After the publication of the Studies in Logical Theory, Dewey entered upon what may be called the polemical period of his career. He joined forces with James and Schiller in the promotion of the new movement called 'Pragmatism.' The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, instituted at Columbia University in 1904, the same year in which Dewey accepted a professorship in that institution, became a convenient medium for the expression of his views, and every volume of this periodical will be found to contain notes, discussions, and articles by Dewey and his followers, bearing on current controversy. He also published many articles in other journals, technical and popular. In 1910, the most important of these essays were collected into a volume, published under the title, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and Other Essays. For purposes of discussion, these essays may be divided into two classes: those of a more constructive character, setting forth Dewey's own standpoint, and those which are mainly polemical, directed against opposing standpoints, chiefly the idealistic. The constructive writings will be given first consideration.

The essay on "The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism," first published in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, in July, 1905, and later reprinted in the volume of collected essays, offers a convenient point of departure. Dewey observes that many of the difficulties in current controversy can be traced to presuppositions tacitly held by thinkers as to what experience means. Dewey attempts to make his own presuppositions explicit, with the object of clearing up this confusion.

"Immediate empiricism," he says, "postulates that things—anything, everything, in the ordinary or non-technical use of the term 'thing'—are what they are experienced as. Hence, if one wishes to describe anything truly, his task is to tell what it is experienced as being."[212] The idealists, on the contrary, hold "that things (or, ultimately, Reality, Being) are only and just what they are known to be or that things are, or Reality is, what it is for a conscious knower—whether the knower be conceived primarily as a perceiver or as a thinker being a further, and secondary, question. This is the root-paralogism of all idealisms, whether subjective or objective, psychological or epistemological."[213] Knowing is merely one mode of experiencing, and things may be experienced in other ways, as, for instance, aesthetically, morally, technologically, or economically. This follows Dewey's familiar division of the processes of experience into separate 'functions' or activities. It becomes the duty of the philosopher, following this scheme, to find out "what sort of an experience knowing is—or, concretely how things are experienced when they are experienced as known things."[214]

Dewey fails, in this essay, to draw a distinction which is highly important, between knowledge as awareness and knowledge as reflection. This results in some confusion. For the present, he is concerned with knowledge as awareness. He employs an illustration to make his meaning clear; the experience of fright at a noise, which turns out, when examined and known, to be the tapping of a window shade. What is originally experienced is a frightful noise. If, after examination, the 'frightfulness' is classified as 'psychical,' while the 'real' fact is said to be harmless, there is no warrant for reading this distinction back into the original experience. The argument is directed against that mode of explaining the difference between the psychical and the physical which employs a subjective mind or 'knower' as the container of the merely subjective aspects of reality. Dewey would hold that mind, used in this sense, is a fiction, having a small explanatory value, and creating more problems than it solves. The difference between psychical and physical is relative, not absolute. The frightful noise first heard was neither psychical nor physical; it was what it was experienced as, and the experience contained no such distinction, nor did it contain a 'knower.' The noise as known, after the intervention of an act of judgment, contained these elements (except the 'knower'), but the thing is not merely what it is known as. There is no warrant for reading the distinctions made by judgment back into a situation where judgment was not operative. The original fact was precisely what it was experienced as.

Dewey's purpose, though not well stated, seems to be the complete rejection of the notion of knowledge as awareness, or of the subjective knower. He discovers at the same time an opportunity to substantiate his own descriptive account of knowing (or reflection) as an occasional function. The two enterprises, however, should be kept distinct. Granting that the subjective knower of the older epistemology should be dismissed from philosophy, it does not follow that Dewey's special interpretation of the function of reflection is the only substitute.

The principle of immediate empiricism, Dewey says, furnishes no positive truth. It is simply a method. Not a single philosophical proposition can be deduced from it. The application of the method is indicated in the following proposition: "If you wish to find out what subjective, objective, physical, mental, cosmic, psychic, cause, substance, purpose, activity, evil, being, quality—any philosophic term, in short—means, go to experience and see what the thing is experienced as."[215] This recipe cannot be taken literally. Dewey probably means that each concept has, or should have, a positive empirical reference, and is significant only in that reference. He is a firm believer, however, in the descriptive method. In a note, he remarks that he would employ in philosophy "the direct descriptive method that has now made its way in all the natural sciences, with such modifications, of course, as the subject itself entails."[216] This remark calls for closer examination than can be made here. It may be said in passing, however, that 'scientific description' is by no means so simple a method of procedure as Dewey would seem to indicate. 'Scientific description,' as actually employed, is a highly elaborated and specialized method of dealing with experience. The whole subject, indeed, is involved, and requires cautious treatment. Dewey's somewhat ingenuous hope, that the identification of his method with the methods of science will add to its impressiveness, is in danger, unfortunately, of being vitiated through the suspicion that he is, after all, not in close touch with the methods of science.

