170. OUTLINE OF PRAGMATISM AND HUMANISM.

 Among

the philosophies which, since Kant s time, have employed the

" speculative " reason for its own dethronement, the latest fashion

is undoubtedly that known as Pragmatism or Humanism.

Though of quite recent origin it has to its credit a very ex

tensive output of literature, 1 on the Continent, in England, and

in America its locus originis. Its principal exponents are, in

America, C. S. Peirce, W. James, and J. Dewey ; in England,

F. C. S. Schiller ; in France, Bergson {psychological direction),

Boutroux (critical direction of Poincare and Milhaud), Le Roy

(combining both directions in the "new philosophy") and

Wilbois ; and in Italy, Papini.

It is frankly anti-intellectualist, advocating as the sole test of

truth the practical test of utility in a very broad sense. It is

therefore voluntarist inasmuch as the "utility" of a judgment,

its " bonum utile" is not immediately an object of intellect but of

will. It has not, however, sprung from any preoccupation or

concern with the defence of moral and religious beliefs, but rather

from a teleological consideration of the function and purpose of

thought and knowledge in man, a consideration itself prompted

by the influence of the evolution concept in biological science. 2

For Pragmatism all truth is essentially relative, provisional,

transformable (142, 143).

It was first propounded by C. S. Peirce as a method of ending

the sterile controversies with which the speculative reason is ever

impeding the real progress of the human mind. The sense of

any proposition, and hence its truth or falsity, must be judged

by the mental habit it induces, the effect it has in action, its

pragmatic or working value : hence the title Pragmatism. The

truth or knowledge-value of a proposition is not at all any insight

it is supposed to give us into things, but simply its relation of

utility to human life. 3

1 For adequate bibliography, cf. JEANNIEKE, of. cit., pp. 269-71, whose treat

ment in the main we have followed.

2 Cf. NOEL, Art. in the Revue neo-scolastique, 1911, p. 46.

3 Such a view involves, of course, the abolition of Metaphysics in its traditional

sense of a speculative study of the real. Hence the severity of Pragmatist strictures

on Metaphysics, and the anxiety of Pragmatists to discourage such research. Here

VOL. II. 33

354 THE OK Y OF KNO W LEDGE

James develops this notion and applies it to religious beliefs,

especially in his Varieties of Religious Experience. All human

functions, not excluding the intellectual function of cognition

or belief, are essentially subservient to practical interests, to life,

conduct, behaviour. Assent is essentially teleological, purposive,

ordained to action. Religious beliefs, like all beliefs, have their

truth-value in the degree of their utility to human existence.

This doctrine he seeks to confirm by the consideration that (<?) dc

facto the cognitive function reveals nothing for certain, as witness

the contradictions of the metaphysicians who use reason in the

attempt to lay bare reality by exploring evidence, and that

(/>) de jure concepts can disclose nothing certain about reality

(cf. Bergson). Hence Pragmatism is more than a method : it is

a doctrine, a theory of knowledge. For it teaches that the truth

of a judgment does not consist in its giving us any insight into

what things really are, but in its working value, in its utility as

prompting and leading to action that is beneficial or helpful to

human progress. Similarly, Dewey holds all cognition to involve

a feeling of expectation or anticipation : by the satisfaction (or

otherwise) of which, in the event, the truth-value of the cognition

is determined.

Schiller enlarged this doctrine into a system called Human

ism, applying it to every department of human speculation and

action. When we reflect on the relation between these two

functions of man, between what intellect conceives by way of

theory or theories on the data of experience, and what it dictates

to us to do, or how to live in and through this experience, we

find four possible interpretations of this relation : (i) Intellect in

its practical dictate is a lower and derivative form of the intel

lect as speculative (a view ascribed by Schiller to Plato) ; (2)

they are mutually irreducible, but the speculative is the higher

(Aristotle} ; (3) they are mutually irreducible, but the practical

holds the primacy (Kant} ; (4) the speculative is a lower and

derivative form of the practical (Humanist Pragmatism}. For

Humanism, then, the truth of a proposition would be its utility

to man : and man would thus be the measure of truth. 1

is a typical illustration : " Metaphysics has hitherto been a piece of amusement for

idle minds, a sort of game at chess ; and the ratio essendi of Pragmatism is to make

a clean sweep of the propositions of ontology, nearly all of which are senseless

rubbish, where words are defined by words and so on without ever reaching any

real concept". The Monist, April, 1905, p. 171, apud JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 273 n.

