But Mr. Tyrrell does not seem to mean all that these sentences might
imply. He speaks repeatedly, in the 'Lex Orandi,' of the 'will-world' as
the only real world.
'The will (he says) cannot make that true which in itself is
not true. But it can make that a fact relatively to our mind
and action which is not a fact relative to our
understanding.... It rests with each of us by an act of will
to create the sort of world to which we shall accommodate
our thought and action. ....It does not follow that harmony
of faith with the truths of reason and facts of experience
is the best or essential condition of its credibility....
Abstractions (he refers to the world as known to science)
are simple only because they are barren forms created by the
mind itself. Faith and doubt have a common element in the
deep sense of the insufficiency of the human mind to grasp
ultimate truths.... The world given to our outward senses is
shadowy and dreamy, except so far as we ascribe to it some
of the characteristics of will and spirit.... The world of
appearance is simply subordinate to the real world of our
will and affections.'
Because the 'abstract' sciences cannot and do not attempt to reach
ultimate truth, it is assumed that they are altogether 'barren forms,'
This is the error of much Oriental mysticism, which denies all value to
what it regards as the lower categories. In his later writings Mr.
Tyrrell objects to being classed with the American and English
pragmatists--the school of Mr. William James. But the doctrine of these
passages is ultra-pragmatist. The will, which is illegitimately
stretched to include feeling,[80] is treated as the creator as well as
the discerner of reality. The 'world of appearance' is plastic in its
grasp. It is this metaphysical pragmatism which is really serviceable to
Modernism. If the categories of the understanding can be so disparaged
as to be allowed no independent truth, value, or importance, all
collisions between faith and fact may be avoided by discrediting in
advance any conclusions at which science may arrive. Assertions about
'brute fact' which are scientifically false may thus not be untrue when
taken out of the scientific plane, because outside that plane they are
harmless word-pictures, soap-bubbles blown off by the poetical
creativeness of faith Any assertion about fact which commends itself to
the will and affections and which is proved by experience to furnish
nutriment to the spiritual life, may be adhered to without scruple. It
is not only useful, but true, in the only sense in which truth can be
predicated of anything in the higher sphere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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