Mankind has not sons and eternities to spare for trying out
discredited systems...." [Footnote: Morrison I. Swift, Human
Submission, Part Second, Philadelphia, Liberty Press, 1905, pp. 4-
10.]
Such is the reaction of an empiricist mind upon the rationalist bill
of fare. It is an absolute 'No, I thank you.' "Religion," says Mr.
Swift, "is like a sleep-walker to whom actual things are blank." And
such, tho possibly less tensely charged with feeling, is the verdict
of every seriously inquiring amateur in philosophy to-day who turns
to the philosophy-professors for the wherewithal to satisfy the
fulness of his nature's needs. Empiricist writers give him a
materialism, rationalists give him something religious, but to that
religion "actual things are blank." He becomes thus the judge of us
philosophers. Tender or tough, he finds us wanting. None of us may
treat his verdicts disdainfully, for after all, his is the typically
perfect mind, the mind the sum of whose demands is greatest, the
mind whose criticisms and dissatisfactions are fatal in the long
run.
It is at this point that my own solution begins to appear. I offer
the oddly-named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy
both kinds of demand.
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