The metaphysical assumption of the Absolute is the death blow of ethics. For a transcendent Whole, which swallows up moral distinctions as partial and relative, deprives human conduct of its significance. The antithesis of this immoralistic position is found in Professor James's 'Pragmatism,' which is based on a teleological psychology. Thought, instead of being isolated from, and exalted at the expense of, action, is treated as a mode of conduct, and practical results as essential determinants of theoretic truth. The purposive character of mental life influences our most remotely cognitive activities. And since the most theoretical cognition has thus a practical value, it is potentially a moral act, a source of responsibility. The pragmatic assertion of the intellectual right to decide between alternative views by emotional and practical as well as by intellectual considerations, instead of favoring Irrationalism as opposed to Intellectualism, really resolves the conflict between the two. Reason is humanized and faith rationalized by showing their common root—practical value. A 'pure' reason, not developed from its practical use in the struggle for existence, would be a failure of adaptation soon eliminated by natural selection. The principle that purpose and interest are the motive power of knowing has an important bearing upon the ultimate question of metaphysics: What can I know as real? Reality and the knowledge of it essentially presuppose a definitely directed effort to know, the effort being inspired by the idea of some good at which it aims. Thus both the metaphysical concept of 'real' and the logical concept of 'true' contain a reference to the ethical concept of 'good': the question of value is raised whenever the questions of fact and of knowledge are raised. If, then, there is no knowing without valuing, Lotze is right, and the foundations of metaphysics really lie in ethics. Since our own activity is the necessary revealer of reality, fatalism and the naturalistic view of an indifferent universe are untenable. Nature must in some way respond to us. This reference to self, and the fact that all our other relations with responsive beings are personal, call for an anthropomorphic treatment of experience. Our metaphysics must be quasi ethical.
It is here proposed to examine and put on a different footing the familiar antithesis between 'appearance' and 'reality,' which, since the work of Bradley, has become the too easy solution of philosophical difficulties. I. It is first urged that the ultimateness of B's absolute criterion, used to convict the whole universe of self-contradiction, is too readily assumed. The very existence of reality proves that seeming contradictions belong not to it, but to our thought. Hence we must assume an ultimate harmony, which can be attained only by taking into account the whole of experience.
