I have no criticism whatever to make upon his excellent article, but let me explain why ‘moral holidays’ were the only gift of the absolute which I picked out for emphasis.  I was primarily concerned in my lectures with contrasting the belief that the world is still in process of making with the belief that there is an ‘eternal’ edition of it ready-made and complete.  The former, or ‘pluralistic’ belief, was the one that my pragmatism favored.  Both beliefs confirm our strenuous moods.  Pluralism actually demands them, since it makes the world’s salvation depend upon the energizing of its several parts, among which we are.  Monism permits them, for however furious they may be, we can always justify ourselves in advance for indulging them by the thought that they will have been expressions of the absolute’s perfect life.  By escaping from your finite perceptions to the conception of the eternal whole, you can hallow any tendency whatever.  Tho the absolute dictates nothing, it will sanction anything and everything after the fact, for whatever is once there will have to be regarded as an integral member of the universe’s perfection.  Quietism and frenzy thus alike receive the absolute’s permit to exist.  Those of us who are naturally inert may abide in our resigned passivity; those whose energy is excessive may grow more reckless still.  History shows how easily both quietists and fanatics have drawn inspiration from the absolutistic scheme.  It suits sick souls and strenuous ones equally well.

One cannot say thus of pluralism.  Its world is always vulnerable, for some part may go astray; and having no ‘eternal’ edition of it to draw comfort from, its partisans must always feel to some degree insecure.  If, as pluralists, we grant ourselves moral holidays, they can only be provisional breathing-spells, intended to refresh us for the morrow’s fight.  This forms one permanent inferiority of pluralism from the pragmatic point of view.  It has no saving message for incurably sick souls.  Absolutism, among its other messages, has that message, and is the only scheme that has it necessarily.  That constitutes its chief superiority and is the source of its religious power.  That is why, desiring to do it full justice, I valued its aptitude for moral-holiday giving so highly.  Its claims in that way are unique, whereas its affinities with strenuousness are less emphatic than those of the pluralistic scheme.

In the last lecture of my book I candidly admitted this inferiority of pluralism.  It lacks the wide indifference that absolutism shows.  It is bound to disappoint many sick souls whom absolutism can console.  It seems therefore poor tactics for absolutists to make little of this advantage.  The needs of sick souls are surely the most urgent; and believers in the absolute should rather hold it to be great merit in their philosophy that it can meet them so well.