Pragmatism by D. L. Murray
page 25 of 58 (43%)
page 25 of 58 (43%)
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of differences_.
There is thus, perhaps, no fundamental procedure of thought in which we cannot trace some deliberately adopted attitude. We distinguish between 'ourselves' and the 'external' world, perhaps because we have more control over our thoughts and limbs, and less, or none, over sticks and stones and mountains; fundamental as it is, it is a distinction _within_ experience, and is not given ready-made, but elaborated in the course of our dealings with it. Similarly, in accordance with its varying degrees of vividness, continuity, and value, experience itself gets sorted into 'realities,' 'dreams,' and 'hallucinations.' In short, when the processes of discriminating between 'dreams' and 'reality' are considered, all these distinctions will ultimately be found to be judgments of value. Nor is it only in the realm of scientific knowing that postulation reveals itself as a practicable and successful method of anticipating experience and consolidating fact. The same method has always been employed by man in reaching out towards the final syntheses which (in imagination) complete his vision of reality. The 'truths' of all religions originate in postulates. 'Gods' and 'devils,' 'heavens' and 'hells,' are essentially demands for a moral order in experience which transcend the given. The value of the actual world is supplemented and enhanced by being conceived as projected and continued into a greater, and our postulates are verified by the salutary influence they exercise on our earthly life. Both postulation and verification, then, are applicable to the problems of religion as of science. This is the meaning of the Will to Believe. When James first defined and defended it, it provoked abundant protest, on the ground that it allowed everyone to believe whatever he pleased and to call it 'true.' The critics had |
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