Dewey employs the descriptive method chiefly as a means for substantiating his special interpretation of the judgment process. His use of the method in this connection is well illustrated by an article called "The Experimental Theory of Knowledge"[217] (1906), in which he attempts "to find out what sort of an experience knowing is" through an appeal to immediate experience. "It should be possible," he says, "to discern and describe a knowing as one identifies any object, concern, or event.... What we want is just something which takes itself as knowledge, rightly or wrongly."[218] The difficulty lies not in finding a case of knowing, but in describing it when found. Dewey selects a case to be described, and, as usual, chooses a simple one.

"This means," he says, "a specific case, a sample.... Our recourse is to an example so simple, so much on its face as to be as innocent as may be of assumptions.... Let us suppose a smell, just a floating odor."[219] The level at which this illustration is taken is significant. Is it possible to suppose that anything so complex, varied, myriad-sided as that something we call knowledge, can be discovered and described within the limits of so simple an instance?

Dewey employs the smell in three situations, the first representing the 'non-cognitional,' the second the 'cognitive,' and the third the genuinely 'cognitional' situation. The first, or 'non-cognitional' situation is described as follows: "But, let us say, the smell is not the smell of the rose; the resulting change of the organism is not a sense of walking and reaching; the delicious finale is not the fulfilment of the movement, and, through that, of the original smell; 'is not,' in each case meaning is 'not experienced as' such. We may take, in short, these experiences in a brutely serial fashion. The smell, S, is replaced (and displaced) by a felt movement, K, this is replaced by the gratification, G. Viewed from without, as we are now regarding it, there is S-K-G. But from within, for itself, it is now S, now K, now G, and so on to the end of the chapter. Nowhere is there looking before and after; memory and anticipation are not born. Such an experience neither is, in whole or in part, a knowledge, nor does it exercise a cognitive function."[220]

It will be seen at once that this is not a description of an actual human experience, but a schematic story designed to illustrate a comparatively simple point. In this situation the person concerned does not deliberately and consciously recognize the smell as the smell of a rose; he is not aware of any symbolic character in the smell, it does not enter as a middle term into a process of inference. In such a situation, Dewey believes, it would be wrong to read into the smell a cognitive property which it does not, as experienced, possess.

In the second, or 'cognitive' situation, the smell as originally experienced does not involve the function of knowing, but turns out after the event, as reflected upon, to have had a significance. "In saying that the smell is finally experienced as meaning gratification ... we retrospectively attribute intellectual force and function to the smell—and this is what is signified by 'cognitive.' Yet the smell is not cognitional, because it did not knowingly intend to mean this; but is found, after the event, to have meant it."[221] The moral is, as usual, that the findings of reflection must not be read back into the former unreflective experience.

In the truly 'cognitional' experience the smell is then and there experienced as meaning or symbolizing the rose. "An experience is a knowledge, if in its quale there is an experienced distinction and connection of two elements of the following sort: one means or intends the presence of the other in the same fashion in which itself is already present, while the other is that which, while not present in the same fashion, must become so present if the meaning or intention of its companion or yoke-fellow is to be fulfilled through the operation it sets up."[222] In the 'cognitional' situation, the smell is then and there experienced as signifying the presence of a rose in the vicinity, and the rose must be experienced as a present fact, before the meaning of the smell is completely fulfilled and verified.

It will be seen at once that this description of knowing follows the lines laid down by James in his chapter on "Reasoning" in the Principles of Psychology. In the process of reasoning the situation is analyzed; some particular feature of it is abstracted and made the middle term in an inference. The smell, as thus abstracted, is said to have the function of knowing, or meaning, the rose whose reality it evidences.

