i ETHICAL BASIS OF METAPHYSICS 13 



by our action we do not know as yet. We can find out 

 only by trying : but we know enough for Pragmatism to 

 transfigure the aspect of existence for us. 



It frees us in the first place from what constitutes 

 perhaps the worst and most paralysing horror of the 

 naturalistic view of life, the nightmare of an indifferent 

 universe. For it proves that at any rate Nature cannot 

 be indifferent to us and to our doings. It may be hostile, 

 and something to be fought with all our might ; it may 

 be unsuspectedly friendly, and something to be co-operated 

 with with our whole heart ; it must respond in varying 

 ways to our various efforts. 



Now, inasmuch as we are most familiar with such 

 varying responsiveness in our personal relations with 

 others, it is I think natural, though not perhaps necessary, 

 that the pragmatist will tend to put a personal interpre 

 tation upon his transactions with Nature and any agency 

 he may conceive to underlie it. Still even ordinary 

 language is aware that things behave differently according 

 as you treat them, that e.g., treated with fire sugar burns, 

 while treated with water it dissolves. Thus in the last 

 resort the anthropomorphic humanism of our whole 

 treatment of experience is unavoidable and obvious ; and 

 however much he wills to disbelieve it the philosopher 

 must finally confess that to escape anthropomorphism he 

 would have to escape from self. And further, seeing 

 that ethics is the science of our relations with other 

 persons, i.e. with our environment qua personal, this 

 ultimateness of the personal construction we put upon 

 our experience must increase the importance of the 

 ethical attitude towards it. In other words, our meta 

 physics must in any case be quasi-ethical. 



It may fairly be anticipated, secondly, that Pragmatism 

 will prove a great tonic to re-invigorate a grievously 

 depressed humanity. It sweeps away entirely the stock 

 excuse for fatalism and despair. It proves that human 

 action is always a perceptible, and never a negligible, 

 factor in the ordering of nature, and shows cause for the 

 belief that the disparity between our powers and the 