1 Cf. The Humanism of Protagoras, in Mind, April, 191 1.

PRAGMATISM 355

It is not, however, utility to the individual that is the test,

but utility to society, to men generally. Look at the general

results of any belief on human progress ; that is the test : Ex

fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos. A proposition is not true merely

because to act on it would suit some individual utility : " it could

not gain currency as effectively true, unless it somehow afforded

satisfaction socially". 1 But social utility can evolve and change.

A belief that " suited " men generally at one time may cease to

serve them any longer ; may indeed disserve them and be re

pudiated. Hence the belief was true, but has become false "

(142, 144). In defence of this view of truth and its criterion

Schiller seeks to show (i) that the intellectualist conception of

truth as mental insight into reality, or cognitive assimilation of

reality, issues in contradictions and cannot account for error ;

(2) that no proposition can have any significance as true or false

unless in relation to the practical issues involved in believing it :

by these alone can its truth-claim be tested, and only in relation

to these is such claim at all intelligible; 3 (3) that psychological

analysis proves man to be always, in all his thinking and judging

functions, influenced by affective motives or interests prompted

by biologically evolved tendencies and impulses of an instinctively

utilitarian order. 4

In France, Boutroux, Milhaud, Poincare, and in Germany,

Simmel, Mach, Hertz, Ostwald, etc., among others, had pro

claimed that the theoretical science attained by reason is but a

system of contingent, conventional conceptions formulated by

reason for the convenience of our practical manipulation or utili-

1 SCHILLER, Error, p. 10, apud JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 276, n. 3.

2 " Truth and error . . . are continuous, as history shows. Either may de

velop out of the other, and both are rooted in the same problems of knowing, which

are ultimately problems of living. The truths of one generation become the

errors of the next, when it has achieved more valuable and efficient modes of

interpreting and manipulating the apparent facts, which the new truths are

continuously transforming. And conversely, what is now scouted as error may

hereafter become the fruitful parent of a long progeny of truths." Error, p. n,

apud JEANNIERE, p. 277, n. i.

3 Every true or false proposition is relevant to an intention. Error is never

accepted as such, but always presents itself as a. truth-claim : " Truth-claims that

have worked badly are those condemned as errors ; those which have worked

well are those accepted as truths ". Error, apud JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 276 n.

4 " Purpose, interest, desire, emotion, satisfaction, are more essential to thinking

than steam is to a steam-engine. . . . Without these psychological conditions,

thinking disappears, and with it presumably Logic. The Rationalistic Conception

of Truth (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1909, p. 83), apud JEANNIERE,

I.e., n. 2.

23*

3 ,6 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

zation of experience: symbolizing results and anticipations of

experience but not attaining to the real. Then Bergson, in his

Matiere et Memoire (1897), Essai sur lesdonnees iinmcdiates de la

conscience (1889), and L Evolution Crfatrice (1907), gradually for

mulated the view that intellectual cognition gives us, in its ab

stract, isolated, fixed and static thought-objects, only evanescent

and kaleidoscopic glances at a reality which is essentially dynamic,

continuous and fluent (86) ; that this intellectual mode of cogni

tion is exclusively practical in its purpose and function, evolved

in order to enable us to adapt our action to our environment, and

not at all to inform us as to what reality really is; that the

mistake of intellectual ism has been to interpret this essentially

practical function as a representation that attains to reality itself ;

