Now the particular difference of temperament that I have in mind in making these remarks is one that has counted in literature, art, government and manners as well as in philosophy.  In manners we find formalists and free-and-easy persons.  In government, authoritarians and anarchists.  In literature, purists or academicals, and realists.  In art, classics and romantics.  You recognize these contrasts as familiar; well, in philosophy we have a very similar contrast expressed in the pair of terms ‘rationalist’ and ‘empiricist,’ ‘empiricist’ meaning your lover of facts in all their crude variety, ‘rationalist’ meaning your devotee to abstract and eternal principles.  No one can live an hour without both facts and principles, so it is a difference rather of emphasis; yet it breeds antipathies of the most pungent character between those who lay the emphasis differently; and we shall find it extraordinarily convenient to express a certain contrast in men’s ways of taking their universe, by talking of the ‘empiricist’ and of the ‘rationalist’ temper.  These terms make the contrast simple and massive.

More simple and massive than are usually the men of whom the terms are predicated.  For every sort of permutation and combination is possible in human nature; and if I now proceed to define more fully what I have in mind when I speak of rationalists and empiricists, by adding to each of those titles some secondary qualifying characteristics, I beg you to regard my conduct as to a certain extent arbitrary.  I select types of combination that nature offers very frequently, but by no means uniformly, and I select them solely for their convenience in helping me to my ulterior purpose of characterizing pragmatism.  Historically we find the terms ‘intellectualism’ and ‘sensationalism’ used as synonyms of ‘rationalism’ and ‘empiricism.’  Well, nature seems to combine most frequently with intellectualism an idealistic and optimistic tendency.  Empiricists on the other hand are not uncommonly materialistic, and their optimism is apt to be decidedly conditional and tremulous.  Rationalism is always monistic.  It starts from wholes and universals, and makes much of the unity of things.  Empiricism starts from the parts, and makes of the whole a collection-is not averse therefore to calling itself pluralistic.  Rationalism usually considers itself more religious than empiricism, but there is much to say about this claim, so I merely mention it.  It is a true claim when the individual rationalist is what is called a man of feeling, and when the individual empiricist prides himself on being hard-headed.  In that case the rationalist will usually also be in favor of what is called free-will, and the empiricist will be a fatalist—­ I use the terms most popularly current.  The rationalist finally will be of dogmatic temper in his affirmations, while the empiricist may be more sceptical and open to discussion.

I will write these traits down in two columns.  I think you will practically recognize the two types of mental make-up that I mean if I head the columns by the titles ‘tender-minded’ and ‘tough-minded’ respectively.