Pragmatism: A New Philosophy

THERE is a strange phenomenon at the present moment, which even the wayfaring man (if he reads a little) must be struck with — or be curious about. A philosophical theory is out in the world making converts — and enemies ! It is like " evolution ” thirty years ago — and the controversy waxes hot. One church paper speaks of the “ pragmatist microbe.” Another pities those ” inoculated with its virus.” Still another calls the pragmatist’s view “ subversive of morality.” A theosophical organ thinks it a “ delicate attempt of the spirit of license to get himself a respectable foothold.” Others more sympathetic, or at least susceptible, declare that the fight over Darwinism will be, compared to the one now on, as a kindergarten game to college football; or, varying the metaphor, that while the old battles of theology and philosophy have been fought with sword and spear, the pragmatic method will be like gunpowder. A philosopher by profession, who looks on Pragmatism as a Catholic would on Protestantism, calls Professor James an anarchist in things speculative. In Italy Pragmatism forms clubs and founds a journal. The movement has got so far as to have a schism! The founder of it, Mr. Charles S. Peirce, gives his own ideas a new name, “ Pragmaticism,” since his child is getting away from him.

What is it all about ?

One or two lines of approach may be suggested.

It is well known that scientific men sometimes regard their theories as working hypotheses rather than as absolute truth. The atomic theory, the idea of an elastic ether, even the nebular hypothesis and Darwinism itself, are instances. A professor of chemistry, it has been said, would not ask his students if the atomic theory were true any more than he would ask if it were blue — an exaggeration, no doubt, but indicative of a tendency. Theories are taken chiefly as more or less convenient instruments. They summarize the facts we know, putting them into handy, portable shape (like short-hand for words), and they lead us on to new facts. Scientific men without illusion do not so much believe them or disbelieve them as use them — it might perhaps be said that they feel themselves beyond truth and falsehood in the old-fashioned sense, as Nietzsche felt himself beyond good and evil: utility, convenience, practical help in the work of further discovery — this is what they care for. Anything that works, that helps, they hold to, until they find something that works better, helps more. What they hold to they may call true, for this from old usage is an honorific term — but they mean true to them: and what is true to-day may not be true to-morrow. Now Pragmatism might be called an extension of this attitude and spirit into the realm of philosophy generally. It is sometimes dubbed “utilitarian metaphysics.”

Another method of approach may be helpful. When we call an action right, the old-time notion is that it corresponds with some abstract, ideal standard. But there are those to-day (in reality there have always been such) who say that we can judge of actions only by their consequences. Some in the end have good results, others bad ones. This then, it is urged, is the real basis for moral preferences — for the distinctions between right and wrong. Mr. Bernard Shaw neatly expresses the idea when he says, “ Conduct must justify itself by its effect upon happiness, and not by its conformity to any rule or ideal.” Accordingly he perpetrates the paradox, “The Golden Rule is that there are no golden rules.” Pragmatism might also be described as an extension of an attitude, a spirit like this. Professor James says that the true is the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the right is the expedient in the way of our behaving.

In fact, Pragmatism involves a radical shifting of our point of view as we consider the world. The ordinary idea is that there are a lot of facts, truths, or laws, independent of man, which man has simply to discover and copy in his mind — or, in the moral realm, a lot of ideals or commandments, which he has simply to discover and obey. The pragmatist view starts with man himself, his wants and needs, his efforts to meet these, the ideas and problems that arise in the struggle, his greater or less success in dealing with the problems; the pragmatist world is the human world, its truths all truths of experience, its laws regularities of experience — truths and laws, too, liable to become incomplete and to be superseded. And so the doctrine is sometimes called Humanism — a sort of successor to the old Greek view connected with the name of Protagoras, according to which man is the measure of all things.²

I may say at the outset that I regard Pragmatism as a half truth — or, to be a little nicer, a three-quarters truth; all the same, let us for the moment try to thoroughly enter into it.

As expounded by Professor James, it covers three points: first, what in general we mean by a theory, conception, or idea; second, what we mean by the truth of an idea; third, what the real nature of the world about us is.

