Page:Philosophical Review Volume 22.djvu/139

No. 2.] add to our understanding of things to identify them. We may interpret utility so as to include in it logical consistency and scientific verification, refusing to accept anything as true that does not satisfy the will for consistency as well as explain the facts of our experience. But in that case we are simply abandoning the pragmatic test and adopting a time-honored rationalistic standard. We may refuse to accept anything as true that does not satisfy both the will for intelligibility and the moral and religious will, but we can do that only in case the thing does not really satisfy the will to understand. The mere fact that a theory leaves no room for free will, pluralism, immortality, or God, does not make it false, even though belief in such ideas should happen to help us over the dismal places in life. What satisfies the will to believe in God may not satisfy the will to understand our world of experience. The will to believe must itself be rendered intelligible; reasons must be given for accepting its demands, and these reasons must satisfy the will to know. And reasons are always given, even by faith-philosophers; they construct a world for us in which the will to believe will not constitute an irrational element. Kant accepted the categorical imperative and its implications because he believed in a rational universe and because a universe did not seem intelligible to him in which human reason could demand an irrational thing, a meaningless law.

It would, however, be a valid objection against the competence of the intellect if it could be shown that it falsifies reality, that it compels us to construct a world-view that simply is not true. Such an objection presupposes the possession of a metaphysic or other sources of knowledge which we are able to oppose to the conclusions of reason as something more real and authoritative. If the intelligence saddles us with a block-universe and there is no block-universe, intelligence ought to be drummed out of camp. But the question quite naturally arises: Does the human understanding really squeeze all life out of existence and leave us nothing but a bony skeleton? Does rational thought demand an absolutely closed system, one in which nothing exists that was not there before, nothing that cannot be deduced in principle,