that in so far as we attain to reality at all, we do so not by

intellect, but by an active, sympathetic identification of ourselves

with the dynamic process or fieri of our immediate vital experi

ence ; that this immediate vital experience of reality as a dynamic

process (elan vital} or evolution that is sui generis, at once thought

and action (la Pensee-Action, les I dees-Forces]^ may be described

as intuitional, as a vital intuition (at once conscious, volitional,

affective, dynamic), in opposition to the static, abstract, intel

lectual, logical, conceptual and judicial processes which were

wrongly supposed to give us a genuine speculative insight into

reality, whereas they are only practical aids to the vital process

wherein we attain to reality by feeling and living it.

Le Roy combined the conception of scientific laws as mere

practical inventions of the intellect, with Bergson s intuition

theory, to form a " new philosophy " in which the test of practical

vital experience would supplant that of intellectual evidence in

the discerning of truth. The "truths" or laws arrived at by

speculation are not representative of the real : they are simply

aids to the concrete, complex, vital process in which alone reality

is attained, not by contemplating it but by living it. 1 That is

1 " Vivre une verite consiste & en faire un object de vie interieure auquel on

croit, dont on se nourrit, que Ton pratique et que Ton aime au point d unifer en lui

toute son ame : cst vraic dcfimiivement ce qui re siste 1 epreuve d une tclle vie. . . .

" Au fond le seul critere c est la vie. Est Evident d abord tout cc qui est vecu a

chaque instant par nous : images, affections, sentiments, idees ou actes, pris en eux-

metnes et en tant que fails. Est ensuite Evident par le progres de la pensee, tout ce

qui . . . rdsiste a I dpreuve de I: 1 , pratique, peut etre assimile par nous, convert!

en notre substance, integre a notre moi, organise avec 1 ensemble de notre vie.

Ainsi 1 evidence appartient a ce qui se montre capable dc durde. Rien n est Evident

de soi, mais tout peut ledevenir." Unposltivismc twuvcau (in the Revue de Mctapli.

cf Morale, 1901), apud JEANNIEKE, op, cit., p. 279, n. 2.

PRAGMATISM 357

true which stands the test of life s experience, which is felt to

assimilate itself in this process ; while that is false which does not

work, which is rejected, repudiated by this experience. Thus

the agreement of the French school with the American and

English Pragmatism and Humanism is apparent. How a belief

works is the test of its truth. By the extension of this theory to

revealed dogma Le Roy attempted a new theology which was

condemned as incompatible with orthodox Christian belief. 1

In Italy, Papini interpreted Pragmatism as a method from

the standpoint of which every conceivable philosophical theory

or system could be seen to have its share of truth, viz. by con

sidering all theories and systems sub specie actionis, i.e. as pos

sessing a greater or less degree of practical value or utility in the

progressive evolution of humanity : a value which, apparently,

would be tested and determined automatically by the touchstone

of experience, sifting the wheat from the chaff, assimilating the

" useful " or " true " and rejecting the " noxious " or " erroneous ".

This interpretation W. James has felicitously described as " the

corridor-theory " of truth.

 Among

the philosophies which, since Kant s time, have employed the

" speculative " reason for its own dethronement, the latest fashion

is undoubtedly that known as Pragmatism or Humanism.

Though of quite recent origin it has to its credit a very ex

tensive output of literature, 1 on the Continent, in England, and

in America its locus originis. Its principal exponents are, in

America, C. S. Peirce, W. James, and J. Dewey ; in England,

F. C. S. Schiller ; in France, Bergson {psychological direction),

Boutroux (critical direction of Poincare and Milhaud), Le Roy

(combining both directions in the "new philosophy") and

Wilbois ; and in Italy, Papini.

It is frankly anti-intellectualist, advocating as the sole test of

truth the practical test of utility in a very broad sense. It is

therefore voluntarist inasmuch as the "utility" of a judgment,

its " bonum utile" is not immediately an object of intellect but of

will. It has not, however, sprung from any preoccupation or

concern with the defence of moral and religious beliefs, but rather

from a teleological consideration of the function and purpose of

thought and knowledge in man, a consideration itself prompted

by the influence of the evolution concept in biological science. 2

For Pragmatism all truth is essentially relative, provisional,

transformable (142, 143).

