hardly be said to experience. Clearly I experience whatever I remember, but some things which I
do not explicitly remember may have set up habits which still persist. The burnt child fears the
fire, even if he has no recollection of the occasion on which he was burnt. I think we may say that
an event is "experienced" when it sets up a habit. (Memory is one kind of habit.) It is obvious that
habits are only set up in living organisms. A burnt poker does not fear the fire, however often it is
made red-hot. On common-sense grounds, therefore, we shall say that "experience" is not
coextensive with the "stuff" of the world. I do not myself see any valid reason for departing from
common sense on this point.
Except in this matter of "experience," I find myself in agreement with James's radical empiricism.
It is otherwise with his pragmatism and "will to believe." The latter, especially, seems to me to be
designed to afford a specious but sophistical defence of certain religious dogmas--a defence,
moreover, which no whole-hearted believer could accept.
The Will to Believe was published in 1896; Pragmatism, a New Name for Some Old Ways of
Thinking was published in 1907. The doctrine of the latter is an amplification of that of the
former.
The Will to Believe argues that we are often compelled, in practice, to take decisions where no
adequate theoretical grounds for a decision exist, for even to do nothing is still a decision.
Religious matters, James says, come under this head; we have, he maintains, a right to adopt a
believing attitude although "our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced." This is
essentially the attitude of Rousseau's Savoyard vicar, but James's development is novel.
The moral duty of veracity, we are told, consists of two coequal precepts: "believe truth," and
"shun error." The sceptic wrongly attends only to the second, and thus fails to believe various
truths which a less cautious man will believe. If believing truth and avoiding error are of equal
importance, I may do well, when presented with an alternative, to believe one of the possibilities
at will, for then I have an even chance of believing truth, whereas I have none if I suspend
judgement.
The ethic that would result if this doctrine were taken seriously is a very odd one. Suppose I meet
a stranger in the-train, and I ask myself: "Is his name Ebenezer Wilkes Smith?" If I admit that I do