FIRST MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM IS ONLY A RE-EDITING OF POSITIVISM.
This seems the commonest mistake. Scepticism, positivism, and agnosticism agree with ordinary dogmatic rationalism in presupposing that everybody knows what the word ‘truth’ means, without further explanation. But the former doctrines15 then either suggest or declare that real truth, absolute truth, is inaccessible16 to us, and that we must fain put up with relative or phenomenal truth as its next best substitute. By scepticism this is treated as an unsatisfactory state of affairs, while positivism and agnosticism are cheerful about it, call real truth sour grapes, and consider phenomenal truth quite sufficient for all our ‘practical’ purposes.
In point of fact, nothing could be farther from all this than what pragmatism has to say of truth. Its thesis is an altogether previous one. It leaves off where these other theories begin, having contented17 itself with the word truth’s DEFINITION. ‘No matter whether any mind extant in the universe possess truth or not,’ it asks, ‘what does the notion of truth signify IDEALLY?’ ‘What kind of things would true judgments18 be IN CASE they existed?’ The answer which pragmatism offers is intended to cover the most complete truth that can be conceived of, ‘absolute’ truth if you like, as well as truth of the most relative and imperfect description. This question of what truth would be like if it did exist, belongs obviously to a purely19 speculative20 field of inquiry21. It is not a theory about any sort of reality, or about what kind of knowledge is actually possible; it abstracts from particular terms altogether, and defines the nature of a possible relation between two of them.
As Kant’s question about synthetic22 judgments had escaped previous philosophers, so the pragmatist question is not only so subtile as to have escaped attention hitherto, but even so subtile, it would seem, that when openly broached23 now, dogmatists and sceptics alike fail to apprehend24 it, and deem the pragmatist to be treating of something wholly different. He insists, they say (I quote an actual critic), ‘that the greater problems are insoluble by human intelligence, that our need of knowing truly is artificial and illusory, and that our reason, incapable25 of reaching the foundations of reality, must turn itself exclusively towards ACTION.’ There could not be a worse misapprehension.
SECOND MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM IS PRIMARILY AN APPEAL TO ACTION.
The name ‘pragmatism,’ with its suggestions of action, has been an unfortunate choice, I have to admit, and has played into the hands of this mistake. But no word could protect the doctrine from critics so blind to the nature of the inquiry that, when Dr. Schiller speaks of ideas ‘working’ well, the only thing they think of is their immediate26 workings in the physical environment, their enabling us to make money, or gain some similar ‘practical’ advantage. Ideas do work thus, of course, immediately or remotely; but they work indefinitely inside of the mental world also. Not crediting us with this rudimentary insight, our critics treat our view as offering itself exclusively to engineers, doctors, financiers, and men of action generally, who need some sort of a rough and ready weltanschauung, but have no time or wit to study genuine philosophy. It is usually described as a characteristically American movement, a sort of bobtailed scheme of thought, excellently fitted for the man on the street, who naturally hates theory and wants cash returns immediately.
It is quite true that, when the refined theoretic question that pragmatism begins with is once answered, secondary corollaries of a practical sort follow. Investigation28 shows that, in the function called truth, previous realities are not the only independent variables. To a certain extent our ideas, being realities, are also independent variables, and, just as they follow other reality and fit it, so, in a measure, does other reality follow and fit them. When they add themselves to being, they partly redetermine the existent, so that reality as a whole appears incompletely definable unless ideas also are kept account of. This pragmatist doctrine, exhibiting our ideas as complemental29 factors of reality, throws open (since our ideas are instigators of our action) a wide window upon human action, as well as a wide license30 to originality31 in thought. But few things could be sillier than to ignore the prior epistemological edifice33 in which the window is built, or to talk as if pragmatism began and ended at the window. This, nevertheless, is what our critics do almost without exception. They ignore our primary step and its motive34, and make the relation to action, which is our secondary achievement, primary.
THIRD MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISTS CUT THEMSELVES OFF FROM THE RIGHT TO BELIEVE IN EJECTIVE REALITIES.
