is true although in fact A does not exist. I have always found that the hypothesis of Santa Claus
"works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word"; therefore "Santa Claus exists" is true,
although Santa Claus does not exist. James says (I repeat): "If the hypothesis of God works
satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true." This simply omits as unimportant the
question whether God really is in His heaven; if He is a useful hypothesis, that is enough. God the
Architect of the Cosmos is forgotten; all that is remembered is belief in God, and its effects upon
the creatures inhabiting our petty planet. No wonder the Pope condemned the pragmatic fence of
religion.
We come here to a fundamental difference between James's religious outlook and that of religious
people in the past. James is interested in religion as a human phenomenon, but shows little interest
in the objects which religion contemplates. He wants people to be happy, and if belief in God
makes them happy let them believe in Him. This, so far, is only benevolence, not philosophy; it
becomes philosophy when it is said that if the belief makes them happy it is "true." To the man
who desires an object of worship this is unsatisfactory. He is not concerned to say, "If I believed in
God I should be happy"; he is concerned to say, "I believe in God and therefore I am happy." And
when he believes in God, he believes in Him as he believes in the existence of Roosevelt or
Churchill or Hitler; God, for him, is an actual Being, not merely a human idea which has good
effects. It is this genuine belief that has the good effects, not James's emasculate substitute. It is
obvious that if I say " Hitler exists" I do not mean "the effects of believing that Hitler exists are
good." And to the genuine believer the same is true of God.
James's doctrine is an attempt to build a superstructure of belief upon a foundation of scepticism,
and like all such attempts it is dependent on fallacies. In his case the fallacies spring from an
attempt to ignore all extra-human facts. Berkeleian idealism combined with scepticism causes him
to substitute belief in God for God, and to pretend that this will do just as well. But this is only a
form of the subjectivistic madness which is characteristic of most modern philosophy.