esis the notion that it is the permanent form of the world is
what I call a radical empiricist. For him the crudity of experience
remains an eternal element thereof. There is no possible point of view
from which the world can appear an absolutely single fact. Real
possibilities, real indeterminations, real beginnings, real ends, real
evil, real crises, catastrophes, and escapes, a real God, and a real
moral life, just as common-sense conceives these things, may remain in
empiricism as conceptions which that philosophy gives up the attempt
either to 'overcome' or to reinterpret in monistic form.

Many of my professionally trained _confreres_ will smile at the
irrationalism of this view, and at the artlessness of my essays in
point of technical form. But they should be taken as illustrations of
the radically empiricist attitude rather than as argumentations for its
validity. That admits meanwhile of {x} being argued in as technical a
shape as any one can desire, and possibly I may be spared to do later a
share of that work. Meanwhile these essays seem to light up with a
certain dramatic reality the attitude itself, and make it visible
alongside of the higher and lower dogmatisms between which in the pages
of philosophic history it has generally remained eclipsed from sight.

The first four essays are largely concerned with defending the
legitimacy of religious faith. To some rationalizing readers such
advocacy will seem a sad misuse of one's professional position.
Mankind, they will say, is only too prone to follow faith
unreasoningly, and needs no preaching nor encouragement in that
direction. I quite agree that what mankind at large most lacks is
criticism and caution, not faith. Its cardinal weakness is to let
belief follow recklessly upon lively conception, especially when the
conception has instinctive liking at its back. I admit, then, that
were I addressing the Salvation Army or a miscellaneous popular crowd
it would be a misuse of opportunity to preach the liberty of believing
as I have in these pages preached it. What such audiences most need is
that their faiths should be broken up and ventilated, that the
northwest wind of science should get into them and blow their
sickliness and barbarism away. But academic audiences, fed already on
science, have a very different need. Paralysis of their native
capacity for faith and timorous _abulia_ in the religious field are
their special forms of mental weak