_Moore._ If you mean that your own crass Philistinism is all that pragmatism comes to, I fancy you are about right. Forget that the only end of action is to bring about an approximation to the complete inclusive consciousness; make, as the pragmatists do, consciousness a means to action, and one form of external activity is just as good as another. Art, religion, all the generous reaches of science which do not show up immediately in the factory--these things become meaningless, and all that remains is that hard and dry satisfaction of economic wants which is Grimes’s ideal.
_Grimes._ An ideal which exists, by the way, only in your imagination. I know of no more convincing proof of the futile irrelevancy of idealism than the damning way in which it narrows the content of actual daily life in the minds of those who uphold idealism. I sometimes think I am the only true idealist. If the conditions of an equitable and ample physical existence for all were once secured, I, for one, have no fears as to the bloom and harvest of art and science, and all the “higher” things of leisure. Life is interesting enough for me; give it a show for all.
_Arthur._ I find myself in a peculiar position in respect to this discussion. An analysis of what is involved in this peculiarity may throw some light on the points at issue, for I have to believe that analysis and definition of what exists is the essential matter both in resolution of doubts and in steps at reform. For brevity, not from conceit, I will put the peculiarity to which I refer in a personal form. I do not believe for a moment in some different Reality beyond and behind Nature. I do not believe that a manipulation of the logical implications of science can give results which are to be put in the place of those which Science herself yields in her direct application. I accept Nature as something which is, not seems, and Science as her faithful transcript. Yet because I believe these things, not in spite of them, I believe in the existence of purpose and of good. How Eaton can believe that fulfilment and the increasing realization of purpose can exist in human consciousness unless they first exist in the world which is revealed in that consciousness is as much beyond me as how Moore can believe that a manipulation of the method of knowledge can yield considerations of a totally different order from those directly obtained by use of the method. If purpose and fulfilment exist as natural goods, then, and only then, can consciousness itself be a fulfilment of Nature, and be also a natural good. Any other view is inexplicable to sound thinking--save, historically, as a product of modern political individualism and literary romanticism which have combined to produce that idealistic philosophy according to which the mind in knowing the universe creates it.