They do so, according to the critics, by making the truth of our beliefs consist in their verifiability, and their verifiability in the way in which they do work for us. Professor Stout35, in his otherwise admirable and hopeful review of Schiller in Mind for October, 1897, considers that this ought to lead Schiller (could he sincerely realize the effects of his own doctrine) to the absurd consequence of being unable to believe genuinely in another man’s headache, even were the headache there. He can only ‘postulate36’ it for the sake of the working value of the postulate to himself. The postulate guides certain of his acts and leads to advantageous37 consequences; but the moment he understands fully38 that the postulate is true ONLY (!) in this sense, it ceases (or should cease) to be true for him that the other man really HAS a headache. All that makes the postulate most precious then evaporates: his interest in his fellow-man ‘becomes a veiled form of self-interest, and his world grows cold, dull, and heartless.’
Such an objection makes a curious muddle39 of the pragmatist’s universe of discourse. Within that universe the pragmatist finds some one with a headache or other feeling, and some one else who postulates40 that feeling. Asking on what condition the postulate is ‘true’ the pragmatist replies that, for the postulator at any rate, it is true just in proportion as to believe in it works in him the fuller sum of satisfactions. What is it that is satisfactory here? Surely to BELIEVE in the postulated41 object, namely, in the really existing feeling of the other man. But how (especially if the postulator were himself a thoroughgoing pragmatist) could it ever be satisfactory to him NOT to believe in that feeling, so long as, in Professor Stout’s words, disbelief ‘made the world seem to him cold, dull, and heartless’? Disbelief would seem, on pragmatist principles, quite out of the question under such conditions, unless the heartlessness of the world were made probable already on other grounds. And since the belief in the headache, true for the subject assumed in the pragmatist’s universe of discourse, is also true for the pragmatist who for his epitemologizing purposes has assumed that entire universe, why is it not true in that universe absolutely? The headache believed in is a reality there, and no extant mind disbelieves it, neither the critic’s mind nor his subject’s! Have our opponents any better brand of truth in this real universe of ours that they can show us? 50
So much for the third misunderstanding, which is but one specification42 of the following still wider one.
FOURTH MISUNDERSTANDING: NO PRAGMATIST CAN BE A REALIST IN HIS EPISTEMOLOGY.
This is supposed to follow from his statement that the truth of our beliefs consists in general in their giving satisfaction. Of course satisfaction per se is a subjective43 condition; so the conclusion is drawn44 that truth falls wholly inside of the subject, who then may manufacture it at his pleasure. True beliefs become thus wayward affections, severed45 from all responsibility to other parts of experience.
It is difficult to excuse such a parody46 of the pragmatist’s opinion, ignoring as it does every element but one of his universe of discourse. The terms of which that universe consists positively47 forbid any non-realistic interpretation48 of the function of knowledge defined there. The pragmatizing epistemologist posits49 there a reality and a mind with ideas. What, now, he asks, can make those ideas true of that reality? Ordinary epistemology contents itself with the vague statement that the ideas must ‘correspond’ or ‘agree’; the pragmatist insists on being more concrete, and asks what such ‘agreement’ may mean in detail. He finds first that the ideas must point to or lead towards THAT reality and no other, and then that the pointings and leadings must yield satisfaction as their result. So far the pragmatist is hardly less abstract than the ordinary slouchy epistemologist; but as he defines himself farther, he grows more concrete. The entire quarrel of the intellectualist with him is over his concreteness, intellectualism contending that the vaguer and more abstract account is here the more profound. The concrete pointing and leading are conceived by the pragmatist to be the work of other portions of the same universe to which the reality and the mind belong, intermediary verifying bits of experience with which the mind at one end, and the reality at the other, are joined. The ‘satisfaction,’ in turn, is no abstract satisfaction ueberhaupt, felt by an unspecified being, but is assumed to consist of such satisfactions (in the plural50) as concretely existing men actually do find in their beliefs. As we humans are constituted in point of fact, we find that to believe in other men’s minds, in independent physical realities, in past events, in eternal logical relations, is satisfactory. We find hope satisfactory. We often find it satisfactory to cease to doubt. Above all we find CONSISTENCY51 satisfactory, consistency between the present idea and the entire rest of our mental equipment, including the whole order of our sensations, and that of our intuitions of likeness52 and difference, and our whole stock of previously53 acquired truths.
