THOUGHT AND LIFE
The mission of Pragmatism is to bring Philosophy into relation to real
Life and Action. So far from regarding Thought as a self-centred,
self-enclosed activity, Pragmatism insists upon replacing it in its
context among the other functions of life, and in measuring its value by
its effect upon them. So far, again, from regarding the abstract
intellect as a vast Juggernaut machine which absorbs and crushes the
individual thinker, it treats him individually as having his own
constitution, _raison d'être,_ and intrinsic interest, and credits him
with a power to make new truths and to enrich the resources of thought.
Each thinker has before him an individual situation, a system of aims
and values, a stock of knowledge and of means from which he must select
what is relevant to his ends, and so cannot escape in any judgment from
the responsibilities of a personal decision.
Thus, for Pragmatism _every thought is an act_ with a person behind it,
who is responsible for launching it into the world of fact. The result
of this change of attitude is immediate. In the first place, as has been
shown in Chapter V., by bringing thought face to face with the whole
experience upon which it claims to work, we are enabled to find a
tangible rule for evaluating its assertions and distinguishing truth
from error. And, secondly, by recognizing that the mind is not an
apparatus which functions in a vacuum, but is a constituent of an
individual organism, we see that thinking always depends upon a purpose;
for it is the purpose of an inquiry which gives reflection its cue, and
determines its scope and (most essential of all) its meaning.
We are thus led from the narrower logical question, 'What constitutes
the "truth" of a statement?' to a wider outlook, from which we can
survey the place of knowing in human life at large. This may be called
the transition from Pragmatism to Humanism. This last word was
introduced into philosophic terminology by Dr. Schiller in order to
describe his general philosophical position as distinct from the
original question of the theory of knowledge, which had been treated by
James under the name of Pragmatism.
To the Humanist the best definition of life is one which displays it as
throughout purposive, as a rational pursuit of ends. This raises the
question of the validity of valuations. Valuation is a widespread human
practice. In their most general aspect we classify all objects as 'good'
and 'bad,' according as they are ends to be pursued or avoided, or means
which further or frustrate the pursuit of ends. This general antithesis
between the 'good' and the 'bad' has numerous specific forms, applicable
to different departments of human activity. Thus, in conduct, actions
are judged 'good' or 'evil' and 'right' or 'wrong'; in thinking, ideas
are 'true' or 'false,' and 'relevant' or 'irrelevant'; for art, objects
are 'beautiful' or 'ugly,' and so forth, for the modes of valuation in
life are innumerable. Any one of these adjectives either denotes value
or censures lack of worth, and each gets its meaning by reference to the
specific purpose, moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, it appeals to. The
_summum bonum_, or supreme good, will then be the ideal of the
harmonious satisfaction of all purposes.
What, then, from the standpoint of Humanism, is the function of
'truth-values' in our life? They indicate a relation to the cognitive
end. What is this end? Surely not self-sufficing? A truth that is merely
true in itself has no interest for human life, and no human mind has an
interest in discovering and affirming it. Truth, therefore, cannot
stand aloof from life. It must somehow subserve our vital purposes. But
how shall it do this? Only by becoming applicable to the reality we have
to live with, by becoming useful for the changes we desire to effect in
it. Whoever will not admit this, and renders truth inapplicable, does in
fact render it unmeaning.
The fact that thought essentially refers to a 'reality' external to it
in no way diminishes its purposive character. Whether the mind is
idealizing an aspect of reality (as in mathematics) or abstracting,
classifying, and predicting (as in science), it is always the fact that
a particular kind of reality is needed for some serious or trivial
purpose which guides the operations of the thinker. A mind which craved
to embrace all or 'any' reality need not _think_; it would do better to
float without discrimination upon the flux of change. This procedure
would be so absolutely antithetical to human knowing that it seems a
wanton paradox on that account to treat it as the final goal of
knowledge.
Actually, of course, the philosophers who claim to be devoted to pure
theory follow no such course. They deliberately choose their ideal of
what is worth knowing--_e.g._, 'God,' or 'the unity of all things,' or
'the laws of the universe'--and, disregarding all other existences,
they pursue the kind of reality they desire because of its religious or
moral or aesthetic value. For there could be no greater mistake than to
suppose that the common antithesis between 'reality' and the 'un-real'
usually means the same thing as the distinction between what 'exists'
and what is absolutely non-existent. On the contrary, it is usually a
judgment of value. We may say that the 'haunted' house is real and the
'ghost' is not; but as an hallucination the ghost is real enough. Utopia
is unreal for the politician, but exists as an ideal for the theorist.
