The question before us is the relation of Pragmatism to a body of
knowledge.
(_a_) One question at issue between the Idealist[15] and the
Pragmatist has to do with the way in which each defines knowledge
and gauges its ultimate aim. Both say that knowledge is relative,
but one school asserts that the human mind slowly and laboriously
uncovers or discovers what Goethe calls the “Living garment of
Deity,” _i.e._ the world of nature, and comes into a heritage of
scientific truth which increasingly corresponds to the subject of his
faith; the other claims that we live in a self-evolving universe in
which in the course of long ages a new heaven and a new earth may be
created which are not foreseen or implied in present conditions. In
other words, the Idealist finds the Divine in human life; he finds
in his own small corner of the universe the microcosm and symbol of
Infinity: the Pragmatist considers that nothing _is_ which is not a
result of human action, and lowers the Divine element to the result
of individual human activity. A compromise between the two ideas on
new and interesting lines has recently been made by Bergson. The
Christian doctrine of Immanence and Transcendence also combines them.
Now the increase of a body of knowledge would seem to depend on
the comparison of the successful working out of hypotheses with
the discrepancies from theory that from time to time appear. Taken
together, proofs and discrepancies point to the evidence of a larger
law. This is Hegel’s logic, and the principle, so far as it is
here implied, is not denied in modern times, for no one wishes to
found a logic on a study of discrepancies as such. Even W. James
says, “Whenever you once place yourself at the point of view of any
higher synthesis you see exactly how it does, in a fashion, take up
opposites into itself.”[16] In fact, without the notion of unity,
that of discrepancy could not exist: there must be a background on
which the differences appear. The ultimate unity is symbolised in the
Idealist doctrine of an Absolute.
The Absolute of Idealistic thought is not, however, now conceived
of (as the Pragmatist would have us believe) as an abstract unity,
but as one involving a social bond, and hence relations which can
be described as personal, if we remember that the Personality of
the Absolute transcends our notion of human personality. Such a
conception of the term Absolute, a new reading of the theory of
the One and the Many, has been led up to by Bradley and Royce by
methods of logic, and without any reference to dogma. It has been
conveniently expressed by Taylor. The argument is briefly that
ultimate Reality must be One, Many, and Personal.
“For our conclusion that mere truth cannot be the same thing as
ultimate reality was itself based upon the principle that only
harmonious individuality is finally real, and this is the very
principle employed by the intellect itself whenever it judges one
thought-construction relatively higher or truer than another.”[17]