know things as a whole, or as they are eternally, if there is
anything eternal in them, is not only beyond our powers, but would
prove worthless, and perhaps even fatal to our lives. Ideas are not
mirrors, they are weapons; their function is to prepare us to meet
events, as future experience may unroll them. Those ideas that
disappoint us are false ideas; those to which events are true are true
themselves.

This may seem a very utilitarian view of the mind; and I confess I
think it a partial one, since the logical force of beliefs and ideas,
their truth or falsehood as assertions, has been overlooked
altogether, or confused with the vital force of the material processes
which these ideas express. It is an external view only, which marks
the place and conditions of the mind in nature, but neglects its
specific essence; as if a jewel were defined as a round hole in a
ring. Nevertheless, the more materialistic the pragmatist's theory of
the mind is, the more vitalistic his theory of nature will have to
become. If the intellect is a device produced in organic bodies to
expedite their processes, these organic bodies must have interests and
a chosen direction in their life; otherwise their life could not be
expedited, nor could anything be useful to it. In other words--and
this is a third point at which the philosophy of William James has
played havoc with the genteel tradition, while ostensibly defending
it--nature must be conceived anthropomorphically and in psychological
terms. Its purposes are not to be static harmonies, self-unfolding
destinies, the logic of spirit, the spirit of logic, or any other
formal method and abstract law; its purposes are to be concrete
endeavours, finite efforts of souls living in an environment which
they transform and by which they, too, are affected. A spirit, the
divine spirit as much as the human, as this new animism conceives it,
is a romantic adventurer. Its future is undetermined. Its scope, its
duration, and the quality of its life are all contingent. This spirit
grows; it buds and sends forth feelers, sounding the depths around for
such other centres of force or life as may exist there. It has a vital
momentum, but no predetermined goal. It uses its past as a
stepping-stone, or rather as a diving-board, but has an absolutely
fresh will at each moment to plunge this way or that into the unknown.
The universe is an experiment; it is unfinished. It has no ultimate or
total nature, beca