on ensued and that
these pictures were gravely reasoned about by barristers and surveyed by
jurymen to assess their merits...

In the end it is the indefensible truth that lasts; it lasts because
it works and serves. People come to it and remain and attract other
understanding and enquiring people.

Now when I say I make my beliefs and that I cannot prove them to you and
convince you of them, that does not mean that I make them wantonly and
regardless of fact, that I throw them off as a child scribbles on a
slate. Mr. Ruskin, if I remember rightly, accused Whistler of throwing
a pot of paint in the face of the public,--that was the essence of his
libel. The artistic method in this field of beliefs, as in the field
of visual renderings, is one of great freedom and initiative and great
poverty of test, but of no wantonness; the conditions of rightness are
none the less imperative because they are mysterious and indefinable. I
adopt certain beliefs because I feel the need for them, because I feel
an often quite unanalyzable rightness in them; because the alternative
of a chaotic life distresses me. My belief in them rests upon the fact
that they WORK for me and satisfy my desire for harmony and beauty. They
are arbitrary assumptions, if you will, that I see fit to impose upon my
universe.

But though they are arbitrary, they are not necessarily individual. Just
so far as we all have a common likeness, just so far can we be brought
under the same imperatives to think and believe.

And though they are arbitrary, each day they stand wear and tear, and
each new person they satisfy, is another day and another voice towards
showing they do correspond to something that is so far fact and real.

This is Pragmatism as I conceive it; the abandonment of infinite
assumptions, the extension of the experimental spirit to all human
interests.

1.12. SUMMARY.

In concluding this first Book let me give a summary of the principal
points of what has gone before.

I figure the mind of man as an imperfect being obtaining knowledge by
imperfect eyesight, imperfect hearing and so forth; who must needs
walk manfully and patiently, exercising will and making choices and
determining things between the mysteries of external and internal fact.

Essentially man's mind moves within limits depending upon his individual
character and experience. These limits constitute what Herbart called
his "circle of thought," and they differ for ev