II
PRAGMATISM AND A THEORY
OF KNOWLEDGE
The question before us is the relation of Pragmatism to a body of knowledge.
(a) One question at issue between the Idealist[15] and the Pragmatist has to do with the way in which each defines knowledge and gauges its ultimate aim. Both say that knowledge is relative, but one school asserts that the human mind slowly and laboriously uncovers or discovers what Goethe calls the “Living garment of Deity,” i.e. the world of nature, and comes into a heritage of scientific truth which increasingly corresponds to the subject of his faith; the other claims that we live in a self-evolving universe in which in the course of long ages a new heaven and a new earth may be created which are not foreseen or implied in present conditions. In other words, the Idealist finds the Divine in human life; he finds in his own small corner of the universe the microcosm and symbol of Infinity: the Pragmatist considers that nothing is which is not a result of human action, and lowers the Divine element to the result of individual human activity. A compromise between the two ideas on new and interesting lines has recently been made by Bergson. The Christian doctrine of Immanence and Transcendence also combines them.
Now the increase of a body of knowledge would seem to depend on the comparison of the successful working out of hypotheses with the discrepancies from theory that from time to time appear. Taken together, proofs and discrepancies point to the evidence of a larger law. This is Hegel’s logic, and the principle, so far as it is here implied, is not denied in modern times, for no one wishes to found a logic on a study of discrepancies as such. Even W. James says, “Whenever you once place yourself at the point of view of any higher synthesis you see exactly how it does, in a fashion, take up opposites into itself.”[16] In fact, without the notion of unity, that of discrepancy could not exist: there must be a background on which the differences appear. The ultimate unity is symbolised in the Idealist doctrine of an Absolute.
The Absolute of Idealistic thought is not, however, now conceived of (as the Pragmatist would have us believe) as an abstract unity, but as one involving a social bond, and hence relations which can be described as personal, if we remember that the Personality of the Absolute transcends our notion of human personality. Such a conception of the term Absolute, a new reading of the theory of the One and the Many, has been led up to by Bradley and Royce by methods of logic, and without any reference to dogma. It has been conveniently expressed by Taylor. The argument is briefly that ultimate Reality must be One, Many, and Personal.
“For our conclusion that mere truth cannot be the same thing as ultimate reality was itself based upon the principle that only harmonious individuality is finally real, and this is the very principle employed by the intellect itself whenever it judges one thought-construction relatively higher or truer than another.”[17]
And again:—
“If we speak of existence as a society, then we must be careful to remember that the individual unity of a society is just as real a fact of experience as the individual unity of the members which compose it, and that when we call the Absolute a society rather than a self, we do not do so with any intention of casting doubt upon its complete spiritual unity as an individual experience.”[18]
The Absolute has been stated in modern thought to be One, Many, Real, and Personal or Social, and these terms of its qualification have been successively arrived at.