simply failed to see that verification by experience is just as integral
a part of voluntaristic procedure as experimental postulation, and that
James himself had from the first asserted this. Indeed, that he had
first given a theological illustration of the function of volition in
knowing was merely an accident. But that the will to believe was capable
of being generalized into a voluntarist theory of all knowledge was soon
shown in Dr. Schiller's _Axioms as Postulates_.




CHAPTER IV


THE DILEMMAS OF DOGMATISM

Every man, probably, is by instinct a dogmatist. He feels perfectly sure
that he knows some things, and is right about them against the world.
Whatever he believes in he does not doubt, but holds to be
self-evidently or indisputably true. His naive dogmatism, moreover,
spontaneously assumes that his truth is universal and shared by all
others.

If now he could live like a fakir, wholly wrapped in a cloud of his own
imaginings, and nothing ever happened to disappoint his expectations, to
jar upon his prejudices, and to convict him of error; if he never held
converse with anyone who took a different view and controverted him, his
dogmatism would be lifelong and incurable. But as he lives socially, he
has in practice to outgrow it, and this lands him in a serious
theoretical dilemma. He has to learn to live with others who differ from