,--wherein is such a
definition really instructive? It means less, than nothing, in its
pompous robe of adjectives. Pragmatism alone can read a positive
meaning into it, and for that she turns her back upon the
intellectualist point of view altogether. 'God's in his heaven;
all's right with the world!'--THAT'S the heart of your theology, and
for that you need no rationalist definitions.
Why shouldn't we all of us, rationalists as well as pragmatists,
confess this? Pragmatism, so far from keeping her eyes bent on the
immediate practical foreground, as she is accused of doing, dwells
just as much upon the world's remotest perspectives.
See then how all these ultimate questions turn, as it were, up their
hinges; and from looking backwards upon principles, upon an
erkenntnisstheoretische Ich, a God, a Kausalitaetsprinzip, a Design,
a Free-will, taken in themselves, as something august and exalted
above facts,--see, I say, how pragmatism shifts the emphasis and
looks forward into facts themselves. The really vital question for
us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually
to make of itself? The centre of gravity of philosophy must
therefore alter its place. The earth of things, long thrown into
shadow by the glories of the upper ether, must resume its rights.
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