At all events this raises a question not touched so far: the place of
the personal in the determination of truth. Mr. James, for example,
emphasizes the doctrine suggested in the following words: "We say this
theory solves it [the problem] more satisfactorily than that theory;
but that means more satisfactorily _to ourselves_, and individuals will
emphasize their points of satisfaction differently" (p. 61, italics
mine). This opens out into a question which, in its larger aspects--the
place of the personal factor in the constitution of knowledge systems
and of reality--I cannot here enter upon, save to say that a synthetic
pragmatism such as Mr. James has ventured upon will take a very
different form according as the point of view of what he calls the
"Chicago School" or that of humanism is taken as a basis for
interpreting the nature of the personal. According to the latter view,
the personal appears to be ultimate and unanalyzable, the
metaphysically real. Associations with idealism, moreover, give
it an idealistic turn, a translation, in effect, of monistic
intellectualistic idealism into pluralistic, voluntaristic idealism.
But, according to the former, the personal is not ultimate, but is to
be analyzed and defined, biologically on its genetic side, ethically on
its prospective and functioning side.
There is, however, one phase of the teaching illustrated by the
quotation which is directly relevant here. Because Mr. James
recognizes that the personal element enters into judgments passed upon
whether a problem has or has not been satisfactorily solved, he is
charged with extreme subjectivism, with encouraging the element of
personal preference to run rough-shod over all objective controls. Now
the question raised in the quotation is primarily one of fact, not of
doctrine. Is or is not a personal factor found in truth evaluations?
If it is, pragmatism is not responsible for introducing it. If it is
not, it ought to be possible to refute pragmatism by appeal to
empirical fact, rather than by reviling it for subjectivism. Now it is
an old story that philosophers, in common with theologians and social
theorists, are as sure that personal habits and interests shape their
opponents' doctrines as they are that their own beliefs are
"absolutely" universal and objective in quality. Hence arises that
dishonesty, that insincerity characteristic of philosophic discussion.
As Mr. James says (p. 8), "The most potential of all our premises is
never mentioned." Now the moment the complicity of the personal
factor in our philosophic valuations is recognized, is recognized
fully, frankly, and generally, that moment a new era in philosophy
will begin. We shall have to discover the personal factors that now
influence us unconsciously, and begin to accept a new and moral
responsibility for them, a responsibility for judging and testing them
by their consequences. So long as we ignore this factor, its deeds
will be largely evil, not because _it_ is evil, but because,
flourishing in the dark, it is without responsibility and without
check. The only way to control it is by recognizing it. And while I
would not prophesy of pragmatism's future, I would say that this
element which is now so generally condemned as intellectual dishonesty
(perhaps because of an uneasy, instinctive recognition of the
searching of hearts its acceptance would involve) will in the future
be accounted unto philosophy for righteousness' sake.
So much in general. In particular cases, it is possible that Mr.
James's language occasionally leaves the impression that the fact of
the inevitable involution of the personal factor in every belief gives
some special sanction to some special belief. Mr. James says that his
essay on the _right_ to believe was unluckily entitled the "_Will_ to
believe" (p. 258). Well, even the term "right" is unfortunate, if the
personal or belief factor is inevitable--unfortunate because it seems
to indicate a privilege which might be exercised in special cases, in
religion, for example, though not in science; or, because it suggests
to some minds that the fact of the personal complicity involved in
belief is a warrant for this or that special personal attitude,
instead of being a warning to locate and define it so as to accept
responsibility for it. If we mean by "will" not something deliberate
and consciously intentional (much less, something insincere), but an
active personal participation, then belief _as_ will, rather than
either the right or the will to believe seems to phrase the matter
correctly.
I have attempted to review not so much Mr. James's book as the present
status of the pragmatic movement which is expressed in the book; and I
have selected only those points which seem to bear directly upon
matters of contemporary controversy. Even as an account of this
limited field, the foregoing pages do an injustice to Mr. James, save
as it is recognized that his lectures were "popular lectures," as the
title-page advises us. We cannot expect in such lectures the kind of
explicitness which would satisfy the professional and technical
interests that have inspired this review. Moreover, it is inevitable
that the attempt to compose different points of view, hitherto
unco-ordinated, into a single whole should give rise to problems
foreign to any one factor of the synthesis, left to itself. The need
and possibility of the discrimination of various elements in the
pragmatic meaning of "practical," attempted in this review, would
hardly have been recognized by me were it not for by-products of
perplexity and confusion which Mr. James's combination has effected.
Mr. James has given so many evidences of the sincerity of his
intellectual aims, that I trust to his pardon for the injustice which
the character of my review may have done _him_, in view of whatever
service it may render in clarifying the problem to which he is
devoted.
As for the book itself, it is in any case beyond a critic's praise or
blame. It is more likely to take place as a philosophical classic than
any other writing of our day. A critic who should attempt to appraise
it would probably give one more illustration of the sterility of
criticism compared with the productiveness of creative genius. Even
those who dislike pragmatism can hardly fail to find much of profit in
the exhibition of Mr. James's instinct for concrete facts, the breadth
of his sympathies, and his illuminating insights. Unreserved
frankness, lucid imagination, varied contacts with life digested into
summary and trenchant conclusions, keen perceptions of human nature in
the concrete, a constant sense of the subordination of philosophy to
life, capacity to put things into an English which projects ideas as
if bodily into space till they are solid things to walk around and
survey from different sides--these things are not so common in
philosophy that they may not smell sweet even by the name of
pragmatism.