It is a crucial question, then, in the interpretation of pragmatism, whether the psychological point of view, undoubtedly prevalent in that school, is the only or the ultimate point of view which it admits.  The habit of studying ideas rather than their objects might be simply a matter of emphasis or predilection.  It might merely indicate a special interest in the life of reason, and be an effort, legitimate under any system of philosophy, to recount the stages by which human thought, developing in the bosom of nature, may have reached its present degree of articulation.  I myself, for instance, like to look at things from this angle:  not that I have ever doubted the reality of the natural world, or been able to take very seriously any philosophy that denied it, but precisely because, when we take the natural world for granted, it becomes a possible and enlightening inquiry to ask how the human animal has come to discover his real environment, in so far as he has done so, and what dreams have intervened or supervened in the course of his rational awakening.  On the other hand, a psychological point of view might be equivalent to the idealistic doctrine that the articulation of human thought constitutes the only structure of the universe, and its whole history.  According to this view, pragmatism would seem to be a revised version of the transcendental logic, leaving logic still transcendental, that is, still concerned with the evolution of the categories.  The revision would consist chiefly in this, that empirical verification, utility, and survival would take the place of dialectical irony as the force governing the evolution.  It would still remain possible for other methods of approach than this transcendental pragmatism, for instinct, perhaps, or for revelation, to bring us into contact with things-in-themselves.  A junction might thus be effected with the system of M. Bergson, which would lead to this curious result:  that pragmatic logic would be the method of intelligence, because intelligence is merely a method, useful in practice, for the symbolic and improper representation of reality; while another non-pragmatic method—­sympathy and dream—­would alone be able to put us in possession of direct knowledge and genuine truth.  So that, after all, the pragmatic “truth” of working ideas would turn out to be what it has seemed hitherto to mankind, namely, no real truth, but rather a convenient sort of fiction, which ceases to deceive when once its merely pragmatic value is discounted by criticism.  I remember once putting a question on this subject to Professor James; and his answer was one which I am glad to be able to record.  In relation to his having said that “as far as the past facts go, there is no difference ... be the atoms or be the God their cause,"[7] I asked whether, if God had been the cause, apart from the value of the idea of him in our calculations, his existence would not have made a difference to him, as he would be presumably self-conscious.  “Of course,”