The transcendentalist believes his ideas to be self-transcendent only because he finds that in fact they do bear fruits.  Why need he quarrel with an account of knowledge that insists on naming this effect?  Why not treat the working of the idea from next to next as the essence of its self-transcendency?  Why insist that knowing is a static relation out of time when it practically seems so much a function of our active life?  For a thing to be valid, says Lotze, is the same as to make itself valid.  When the whole universe seems only to be making itself valid and to be still incomplete (else why its ceaseless changing?) why, of all things, should knowing be exempt?  Why should it not be making itself valid like everything else?  That some parts of it may be already valid or verified beyond dispute; the empirical philosopher, of course, like any one else, may always hope.

V

THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM

[Footnote:  Reprinted from the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. ii.  No. 5, March 2, 1905.]

Humanism is a ferment that has ‘come to stay.’  It is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts.  It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.  Some writers are strongly conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though their own vision may have undergone much change.  The result is no small confusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part against the radical ones, as if they wished to count upon the other side. [Footnote:  Professor Baldwin, for example.  His address ‘Selective Thinking’ (Psychological Review, January, 1898, reprinted in his volume, ‘Development and Evolution’) seems to me an unusually well written pragmatic manifesto.  Nevertheless in ’The Limits of Pragmatism’ (ibid; January, 1904), he (much less clearly) joins in the attack.]

If humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspective, it is obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change in some degree if humanism prevails.  The emphasis of things, their foreground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not keep just the same. [Footnote:  The ethical changes, it seems to me, are beautifully made evident in Professor Dewey’s series of articles, which will never get the attention they deserve till they are printed in a book.  I mean:  ’The Significance of Emotions,’ Psychological Review, vol. ii, 13; ’The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,’ ibid; iii, 357; ’Psychology and Social Practice,’ ibid., vii, 105; ‘Interpretation of Savage Mind,’ ibid; ix, 2l7; ‘Green’s Theory of the Moral Motive,’ Philosophical Review, vol. i, 593; ‘Self-realization as the Moral Ideal,’ ibid; ii, 652; ‘The Psychology of Effort,’ ibid; vi, 43; ’The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality,’ ibid; xi, 107,353; ’Evolution and Ethics,’ Monist, vol. viii, 321; to mention only a few.] If such pervasive consequences be involved in humanism, it is clear that no pains which philosophers may take, first in defining it, and then in furthering, checking, or steering its progress, will be thrown away.