Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Additional
notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM
AGENTS
AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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PRAGMATISM
AND
IDEALISM
BY
WILLIAM CALDWELL, M.A., D.SC.[EDINR.]
SIR WILLIAM MACDONALD PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY,
McGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1913
PREFACE
What is attempted in this book is an examination of the Pragmatist
philosophy in its relations to older and newer tendencies in the
thought and practice of mankind.
While a good deal has been written within the last ten years upon
Pragmatism, the issue that it represents is still an open one--to
judge at least from recent books and reviews, and from recent official
discussions. And there seems to be a favourable opportunity for a
general account of the whole subject and for an estimate of its
significance.
In the opening chapter and elsewhere, both in the text and in the
footnotes, I have put together some things about the development and
the affiliations of Pragmatism, and of pragmatist tendencies, that may
not be altogether new to the professional student. Such a presentation,
or general conspectus, I have found to be a necessity in the way of a
basis both for discussion and for rational comprehension. Taken along
with the original pronouncements of James and his _confrères_ it
affords an indication of the philosophy to which the pragmatists would
fain attain, and of the modification of rationalistic philosophy they
would fain effect.
The chapter upon Pragmatism as Americanism is put forth in the
most tentative spirit possible, and I have thought more than once
of withholding it. Something in this connexion, however, is, in my
opinion, needed to cause us to regard the pragmatist philosophy as
resting upon a very real tendency of the civilized world of to-day--a
tendency that is affecting us all whether we like it or not.
The chapter upon Pragmatism and Anglo-Hegelian Rationalism is also
offered with some degree of reservation and misgiving, for, like
many of my contemporaries, I owe nearly everything in the way of my
introduction to philosophy to the great Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian
movement. In its place, I had some months ago a more general
chapter upon Pragmatism and Rationalism, containing the results of
material that I had been elaborating upon the development of English
Neo-Hegelianism. At the last moment I substituted what is here offered
upon the significant high-water output of Hegelianism represented in
Dr. Bosanquet’s Edinburgh Gifford Lectures.
In regard to the note upon the Pragmatist elements in the philosophy of
Bergson I ought, perhaps, to say that I kept away from Bergson’s last
two books until I had written out what had been growing up in my own
mind about the activism of Pragmatism and its relations to Idealism.
I have found confirmation for much of my own thought in the teaching
of this remarkable and significant thinker, and I regret the partial
representation of it that is here submitted.
Having crossed the ocean for the printing of my book, I have in some
cases lost or misplaced references that I intended to use or to verify.
For this I crave the indulgence of readers and critics.
I am indebted to the following gentlemen for much kind help and
criticism in the revision of my manuscript and proof-sheets for the
press: my brother, the Rev. Victor Caldwell, M.A., of Patna, Ayrshire;
Professor John Laird of Queen’s University, Belfast; Professor James
Seth of the University of Edinburgh; Professor P. T. Lafleur of
M’Gill University. I also owe much in this same connexion to recent
conversations with Professors A. Lalande and D. Parodi of Paris, upon
Pragmatism and contemporary philosophy generally.
LONDON, _September 1913_.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
NOTE ON THE MEANING OF “PRAGMATISM” 21
II. PRAGMATISM AND THE PRAGMATIST MOVEMENT 23
III. SOME FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS 58
IV. PRAGMATISM AND HUMAN ACTIVITY 93
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IV.--PHILOSOPHY AND THE
ACTIVITY-EXPERIENCE 109
V. CRITICAL 116
VI. PRAGMATISM AS HUMANISM 141
VII. PRAGMATISM AS AMERICANISM 168
VIII. PRAGMATISM AND ANGLO-HEGELIAN RATIONALISM 196
IX. PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON 234
CONCLUDING REMARKS 262
INDEX 267
PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Pragmatism has by this time received so much attention in the
reflective literature of the day that any writer upon the subject may
now fairly presume upon a general acquaintance with its main principles
and contentions. Indeed, it is probable that most thinking people may
be credited with the ability to have formed some sort of judgment of
their own about a philosophy whose main contention is that true ideas
are working ideas, and that truth itself, like a creed or a belief, is
simply a working valuation of reality. There are still, however, some
things to be said, at least in English, upon the place and the meaning
of Pragmatism in the philosophical reconstruction that is generally
felt to be so necessary to-day.
