The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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God
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258 APPENDIX
form of humanism), the stress is laid on human nature,
and more particularly on the practical needs of it ;
and
reality, as well as truth, is that which interests us and
in which we find satisfaction. Other reality there can
be none ; for, until a thing interests us and wins our
affection, it is nothing to us, but, when it does so, it
cannot be taken as
anything apart from the subject
its nature is, in measure, determined by its relation to
the subject. Reality and truth alike, therefore, are
tested by experience and find their verification therein ;
and, in the long run, the two are one.
And so, on its negative side, pragmatism is a protest
against a priorism and Absolutism ;
neither of which
submits to experience. Indeed, it owes its existence to
reaction against that extreme intellectualism which so
long ruled, where man was contemplated simply as
rational being, his emotive and his volitional nature
being ignored. It is, consequently, essentially inductive
in its method, and breathes the scentific spirit through
out. It will not permit truth to be relegated to a
transcendent sphere to which experience has no access,
nor will it allow experience to be dictated to by mere
unverified and unverifiable a priori conceptions. The
Absolute, if it is taken in the pure metaphysical sense,
as we find it, say, in Mr. Bradley s
Appearance and
Reality, is a mere name without a meaning, "a
worthless technicality
: it sheds no light on life s
problems, it solves no difficulties on the
; contrary,
it
darkens and confuses. Difficulties disappear only under
what works, and hypotheses have value only if they be
working hypotheses.
Thus we are done with the old order of things ;
and the advance of science has effected the change.
geometrises,
it used to be said; and it was
believed that Euclid s Elements (I
am quoting Professor
James, Mind, vol. xiii. p. 459) literally reproduced his
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