• 4:57:19
  Speaker 1: other kind of aught than health and wealth do. All
• 4:57:24
  Speaker 1: these claims are conditional. The concrete benefits we gain are
• 4:57:28
  Speaker 1: what we mean by calling the pursuit a duty. In
• 4:57:32
  Speaker 1: the case of truth, untrue beliefs work as perniciously in
• 4:57:37
  Speaker 1: the long run as true beliefs work beneficially. Talking abstractly,
• 4:57:43
  Speaker 1: the quality true may thus be said to grow absolutely precious,
• 4:57:47
  Speaker 1: and the quality untrue absolutely damnable. The one may be
• 4:57:53
  Speaker 1: called good, the other bad. Unconditionally, we ought to think
• 4:57:58
  Speaker 1: the true, We ought to shun the false imperatively. But
• 4:58:03
  Speaker 1: if you treat all this abstraction literally and oppose it
• 4:58:07
  Speaker 1: to its mother soil inexperience, see what a preposterous position
• 4:58:12
  Speaker 1: we work ourselves into. We cannot then take a step
• 4:58:17
  Speaker 1: forward in our actual thinking. When shall I acknowledge this truth?
• 4:58:22
  Speaker 1: And when that shall the acknowledgment be loud or silent?
• 4:58:28
  Speaker 1: If sometimes loud sometimes silent? Which now, when may a
• 4:58:34
  Speaker 1: truth go into cold storage in the encyclopedia? And when
• 4:58:39
  Speaker 1: shall it come out for battle? Must I constantly be
• 4:58:44
  Speaker 1: repeating the truth twice two or four because of its
• 4:58:48
  Speaker 1: eternal claim on recognition? Or is it sometimes irrelevant? Must
• 4:58:54
  Speaker 1: my thoughts dwell night and day on my personal sins
• 4:58:57
  Speaker 1: and blemishes because I truly have them? Or may I
• 4:59:01
  Speaker 1: sink and ignore them in order to be a decent
• 4:59:04
  Speaker 1: social unit and not a mass of morbid melancholy an apology.
• 4:59:09
  Speaker 1: It is quite evident that our obligation to acknowledge truth,
• 4:59:13
  Speaker 1: so far from being unconditional, is tremendously conditioned. Truth with
• 4:59:18
  Speaker 1: a big T, and in the singular claims abstractly to
• 4:59:22
  Speaker 1: be recognized, of course, but concrete truths in the plural
• 4:59:28
  Speaker 1: needs be recognized only when the recognition is expedient. A
• 4:59:33
  Speaker 1: truth must always be preferred to falsehood when both relate
• 4:59:37
  Speaker 1: to the situation, but when neither does, truth is as
• 4:59:42
  Speaker 1: little of a duty as falsehood. If you ask me
• 4:59:46
  Speaker 1: what a clock it is, and I tell you that
• 4:59:49
  Speaker 1: I live at ninety five Irving Street may also may
• 4:59:53
  Speaker 1: indeed be true, but you don't see why it is
• 4:59:56
  Speaker 1: my duty to give it. A false address would be
• 4:59:59
  Speaker 1: a much to the purpose. With this admission that there
• 5:00:04
  Speaker 1: are conditions that limit the application of the abstract imperative,
• 5:00:09
  Speaker 1: the pragmatistic treatment of truth sweeps back upon us. In
• 5:00:13
  Speaker 1: its fullness. Our duty to agree with reality is seen
• 5:00:18
  Speaker 1: to be grounded in a perfect jungle of concrete expediences.
• 5:00:24
  Speaker 1: When Berkeley had explained what people meant by matter, people
• 5:00:28
  Speaker 1: thought that he denied matter's existence. When Mistress Schiller and
• 5:00:34
  Speaker 1: Dewey now explain what people mean by truth, they are
• 5:00:37
  Speaker 1: accused of denying its existence. These pragmatists destroy all objective
• 5:00:44
  Speaker 1: standards critics say, and put foolishness and wisdom on one level.
• 5:00:49
  Speaker 1: A favorite formula for describing mister Schiller's doctrines and mine
• 5:00:54
  Speaker 1: is that we are persons who think that by saying
• 5:00:57
  Speaker 1: whatever you find it pleasant to say, and calling it truth,
• 5:01:01
  Speaker 1: you fulfill every pragmatistic requirement. I leave it to you
• 5:01:06
  Speaker 1: to judge whether this be not an impudent slander. Pent
• 5:01:11
  Speaker 1: In as the pragmatist, more than anyone else, sees himself
• 5:01:14
  Speaker 1: to be between the whole body of funded truths squeezed
• 5:01:19
  Speaker 1: from the past and the quercions of the world of
• 5:01:21
  Speaker 1: sense about him, who so well as he feels the
• 5:01:25
  Speaker 1: immense pressure of objective control under which our minds perform
• 5:01:31
  Speaker 1: their operations. If anyone imagines that this law is lax,
• 5:01:37
  Speaker 1: let him keep its commandment one day, says Emerson. We
• 5:01:43
  Speaker 1: have heard much of late of the uses of the
• 5:01:46
  Speaker 1: imagination in science. It is high time to urge the
• 5:01:50
  Speaker 1: use of our little imagination in philosophy. The unwillingness of
• 5:01:54
  Speaker 1: some of our critics to read any but the silliest
• 5:01:58
  Speaker 1: or possible meanings into our statements is as discreditable to
• 5:02:03
  Speaker 1: their imaginations as anything I know in recent philosophic history.
• 5:02:09
  Speaker 1: Schiller says, the true is that which works. Thereupon he
• 5:02:15
  Speaker 1: is treated as one who limits verification to the lowest
• 5:02:19
  Speaker 1: material utilities. Dewis says truth is what gives satisfaction. He
• 5:02:26
  Speaker 1: is treated as one who believes in calling everything true, which,
• 5:02:31
  Speaker 1: if it were true, would be pleasant. Our critics certainly
• 5:02:35
  Speaker 1: need more imagination of realities. I have honestly tried to
• 5:02:40
  Speaker 1: stretch my own imagination and to read the best possible
• 5:02:44
  Speaker 1: meaning into the rationalist conception, but I have to confess
• 5:02:49
  Speaker 1: that it still completely baffles me. The notion of reality
• 5:02:54
  Speaker 1: calling on us to agree with and that for no
• 5:02:57
  Speaker 1: reason but simply because it's c is unconditional or transcendent,
• 5:03:03
  Speaker 1: is one that I can make neither head nor tail of.
• 5:03:08
  Speaker 1: I try to imagine myself as a sole reality in
• 5:03:11
  Speaker 1: the world, and then to imagine what more I would
• 5:03:14
  Speaker 1: claim if I were allowed to. If you suggest the
• 5:03:18
  Speaker 1: possibility on my claiming that a mind should come into
• 5:03:22
  Speaker 1: being from out of the void inane and stand and
• 5:03:25
  Speaker 1: copy me, I can indeed imagine what the copying might mean.
• 5:03:31
  Speaker 1: But I can conjure up no motive what good it
• 5:03:35
  Speaker 1: would do me to be copied, or what good it
• 5:03:38
  Speaker 1: would do that mind to copy me. If father consequences
• 5:03:42
  Speaker 1: are expressly and in principle ruled out as motives for
• 5:03:46
  Speaker 1: the claim, as they are by our rationalist authorities. I
• 5:03:50
  Speaker 1: cannot fathom when the Irishman's admirers ran him along to
• 5:03:55
  Speaker 1: the place of banquet in a sedan chair with no bottom,
• 5:03:59
  Speaker 1: he said, faith, if it wasn't for the honor of
• 5:04:03
  Speaker 1: the thing, I might as well have come on foot
• 5:04:07
  Speaker 1: so here. But for the honor of the thing, I
• 5:04:11
  Speaker 1: might as well have remained uncopied. Copying is one genuine
• 5:04:17
  Speaker 1: mode of knowing, which, for some strange reason, our contemporary
• 5:04:21
  Speaker 1: Transcendentalists seem to be tumbling over each other to repudiate.
• 5:04:26
  Speaker 1: But when we get beyond copying and fall back on
• 5:04:30
  Speaker 1: unnamed forms of agreeing that are expressly denied to be
• 5:04:35
  Speaker 1: either copyings or leadings or fittings, or any processes pragmatically definable,
• 5:04:41
  Speaker 1: the what of the agreement claimed becomes as unintelligible as
• 5:04:46
  Speaker 1: the why of it. Neither content nor motive can be
• 5:04:52
  Speaker 1: imagined for it. It is an absolutely meaningless abstraction. Footnote.
• 5:05:00
  Speaker 1: I am not forgetting that Professor Rickart long ago gave
• 5:05:03
  Speaker 1: up the whole notion of truth being founded on agreement
• 5:05:06
  Speaker 1: with reality. Reality, according to him, is whatever Greece with truth,
• 5:05:11
  Speaker 1: and truth is founded solely on our primal duty. This
• 5:05:16
  Speaker 1: fantastic flight, together with mister Joakim's candid confession of failure
• 5:05:21
  Speaker 1: in his book The Nature of Truth, seems to me
• 5:05:25
  Speaker 1: to mark the bankruptcy of rationalism. When dealing with this subject,
• 5:05:31
  Speaker 1: Rickard deals with part of the pragmatistic position under the
• 5:05:34
  Speaker 1: head of what he calls relativismos. I cannot discuss his
• 5:05:39
  Speaker 1: text here, suffice it to say that his argumentation in
• 5:05:44
  Speaker 1: that chapter is so feeble as to seem almost incredible
• 5:05:49
  Speaker 1: in so generally able a writer. Surely, in this field
• 5:05:53
  Speaker 1: of truth, it is the pragmatists and not the rationalists,
• 5:05:57
  Speaker 1: who are the more genuine defenders of the universe's rationality.
• 5:06:04
  Speaker 1: End of Lecture six. Lecture seven Pragmatism and humanism. What
• 5:06:10
  Speaker 1: hardens the heart of everyone I approach with a view
• 5:06:14
  Speaker 1: of truth sketched in my last lecture is that the
• 5:06:17
  Speaker 1: typical idol of the tribe, the notion of the truth
• 5:06:21
  Speaker 1: conceived as the one answer, determinate and complete to the
• 5:06:26
  Speaker 1: one fixed enigma which the world is believed to propound.
• 5:06:31
  Speaker 1: For popular tradition, it is all the better if the
• 5:06:34
  Speaker 1: answer be oracular, so as itself to awaken wonder as
• 5:06:38
  Speaker 1: an enigma of the second order, vealing rather than revealing,
• 5:06:43
  Speaker 1: what its profundities are supposed to contain. All the great
• 5:06:48
  Speaker 1: single word answers to the world's riddle, such as God,
• 5:06:54
  Speaker 1: the One Reason, law, spirit, matter, nature, polity, the dialectic process,
• 5:07:02
  Speaker 1: their idea, the self, the over soul, draw the admiration
• 5:07:08
  Speaker 1: that men have lavished on them. From this oracular role.
• 5:07:12
  Speaker 1: By amateurs in philosophy and professionals alike, the universe is
• 5:07:17
  Speaker 1: represented as a queer, sort of petrified sphinx, whose appeal
• 5:07:22
  Speaker 1: to man consists in a monotonous challenge to his divining powers,
• 5:07:28
  Speaker 1: the truth. What a perfect idol of the rationalistic mind.
• 5:07:33
  Speaker 1: I read in an old letter from a gifted friend
• 5:07:36
  Speaker 1: who died too young these words. In everything, in science, art, morals,
• 5:07:44
  Speaker 1: and religion, there must be one system that is right
• 5:07:48
  Speaker 1: and every other wrong. How characteristic of the enthusiasm of
• 5:07:54
  Speaker 1: a certain stage of youth. At twenty one we rise
• 5:07:58
  Speaker 1: to such a challenge and to find the system. It
• 5:08:02
  Speaker 1: never occurs to most of us even later, that the
• 5:08:05
  Speaker 1: question what is the truth is no real question, being
• 5:08:11
  Speaker 1: irrelative to all conditions, and that the whole notion of
• 5:08:15
  Speaker 1: the truth is an abstraction from the fact of truths
• 5:08:19
  Speaker 1: in the plural, a mere useful summarizing phrase, like the
• 5:08:23
  Speaker 1: Latin language or the law. Common law judges sometimes talk
• 5:08:30
  Speaker 1: about the law, and schoolmasters talk about the Latin tongue
• 5:08:34
  Speaker 1: in a way to make their hearers think they mean
• 5:08:37
  Speaker 1: entities pre existent to the decisions, or to the words
• 5:08:41
  Speaker 1: and syntax, determining them uneqivocally and requiring them to obey.
