Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of ThinkingJames, William
Philosophy
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
James, William
Pragmatism
To rationalists this describes a tramp and vagrant world, adrift in
space, with neither elephant nor tortoise to plant the sole of its foot
upon. It is a set of stars hurled into heaven without even a centre of
gravity to pull against. In other spheres of life it is true that we
have got used to living in a state of relative insecurity. The authority
of 'the State,' and that of an absolute 'moral law,' have resolved
themselves into expediencies, and holy church has resolved itself into
'meeting-houses.' Not so as yet within the philosophic class-rooms.
A universe with such as US contributing to create its truth, a world
delivered to OUR opportunisms and OUR private judgments! Home-rule for
Ireland would be a millennium in comparison. We're no more fit for such
a part than the Filipinos are 'fit for self-government.' Such a world
would not be RESPECTABLE, philosophically. It is a trunk without a tag,
a dog without a collar, in the eyes of most professors of philosophy.
What then would tighten this loose universe, according to the
professors?
Something to support the finite many, to tie it to, to unify and anchor
it. Something unexposed to accident, something eternal and unalterable.
The mutable in experience must be founded on immutability. Behind our de
facto world, our world in act, there must be a de jure duplicate fixed
and previous, with all that can happen here already there in posse,
every drop of blood, every smallest item, appointed and provided,
stamped and branded, without chance of variation. The negatives that
haunt our ideals here below must be themselves negated in the absolutely
Real. This alone makes the universe solid. This is the resting deep.
We live upon the stormy surface; but with this our anchor holds, for it
grapples rocky bottom. This is Wordsworth's "central peace subsisting at
the heart of endless agitation." This is Vivekananda's mystical One of
which I read to you. This is Reality with the big R, reality that makes
the timeless claim, reality to which defeat can't happen. This is
what the men of principles, and in general all the men whom I called
tender-minded in my first lecture, think themselves obliged to
postulate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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