As far as the external signs of any such vital relation between
Pragmatism and our recent academic philosophy are concerned, the reader
may be aware, to begin with, that there have been many important
concessions[1] made to pragmatists by such representative rationalists
as Mr. Bradley and Professor Taylor, not to speak of others,[2]
and Pragmatism has certainly had a very powerful effect upon the
professional philosophy of both England and Germany, judging at least
from the extent to which many of the more prominent representatives of
philosophy in these countries have apparently been compelled to accord
to it at least an official recognition.[3]
Pragmatism, again, in consequence of the different receptions that it
has met with at the hands of its friends and its foes, has undergone
various phases of exposition and of modification, although it has
not yet, nor is it on the whole likely to have, a philosophical
output comparable to that of Idealism. It has become more and more
conscious of its own affiliations and relations to older, and to
broader doctrines, declaring itself, in the hands of Professor James
and his friends, to be but a new name for older ways of thinking. And
it has succeeded, in a measure, in clearing itself from liability to
the superficial interpretation that it met with a few years ago, when
it was scoffed at for teaching that you may believe “what you like,”
for speaking, for example, as if the “theoretical” consequences of
truth were not to be considered as well as the “practical.” Although
still resting in the main upon an outspoken declaration of war against
Rationalism, it is no longer blind to the place and the value of
thought or the “concept,” in the matter of the interpretation of our
experience.
Pragmatism, as the theory is generally understood, rests in the main
upon the work of three men, Professors James and Dewey of America,
and Dr. Schiller of Oxford. The fact, along doubtless with other
things, that these men have ere now been spoken of as occupying a
right, a left, and a centre in the new movement, is presumably an
indication that it has already received its highest theoretical
expression--presumably in the California pamphlet of Professor James,
or in the famous _Popular Science Monthly_ article of Peirce, canonized
as the patron saint of the movement by James.
Whether this be so or not, it has been in the main the work of James to
set forth the meaning of Pragmatism as a philosophy of everyday life,
as the theory of the attitude of man as man to the world in which he
finds himself. Dr. Schiller, again, it is claimed, has done much to set
forth Pragmatism to the world as an essentially humanistic philosophy,
recognizing and providing for the rights of faith and of feeling in
determining our beliefs and our theories about things. This philosophy
has “much in common with what in other quarters is called Personalism.”
It cannot, however, be differentiated so sharply as Dr. Schiller
apparently would have us believe from the many manifestations of this
philosophy that abound in modern times, from Fichte, and from Lotze,
down to men who are still living--Eucken and others. The ingenious
Professor Dewey, moreover, is the champion of the scientific, or the
empirical, or the “instrumental” method in philosophy, and has worked
hard and successfully at the reform which he thinks must take place in
logical and philosophical conceptions when interpreted as simply tools
or devices for the economy of our thought.
When, in pragmatist fashion, we seek to judge of Pragmatism by this
last-mentioned matter of its results, by the things it has enabled its
advocates to accomplish, we find that we may, to begin with, speak in
the following terms of the work of Professor James. He has certainly
indicated how the pragmatist method may be applied to the solution of
some of the ordinary difficulties of reflective thought; about, for
example, the nature of matter or the nature of the soul, or about the
old opposition between the “one” and the “many,” about such concepts
as “thing,” “kinds,” “time,” “space,” the “fancied,” the “real,” and
so on. In all such cases an answer, he holds, is obtained by putting,
say, the initial difficulty in the following form: “What practical
difference can it make now that the world should be run by matter or by
spirit?”