The pragmatist, being himself a man, and imagining in general no contrary lines of truer belief than ours about the ‘reality’ which he has laid at the base of his epistemological discussion, is willing to treat our satisfactions as possibly really true guides to it, not as guides true solely54 for US. It would seem here to be the duty of his critics to show with some explicitness55 why, being our subjective feelings, these satisfactions can not yield ‘objective’ truth. The beliefs which they accompany ‘posit’ the assumed reality, ‘correspond’ and ‘agree’ with it, and ‘fit’ it in perfectly56 definite and assignable ways, through the sequent trains of thought and action which form their verification, so merely to insist on using these words abstractly instead of concretely is no way of driving the pragmatist from the field — his more concrete account virtually includes his critic’s. If our critics have any definite idea of a truth more objectively grounded than the kind we propose, why do they not show it more articulately? As they stand, they remind one of Hegel’s man who wanted ‘fruit,’ but rejected cherries, pears, and grapes, because they were not fruit in the abstract. We offer them the full quart-pot, and they cry for the empty quart-capacity.
But here I think I hear some critic retort as follows: ‘If satisfactions are all that is needed to make truth, how about the notorious fact that errors are so often satisfactory? And how about the equally notorious fact that certain true beliefs may cause the bitterest dissatisfaction? Isn’t it clear that not the satisfaction which it gives, but the relation of the belief TO THE REALITY is all that makes it true? Suppose there were no such reality, and that the satisfactions yet remained: would they not then effectively work falsehood? Can they consequently be treated distinctively58 as the truth-builders? It is the INHERENT RELATION TO REALITY of a belief that gives us that specific TRUTH-satisfaction, compared with which all other satisfactions are the hollowest humbug59. The satisfaction of KNOWING TRULY is thus the only one which the pragmatist ought to have considered. As a PSYCHOLOGICAL SENTIMENT, the anti-pragmatist gladly concedes it to him, but then only as a concomitant of truth, not as a constituent60. What CONSTITUTES truth is not the sentiment, but the purely logical or objective function of rightly cognizing the reality, and the pragmatist’s failure to reduce this function to lower values is patent.’
Such anti-pragmatism as this seems to me a tissue of confusion. To begin with, when the pragmatist says ‘indispensable,’ it confounds this with ‘sufficient.’ The pragmatist calls satisfactions indispensable for truth-building, but I have everywhere called them insufficient61 unless reality be also incidentally led to. If the reality assumed were cancelled from the pragmatist’s universe of discourse, he would straightway give the name of falsehoods to the beliefs remaining, in spite of all their satisfactoriness. For him, as for his critic, there can be no truth if there is nothing to be true about. Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive62 lustre63. This is why as a pragmatist I have so carefully posited64 ‘reality’ AB INITIO, and why, throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemological realist. 51
The anti-pragmatist is guilty of the further confusion of imagining that, in undertaking65 to give him an account of what truth formally means, we are assuming at the same time to provide a warrant for it, trying to define the occasions when he can be sure of materially possessing it. Our making it hinge on a reality so ‘independent’ that when it comes, truth comes, and when it goes, truth goes with it, disappoints this naive66 expectation, so he deems our description unsatisfactory. I suspect that under this confusion lies the still deeper one of not discriminating67 sufficiently68 between the two notions, truth and reality. Realities are not TRUE, they ARE; and beliefs are true OF them. But I suspect that in the anti-pragmatist mind the two notions sometimes swap69 their attributes. The reality itself, I fear, is treated as if ‘true’ and conversely. Whoso tells us of the one, it is then supposed, must also be telling us of the other; and a true idea must in a manner BE, or at least YIELD without extraneous70 aid, the reality it cognitively71 is possessed72 of.
To this absolute-idealistic demand pragmatism simply opposes its non possumus. If there is to be truth, it says, both realities and beliefs about them must conspire73 to make it; but whether there ever is such a thing, or how anyone can be sure that his own beliefs possess it, it never pretends to determine. That truth-satisfaction par14 excellence74 which may tinge75 a belief unsatisfactory in other ways, it easily explains as the feeling of consistency with the stock of previous truths, or supposed truths, of which one’s whole past experience may have left one in possession.