• 5:08:48
  Speaker 1: But the slightest exercise of reflection makes us see that
• 5:08:52
  Speaker 1: instead of being principles of this kind, both law and
• 5:08:56
  Speaker 1: Latin are results. Distinctions between between the lawful and the
• 5:09:01
  Speaker 1: unlawful in conduct, or between the correct and incorrect in speech,
• 5:09:06
  Speaker 1: have grown up incidentally among the interactions of men's experiences
• 5:09:11
  Speaker 1: in detail, and in no other way do distinctions between
• 5:09:15
  Speaker 1: the true and the false in belief, ever, grow up.
• 5:09:19
  Speaker 1: Truth grafts itself on previous truth, modifying it in the process,
• 5:09:25
  Speaker 1: just as idiom grafts itself on previous idiom, and law
• 5:09:30
  Speaker 1: on previous law. Given previous law and a novel case,
• 5:09:35
  Speaker 1: and the judge will twist them into fresh law. Previous idiom.
• 5:09:40
  Speaker 1: New slang or metaphor or oddity that hits the public taste,
• 5:09:44
  Speaker 1: and presto, a new idiom is made, previous truth, fresh facts,
• 5:09:51
  Speaker 1: and our mind finds a new truth. All the while, however,
• 5:09:56
  Speaker 1: we pretend that the eternal is unrolling, that the one
• 5:10:00
  Speaker 1: previous justice, grammar, or truth is simply fulgrating and not
• 5:10:04
  Speaker 1: being made. But imagine a youth in the court room
• 5:10:08
  Speaker 1: trying cases with this abstract notion of the law, where
• 5:10:12
  Speaker 1: a censor of speech let loose among the theaters with
• 5:10:16
  Speaker 1: his idea of the mother tongue, or a professor setting
• 5:10:19
  Speaker 1: up to lecture on the actual universe with his rationalistic
• 5:10:24
  Speaker 1: notion of the truth with a big t. And what
• 5:10:27
  Speaker 1: progress do they make? Truth, law and language fairly boil
• 5:10:33
  Speaker 1: away from them, at least the touch of novel fact.
• 5:10:38
  Speaker 1: These things make themselves as we go. Our rights, wrongs, prohibitions, penalties, words, forms, idioms,
• 5:10:48
  Speaker 1: beliefs are so many new creations that add themselves as
• 5:10:52
  Speaker 1: fast as history proceeds. Far from being antecedent principles that
• 5:10:58
  Speaker 1: animate the process, law, language, truths are but abstract names
• 5:11:03
  Speaker 1: for its results. Laws and languages at any rate are
• 5:11:09
  Speaker 1: thus seen to be man made things. Mister Schiller applies
• 5:11:14
  Speaker 1: the analogy to believes, and proposes the same of humanism
• 5:11:18
  Speaker 1: for the doctrine that, to an uncertainable extent, our truths
• 5:11:23
  Speaker 1: are man made products too. Human motives sharpen all our questions,
• 5:11:29
  Speaker 1: Human satisfactions lurk in all our answers, all our formulas
• 5:11:34
  Speaker 1: have a human twist. This element is so inextricable in
• 5:11:39
  Speaker 1: the products that mister Schiller sometimes seems almost to leave
• 5:11:43
  Speaker 1: it an open question whether there be anything else. The world,
• 5:11:48
  Speaker 1: he says, is essentially julam daniu. It is what we
• 5:11:54
  Speaker 1: make of it. It is fruitless to define it by
• 5:11:58
  Speaker 1: what it originally was or by what it is apart
• 5:12:01
  Speaker 1: from us. It is what is made of it. Hence
• 5:12:06
  Speaker 1: the world is plastic footnote Personal Idealism, page sixty. He
• 5:12:14
  Speaker 1: adds that we can learn the limits of the plasticity
• 5:12:17
  Speaker 1: only by trying, and that we ought to start, as
• 5:12:20
  Speaker 1: it were, wholly plastic, acting methodically on that assumption, and
• 5:12:25
  Speaker 1: stopping only when we are decisively rebuked. This is mister
• 5:12:30
  Speaker 1: Schiller's butt and foremost statement of the humanist position, and
• 5:12:34
  Speaker 1: it has exposed him to severe attack. I mean to
• 5:12:38
  Speaker 1: defend the humanists position in this lecture, so I will
• 5:12:40
  Speaker 1: insinuate a few remarks. At this point, mister Schiller admits
• 5:12:45
  Speaker 1: as emphatically as anyone, the presence of resisting factors in
• 5:12:50
  Speaker 1: every actual experience of truth making, of which the new
• 5:12:53
  Speaker 1: made special truths must take account, and with which it
• 5:12:57
  Speaker 1: has perforce to agree all our truths, our beliefs about reality,
• 5:13:04
  Speaker 1: and in any particular belief the reality acts as something independent,
• 5:13:08
  Speaker 1: as a thing found, not manufactured. Let me here recall
• 5:13:13
  Speaker 1: a bit of my last lecture. Reality is, in general
• 5:13:16
  Speaker 1: what truths have to take account of. Footnote. Mister Taylor,
• 5:13:21
  Speaker 1: in his Elements of Metaphysics uses this excellent pragmatic definition.
• 5:13:26
  Speaker 1: And the first part of reality from this point of
• 5:13:29
  Speaker 1: view is the flux of our sensations. Sensations are forced
• 5:13:34
  Speaker 1: upon us, coming we know not whence over their nature, order,
• 5:13:39
  Speaker 1: and quantity we have as good as no control. They
• 5:13:42
  Speaker 1: are neither true nor false. They simply are. It is
• 5:13:46
  Speaker 1: only what we say about them, only the names we
• 5:13:49
  Speaker 1: give them, our theories of their source and nature, and
• 5:13:52
  Speaker 1: remote relations that may be true or not. The second
• 5:13:57
  Speaker 1: part of reality, as something that our beliefs must also
• 5:14:00
  Speaker 1: obediently take account of, is the relations that obtain between
• 5:14:04
  Speaker 1: our sensations or between their copies in our minds. This
• 5:14:08
  Speaker 1: part falls into two sub parts, one the relations that
• 5:14:13
  Speaker 1: are mutable and accidental, as those of date and place,
• 5:14:17
  Speaker 1: and two those that are fixed and essential because they
• 5:14:21
  Speaker 1: are grounded on the inner natures of their terms, such
• 5:14:24
  Speaker 1: as likeness and unlikeness. Both sorts of relation are matters
• 5:14:29
  Speaker 1: of immediate perception. Both are facts, but it is the
• 5:14:34
  Speaker 1: latter kind of fact that forms the more important sub
• 5:14:37
  Speaker 1: part of reality. For our theories of knowledge, inner relations, namely,
• 5:14:43
  Speaker 1: are eternal, are perceived whenever their sensible terms are compared,
• 5:14:48
  Speaker 1: and of them our thought, mathematical and logical thoughts, so called,
• 5:14:53
  Speaker 1: must eternally take account. The third part of reality, additional
• 5:14:59
  Speaker 1: to these perceptions, though largely based upon them, is the
• 5:15:03
  Speaker 1: previous truths, of which every new inquiry takes account. This
• 5:15:08
  Speaker 1: third part is a much less obdurately resisting factor. It
• 5:15:12
  Speaker 1: often ends by giving way in speaking of these three
• 5:15:16
  Speaker 1: portions of reality as at all times controlling our beliefs formation,
• 5:15:22
  Speaker 1: I'm only reminding you of what we heard in our
• 5:15:24
  Speaker 1: last hour. Now, however fixed these elements of reality may be,
• 5:15:30
  Speaker 1: we still have a certain freedom in our dealings with them.
• 5:15:34
  Speaker 1: Take our sensations. That they are is undoubtedly beyond our control.
• 5:15:40
  Speaker 1: But which we attend to note and make empathetic in
• 5:15:44
  Speaker 1: our conclusions depends on our own interests. And according as
• 5:15:49
  Speaker 1: we lay the emphasis here and there, quite different formulations
• 5:15:54
  Speaker 1: of truth result. We read the same facts differently with
• 5:16:00
  Speaker 1: the same fixed details. Spells a victory for an Englishman.
• 5:16:05
  Speaker 1: For a Frenchman it spells a defeat. So for an
• 5:16:09
  Speaker 1: optimist philosopher, the universe spells victory for a pessimist defeat.
• 5:16:15
  Speaker 1: What we say about reality thus depends on the perspective
• 5:16:19
  Speaker 1: into which we throw it. That of it is its own,
• 5:16:24
  Speaker 1: But the what depends on the witch, and the witch
• 5:16:28
  Speaker 1: depends on us. Both the sensational and relational parts of
• 5:16:33
  Speaker 1: reality are dumb. They say absolutely nothing about themselves. We
• 5:16:39
  Speaker 1: it is, who have to speak for them. This dumbness
• 5:16:43
  Speaker 1: of sensations has led such intellectualists as T. H. Green
• 5:16:47
  Speaker 1: and Edward Cared to shove them almost beyond the pale
• 5:16:51
  Speaker 1: of philosophic recognition. But pragmatis refuse to go so far.
• 5:16:57
  Speaker 1: A sensation is rather like a client who has give
• 5:17:00
  Speaker 1: given his case to a lawyer and then has passively
• 5:17:03
  Speaker 1: to listen in the court room to whatever account of
• 5:17:06
  Speaker 1: his affairs, pleasant or unpleasant, the lawyer finds it most
• 5:17:09
  Speaker 1: expedient to give. Hence, even in the field of sensation,
• 5:17:15
  Speaker 1: our minds exert a certain arbitrary choice. By our inclusions
• 5:17:20
  Speaker 1: and omissions. We trace the fields extent by our emphasis,
• 5:17:24
  Speaker 1: we mark its foreground and its background by our order.
• 5:17:29
  Speaker 1: We read it in this direction or in that, we receive,
• 5:17:33
  Speaker 1: in short, the block of marble, But we carve the
• 5:17:36
  Speaker 1: statue ourselves. This applies to the eternal parts of reality
• 5:17:41
  Speaker 1: as well. We shuffle our perceptions of intrinsic relation and
• 5:17:46
  Speaker 1: arrange them just as freely. We read them in one
• 5:17:49
  Speaker 1: serial order or another. Class them in this way or
• 5:17:53
  Speaker 1: in that, treat one or the other as more fundamental
• 5:17:58
  Speaker 1: until our beliefs about them. For those bodies of truth
• 5:18:02
  Speaker 1: known as logics, geometries, or arithmetics, in each and all
• 5:18:07
  Speaker 1: of which the form and order in which the whole
• 5:18:10
  Speaker 1: is cast is flagrantly man made. That's to say nothing
• 5:18:15
  Speaker 1: of the new facts which men add to the matter
• 5:18:18
  Speaker 1: of reality. By the acts of their own lives. They
• 5:18:22
  Speaker 1: have already impressed their mental forms on that whole third
• 5:18:26
  Speaker 1: of reality which I have called previous truths. Every hour
• 5:18:31
  Speaker 1: brings its new percepts, its own facts of sensation and
• 5:18:35
  Speaker 1: relation to be truly taken account of. But the whole
• 5:18:39
  Speaker 1: of our past dealings with such facts is already funded
• 5:18:42
  Speaker 1: in the previous truths. It is therefore only the smallest
• 5:18:46
  Speaker 1: and recentest fraction of the first two parts of reality
• 5:18:51
  Speaker 1: that comes to us without the human touch, and that
• 5:18:54
  Speaker 1: fraction has immediately to become humanized, in the sense of
• 5:18:58
  Speaker 1: being squared, simulated, or in some way adapted to the
• 5:19:03
  Speaker 1: humanized mass already there. As a matter of fact, we
• 5:19:07
  Speaker 1: can hardly take in an impression at all in the
• 5:19:11
  Speaker 1: absence of a preconception of what impressions there may possibly be.
• 5:19:17
  Speaker 1: When we talk of reality independent of human thinking, then
• 5:19:21
  Speaker 1: it seems a thing very hard to find. It reduces
• 5:19:24
  Speaker 1: to the notion of what is just entering into experience
• 5:19:28
  Speaker 1: and yet to be named, or else to some imagined
• 5:19:31
  Speaker 1: aboriginal presence in experience before any belief about the presence
• 5:19:36
  Speaker 1: had arisen, before any human conception had been applied. It
• 5:19:41
  Speaker 1: is what is absolutely dumb an evanescent, the merely ideal
• 5:19:46
  Speaker 1: limit of our minds. We may glimpse it, but we
• 5:19:50
  Speaker 1: never grasp it. What we grasp is always some substitute
• 5:19:55
  Speaker 1: for it, which previous human thinking has peptonized and cooked
• 5:20:00
  Speaker 1: for our consumption. If so vulgar an expression were allowed us,
• 5:20:05
  Speaker 1: we might say that wherever we find it, it has
• 5:20:08
  Speaker 1: been already faked. This is what mister Shiller has in
• 5:20:11
  Speaker 1: mind when he calls independent reality a mere unresisting yu lumbdanyu,
• 5:20:17
  Speaker 1: which is only to be made over by us. That
• 5:20:22
  Speaker 1: is mister Schiller's beliefs about the sensible core of reality.
