[319] And this despite the enormous amount of work that has been done by American biologists upon the “factors” of evolution, and upon a true interpretation of Darwinism and of Weismannism and of the evolutionary theory generally.
[320] Even Professor James, for example, dismissed (far too readily, in my opinion) as a “sociological romance” a well-known book (published both in French and in English) by Professor Schinz entitled Anti-Pragmatism. Although in some respects a superficial and exaggerated piece of work, this book did discover certain important things about Pragmatism and about its relation to American life.
[321] It is probably a perception of this truth that has led Dr. Bosanquet to express the opinion that the whole pragmatist issue may be settled by an examination of the notion of “satisfaction.” He must mean, I think, that satisfaction is impossible to man without a recognition of many of the ideal factors that are almost entirely neglected by the pragmatists—except by Bergson, if it be fair to call him a pragmatist.
[322] Bourdeau, for example, has suggested that its God is not really God, but merely an old domestic servant destined to do us personal services—-help us to carry our trunk and our cross in the midst of sweat and dirt. He is not a gentleman even. “No wonder,” he adds, “it was condemned at Rome.” See his Pragmatisme et Modernisme, p. 82.
[323] I am thinking here of the words in the Constitution of the State of California (they are printed in Mr. Bryce’s American Commonwealth—at least in the earlier editions) to the effect that it is the natural right of all men to seek and to “obtain [!]” happiness.
[324] “Epigramme,” Venice, 1790. [“I could never abide any of those freedom-gospellers. All that they ever wanted was to get things running so as to suit themselves. If you are anxious to set people free, just make a beginning by trying to serve them. The simplest attempt will teach you how dangerous this effort may be.”]
[325] See [Chapter IX.]
[326] On what grounds does Professor Bosanquet think of “compensating justice” as a naïve idea? It is on the contrary one of the highest and deepest, and one of the most comprehensive to which the human mind has ever attained—giving rise to the various theogonies and theodicies and religious systems of mankind. It is at the bottom, for example, of the theodicy and the philosophy of Leibniz, the founder of the Rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe.
[327] Could any system of ethics which took such an impossible and such a belated conception of the individual be regarded as ethics at all?
[328] I do not think that this is a fair preliminary description of the problem of teleology. A person who believes in the realization of purpose in some experiences with which he thinks himself to be acquainted does not plead for the guidance of the universe by finite minds, but simply for a view of it that shall include the truth of human purposes. And of course there may be in the universe beings other than ourselves who also realize purposes.