But are not all pragmatists sure that their own belief is right? their enemies will ask at this point; and this leads me to the
FIFTH MISUNDERSTANDING: WHAT PRAGMATISTS SAY IS INCONSISTENT WITH THEIR SAYING SO.
A correspondent puts this objection as follows: ‘When you say to your audience, “pragmatism is the truth concerning truth,” the first truth is different from the second. About the first you and they are not to be at odds76; you are not giving them liberty to take or leave it according as it works satisfactorily or not for their private uses. Yet the second truth, which ought to describe and include the first, affirms this liberty. Thus the INTENT of your utterance77 seems to contradict the CONTENT of it.’
General scepticism has always received this same classic refutation. ‘You have to dogmatize,’ the rationalists say to the sceptics,’ whenever you express the sceptical position; so your lives keep contradicting your thesis.’ One would suppose that the impotence of so hoary78 an argument to abate79 in the slightest degree the amount of general scepticism in the world might have led some rationalists themselves to doubt whether these instantaneous logical refutations are such fatal ways, after all, of killing80 off live mental attitudes. General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor81 of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic32 than yon can kill off obstinacy82 or practical joking. This is why it is so irritating. Your consistent sceptic never puts his scepticism into a formal proposition — he simply chooses it as a habit. He provokingly hangs back when he might so easily join us in saying yes, but he is not illogical or stupid — on the contrary, he often impresses us by his intellectual superiority. This is the REAL scepticism that rationalists have to meet, and their logic does not even touch it.
No more can logic kill the pragmatist’s behavior: his act of utterance, so far from contradicting, accurately83 exemplifies the matter which he utters. What is the matter which he utters? In part, it is this, that truth, concretely considered, is an attribute of our beliefs, and that these are attitudes that follow satisfactions. The ideas around which the satisfactions cluster are primarily only hypotheses that challenge or summon a belief to come and take its stand upon them. The pragmatist’s idea of truth is just such a challenge. He finds it ultra-satisfactory to accept it, and takes his own stand accordingly. But, being gregarious84 as they are, men seek to spread their beliefs, to awaken85 imitation, to infect others. Why should not YOU also find the same belief satisfactory? thinks the pragmatist, and forthwith endeavors to convert you. You and he will then believe similarly; you will hold up your subject-end of a truth, which will be a truth objective and irreversible if the reality holds up the object-end by being itself present simultaneously87. What there is of self-contradiction in all this I confess I cannot discover. The pragmatist’s conduct in his own case seems to me on the contrary admirably to illustrate88 his universal formula; and of all epistemologists, he is perhaps the only one who is irreproachably89 self-consistent.
SIXTH MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM EXPLAINS NOT WHAT TRUTH IS, BUT ONLY HOW IT IS ARRIVED AT.
In point of fact it tells us both, tells us what it is incidentally to telling us how it is arrived at — for what IS arrived at except just what the truth is? If I tell you how to get to the railroad station, don’t I implicitly90 introduce you to the WHAT, to the being and nature of that edifice? It is quite true that the abstract WORD ‘how’ hasn’t the same meaning as the abstract WORD ‘what,’ but in this universe of concrete facts you cannot keep hows and whats asunder91. The reasons why I find it satisfactory to believe that any idea is true, the HOW of my arriving at that belief, may be among the very reasons why the idea IS true in reality. If not, I summon the anti-pragmatist to explain the impossibility articulately.
His trouble seems to me mainly to arise from his fixed92 inability to understand how a concrete statement can possibly mean as much, or be as valuable, as an abstract one. I said above that the main quarrel between us and our critics was that of concreteness VERSUS93 abstractness. This is the place to develop that point farther.
In the present question, the links of experience sequent upon an idea, which mediate27 between it and a reality, form and for the pragmatist indeed ARE, the CONCRETE relation of truth that may obtain between the idea and that reality. They, he says, are all that we mean when we speak of the idea ‘pointing’ to the reality, ‘fitting’ it, ‘corresponding’ with it, or ‘agreeing’ with it — they or other similar mediating94 trains of verification. Such mediating events make the idea ‘true.’ The idea itself, if it exists at all, is also a concrete event: so pragmatism insists that truth in the singular is only a collective name for truths in the plural, these consisting always of series of definite events; and that what intellectualism calls the truth, the inherent truth, of any one such series is only the abstract name for its truthfulness95 in act, for the fact that the ideas there do lead to the supposed reality in a way that we consider satisfactory.