A fair illustration of his meaning here would be his own characteristic
attitude, so far as the philosophy of religion is concerned, to the
so-called “theistic” proofs that have been part of the stock in trade
of rational theology. A “necessary being” and a “whole of truth”
and the “Absolute”[4] are not, he would hold, what the average man
understands by God; they have hardly any perceptible effect upon
life and conduct--the all-important matter in the thought of God as
he conceives it. Only those notions, he would have it, which can
be interpreted by the thought of the “difference” they make to our
practical conduct are real notions at all--“Providence,” say, or “God”
as the guarantor of the reality and the permanence of the moral order,
and so on. The “soul,” again, he would hold, “is good for just so much
and no more.” And a similar thing, too, would be true about Berkeley’s
“matter,” or about the “matter” of the materialists.[5] This latter,
for instance, cannot possibly do all it is claimed to be able to do in
the way of an explanation of the order of the world and the phenomena
of life.
Then again, James has written a great many pages upon the so-called
deeper view of human nature (as inclusive of will and “emotion” in
addition to mere thought) taken by Pragmatism in comparison with that
entertained by Rationalism. We shall have occasion to return to this
point.
He has made it clear, too, that it was an unfair interpretation of
Pragmatism to take it as a plea for believing what you like, as was
said above. Our experience, he puts it, must be consistent, the “parts
with the parts,” and the “parts with the whole.” Beliefs must not clash
with other beliefs, the mind being wedged tightly between the coercion
of the sensible order and that of the ideal order. By “consequences,”
too, he contends we may mean intellectual or theoretical consequences
as well as practical consequences.
He has also, along with his brother-pragmatists, raised the question
of the nature of Truth, attaining to such important results as the
following: (1) there is no such thing as pure truth, or ready-made
truth; (2) the “copy-theory” of truth is unintelligible.[6] We shall
later be obliged to examine the more controversial positions that (3)
truth is not an end in itself, but a means towards vital satisfaction;
(4) truth is the “expedient” in the way of thinking, as the right is
the expedient[7] in the way of acting, and so on.
Further, Professor James finds that Pragmatism leaves us with the
main body of our common-sense beliefs [Peirce holds practically the
same thing], such as the belief in “freedom”--as a “promise and a
relief,” he adds; and the belief in the religious outlook upon life,
in so far as it “works.” This is the attitude and the tenor of the
well-known books on The _Will to Believe_ and _The Varieties of
Religious Experience_.[8] “Our acts, our turning-places, where we
seem to ourselves to make ourselves and grow, are the parts of the
world to which we are closest, the parts of which our knowledge is
the most intimate and complete. Why should we not take them at their
face-value?” And yet, as against this attitude, Professor James
elsewhere finds himself unable to believe “that our human experience
is the highest form of experience extant in the universe.” It is the
emergence of many such incoherences in his writings that gives to
his pragmatist philosophy of religion a subjective and temperamental
character, and makes it seem to be lacking in any objective basis. “If
radically tough, the hurly-burly of the sensible facts of nature will
be enough for you, and you will need no religion at all. If radically
tender, you will take up with the more monistic form of religion:
the pluralistic form--that is, reliance on possibilities that are
not necessities--will not seem to offer you security enough.”[9] He
“inclines,” on the whole, to “Meliorism,” treating satisfaction as
neither necessary nor impossible; the pragmatist lives in “the world of
possibilities.”
These words show clearly how difficult it is to pin down Professor
James to any single intelligible philosophy of belief, if belief be
interpreted as in any sense a “commerce” of the soul with objective
realities, as something more than a merely generous faith in the
gradual perfection or betterment of human society.
