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James, William, 1842-1910

"Pragmatism"

Scholasticism still teaches
that the core is 'matter.' Professor Bergson, Heymans, Strong, and
others, believe in the core and bravely try to define it. Messrs.
Dewey and Schiller treat it as a 'limit.' Which is the truer of all
these diverse accounts, or of others comparable with them, unless it
be the one that finally proves the most satisfactory? On the one
hand there will stand reality, on the other an account of it which
proves impossible to better or to alter. If the impossibility prove
permanent, the truth of the account will be absolute. Other content
of truth than this I can find nowhere. If the anti-pragmatists have
any other meaning, let them for heaven's sake reveal it, let them
grant us access to it!
Not BEING reality, but only our belief ABOUT reality, it will
contain human elements, but these will KNOW the non-human element,
in the only sense in which there can be knowledge of anything. Does
the river make its banks, or do the banks make the river? Does a man
walk with his right leg or with his left leg more essentially? Just
as impossible may it be to separate the real from the human factors
in the growth of our cognitive experience.
Let this stand as a first brief indication of the humanistic
position.


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