All these, you see, are ANTI-INTELLECTUALIST tendencies. Against
rationalism as a pretension and a method, pragmatism is fully armed
and militant. But, at the outset, at least, it stands for no
particular results. It has no dogmas, and no doctrines save its
method. As the young Italian pragmatist Papini has well said, it
lies in the midst of our theories, like a corridor in a hotel.
Innumerable chambers open out of it. In one you may find a man
writing an atheistic volume; in the next someone on his knees
praying for faith and strength; in a third a chemist investigating a
body's properties. In a fourth a system of idealistic metaphysics is
being excogitated; in a fifth the impossibility of metaphysics is
being shown. But they all own the corridor, and all must pass
through it if they want a practicable way of getting into or out of
their respective rooms.
No particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of
orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. THE ATTITUDE OF
LOOKING AWAY FROM FIRST THINGS, PRINCIPLES, 'CATEGORIES,' SUPPOSED
NECESSITIES; AND OF LOOKING TOWARDS LAST THINGS, FRUITS,
CONSEQUENCES, FACTS.
So much for the pragmatic method! You may say that I have been
praising it rather than explaining it to you, but I shall presently
explain it abundantly enough by showing how it works on some
familiar problems.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59