[42] Even such a book—and it is no doubt in its way a genuine and a noteworthy book—as Harold H. Begbie’s Twice-born Men is pointed to by this wing as another instance of the truth of pragmatist principles in the sphere of experimental religion. Schopenhauer, by the way, was inclined to estimate the efficacy of a religion by its power of affecting the will, of converting men so that they were able to overcome the selfish will to live. See my Schopenhauer’s System in its Philosophical Significance.
[43] See, for example, the declaration of James and Schiller (in the prefaces to their books and elsewhere) in respect of their attitudes to the work of men like Renouvier, Poincaré, Milhaud, Wilbois, Le Roy, Blondel, Pradines, the valuable reports of M. Lalande to the Philosophical Review (1906–7–8), the articles of Woodbridge Riley in the Journal of Philosophy (1911) upon the continental critics of Pragmatism, the books of Bourdeau, Hebert, Rey, Tonquedoc, Armand Sabatier, Schinz, Picard, Berthelot, those of Poincaré, Renouvier, Pradines, and the rest, the older books upon nineteenth-century French philosophy by men like Fouillée, Levy-Bruhl, etc. There are also valuable references upon the French pragmatists in Father Walker’s Theories of Knowledge (in the Stoneyhurst Series), and in Professor Inge’s valuable little book upon Faith and its Psychology.
[44] The outstanding representative in France during the entire second half of the nineteenth century of “Neo-Criticism” or “Neo-Kantianism,” a remarkable and comprehensive thinker, to whose influence, for example, James attributed a part of his mental development. His review, the Critique Philosophique, was a worthy (idealist) rival of the more positivistically inclined, and merely psychological, review of Ribot, the Revue Philosophique. French Neo-Kantianism, holding, as Renouvier does, that Kant’s ethics is the keystone of his system, is not in general inclined to the “positivism” or the “scientific” philosophy of some of the German Neo-Kantians. The critical work of Renouvier proposes some very ingenious and systematic rearrangements of Kant’s philosophy of the categories, and his freedom-philosophy must certainly have done a good deal (along with the work of others) to create the atmosphere in which Bergson lives and moves to-day. With Renouvier, Neo-Kantianism merges itself too in the newer philosophy of “Personalism,” and he wrote, indeed, an important book upon this very subject (Le Personnalisme, 1902). In this work, we find a criticism of rationalism that anticipates Pragmatism, the author explicitly contending for a substitution of the principle of “rational belief” instead of the “false principle” of demonstrable or a priori “evidence.” Consciousness, he teaches, is the foundation of existence, and “personality” the first “causal principle” of the world (although admitting “creation” to be beyond our comprehension). He examines critically, too, the notions of the “Absolute” and of the “Unconditioned,” holding that they should not be substantiated into entities. “Belief” is involved in “every act,” he teaches—also another pragmatist doctrine. And like his great predecessor Malebranche, and like our English Berkeley, he teaches that God is our “natural object,” the true “other” of our life. The philosophy of Personalism, the foundations of which are laid in this work, is further developed by Renouvier in a comprehensive work which he published in 1899, in conjunction with M. Prat, on The New Monadology (La Nouvelle Monadologie). This is one of the most complete presentations of a philosophy of “Pluralism” that is at the same time a “Theism”—to be associated, in my opinion, say, with the recent work of Dr. James Ward upon the Realm of Ends, referred to on p. 162.
[45] Philos. Rev. (1906), article by Lalande.
[46] H. Poincaré (talked of in recent scientific circles as one of the greatest mathematicians of history) is (he died about a year ago), so far as our present purpose is concerned, one of the important scientific writers of the day upon the subject of the “logic of hypotheses,” and of the “hypothetical method” in science—the method which the pragmatists are so anxious to apply to philosophy. He seems (see his La Science et l’Hypothèse, as well as the later book, La Valeur de la Science, referred to by Lalande in his professional reports to the Philosophical Review) to accept to some extent the idea of the “hypothetical” character of the constructions of both the mathematical and the physical sciences, believing, however, at the same time that we must not be “unduly sceptical” about their conclusions, revealing as they do something of the “nature of reality.” He discusses among other topics the theory of “energetics” of which we speak below in the case of Ostwald. He insists, too, upon the idea that the real is known only by “experience,” and that this “experience” includes the comparison of the thoughts of many minds. And yet he believes to some extent in the Kantian theory of the a priori element in knowledge (see La Science, etc., p. 64). It is, however, quite unnecessary for me to presume to enter into the large subject of the precise nature of “hypotheses” in the mathematical and the physical sciences.
[47] A professor of mathematics in Paris and an ardent Bergsonian, and along with Laberthonnière one of the prominent Catholic defenders of Pragmatism and Modernism, author of a book on Dogmatism and Criticism (Dogme et Critique). Not having had the time to examine this book, as somewhat removed from my immediate subject, I append for the benefit of the reader the following statements and quotations from the useful book Faith and its Psychology, by Professor Inge of Cambridge. It is easy to see that the positions represented therein would give rise to controversy as to the historicity or fact of Christianity. “Le Roy gives us some examples of this Catholic Pragmatism. When we say ‘God is personal,’ we mean ‘behave in our relations with God as you do in your relations with a human person.’ When we say, ‘Jesus is risen from the dead,’ we mean ‘treat him as if he were your contemporary.’... His main theses may be summed up in his own words. ‘The current intellectualist conception renders insoluble most of the objections which are now raised against the idea of dogma. A doctrine of the primacy of action, on the contrary, permits us to solve the problem without abandoning anything of the rights of thought or of the exigencies of dogma.’” Le Roy, by the way, has published a book upon the philosophy of Bergson, which is said to be the best book upon the subject. It has been translated into English.
[48] M. Abel Rey, author of a work on the Theory of Physical Science in the hands of Contemporary Scientists (La Théorie de la physique chez les physiciens contemporains). In this book (I have not had the time to examine it carefully) M. Rey examines the theories and methods of Newton, and also of modern thinkers like Mach and Ostwald, reaching the conclusion that the philosophy with which physical science is most compatible is a “modified form of Positivism,” which bears a striking resemblance to “Pragmatism” and the “philosophy of experience.” The English reader will find many useful references to Rey in the pages of Father Leslie J. Walker’s Theories of Knowledge, in the “Stoneyhurst Philosophical Series.”
[49] Ibidem.
[50] It was impossible to procure a copy of this work of M. Blondel. I have tried to do so twice in Paris.
[51] M. Lalande in the Philosophical Review (1906), p. 246.