Sentence:  When the reader is a critic, and obliged to respond determinately, he is likely to attack James with some exasperation, as not being properly passionate or properly ethical or properly modern or properly Victorian or as being too properly any of the above. In doing so the critic ceases to unconsciously <WSD>pragmatize</WSD>; teased out of his shell of moral anonymity he reveals as much about his own ethical and passional predilections as about those of James. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To consider, represent, or embody (something unreal) as fact; to materialize.