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Updated: May 19, 2025
James certainly neglected many of the deeper metaphysical aspects of Bergson's thought, which did not harmonize with his own, and are even in direct contradiction. In addition to this Bergson is no pragmatist, for him "utility," so far from being a test of truth, is rather the reverse, a synonym for error. Nevertheless, William James hailed Bergson as an ally very enthusiastically.
It means a real change of heart, a break with absolutistic hopes, when one takes up this inductive view of the conditions of belief. As I understand the pragmatist way of seeing things, it owes its being to the break-down which the last fifty years have brought about in the older notions of scientific truth.
I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities precisely is a belief in objective truth. The pragmatist tells a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute.
Professor J. B. Pratt's paper in the Journal of Philosophy for June 6, 1907, is so brilliantly written that its misconception of the pragmatist position seems doubly to call for a reply.
The existence of absolute certainty is denied, and the demand for it, in a world which contains only the practical sort, merely plays into the hands of scepticism. The uncertainty of all our verificatory processes, however, is not the creation of the pragmatist, nor is he a god to abolish it.
He asserts that, for a pragmatist, truth cannot be a relation between an idea and a reality outside and transcendent of the idea, but must lie 'altogether within experience, where it will need 'no reference to anything else to justify it' no reference to the object, apparently. The pragmatist must 'reduce everything to psychology, aye, and to the psychology of the immediate moment.
Of course, definitions are free to every one; but I have myself never meant by the pragmatic view of truth anything different from what I now describe; and inasmuch as my use of the term came earlier than my friend's, I think it ought to have the right of way. But I suspect that Professor Pratt's contention is not solely as to what one must think in order to be called a pragmatist.
Without it, civilization would be impossible. What we call progress is but society following after and realizing the visions, plans and patterns of the imagination. Now our busy, bustling age is inclined to under-estimate the imagination. Men cavil at castle-building. The pragmatist jeers at reveries.
Thus, once again, we find that an account of truth-claim is being foisted on us in place of a description of truth-testing. The intellectualist, then, being in every case unable to justify the vital distinction commonly made between the true and the false, we return to the pragmatist.
The Barbarian, when he has graduated to be a "pragmatist," struts like a nigger in evening clothes, and believes himself superior to the gift of reason, etc., etc. It would be unfair to offer this passage as an example of Mr. Belize's dominating genius, but it is an excellent example of his domineering temper.
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