There is a curious impression to-day in the world of thought that Pragmatism is the most audacious of philosophic novelties, the most anarchical transvaluation of all respectable traditions. Sometimes it is pictured as an insurgence of emotion against logic, sometimes as an assault of theology upon the integrity of Pure Reason. One day it is described as the reckless theorizing of dilettanti whose knowledge of philosophy is too superficial to require refutation, the next as a transatlantic importation of the debasing slang of the Wild West. Abroad it is frequently denounced as an outbreak of the sordid commercialism of the Anglo-Saxon mind.

All these ideas are mistaken. Pragmatism is neither a revolt against philosophy nor a revolution in philosophy, except in so far as it is an important evolution of philosophy. It is a collective name for the most modern solution of puzzles which have impeded philosophical progress from time immemorial, and it has arisen naturally in the course of philosophical reflection. It answers the big problems which are as familiar to the scientist and the theologian as to the metaphysician and epistemologist, and which are both intelligible and interesting to common sense.

The following questions stand out: (1) Can the possibility of knowledge be maintained against Hume and other sceptics? Certainly, if it can be shown that 'The New Psychology' has antiquated the analysis of mind which Hume assumed and 'British Associationism' respectfully continued to uphold. (2) Seeing that inclination and volition indisputably play a part in the acceptance of all beliefs, scientific and religious, what is the logical significance of this fact? This yields the problem 'The Will to Believe,' and more generally of 'the place of Will in cognition.' (3) Is there no criterion by which the divergent claims of rival creeds and philosophies—to be possessed of unconditional truth—can be scientifically tested? The sceptic's sneer, that the shifting systems of philosophy illustrate only the changing fashions of a great illusion about man's capacity for truth, plunges dogmatism into a 'Dilemma,' from which it can emerge only by finding a way of discriminating a 'truth' from an 'error,' and so solving the 'problem of Truth and Error.' The weird verbalism of the traditional Logic suggests a problem which strikes deeper even than the question, 'What do you mean by truth?' viz.: 'Do you mean anything?' and so the 'problem of Meaning' is propounded by the failure of Formal Logic. Is Logic not concerned at all with meaning, is it only juggling with empty forms of words? Lastly, if from all this there springs up a conviction of 'The Bankruptcy of Intellectualism,' the question suggests itself whether the relation between abstract thinking and concrete experience, between 'Thought' and 'Life,' has been rightly grasped. Is life worth living only for the sake of philosophic contemplation, or is thinking only worth doing to aid us in the struggle for life? Are 'theory' and 'practice' two separate kingdoms with rigid frontiers, strictly guarded, or does it appear that theories which cannot be applied have, in the end, neither worth, nor truth, nor even meaning?

It is plain from this catalogue of inquiries that Pragmatism makes no abrupt breach in tradition. It is not the pÉtroleuse of philosophy. It does not wipe out the history of speculation in order to announce a millennium of new ideas; it claims, on the contrary, to be the culmination and dÉnoÛment of that history. It cannot rightly be represented as trying either to sell new lamps for old, or to jerry-build a new metaphysical system on the ruins of all previous achievements. Its real task is singularly modest. It aims merely at instructing system-builders in the elementary laws which condition the stability of such structures and conduce to their conservation.

It is therefore a grave mistake to regard it as a parochial eccentricity, as a specific Americanism. Nor is it the product of the misplaced ingenuity of individual paradox-mongers. It has come into being by the convergence of distinct lines of thought pursued in different countries by different thinkers.

1. One of the most interesting of these has originated in the scientific world. The immense growth of scientific knowledge during the last century was bound to react on human conceptions of scientific procedure. The enormous number of new facts brought to light by manipulating hypotheses could not but modify our view of scientific law. Laws no longer seem to scientists the immutable foundations of an eternal order, but are inevitably treated as man-made formulae for grouping and predicting the events which verify them. The labours of physicists like Mach, Duhem, and Ostwald, point to alternative formulations of new hypotheses for the best established laws. The physics of Newton are no longer final, and the notion of 'energy' is a dangerous rival to the older conception of 'matter.' It is, of course, indifferent to the philosopher whether the new physics are successful in superseding the old or not. What it concerns him to note is that dogmatic confidence in the finality of scientific laws has given place to a belief that our "laws" are only working formulae for scientific purposes, and that no science can truly boast of having read off the mind of the Deity. As Sir J.J. Thomson neatly puts it, a scientific theory, for the enlightened modern scientist, is a 'policy and not a creed.' Science has become content to be only 'a conceptual shorthand,' provided that its message be humanly intelligible. It no longer claims truth because abstractly and absolutely it 'corresponds with Nature,' but because it yields a convenient means of mastering the flux of events.

