Effort Supposes Resistance.

The Definition Of Definition Is At Bottom Just What The Maxim Of Pragmatism Expresses.

To Suppose Universal Laws Of Nature Capable Of Being Apprehended By The Mind And Yet Having No Reason For Their Special Forms, But Standing Inexplicable And Irrational, Is Hardly A Justifiable Position. Uniformities Are Precisely The Sort Of Facts That Need To Be Accounted For. Law Is Par Excellence The Thing That Wants A Reason. Now The Only Possible Way Of Accounting For The Laws Of Nature, And For Uniformity In General, Is To Suppose Them Results Of Evolution.

Over Against Any Cognition, There Is An Unknown But Knowable Reality; But Over Against All Possible Cognition, There Is Only The Self-contradictory. In Short, Cognizability (in Its Widest Sense) And Being Are Not Merely Metaphysically The Same, But Are Synonymous Terms.

No General Description Of The Mode Of Advance Of Human Knowledge Can Be Just Which Leaves Out Of Account The Social Aspect Of Knowledge. That Is Of Its Very Essence. What A Thing Society Is! The Workingman, With His Trade Union, Knows That. Men And Women Moving In Polite Society Understand It, Still Better. But Bohemians, Like Me, Whose Work Is Done In Solitude, Are Apt To Forget That Not Only Is A Man As A Whole Little Better Than A Brute In Solitude, But Also That Everything That Bears Any Important Meaning To Him Must Receive Its Interpretation From Social Considerations.

The Real, Then, Is That Which, Sooner Or Later, Information And Reasoning Would Finally Result In, And Which Is Therefore Independent Of The Vagaries Of Me And You. Thus, The Very Origin Of The Conception Of Reality Shows That This Conception Essentially Involves The Notion Of A Community, Without Definite Limits, And Capable Of A Definite Increase Of Knowledge.