Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/362

356 such matters is not a proof of the impotence, but of the power of our mind. The positivists repudiate metaphysics, but as they do not sufficiently explain why they do so, they leave open a way whereby the exiled problems may return. And thus a still graver thing happens, for the lack in their theories, of a sufficiently profound analysis of the methods of science and of philosophy, gives the metaphysical spider a chance to spin its web once more even within themselves and in their own thought. This may be seen in even the best representatives of positivist methods, for these, while raising their voices upon all occasions against vain and empty metaphysics, yet do not perceive the poor and feeble metaphysics in their own books and discussions. Agnosticism, monism, materialism, evolution, which are almost always associated or confused in the minds of the positivists, are metaphysical doctrines which presuppose in their turn metaphysical premises. Agnosticism implies the belief in a world more real than ours. Monism appeals to universal and unthinkable conceptions. Evolution supposes a sort of providential plain of the universe, and so on. Positivism, then, is only anti-metaphysical in words, while pragmatism is anti-metaphysical in substance.

And the differences do not end here. There are in pragmatism at least three tendencies which in agnostic positivism do not exist at all, or at best only in the germinal state.

First of all is the principle of the economy of thought, traces of which may more easily be found in Occam and Leibniz than among the positivists. Secondly, the resurrection of the Baconian axiom "knowledge is power," that is, the demonstration of the part played by the idea of power and the possibility of power in our beliefs and theories. Finally, the emancipation of thought, both from immediate facts and from pure rationalism. Both are shown in pragmatism, not only by its theories about the free "creation" of facts, and of hypotheses in science, but also by its views concerning the non-necessity. for deduction, of the premises being "rational." That is to say, its willingness to start from absurd or fanciful hypotheses, in building up new theories and new sciences. It seems to me, then, that this is enough to justify the separation of these two lines of thought under distinct names, the more so since it can be shown historically that the differences between positivism and pragmatism arc much greater than those which existed between positivism and the earlier so-called "English philosophy." Pragmatism may indeed continue on certain lines the work of some of the best positivists, but it may claim, when closely considered, to be really made up of differences from positivism. It would be hard to differ more than that!