Even mathematics, long the pattern of absolute knowledge, has not escaped the stigma of relativity. 'Metageometries' have been invented by Riemann and Lobatschewski as rivals to the assumptions of Euclid, and the brilliant writings of PoincarÉ have explained the human devices on which mathematical concepts rest. Euclidean geometry is reduced to a useful interpretation of the data of experience; it is not theoretically the only one. Its superior validity is dependent upon its use when applied to the physical world. Even mathematics, therefore, lend themselves to the philosophic inference drawn by Henri Bergson and others, that all conceptual systems of the human mind have a merely conditional truth, depending on the circumstances of their application.

2. Another fountain-head of Pragmatic philosophy has been Darwinism. Indeed, the Pragmatic is the only philosophizing which has completely assimilated Evolution. The insight into the real fluidity of natural species ought long ago to have toned down the artificial rigidity of logical classifications. To know reality man can no longer rest in a 'timeless' contemplation of a static system; he must expand his thoughts so as to cope with a perpetually changing process. Since the world changes, his 'truths' must change to fit it. He is faced with the necessity of a continuous reconstruction of beliefs. This influence of Darwin has inspired the logical theories of Professor Dewey and the 'Chicago School' of Pragmatists. Thought in their writings is essentially the instrument of this readjustment. Its function is to effect the necessary changes in beliefs as economically and usefully as possible. It is an evolving process which keeps pace with the evolution of reality and the changing situations of mortal life.

3. It is not, however, entirely the reaction of science upon philosophy which has given birth to Pragmatism. Philosophy itself has been rent by internal convulsions. These have been emphasized in the work of Dr. F.C.S. Schiller, who has shown that already in the days of Plato the distinction between 'truth' and 'error' was baffling philosophy, that Plato's Theaetetus has failed to establish it, and that the famous dictum of Protagoras, 'Man is the measure of all things,' distinctly foreshadows the 'Pragmatic,' or, as he calls it, the 'Humanist,' solution of the difficulty.

Elsewhere Dr. Schiller has commented on the controversies raised by Hume's criticism of dogmatism. He has shown that Kant failed to answer Hume because he accepted Hume's psychology, and that no a priori philosophers have since been able to devise any consistent and tenable doctrine. The idealistic theories of the 'Absolute' reveal their futility by their want of application to the genuine problems of life, and by the theoretic agnosticism from which they cannot escape. Hence the need for a new Theory of Knowledge and a thorough reform of Logic.

4. At this point he joins forces with Mr. Alfred Sidgwick, who has long been urging a radical criticism of the procedures of Formal Logic, and shown the gulf between them and the processes of concrete thought. Sidgwick has demonstrated that the belief in formal truth renders Logic merely verbal, and that the actual meaning of assertions completely escapes it.

5. The most sensational approach to Pragmatism, however, is that from the side of religion. The Pragmatic method of deciding religious problems, which asserts the legitimacy of a 'Faith' that precedes knowledge, has always been, more or less consciously, practised by the religious. It is brilliantly advocated in the Thoughts of Pascal, and clearly and forcibly defended in that most remarkable essay in unprofessional philosophy, Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent. This line of reasoning, however, is most familiarly associated with the name of William James; he first illustrated the Pragmatic Method by a famous paper (for a theological audience) on The Will to Believe, and founded the psychological study of religious experience in his Gifford Lectures on The Varieties of Religious Experience.

6. This brings us to the last, and historically the most fertile, of the sources of Pragmatism, Psychology. The publication in 1890 of James's great Principles of Psychology opened a new era in the history of that science. More than that, it was destined in the long run to work a transformation in philosophy as a whole, by introducing into it those biological and voluntaristic principles to which he afterwards applied the generic name of Pragmatism, or philosophy of action. We must pass, then, to consider the New Psychology of William James.