• 5:20:26
  Speaker 1: We encounter it, in mister Bradley's words, but don't possess
• 5:20:30
  Speaker 1: it superficially. This sounds like canst view, But between kateogorias
• 5:20:36
  Speaker 1: fulminated before nature began and ketogoris gradually forming themselves in
• 5:20:41
  Speaker 1: nature's presence, the whole chasm between rationalism and empiricism yawns
• 5:20:49
  Speaker 1: to the genuine can gener Schiller will always be to
• 5:20:53
  Speaker 1: kunt as a satyr to hyperion. Other pragmatists may reach
• 5:20:58
  Speaker 1: more positive belief about the sensible core of reality. They
• 5:21:03
  Speaker 1: may think to get at it in its independent nature
• 5:21:06
  Speaker 1: by peeling off the successive man made rappings. They may
• 5:21:11
  Speaker 1: make theories that tell us where it comes from, and
• 5:21:14
  Speaker 1: all about it, and if these theories work satisfactorily, they
• 5:21:19
  Speaker 1: will be true. The transcendental idealists say that there is
• 5:21:23
  Speaker 1: no core, the finally completed rapping being reality and truth
• 5:21:29
  Speaker 1: in one. Scholasticism still teaches that the core is matter.
• 5:21:35
  Speaker 1: Professor Bergson, Highman, Strong and others believe in the core
• 5:21:39
  Speaker 1: and bravely try to define it. Misters Dewey and Schiller
• 5:21:44
  Speaker 1: treat it as a limit, which is the truer of
• 5:21:48
  Speaker 1: all these diverse accounts, or of others comparable with them,
• 5:21:53
  Speaker 1: Unless it be the one that finally proves the most satisfactory.
• 5:21:58
  Speaker 1: On the one hand, there will stand and reality, on
• 5:22:01
  Speaker 1: the other, an account of it which proves impossible to
• 5:22:05
  Speaker 1: better or to alter. If the impossibility prove permanent, the
• 5:22:09
  Speaker 1: truth of the account will be absolute. Other content of
• 5:22:13
  Speaker 1: truth than this I can find nowhere. If the anti
• 5:22:18
  Speaker 1: pragmatists have any other meaning, let them, for the Heaven's sake,
• 5:22:22
  Speaker 1: reveal it. Let them grant us access to it, not
• 5:22:26
  Speaker 1: being reality but only our belief about reality. It will
• 5:22:30
  Speaker 1: contain human elements, but these will know the non human
• 5:22:35
  Speaker 1: element in the only sense in which there can be
• 5:22:38
  Speaker 1: knowledge of anything. Does the river make its banks, or
• 5:22:42
  Speaker 1: the banks make the river? Does a man walk with
• 5:22:46
  Speaker 1: his right leg or with his left leg? More essentially,
• 5:22:50
  Speaker 1: just as impossible may it be to separate the real
• 5:22:54
  Speaker 1: from the human factors in the growth of our cognitive experience.
• 5:22:59
  Speaker 1: Let this stand, and as a first brief indication of
• 5:23:02
  Speaker 1: the humanistic position? Does it seem paradoxical? If so, I
• 5:23:07
  Speaker 1: will try to make it plausible by a few illustrations,
• 5:23:10
  Speaker 1: which will lead to a fuller acquaintance with the subject.
• 5:23:14
  Speaker 1: In many familiar objects, everyone will recognize the human element.
• 5:23:19
  Speaker 1: We conceive a given reality in this way or in
• 5:23:22
  Speaker 1: that to suit our purpose, and the reality passively submits
• 5:23:26
  Speaker 1: to the conception. You can take the number twenty seven
• 5:23:30
  Speaker 1: as the cube of three, or as the product of
• 5:23:33
  Speaker 1: three and nine, or as twenty six plus one or
• 5:23:37
  Speaker 1: one hundred minus seventy three, or in countless other ways,
• 5:23:41
  Speaker 1: of which one will be just as true as another.
• 5:23:45
  Speaker 1: You can take a chessboard as black squares on a
• 5:23:48
  Speaker 1: white ground, or as white squares on a blackground, and
• 5:23:53
  Speaker 1: neither conception is a false one. You can treat the
• 5:23:56
  Speaker 1: adjoined nature figure of a star of David as a
• 5:23:59
  Speaker 1: star as two big triangles crossing each other. As a
• 5:24:04
  Speaker 1: hexagon with legs set up on its angles, as six
• 5:24:08
  Speaker 1: equal triangles hanging together by their tips, et cetera. All
• 5:24:14
  Speaker 1: these treatments are true treatments the sensible that upon the
• 5:24:18
  Speaker 1: paper resists no one of them. You can say of
• 5:24:22
  Speaker 1: a line that it runs east, or you can say
• 5:24:25
  Speaker 1: that it runs west, and the line per se accepts
• 5:24:29
  Speaker 1: both descriptions without rebelling at the inconsistency. We carve out
• 5:24:36
  Speaker 1: groups of stars in the heavens and call them constellations,
• 5:24:39
  Speaker 1: and the stars patiently suffer us to do so, though
• 5:24:44
  Speaker 1: if they knew what we were doing, some of them
• 5:24:47
  Speaker 1: might feel much surprised at the partners we had given them.
• 5:24:51
  Speaker 1: We name the same constellations diversely as Charles Vane, the
• 5:24:57
  Speaker 1: Great Bear, or the Dipper. None of the names will
• 5:25:01
  Speaker 1: be false, and one will be as true as another,
• 5:25:04
  Speaker 1: for all are applicable. In all these cases we humanly
• 5:25:09
  Speaker 1: make in addition to some sensible reality, and that reality
• 5:25:14
  Speaker 1: tolerates the addition. All the additions agree with the reality.
• 5:25:19
  Speaker 1: They fit it while they build it out. No one
• 5:25:23
  Speaker 1: of them is false. Which may be treated as the
• 5:25:27
  Speaker 1: more true depends altogether on the human use of it.
• 5:25:32
  Speaker 1: If the twenty seven is a number of dollars which
• 5:25:35
  Speaker 1: I find in a drawer which I had left twenty eight,
• 5:25:39
  Speaker 1: it is twenty eight minus one. If it is the
• 5:25:43
  Speaker 1: number of inches in a shelf which I wish to
• 5:25:46
  Speaker 1: insert into a cupboard twenty six inches wide, it is
• 5:25:50
  Speaker 1: twenty six plus one. If I wish to ennoble the
• 5:25:55
  Speaker 1: heavens by the constellations I see there, Charles Wayne would
• 5:26:00
  Speaker 1: be more true than Dipper. My friend Frederick Myers was
• 5:26:04
  Speaker 1: humorously indignant that that prodigious star group should remind us
• 5:26:09
  Speaker 1: Americans of nothing but a culinary utensil. What shall we
• 5:26:15
  Speaker 1: call a thing? Anyhow, it seems quite arbitrary, for we
• 5:26:20
  Speaker 1: carve out everything, just as we carve out constellations to
• 5:26:24
  Speaker 1: suit our human purposes. For me, this whole audience is
• 5:26:29
  Speaker 1: one thing which grows now restless, now attentive. I have
• 5:26:33
  Speaker 1: no use at present for its individual units. So I
• 5:26:36
  Speaker 1: don't consider them so of an army of a nation.
• 5:26:40
  Speaker 1: But in your own eyes, ladies and gentlemen, to call
• 5:26:44
  Speaker 1: your audience is an accidental way of taking you the
• 5:26:48
  Speaker 1: permanently real thing. For you are your individual persons. To
• 5:26:53
  Speaker 1: an anatomist, again, those persons are but organisms and the
• 5:26:57
  Speaker 1: real things are the organs. Not the organs so much
• 5:27:01
  Speaker 1: as their constituent cells, say the histologists. Not the cells,
• 5:27:06
  Speaker 1: but their molecules, say in turn the chemists. We break
• 5:27:11
  Speaker 1: the flux of sensible reality into things, then, at our
• 5:27:15
  Speaker 1: will we create the subjects of our true as well
• 5:27:19
  Speaker 1: as of our false propositions. We create the predicates. Also,
• 5:27:24
  Speaker 1: many of the predicates of things express only the relations
• 5:27:28
  Speaker 1: of the things to us and to our feelings. Such predicates,
• 5:27:31
  Speaker 1: of course, are human additions. Caesar crossed the rubicon and
• 5:27:36
  Speaker 1: was a menace to Rome's freedom. He is also an
• 5:27:39
  Speaker 1: American schoolroom pest, made into one by the reaction of
• 5:27:43
  Speaker 1: our schoolboys on his writings. The added predicate is as
• 5:27:48
  Speaker 1: true of him as the earlier ones. End of Lecture seven,
• 5:27:54
  Speaker 1: Part one. You see how naturally one comes to the
• 5:27:58
  Speaker 1: humanistic principle. Can't weed out the human contribution. Our nouns
• 5:28:03
  Speaker 1: and adjectives are all humanized heirlooms, and in the theories
• 5:28:07
  Speaker 1: we build them into the inner order and arrangement is
• 5:28:11
  Speaker 1: wholly dictated by human considerations, intellectual consistency being one of them.
• 5:28:19
  Speaker 1: Mathematics and logic themselves are fermenting with human rearrangements. Physics, astronomy,
• 5:28:26
  Speaker 1: and biology follow massive cues of preference. We plunge forward
• 5:28:32
  Speaker 1: into the field of fresh experience with the beliefs our ancestors,
• 5:28:36
  Speaker 1: and we have made already these determined what we notice.
• 5:28:41
  Speaker 1: What we notice determines what we do. What we do again,
• 5:28:45
  Speaker 1: determines what we experience. So from one thing to another,
• 5:28:49
  Speaker 1: although the stubborn fact remains that there is a sensible flux,
• 5:28:55
  Speaker 1: what is true of it seems from first to last
• 5:28:58
  Speaker 1: to be largely a mass of our own creation. We
• 5:29:03
  Speaker 1: build the flux out inevitably. The great question is, does it,
• 5:29:08
  Speaker 1: with our additions rise or fall in value? Are the
• 5:29:13
  Speaker 1: additions worthy or unworthy? Suppose a universe composed of seven
• 5:29:18
  Speaker 1: stars and nothing else but three human witnesses and their critic.
• 5:29:23
  Speaker 1: One witness names the stars great Bear, one calls them
• 5:29:29
  Speaker 1: Charles Wayne. One calls them the Dipper. Which human addition
• 5:29:35
  Speaker 1: has made the best universe of the given stellar material?
• 5:29:40
  Speaker 1: If Frederick Myers were the critic, he would have no
• 5:29:43
  Speaker 1: hesitation in turning down the American witness. Lotza has in
• 5:29:50
  Speaker 1: several places made a deep suggestion. We naively assume he
• 5:29:55
  Speaker 1: says a relation between reality and our minds, which may
• 5:30:00
  Speaker 1: be just the opposite of the true one. Reality we
• 5:30:04
  Speaker 1: naturally think stands ready made and complete, and our intellects
• 5:30:09
  Speaker 1: supervene with the one simple duty of describing it as
• 5:30:13
  Speaker 1: it is already. But may not our descriptions, Lotzi asks
• 5:30:19
  Speaker 1: be themselves important additions to reality, and may not previous
• 5:30:24
  Speaker 1: reality itself. Be there far less for the purpose of
• 5:30:28
  Speaker 1: reappairing unaltered in our knowledge than for the very purpose
• 5:30:32
  Speaker 1: of stimulating our minds to such additions as shall enhance
• 5:30:37
  Speaker 1: the universe's total value. The et huhung des Forgefunden than
• 5:30:42
  Speaker 1: the science is a phrase used by Professor Eucken somewhere
• 5:30:47
  Speaker 1: which reminds one of this suggestion by the Great Lotzy.
• 5:30:52
  Speaker 1: It is identically our pragmatistic conception. In our cognitive as
• 5:30:57
  Speaker 1: well as in our active life. We are creative. We
• 5:31:01
  Speaker 1: add both to the subject and to the predicate part
• 5:31:05
  Speaker 1: of reality. The world stands really immaleable, waiting to receive
• 5:31:10
  Speaker 1: its final touches at our hands. Like the Kingdom of Heaven,
• 5:31:16
  Speaker 1: it suffers human violence willingly man engenders truths upon it.
• 5:31:23
  Speaker 1: No one can deny that such a role would add
• 5:31:26
  Speaker 1: both to our dignity and to our responsibility as thinkers.
• 5:31:31
  Speaker 1: To some of us, it proves a most inspiring notion.
• 5:31:36
  Speaker 1: Signet Pappini, the leader of Italian pragmatism, grows fairly detherambic
• 5:31:42
  Speaker 1: over the view that it opens of man's divinely creative functions.
• 5:31:47
  Speaker 1: The import of the difference between pragmatism and rationalism is
• 5:31:52
  Speaker 1: now in sight throughout its whole extent. The essential contrast
• 5:31:57
  Speaker 1: is that for rationalism reality it is ready made and
• 5:32:01
  Speaker 1: complete from all eternity, while for pragmatism it is still
• 5:32:05
  Speaker 1: in the making and waits part of its complexion from
• 5:32:09
  Speaker 1: the future. On the one side, the universe is absolutely secure.
