Accordingly, most men instinctively, and positivists and
scientists deliberately, do turn their backs on philosophical
disputes from which nothing in the line of definite future
consequences can be seen to follow. The verbal and empty character
of philosophy is surely a reproach with which we are, but too
familiar. If pragmatism be true, it is a perfectly sound reproach
unless the theories under fire can be shown to have alternative
practical outcomes, however delicate and distant these may be. The
common man and the scientist say they discover no such outcomes, and
if the metaphysician can discern none either, the others certainly
are in the right of it, as against him. His science is then but
pompous trifling; and the endowment of a professorship for such a
being would be silly.
Accordingly, in every genuine metaphysical debate some practical
issue, however conjectural and remote, is involved. To realize this,
revert with me to our question, and place yourselves this time in
the world we live in, in the world that HAS a future, that is yet
uncompleted whilst we speak. In this unfinished world the
alternative of 'materialism or theism?' is intensely practical; and
it is worth while for us to spend some minutes of our hour in seeing
that it is so.
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