6o HUMANISM 



in 



illegitimate use of the pragmatic principle. As a 

 legitimate case we may allude to the well-known fact 

 that what decided the rejection of the Ptolemaic epicycles 

 in favour of the Copernican astronomy was not any 

 sheer failure to represent celestial motions, but the 

 growing cumbrousness of the assumptions and the grow 

 ing difficulty of the calculations which its truth involved. 

 Similarly when I affirm (as I have now been doing for 

 a good many years) that the metaphysical theory 

 of the Absolute is false, I only mean that it is useless, 

 that it simplifies nothing and complicates everything, and 

 that its supposed advantages are one and all illusory. 

 And I hope that as the pragmatist way of looking at 

 things grows to be more familiar, more of my philosophic 

 confreres will allow themselves to perceive these simple 

 facts. 



Of course there still remain complications of detail 

 about the doctrine that social usefulness is an ultimate 

 determinant of truth. It is obvious, for example, that 

 delicate questions may arise out of the fact that not only 

 does what works receive social recognition, but also that 

 what receives social recognition for this very reason 

 largely works. Effete superstitions always try to sustain 

 their truth in this way. Again, there may be old- 

 established mental industries which have outlived their use 

 fulness, but have not yet been condemned as false. Other 

 truths again are intrinsically of so individual a character 

 that society accepts, e.g. Smith s statement that he has a 

 headache, or that he dreamt a dream, on his ipse dixit. 

 And while new truths are struggling for recognition, it 

 may come about that much that is useful is thought to 

 be useless and vice versa, and that the discrepancy 

 between truth as it is supposed, and as it turns out, to be, 

 grows great. Then, again, few societies are so severely 

 organized with a sole view to efficiency as not to tolerate 

 a considerable number of useless persons pursuing 

 useless knowledge, or useful knowledge in a useless 

 way. Of course there is a certain amount of social 

 pressure brought to bear upon such persons, but it is not 