• 5:32:15
  Speaker 1: On the other, it is still pursuing its adventures. We
• 5:32:20
  Speaker 1: have got into rather deep water with this humanistic view,
• 5:32:25
  Speaker 1: and it is no wonder that misunderstanding gathers round it.
• 5:32:29
  Speaker 1: It is accused of being a doctrine of caprice. Mister Bradley,
• 5:32:34
  Speaker 1: for example, says that a humanist, if he understood his
• 5:32:37
  Speaker 1: own doctrine, would have to hold any end, however perverted,
• 5:32:42
  Speaker 1: to be rational if I insist on it personally, and
• 5:32:46
  Speaker 1: any idea, however mad, to be the truth, if only
• 5:32:50
  Speaker 1: someone is resolved that he will have it so. The
• 5:32:54
  Speaker 1: humanist view of reality as something resisting yet malleable, which
• 5:32:59
  Speaker 1: contrays our thinking as an energy that must be taken
• 5:33:03
  Speaker 1: account of incessantly, though not necessarily merely copied, is evidently
• 5:33:10
  Speaker 1: a difficult one to introduce to novices. The situation reminds
• 5:33:14
  Speaker 1: me of one that I have personally gone through. I
• 5:33:18
  Speaker 1: once wrote an essay on our right to believe, which
• 5:33:21
  Speaker 1: I unluckily called the Will to Believe. All the critics,
• 5:33:26
  Speaker 1: neglecting the essay, pounced upon the title. Psychologically it was impossible.
• 5:33:33
  Speaker 1: Morally it was iniquitous. The will to deceive the will
• 5:33:39
  Speaker 1: to make believe were witty proposed as substitutes for it.
• 5:33:44
  Speaker 1: The alternative between pragmatism and rationalism, in the shape in
• 5:33:49
  Speaker 1: which we now have it before us, is no longer
• 5:33:53
  Speaker 1: a question in the theory of knowledge. It concerns the
• 5:33:57
  Speaker 1: structure of the universe itself. On the pragmatist side, we
• 5:34:02
  Speaker 1: have only one edition of the universe, unfinished, growing in
• 5:34:07
  Speaker 1: all sorts of places, especially in the places where thinking
• 5:34:10
  Speaker 1: beings are at work. On the rationalist side, we have
• 5:34:15
  Speaker 1: a universe in many editions, one real one, the infinite
• 5:34:19
  Speaker 1: folio or additioned looks eternally complete, and then the various
• 5:34:23
  Speaker 1: finite editions full of false readings, distorted and mutilated, each
• 5:34:28
  Speaker 1: in its own way. So the rival metaphysical hypothesis of
• 5:34:33
  Speaker 1: pluralism and monism here come back upon us. I will
• 5:34:38
  Speaker 1: develop their differences during the remainder of our hour. And
• 5:34:43
  Speaker 1: first let me say that it is impossible not to
• 5:34:45
  Speaker 1: see a temperamental difference at work in the choice of science.
• 5:34:50
  Speaker 1: The rationalist mind radically taken is of a doctrinaire and
• 5:34:56
  Speaker 1: authoritative complexion. The phrase must be is ever on its lips.
• 5:35:02
  Speaker 1: The belly band of its universe must be tied. A
• 5:35:07
  Speaker 1: radical pragmatist, on the other hand, is a happy, go lucky,
• 5:35:11
  Speaker 1: anarchistic sort of creature. If it had to live in
• 5:35:14
  Speaker 1: a tub like diogenist, he wouldn't mind at all if
• 5:35:18
  Speaker 1: the hoops were loose and the stays let in the sun. Now,
• 5:35:23
  Speaker 1: the idea of this loose universe affects your typical rationalists
• 5:35:27
  Speaker 1: in much the same way as freedom of the press
• 5:35:30
  Speaker 1: might affect a veteran official in the Russian Bureau of Censorship,
• 5:35:35
  Speaker 1: or as simplified spelling might affect an elderly school mistress.
• 5:35:41
  Speaker 1: It affects him, as the swarm of Protestant sects affects
• 5:35:44
  Speaker 1: a papist onlooker, it appears as the backboneless and devoid
• 5:35:50
  Speaker 1: of principle, as opportunism in politics appears to an old
• 5:35:55
  Speaker 1: fashioned French legitimist, or to a fanatical believer in the
• 5:36:00
  Speaker 1: divine right of the people. For pluralistic pragmatism, truth grows
• 5:36:05
  Speaker 1: up inside of all the finite experiences. They lean on
• 5:36:10
  Speaker 1: each other, but the whole of them. If such a
• 5:36:12
  Speaker 1: hole there be leans on nothing. All homes are infinite experience.
• 5:36:19
  Speaker 1: Finite experience as such is homeless. Nothing outside of the
• 5:36:24
  Speaker 1: flux secures the issue of it. It can hope salvation
• 5:36:28
  Speaker 1: only from its own intrinsic promises and potencies. To rationalists,
• 5:36:35
  Speaker 1: this describes a tramp and vagrant world adrift in space,
• 5:36:40
  Speaker 1: with neither elephant nor tortourese to plant the soul of
• 5:36:43
  Speaker 1: its foot upon. It is a set of stars hurled
• 5:36:47
  Speaker 1: into heaven, without even a center of gravity to pull against.
• 5:36:52
  Speaker 1: In other spheres of life, it is true that we
• 5:36:55
  Speaker 1: have got used to living in a state of relative insecurity,
• 5:37:00
  Speaker 1: authority of the state and that of an absolute moral
• 5:37:03
  Speaker 1: law have resolved themselves into expediences, and Holy Church has
• 5:37:09
  Speaker 1: resolved itself into meeting houses. Not so as yet within
• 5:37:14
  Speaker 1: the philosophic classrooms. A universe with such as us contributing
• 5:37:19
  Speaker 1: to create its truth, a world delivered to our opportunisms
• 5:37:25
  Speaker 1: and our private judgments. Home rule for Ireland would be
• 5:37:30
  Speaker 1: a millennium in comparison. Were no more fit for such
• 5:37:34
  Speaker 1: a part than the Filipinos are fit for self government,
• 5:37:39
  Speaker 1: such a world would not be respectable philosophically. It is
• 5:37:44
  Speaker 1: a trunk without a tag, a dog without a collar
• 5:37:48
  Speaker 1: in the eyes of most professors of philosophy, What then,
• 5:37:53
  Speaker 1: would tighten this loose universe? According to the professors, something
• 5:37:58
  Speaker 1: to support the finite, many to tie it to, to
• 5:38:02
  Speaker 1: unify and anchor it. Something unexposed to accident, something eternal
• 5:38:07
  Speaker 1: and unalterable. The mutable inexperience must be founded on immutability.
• 5:38:14
  Speaker 1: Behind our de facto world, our world in act, there
• 5:38:18
  Speaker 1: must be a dedured duplicate, fixed and previous, with all
• 5:38:23
  Speaker 1: that can happen here already there in pulsse, every drop
• 5:38:27
  Speaker 1: of blood, every smallest item, appointed and provided, stamped and
• 5:38:33
  Speaker 1: branded without chance of variation. The negatives that haunt. Our
• 5:38:38
  Speaker 1: ideals here below must be themselves negated in the absolutely real.
• 5:38:45
  Speaker 1: This alone makes the universe solid. This is the resting deep.
• 5:38:50
  Speaker 1: We live upon the stormy surface, but with this our
• 5:38:54
  Speaker 1: anchor holds for it grapples rocky bottom. This is wordsworth
• 5:39:00
  Speaker 1: central plays, subsisting at the heart of endless agitation. This
• 5:39:06
  Speaker 1: is Vivi Cananda's mystical one of which I read to you.
• 5:39:10
  Speaker 1: This is reality with the big r reality that makes
• 5:39:14
  Speaker 1: the timeless claim reality to which defeat can't happen. This
• 5:39:19
  Speaker 1: is what the men of principles, and in general, all
• 5:39:23
  Speaker 1: the men whom I called tender minded in my first lecture,
• 5:39:26
  Speaker 1: think themselves obliged to postulate. And this exactly, this is
• 5:39:33
  Speaker 1: what tough minded of that lecture find themselves moved to
• 5:39:37
  Speaker 1: call a piece of perverse abstraction worship. The tough minded
• 5:39:43
  Speaker 1: are the men whose alpha and omiga are facts behind
• 5:39:48
  Speaker 1: the bare phenomenal facts. As my tough minded old friend
• 5:39:52
  Speaker 1: Chauncey Wright, the great Harvard empiricist on my youth, used
• 5:39:56
  Speaker 1: to say, there is nothing when a rationalist insists that
• 5:40:02
  Speaker 1: behind the fact, there is the ground of the facts,
• 5:40:06
  Speaker 1: the possibility of the facts, the tougher empiricists accuse him
• 5:40:11
  Speaker 1: of taking the mere name and nature of a fact
• 5:40:14
  Speaker 1: and clapping it behind the fact as a duplicate entity,
• 5:40:18
  Speaker 1: to make it possible that such sham grounds are often invoked.
• 5:40:23
  Speaker 1: Is notorious at a surgical operation, I heard a bystander
• 5:40:28
  Speaker 1: ask a doctor why the patient breathed so deeply, because
• 5:40:32
  Speaker 1: ether is a respiratory stimulant. The doctor answered, Ah, said
• 5:40:37
  Speaker 1: the questioner, as if relieved by the explanation. But this
• 5:40:42
  Speaker 1: is like saying that cyanide of potassium kills because it
• 5:40:47
  Speaker 1: is a poison, or that it is so cold tonight
• 5:40:52
  Speaker 1: because it is winter, or that we have five fingers
• 5:40:56
  Speaker 1: because we are pentadactyls. These are but names for the facts,
• 5:41:02
  Speaker 1: taken from the facts, and then treated as previous and explanatory.
• 5:41:07
  Speaker 1: The tender minded notion of an absolute reality is, according
• 5:41:11
  Speaker 1: to the radically tough minded, framed on just this pattern.
• 5:41:17
  Speaker 1: It is but our summarizing name for the whole, spread
• 5:41:20
  Speaker 1: out and strong, long mass of phenomena, treated as if
• 5:41:24
  Speaker 1: it were a different entity, both one and previous. You
• 5:41:29
  Speaker 1: see how differently people take things. The world we live
• 5:41:33
  Speaker 1: in exists, diffused and distributed in the form of an
• 5:41:37
  Speaker 1: indefinitely numerous lots of eaches, coherent in all sorts of
• 5:41:41
  Speaker 1: ways and degrees. And the tough minded are perfectly willing
• 5:41:45
  Speaker 1: to keep them at that valuation. They can stand that
• 5:41:49
  Speaker 1: kind of world, their temper being well adapted to its insecurity.
• 5:41:54
  Speaker 1: Not so the tender minded party. They must back the
• 5:41:58
  Speaker 1: world we find ourselves born into by another and a
• 5:42:03
  Speaker 1: better world in which the eaches form and the all
• 5:42:07
  Speaker 1: a one that logically presupposes, co implicates, and secures each
• 5:42:13
  Speaker 1: each without exception. Must we, as pragmatists be radically tough minded?
• 5:42:21
  Speaker 1: Or can we treat the absolute edition of the world
• 5:42:24
  Speaker 1: as a legitimate hypothesis. It is certainly legitimate, for it
• 5:42:30
  Speaker 1: is thinkable, whether we take it in its abstract or
• 5:42:33
  Speaker 1: in its concrete shape. By taking it abstractly, I mean
• 5:42:38
  Speaker 1: placing it behind our finite life, as we place the
• 5:42:42
  Speaker 1: word winter behind tonight's cold weather. Winter is only the
• 5:42:47
  Speaker 1: name for a certain number of days which we find
• 5:42:51
  Speaker 1: generally characterized by cold weather, but it guarantees nothing in
• 5:42:56
  Speaker 1: that line, for our thermometer tomorrow may soar into the seventies. Nevertheless,
• 5:43:02
  Speaker 1: the word is a useful one to plunge forward with
• 5:43:06
  Speaker 1: into the stream of our experience. It cuts off certain
• 5:43:10
  Speaker 1: probabilities and sets up others. You can put away your
• 5:43:14
  Speaker 1: straw hats, you can unpack your architicts. It is a
• 5:43:17
  Speaker 1: summary of things to look for. It names a part
• 5:43:21
  Speaker 1: of nature's habits and gets you ready for their continuation.
• 5:43:25
  Speaker 1: It is a definite instrument, abstracted from experience, a conceptual
• 5:43:30
  Speaker 1: reality that you must take account of and which reflects
• 5:43:33
  Speaker 1: you totally back into sensible realities. The pragmatist is the
• 5:43:38
  Speaker 1: last person to deny the reality of such abstractions. They
• 5:43:42
  Speaker 1: are so much past experience funded. But taking the absolute
• 5:43:47
  Speaker 1: edition of the world concretely means a different hypothesis. Rationalists
• 5:43:52
  Speaker 1: take it concretely and oppose it to the world's finite editions.
