"
Such a fine expression of personal faith warms the heart of the
hearer. But how much does it clear his philosophic head? Does the
writer consistently favor the monistic, or the pluralistic,
interpretation of the world's poem? His troubles become atoned for
WHEN THUS SUPPLEMENTED, he says, supplemented, that is, by all the
remedies that THE OTHER PHENOMENA may supply. Obviously here the
writer faces forward into the particulars of experience, which he
interprets in a pluralistic-melioristic way.
But he believes himself to face backward. He speaks of what he calls
the rational UNITY of things, when all the while he really means
their possible empirical UNIFICATION. He supposes at the same time
that the pragmatist, because he criticizes rationalism's abstract
One, is cut off from the consolation of believing in the saving
possibilities of the concrete many. He fails in short to distinguish
between taking the world's perfection as a necessary principle, and
taking it only as a possible terminus ad quem.
I regard the writer of this letter as a genuine pragmatist, but as a
pragmatist sans le savoir. He appears to me as one of that numerous
class of philosophic amateurs whom I spoke of in my first lecture,
as wishing to have all the good things going, without being too
careful as to how they agree or disagree.
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