[530] a matter of disruption of both, and this has happened on a worldwide scale and is happening in individuals all the time. Therefore this solution cannot be accepted either. Is there another solution to which we can look? There is the pragmatic^a solution, which is practically the solution in this country. What is the character of this solution? It has similarity to the totalitarian solution, insofar as it denies a universal, embracing, rational principle for ethics,

in contrast to the natural law of the Roman Church. On the other hand, it does not bind the ethical contents to a special situation, the situation of a special group, but it binds it to the EXPERIENCE, as pragmatism calls it. When pragmatists---I have experienced myself---are attacked BECAUSE of the relativism ^bimplied in the pragmatic principle, and the DANGER of creating an empty space into which, once upon a time, the demonic forces of the totalitarian^c movements may enter, then they answer: this is not true, because EXPERIENCE SHOWS us what is good and what is not good, or should be or should not be, or correspondence to the moral ultimate and what not.--- Now then, of course, one has to make a sociological statement, which is a statement about the state of mind in THIS country, [and] only in this country---perhaps partially in England, and the British Commonwealth generally---namely that pragmatism works because traditions work which come from somewhere else and are NOT derived from the pragmatic experience itself. This is my analysis of the possibility of pragmatism^d in this country. One can permit oneself to be pragmatic and to derive ethical principles from the so-called experience---whatever this may be---in ethical respect, IF ONE KNOWS that this experience will remain within the boundary of pure reason, or,

in this case, within the boundary of good, denominational, Protestant traditions [little laughter], which are not yet undermined to such a degree as they were in Europe, where they didn't help any more, where the pragmatic principle in terms of the philosophy of life was introduced into European and especially German thinking. Now this shows that it is NOT the pragmatic principle as such, which gives the contents,