THE BANKRUPTCY OF INTELLECTUALISM

We have now struggled through the quagmires of intellectualist
philosophy, and found that neither in its Psychology, which divided the
mind's integrity into a heap of faculties, and comminuted it into a
dust-cloud of sensations; nor in its Epistemology, which ignored the
will to know and the value of knowing; nor in its Logic, which
abstracted thought wholly from the thinking and the thinker, and so
finally from, all meaning, could man find a practicable route of
philosophic progress. But our struggles will not have been in vain if
they have left us with a willingness to try the pragmatist alternative,
and convinced us that it is not a wanton innovation, but the only path
of salvation for the scientific spirit.

But before we venture on it, it will be well to restore confidence in
the solvency of human thought by analysing the causes of the bankruptcy
of Intellectualism and exposing the extravagance of the assumptions
which conducted to it.

Was it not, after all, an unwarranted assumption that severed the
intellect from its natural connection with human activity? No doubt it
seemed to simplify the problem to suppose that the functioning of the
intellect could be studied as a thing apart, and unrelated to the
general context of the vital functions. Again, it was to simplify to
assume that thought could be considered apart from the personality of
the human thinker. But it should not have been forgotten that it is
possible to pay too dearly for simplifications and abstractions, and
that they all involve a risk, which the event may show should never have