NATURE S GOOD: A CONVERSATION 27 



sist upon translating my position into terms of 

 your own ; I am not then surprised to hear that it 

 would be a begging of the question for you to hold 

 my views. My point is precisely that it is only 

 as long as you take the position that some Reality 

 beyond some metaphysical or transcendental real 

 ity is necessary to substantiate empirical values 

 that you can even discuss whether the latter are 

 genuine or illusions. Drop the presupposition that 

 you read into everything I say, the idea that the 

 reality of things as they are is dependent upon some 

 thing beyond and behind, and the facts of the case 

 just stare you in the eyes: Goods are, a multitude 

 of them but, unfortunately, evils also are; and 

 all grades, pretty much, of both. Not the con 

 trast and relation of experience in toto to some 

 thing beyond experience drives men to religion and 

 then to philosophy; but the contrast within ex 

 perience of the better and the worse, and the con 

 sequent problem of how to substantiate the former 

 and reduce the latter. Until you set up the no 

 tion of a transcendental reality at large, you can 

 not even raise the question of whether goods and 

 evils are, or only seem to be. The trouble and the 

 joy, the good and the evil, is that they are; the 

 hope is that they may be regulated, guided, in 

 creased in one direction and minimized in another. 

 Instead of neglecting thought, we (I mean the 

 pragmatists ) exalt it, because we say that intelli- 



