The  oneness  and  the  manyness  of  it  thus  obtain  in  respects  which
can  be  separately  named. It  is  neither  a  universal  pure  and  simple
nor  a  multiverse  pure  and  simple. And  its  various  manners  of  being
one  suggest,  for  their  accurate  ascertainment,  so  many  distinct  pro-
grams of  scientific  work. Thus  the  pragmatic  question,  'What  is
the  oneness  known  as?  What  practical  difference  will  it  make?'
saves  us  all  from  feverish  excitement  over  it  as  a  principle  of  sub-
limity and  carries  us  forward  into  the  stream  of  experience  with  a
cool  head."  What's  the  use  of  talking  any  more  about  philosophy,
seeking  relations  between  phenomena,  between  ideas,  between  sciences  ?


78  ANTI-PRAGMATISM

no  unity  at  the  starting  point,  how  should  there  be
such  anywhere?  With  this  "method"  every  want
that  your  "  temperament "  invites  you  to  satisfy  be-
comes the  point  of  departure  and  the  nucleus  of  a
little  system  by  itself,  and  it  would  be  very  surpris-
ing if  all  these  little  systems  built  up  at  random  out
of  all  the  experiences  and  inspirations  of  the  famous
"  temperament "  should  go,  of  themselves  and  judi-
ciously, fit  themselves  together  to  form  a  grand  phil-
osophic whole  (that  is  a  co-ordinated  whole). At
the  beck  of  that  enchanter's  wand  shall  ideas  mutu-
ally contradictory,  when  in  different  historical  sys-
tems, cease  to  contradict  each  other  when  they  are
introduced  pell-mell  into  pragmatism  ?  That  is  what
we  should  like  to  know. Every  one  understands  that
in  adopting  any  portion  of  a  theory  we  implicitly
adopt  the  premises  on  which  it  is  based. In  order
to  get  the  constituent  parts  of  pragmatism  to  hold
together  requires,  under  these  conditions,  prodigies
of  skill,  subtlety,  mental  acrobatism. Intellectualism,
the  simple  reason,  no  longer  suffices. After  every
theory  that  you  have  established  you  have  to  refo-
cus  your  instrument  or  your  method  upon  the  next
problem  you  tackle. Professor  James  himself  shall
furnish  us  luminous  examples  of  this  "  method."
Let  us  pass  rapidly  in  review  three  of  his  theories.^

If  we  see  a  relation,  very  well;  if  we  don't  see  it,  it  is  very  well  again;
in  fact  it 's  better,  for  it  saves  us  a  little  of  that  thought  which  weighs
so  heavy  on  M. Papini's  mind. (Article  cited,  p. 