A DEFENCE OF PRAGMATISM 197 



Pray postpone for a moment the question whether the two con- 

 trasted mixtures which I have written down are each inwardly coherent 

 and self-consistent or not — I shall very soon have a good deal to say 

 on that point. It suffices for our immediate purpose that tender- 

 minded and tough-minded people, characterized as I have written them 

 down, do both exist. Each of you probably knows some well-marked 

 example of each type, and you know what each example thinks of the 

 example on the other side of the line. They have a low opinion of 

 each other. Their antagonism, whenever as individuals their tempera- 

 ments have been intense, has formed in all ages a part of the philo- 

 sophic atmosphere of the time. It forms a part of the philosophic 

 atmosphere to-day. The tough think of the tender as sentimentalists 

 and soft-heads. The tender feel the tough to be unrefined, callous, 

 or brutal. Their mutual reaction is very much like that that takes 

 place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population like that of 

 Cripple Creek. Each type believes the other to be inferior to itself; 

 but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the other 

 it has a dash of fear. 



Now, as I have already insisted, few of us are tender-foot Bos- 

 tonians pure and simple, and few are typical Rocky Mountain toughs, 

 in philosophy. Most of us have a hankering for the good things on 

 both sides of the line. Facts are good, of course — give us lots of facts. 

 Principles are good — give us plenty of principles. The world is in- 

 dubitably one if you look at it in one way, but as indubitably is it 

 many, if you look at it in another. It is both one and many — let us 

 adopt a sort of pluralistic monism. Everything, of course, is neces- 

 sarily determined, and yet of course our wills are free: a sort of 

 free-will determinism is the true philosophy. The evil of the parts 

 is undeniable ; but the whole can't be evil : so practical pessimism may 

 be combined with metaphysical optimism. And so forth — your ordi- 

 nary philosophic layman never being a radical, never straightening 

 out his system, but living vaguely in one plausible compartment of 

 it or another to suit the temptations of successive hours. 



But some of us are more than mere laymen in philosophy. We 

 are worthy of the name of amateurs, and are vexed by too much incon- 

 sistency and vacillation in our creed. We cannot preserve a good in- 

 tellectual conscience so long as we keep mixing incompatibles from 

 opposite sides of the line. 



And now I come to the first positively important point which I 

 wish to make. Never were as many men of a decidedly empiricist 

 proclivity in existence as there are at the present day. Our children, 

 one may say, are almost born scientific. But our esteem for facts has 

 not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. 

 Our scientific temper is devout. Now take a man of this type, and 



