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
The issues of fact at stake in the debate are of course vaguely enough
conceived by us at present. But spiritualistic faith in all its forms
deals with a world of PROMISE, while materialism's sun sets in a sea of
disappointment. Remember what I said of the Absolute: it grants us moral
holidays. Any religious view does this. It not only incites our more
strenuous moments, but it also takes our joyous, careless, trustful
moments, and it justifies them. It paints the grounds of justification
vaguely enough, to be sure. The exact features of the saving future
facts that our belief in God insures, will have to be ciphered out
by the interminable methods of science: we can STUDY our God only by
studying his Creation. But we can ENJOY our God, if we have one, in
advance of all that labor. I myself believe that the evidence for God
lies primarily in inner personal experiences. When they have once given
you your God, his name means at least the benefit of the holiday. You
remember what I said yesterday about the way in which truths clash and
try to 'down' each other. The truth of 'God' has to run the gauntlet of
all our other truths. It is on trial by them and they on trial by it.
Our FINAL opinion about God can be settled only after all the truths
have straightened themselves out together. Let us hope that they shall
find a modus vivendi!
Let me pass to a very cognate philosophic problem, the QUESTION of
DESIGN IN NATURE. God's existence has from time immemorial been held to
be proved by certain natural facts. Many facts appear as if expressly
designed in view of one another. Thus the woodpecker's bill, tongue,
feet, tail, etc., fit him wondrously for a world of trees with grubs hid
in their bark to feed upon. The parts of our eye fit the laws of light
to perfection, leading its rays to a sharp picture on our retina. Such
mutual fitting of things diverse in origin argued design, it was held;
and the designer was always treated as a man-loving deity.
The first step in these arguments was to prove that the design existed.
Nature was ransacked for results obtained through separate things being
co-adapted. Our eyes, for instance, originate in intra-uterine darkness,
and the light originates in the sun, yet see how they fit each other.
They are evidently made FOR each other. Vision is the end designed,
light and eyes the separate means devised for its attainment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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