In order fairly to estimate aright our relation to this larger life,
we must briefly review the further thesis upon which recent pragmatism
lays so much stress--the thesis that, since the truth of an opinion
consists in the agreement or disagreement of its empirical workings
with their anticipated consequences, all truth is both temporal and
relative and cannot be either eternal or absolute. Let me then say a
word as to the absoluteness of truth.
The thesis of pragmatism as to the active nature {152} and the
practical meaning of all opinions may be illustrated by a simile that,
as I think, well brings out the sense in which, as I hold, pragmatism
itself is a true doctrine. Any sincere opinion announces a plan of
action whereby we are, in some way, to adjust ourselves for some
purpose to a real object. That is, an opinion lays down, in some form,
a rule for some sort of conduct. This rule is of course valid only for
one who has some specific interest in the object in question. For you
can guide action only by appealing to the will of the one whom you
guide. This is the pragmatist's view of the nature of all assertions
and opinions. And so far, as you already know, I agree with the
pragmatist. This account is correct.
This being so, we can, for the sake of a simile, compare any definite
opinion to the counsel that a coach may give to a player whom he is
directing. The player wants to "play the game." He therefore accepts
its rules, and has his interests in what the pragmatists call "the
concrete situation." The player, at any point in his training or in
his activities as a player, may also accept the coach's guidance, and
put himself under the coach's directions. If, hereupon, the player
acts in accordance with what the coach ordains, the coach's directions
have "workings." Their "workings" are in so far the deeds of the
player. These deeds, if the issues of the game are sharply defined,
are what we may call hits or misses. That is, each one of them either
is {153} what, for the purposes of the game and the player, it ought
to be, or else it is not what it ought to be. And each act of the
player is a hit or a miss in a perfectly objective sense, as a real
deed belonging to a world whose relations are determined by the rules
and events of the game and by the purposes of the whole body of
players.
Applying the simile to the case of assertions, we may say: An
assertion is an act whereby our deeds are provided with a sort of
coaching. Life itself is our game. Opinions coach the active will as
to how to do its deed. If the opinion is definite enough, and if the
active will obeys the coach, the opinion has "workings." These
workings are our intelligent deeds, which translate our opinions into
new life. If our purposes are definite enough, and if the issues of
life are for us sharply defined, these deeds are, with reference to
our purposes, either hits or misses, either successful or unsuccessful
acts, either steps toward winning or steps toward failure. All this is
surely concrete enough. And, in real life, this account applies
equally to the practical situations of the workshop or of the
market-place, and to the ideas and deeds of a religious man seeking
salvation.
But now one of the central facts about life is that every deed once
done is _ipso facto_ irrevocable. That is, at any moment you perform a
given deed or you do not. If you perform it, it is done and cannot be
undone. This difference between what {154} is done and what is left
undone is, in the real and empirical world, a _perfectly absolute
difference._ The opportunity for a given individual deed returns not;
for the moment when that individual deed can be done never recurs.
Here is a case where the rational constitution of the whole universe
gets into definite relation to our momentary experience. _And if any
one wants to be in touch with the "Absolute"--with that reality which
the pragmatists fancy to be peculiarly remote and abstract--let him
simply do any individual deed whatever and then try to undo that deed.
Let the experiment teach him what one means by calling reality
absolute. Let the truths which that experience teaches any rational
being show him also what is meant by absolute truth._
For this irrevocable and absolute character of the deed, when once
done, rationally determines an equally irrevocable character about the
truth or falsity of any act of judgment, of any assertion or opinion,
which has actually called in a concrete situation for a given deed,
and which therefore has had this individual deed for any part of its
intended "workings." Let us return to the simile of the game. Suppose
the coach to counsel a given deed of the player. Suppose the player,
acting on the coach's advice, to perform that deed, to make that play.
Suppose the play to be a misplay. The play, once made, cannot be
recalled. It stands, if the rules of the game require it so to stand,
on the score. If it stands there, then just _that_ item of the score
{155} can never be changed under the rules of the game. The score is,
for the game, absolute and irrevocable. If the coach counselled that
misplay, his counsel was an error. And just as the player's score
cannot be changed without simply abandoning the rules of the game, so
too the coach's record as a blunderer is, in respect of this one bit
of counsel, unalterable. Analogous results hold for the player's
successful hits and for the coaching that required them. All this is
no result of abstractions or of bare theory. It is the result of
having the will to play the game. It is the absolute truth that
results from joining definite practical issues.
