We cannot therefore methodically join the tough minds in their
rejection of the whole notion of a world beyond our finite
experience. One misunderstanding of pragmatism is to identify it
with positivistic tough-mindedness, to suppose that it scorns every
rationalistic notion as so much jabber and gesticulation, that it
loves intellectual anarchy as such and prefers a sort of wolf-world
absolutely unpent and wild and without a master or a collar to any
philosophic class-room product, whatsoever. I have said so much in
these lectures against the over-tender forms of rationalism, that I
am prepared for some misunderstanding here, but I confess that the
amount of it that I have found in this very audience surprises me,
for I have simultaneously defended rationalistic hypotheses so far
as these re-direct you fruitfully into experience.
For instance I receive this morning this question on a post-card:
"Is a pragmatist necessarily a complete materialist and agnostic?"
One of my oldest friends, who ought to know me better, writes me a
letter that accuses the pragmatism I am recommending, of shutting
out all wider metaphysical views and condemning us to the most
terre-a-terre naturalism. Let me read you some extracts from it.
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