• 5:43:56
  Speaker 1: They give it a particular nature. It is perfect finished.
• 5:44:01
  Speaker 1: Everything known there is known along with everything else here
• 5:44:07
  Speaker 1: where ignorance reigns far Otherwise, if there is want, there
• 5:44:13
  Speaker 1: there also is the satisfaction. Provided Here all is process.
• 5:44:19
  Speaker 1: The world is timeless. Possibilities obtain in our world. In
• 5:44:24
  Speaker 1: the absolute world, where all that is not is from
• 5:44:28
  Speaker 1: eternity impossible, and all that is is necessary, the categorical
• 5:44:34
  Speaker 1: possibility has no application in this world, crimes and horrors
• 5:44:40
  Speaker 1: are regrettable. In that totalized world, regret obtains not for
• 5:44:45
  Speaker 1: the existence of ill in the temporal order is the
• 5:44:48
  Speaker 1: very condition of the perfection of the eternal order. Once More,
• 5:44:53
  Speaker 1: either hypothesis is legitimate in pragmatist eyes, for either has
• 5:44:58
  Speaker 1: its uses distractly or taking, like the word winter, as
• 5:45:02
  Speaker 1: a memorandum of past experience that orientces towards the future.
• 5:45:07
  Speaker 1: The notion of the absolute world is indispensable concretely taken.
• 5:45:13
  Speaker 1: It is also indispensable, at least to certain minds, for
• 5:45:18
  Speaker 1: it determines them religiously, being often a thing to change
• 5:45:22
  Speaker 1: their lives by, and by changing their lives, to change
• 5:45:26
  Speaker 1: whatever in the outer order depends on them. We cannot
• 5:45:30
  Speaker 1: therefore methodically join the tough minds in the rejections of
• 5:45:34
  Speaker 1: the whole notion of a world beyond our finite experience.
• 5:45:39
  Speaker 1: One misunderstanding of pragmatism is to identify it with positivistic
• 5:45:45
  Speaker 1: tough mindedness, to suppose that it scorns every rationalistic notion
• 5:45:50
  Speaker 1: as so much jabber and gesticulation, that it loves intellectual
• 5:45:54
  Speaker 1: honarchy as such and prefers a sort of wolf world.
• 5:45:59
  Speaker 1: Absolutely unpenned and wild, and without a master or a
• 5:46:03
  Speaker 1: collar to any philosophic classroom product whatsoever. I have said
• 5:46:09
  Speaker 1: so much in these lectures against the overtender forms of
• 5:46:13
  Speaker 1: rationalism that I am prepared for some misunderstanding here. But
• 5:46:17
  Speaker 1: I confess that the amount of it that I have
• 5:46:20
  Speaker 1: found in this very audience surprises me, For I have
• 5:46:23
  Speaker 1: simultaneously defended rationalistic hypothesis so far as these redirect you
• 5:46:29
  Speaker 1: fruitfully into experience. For instance, I received this morning this
• 5:46:35
  Speaker 1: question on a postcard. Is a pragmatist necessarily a complete
• 5:46:40
  Speaker 1: materialist and agnostic. One of my oldest friends, who ought
• 5:46:44
  Speaker 1: to know me better, writes me a letter that accuses
• 5:46:47
  Speaker 1: the pragmatism I am recommending of shutting out all wider
• 5:46:51
  Speaker 1: metaphysical views and condemning us to the most terrtaire of naturalism.
• 5:46:57
  Speaker 1: Let me read you some extracts from it. It seems
• 5:47:02
  Speaker 1: to me my friend writes that the pragmatic objection to
• 5:47:06
  Speaker 1: pragmatism lies in the fact that it might accentuate the
• 5:47:10
  Speaker 1: narrowness of narrow minds. Your call to the rejection of
• 5:47:16
  Speaker 1: the namby Pamby and the wishy washy is of course
• 5:47:19
  Speaker 1: inspiring But although it is salutary and stimulating to be
• 5:47:24
  Speaker 1: told that one should be responsible for the immediate issues
• 5:47:29
  Speaker 1: and bearings of his words and thoughts, I decline to
• 5:47:32
  Speaker 1: be deprived of the pleasure and profit of dwelling also
• 5:47:36
  Speaker 1: on remoter bearings and issues. And it is the tendency
• 5:47:41
  Speaker 1: of pragmatism to refuse this privilege. In short, it seems
• 5:47:46
  Speaker 1: to me that the limitations, or rather the dangers, of
• 5:47:50
  Speaker 1: the pragmatic tendency, are analogous to those which beset the
• 5:47:54
  Speaker 1: unwary followers of the natural sciences. Chemistry and physics are
• 5:48:00
  Speaker 1: eminently pragmatic, and many of their devotees, smugly content with
• 5:48:05
  Speaker 1: the data that their weights and measures furnish, feel an
• 5:48:09
  Speaker 1: infinite pity and disdain for all students of philosophy and
• 5:48:13
  Speaker 1: metaphysics whomsoever. And of course, everything can be expressed after
• 5:48:19
  Speaker 1: a fashion, and theoretically in terms of chemistry and physics,
• 5:48:23
  Speaker 1: that is, everything except the vital principle of the whole,
• 5:48:27
  Speaker 1: and that they say there is no pragmatic use in
• 5:48:30
  Speaker 1: trying to express it has no bearings for them. I,
• 5:48:35
  Speaker 1: for my part, refuse to be persuaded that we cannot
• 5:48:39
  Speaker 1: look beyond the obvious pluralism of the naturalist and the
• 5:48:43
  Speaker 1: pragmatists to a logical unity in which they take no interest.
• 5:48:49
  Speaker 1: How is such a conception of the pragmatism I am
• 5:48:51
  Speaker 1: advocating possible After my first and second lectures, I have
• 5:48:56
  Speaker 1: all along been offering it expressly as a mediative between
• 5:49:00
  Speaker 1: tough mindedness and tender mindedness. If the notion of a
• 5:49:05
  Speaker 1: world anti rem whether taking abstractly like the word winter,
• 5:49:10
  Speaker 1: or concretely as the hypothesis of an absolute can be
• 5:49:14
  Speaker 1: shown to have any consequences whatever for our life, it
• 5:49:18
  Speaker 1: has a meaning. If the meaning works, it will have
• 5:49:22
  Speaker 1: some truths that ought to be held to through all
• 5:49:25
  Speaker 1: possible reformulations for pragmatism. The absolutistic hypothesis that perfection is eternal, aboriginal,
• 5:49:34
  Speaker 1: and most real has a perfectly definite meaning, and it
• 5:49:39
  Speaker 1: works religiously to examine. How will be the subject of
• 5:49:44
  Speaker 1: my next and final lecture. End of Lecture seven, Lecture eight,
• 5:49:51
  Speaker 1: Pragmatism and Religion. At the close of the last lecture
• 5:49:56
  Speaker 1: I reminded you of the first one, in which I
• 5:49:58
  Speaker 1: had opposed tough mind mindedness to tender mindedness and recommended
• 5:50:02
  Speaker 1: pragmatism as their mediator. Tough mindedness positively rejects tender mindednesses
• 5:50:10
  Speaker 1: hypothesis of an eternal, perfect edition of the universe coexisting
• 5:50:15
  Speaker 1: with our finite experience. On pragmatic principles, we cannot reject
• 5:50:20
  Speaker 1: any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it.
• 5:50:26
  Speaker 1: Universal conceptions as things to take account of may be
• 5:50:30
  Speaker 1: as real for pragmatism as particular sensations are. They have
• 5:50:34
  Speaker 1: indeed no meaning and no reality if they have no use.
• 5:50:39
  Speaker 1: But if they have any use, they have that amount
• 5:50:43
  Speaker 1: of meaning, and the meaning will be true if the
• 5:50:46
  Speaker 1: use squares well with life's other uses. Well. The use
• 5:50:51
  Speaker 1: of the absolute is proved by the whole course of
• 5:50:54
  Speaker 1: men's religious history. The eternal arms are then beneath Remember
• 5:51:00
  Speaker 1: vive Cananda's use of the Atman. It is indeed not
• 5:51:04
  Speaker 1: a scientific use, for we can make no particular deductions
• 5:51:08
  Speaker 1: from it. It is emotional and spiritual altogether. It is
• 5:51:13
  Speaker 1: always best to discuss things by the help of concrete examples.
• 5:51:18
  Speaker 1: Let me read therefore, some of those verses entitled to
• 5:51:21
  Speaker 1: you by Walt Whitman, You, of course, meaning the reader
• 5:51:26
  Speaker 1: or hearer of the poem. Whosoever he or she may be,
• 5:51:30
  Speaker 1: whoever you are. Now I place my hand upon you,
• 5:51:34
  Speaker 1: that you be my poem. I whisper with my lips
• 5:51:37
  Speaker 1: close to your ear. I have loved many women and men,
• 5:51:41
  Speaker 1: but I love none better than you. Oh, I have
• 5:51:44
  Speaker 1: been dilatory and dumb. I should have made my way
• 5:51:47
  Speaker 1: straight to you long ago. I should have labbed nothing
• 5:51:50
  Speaker 1: but you. I should have chanted nothing but you. I
• 5:51:54
  Speaker 1: will leave all and come and make the hymns of you.
• 5:51:57
  Speaker 1: None have understood you, but I unders stand you. None
• 5:52:01
  Speaker 1: have done justice to you. You have not done justice
• 5:52:04
  Speaker 1: to yourself. None but have found you imperfect. I only
• 5:52:09
  Speaker 1: find no imperfection in you. Oh, I could sing such
• 5:52:12
  Speaker 1: grandeurs and glorious about you. You have not known what
• 5:52:16
  Speaker 1: you are. You have slumbered upon yourself all your life.
• 5:52:20
  Speaker 1: What you have done returns already in mockeries. But the
• 5:52:24
  Speaker 1: mockeries are not you. Underneath them, and within them, I
• 5:52:29
  Speaker 1: see you lurk. I pursue where none else has pursued you. Silence,
• 5:52:34
  Speaker 1: the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustomed routine.
• 5:52:39
  Speaker 1: If these concealed you from others or from yourself, they
• 5:52:43
  Speaker 1: do not conceal you from me. The shaved face, the
• 5:52:47
  Speaker 1: unsteady eye, the impure complexion. If these balk others, they
• 5:52:52
  Speaker 1: do not balk me. The pert apparel, the deformed attitude, drunkenness, greed,
• 5:52:59
  Speaker 1: premature death, All these I part aside. There is no
• 5:53:04
  Speaker 1: endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you.
• 5:53:08
  Speaker 1: There is no virtue nor beauty in man or woman.
• 5:53:12
  Speaker 1: But as good is in you, no pluck, no endurance
• 5:53:16
  Speaker 1: in others, but as good is in you, no pleasure
• 5:53:19
  Speaker 1: waiting for others, but in equal pleasure waits for you.
• 5:53:24
  Speaker 1: Whoever you are, claim your own at any hazard. These
• 5:53:29
  Speaker 1: shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
• 5:53:33
  Speaker 1: these immense meadows, these interminable rivers. You are immense and
• 5:53:39
  Speaker 1: internable as they. You are he or she who is
• 5:53:43
  Speaker 1: master or mistress over them, master or mistress in your
• 5:53:47
  Speaker 1: own right over nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution, The hopples
• 5:53:53
  Speaker 1: fall from your ankles. You find an unfailing sufficiency, old
• 5:53:58
  Speaker 1: or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest.
• 5:54:03
  Speaker 1: Whatever you are promulgeous itself through birth, life, death, burial,
• 5:54:09
  Speaker 1: the means are provided. Nothing is scanted through angers, losses, ambition,
• 5:54:14
  Speaker 1: and ignorance annui. What you are picks its way verily
• 5:54:20
  Speaker 1: a fine and moving poem in any case, But there
• 5:54:23
  Speaker 1: are two ways of taking it, both useful. One is
• 5:54:26
  Speaker 1: the monistic way, the mystical way of pure cosmic emotion.
• 5:54:31
  Speaker 1: The glories and grandeurs, they are yours. Absolutely, even in
• 5:54:35
  Speaker 1: the midst of your defacement, whatever may happen to you,
• 5:54:38
  Speaker 1: whatever you may appear to be inwardly, you are safe.
• 5:54:42
  Speaker 1: Look back, lie back on your true principle of being.