Dewey's treatment of knowledge, however, is far too simple. The function of meaning, symbolizing, or 'pointing' does not reside in the abstracted element as such; for the context in which the judgment occurs determines the choosing of the 'middle term,' as well as the direction in which it shall point. The situation as a whole has a rationality which resides in the distinctions, identities, phases of emphasis, and discriminations of the total experience. Rationality expresses itself in the organized system of experience, not in particular elements and their 'pointings.' Taken in this sense, rationality is present in all experience. The smell, in Dewey's first situation, is not 'cognitional' because the situation as a whole does not permit it to be, if such an expression may be used. The intellectual drift of the moment drives the smell away from the centre of attention at one time, just as at another it selects it to serve as an element in judgment. It is only with reference to a system of some kind that things can be regarded as symbols at all. Things do not represent one another at haphazard, but definitely and concretely; they imply an organization of elements having mutual implications. One thing implies another because both are elements in a whole which determines their mutual reference. This organization is present in all experience, not in the form of 'established habits,' but in the form of will and purpose.

In the course of his further discussion, which need not be followed in detail, Dewey passes on to a consideration of truth. Truth is concerned with the worth or validity of ideas. But, before their validity can be determined, there must be a 'cognitional' experience of the type described above. "Before the category of confirmation or refutation can be introduced, there must be something which means to mean something and which therefore can be guaranteed or nullified by the issue."[223] Ideas, or meanings, as directly experienced, are neither true nor false, but are made so by the results in which they issue. Even then, the outcome must be reflected upon, before they can be designated true or false. "Truth and falsity present themselves as significant facts only in situations in which specific meanings and their already experienced fulfilments and non-fulfilments are intentionally compared and contrasted with reference to the question of the worth, as to reliability of meaning, of the given meaning or class of meanings."[224] This makes the whole problem of truth a relatively simple affair. The symbol and its 'pointing' are taken as a single, objective fact, to be tested, and, if verified, labelled 'true.' Meanings, after all, are not so simple as this scheme would imply.

As the intellectual life of man is more subtle and universal than Dewey represents it to be, so is truth, as that which thought seeks to establish, something deeper-lying and more comprehensive. Ideas are not simple and isolated facts; their truth is not strictly their own, but is reflected into them from the objective order to which they pertain. The possibility of making observations and experiments, and of having ideas, rests upon the presence in and through experience of that directing influence which we call valid knowledge, or truth. An idea, to be true, must fit in with this general body of truth. Not correspondence with its single object, but correspondence with the whole organized body of knowledge, is the test of the truth of an idea. The attempt to describe knowledge as a particular occurrence, fact, or function, is foredoomed to failure. It should be noted also that Dewey's 'description,' throughout this essay, is anything but a direct, empirical examination of thought. He presents a schematized picture of reality which, like an engineer's diagram, leaves out the cloying details of the object it is supposed to represent.

The sceptical and positivistic results of Dewey's treatment of knowledge are set forth in an article entitled "Some Implications of Anti-Intellectualism," published in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, in 1910.[225] This was not included in the volume of collected essays published in the same year, but may be regarded as of some importance.

After some comments on current anti-intellectualistic tendencies, Dewey proceeds to distinguish his own anti-intellectualism from that of others. This type "starts from acts, functions, as primary data, functions both biological and social in character; from organic responses, readjustments. It treats the knowledge standpoint, in all its patterns, structures, and purposes, as evolving out of, and operating in the interests of, the guidance and enrichment of these primary functions. The vice of intellectualism from this standpoint is not in making of logical relations and functions in and for knowledge, but in a false abstraction of knowledge (and the logical) from its working context."[226]

The manner in which this exaltation of the "primary" functions at the expense of knowledge affects philosophy is indicated in the following passage: "Philosophy is itself a mode of knowing, and of knowing wherein reflective thinking is much in play.... As a mode of knowledge, it arises, like any intellectual undertaking, out of certain typical perplexities and conflicts of behavior, and its purpose is to help straighten these out. Philosophy may indeed render things more intelligible or give greater insight into existence; but these considerations are subject to the final criterion of what it means to acquire insight and to make things intelligible, i. e., namely, service of special purposes in behavior, and limit by the special problems in which the need of insight arises. This is not to say that instrumentalism is merely a methodology or an epistemology preliminary to more ultimate philosophic or metaphysical inquiries, for it involves the doctrine that the origin, structure, and purpose of knowing are such as to render nugatory any wholesale inquiries into the nature of Being."[227]

In the last analysis, this appears to be a confession, rather than an argument. It is the inevitable outcome of the functional analysis of intelligence. Thought is this organ, with these functions, and is capable of so much and no more. The limit to its capacity is set by the description of its nature. The nature of the functionalistic limitation of thought is well expressed in the words 'special' and 'specific.' Since thought is the servant of the 'primary' modes of experience, it can only deal with the problems set for it by preceding non-reflective processes. These problems are 'specific' because they are concrete problems of action, and are concerned with particular aspects of the environment. Dewey's formidable positivism would vanish at once, however, if his special psychology of the thought-process should be found untenable. Thought is limited, according to Dewey, because it is a very special form of activity, operating occasionally in the interest of the direct modes of experiencing.

