THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSICS 257 



the transcendent, to which our thought responds (to put it no 

 stronger), a dialectical activity arises; on the one hand, the appli- 

 cation of the experience-analogies to determine the real; on the 

 other, the incessant removal of limits by the impulse of transcend- 

 ence (as we may call it). Thus arises a movement of approxima- 

 tion which while it never completely compasses its goal, yet proceeds 

 along intelligent lines; constitutes the mind's effort to know; and 

 results in an approximating series of intelligible and relatively ade- 

 quate conceptions. Metaphysically, we are ever approximating to 

 ultimate knowledge; though it can never be said that we have at- 

 tained it. The type of metaphysical knowledge cannot be character- 

 ized, therefore, as either gnostic or agnostic. 



As to the question of ultimate criteria, it is clear that we are here 

 touching one of the living issues of our present-day thought. Shall 

 the judgment of truth, on which certitude must found, exclude 

 practical considerations of value, or shall the consideration of value 

 have weight in the balance of certitude ? On this issue we have at 

 the opposite extremes (1) the pure rationalist who insists on the 

 rigid exclusion from the epistemological scale of every consideration 

 except that of pure logic. The truth of a thing, he urges, is always 

 a purely logical consideration. On the other hand, we have (2) the 

 pure pragmatist, who insists on the "will to believe" as a legitimate 

 datum or factor in the determination of certitude. The pragmatic 

 platform has two planks: (1) the ontological we select our world 

 that we call real at the behest of our interests; (2) the ethical in 

 such a world practical interest has the right of way in determining 

 what we are to accept as true as well as what we are to choose as 

 good. It is my purpose in thus outlining the extremes of doctrine 

 to close with a suggestion or two toward less ultra-conclusions. It 

 is a sufficient criticism on the pure rationalist's position to point out 

 the fact that his separation of practical and theoretic interests is a 

 pure fiction that is never realized anywhere. The motives of science 

 and the motives of practice are so blended that interest in the con- 

 clusion always enters as a factor in the process. A conclusion reached 

 by the pure rationalist's method would be one that would only 

 interest the pure rationalist in so far as he could divest himself of all 

 motives except the bare love of fact for its own sake. The pure 

 pragmatist is, I think, still more vulnerable. He must, to start with, 

 be a pure subjective idealist, otherwise he would find his world at 

 many points recalcitrant to his ontology. Furthermore, the mere 

 will to believe is arbitrary and involves the suppression of reason. In 

 order that the will to believe may work real conviction, the point 

 believed must at least amount to a postulate of the practical reason ; 

 it must become somehow evident that the refusal to believe would 

 create a situation that would be theoretically unsound or irrational; 