The pragmatist himself has no objection to abstractions. Elliptically, and ‘for short,’ he relies on them as much as any one, ending upon innumerable occasions that their comparative emptiness makes of them useful substitutes for the overfulness of the facts he meets, with. But he never ascribes to them a higher grade of reality. The full reality of a truth for him is always some process of verification, in which the abstract property of connecting ideas with objects truly is workingly embodied96. Meanwhile it is endlessly serviceable to be able to talk of properties abstractly and apart from their working, to find them the same in innumerable cases, to take them ‘out of time,’ and to treat of their relations to other similar abstractions. We thus form whole universes of platonic97 ideas ante rem, universes in posse, tho none of them exists effectively except in rebus98. Countless99 relations obtain there which nobody experiences as obtaining — as, in the eternal universe of musical relations, for example, the notes of Aennchen von Tharau were a lovely melody long ere mortal ears ever heard them. Even so the music of the future sleeps now, to be awakened100 hereafter. Or, if we take the world of geometrical relations, the thousandth decimal of ‘pi’ sleeps there, tho no one may ever try to compute101 it. Or, if we take the universe of ‘fitting,’ countless coats ‘fit’ backs, and countless boots ‘fit’ feet, on which they are not practically FITTED; countless stones ‘fit’ gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions ‘fit’ realities, and countless truths are valid102, tho no thinker ever thinks them.
For the anti-pragmatist these prior timeless relations are the presupposition of the concrete ones, and possess the profounder dignity and value. The actual workings of our ideas in verification-processes are as naught103 in comparison with the ‘obtainings’ of this discarnate truth within them.
For the pragmatist, on the contrary — all discarnate truth is static, impotent, and relatively104 spectral105, full truth being the truth that energizes106 and does battle. Can any one suppose that the sleeping quality of truth would ever have been abstracted or have received a name, if truths had remained forever in that storage-vault of essential timeless ‘agreements’ and had never been embodied in any panting struggle of men’s live ideas for verification? Surely no more than the abstract property of ‘fitting’ would have received a name, if in our world there had been no backs or feet or gaps in walls to be actually fitted. EXISTENTIAL truth is incidental to the actual competition of opinions. ESSENTIAL truth, the truth of the intellectualists, the truth with no one thinking it, is like the coat that fits tho no one has ever tried it on, like the music that no ear has listened to. It is less real, not more real, than the verified article; and to attribute a superior degree of glory to it seems little more than a piece of perverse107 abstraction-worship. As well might a pencil insist that the outline is the essential thing in all pictorial108 representation, and chide109 the paint-brush and the camera for omitting it, forgetting that THEIR pictures not only contain the whole outline, but a hundred other things in addition. Pragmatist truth contains the whole of intellectualist truth and a hundred other things in addition. Intellectualist truth is then only pragmatist truth in posse. That on innumerable occasions men do substitute truth in posse or verifiability, for verification or truth in act, is a fact to which no one attributes more importance than the pragmatist: he emphasizes the practical utility of such a habit. But he does not on that account consider truth in posse — truth not alive enough ever to have been asserted or questioned or contradicted, to be the metaphysically prior thing, to which truths in act are tributary110 and subsidiary. When intellectualists do this, pragmatism charges them with inverting111 the real relation. Truth in posse MEANS only truths in act; and he insists that these latter take precedence in the order of logic as well as in that of being.
SEVENTH MINUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM IGNORES THE THEORETICAL INTEREST.