Probably every philosopher recognizes that speculation cannot be allowed to run wild. Some problems are worth while, others are artificial and trivial, and some means must be found for separating the sound and substantial from the tawdry and sentimental. The question is, however, whether Dewey's psychology furnishes a ground for such distinctions. Again, it should be noted that, in spite of the limitations placed upon thought by its very nature, as described by Dewey, certain philosophers, by his own confession, are guilty of "wholesale inquiries into the nature of Being." If thought can deal only with specific problems, then there can be no question as to whether philosophy ought to be metaphysical. It is a repetition of the case of psychological versus ethical hedonism.

Modern idealists would resent the imputation that there is any inclination on their part to deny the need for a critical attitude toward the problems and methods of philosophy. Kant's criticism of the 'dogmatists' for their undiscriminating employment of the categories in the interpretation of reality, established an attitude which has been steadily maintained by his philosophical descendants. The idealist, in fact, has accused Dewey of laxity in the criticism of his own methods and presuppositions. The categories of description and natural selection by means of which his functionalism is established, it is argued, are of little service in the sphere of mind. And while Dewey accepts an evolutionary view of reality in general, the idealist has found evolutionism, at least in its biological form, too limited in scope to serve the extensive interests of philosophy. Dewey is right in opposing false problems and fanciful solutions in philosophy; but these evils are to be corrected, not by functional psychology, but by an empirical criticism of each method and each problem as it arises.

It has been seen that, even in these more constructive essays, Dewey's position is largely defined in negatives. What might be expected, then, of the essays which are primarily critical? Perhaps the best answer will be afforded by a close analysis of one or more of them. Idealism, as has been said, receives most of Dewey's attention. There are three essays in The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, which bear directly against idealism. One, "The Intellectualist Criterion of Truth," is directed against Bradley; another, "Experience and Objective Idealism," is a historical discussion of idealistic views. The third, which is broadest in scope, is entitled "Beliefs and Existences." This was originally delivered as the presidential address at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association in December, 1905, and was printed in the Philosophical Review in March, 1906, under the title, "Beliefs and Realities."

Dewey begins with a discussion of the personal and human character of beliefs. "Beliefs," he says, "look both ways, towards persons and towards things.... They form or judge—justify or condemn—the agents who entertain them and who insist upon them.... To believe is to ascribe value, impute meaning, assign import."[228] Beliefs are entertained by persons; by men as individuals and not as professional beings. Because they are essentially human, beliefs issue in action, and have their import in conduct. "That believed better is held to, asserted, affirmed, acted upon.... That believed worse is fled, resisted, transformed into an instrument for the better."[229] Beliefs, then, have a human side; they belong to people, and have a character which is expressed in the conduct to which they lead.

On the other hand, beliefs look towards things. "'Reality' naturally instigates belief. It appraises itself and through this self-appraisal manages its affairs.... It is interpretation; not merely existence aware of itself as fact, but existence discerning, judging itself, approving and disapproving."[230] The vital connection between belief as personal, and as directed upon things, cannot be disregarded. "We cannot keep connection on one side and throw it away on the other. We cannot preserve significance and decline the personal attitude in which it is inscribed and operative...."[231] To take the world as something existing by itself, is to overlook the fact that it is always somebody's world, "and you shall not have completed your metaphysics till you have told whose world is meant and how and what for—in what bias and to what effect."[232]

But philosophers have been guilty of error here. They have thrown aside all consideration of belief as a personal fact in reality, and have taken "an oath of allegiance to Reality, objective, universal, complete; made perhaps of atoms, perhaps of sensations, perhaps of logical meanings."[233] This Reality leaves no place for belief; for belief, as having to do with human adventures, can have no place in a cut and dried cosmos. The search for a world which is eternally fixed in eternal meanings has developed the present wondrous and formidable technique of philosophy.

