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My disbelief in the Absolute means then disbelief in those other supernumerary features, for I fully believe in the legitimacy of taking moral holidays. You see by this what I meant when I called pragmatism a mediator and reconciler and said, borrowing the word from Papini, that he unstiffens our theories.
No one can deny that such a role would add both to our dignity and to our responsibility as thinkers. To some of us it proves a most inspiring notion. Signer Papini, the leader of italian pragmatism, grows fairly dithyrambic over the view that it opens, of man's divinely-creative functions.
But as it was necessary to get rid of every kind of creation, "the unemployed engineer turned metaphysician," as Papini called him, invented the theory of the instability of the homogeneous, which is more ... what shall I say? more mystical, and even more mythological if you like, than the creative action of God.
If such an hypothesis were legitimate, total oneness would appear at the end of things rather than at their origin. After discussing the unity of the universe in this pragmatic way, you ought to see why I said in my second lecture, borrowing the word from my friend G. Papini, that pragmatism tends to UNSTIFFEN all our theories.
But, at the outset, at least, it stands for no particular results. It has no dogmas, and no doctrines save its method. As the young Italian pragmatist Papini has well said, it lies in the midst of our theories, like a corridor in a hotel. Innumerable chambers open out of it.
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