Note 113 — Chapter III · SOME FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS

There is, it seems to me, a suggestion of this rationalist position in the fact, for example, that Mr. Bertrana Russell begins his recent booklet upon The Problems of Philosophy with the following inquiry about knowledge: “Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?” I mean that the initial and paramount importance attached here to this question conveys the impression that the supreme reality for philosophy is still some independently certain piece of knowledge. I prefer, with the pragmatists and the humanists, to think of knowledge as concerned with the purposes of persons as intelligent beings, or with the realities revealed in the knowing process. Although there are passages in his book that show Mr. Russell to be aware of the selves and the psychical elements and processes that enter into knowing, they do not affect his prevailingly rationalistic and impersonal conception of knowledge and philosophy.