We feel both the claims and the
obligations, and we feel them for just those reasons.
But the rationalists who talk of claim and obligation EXPRESSLY SAY
THAT THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR PRACTICAL INTERESTS OR
PERSONAL REASONS. Our reasons for agreeing are psychological facts,
they say, relative to each thinker, and to the accidents of his
life. They are his evidence merely, they are no part of the life of
truth itself. That life transacts itself in a purely logical or
epistemological, as distinguished from a psychological, dimension,
and its claims antedate and exceed all personal motivations
whatsoever. Tho neither man nor God should ever ascertain truth, the
word would still have to be defined as that which OUGHT to be
ascertained and recognized.
There never was a more exquisite example of an idea abstracted from
the concretes of experience and then used to oppose and negate what
it was abstracted from.
Philosophy and common life abound in similar instances. The
'sentimentalist fallacy' is to shed tears over abstract justice and
generosity, beauty, etc., and never to know these qualities when you
meet them in the street, because there the circumstances make them
vulgar. Thus I read in the privately printed biography of an
eminently rationalistic mind: "It was strange that with such
admiration for beauty in the abstract, my brother had no enthusiasm
for fine architecture, for beautiful painting, or for flowers.
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