• 5:54:47
  Speaker 1: This is the famous way of quietism, of indifferentism. Its
• 5:54:52
  Speaker 1: enemies compare it to a spiritual opium. Yet pragmatism must
• 5:54:57
  Speaker 1: respect this way, for it has massive historic vindication. But
• 5:55:02
  Speaker 1: pragmatism sees another way to be respected also, the pluralistic
• 5:55:06
  Speaker 1: way of interpreting the poem. The you so glorified to
• 5:55:11
  Speaker 1: which the hymn is sung may mean your better possibilities
• 5:55:15
  Speaker 1: phenomenally taken, or the specific redemptive effects even of your failures,
• 5:55:21
  Speaker 1: upon yourself or others. It may mean your loyalty to
• 5:55:26
  Speaker 1: the possibilities of others whom you admire and love, so
• 5:55:29
  Speaker 1: that you are willing to accept your own poor life.
• 5:55:33
  Speaker 1: For it is that glorious partner, you can at least appreciate, applaud,
• 5:55:39
  Speaker 1: furnish the audience of so brave a total world. Forget
• 5:55:44
  Speaker 1: the low in yourself, then think only of the high.
• 5:55:47
  Speaker 1: Identify your life therewith. Then through angers, losses, ignorance, and nui,
• 5:55:54
  Speaker 1: whatever you thus make yourself, whatever you thus most deeply
• 5:55:57
  Speaker 1: are picks its way. In either way of taking the poem,
• 5:56:02
  Speaker 1: it encourages fidelity to ourselves. Both ways satisfy, both sanctify
• 5:56:09
  Speaker 1: the human flux. Both paint the portrait of the ue
• 5:56:13
  Speaker 1: on a gold background. But the background of the first
• 5:56:17
  Speaker 1: way is the static one, while in the second way
• 5:56:20
  Speaker 1: it means possibles in the plural, genuine possibles, and it
• 5:56:24
  Speaker 1: has all the restlessness of that conception. Noble enough is
• 5:56:29
  Speaker 1: either way of reading the poem. But plainly the pluralistic
• 5:56:33
  Speaker 1: way agrees with the pragmatic temper best, for it immediately
• 5:56:37
  Speaker 1: suggests an infinitely larger number of the details of future
• 5:56:41
  Speaker 1: experience to our mind. It sets definite activities in us
• 5:56:46
  Speaker 1: at work. Although this second way seems prosaic and earth
• 5:56:51
  Speaker 1: borne in comparison with the first way, yet no one
• 5:56:54
  Speaker 1: can accuse it of tough mindedness in any brutal sense
• 5:56:58
  Speaker 1: of the term. Yet, if, as pragmatists, you should positively
• 5:57:03
  Speaker 1: set up the second way against the first way, you
• 5:57:06
  Speaker 1: would very likely be misunderstood. You would be accused of
• 5:57:10
  Speaker 1: denying nobler conceptions and of being an alley of tough
• 5:57:14
  Speaker 1: mindedness in the worst sense. You remember the letter from
• 5:57:18
  Speaker 1: a member of this audience from which I read some
• 5:57:21
  Speaker 1: extracts at our previous meeting. Let me read you an
• 5:57:25
  Speaker 1: additional extract now. It shows a vagueness in realizing the
• 5:57:30
  Speaker 1: alternatives before us, which I think is very widespread. I believe,
• 5:57:35
  Speaker 1: writes my friend and correspondent, im pluralism. I believe that
• 5:57:39
  Speaker 1: in our search for truth, we leap from one floating
• 5:57:42
  Speaker 1: cake of ice to another on an infinite sea, and
• 5:57:46
  Speaker 1: that by each of our acts we make new truths
• 5:57:49
  Speaker 1: possible and old ones impossible. I believe that each man
• 5:57:54
  Speaker 1: is responsible for making the universe better, and that if
• 5:57:57
  Speaker 1: he does not do this, it will be in so
• 5:57:59
  Speaker 1: far left undone. Yet at the same time, I am
• 5:58:03
  Speaker 1: willing to endure that my children should be incurably sick
• 5:58:07
  Speaker 1: and suffering as they are not, and I myself stupid
• 5:58:11
  Speaker 1: and yet with brains enough to see my stupidity only
• 5:58:15
  Speaker 1: on one condition, namely, that through the construction in imagination
• 5:58:19
  Speaker 1: and by reasoning of our rational unity of all things,
• 5:58:23
  Speaker 1: I can conceive my acts and my thoughts and my
• 5:58:26
  Speaker 1: troubles as supplemented by all the other phenomena of the world,
• 5:58:31
  Speaker 1: and as forming when thus supplemented, a scheme which I
• 5:58:35
  Speaker 1: approve and adopt as my own. And for my part,
• 5:58:38
  Speaker 1: I refuse to be persuaded that we cannot look beyond
• 5:58:41
  Speaker 1: the obvious pluralism of their naturalist and pragmatis to a
• 5:58:44
  Speaker 1: logical unity in which they take no interest or stock.
• 5:58:50
  Speaker 1: Such a fine expression of personal faith warms the heart
• 5:58:53
  Speaker 1: of the hearer, But how much does it clear his
• 5:58:56
  Speaker 1: philosophic head. Does the writer consistently favor the monistic or
• 5:59:00
  Speaker 1: the pluralistic interpretation of the world's poem? His troubles become
• 5:59:05
  Speaker 1: atoned for when thus supplemented, he says, supplemented, that is,
• 5:59:10
  Speaker 1: by all the remedies that the other phenomena may supply. Obviously,
• 5:59:15
  Speaker 1: here the writer faces forward into the particulars of experience,
• 5:59:19
  Speaker 1: which he interprets in a pluralistic malioristic way. But he
• 5:59:24
  Speaker 1: believes himself to face backward. He speaks of what he
• 5:59:28
  Speaker 1: calls the rational unity of things, when all the while
• 5:59:32
  Speaker 1: he really means their possible empirical unification. He supposes at
• 5:59:38
  Speaker 1: the same time that the pragmatist, because he criticizes rationalism's
• 5:59:43
  Speaker 1: abstract one, is cut off from the consolation of believing
• 5:59:47
  Speaker 1: in the saving possibilities of the concrete many. He fails,
• 5:59:52
  Speaker 1: in short, to distinguish between taking the world's perfection as
• 5:59:56
  Speaker 1: a necessary principle and taking it only as a possible
• 6:00:00
  Speaker 1: terminus at quem. I regard the writer of this letter
• 6:00:04
  Speaker 1: as a genuine pragmatist, but as a pragmatist sans lessoir.
• 6:00:10
  Speaker 1: He appears to me as one of that numerous class
• 6:00:13
  Speaker 1: of philosophic amateurs whom I spoke of in my first
• 6:00:16
  Speaker 1: lecture as wishing to have all the good things going
• 6:00:19
  Speaker 1: without being too careful as to how they agree or disagree.
• 6:00:23
  Speaker 1: Rational unity of all things is so inspiring a formula
• 6:00:28
  Speaker 1: that he brandishes it offhand and abstractly accuses pluralism of
• 6:00:32
  Speaker 1: conflicting with it for the bare names due conflict, although
• 6:00:37
  Speaker 1: concretely he means by it just a pragmatistically unified and
• 6:00:42
  Speaker 1: ameliorated world most of us remain in this essential vagueness,
• 6:00:46
  Speaker 1: and it is well that we should. But in the
• 6:00:49
  Speaker 1: interest of clear headedness, it is well that some of
• 6:00:52
  Speaker 1: us should go farther. So I will try now to
• 6:00:55
  Speaker 1: focus a little more discriminatingly on this particular religious point.
• 6:01:01
  Speaker 1: Is then view of use this absolutely real world, this
• 6:01:06
  Speaker 1: unity that yields the moral inspiration and has the religious value,
• 6:01:11
  Speaker 1: to be taken monistically or pluralistically. Is it anti rim
• 6:01:17
  Speaker 1: or in rebus? Is it a principle or an end,
• 6:01:19
  Speaker 1: an absolute or an ultimate, a first or a last?
• 6:01:23
  Speaker 1: Does it make you look forward or lie back? It
• 6:01:26
  Speaker 1: is certainly worthwhile not to clump the two things together,
• 6:01:30
  Speaker 1: for if discriminated, they have decidedly diverse meanings for life.
• 6:01:36
  Speaker 1: Please observe that the whole dilemma revolves pragmatically about the
• 6:01:40
  Speaker 1: notion of the world's possibilities. Intellectually, rationalism invokes its absolute
• 6:01:46
  Speaker 1: principle of unity as a ground of possibility for the
• 6:01:50
  Speaker 1: many facts. Emotionally, it sees it as a container and
• 6:01:55
  Speaker 1: limiter of possibilities, a guarantee that the upshot shall be good.
• 6:02:00
  Speaker 1: Taken in this way, the absolute makes all good things certain,
• 6:02:04
  Speaker 1: and all bad things impossible in the eternal, namely, and
• 6:02:08
  Speaker 1: may be said to transmute the entire cateogorial or possibility
• 6:02:12
  Speaker 1: into categorists more secure. One sees at this point that
• 6:02:17
  Speaker 1: the great religious difference lies between the men who insist
• 6:02:20
  Speaker 1: that the world must and shall be, and those who
• 6:02:23
  Speaker 1: are contended with believing that the world may be saved.
• 6:02:28
  Speaker 1: The whole clash of rationalistic and empiricist religion is thus
• 6:02:32
  Speaker 1: over the validity of possibility. It is necessary, therefore, to
• 6:02:36
  Speaker 1: begin by focusing upon that word. What may the word
• 6:02:41
  Speaker 1: possible definitely mean? To unreflecting men, the possible means a
• 6:02:46
  Speaker 1: sort of a third estate, of being, less real than existence,
• 6:02:51
  Speaker 1: more real than non existence, a twilight realm, a hybrid status,
• 6:02:55
  Speaker 1: a limbo into which and outer which realities, ever and
• 6:02:59
  Speaker 1: anon are made to pause. Such a conception is, of
• 6:03:04
  Speaker 1: course too vague in nondescriptive satisfiers. Here as elsewhere, the
• 6:03:09
  Speaker 1: only way to extract a term's meaning is to use
• 6:03:12
  Speaker 1: the pragmatic method on it. When you say that a
• 6:03:15
  Speaker 1: thing is possible, what difference does it make? It makes
• 6:03:20
  Speaker 1: at least this difference that if anyone calls it impossible,
• 6:03:24
  Speaker 1: you can contradict him. If anyone calls it actual, you
• 6:03:28
  Speaker 1: can contradict him. And if anyone calls it necessary, you
• 6:03:31
  Speaker 1: can contradict him too. But these privileges of contradiction don't
• 6:03:37
  Speaker 1: amount to much. When you say a thing is possible,
• 6:03:40
  Speaker 1: does not that make some farther difference in terms of
• 6:03:43
  Speaker 1: actual fact? It makes at least this negative difference that
• 6:03:47
  Speaker 1: if the statement be true, it follows that there is
• 6:03:50
  Speaker 1: nothing extant capable of preventing the possible thing. The absence
• 6:03:55
  Speaker 1: of real grounds of interference may thus be said to
• 6:03:58
  Speaker 1: make things not impossible possible therefore in the bar or
• 6:04:03
  Speaker 1: abstract sense, but most possibles are not bare. They are
• 6:04:08
  Speaker 1: concretely grounded, or well grounded. As we say, what does
• 6:04:12
  Speaker 1: this mean? Pragmatically? It means not only that there are
• 6:04:16
  Speaker 1: no preventive conditions present, but that some of the conditions
• 6:04:21
  Speaker 1: or production of the possible thing actually are here. That's
• 6:04:25
  Speaker 1: a concretely possible chicken means one that the idea of
• 6:04:30
  Speaker 1: chicken contains no essential self contradiction, two that no boy's
• 6:04:36
  Speaker 1: skugs or other enemies are about, and three that at
• 6:04:41
  Speaker 1: least an actual egg exists. Possible chicken means actual egg
• 6:04:48
  Speaker 1: plus actual sitting hen or incubator or whatnot. As the
• 6:04:53
  Speaker 1: actual conditions approach completeness, the chicken becomes a better and
• 6:04:58
  Speaker 1: better grounded possibility. When the conditions are entirely complete, it
• 6:05:04
  Speaker 1: ceases to be a possibility and turns into an actual fact.
• 6:05:09
  Speaker 1: Let us apply this notion to the salvation of the world.
• 6:05:13
  Speaker 1: What does it pragmatically mean to say that this is possible?