The attempt to exclude the human element from belief has resulted in philosophical errors. Philosophers have divided reality into two parts, "one of which shall alone be good and true 'Reality,' ... while the other part, that which is excluded, shall be referred exclusively to belief and treated as mere appearance...."[234] To cap the climax, this division of the world into two parts must be made by some philosopher who, being human, employs his own beliefs, and classifies things on the basis of his own experience. Can it be done? We are today in the presence of a revolt against such tendencies, Dewey says; and he proposes to give some sketch, "(1) of the historical tendencies which have shaped the situation in which a Stoic theory of knowledge claims metaphysical monopoly, and (2) of the tendencies that have furnished the despised principle of belief opportunity and means of reassertion."[235]

Throughout this introduction Dewey speaks with considerable feeling, as if the question were a moral one, rather than a disquisition concerning the best method of dealing with the personal aspects of thought. His meaning, however, is far from being apparent. What does it mean to say that a Stoic theory of knowledge holds a monopoly in modern philosophy? In what sense has the philosophy of the past been misanthropic? Is Humanism a product of the twentieth century? Dewey's assertions are broad and sweeping; too broad even for a popular discourse, let alone a philosophical address. Perhaps his attitude will be more fully expressed in the historical inquiry which follows.

Dewey begins this inquiry with the period of the rise of Christianity, which, because it emphasized faith and the personal attitude, seemed in a fair way to do justice to human belief. "That the ultimate principle of conduct is affectional and volitional; that God is love; that access to the principle is by faith, a personal attitude; that belief, surpassing logical basis and warrant, works out through its own operation its own fulfilling evidence: such was the implied moral metaphysic of Christianity."[236] But these implications had to be worked out into a theory, and the only logical or metaphysical systems which offered themselves as a basis for organization were those Stoic systems which "identified true existence with the proper object of logical reason." Aristotle alone among the ancients gave practical thought its due attention, but he, unfortunately, failed to assimilate "his idea of theoretical to his notion of practical knowledge."[237] In the Greek systems generally, "desiring reason culminating in beliefs relating to imperfect existence, stands forever in contrast with passionless reason functioning in pure knowledge, logically complete, of perfect being."[238]

Dewey's discussion moves too rapidly here to be convincing. He does not take time, for instance, to make a very important distinction between the Greek and Hellenistic philosophies. He does not do justice to the purpose which animated the Greeks in their attempt to put thought on a 'theoretical' basis. His confusion of Platonism with Neo-Platonism is especially annoying. And, most assuredly, his estimate of primitive Christianity needs corroboration. Probably Christianity, in its primitive form, did lay great stress upon individual beliefs and persuasions, but it was expected, nevertheless, that the Holy Spirit working in men would produce uniform results in the way of belief. When the uniformity failed to materialize, Christianity was forced, in the interests of union, to fall back upon some objective standard by which belief could be tested. After this was established, an end was made of individual inspiration. From the earliest times, therefore, it may be said, Christianity sought means for the suppression of free inquiry and belief, a proceeding utterly opposed to the spirit of ancient Greece.

"I need not remind you," Dewey continues, "how through Neo-Platonism, St. Augustine, and the Scholastic renaissance, these conceptions became imbedded in Christian philosophy; and what a reversal occurred of the original practical principle of Christianity. Belief is henceforth important because it is the mere antecedent in a finite and fallen world, a temporal and phenomenal world infected with non-being, of true knowledge to be achieved only in a world of completed Being."[239] Through the hundreds of years that intervened before the world's awakening, the 'Stoic dogma,' enforced by authority, held the world in thrall. And still Dewey finds the mediaeval Absolutism in many respects more merciful than the Absolutism of modern philosophy. "For my part, I can but think that mediaeval absolutism, with its provision for authoritative supernatural assistance in this world and assertion of supernatural realization in the next, was more logical, as well as more humane, then the modern absolutism, that, with the same logical premises, bids man find adequate consolation and support in the fact that, after all, his strivings are already eternally fulfilled, his errors already eternally transcended, his partial beliefs already eternally comprehended."[240] Dewey takes no note of the fact that philosophy, as involving really free inquiry, was dead during the whole period of mediaeval predominance.

