l science; but this order was
held to be inaccessible to human knowledge. Such a theory is essentially
unstable because it employs principles which define a non-natural order,
but refuses to credit them or call them knowledge. The agnostic is in
the paradoxical position of one who knows of an unknowable world.
Present-day naturalism is more circumspect. It has interested itself in
bringing to light that in the very procedure of science which, because
it predetermines what nature shall be, cannot be included within nature.
To this interest is due the rediscovery of the rational foundations of
science. It was already known in the seventeenth century that exact
science does not differ radically from mathematics, as mathematics does
not differ radically from logic. Mathematics and mechanics are now being
submitted to a critical examination which reveals the definitions and
implications upon which they rest, and the general relation of these to
the fundamental elements and necessities of thought.[406:7]

[Sidenote: Recognition of the Will. Pragmatism.]

Sect. 203. This rationalistic tendency in naturalism is balanced by a
tendency which is more empirical, but equally subversive of the old
ultra-naturalism. Goethe once wrote:

"I have observed that I hold that thought to be true which is
_fruitful for me_. . . . When I know my relation to myself and
to the outer world, I say that I possess the truth."

Similarly, it is now frequently observed that all knowledge is _humanly
fruitful_, and it is proposed that this shall be regarded as the very
criterion of truth. According to this principle science as a whole, even
knowledge as a whole, is primarily a human utility. The nature which
science defines is an artifact or construct. It is designed to express
briefly and conveniently what man may practically expect from his
environment. This tendency is known as _pragmatism_. It ranges
from systematic doctrines, reminiscent of Fichte, which seek to
define practical needs and deduce knowledge from them, to the
more irresponsible utterances of those who liken science to
"shorthand,"[407:8] and mathematics to a game of chess. In any case
pragmatism attributes to nature a certain dependence on will, and
therefore implies, even when it does not avow, that will with its
peculiar principles or values cannot be reduced to the terms of nature.
In short, it would be more true to say that nature expresses will, than
that will