“Religious experience,” as he puts it in his _Pluralistic Universe_,
“peculiarly so called, needs, in my opinion, to be carefully considered
and interpreted by every one who aspires to reason out a more complete
philosophy.” In this same book, it is declared, however, on the one
hand, that “we have outgrown the old theistic orthodoxy, the God of
our popular Christianity being simply one member of a pluralistic
system”; and yet, on the other hand, and with equal emphasis, that
“we finite minds may simultaneously be conscious with one another in a
supernatural intelligence.”[10]
The book on _The Meaning of Truth_ seems to return, in the main, to the
American doctrine of the strenuous life as the only courageous, and
therefore true, attitude to beliefs, as the life that contains, in the
plenitude of its energizing, the answer to all questions. “Pluralism
affords us,” it openly confesses, “no moral holidays, and it is unable
to let loose quietistic raptures, and this is a serious deficiency in
the pluralistic philosophy which we have professed.” Professor James
here again attacks Absolutism in the old familiar manner, as somehow
unequal to the complexity of things, or the pulsating process of the
world, casting himself upon the philosophy of experience, and upon
the evident reality of the “many” and of the endless variety of the
relations of things, in opposition to the abstract simplicity of the
“one,” and the limited range of a merely logical, or mathematical,
manner of conceiving of reality. “The essential service of Humanism,
as I conceive the situation, is to have seen that, though one part of
experience may lean upon another part to make it what it is in any
one of several aspects in which it may be considered, experience as
a whole is self-sustaining and leans on nothing.... “It gets rid of
the standing problems of Monism and of other metaphysical systems and
paradoxes.”[11]
Professor James exhibits, however, at the same time a very imperfect
conception of philosophy, holding that it gives us, in general, “no new
range of practical power,” ignoring, as it were, the difference between
philosophy and poetry and religion and mere personal enthusiasm.
And he leaves the whole question of the first principles of both
knowledge and conduct practically unsettled. These things are to him
but conceptual tools,[12] and “working” points of departure for our
efforts, and there seems in his books to be no way of reducing them to
any kind of system. And he makes, lastly, a most unsuccessful attempt
at a theory of reality. Reality is to him sometimes simply a moving
equilibrium of experience, the “flux” we have already referred to;
sometimes the fleeting generations of men who have thought out for us
all our philosophies and sciences and cults and varied experiences,
and sometimes the “common-sense world in which we find things partly
joined and partly disjoined.” It is sometimes, too, other things
even than these. In a chapter of the book upon _Pragmatism_[13] it
is stated in italics that “reality is, in general, what truths have
to take account of,” and that it has three parts: (1) “the flux of
our sensations,” and (2) the “relations that obtain between our
sensations, or between their copies in our minds,” and (3) “the
previous truths of which every new inquiry takes account.” Then again,
in _A Pluralistic Universe_,[14] it is declared that “there may
ultimately never be an All-form at all, that the substance of reality
may never get totally collected ... and that a distributive form of
reality, the Each-form, is logically as acceptable and empirical
and probable as the All-form.” This is the theory of the outspoken
“radical empiricism”[15] which is the contention of the volume upon
_The Meaning of Truth_, the main effort of which seems to be to show
again that the world is still in the process of making. It has the
additional drawback of bringing Pragmatism down not only to the level
of radical empiricism, but to that of common-sense realism or dualism
[the belief in the two independent realities of matter and mind], and
to that of the “copy-theory”[16] of truth, from which both Pragmatism
and Radical Empiricism are especially supposed to deliver us. “I will
say here again, for the sake of emphasis, that the existence of the
object ... is the only reason, in innumerable cases, why the idea does
work successfully.... Both Dewey and I hold firmly ... to objects
independent of our own judgments.”[17] Much of all this is, no doubt,
like surrendering philosophy altogether.
