[58] For a later statement upon the philosophy of religion in France
see a report for the _Phil. Rev._ (vol. xvi. p. 304), by Le Roy.
This whole matter is, of course, a subject in itself of the greatest
theoretical and practical importance. It is enough for our purpose
to have indicated the different ways in which Pragmatism and the
“Will-to-Believe” philosophy have been received in France, and the
different issues raised by this reception. The reader who would
care to look at a constructive, philosophical view (by the _doyen_
of French philosophy professors) of the whole issue between the
pragmatist or “voluntarist” point of view in religion and the older
“intellectual” view, cannot do better than consult _Science and
Religion in Contemporary Philosophy_, by E. Boutroux, a book that is
apparently studied everywhere at present in France. Its spirit and
substance may be indicated by the following quotations, which follow
after some pages in which M. Boutroux exposes the error of “the radical
distinction between theory and practice.” “The starting point of
science is an abstraction, _i.e._ an element extracted from the given
fact and considered separately. We cannot expect man to be satisfied
with the abstract when the concrete is at his disposal. That would be
‘something like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent for a
solid meal.’ _Man uses science but he lives religion._ The part cannot
replace the whole; the symbol cannot suppress reality.”... “Not only
is science unable to replace religion, but she cannot dispense with
the subjective reality upon which the latter is grounded. It is pure
Scholastic realism to imagine that the objective and the impersonal
suffice apart from the subjective in our experience. Between the
subjective and the objective no demarcation is given which justifies
from the philosophical standpoint the divisions which science imagines
for her own convenience.” (p. 329).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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