This would seem to be an absolutely wanton slander112, were not a certain excuse to be found in the linguistic113 affinities114 of the word ‘pragmatism,’ and in certain offhand115 habits of speech of ours which assumed too great a generosity116 on our reader’s part. When we spoke5 of the meaning of ideas consisting “in their ‘practical’ consequences”, or of the ‘practical’ differences which our beliefs make to us; when we said that the truth of a belief consists in its ‘working’ value, etc.; our language evidently was too careless, for by ‘practical’ we were almost unanimously held to mean OPPOSED to theoretical or genuinely cognitive, and the consequence was punctually drawn that a truth in our eyes could have no relation to any independent reality, or to any other truth, or to anything whatever but the acts which we might ground on it or the satisfactions they might bring. The mere57 existence of the idea, all by itself, if only its results were satisfactory, would give full truth to it, it was charged, in our absurd pragmatist epistemology. The solemn attribution of this rubbish to us was also encouraged by two other circumstances. First, ideas ARE practically useful in the narrow sense, false ideas sometimes, but most often ideas which we can verify by the sum total of all their leadings, and the reality of whose objects may thus be considered established beyond doubt. That these ideas should be true in advance of and apart from their utility, that, in other words, their objects should be really there, is the very condition of their having that kind of utility — the objects they connect us with are so important that the ideas which serve as the objects’ substitutes grow important also. This manner of their practical working was the first thing that made truths good in the eyes of primitive117 men; and buried among all the other good workings by which true beliefs are characterized, this kind of subsequential utility remains118.
The second misleading circumstance was the emphasis laid by Schiller and Dewey on the fact that, unless a truth be relevant to the mind’s momentary119 predicament, unless it be germane120 to the ‘practical’ situation — meaning by this the quite particular perplexity — it is no good to urge it. It doesn’t meet our interests any better than a falsehood would under the same circumstances. But why our predicaments and perplexities might not be theoretical here as well as narrowly practical, I wish that our critics would explain. They simply assume that no pragmatist CAN admit a genuinely theoretic interest. Having used the phrase ‘cash-value’ of an idea, I am implored121 by one correspondent to alter it, ‘for every one thinks you mean only pecuniary122 profit and loss.’ Having said that the true is ‘the expedient123 in our thinking,’ I am rebuked124 in this wise by another learned correspondent:
‘The word expedient has no other meaning than that of self-interest. The pursuit of this has ended by landing a number of officers of national banks in penitentiaries125. A philosophy that leads to such results must be unsound.’
But the word ‘practical’ is so habitually126 loosely used that more indulgence might have been expected. When one says that a sick man has now practically recovered, or that an enterprise has practically failed, one usually means I just the opposite of practically in the literal sense. One means that, altho untrue in strict practice, what one says is true in theory, true virtually, certain to be true. Again, by the practical one often means the distinctively concrete, the individual, particular, and effective, as opposed to the abstract, general, and inert127. To speak for myself, whenever I have emphasized the practical nature of truth, this is mainly what has been in my mind. ‘Pragmata’ are things in their plurality; and in that early California address, when I described pragmatism as holding that the meaning of any proposition can always be brought down to some particular consequence in our future practical experience, whether passive or active, expressly added these qualifying words: the point lying rather in the fact that the experience must be particular than in the fact that it must be active — by ‘active’ meaning here ‘practical’ in the narrow literal sense. 52 But particular consequences can perfectly well be of a theoretic nature. Every remote fact which we infer from an idea is a particular theoretic consequence which our mind practically works towards. The loss of every old opinion of ours which we see that we shall have to give up if a new opinion be true, is a particular theoretic as well as a particular practical consequence. After man’s interest in breathing freely, the greatest of all his interests (because it never fluctuates or remits128, as most of his physical interests do), is his interest in consistency, in feeling that what he now thinks goes with what he thinks on other occasions. We tirelessly compare truth with truth for this sole purpose. Is the present candidate for belief perhaps contradicted by principle number one? Is it compatible with fact number two? and so forth86. The particular operations here are the purely logical ones of analysis, deduction129, comparison, etc.; and altho general terms may be used ad libitum, the satisfactory practical working of the candidate — idea consists in the consciousness yielded by each successive theoretic consequence in particular. It is therefore simply idiotic130 to repeat that pragmatism takes no account of purely theoretic interests. All it insists on is that verity131 in act means VERIFICATIONS, and that these are always particulars. Even in exclusively theoretic matters, it insists that vagueness and generality serve to verify nothing.
EIGHTH MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM IS SHUT UP TO SOLIPSISM.
I have already said something about this misconception under the third and fourth heads, above, but a little more may be helpful. The objection is apt to clothe itself in words like these: ‘You make truth to consist in every value except the cognitive value proper; you always leave your knower at many removes (or, at the uttermost, at one remove) from his real object; the best you do is to let his ideas carry him towards it; it remains forever outside of him,’ etc.