In the case of Dr. Schiller, we may notice first his frequent and
successful exhibition of the extent to which human activity enters into
the constitution not only of “truth,” but of “reality,” of what we mean
by reality. This is interwoven in his books with his whole philosophy
of truth as something merely human, as “dependent upon human purposes,”
as a “valuation” expressive of the satisfactory, or the unsatisfactory,
nature of the contents of “primary reality.” It is interwoven, too,
with his doctrine that reality is essentially a ὕλη, something that is
still in the making, something that human beings can somehow re-make
and make perfect. Then this position about truth and reality is used
by him, as by James, as a ground of attack against Absolutism, with
its notion of a “pre-existing ideal” of knowledge and reality, as
already existing in a super-sensible world, that descends magically
into the passively recipient soul of man. There is no such thing, he
claims, as absolute truth, and the conception of an “absolute reality”
is both futile and pernicious. Absolutism, too, has an affinity
to Solipsism,[18] the difficulties of which it can escape only by
self-elimination.
Then Absolutism is, Schiller continues, “essentially irreligious,”[19]
although it was fostered at first in England for essentially religious
purposes.[20] It has developed there now at last, he reminds us, a
powerful left[21] wing which, as formerly in Germany, has opened a
quarrel with theology. In Absolutism, the two phases of Deity--God
as moral principle, and God as an intellectual principle--“fall
apart,” and absolutist metaphysic has really no connexion with genuine
religion. Humanism can “renew Hegelianism” by treating the making
of truth as also the making of reality. Freedom is real, and may
possibly “pervade the universe.”[22] All truth implies belief, and
it is obviously one of the merits of Pragmatism to bring truth and
reason together. Beliefs and ideas and wishes are really essential and
integral features in real knowing, and if knowing, as above, really
transforms our experience, they must be treated as “real forces,” which
cannot be ignored by philosophy.[23]
Against all this would-be positive, or constructive, philosophy we
must, however, record the fact that the pragmatism of Dr. Schiller
breaks down altogether in the matter of the recognition of a
distinction between the “discovering” of reality and the “making” of
reality. And despite the ingenuity of his essay in the first edition
of _Humanism_ upon “Activity and Substance,”[24] there is not in his
writings, any more than in those of James, any coherent or adequate
theory of reality. And this is the case whether we think of the
“primary reality” upon which we human beings are said to “react,” in
our knowledge and in our action, or of the supreme reality of God’s
existence, of which such an interesting speculative account is given
in the essay referred to. Nor is there in Dr. Schiller, any more than
in James, any adequate conception, either of philosophy as a whole,
or of the theory of knowledge, or of the relation of Pragmatism as a
“method” (it is modestly claimed to be only such, but the position is
not adhered to) to philosophy as such.[25] “For the pragmatic theory of
knowledge initial principles are literally ἀρχαί, mere starting-points
variously, arbitrarily, casually selected, from which we hope to try
to advance to something better. Little we care what their credentials
may be.... And as far as the future is concerned, systems of philosophy
will abound as before, and will be as various as ever, but they will
probably be more brilliant in colouring and more attractive in their
form, for they will certainly have to be put forward and acknowledged
as works of art that bear the impress of a unique and individual
soul.”[26]
The main result of pragmatist considerations in the case of Professor
Dewey is perhaps that reconsideration of the problems of logic
and knowledge in the light of the facts of genetic and functional
psychology which has now become fairly general on the part of English
and American students of philosophy. It is through his influence
generally that pragmatists seem always to be talking about the way in
which we “arrive at” our beliefs, about ideas as “instruments” for the
interpretation and arrangement of our experience, about the “passage”
from cognitive expectation to “fulfilment,” about ideas as “plans of
action” and mental habits, about the growth and the utility of the
truth, about the “instrumental” character of all our thinking, about
beliefs as more fundamental than knowledge, and so on.
Professor Dewey has also written many more or less popular, but none
the less highly valuable, short studies upon the application of an
instrumentalist conception of philosophy to education and to social
questions. One of his last pieces of service in this connection is a
volume in which he associates Pragmatism with the general revolution
effected in the entire range of the mental and moral sciences by
Darwinism, with the present tendency in philosophy to turn away from
ultimate questions to specific problems, and with the reform which, in
his opinion, is necessary in our educational ideals[27] generally.
