Note 110 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal

On Pragmatism, especially Nietzschean pragmatism, and the place it holds (whether they confess it or not) in almost all the moral and political teachings really characteristic of this time, see R. Berthelot, Un Romantisme Utilitaire, tome i, page 28 onwards. I can best show the novelty of the pragmatist attitude, especially among the French moralists, by quoting a remark of Montaigne which they all, before Barrès, would have ratified: ‘The honour and beauty of an action cannot be argued from its utility.’ Let us not forget, however, that Nietzsche, always unfaithful to his disciples, declares that ‘in the long run, utility, like everything else, is simply a figment of our imagination, and may well be the fatal stupidity by which we shall one day perish’.