I think that the leaven132 working here is the rooted intellectualist persuasion133 that, to know a reality, an idea must in some inscrutable fashion possess or be it. 53 For pragmatism this kind of coalescence134 is inessential. As a rule our cognitions are only processes of mind off their balance and in motion towards real termini; and the reality of the termini, believed in by the states of mind in question, can be guaranteed only by some wider knower 54. But if there is no reason extant in the universe why they should be doubted, the beliefs are true in the only sense in which anything can be true anyhow: they are practically and concretely true, namely. True in the mystical mongrel sense of an Identitatsphilosophie they need not be; nor is there any intelligible135 reason why they ever need be true otherwise than verifiably and practically. It is reality’s part to possess its own existence; it is thought’s part to get into ‘touch’ with it by innumerable paths of verification.
I fear that the ‘humanistic’ developments of pragmatism may cause a certain difficulty here. We get at one truth only through the rest of truth; and the reality, everlastingly136 postulated as that which all our truth must keep in touch with, may never be given to us save in the form of truth other than that which we are now testing. But since Dr. Schiller has shown that all our truths, even the most elemental, are affected137 by race-inheritance with a human coefficient, reality per se thus may appear only as a sort of limit; it may be held to shrivel to the mere PLACE for an object, and what is known may be held to be only matter of our psyche138 that we fill the place with. It must be confessed that pragmatism, worked in this humanistic way, is COMPATIBLE with solipsism. It joins friendly hands with the agnostic part of kantism, with contemporary agnosticism, and with idealism generally. But worked thus, it is a metaphysical theory about the matter of reality, and flies far beyond pragmatism’s own modest analysis of the nature of the knowing function, which analysis may just as harmoniously139 be combined with less humanistic accounts of reality. One of pragmatism’s merits is that it is so purely epistemological. It must assume realities; but it prejudges nothing as to their constitution, and the most diverse metaphysics can use it as their foundation. It certainly has no special affinity140 with solipsism.
As I look back over what I have written, much of it gives me a queer impression, as if the obvious were set forth so condescendingly that readers might well laugh at my pomposity141. It may be, however, that concreteness as radical142 as ours is not so obvious. The whole originality of pragmatism, the whole point in it, is its use of the concrete way of seeing. It begins with concreteness, and returns and ends with it. Dr. Schiller, with his two ‘practical’ aspects of truth, (1) relevancy to situation, and (2) subsequential utility, is only filling the cup of concreteness to the brim for us. Once seize that cup, and you cannot misunderstand pragmatism. It seems as if the power of imagining the world concretely MIGHT have been common enough to let our readers apprehend us better, as if they might have read between our lines, and, in spite of all our infelicities of expression, guessed a little more correctly what our thought was. But alas143! this was not on fate’s programme, so we can only think, with the German ditty:—
“Es waer’ zu schoen gewesen, Es hat nicht sollen sein.”