The modern age, Dewey continues, brought intelligence back to earth again, but only partially. Fixed being was still supposed to be the object of thought. "The principle of the inherent relation of thought to being was preserved intact, but its practical locus was moved down from the next world to this."[241] Aristotle's mode of dealing with the Platonic ideas was followed, and Spinoza was the great exponent of "the strict correlation of the attribute of matter with the attribute of thought."

But, again, the modern conception of knowledge failed to do justice to belief, in spite of the compromise that gave the natural world to intelligence, and the spiritual world to faith. This compromise could not endure, for Science encroached upon the field of religious belief, and invaded the sphere of the personal and emotional. "Knowledge, in its general theory, as philosophy, went the same way. It was pre-committed to the old notion: the absolutely real is the object of knowledge, and hence is something universal and impersonal. So, whether by the road of sensationalism or rationalism, by the path of mechanicalism or objective idealism, it came about that concrete selves, specific feeling and willing beings, were relegated with the beliefs in which they declare themselves to the 'phenomenal.'"[242] Feeling, volition, desiring thought have never received the justice due them in the whole course of philosophy. This is Dewey's conclusion. Little can be said in praise of his historical survey. There is scarcely a statement to which exception could not be taken, for the history of philosophy is not amenable to generalized treatment of this character.

The reader turns more hopefully toward the third part of the essay, in which he is promised a positive statement of the new theory which does full justice to belief. "First, then, the very use of the knowledge standpoint, the very expression of the knowledge preoccupation, has produced methods and tests that, when formulated, intimate a radically different conception of knowledge, and of its relation to existence and belief, than the orthodox one."[243]

But after this not unpromising introduction, Dewey falls into the polemical strain again. The argument need not be followed in detail, since it consists largely in a reassertion of the validity of belief as an element in knowledge. The general conclusion is that modern scientific investigation reveals itself, when examined, as nothing more that the "rendering into a systematic technique, into an art deliberately and delightfully pursued, the rougher and cruder means by which practical human beings have in all ages worked out the implications of their beliefs, tested them, and endeavored in the interests of economy, efficiency, and freedom, to render them coherent with one another."[244] This is presumably true. If no more is implied than is definitely asserted in this passage, the reader is apt to wonder who would deny it.

Dewey again claims for his theory the support of modern science. "Biology, psychology, and the social sciences proffer an imposing body of concrete facts that also point to the rehabilitation of belief...."[245] Psychology has revised its notions in terms of beliefs. 'Motor' is writ large on the face of sensation, perception, conception, cognition in general. Biology shows that the organic instruments of the intellectual life were evolved for specifically practical purposes. The historical sciences show that knowledge is a social instrument for the purpose of meeting social needs. This testimony is not philosophy, Dewey says, but it has a bearing on philosophy. The new sciences have at least as much importance as mathematics and physics. "Such being the case, the reasons for ruling psychology and sociology and allied sciences out of competency to give philosophic testimony have more significance than the bare denial of jurisdiction."[246] The idealists, apparently, have been the worst offenders in this connection. "One would be almost justified in construing idealism as a Pickwickian scheme, so willing is it to idealize the principle of intelligence at the expense of its specific undertakings, were it not that this reluctance is the necessary outcome of the Stoic basis and tenor of idealism—its preoccupation with logical contents and relations in abstraction from their situs and function in conscious living beings."[247]

In conclusion, Dewey warns against certain possible misunderstandings. The pragmatic philosopher, he says, is not opposed to objective realities, and logical and universal thinking. Again, it is not to be supposed that science is any the less exact by reason of being instrumental to human beliefs. "Because reason is a scheme of working out the meanings of convictions in terms of one another and of the consequences they import in further experience, convictions are the more, not the less, amenable and responsible to the full exercise of reason."[248] And finally, Dewey assures the reader that the outcome of his discussion is not a solution, but a problem. Nobody is apt to dispute that statement.

This very unsatisfactory essay is, nevertheless, a fair specimen of the polemical literature which was produced by Dewey and others during these years. Pragmatism was trying to make converts, and the argumentum ad hominem was freely employed. If the opposition was painted a good deal blacker than was necessary, the end was supposed to justify the evident exaggeration. And so, in this essay, after accusing his contemporaries of adherence to tenets that they would have indignantly repudiated, after a wholesale and indiscriminate condemnation of idealism, Dewey concludes with—a problem. This period of propaganda is now quite definitely a thing of the past. Philosophical discussion, especially since the beginning of the great war, has entered upon a new epoch of sanity, and, perhaps, of constructive effort.

[212] The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 227.