The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we
are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can
surely be no gentleman. His menial services are needed in the dust
of our human trials, even more than his dignity is needed in the
empyrean.
Now pragmatism, devoted tho she be to facts, has no such
materialistic bias as ordinary empiricism labors under. Moreover,
she has no objection whatever to the realizing of abstractions, so
long as you get about among particulars with their aid and they
actually carry you somewhere. Interested in no conclusions but those
which our minds and our experiences work out together, she has no a
priori prejudices against theology. IF THEOLOGICAL IDEAS PROVE TO
HAVE A VALUE FOR CONCRETE LIFE, THEY WILL BE TRUE, FOR PRAGMATISM,
IN THE SENSE OF BEING GOOD FOR SO MUCH. FOR HOW MUCH MORE THEY ARE
TRUE, WILL DEPEND ENTIRELY ON THEIR RELATIONS TO THE OTHER TRUTHS
THAT ALSO HAVE TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED.
What I said just now about the Absolute of transcendental idealism
is a case in point. First, I called it majestic and said it yielded
religious comfort to a class of minds, and then I accused it of
remoteness and sterility. But so far as it affords such comfort, it
surely is not sterile; it has that amount of value; it performs a
concrete function.
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