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tempted
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converse
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spoke
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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7
unfamiliarity
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8
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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9
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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10
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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12
implicated
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| adj.密切关联的；牵涉其中的 | |
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13
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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14
par
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| n.标准，票面价值，平均数量；adj.票面的，平常的，标准的 | |
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15
doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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16
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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17
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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18
judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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19
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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20
speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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21
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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22
synthetic
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| adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品 | |
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23
broached
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| v.谈起( broach的过去式和过去分词 )；打开并开始用；用凿子扩大（或修光）；（在桶上）钻孔取液体 | |
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24
apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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25
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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26
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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27
mediate
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| vi.调解，斡旋；vt.经调解解决；经斡旋促成 | |
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28
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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29
complemental
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| 补足的，补充的 | |
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30
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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31
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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32
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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33
edifice
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| n.宏伟的建筑物(如宫殿，教室) | |
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34
motive
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|
| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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36
postulate
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| n.假定，基本条件；vt.要求，假定 | |
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37
advantageous
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| adj.有利的；有帮助的 | |
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38
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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39
muddle
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|
| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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40
postulates
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| v.假定，假设( postulate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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41
postulated
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| v.假定，假设( postulate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
specification
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| n.详述；[常pl.]规格，说明书，规范 | |
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43
subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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44
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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45
severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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46
parody
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|
| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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47
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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48
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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49
posits
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| v.假定，设想，假设( posit的第三人称单数 ) | |
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50
plural
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|
| n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的 | |
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51
consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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52
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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53
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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54
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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55
explicitness
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56
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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57
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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58
distinctively
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| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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59
humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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60
constituent
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| n.选民；成分，组分；adj.组成的，构成的 | |
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61
insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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62
cognitive
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| adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的 | |
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63
lustre
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| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
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64
posited
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|
| v.假定，设想，假设( posit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65
undertaking
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|
| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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66
naive
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|
| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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67
discriminating
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| a.有辨别能力的 | |
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68
sufficiently
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|
| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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69
swap
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|
| n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易 | |
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70
extraneous
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|
| adj.体外的；外来的；外部的 | |
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71
cognitively
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72
possessed
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|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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73
conspire
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|
| v.密谋，（事件等）巧合，共同导致 | |
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74
excellence
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|
| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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75
tinge
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|
| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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76
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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77
utterance
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|
| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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78
hoary
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|
| adj.古老的；鬓发斑白的 | |
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79
abate
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|
| vi.(风势，疼痛等)减弱，减轻，减退 | |
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80
killing
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|
| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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81
torpor
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|
| n.迟钝；麻木；（动物的）冬眠 | |
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82
obstinacy
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|
| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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83
accurately
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|
| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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84
gregarious
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|
| adj.群居的，喜好群居的 | |
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85
awaken
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|
| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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86
forth
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|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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87
simultaneously
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|
| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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88
illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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89
irreproachably
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|
| adv.不可非难地，无过失地 | |
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90
implicitly
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|
| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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91
asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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92
fixed
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|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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93
versus
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| prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下 | |
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94
mediating
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|
| 调停，调解，斡旋( mediate的现在分词 )； 居间促成； 影响…的发生； 使…可能发生 | |
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95
truthfulness
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|
| n. 符合实际 | |
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96
embodied
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|
| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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97
platonic
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|
| adj.精神的；柏拉图（哲学）的 | |
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98
rebus
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| n.谜,画谜 | |
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99
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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100
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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101
compute
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| v./n.计算，估计 | |
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102
valid
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|
| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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103
naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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104
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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105
spectral
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|
| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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106
energizes
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| v.给予…精力，能量( energize的第三人称单数 )；使通电 | |
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107
perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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108
pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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109
chide
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| v.叱责；谴责 | |
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110
tributary
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| n.支流；纳贡国；adj.附庸的；辅助的；支流的 | |
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111
inverting
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| v.使倒置，使反转( invert的现在分词 ) | |
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112
slander
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| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
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113
linguistic
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| adj.语言的，语言学的 | |
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114
affinities
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| n.密切关系( affinity的名词复数 )；亲近；（生性）喜爱；类同 | |
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115
offhand
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| adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的 | |
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116
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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117
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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118
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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119
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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120
germane
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| adj.关系密切的，恰当的 | |
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121
implored
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| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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122
pecuniary
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| adj.金钱的；金钱上的 | |
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123
expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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124
rebuked
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| 责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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125
penitentiaries
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| n.监狱( penitentiary的名词复数 ) | |
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126
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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127
inert
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| adj.无活动能力的，惰性的；迟钝的 | |
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128
remits
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| n.职权范围，控制范围，影响范围( remit的名词复数 )v.免除（债务），宽恕( remit的第三人称单数 )；使某事缓和；寄回，传送 | |
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129
deduction
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| n.减除，扣除，减除额；推论，推理，演绎 | |
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130
idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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131
verity
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| n.真实性 | |
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132
leaven
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| v.使发酵；n.酵母；影响 | |
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133
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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134
coalescence
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| n.合并，联合 | |
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135
intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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136
everlastingly
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| 永久地，持久地 | |
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137
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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138
psyche
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| n.精神；灵魂 | |
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139
harmoniously
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| 和谐地，调和地 | |
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140
affinity
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| n.亲和力，密切关系 | |
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141
pomposity
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| n.浮华；虚夸；炫耀；自负 | |
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142
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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