These three leading exponents of Pragmatism may be regarded as
meeting the objections to philosophy urged respectively by the “man
of affairs,” by the “mystical, religious” man, and by the “man of
science.”[28] By this it is meant that the man of affairs will find
in James an exposition of philosophy as the study of different ways
of looking at the world; the mystical, religious man will find
in Schiller a treatment of philosophy as the justification of an
essentially spiritual philosophy of life; and that the scientific man
will find in the writings of Dewey and his associates a treatment of
philosophy as nothing else than an extension into the higher regions of
thought of the same experimental and hypothetical method with which he
is already familiar in the physical sciences.
In this version of the work of the three leading pragmatists it
is assumed, of course, that the pragmatist philosophy is the only
philosophy that can show to the average man that philosophy can really
do something useful--can “bake bread,” if you will, can give to a man
the food of a man. It is assumed, too, that it is the only philosophy
which proceeds scientifically, that is to say, by means of observation
and of hypotheses that “work,” and by subsequent deduction and by
“verification.” And again, that it is the only philosophy that gives
to man the realities upon which he can base his aspirations or his
faith in distinction, that is to say, from the mere abstractions of
Rationalism in any form.
By way of a few quotations illustrative of the fundamental contentions
of the pragmatists, we may select the following: “Ideas become true
just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with
other parts of our experience, to summarise them and get about among
them by conceptional short-cuts instead of following the interminable
succession of particular phenomena. Any idea upon which we can ride, so
to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part
of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily,
working securely, simplifying, saving labour--is true for just so much,
true in so far forth, true instrumentally.”[29] “The true is the name
of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good for
definite and assignable reasons.”[30] From Professor Dewey: “Thinking
is a kind of activity which we perform at specific need, just as at
other times we engage in other sorts of activity, as converse with a
friend, draw a plan for a house, take a walk, eat a dinner, purchase
a suit of clothes, etc. etc. The measure of its success, the standard
of its validity is precisely the degree in which thinking disposes of
the difficulty and allows us to proceed with the more direct modes
of experiencing, that are henceforth possessed of more assured and
deepened value.”[31] From Dr. Schiller’s book, _Studies in Humanism_:
“Pragmatism is the doctrine that when an assertion claims truth, its
consequences are always used to test its claims; that (2) the truth
of an assertion depends on its application; that (3) the meaning
of a rule lies in its application; that (4) all meaning depends on
purpose; that (5) all mental life is purposive. It [Pragmatism] must
constitute itself into (6) a systematic protest against all ignoring
of the purposiveness of actual knowing, alike whether it is abstracted
from for the sake of the imaginary, pure, or absolute reason of the
rationalists, or eliminated for the sake of an equally imaginary or
pure mechanism of the naturalists. So conceived, we may describe it as
(7) a conscious application to logic of a teleological psychology which
implies ultimately a voluntaristic metaphysics.”
From these citations, and from the descriptive remarks of the
preceding two paragraphs, we may perhaps be enabled to infer that our
Anglo-American Pragmatism has progressed from the stage of (1) a mere
method of discussing truth and thinking in relation to the problem
of philosophy as a whole, (2) that of a more or less definite and
detailed criticism of the rationalism that overlooks the practical,
or purposive, character of most of our knowledge, to that of (3) a
humanistic or “voluntaristic” or “personalistic” philosophy, with
its many different associations and affiliations.[32] One of the
last developments, for example, of this pragmatist humanism is Dr.
Schiller’s association of philosophy with the metaphysics of evolution,
with the attempt to find the goal of the world-process and of human
history in a changeless society of perfected individuals.