1. An idea, so Pragmatism considers, is something on which to act and has its meaning in the consequences the action brings. The Greek word πpαγμα means action — hence the English “ Pragmatism,” the theory or philosophy of action or based on action. One of Tanner’s ” Maxims for Revolutionists ” in Shaw’s Man and Superman is, “ Activity is the only road to knowledge.” It is a pragmatist aphorism. What you act on you know about, and what you don’t act on you know little or nothing about — this is the underlying thought. It is obviously true in morals; but the pragmatist’s point is that it is true in science and philosophy as well. Nowhere perhaps has it been so logically and thoroughly worked out as in Professor John Dewey’s recent writings.³ The new school of thought is sometimes called the “ Chicago School ” — something that should make those critics pause who think of Chicago simply in connection with the stockyards or the Lake Shore drive. Professor Dewey says that if we exclude acting on an idea, no amount of mere intellectual procedure will confirm or refute the idea or throw any light on its validity. The meaning of an idea is what comes of it, the practical details that follow acting upon it. We act now, others have acted before us, and we can conceive of men’s acting before, as matter of fact, there were any human beings at all — and so in imagination we can construct the story of geologic evolution and picture to ourselves the primeval nebula itself. The same holds of metaphysical disputes. “ Is the world one or many ? — fated or free? — material or spiritual?” What about “ substance,” what about “ soul,” what about “ God ” ? The first thing is to get a clear idea of what the terms mean, and this can only be done, according to Pragmatism, as we trace the practical consequences of each alternative or conception. How would our experience differ if this notion or that notion were true ? If there would be no concrete, definite, practical difference, the notions vary only in sound, and the dispute is without sense.

2. The second point in Pragmatism relates to what we mean by saying that an idea is true. Pragmatism holds that it simply means that the idea will work — that it turns out to be one not at odds with experience, but rather borne out by it; that with it we get along and succeed in our operations, while with its opposite we get into trouble. “True ” means true leading — what we call truth brings us up somewhere; what we call falsehood lands us or leaves us nowhere. If we are lost in the woods (to use an illustration of Dr. Dewey’s), the true direction is what will lead us home again, or on to the highway. Truth has no meaning save in relation to some purpose or end; it is what helps to attain the end. We may have various ideas — that is the true one which does help. Truth thus happens to an idea, it becomes true. Truth is not an independent reality outside of us, but our successful experimenting, the particular kind of forecast that brings us where we want to be. If by going ahead on the basis of the atomic theory we are led to see the physical or chemical world more nearly as it actually is, and particularly if we are led to new discoveries, if the idea of an ether or of radium or what-not is serviceable and fills a “ long-felt want,” if an astronomical theory leads us to discover a new planet (as did once happen), then each is true. Experience, sensible fact, is the test, ⁴ and anything that points that way, that anticipates and chimes in with experience, instead of being defeated by it, is true. It is this relative, “ instrumental,” provisional view of truth that shocks the critics of Pragmatism and almost draws down maledictions on the new philosophers’ devoted heads. Truth is a copy of reality! they indignantly exclaim, and not any mere makeshift, pointing or leading. But what is reality ? This brings us to the pragmatist’s third point.

3. Pragmatist philosophers may not be agreed in their views of reality, and it is difficult to make out a consistent doctrine in their teaching — and yet there is a tendency in a certain direction in both Dewey and James. They say and repeat that Pragmatism is a method only, and yet there is a tendency to certain results. The trouble with most of us from their point of view is that the world of reality seems to us ready-made, to which man and his thinking contribute nothing (aside from a few minor practical alterations) except to copy it. We think there is something to copy; that, to use James’s metaphor, there are several editions of the universe, the original real one, the infinite folio or édition de luxe, eternally complete — and then the various finite editions, full of false readings, distorted and mutilated each in its own way; or, to put it quite simply, that there is a definite, real, objective world, and, in addition, our different, personal, all-too-human copies of it. The tendency of Pragmatism, on the other hand, is to turn things round, and say that these personal, human copies are the reality, and to ignore the socalled “ objective world,” the édition de luxe, altogether. “ On the pragmatist side,” says Professor James, “ we have only one edition of the universe, unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places where thinking beings are at work.” Again, our finite experiences “ lean on each other, but the whole of them, if such a whole there be, leans on nothing. All ‘ homes ’ are in finite experience; finite experience as such is homeless. Nothing outside the flux secures the issue of it.” Professor James admits in his frank and picturesque manner that to rationalists, and, I might add, to most men, this describes “ a tramp and vagrant world, adrift in space, with neither elephant nor tortoise to plant the sole of its foot upon.”

But the fact is (as I think most of us can convince ourselves by a little analysis and reflection) that this world made up of our varying finite human experiences is the only world that we immediately know. The world that seems so firm and fixed about us is, after all, an outcome of human observation and thinking — get new observation or deeper thinking and you get, a new world. The world of the scientific man to-day is almost as different from the world of Homer, or even of Aristotle, as any supposed finite edition of the world is from an original infinite folio or édition de luxe.

