AN ABUSE OF ABSTRACTION 493 



majority vote. It is a relation, that antedates experience, between our 

 opinions and an independent something which the pragmatist account 

 ignores, a relation which, though the opinions of individuals should to 

 all eternity deny it, would still remain to qualify them as false. To talk 

 of opinions without referring to this independent something, the anti- 

 pragmatist assures us, is to play Hamlet with Hamlet's part left out. 



But when the pragmatist speaks of opinions, does he mean any 

 such insulated and unmotived abstractions as are here supposed? Of 

 course not, he means men's opinions in the flesh, as they have really 

 formed themselves, opinions surrounded by their causes and the in- 

 fluences they obey and exert, and along with the whole environment 

 of social communication of which they are a part. The " experience " 

 which the pragmatic definition postulates is the independent something 

 which the anti-pragmatist accuses him of ignoring. Already have men 

 grown unanimous in the opinion that such experience is " of " an in- 

 dependent reality, the existence of which all opinions must acknowledge, 

 in order to be true. Already do they agree that in the long run it 

 is useless to resist experience's pressure; that the more of it a man 

 has, the better position he stands in, in respect of truth; that some 

 men, having had more experience, are therefore better authorities than 

 others; that some are also wiser by nature and better able to interpret 

 the experience they have had; that it is the part of wisdom to compare 

 notes, to discuss, and to follow the opinion of our betters; and that 

 the more systematically and thoroughly the comparison and weighing 

 of opinions is pursued, the truer the opinions that survive are likely 

 to be. When the pragmatist talks of opinions, it is opinions as they 

 thus concretely and livingly and interactingly and correlaiively exist 

 that he has in mind; and when the anti-pragmatist tries to floor him 

 because the word opinion can also be taken abstractly and as if it had 

 no environment, he simply ignores the soil out of which the whole 

 discussion grows. His weapons cut the air and strike no blow. No 

 one gets wounded in the war against caricatures of belief and skeletons 

 of opinion of which the German onslaughts upon " Eelativismus " con- 

 sist. Refuse to use the word opinion abstractly, keep it in its real 

 environment, and the withers of pragmatism remain unwrung. 



That men do exist who are " opinionated," in the sense that their 

 opinions are self-willed, is unfortunately a fact that must be admitted, 

 no matter what one's notion of truth in general may be. But that 

 this fact makes it impossible for truth to form itself authentically out 

 of the life of " opinion," is what no critic has yet proved. Truth may 

 well consist of certain opinions, and does indeed consist of nothing 

 but opinions, though not every opinion need be true. No pragmatist 

 needs to dogmatize about the consensus of opinion in the future being 

 right — he need only postulate that it will probably contain more of 

 truth than any one's opinion now. 



