In concluding, let me say that reference to experience seems at
present to be the easiest way of realizing the continuities among
subject-matters that are always getting split up into dualisms. A
creation of a world of subsistences or essences which are quite other
than the world of natural existences (which are other than natural
existences adapted to the successful performance of inference) is in
itself a technical matter, though a discouraging one to a philosopher
expertly acquainted with all the difficulties which that view has
generated from the time of Plato down. But the assistance which such
a philosophy lends to the practical and current divorce of the
"ideal" from the natural world makes it a thing to be dreaded for
other than professional reasons. God only knows how many of the
sufferings of life are due to a belief that the natural scene and
operations of our life are lacking in ideal import, and to the
consequent tendency to flee for the lacking ideal factors to some
other world inhabited exclusively by ideals. That such a cut-off,
ideal world is impotent for direction and control and change of the
natural world follows as a matter of course. It is a luxury; it
belongs to the "genteel tradition" of life, the persistence of an
"upper" class given to a detached and parasitic life. Moreover, it
places the scientific inquirer within that irresponsible class. If
philosophers could aid in making it clear to a troubled humanity that
ideals are continuous with natural events, that they but represent
their possibilities, and that recognized possibilities form methods
for a conduct which may realize them in fact, philosophers would
enforce the sense of a social calling and responsibility. I do not say
that pointing out the continuity and interaction of various attitudes
and interests in experience is the only way of effecting this
consummation. But for a large number of persons today it is the
readiest way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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