How does what we call the world come to be ? Why, we have certain sensations under our feet and we call them the ground. We have other sensations when we look up, and we call them the sky or the sun or the stars. We have still other sensations that we call water, air, and so on. What would be if we had n’t sensations, we haven’t an idea. The whole world is an order and continuity and variety of sensations; the history of the world and the future of the world are only what somebody has felt, or might feel, or will feel, or could conceivably feel. Every fresh feeling adds a new increment to the world; as we know it and experience it, the world is a changing, shifting thing, a “ tramp and vagrant” thing, if you will. Indeed, this makes a part of the charm and interest of it. We don’t know what will come next. We must n’t be too sure we have got all, or make idols of our “ truths,” “ laws, etc., and allow them to bar out sensations and facts different from those we are accustomed to. ” Laws ” and “ truths ” are not over facts and regulating them, but in them — and perhaps imperfect formulations at that. The pragmatist says, Act and experiment — and know: it is the only way you can know. Embark on enterprises - that is the way to learn something.

This is all a very weak and popular statement of the pragmatist doctrine — and if you really want to get it and, above all, be interested in it, you must read James ; and if you want to see how subtle and closely knit the argument is, you should read Dewey,

May I add a few reflections of my own ? I am perhaps more egotistical than you think, and always like to end up with my own view.

I follow Pragmatism as far as it goes (supposing I understand it — sometimes I think I don’t). Aside from the patent facts of the senses, and perhaps one or two necessary implications, I know of no fixed, absolute, infallible truths — you will have to go to the Pope to get them (particularly the present Pope). Scientific truths, religious truths, even moral rules (aside from one or two great principles), are all provisional. They are working truths rather than finalities — the best to date, and yet liable to be superseded by something that will work better. Darwinism is not a finality; the popular ideas of evolution itself are not a finality; religious truths are in a notorious state of flux at the present day; morality itself, in its detailed meaning at least, is infected with the spirit of change. Have we not heard it on quite good authority that

Our civil war was in part the precipitation of a conflict between two moralities - one very ancient, recognized in the New Testament, the other hardly more than a century or two old. What a contrast now between the morality of the average “ good citizen ” and that of Bernard Shaw — perhaps neither of them quite right! It is a childish notion that while science, philosophy, and religion are all more or less uncertain, any man can know with his eyes shut what true morality is. Those who indulge it should read what Undershaft says to that Cambridge prig of a son of his in “ Major Barbara,” act iii.

By no means does all this involve skepticism and the lazy notion that one opinion is as good as another. Because Darwinism is not absolute truth it does not follow that it is not better than the view it superseded. Because the golden rule is not absolute, it does not follow that it is not better than the brazen rule, the maxim of every impudent upstart in society, or the iron rule of those who make others serve them, or the wooden rule of those who pretend to govern—and are governed. Some things are better than others — that is enough for every clear-headed man and for every decent man to act on.

And the pragmatist’s view of the structure of reality I also coincide with, on its positive side. The world we know — the world stretching out in space, and back and forwards in time — is a human world. It is what we experience, or have reason to believe we should experience, in other times and places. The world, down to its atoms and up to its most comprehensive laws, is but a picture of possible or at least conceivable human experience. It is not something antecedent to experience and which experience copies, but is experience. Leave out experience, and absolutely nothing definite and concrete remains. I believe that we have learned this world and have built it up primarily in our struggle to live. So far as we were free in the matter, we have had those experiences we wanted to have to help us to live. We have attended to what it was useful to attend to. Almost all our knowledge is thus (to use a big word) teleological, that is, for a purpose; experiences that did n’t vitally concern or interest us we have n’t developed or noticed; they were no better than no experience at all. It is thus really a quite finite, special, utilitarian world that we for the most part know. It is conceivable that other beings with different interests might have a more or less different world. I do not mean merely that we can make use of this world of ours, but that it is there, in just the form it is, because it is useful. So far do I go with Pragmatism.

But now I must turn to speak of what seems to me the insufficiency of the new philosophy — and later I shall say a word of its weakness, and even of an element of danger in it, as expounded by its most brilliant representative, Professor James.

The world, I have admitted, is our experience — more or less, our selected experience. But there is a strange thing about this experience, selected or involuntary : we don’t give it to ourselves

