We have now struggled through the quagmires of intellectualist philosophy, and found that neither in its Psychology, which divided the mind's integrity into a heap of faculties, and comminuted it into a dust-cloud of sensations; nor in its Epistemology, which ignored the will to know and the value of knowing; nor in its Logic, which abstracted thought wholly from the thinking and the thinker, and so finally from, all meaning, could man find a practicable route of philosophic progress. But our struggles will not have been in vain if they have left us with a willingness to try the pragmatist alternative, and convinced us that it is not a wanton innovation, but the only path of salvation for the scientific spirit.

But before we venture on it, it will be well to restore confidence in the solvency of human thought by analysing the causes of the bankruptcy of Intellectualism and exposing the extravagance of the assumptions which conducted to it.

Was it not, after all, an unwarranted assumption that severed the intellect from its natural connection with human activity? No doubt it seemed to simplify the problem to suppose that the functioning of the intellect could be studied as a thing apart, and unrelated to the general context of the vital functions. Again, it was to simplify to assume that thought could be considered apart from the personality of the human thinker. But it should not have been forgotten that it is possible to pay too dearly for simplifications and abstractions, and that they all involve a risk, which the event may show should never have been taken. So it is in this case. Its rash assumptions confront Intellectualism with a host of problems it cannot attack. It can do nothing to assuage the conflict of opinions which all claim truth with equal confidence. It cannot understand the correction of error which is continually proceeding. Nor can it understand, either the existence of error or the meaning of truth, or the means of distinguishing between them. It has no means of testing and confuting even the wildest and maddest assertions. It cannot discriminate between the intuitions of the sage and of the lunatic. It is forced to view energy of will in knowing as a source merely of corruption, and when it finds that as a psychic fact willing is ineradicable, it must conclude that we are constitutionally incapable of that passive reflection of reality which it regards as the sine qua non of truth. Hence, if disinterestedness is the condition of knowing, knowledge is impossible. And it is so entangled in its unintelligible theory of truth as a copying of reality that, rather than renounce it, when it finds that human knowing is not copying, it prefers a surrender to Scepticism.

Yet is not its whole procedure a signal example of human arbitrariness and perversity? We professed to be impelled by logical necessity at every step, but were free to escape from all our perplexities by adopting the pragmatic inferences from them. The Pragmatic Method of observing the consequences readily suggests the means of discriminating between truth and error, of sifting values and of testing claims. And, though not infallible, it is adequate to all our needs. The pragmatic notion that Truth is practical closes the artificial gulf between the theoretic and the practical side of life, and assigns to truth a biological function and vital value. The humanist contention that Truth is human rescues man from the despondency in which his failure to grasp absolute truth had left him. The Protagorean dictum that Man is the measure of all things assures him that his knowledge may become adequate to his reality, and that the value of truths and the differences between truth and error also are susceptible of estimation.

True, this policy averts the bankruptcy of the intellect by scaling down the intolerable charges on it. True, practical knowledge is not absolute; but if it is enough to live by, is it not better to live by it than to be lured on to perish in the deserts of Scepticism by the mirage of an absolute truth not humanly attainable? True, verification is not 'proof,' but as its conclusions are not incorrigible, its defects are not fatal, and its demands are not impracticable. True, no truth and no reality are wholly 'objective,' in the sense of wholly indifferent to our action; but to say that the human and 'subjective' factor in all knowledge must be taken into account does not preclude our apprehending and measuring an 'objective' world as real as, and more knowable than, any other theory can offer.

Thus the proposals of Pragmatism for reconstructing the business of the intellect, and rescuing it from the bankruptcy of Intellectualism, are not unreasonable. They open out to it a prospect of recovering its credit and its usefulness by returning to the service of Life.