rational will, whose expression
is the world, and whose life is that in which we too live and move and
have our being.

Let me briefly dwell on each of the considerations which I here have
in mind. To me, as a philosophical student, they are not new; for, as
I repeat, I insisted upon them years ago, before the modern
pragmatistic controversy began.

First, then, there are certain respects in which I fully agree with
recent pragmatism. I agree that every opinion expresses an attitude of
the will, a preparedness for action, a determination to guide a plan
of action in accordance with an idea. Whoever asserts anything about
the way out of the woods, or about the cause and possible cure of a
toothache, defines a course of action in accordance with some purpose,
and amongst other things predicts the {146} possible outcome of that
course of action. The outcome that he predicts is defined in terms of
experience, and, so far as that is possible, in terms of human
experience. And now this is true, not only of assertions or opinions
about toothaches. It is true also of assertions about all objects in
heaven or earth. There is no such thing as a purely intellectual form
of assertion which has no element of action about it. An opinion is a
deed. It is a deed intended to guide other deeds. It proposes to have
what the pragmatists call "workings." That is, it undertakes to guide
the life of the one who asserts the opinion. In that sense, all truth
is practical. If you assert a proposition in mathematics, you propose
to guide the computations, or other synthetic processes, of whoever is
interested in certain mathematical objects. If you say "There is a
God," and know what you mean by the term "God," you lay down some sort
of rule for such forms of action as involve a fitting acknowledgment
of God's being and significance. So far, then, I wholly side with the
pragmatists. There is no pure intellect. There is no genuine insight
which does not also exist as a guide to some sort of action.

Furthermore, the proper "workings" of an assertion, the rational
results of the application of this opinion to life, must, if the
assertion is true, agree with the expectations of the one who defines
the assertion. And these "workings" belong, indeed, to the realm of
actual and concrete experience, be this {147} experience wholly human,
or be it, in some respect, an experience which is higher and richer
than any merely human experience. Opinions are