The Platonist treats our physical world of sight and touch, which we
think the most real of all, as a mere illusion compared to the 'Ideas'
of his metaphysical world. The thinker who declares he wants to know all
about 'reality' does not mean that he wishes to investigate _everything_
which in any sense exists, but that he wishes to know what _he_
considers _best worth knowing_--and this, of course, implies a personal
valuation, a purged and expurgated extract, which will not offend his
taste. So all philosophies are, in fact, selective. Even the more
conscientious rationalists show very little anxiety to include in their
intellectual scheme a knowledge of their opponents' opinions--indeed,
they seem to think that the existence of such facts may be made
dependent wholly on their will to recognize them. An exposition of
Pragmatism is for them a 'reality' which does not count: it is not worth
knowing about. And this is only natural, after all. For 'reality,' the
object of the mind's search, is always a selection, conceived after the
likeness of the heart's desire, the product of a human purpose.
To recognize this is to appreciate the wisdom of Humanism's refusal to
treat the world, for good or bad, as a given and completed whole. For
not only is what we call the real world always a selection from a larger
whole from which we have ventured to exclude great masses of
irrelevance, but every day brings fresh experience, and may bring fresh
enlightenment. And since man has always an interest in improving his
condition, is it not futile to forbid him to re-make his world as beat
he can? Why prematurely claim to have reached finality, when unexpected
novelties may shatter any system before it is even completed? Our world
is plastic, it is most 'really' what we can make of it, and the process
of our making is not ended. Whether a decree of Fate has fixed any
ultimate limits to our efforts we have no means of knowing, and no
occasion to assume. Is not our wisest course, then, to persist in
trying? It is bad method ever to despair of knowing what we need.
For good or ill, the world with which the Humanist contends is always a
world that reveals itself to him. Reality, as it is assumed, presumed,
or guessed to be 'in itself,' apart from our experience of it, is
cancelled from his reckonings. For he cannot discover how he (or anyone)
can get any 'knowledge' or 'intuition' which transcends all human
faculties. The theories of metaphysicians on these lofty themes he
regards as personal postulates which, in so far as they cannot be
subjected to the pragmatic method, must remain open questions. Human
experience does not warrant such gratuitous demands. It confirms neither
the rigid system of unchanging fact which realism postulates (seeing
that the only facts that science speaks of are ever changing in its
progress), nor finds its problems, conflicts, and errors credible as a
reflexion of any Universal Mind, unless Idealism ultimately repudiates
the sanity of its Absolute.
The superiority of Humanism, then, lies in this, that it does not
discourage human enterprise by assuming that the real is completely
rigid and eternally achieved without regard to human effort. In the
drama that unrolls reality, every man, it teaches, has a duty and a
power to play his humble but essential part. Humanism is neither an
Optimism nor a Pessimism--both of which must consistently, in their
extreme form, deny that reality can be improved--but concedes to man the
right and duty to improve the world. It impresses us with the necessity
of acting, it vindicates the procedure of acting on our hopes, it shows
us how we may correct our errors, and so gives reasons for our faith in
the possibility of Progress.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WILLIAM JAMES:
_The Principles of Psychology_, 1890.
_The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy_, 1897.
_The Varieties of Religious Experience_, 1902.
_Pragmatism, a New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking_, 1907.
_A Pluralistic Universe_, 1909.
_The Meaning of Truth_, 1909.
_Some Problems of Philosophy_, 1911.
_Radical Empiricism_, 1912.
F.C.S. SCHILLER:
_Riddles of the Sphinx_, 1891 (revised edition, 1910).
_Axioms as Postulates_ (in _Personal Idealism_, ed. Henry
Sturt, 1902).
_Humanism: Philosophical Essays_, 1903.
_Studies in Humanism_, 1907.
_Formal Logic, a Scientific and Social Problem_, 1912.
HENRY STURT:
_Idola Theatri, a Criticism of Oxford Thought and Thinkers from the
Standpoint of Personal Idealism_, 1906.
J. DEWEY AND OTHERS:
_Studies in Logical Theory_, 1903.
J. DEWEY:
_The Influence of Darwinism, and Other Essays_, 1910.
H.V. KNOX:
_The Evolution of Truth_, Quarterly Review, No. 419. April, 1909.
A.W. MOORE:
_Pragmatism and its Critics_, 1911.
A. SIDGWICK:
_The Application of Logic_, 1910.