Note 268 — Chapter VI · PRAGMATISM AS HUMANISM

There is a sentence in the Metaphysics of which I cannot but think at this point, and which so far at least as the rationalist-pragmatist issue is concerned is really one of the deepest and most instructive ideas in the whole history of philosophy. It is one of Aristotle’s troublesome additional statements in reference to something that he has just been discussing—in this case the “object of desire” and the “object of thought.” And what he adds in the present instance is this (Bk. xii. 7): “The primary objects of these two things are the same”—τούτων τὰ πρῶτα τὰ αὐτά—rendered by Smith and Ross “the primary objects of thought and desire are the same.” The translation, of course, is a matter of some slight difficulty, turning upon the proper interpretation of τὰ πρῶτα, “the first things,” although, of course, the student soon becomes familiar with what Aristotle means by “first things,” and “first philosophy,” and “first in nature,” and “first for us,” and so on. Themistius in his commentary on this passage (Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, vol. v. i-vi; Themistius in Metaphysica, 1072 and 17–30) puts it that “in the case of immaterial existences the desirable and the intelligible are the same—in primis vero principiis materiae non immixtis idem est desiderabile atque intelligibile.” I am inclined to use this great idea of the identity of the desirable and the intelligible—for conscious, intelligent beings as the fundamental principle of the true Humanism of which Pragmatism is in search. It is evidently in this identity that Professor Bosanquet also believes in when he says: “I am persuaded that if we critically understand what we really want and need, we shall find it established by a straightforward argument” (Preface to Individuality and Value. See the eighth chapter of this book). It is certainly true that the constructive philosophy of which we are in search to-day must leave no gap between thought and desire.