CHAPTER VIII
THOUGHT AND LIFE
The mission of Pragmatism is to bring Philosophy into relation to real Life and Action. So far from regarding Thought as a self-centred, self-enclosed activity, Pragmatism insists upon replacing it in its context among the other functions of life, and in measuring its value by its effect upon them. So far, again, from regarding the abstract intellect as a vast Juggernaut machine which absorbs and crushes the individual thinker, it treats him individually as having his own constitution, raison d'être, and intrinsic interest, and credits him with a power to make new truths and to enrich the resources of thought. Each thinker has before him an individual situation, a system of aims and values, a stock of knowledge and of means from which he must select what is relevant to his ends, and so cannot escape in any judgment from the responsibilities of a personal decision.
Thus, for Pragmatism every thought is an act with a person behind it, who is responsible for launching it into the world of fact. The result of this change of attitude is immediate. In the first place, as has been shown in Chapter V., by bringing thought face to face with the whole experience upon which it claims to work, we are enabled to find a tangible rule for evaluating its assertions and distinguishing truth from error. And, secondly, by recognizing that the mind is not an apparatus which functions in a vacuum, but is a constituent of an individual organism, we see that thinking always depends upon a purpose; for it is the purpose of an inquiry which gives reflection its cue, and determines its scope and (most essential of all) its meaning.
We are thus led from the narrower logical question, 'What constitutes the "truth" of a statement?' to a wider outlook, from which we can survey the place of knowing in human life at large. This may be called the transition from Pragmatism to Humanism. This last word was introduced into philosophic terminology by Dr. Schiller in order to describe his general philosophical position as distinct from the original question of the theory of knowledge, which had been treated by James under the name of Pragmatism.
To the Humanist the best definition of life is one which displays it as throughout purposive, as a rational pursuit of ends. This raises the question of the validity of valuations. Valuation is a widespread human practice. In their most general aspect we classify all objects as 'good' and 'bad,' according as they are ends to be pursued or avoided, or means which further or frustrate the pursuit of ends. This general antithesis between the 'good' and the 'bad' has numerous specific forms, applicable to different departments of human activity. Thus, in conduct, actions are judged 'good' or 'evil' and 'right' or 'wrong'; in thinking, ideas are 'true' or 'false,' and 'relevant' or 'irrelevant'; for art, objects are 'beautiful' or 'ugly,' and so forth, for the modes of valuation in life are innumerable. Any one of these adjectives either denotes value or censures lack of worth, and each gets its meaning by reference to the specific purpose, moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, it appeals to. The summum bonum, or supreme good, will then be the ideal of the harmonious satisfaction of all purposes.
What, then, from the standpoint of Humanism, is the function of 'truth-values' in our life? They indicate a relation to the cognitive end. What is this end? Surely not self-sufficing? A truth that is merely true in itself has no interest for human life, and no human mind has an interest in discovering and affirming it. Truth, therefore, cannot stand aloof from life. It must somehow subserve our vital purposes. But how shall it do this? Only by becoming applicable to the reality we have to live with, by becoming useful for the changes we desire to effect in it. Whoever will not admit this, and renders truth inapplicable, does in fact render it unmeaning.
The fact that thought essentially refers to a 'reality' external to it in no way diminishes its purposive character. Whether the mind is idealizing an aspect of reality (as in mathematics) or abstracting, classifying, and predicting (as in science), it is always the fact that a particular kind of reality is needed for some serious or trivial purpose which guides the operations of the thinker. A mind which craved to embrace all or 'any' reality need not think; it would do better to float without discrimination upon the flux of change. This procedure would be so absolutely antithetical to human knowing that it seems a wanton paradox on that account to treat it as the final goal of knowledge.
Actually, of course, the philosophers who claim to be devoted to pure theory follow no such course. They deliberately choose their ideal of what is worth knowing—e.g., 'God,' or 'the unity of all things,' or 'the laws of the universe'—and, disregarding all other existences, they pursue the kind of reality they desire because of its religious or moral or aesthetic value. For there could be no greater mistake than to suppose that the common antithesis between 'reality' and the 'un-real' usually means the same thing as the distinction between what 'exists' and what is absolutely non-existent. On the contrary, it is usually a judgment of value. We may say that the 'haunted' house is real and the 'ghost' is not; but as an hallucination the ghost is real enough. Utopia is unreal for the politician, but exists as an ideal for the theorist. The Platonist treats our physical world of sight and touch, which we think the most real of all, as a mere illusion compared to the 'Ideas' of his metaphysical world. The thinker who declares he wants to know all about 'reality' does not mean that he wishes to investigate everything which in any sense exists, but that he wishes to know what he considers best worth knowing—and this, of course, implies a personal valuation, a purged and expurgated extract, which will not offend his taste. So all philosophies are, in fact, selective. Even the more conscientious rationalists show very little anxiety to include in their intellectual scheme a knowledge of their opponents' opinions—indeed, they seem to think that the existence of such facts may be made dependent wholly on their will to recognize them. An exposition of Pragmatism is for them a 'reality' which does not count: it is not worth knowing about. And this is only natural, after all. For 'reality,' the object of the mind's search, is always a selection, conceived after the likeness of the heart's desire, the product of a human purpose.