Note 126 — Chapter III · SOME FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS

“You will be surprised to learn, then, that Messrs. Schiller’s and Dewey’s theories have suffered a hailstorm of contempt and ridicule. All rationalism has risen up against them. In influential quarters, Mr. Schiller in particular has been treated like an impudent school-boy who deserves a spanking. I should not mention this but for the fact that it throws so much light upon that rationalist temper to which I have opposed the temper of pragmatism. Pragmatism is uncomfortable away from facts. Rationalism is comfortable only in the presence of abstractions. This pragmatist talk about truths in the plural, about their utility and satisfactoriness, about the success with which they ‘work,’ etc., suggests to the typical intellectualist mind a sort of coarse, lame, second-rate makeshift article of truth” (James, Pragmatism, pp. 66–67; italics mine). The words about Rationalism being comfortable only in the world of abstractions are substantiated by the procedure of Bosanquet, to whom I refer in Chapter VIII., or by the procedure of Mr. Bertrand Russell, referred to on p. 169.