6 HUMANISM i 



exemplified at the present day by Mr. Balfour s Founda 

 tions of Belief, and, in a less defensible form, by Mr. 

 Benjamin Kidd. And if, instead of denouncing it, we 

 try to understand it, we shall not find that it is entirely 

 absurd. At bottom indeed it indicates little more than a 

 defect in the current rationalism, and a protest against 

 the rationalistic blindness towards the non-intellectual 

 factors in the foundation of beliefs. Common Sense 

 has always shown a certain sympathy with all such 

 protests against the pretensions of what is called the pure 

 intellect to dictate to man s whole complex nature. It 

 has always felt that there are reasons of the heart of 

 which the head knows nothing, postulates of a faith that 

 surpasses mere understanding, and that these possess a 

 higher rationality which a bigoted intellectualism has 

 failed to comprehend. 



If, then, one had to choose between Irrationalism and 

 Intellectualism, the former would undoubtedly have to be 

 preferred. It is less inadequate to life, a less violent 

 departure from our actual behaviour, a less grotesque 

 caricature of our actual procedure. Like Common Sense, 

 therefore, Pragmatism sympathizes with Irrationalism in 

 its blind revolt against the trammels of a pedantic In 

 tellectualism. But Pragmatism does more ; it not only 

 sympathizes, it explains. It vindicates the rationality of 

 Irrationalism, without becoming itself irrational; it restrains 

 the extravagance of Intellectualism, without losing faith 

 in the intellect. 1 And it achieves this by instituting a new 

 analysis of the common root both of the reason and of 

 the emotional revulsion against its pride. By showing 

 the pure reason to be a pure figment, and a psychological 

 impossibility, and the real structure of the actual reason 

 to be essentially pragmatical, and permeated through and 

 through with acts of faith, desires to know and wills to 

 believe, to disbelieve and to make believe, it renders 

 possible, nay unavoidable, a reconciliation between a 

 reason which is humanized and a faith which is rationalized 



1 This passage has actually been quoted by a critic as cogent evidence that 

 Pragmatism is irrationalism ! Cp. Mind, No. 75, p. 431, and No. 71, p. 426. 