We shall immediately see, however, that this summary description of the
growth of Pragmatism has to be supplemented by a recognition of (1)
some of the different phases Pragmatism has assumed on the continent of
Europe, (2) the different phases that may be detected in the reception
or criticism accorded to it in different countries, and (3) some of the
results of the pragmatist movement upon contemporary philosophy. All
these things have to do with the making of the complex thing that we
think of as Pragmatism and the pragmatist movement.
A NOTE ON THE MEANING OF “PRAGMATISM”
(1) “The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by
the application of the following maxim for obtaining clearness of
apprehension: ‘Consider what effects that might conceivably have
practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have.
Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of
the object’” (Baldwin’s _Philosophical Dictionary_, vol. ii. p. 321).
[We can see from this citation that the application of its formulæ
about “consequences” to metaphysics, or philosophy generally, must be
considered as a part, or aspect, of the pragmatist philosophy.]
(2) “The doctrine that the whole meaning of a conception expresses
itself in practical consequences; consequences either in the shape of
conduct to be recommended, or in that of experiences to be expected,
if the conception be true; which consequences would be different, if
it were untrue, and must be different from the consequences by which
the meaning of other conceptions is in turn expressed. If a second
conception should not appear to have other consequence, then it
must be really only the first conception under a different name. In
methodology, it is certain that to trace and compare their respective
consequences is an admirable way of establishing the different meanings
of different conceptions” (_ibid._, from Professor James).
(3) “A widely current opinion during the last quarter of a century has
been that _‘reasonableness’ is not a good in itself, but only for the
sake of something_. Whether it be so or not seems to be a synthetical
question [_i.e._ a question that is not merely a verbal question, a
question of words], not to be settled by an appeal to the Principle of
Contradiction [the principle hitherto relied upon by Rationalism or
Intellectualism].... Almost everybody will now agree that the ultimate
good lies in the evolutionary process in some way. If so, it is not in
individual reactions in their segregation, but in something general or
continuous. Synechism is founded on the notion that the coalescence,
the becoming continuous, the becoming governed by laws, the becoming
instinct with general ideas, are but phases of one and the same process
of the growth of reasonableness” (_ibid._ p. 322. From Dr. Peirce, the
bracket clauses being the author’s).
(4) “It is the belief that ideas invariably strive after practical
expression, and that our whole life is teleological. Putting the
matter logically, logic formulates theoretically what is of regulative
importance for life--for our ‘experience’ in view of practical ends.
Its philosophical meaning is the conviction that all facts of nature,
physically and spiritually, find their expressions in ‘_will_’; will
and energy are identical. This tendency is in agreement with the
practical tendencies of American thought and American life in so far
as they both set a definite end before Idealism” (Ueberweg-Heinze,
_Geschichte der Philosophie_, vol. iv., written and contributed by
Professor Matoon Monroe Curtis, Professor of Philosophy in Western
Reserve University, Cleveland, U.S.A.).
(5) See also an article in _Mind_ for October 1900, vol. ix. N.S., upon
“Pragmatism” by the author of this book on _Pragmatism and Idealism_,
referred to as one of the early sources in Baldwin’s _Philosophical
Dictionary_ (New York and London) and in Ueberweg-Heinze’s
_Geschichte_, Vierter Teil (Berlin, 1906).
The conclusion that I am inclined to draw from the foregoing official
statements (and also, say, from another official article like that
of M. Lalande in the _Revue Philosophique_, 1906, on “Pragmatisme
et Pragmaticisme”) is that the _term_ “Pragmatism” is not of itself
a matter of great importance, and that there is no separate,
intelligible, independent, self-consistent system of philosophy that
may be called Pragmatism. It is a general name for the Practicalism or
Voluntarism or Humanism or the Philosophy of the Practical Reason, or
the Activism, or the Instrumentalism, or the Philosophy of Hypotheses,
or the Dynamic Philosophy of life and things that is discussed in
different ways in this book upon Pragmatism and Idealism. And it is
not and cannot be independent of the traditional body of philosophical
truth in relation to which it can alone be defined.