Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/565

 WILLIAM JAMES, The Will to Believe. 549 even that the universe is a universe in any debatable sense (p. 68). For he will not allow that anything has been determined by calling the world a universe, so long as the infinite alternatives to which the term might apply are not rendered definite by a de- scription of the particular universe intended. Hence he will not "dogmatically affirm monism as something with which all ex- perience has to square," but accepts " the opacity of the finite facts as given," and "the crudity of experience remains an eternal element thereof". But if so, he must needs be a pluralist, on the ground that "there is no possible point of view from which the world can appear as an absolutely single fact. Eeal possibilities, real indeterminations, real beginnings, real ends, real evil, real crises, catastrophies and escapes, a real God, and a real moral life, just as common sense conceives these things, may remain in empiricism as conceptions which philosophy gives up the attempt either to ' overcome ' or to reinterpret in monistic form " (p. ix.). These are brave words and of the happiest augury ; for" they may mean the dawn of an era in which teleological postulates will be admitted to underlie all human activities, when consequently the postulates of man's knowing activities will be subjected to as candid a criticism as the implications of his feelings and actions, and when their subordination to the needs and aims of the whole organism will win due recognition. The paper on " The Will to Believe " strikes Prof. James' key- note boldly by declaring that in all cases of genuine option between intellectual alternatives that is in all cases where both alter- natives appeal to us in any way our decision not only lawfully may but must be made by our passional nature. It is idle in such cases to avoid decision by suspense of judgment ; for though we may thus escape error, we also lose our chance of gaining truth. Very often, as is well illustrated by the Alpine climber in a desperate case, to refuse a decision is itself a decision ; the climber must leap to safety or perish (p? 59). In such cases he who hesitates is lost, while conversely faith " creates its own verification," so that " the thought becomes literally father to the fact as the wish was father to the thought" (p. 103). Hence Prof. James " cannot see his way to accept the agnostic rules for truth-seeking or wilfully agree to keep his willing nature out of the game". For "a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent one from acknowledging certain kinds of truth, if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule" (p. 28). And the more so if it is realised that it is not really a question of intellect versus feelings, but of intellect plus one passion, " the horror of becoming a dupe," versus the rest. The truth is that the intellect is entirely built up of practical interests, cognition is but " a cross-section at a certain point of what in its totality is a motor phenomenon," and "incomplete until discharged in act " (pp. 84-5). " Conceptions, ' kinds,' are teleological instruments," '' every way of classifying a thing is but