we get it. We may attend at discretion to a sound in the street, and if we do not attend, the sound may scarcely exist for us: but why is it that when we listen with the closest attention, sometimes there is sound and sometimes not ? Even if we take the sensation as a reaction rather than an impression (and this Dr. Edmund Montgomery has taught me ⁵), what has occasioned the reaction, against what is it a reaction? In other words, how is it that we have experience ? what gives rise to it ? With all our power of selecting and attending, why is it that when I look in one direction I see only the sun, and when I look in another only the moon, and not by any possibility the sun; and when I look this way I see you, and when I look another way I see you — both “ yous ” and yet so different ? What fixes these things, since we don’t ? What limits possibilities ? What makes every experience specific ? It is an entirely curious question, without the slightest practical importance; and an answer, that is, an assured and definite one, may be impossible. And yet we raise the question - at least, I raise it. And I can get no sort of intellectual satisfaction, till I make some kind of rude, stumbling, provisional answer to it — whether it be Berkeley’s “ God,” Kant’s “ Ding-ansich,” Spencer’s “ Unknowable,” Montgomery’s “ power-endowed existents,” or some other. The point is that such a question takes us out of the realm of experience; it presupposes an order of things beyond experience — conducts us straight to the land of metaphysics. Contrary to James’s positions, it means that experience has to lean on something; it is a definite break with the notion that the world of experience is self-contained. For my part, I am incurably metaphysical. Beyond the whole world of experience, I must hold to another world of which we have only glimpses, and in strictness scarcely that, since we can only think it and never see it, and yet which determines the possibilities of the experience we have.

The weakness of Pragmatism I have in mind is this. The doctrine is construed by Professor James as a help to religion — religion in the popular theistic sense; but as a help in a peculiar manner. James has as little consideration as Kant had for the ordinary arguments for a personal God. He can see little objective basis for the idea. The actual world is “tangled, muddy, painful and perplexed.” He even suggests that if the world were to end now, it might, make no special difference whether we regarded God or regarded blind matter and force as causing it. The great secular processes of it, evolution and dissolution, he speaks of as “vast driftings” of “ cosmic weather.” In other words, rays of a Divine meaning and a Divine glory in it he can scarcely make out. And yet he writes in the interests of religion and holds to the idea of a personal God. How? By a leap. He has no basis, or shows none; but he leaps all the same. It is an act of faith. But what has this to do, you ask, with Pragmatism ? Why, — so seems the train of thought, — Pragmatism allows us to hold any theory or view which works, and this view does work; it comforts us, helps and sustains us in the battle of life. To me it is weak — deplorably weak. I hold that one of the needs of the time is some kind of constructive thinking that shall enable us to see and feel the Divine in the world once more, that shall again put us in the attitude of worship and again lift us and make us strong in a strength not our own. But there is no such constructive thinking that I can discover in James’s book — otherwise so notable. He says little more than, “ Believe; it is good for you to believe, profitable to believe.” But I do not see how any one who has learned modern scientific habits of thought can believe in such a fashion. Give us some basis, some show of reason for believing, we ask. One cannot lift himself by his bootstraps.

And this leads to my closing word about the dangers of Pragmatism. A theory is true that works, it says. Working value is truth. Very well. But this may mean two things. One is that the theory blends with experience, leads us into it, is not defeated by it — in a word, is borne out by facts, concrete, sensible facts. Another is that the theory attracts us, pleases us, gives us comfort, makes us happy, and all that. These two meanings are liable to be confused — are more or less confused in James’s book. According to one, Pragmatism is a respectable, and, as I think, within limits, a valid philosophical theory. According to the other, it is a thing to conjure with. Let me borrow from my own experience. If comfort, personal happiness, were any kind of a test of truth, I should never have given up the loved creed in which I was nurtured. Not that I don’t care for comfort and happiness as much as anybody, not that I willingly made myself lonely, Christ-forsaken, and God-forsaken, and turned myself into a pilgrim to I knew not what strange land, but simply that the old beliefs did not work in the true and, as I fancy, only respectable pragmatic sense — that is, did not blend with and lead up to the facts of science, the facts of historical criticism, all the myriad facts that make the basis of what we call a modern view of things, but were rather defeated and undone by them. And any one who in this stagnant world of habit and routine and silly personal preferences has a real intellectual life, in whatever department of inquiry, has more or less similar experiences; he is guided at every step, sometimes almost compelled. He may never know absolutely; but he knows or learns that one thing is truer, better than another on entirely objective grounds. Now by no means do I say that Pragmatism as expounded by Professor James tells us to believe simply for reasons of comfort — I only say the message is not clear, and therefore has elements of danger in it. Comfort is made a test of truth,⁶ though not the only test; and despite the language of stupid religious journals about the “ pragmatist microbe ” and its “ virus,” I suspect that we may yet find pragmatist sanction claimed for almost any of the dear old illusions, the cradle-songs by which, as M. Jaurès says, “ through the ages human misery has been rocked to sleep.” Already Professor James is acquiring a great reputation in certain religious circles. Meanwhile a few of us want a. straighter religion if we have one at all. We will tread the floors of hell if need be rather than hocus-pocus ourselves into believing it is heaven. We will face reality, I mean — and perhaps by long facing it and dwelling on it and above all working in it, we may, under the surface and the scum, detect traces of heaven in it; not traces that we put there, God forbid — but that are there, immanent, struggling, and destined yet to transform the whole.