[268] There is a sentence in the Metaphysics of which I cannot but think at this point, and which so far at least as the rationalist-pragmatist issue is concerned is really one of the deepest and most instructive ideas in the whole history of philosophy. It is one of Aristotle’s troublesome additional statements in reference to something that he has just been discussing--in this case the “object of desire” and the “object of thought.” And what he adds in the present instance is this (Bk. xii. 7): “_The primary objects of these two things are the same_”--τούτων τὰ πρῶτα τὰ αὐτά--rendered by Smith and Ross “_the primary objects of thought and desire are the same_.” The translation, of course, is a matter of some slight difficulty, turning upon the proper interpretation of τὰ πρῶτα, “the first things,” although, of course, the student soon becomes familiar with what Aristotle means by “first things,” and “first philosophy,” and “first in nature,” and “first for us,” and so on. Themistius in his commentary on this passage (_Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca_, vol. v. i-vi; _Themistius in Metaphysica_, 1072 and 17–30) puts it that “in the case of immaterial existences the desirable and the intelligible are the same--in primis vero principiis materiae non immixtis _idem est desiderabile atque intelligibile_.” I am inclined to use this great idea of the identity of the desirable and the intelligible--for conscious, intelligent beings as the fundamental principle of the true Humanism of which Pragmatism is in search. It is evidently in this identity that Professor Bosanquet also believes in when he says: “I am persuaded that if we critically understand what we really want and need, we shall find it established by a straightforward argument” (Preface to _Individuality and Value_. See the eighth chapter of this book). It is certainly true that the constructive philosophy of which we are in search to-day must leave no gap between thought and desire. [269] I find an illustration or a confirmation of this thought in the following piece of insight of Mr. Chesterton in regard to the “good,” which is no doubt a “predicate” of our total thought and feeling and volition. “Or, in other words, man cannot escape from God, _because good is God in man; and insists on omniscience_” (_Victorian Age in Literature_, p. 246--italics mine). A belief in goodness is certainly a belief in an active goodness greater than our own; and it does raise a desire for a comprehension of things. [270] The reader will find a good deal in Professor Baldwin’s _Social and Ethical Interpretations of Mental Development_ upon the relation of truth and thought to desire, and also upon the social, or the pragmatist or the experimental test of beliefs. [271] See Chapter IX., in reference to Bergson’s “creative activity.”