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James, William, 1842-1910

"Pragmatism"

They
must back the world we find ourselves born into by "another and a
better" world in which the eaches form an All and the All a One that
logically presupposes, co-implicates, and secures each EACH without
exception.
Must we as pragmatists be radically tough-minded? or can we treat
the absolute edition of the world as a legitimate hypothesis? It is
certainly legitimate, for it is thinkable, whether we take it in its
abstract or in its concrete shape.
By taking it abstractly I mean placing it behind our finite life as
we place the word 'winter' behind to-night's cold weather. 'Winter'
is only the name for a certain number of days which we find
generally characterized by cold weather, but it guarantees nothing
in that line, for our thermometer to-morrow may soar into the 70's.
Nevertheless the word is a useful one to plunge forward with into
the stream of our experience. It cuts off certain probabilities and
sets up others: you can put away your straw-hats; you can unpack
your arctics. It is a summary of things to look for. It names a part
of nature's habits, and gets you ready for their continuation. It is
a definite instrument abstracted from experience, a conceptual
reality that you must take account of, and which reflects you
totally back into sensible realities.


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