• 6:05:17
  Speaker 1: It means that some of the conditions of the world's
• 6:05:20
  Speaker 1: deliverance do actually exist. The more of them that are existent,
• 6:05:26
  Speaker 1: the fewer preventing conditions you can find. The better grounded
• 6:05:31
  Speaker 1: is the salvation's possibility. The more probable does the fact
• 6:05:36
  Speaker 1: of the deliverance become so much for our preliminary look
• 6:05:40
  Speaker 1: at possibility. Now, it would contradict the very spirit of
• 6:05:44
  Speaker 1: life to say that our minds must be indifferent and
• 6:05:47
  Speaker 1: neutral in questions like that of the world's salvation. Anyone
• 6:05:52
  Speaker 1: who pretends to be neutral writes himself down here as
• 6:05:55
  Speaker 1: a fool and a sham. We all do wish to
• 6:05:59
  Speaker 1: minimize the insecurity of the universe. We are and ought
• 6:06:02
  Speaker 1: to be unhappy when we regard it as exposed to
• 6:06:05
  Speaker 1: every enemy and open to every life destroying draft. Nevertheless,
• 6:06:10
  Speaker 1: there are unhappy men who think the salvation of the
• 6:06:13
  Speaker 1: world impossible. Theirs is the doctrine known as pessimism. Optimism,
• 6:06:19
  Speaker 1: in turn, would be the doctrine that thinks the world's
• 6:06:22
  Speaker 1: salvation inevitable. Midway between the two there stands what may
• 6:06:27
  Speaker 1: be called the doctrine of meliorism, though it has hitherto
• 6:06:31
  Speaker 1: figured less as a doctrine than as an attitude. In
• 6:06:34
  Speaker 1: human affairs, optimism has always been the regnant doctrine in
• 6:06:39
  Speaker 1: European philosophy. Pessimism was only recently introduced by Schopenhauer and
• 6:06:45
  Speaker 1: counts few systematic defenders. As yet. Meliarism treats salvation as
• 6:06:51
  Speaker 1: neither inevitable nor impossible. It treats it as a possibility,
• 6:06:56
  Speaker 1: which becomes more and more of a probability the more
• 6:06:59
  Speaker 1: newnumerous the actual conditions of salvation become. It is clear
• 6:07:05
  Speaker 1: that pragmatism must incline towards meliorism. Some conditions of the
• 6:07:10
  Speaker 1: world's salvation are actually extant, and she cannot possibly close
• 6:07:15
  Speaker 1: her eyes to this fact. And should the residual conditions come,
• 6:07:19
  Speaker 1: salvation would become in an accomplished reality naturally. The terms
• 6:07:24
  Speaker 1: I use here are exceedingly summary. You may interpret the
• 6:07:29
  Speaker 1: word salvation in any way you like, and make it
• 6:07:32
  Speaker 1: as diffuse and distributive, or as climacteric and integral, are
• 6:07:37
  Speaker 1: phenomenon as you please. Take, for example, any one of
• 6:07:41
  Speaker 1: us in this room with the ideals which he cherishes
• 6:07:45
  Speaker 1: and is willing to live and work for. Every such
• 6:07:48
  Speaker 1: ideal realized will be one moment in the world's salvation.
• 6:07:52
  Speaker 1: But these particular ideals are not bare abstract possibilities. They
• 6:07:57
  Speaker 1: are grounded. They are live possible. It is for we
• 6:08:01
  Speaker 1: are their live champions and pledges. And if the complimentary
• 6:08:05
  Speaker 1: conditions come and add themselves, our ideals will become actual things.
• 6:08:12
  Speaker 1: But how are the complementary conditions? They are first such
• 6:08:17
  Speaker 1: a mixture of things as will, in the fullness of
• 6:08:20
  Speaker 1: time give us a chance, a gap that we can
• 6:08:23
  Speaker 1: spring into, and finally our act end of Lecture eight,
• 6:08:31
  Speaker 1: Part one. Does our act then create the world's salvation
• 6:08:36
  Speaker 1: so far as it makes room for itself, so far
• 6:08:39
  Speaker 1: as it leaps into the gap? Does it create not
• 6:08:42
  Speaker 1: the whole world's salvation, of course, but just so much
• 6:08:46
  Speaker 1: of this as itself covers of the world's extent. Here
• 6:08:50
  Speaker 1: I take the bull by the horns, And in spite
• 6:08:52
  Speaker 1: of the whole crew of rationalists and monists, of whatever
• 6:08:56
  Speaker 1: brand they be, I ask, why not our acts, our
• 6:09:01
  Speaker 1: turning places, where we seem to ourselves to make ourselves
• 6:09:06
  Speaker 1: and grow are the parts of the world to which
• 6:09:09
  Speaker 1: we are closest, the parts of which our knowledge is
• 6:09:13
  Speaker 1: the most intimate and complete. Why should we not take
• 6:09:17
  Speaker 1: them at their face value? Why may they not be
• 6:09:21
  Speaker 1: the actual turning places and growing places which they seem
• 6:09:25
  Speaker 1: to be of the world. Why not the workshop of
• 6:09:28
  Speaker 1: being where we catch fact in the making, so that
• 6:09:31
  Speaker 1: nowhere may the world grow in any other kind of
• 6:09:34
  Speaker 1: way than this irrational? We are told, How can new
• 6:09:40
  Speaker 1: being come in local spots and patches which add themselves
• 6:09:44
  Speaker 1: or stay away at random, independently of the rest? There
• 6:09:48
  Speaker 1: must be a reason for our acts, And where in
• 6:09:51
  Speaker 1: the last resort can in a reason be looked for,
• 6:09:54
  Speaker 1: Save in the material pressure or the logical compulsion of
• 6:09:58
  Speaker 1: the total nature of the world. There can be but
• 6:10:02
  Speaker 1: one real agent of growth or seeming growth anywhere, and
• 6:10:06
  Speaker 1: that agent is the integral world itself. It may grow
• 6:10:10
  Speaker 1: all over. If growth there be, but that single parts
• 6:10:14
  Speaker 1: should grow per se is irrational. But if one talks
• 6:10:19
  Speaker 1: of rationality and of reasons for things, and insists that
• 6:10:23
  Speaker 1: they can't just come in spots. What kind of a
• 6:10:27
  Speaker 1: reason can there ultimately be why anything should come at all?
• 6:10:32
  Speaker 1: Talk of the logic and necessity and categories and the
• 6:10:36
  Speaker 1: absolute and the contents of the whole philosophical machine, shop
• 6:10:41
  Speaker 1: as you will. The only real reason I can think
• 6:10:44
  Speaker 1: of why anything should ever come is that someone wishes
• 6:10:48
  Speaker 1: it to be here. It is demanded, demanded it may
• 6:10:53
  Speaker 1: be to give relief to no matter how small a
• 6:10:56
  Speaker 1: fraction of the world's moss. This is living reason, and
• 6:11:01
  Speaker 1: compared with it, material causes and logical necessities are spectral things.
• 6:11:08
  Speaker 1: In short, the only fully rational world would be the
• 6:11:11
  Speaker 1: world of wishing caps the world of telepathy, where every
• 6:11:15
  Speaker 1: desire is fulfilled instanter without having to consider applicate, surrounding
• 6:11:21
  Speaker 1: or intermediate powers. This is the Absolute's own world. He
• 6:11:27
  Speaker 1: calls upon the phenomenal world to be, and it is
• 6:11:30
  Speaker 1: exactly as he calls for it, no other condition being required.
• 6:11:36
  Speaker 1: In our world. The wishes of the individual are only
• 6:11:40
  Speaker 1: one condition. Other individuals are there with other wishes, and
• 6:11:44
  Speaker 1: they must be propitiated first. So being grows under all
• 6:11:50
  Speaker 1: sorts of resistances in this world are the many, and
• 6:11:53
  Speaker 1: from compromise to compromise only gets organized gradually into what
• 6:11:59
  Speaker 1: may be called secondarily rational shape. We approach the wishing
• 6:12:04
  Speaker 1: cap type of organization only in a few departments of life.
• 6:12:09
  Speaker 1: We want water and we turn to a falceat. We
• 6:12:12
  Speaker 1: want a codec picture and we press a button. We
• 6:12:15
  Speaker 1: want information and we telephone. We want to travel and
• 6:12:19
  Speaker 1: we buy a ticket. In these and similar cases, we
• 6:12:22
  Speaker 1: hardly need to do more than the wishing. The world
• 6:12:26
  Speaker 1: is rationally organized to do the rest. But this talk
• 6:12:31
  Speaker 1: of rationality is are parentheses and a digression. What we
• 6:12:35
  Speaker 1: were discussing was the idea of a world growing not
• 6:12:38
  Speaker 1: integrally but piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts.
• 6:12:43
  Speaker 1: Take their hypothesis seriously and as a live one. Suppose
• 6:12:48
  Speaker 1: that the world's author put the case to you before creation, saying,
• 6:12:53
  Speaker 1: I AM going to make a world not certain to
• 6:12:56
  Speaker 1: be saved, our world, the perfection of which shall be
• 6:12:59
  Speaker 1: cone additional, merely, the condition being that each several agent
• 6:13:04
  Speaker 1: does its own level best. I offer you the chance
• 6:13:08
  Speaker 1: of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see,
• 6:13:12
  Speaker 1: is unwarranted. It is a real adventure with real danger,
• 6:13:17
  Speaker 1: yet it may win through it is a social scheme
• 6:13:20
  Speaker 1: of cooperative work genuinely to be done. Will you join
• 6:13:25
  Speaker 1: the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other
• 6:13:28
  Speaker 1: agents enough to face the risk? Should you, in all seriousness,
• 6:13:33
  Speaker 1: if participation in such a world were proposed to you
• 6:13:37
  Speaker 1: feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would
• 6:13:41
  Speaker 1: you say that, rather than be part and parcel of
• 6:13:44
  Speaker 1: so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a universe, you preferred to
• 6:13:48
  Speaker 1: relapse into the slumber of non intensity from which you
• 6:13:51
  Speaker 1: have been momentarily aroused From the tempter's voice, of course,
• 6:13:56
  Speaker 1: if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of
• 6:13:59
  Speaker 1: the sort. There is a healthy minded buoyancy in most
• 6:14:03
  Speaker 1: of us which such a universe would exactly fit. We
• 6:14:07
  Speaker 1: would therefore accept the offer top unchlak Alfschlach. It would
• 6:14:12
  Speaker 1: be just like the world we practically live in, and
• 6:14:15
  Speaker 1: loyalty to our old nurse nature would forbid us to
• 6:14:19
  Speaker 1: say no. The world proposed would seem rational to us
• 6:14:24
  Speaker 1: in the most living way. Most of us, I say,
• 6:14:29
  Speaker 1: would therefore welcome the proposition and add our fire to
• 6:14:33
  Speaker 1: the fight of the creator. Yet perhaps some would not
• 6:14:37
  Speaker 1: for there are morbid minds in every human collection, and
• 6:14:40
  Speaker 1: to them the prospect of a universe with only a
• 6:14:44
  Speaker 1: fighting chance of safety would probably make no appeal. There
• 6:14:50
  Speaker 1: are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are
• 6:14:53
  Speaker 1: sick of self and tired of vainly striving our own
• 6:14:58
  Speaker 1: life breaks down, and we've fall into the attitude of
• 6:15:01
  Speaker 1: the prodigal sun. We mistrust the chances of things. We
• 6:15:06
  Speaker 1: want a universe where we can just give up, fall
• 6:15:09
  Speaker 1: on our father's neck, and be absorbed into the absolute
• 6:15:14
  Speaker 1: life as a drop of water melts into the river
• 6:15:17
  Speaker 1: or the sea. The peace and rest the security desiderated
• 6:15:22
  Speaker 1: at such moments is security against the bewildering accidents of
• 6:15:26
  Speaker 1: so much finite experience. Nirvana means safety from this everlasting
• 6:15:32
  Speaker 1: round of adventures of which the world of sense consists.
• 6:15:37
  Speaker 1: The Hindu and the Buddhist, for this is essentially their
• 6:15:40
  Speaker 1: attitude are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life.
• 6:15:47
  Speaker 1: And to men of this complexion, religious monism comes with
• 6:15:51
  Speaker 1: its consoling words all is needed and essential, even you,
• 6:15:57
  Speaker 1: with your sick soul and heart. All all are one
• 6:16:00
  Speaker 1: with God, and with God, all is well. The everlasting
• 6:16:05
  Speaker 1: arms are beneath. Whether in the world of finite appearances
• 6:16:09
  Speaker 1: you seem to fail or to succeed, there can be
• 6:16:13
  Speaker 1: no doubt that when men are reduced to their last
• 6:16:16
  Speaker 1: sick extremity, absolutism is the only saving scheme. Pluralistic moralism
• 6:16:23
  Speaker 1: simply makes their teeth chatter. It refrigerates the very heart
• 6:16:28
  Speaker 1: within their beast. So we see concretely two types of
• 6:16:33
  Speaker 1: religion in sharp contrast. Using our old terms of comparison,
• 6:16:38
  Speaker 1: we may say that the absolutistic scheme appeals to the
• 6:16:42
  Speaker 1: tender minded, while the pluralistic scheme appeals to the tough.
• 6:16:47
  Speaker 1: Many persons would refuse to call the pluralistic scheme religious
• 6:16:52
  Speaker 1: at all. They would call it moralistic, and would apply
• 6:16:56
  Speaker 1: the word religious to the monistic scheme alone. Religion in
• 6:17:01
  Speaker 1: the sense of self surrender and moralism in the sense
• 6:17:04
  Speaker 1: of self sufficientness have been pitied against each other as
• 6:17:08
  Speaker 1: incompatibles frequently enough in the history of human thought. We
• 6:17:13
  Speaker 1: stand here before the final question of philosophy. I said
• 6:17:17
  Speaker 1: in my fourth lecture that I believe the monistic pluralistic
• 6:17:20
  Speaker 1: alternative to be the deepest and most pregnant question that
• 6:17:24
  Speaker 1: our minds can frame, Can it be that the disjunction
• 6:17:28
  Speaker 1: is a final one, that only one side can be true?
