Now it would be easily possible to continue our study of Pragmatism
along some or all of those different lines and points of view. In
the matter, for example, of the affiliations and associations
of Pragmatism, we could show that, in addition to such things
as the “nominalism” and the utilitarianism, and the positivism,
and the “voluntarism” and the philosophy of hypotheses, and the
“anti-intellectualism” already referred to, Pragmatism has an affinity
with things as far apart and as different as the Scottish Philosophy
of Common-sense, the sociological philosophy of Comte and his
followers, the philosophy of Fichte with its great idea of the world
as the “sensualized sphere” of our duty, the “experience” philosophy
of Bacon and of the entire modern era, and so on. There is even a
“romantic” element in Pragmatism, and it has, in fact, been called
“romantic utilitarianism.”[206] We can understand this if we think of
M. Berthelot’s[207] association of it not only with Poincaré, but with
Nietzsche, or of Dr. Schiller’s famous declaration that the genius of a
man’s logical method should be loved and reverenced by him as is “his
bride.”
And there is always in it, to be sure, the important element of
sympathy with the religious instincts of mankind. And this is the case,
too, whether these instincts are contemplated in some of the forms to
which reference has already been made, or in the form, say, expressed
by such a typical modern thinker as the late Henry Sidgwick, in his
conviction that “Humanity will not, and cannot, acquiesce in a Godless
world.”[208]
Then again we might take up the point of the relations of Pragmatism
to doctrines new and old in the history of philosophy, to the main
points of departure of different schools of thought, or to fundamental
and important positions in many of the great philosophers. The writer
finds that he has noticed in this connexion the doctrines of Stoicism
and Epicureanism,[209] the “probability” philosophy of Locke[210] and
Butler, and Pascal, the ethics and the natural theology of Cicero,
the “voluntarism” of Schopenhauer,[211] Aristotle’s philosophy of the
Practical Reason,[212] Kant’s philosophy of the same, the religious
philosophy of theologians like Tertullian, Augustine, Duns Scotus, and
so on--to take only a few instances.[213] The view of man and his
nature represented by all these names is, in the main, an essentially
practical, a concrete, and a moral view as opposed to an abstract and
a rationalistic view. And of course even to Plato knowledge was only
an element in the total spiritual philosophy of man, while his master,
Socrates, never really seemed to make any separation between moral and
intellectual inquiries.
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