Returning to life, we must say: If our assertions have a determinate
meaning, they get their concrete workings through counselling
determinate individual deeds. Each deed, as an individual act, is
irrevocable and is absolutely what it is. Our deeds, judged in the
light of a reasonable survey of life--a survey of life such as that to
which, when we form our opinions, and when we act on our opinions, we
intend to appeal--are, for a determinate purpose, either hits or
misses. If the issues of life in question when we act are definite
enough, our deeds, under the rules of the game of life, cannot avoid
this character of being the right deeds or the wrong deeds for the
purpose in question and in view of their actual place in real life.
Whoever so acts that his deeds are done, as a cant phrase has it,
"with a string attached to them"--that is, whoever regards {156} his
deeds as having only relative reality, as capable of being recalled if
he chooses, is not acting seriously. He is not, as they say, really
"playing the game." And, as a fact, he is trifling with absolute
reality. He is not only not serious; he views real life as it
absolutely is not. For whatever individual deed he actually does is
absolutely irrevocable, whether he wants to recall it or not. Once
done, it stands eternally on the world's score.
Now I insist, whatever assertion, or opinion, regarded as itself an
expression of one's will, has for its intended working one of these
irrevocable deeds, is in so far forth true, as the individual deed
which it counsels is for the required purpose quite irrevocably a
right deed when estimated with reference to this purpose and to the
life into whose score it enters. That is, the opinion is true in so
far as the working which it counsels is a deed that is in fact a hit
in the chosen game of life under the rules of that game. And whatever
opinion counsels a deed that, as the working of this opinion, is a
miss in the game of life, is a false opinion. And, so I insist, _this
distinction between the truth and falsity of an opinion that counsels
an individual deed is as absolute and irrevocable as is the place of
the deed when once done on the score of the game of life._
Whoever denies this position simply trifles with the very nature of
all individual facts of experience; trifles also with life and with
his own decisive will. Every serious man does his daily business with
an {157} assurance that, since his deeds are irrevocable, his guiding
opinions, that counsel his individual deeds give, in an equally
irrevocable way, right or wrong guidance, precisely in so far as they
get their workings concretely presented in his deeds. And this view
about life is no philosopher's abstraction. It is the only genuinely
concrete view. Its contradiction is not merely illogical, but
practically inane. I cannot do a deed and then undo it. Therefore I
cannot declare it to be for a determinate purpose the right individual
deed at this point in life, and then say that I did not really mean
that counsel to be taken as simply and therefore absolutely true.
Absolute reality (namely, the sort of reality that belongs to
irrevocable deeds), absolute truth (namely, the sort of truth that
belongs to those opinions which, for a given purpose, counsel
individual deeds, when the deeds in fact meet the purpose for which
they were intended)--these two are not remote affairs invented by
philosophers for the sake of "barren intellectualism." _Such absolute
reality and absolute truth are the most concrete and practical and
familiar of matters._ The pragmatist who denies that there is any
absolute truth accessible has never rightly considered the very most
characteristic feature of the reasonable will, namely, that it is
always counselling irrevocable deeds, and therefore is always giving
counsel that is for its own determinate purpose irrevocably right or
wrong precisely in so far as it is definite counsel.
{158}
One of the least encouraging features of recent discussion is the
prominence and popularity of those philosophical opinions which are
always proclaiming their "concrete" and "practical" character, while
ignoring the most vital and concrete feature of all voluntary life.
For the very essence of the will is that, at every moment of action,
it decides absolute issues, because it does irrevocable deeds, and
therefore, if intelligent at all, is guided by opinions that are as
absolutely true or false as their intended workings are irrevocable. I
repeat: If you want to know what an absolute truth is, and what an
absolute falsity, do anything whatever, and then try to undo your
deed. You will find that the opinion which should counsel you to
regard it as capable of being undone gives you simply and absolutely
false coaching as to any game of life whatever. Every effort to undo
your deed is a blunder. Every opinion that you can undo is a trivial
and absolutely false absurdity. Just such triviality and absurdity
belong to the thesis that absolute truth is an unpractical and
inaccessible abstraction.