202 HUMANISM xi 



entirely reasonable thing to do in the case supposed. If 

 the pursuit of knowledge really aggravated, instead of 

 relieving, the burden of life, it would be irrational. If 

 every step we took beyond appearances were but an 

 augmentation of the disharmony in our experience, there 

 would be no gain in taking it. The alleged knowledge 

 would be worse than useless, and we should fare better 

 without it We should have to train ourselves therefore 

 to make the most of appearances, to make no effort to 

 get behind them. And natural selection would see to it 

 that those did not survive who remained addicted to a 

 futile and noxious pursuit. This then would be the worst 

 that could happen ; the frivolity and thoughtlessness of 

 the day-fly might pay better than the deadly earnest of 

 the sage. But the day-fly would ipso facto have become 

 incapable of assenting to the extravagances of ultra- 

 pessimism. 



From the worst possibility let us turn to the best. 

 The best that has been mentioned is that by Faith and 

 daring we should find an experience that would conduct 

 us to the fortunate thought of an ultimate reality capable 

 of completely harmonising our experience. And a merely 

 intellectualist philosophy would have no reason, I presume, 

 to ask for more than this. But just as before we conceived 

 the principle of non- contradiction to be a form of the 

 wider principle of harmony, so now we can hardly rest 

 content with a reality which is merely conceived as the 

 ground of complete satisfaction. For so long as it remains 

 a mere conception, it must remain doubtful whether it 

 could be realised in actual fact. To remove this doubt, 

 therefore, our ultimate reality would have actually to 

 establish the perfect harmony. By this achievement alone, 

 i.e. by returning to our immediate experience and trans 

 muting it into a form in which doubt would have become 

 impossible, would it finally put an end to every doubt of 

 its own ultimateness. But by this same achievement it 

 would have dissolved our original problem. The antithesis 

 of appearance and reality would have vanished. 

 Ultimate reality having become immediate experience 



