[309] We may quote, I think, the following passage from Professor Perry to show that the open-mindedness of James was not merely a temperamental and an American characteristic in his case, but a quality or attitude that rested upon an intellectual conviction in respect of the function of ideas. “Since it is their office [i.e. the office of ideas] to pave the way for direct knowledge, or to be temporarily substituted for it, then efficiency is conditioned by their unobtrusiveness, by the readiness with which they subordinate themselves. The commonest case of an idea in James’s sense is the word, and the most notable example of his pragmatic or empirical method is his own scrupulous avoidance of verbalism. It follows that since ideas are in and of themselves of no cognitive value, since they are essentially instrumental, they are always on trial, and ‘liable to modification in the course of future experience.’”—Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 364 (italics mine).
[310] It is known to all students that some of the more important writings of this prince of thinkers cannot be intelligibly approached without a long preliminary study of the peculiar “dressing up,” or transformation, to which he subjects the various facts of life and existence. And the same thing is true (to a more modified extent) of the writings of Kant.
[311] See the wise remark, in this very connexion, of the possible service of philosophy to-day, of Dr. Bosanquet, reproduced upon p. 226. And then, again, we must remember that an unduly pragmatist view of life would tend to make people impervious to ideas that transcend the range and the level of their ordinary interests and activities.
[312] Cf. the following from Professor Pace’s Preface to Introduction to Philosophy, by Charles A. Dubray. “In Catholic colleges, importance has always been attached to the study of philosophy both as a means of culture and as a source of information regarding the great truths which are influential in supporting Christian belief and in shaping character.” Of course these same words might be used as descriptive of what Professor Santayana calls the “older tradition” in all American colleges. It is interesting, by the way, to note also the pragmatist touch in the same Preface to this Catholic manual. “But if this training is to be successful, philosophy must be presented, not as a complex of abstruse speculations on far-off inaccessible topics, but as a system of truths that enter with vital consequence into our ordinary thinking and our everyday conduct.”
[314] See above, p. 34 and [p. 165].
[315] It is not, however, “rest” that the pragmatists want, even in heaven, but renewed opportunities for achievement. “‘There shall be news,’ W. James was fond of saying with rapture, quoting from the unpublished poem of a new friend, ‘there shall be news in heaven.’”—Professor Santayana in Winds of Doctrine, p. 209.
[316] In using this expression I am acutely conscious of its limitations and of its misleading character. There is nothing in which Americans so thoroughly believe as knowledge and instruction and information. A belief in education is in fact the one prevailing religion of the country—the one thing in which all classes, without any exception, unfeignedly believe, and for which the entire country makes enormous sacrifices.
[317] In using this expression I am not blind to such outstanding characteristics of American life as (1) the enormous amount of preventive philanthropy that exists in the United States; (2) the well-known system of checks in the governmental machinery of the country; (3) the readiness with which Americans fly to legislation for the cure of evils; (4) the American sensitiveness to pain and their hesitation about the infliction of suffering or punishment, etc. Nor do I forget the sacrifice of life entailed by modern necessities and modern inventions in countries other than America. I simply mean that owing to the constant stream of immigration, and to the spirit of youthfulness that pervades the country, the willingness of people to make experiments with themselves and their lives is one of the many remarkable things about the United States.