[378] With, we might almost say, the pragmatists and the humanists.
[379] This is really their main distinguishing characteristic and merit.
[381] “Indeed, I do not conceal my belief that in the main the work has been done.”—Preface.
[382] I think that the confession is a praiseworthy one in view of the fact of the prejudice of Rationalism, that philosophy has nothing to do with convictions but only with knowledge.
[383] By belief I have understood throughout this book simply man’s working sense for reality, and I am inclined to think that this is almost the best definition that could be given of it—our working sense for reality. It is at least, despite its apparent evasiveness, most in harmony with the pragmatist-humanist inclusion of will elements and feeling elements in our knowledge and in our apprehension of reality. It is also in harmony with the conception of reality which may, in my opinion, be extracted from both Pragmatism and Idealism—that reality is what it proves itself to be in the daily transformation of our experience. By the retention of the term “working” in this attempted definition I express my agreement with the idea that action, and the willingness to act, is an essential element in belief. The outstanding positions in the definitions of belief that are generally given in philosophical dictionaries are, firstly, that belief is a conviction or subjective apprehension of truth or reality in distinction from demonstrable knowledge or direct evidence; and, secondly, that feeling elements and action elements enter into it. I am inclined to think that the sharp antithesis between belief and knowledge, or the tendency of philosophical books to emphasise the difference between belief and knowledge, is a characteristic, or consequence, of our modern way of looking at things, of our break with the unfortunate, medieval conception of faith and of the higher reason. The study of the facts either of the history of religion or of the history of science, will convince us, I think, that it is always belief, and that it still is belief (as the working sense for reality), that is man’s measure of reality, our knowledge about the universe being at all times but a more or less perfect working out of our beliefs and of their implications—of our sense of the different ways in which the world affects us, and of the ways in which we are affected towards it. Nor do I think, as I have indicated in different places, that “reality” can be defined apart from belief, reality being that in which we believe for all purposes, theoretical and practical and emotional. In the conception of reality as a world of intersubjective intercourse in which beings, or persons at different stages of development, share in a common spiritual life, we have attained so far (and only so far) to the truth that is common to an idealism of the type of Dr. Bosanquet’s, and to pragmatist-humanism when properly developed and interpreted. There are, I find, upon thinking of the matter, any number of philosophers and thinkers who interpret belief, in the larger sense of the term, as our complete and final estimate of reality, and as therefore not exclusive of, but inclusive of knowledge in the ordinary sense of the term.
[384] He even says in the Abstract of his first lecture upon the “Central Experiences,” that Lord Gifford’s desire that his lecturers should “try to communicate” a “grave experience” is the demand that “introduces us to the double task of philosophy. It [philosophy] needs the best of logic, but also the best of life, and neither can be had in philosophy without the other.”
[385] Treatise upon Human Nature, sect. vii. (Green and Grose, i. 547).
[386] I had originally the idea of calling this chapter by the more modest title of a note upon “pragmatist elements” in the teaching of Bergson. I have allowed myself to call it a chapter partly for the sake of symmetry, and partly because the footnotes and the criticism (of his Idealism) have carried it beyond the limits of a note. I find, too, (as I have partly indicated in my preface) in the teaching of Bergson so many things that make up almost the very body of truth and fact upon which Pragmatism, and Humanism, and Idealism all repose (or ought to repose) that I quote them directly in my footnotes. They indicate to me the scope and the territory of my entire subject. And they are a confirmation to me of much that I had myself arrived at before I read a line of Bergson.
[387] “Our intelligence, as it leaves the hands of nature, has for its chief object the unorganised solid” (Creative Evolution, p. 162); “of immobility alone does the intellect form a clear idea” (ibid. 164). “The aspect of life that is accessible to the intellect—as indeed to our senses, of which our intellect is the extension—is that which offers a hold to action” (ibid. 170). “We see that the intellect, so skilful in dealing with the inert, is awkward the moment it touches the living. Whether it wants to treat the life of the body or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigour, the stiffness, and the brutality of the instrument not designed for such use. The history of hygiene or of pedagogy teaches us much in this matter. When we think of the cardinal, urgent, and constant need we have to preserve our bodies and to raise our souls, of the special facilities given to each of us in this field to experiment continually on ourselves and on others, of the palpable injury by which the wrongness of a medical or a pedagogical practice is made manifest and punished at once, we are amazed at the stupidity and especially at the persistence of errors. We may easily find their origin in the natural obstinacy with which we treat the living like the lifeless, and think all reality, however fluid, under the form of the sharply-defined solid. We are at ease only in the discontinuous, in the immobile, in the dead. The intellect is characterised by a natural inability to comprehend life” (Creative Evolution, p. 174). (Italics mine.)