It certainly shares with the pragmatic philosophy a tendency to lay
more stress upon the freedom of the will than is usual among
philosophies. But the "will" of the complex vision moves in closer
association with the aesthetic sense than does the "will" of
pragmatism. It is perhaps as a matter of "taste" that pragmatism
proves most unsatisfactory to it. It seems to be conscious of
something in pragmatism, which, though itself perhaps not
precisely "commercial," seems curiously well adapted to a
commercial age. It is aware, in fine, that certain high and
passionate intimations are roused to unmitigated hostility by the
whole pragmatic attitude. And it refuses to outrage these
intimations for the sake of any psychological contentment.
In regard to the particular kind of "truth" championed by
pragmatists, the "truth" namely which gives one on the whole the
greatest amount of practical efficiency, the philosophy of the
complex vision remains unconvinced. The pragmatic philosophy
judges the value of any "truth" by its effective application to
ordinary moments. The philosophy of the complex vision judges
the value of any "truth" by its relation to that rare and difficult
harmony which can be obtained only in extraordinary moments.
To the pragmatic philosopher a shrewd, efficient and healthy-minded
person, with a good "working" religion, would seem the lucky
one, while to the philosophy of the complex vision some
desperate, unhappy suicidal wastrel, who by the grace of the
immortals was allowed some high unutterable moment, might
approach much more closely to the vision of those "sons of the
universe" who are the pattern of us all.
This comparison of the method we are endeavouring to follow
with the method of "pragmatism" helps to throw a clear light upon
what the complex vision reveals about these "ultimate ideas" in the
flow of an indiscriminate mass of mental impression.
To the passing fashion of modern thought there is something stiff,
scholastic, archaic, rigid, and even Byzantine, about the words
"truth," "beauty," "goodness," thus pedestalled side by side. But
just as with the old-fashioned word "matter" and the old-fashioned
word "soul," we must not be misled by a mere "superstition of
novelty" in these things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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