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
6. Another specification of what the phrase 'the world is One' may mean
is UNITY OF PURPOSE. An enormous number of things in the world subserve
a common purpose. All the man-made systems, administrative, industrial,
military, or what not, exist each for its controlling purpose. Every
living being pursues its own peculiar purposes. They co-operate,
according to the degree of their development, in collective or tribal
purposes, larger ends thus enveloping lesser ones, until an absolutely
single, final and climacteric purpose subserved by all things without
exception might conceivably be reached. It is needless to say that the
appearances conflict with such a view. Any resultant, as I said in
my third lecture, MAY have been purposed in advance, but none of the
results we actually know in is world have in point of fact been purposed
in advance in all their details. Men and nations start with a vague
notion of being rich, or great, or good. Each step they make brings
unforeseen chances into sight, and shuts out older vistas, and the
specifications of the general purpose have to be daily changed. What is
reached in the end may be better or worse than what was proposed, but it
is always more complex and different.
Our different purposes also are at war with each other. Where one can't
crush the other out, they compromise; and the result is again different
from what anyone distinctly proposed beforehand. Vaguely and generally,
much of what was purposed may be gained; but everything makes strongly
for the view that our world is incompletely unified teleologically and
is still trying to get its unification better organized.
Whoever claims ABSOLUTE teleological unity, saying that there is one
purpose that every detail of the universe subserves, dogmatizes at
his own risk. Theologians who dogmalize thus find it more and more
impossible, as our acquaintance with the warring interests of the
world's parts grows more concrete, to imagine what the one climacteric
purpose may possibly be like. We see indeed that certain evils minister
to ulterior goods, that the bitter makes the cocktail better, and that
a bit of danger or hardship puts us agreeably to our trumps. We can
vaguely generalize this into the doctrine that all the evil in the
universe is but instrumental to its greater perfection. But the scale
of the evil actually in sight defies all human tolerance; and
transcendental idealism, in the pages of a Bradley or a Royce, brings us
no farther than the book of Job did--God's ways are not our ways, so let
us put our hands upon our mouth. A God who can relish such superfluities
of horror is no God for human beings to appeal to. His animal spirits
are too high. In other words the 'Absolute' with his one purpose, is not
the man-like God of common people.
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