-and, disregarding all other existences,
they pursue the kind of reality they desire because of its religious or
moral or aesthetic value. For there could be no greater mistake than to
suppose that the common antithesis between 'reality' and the 'un-real'
usually means the same thing as the distinction between what 'exists'
and what is absolutely non-existent. On the contrary, it is usually a
judgment of value. We may say that the 'haunted' house is real and the
'ghost' is not; but as an hallucination the ghost is real enough. Utopia
is unreal for the politician, but exists as an ideal for the theorist.
The Platonist treats our physical world of sight and touch, which we
think the most real of all, as a mere illusion compared to the 'Ideas'
of his metaphysical world. The thinker who declares he wants to know all
about 'reality' does not mean that he wishes to investigate _everything_
which in any sense exists, but that he wishes to know what _he_
considers _best worth knowing_--and this, of course, implies a personal
valuation, a purged and expurgated extract, which will not offend his
taste. So all philosophies are, in fact, selective. Even the more
conscientious rationalists show very little anxiety to include in their
intellectual scheme a knowledge of their opponents' opinions--indeed,
they seem to think that the existence of such facts may be made
dependent wholly on their will to recognize them. An exposition of
Pragmatism is for them a 'reality' which does not count: it is not worth
knowing about. And this is only natural, after all. For 'reality,' the
object of the mind's search, is always a selection, conceived after the
likeness of the heart's desire, the product of a human purpose.

To recognize this is to appreciate the wisdom of Humanism's refusal to
treat the world, for good or bad, as a given and completed whole. For
not only is what we call the real world always a selection from a larger
whole from which we have ventured to exclude great masses of
irrelevance, but every day brings fresh experience, and may bring fresh
enlightenment. And since man has always an interest in improving his
condition, is it not futile to forbid him to re-make his world as beat
he can? Why prematurely claim to have reached finality, when unexpected
novelties may shatter any system before it is even completed? Our world
is plastic, it is most 'really' what we can make of it, and the process
of our making is not ended. Whether a