FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142  
143   >>  
in either perceptual or conceptual terms can be given. It includes, of course, any amount of empirical reality independent of the knower." _Meaning of Truth_, p. 100, note. ED.] XI HUMANISM AND TRUTH ONCE MORE.[129] Mr. Joseph's criticism of my article 'Humanism and Truth'[130] is a useful contribution to the general clearing up. He has seriously tried to comprehend what the pragmatic movement may intelligibly mean; and if he has failed, it is the fault neither of his patience nor of his sincerity, but rather of stubborn tricks of thought which he could not easily get rid of. Minute polemics, in which the parties try to rebut every detail of each of the other's charges, are a useful exercise only to the disputants. They can but breed confusion in a reader. I will therefore ignore as much as possible the text of both our articles (mine was inadequate enough) and treat once more the general objective situation. As I apprehend the movement towards humanism, it is based on no particular discovery or principle that can be driven into one precise formula which thereupon can be impaled upon a logical skewer. It is much more like one of those secular changes that come upon public opinion over-night, as it were, borne upon tides 'too full for sound or foam,' that survive all the crudities and extravagances of their advocates, that you can pin to no one absolutely essential statement, nor kill by any one decisive stab. Such have been the changes from aristocracy to democracy, from classic to romantic taste, from theistic to pantheistic feeling, from static to evolutionary ways of understanding life--changes of which we all have been spectators. Scholasticism still opposes to such changes the method of confutation by single decisive reasons, showing that the new view involves self-contradiction, or traverses some fundamental principle. This is like stopping a river by planting a stick in the middle of its bed. Round your obstacle flows the water and 'gets there all the same.' In reading Mr. Joseph, I am not a little reminded of those Catholic writers who refute Darwinism by telling us that higher species can not come from lower because _minus nequit gignere plus_, or that the notion of transformation is absurd, for it implies that species tend to their own destruction, and that would violate the principle that every reality tends to persevere in its own shape. The point of view is too myopic, too tight and clos
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142  
143   >>  



Top keywords:
principle
 

movement

 

reality

 

species

 

decisive

 
Joseph
 
general
 

conceptual

 
Scholasticism
 

spectators


opposes

 

evolutionary

 
static
 

understanding

 
confutation
 

involves

 
contradiction
 
traverses
 

feeling

 

single


reasons

 

showing

 

method

 

pantheistic

 

perceptual

 

extravagances

 

statement

 

essential

 

advocates

 

absolutely


crudities

 
romantic
 

fundamental

 

theistic

 

classic

 
democracy
 

HUMANISM

 
aristocracy
 

notion

 
transformation

absurd
 

implies

 
gignere
 
nequit
 

higher

 

myopic

 
persevere
 

destruction

 
violate
 

telling