The case of Herbert Spencer's system is much
to the point here. Rationalists feel his fearful array of
insufficiencies. His dry schoolmaster temperament, the hurdy-gurdy
monotony of him, his preference for cheap makeshifts in argument,
his lack of education even in mechanical principles, and in general
the vagueness of all his fundamental ideas, his whole system wooden,
as if knocked together out of cracked hemlock boards--and yet the
half of England wants to bury him in Westminster Abbey.
Why? Why does Spencer call out so much reverence in spite of his
weakness in rationalistic eyes? Why should so many educated men who
feel that weakness, you and I perhaps, wish to see him in the Abbey
notwithstanding?
Simply because we feel his heart to be IN THE RIGHT PLACE
philosophically. His principles may be all skin and bone, but at any
rate his books try to mould themselves upon the particular shape of
this, particular world's carcase. The noise of facts resounds
through all his chapters, the citations of fact never cease, he
emphasizes facts, turns his face towards their quarter; and that is
enough. It means the right kind of thing for the empiricist mind.
The pragmatistic philosophy of which I hope to begin talking in my
next lecture preserves as cordial a relation with facts, and, unlike
Spencer's philosophy, it neither begins nor ends by turning positive
religious constructions out of doors--it treats them cordially as
well.
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