The Will To Believe

"The faith that truth exists, and thatour minds can find it may be held in two ways. We may talk of the empiricist way and of the absolutist way of believing in truth. The Absoluststs in this matter say that we not only can attain to knowing truth, but we can know when we have attained to know it; while the empiticists think that although we mayattain it, we cannot infallibly know when." (77)

William James is saying that there are two ways that faith exists in truth: the absolutist way of believing truth seems to be the way that scientists would attain truth. They would have a hypothesis and have faith in their hypothesis, knowing that it will work. Then they would conduct experiments to support their hypotheis and prove that they were right. The experiment matching the hypothesis is reassuring that they know for certain.

James also talks about moral questions, options for religion, and the rule of thinking. Next he describes what prgamatism is: common sense things or general concrete things that are true.