• 6:17:32
  Speaker 1: Are a pluralism and monism genuine incompatibles, so that if
• 6:17:38
  Speaker 1: the world were really pluralistically constituted, if it really existed
• 6:17:43
  Speaker 1: distributably and were made up of a lot of eaches,
• 6:17:47
  Speaker 1: it could only be saved piecemeal and de facto as
• 6:17:50
  Speaker 1: the result of their behavior and its epic history, in
• 6:17:54
  Speaker 1: no wise short circuited by some essential oneness in which
• 6:17:58
  Speaker 1: the severalness were already taken up beforehand and eternally overcome.
• 6:18:04
  Speaker 1: If this were so, we should have to choose one
• 6:18:07
  Speaker 1: philosophy or the other. We could not say yes yes
• 6:18:11
  Speaker 1: to both alternatives. They would have to be Aknow in
• 6:18:15
  Speaker 1: our relations with the possible, we should confess an ultimate disappointment.
• 6:18:21
  Speaker 1: We could not remain healthy minded and sick minded in
• 6:18:24
  Speaker 1: one indivisible act. Of course, as human beings, we can
• 6:18:29
  Speaker 1: be healthy minds on one day and six souls on
• 6:18:33
  Speaker 1: the next, and as amateur dabblers in philosophy we may
• 6:18:37
  Speaker 1: perhaps be allowed to call ourselves monistic pluralists, or free
• 6:18:42
  Speaker 1: will determinists, or whatever else may occur to us. As
• 6:18:46
  Speaker 1: a reconciling kind. But as philosophers aiming at clearness and consistency,
• 6:18:52
  Speaker 1: and feeling their pragmatistic need of squaring truth with truth,
• 6:18:57
  Speaker 1: the questions forced upon us of frankly adopting either the
• 6:19:02
  Speaker 1: tender or the robustuous type of thought. In particular, this
• 6:19:08
  Speaker 1: query has always come home to me. May not the
• 6:19:11
  Speaker 1: claims of tender mindedness go too far? May not the
• 6:19:16
  Speaker 1: notion of a world already saved in Toto anyhow, be
• 6:19:20
  Speaker 1: too saccharine to stand? May not religious optimists be too idyllic?
• 6:19:27
  Speaker 1: Must all be saved? Is no price to be paid
• 6:19:32
  Speaker 1: in the work of salvation? Is the last word sweet?
• 6:19:36
  Speaker 1: Is all yes yes in the universe? Doesn't the fact
• 6:19:41
  Speaker 1: of no stand at the very core of life? Doesn't
• 6:19:44
  Speaker 1: the very seriousness that we attribute to life mean that
• 6:19:48
  Speaker 1: ineluctable knows and losses form a part of it, That
• 6:19:52
  Speaker 1: there are genuine sacrifices somewhere, and that something permanently drastic
• 6:19:58
  Speaker 1: and bitter always remain at the bottom of its cup.
• 6:20:03
  Speaker 1: I can not speak officially as a pragmatist here. All
• 6:20:07
  Speaker 1: I can say is that my own pragmatism offers no
• 6:20:10
  Speaker 1: objection to my taking sides with this more moralistic view
• 6:20:14
  Speaker 1: and giving up the claim of a total reconciliation. The
• 6:20:19
  Speaker 1: possibility of this is involved in the pragmatistic willingness to
• 6:20:23
  Speaker 1: treat pluralism as a serious hypothesis. In the end, it
• 6:20:28
  Speaker 1: is our faith and not our logic that decides such questions,
• 6:20:32
  Speaker 1: and I deny the right of any pretended logic to
• 6:20:35
  Speaker 1: veto my own faith. I find myself willing to take
• 6:20:39
  Speaker 1: the universe to be really dangerous and adventurous, without therefore
• 6:20:45
  Speaker 1: backing out and crying no play. I am willing to
• 6:20:50
  Speaker 1: think that the prodigal sun attitude open to us, as
• 6:20:54
  Speaker 1: it is in many vicissitudes, is not the right and
• 6:20:57
  Speaker 1: final attitude towards the whole of life. I am willing
• 6:21:02
  Speaker 1: that there should be real losses and real losers, and
• 6:21:05
  Speaker 1: no total preservation of all that is. I can believe
• 6:21:09
  Speaker 1: in the ideal as an ultimate, not as an origin,
• 6:21:13
  Speaker 1: and as an extract, not the whole. When the cup
• 6:21:17
  Speaker 1: is poured off, the dregs are left behind forever, but
• 6:21:22
  Speaker 1: the possibility of what is poured off is sweet enough
• 6:21:26
  Speaker 1: to accept. As a matter of fact. Countless human imaginations
• 6:21:31
  Speaker 1: live in this moralistic and epic kind of a universe
• 6:21:35
  Speaker 1: and find its disseminated and strong, long successes sufficient for
• 6:21:39
  Speaker 1: their rational needs. There is a finely translated epigram in
• 6:21:43
  Speaker 1: the Greek Anthology which admirably expresses this state of mind,
• 6:21:48
  Speaker 1: This acceptance of loss as unatoned for, even though the
• 6:21:52
  Speaker 1: lost element might be one's self, a shipwrecked sailor buried
• 6:21:58
  Speaker 1: on this coast, bids you set sail full many a
• 6:22:03
  Speaker 1: gallant bark. When we were lost weathered the gale. Those
• 6:22:09
  Speaker 1: Puritans who answered yes to the question are you willing
• 6:22:13
  Speaker 1: to be damned for God's glory? Where in this objective
• 6:22:17
  Speaker 1: and magnanimous condition of mind, the way of escape from
• 6:22:22
  Speaker 1: evil on this system is not by getting it alfgehorben
• 6:22:26
  Speaker 1: or preserved in the whole as an element essential but overcome.
• 6:22:31
  Speaker 1: It is by dropping it out altogether, throwing it overboard,
• 6:22:35
  Speaker 1: and getting beyond it, helping to make a universe that
• 6:22:39
  Speaker 1: shall forget its very place and name. It is then
• 6:22:42
  Speaker 1: perfectly possible to accept sincerely a drastic kind of a
• 6:22:46
  Speaker 1: universe from which the element of seriousness is not to
• 6:22:50
  Speaker 1: be expelled. Whoso does so is it seems to me
• 6:22:54
  Speaker 1: a genuine pragmatist. He is willing to live on a
• 6:22:58
  Speaker 1: scheme of uncertify possibilities which he trusts willing to pay
• 6:23:04
  Speaker 1: with his own person if need be, for the realization
• 6:23:08
  Speaker 1: of the ideals which he frames. What now actually are
• 6:23:13
  Speaker 1: the other forces which he trust to cooperate with him
• 6:23:16
  Speaker 1: in a universe of such a type, They are, at
• 6:23:20
  Speaker 1: least his fellow men in the stage of being which
• 6:23:23
  Speaker 1: our actual universe has reached. But are there not superhuman
• 6:23:29
  Speaker 1: forces also, such as religious men of the pluralistic type
• 6:23:32
  Speaker 1: we have been considering have always believed, in their words,
• 6:23:37
  Speaker 1: may have sounded monistic when they said there is no
• 6:23:40
  Speaker 1: God but God. But the original polytheism of mankind has
• 6:23:45
  Speaker 1: only imperfectly and vaguely sublimated itself into monotheism, and monotheism
• 6:23:52
  Speaker 1: itself so far as it was religious and not a
• 6:23:55
  Speaker 1: scheme of classroom instruction. For the metaphysicians has always viewed
• 6:23:59
  Speaker 1: God as but one helper primus entreparis in the midst
• 6:24:05
  Speaker 1: of all the shapers of the great world's fate. I
• 6:24:09
  Speaker 1: fear that my previous lectures, confined as they have been,
• 6:24:12
  Speaker 1: to human and humanistic aspects, may have left the impression
• 6:24:17
  Speaker 1: on many of you that pragmatism means methodically to leave
• 6:24:21
  Speaker 1: the superhuman out I have shown small respect, indeed for
• 6:24:26
  Speaker 1: the Absolute, and I have until this moment spoken of
• 6:24:29
  Speaker 1: no other superhuman hypothesis but that. But I trust that
• 6:24:33
  Speaker 1: you see sufficiently that the Absolute has nothing but its
• 6:24:38
  Speaker 1: superhumanness in common with the theistic God. On pragmatistic principles,
• 6:24:45
  Speaker 1: if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest
• 6:24:49
  Speaker 1: sense of the word, it is true now, whatever its
• 6:24:53
  Speaker 1: residual difficulties may be. Experience shows that it certainly does work,
• 6:24:59
  Speaker 1: and that the problem is to build it out and
• 6:25:01
  Speaker 1: determine it so that it would combine satisfactorily with all
• 6:25:06
  Speaker 1: the other working truths. I cannot start upon a whole
• 6:25:11
  Speaker 1: theology at the end of this last lecture. But when
• 6:25:14
  Speaker 1: I tell you that I have written a book on
• 6:25:17
  Speaker 1: men's religious experience, which on the whole has been regarded
• 6:25:21
  Speaker 1: as making for the reality of God, you will perhaps
• 6:25:25
  Speaker 1: exempt my own pragmatism from the charge of being an
• 6:25:28
  Speaker 1: atheistic system. I firmly disbelieve myself that our human experience
• 6:25:35
  Speaker 1: is the highest form of experience extant in the universe.
• 6:25:39
  Speaker 1: I believe rather, that we stand in much the same
• 6:25:43
  Speaker 1: relation to the whole of the universe as our canine
• 6:25:47
  Speaker 1: and feline pets. Due to the whole of human life.
• 6:25:51
  Speaker 1: They inhabit our drawing rooms and libraries, They take part
• 6:25:55
  Speaker 1: in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They
• 6:25:59
  Speaker 1: are merely tangent to curves of history, the beginnings and
• 6:26:03
  Speaker 1: ends and forms of which pause wholly beyond their ken.
• 6:26:08
  Speaker 1: So we are tangents to the wider lifeful things. But
• 6:26:13
  Speaker 1: just as many of the dogs and cats ideals coincide
• 6:26:17
  Speaker 1: with our ideals, and the dogs and cats have daily
• 6:26:20
  Speaker 1: living proof of the fact, so we may well believe
• 6:26:24
  Speaker 1: on the proofs that religious experience affords, that higher powers
• 6:26:29
  Speaker 1: exist and are at work to save the world on
• 6:26:32
  Speaker 1: ideal lines similar to our own. You see that pragmatism
• 6:26:37
  Speaker 1: can be called religious if you allow that religion can
• 6:26:41
  Speaker 1: be pluralistic or merely melioristic in type. But whether you
• 6:26:46
  Speaker 1: will finally put up with that type of religion or
• 6:26:49
  Speaker 1: not is a question that only you yourself can decide. Pragmatism
• 6:26:54
  Speaker 1: has to postpone dogmatic answers, for we do not yet
• 6:26:58
  Speaker 1: know certainly which type of religion is going to work
• 6:27:01
  Speaker 1: best in the long run. The various over beliefs of
• 6:27:05
  Speaker 1: men there several faith ventures are in fact what are
• 6:27:08
  Speaker 1: needed to bring the evidence in. You will probably make
• 6:27:13
  Speaker 1: your own ventures severely. If radically tough, the hurly burly
• 6:27:18
  Speaker 1: of the sensible facts of nature will be enough for you,
• 6:27:21
  Speaker 1: and you will need no religion at all. If radically tender,
• 6:27:26
  Speaker 1: you will take up with a more monistic form of religion.
• 6:27:30
  Speaker 1: The pluralistic form, with its reliance on possibilities that are
• 6:27:34
  Speaker 1: not necessities, will not seem to afford your security enough.
• 6:27:39
  Speaker 1: But if you are neither tough nor tender in an
• 6:27:42
  Speaker 1: extreme and radically sense, but mixed, as most of us are,
• 6:27:47
  Speaker 1: it may seem to you that the type of pluralistic
• 6:27:50
  Speaker 1: and moralistic religion that I have offered is as good
• 6:27:53
  Speaker 1: a religious synthesis as you are likely to find. Between
• 6:27:57
  Speaker 1: the two extreme of crude naturalism on the one hand
• 6:28:01
  Speaker 1: and transcendental absolutism on the other, you may find that
• 6:28:05
  Speaker 1: what I take the liberty of calling the pragmatistic or
• 6:28:08
  Speaker 1: melioristic type of theism is exactly what you require. The
• 6:28:15
  Speaker 1: End of Pragmatism, end of Lecture eight. End of Pragmatism
• 6:28:22
  Speaker 1: by William James