It was first propounded by C. S. Peirce as a method of ending

the sterile controversies with which the speculative reason is ever

impeding the real progress of the human mind. The sense of

any proposition, and hence its truth or falsity, must be judged

by the mental habit it induces, the effect it has in action, its

pragmatic or working value : hence the title Pragmatism. The

truth or knowledge-value of a proposition is not at all any insight

it is supposed to give us into things, but simply its relation of

utility to human life. 3

1 For adequate bibliography, cf. JEANNIEKE, of. cit., pp. 269-71, whose treat

ment in the main we have followed.

2 Cf. NOEL, Art. in the Revue neo-scolastique, 1911, p. 46.

3 Such a view involves, of course, the abolition of Metaphysics in its traditional

sense of a speculative study of the real. Hence the severity of Pragmatist strictures

on Metaphysics, and the anxiety of Pragmatists to discourage such research. Here

VOL. II. 33

354 THE OK Y OF KNO W LEDGE

James develops this notion and applies it to religious beliefs,

especially in his Varieties of Religious Experience. All human

functions, not excluding the intellectual function of cognition

or belief, are essentially subservient to practical interests, to life,

conduct, behaviour. Assent is essentially teleological, purposive,

ordained to action. Religious beliefs, like all beliefs, have their

truth-value in the degree of their utility to human existence.

This doctrine he seeks to confirm by the consideration that (<?) dc

facto the cognitive function reveals nothing for certain, as witness

the contradictions of the metaphysicians who use reason in the

attempt to lay bare reality by exploring evidence, and that

(/>) de jure concepts can disclose nothing certain about reality

(cf. Bergson). Hence Pragmatism is more than a method : it is

a doctrine, a theory of knowledge. For it teaches that the truth

of a judgment does not consist in its giving us any insight into

what things really are, but in its working value, in its utility as

prompting and leading to action that is beneficial or helpful to

human progress. Similarly, Dewey holds all cognition to involve

a feeling of expectation or anticipation : by the satisfaction (or

otherwise) of which, in the event, the truth-value of the cognition

is determined.

Schiller enlarged this doctrine into a system called Human

ism, applying it to every department of human speculation and

action. When we reflect on the relation between these two

functions of man, between what intellect conceives by way of

theory or theories on the data of experience, and what it dictates

to us to do, or how to live in and through this experience, we

find four possible interpretations of this relation : (i) Intellect in

its practical dictate is a lower and derivative form of the intel

lect as speculative (a view ascribed by Schiller to Plato) ; (2)

they are mutually irreducible, but the speculative is the higher

(Aristotle} ; (3) they are mutually irreducible, but the practical

holds the primacy (Kant} ; (4) the speculative is a lower and

derivative form of the practical (Humanist Pragmatism}. For

Humanism, then, the truth of a proposition would be its utility

to man : and man would thus be the measure of truth. 1

is a typical illustration : " Metaphysics has hitherto been a piece of amusement for

idle minds, a sort of game at chess ; and the ratio essendi of Pragmatism is to make

a clean sweep of the propositions of ontology, nearly all of which are senseless

rubbish, where words are defined by words and so on without ever reaching any

real concept". The Monist, April, 1905, p. 171, apud JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 273 n.

1 Cf. The Humanism of Protagoras, in Mind, April, 191 1.

PRAGMATISM 355

It is not, however, utility to the individual that is the test,

but utility to society, to men generally. Look at the general

results of any belief on human progress ; that is the test : Ex

fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos. A proposition is not true merely

because to act on it would suit some individual utility : " it could

not gain currency as effectively true, unless it somehow afforded

satisfaction socially". 1 But social utility can evolve and change.

A belief that " suited " men generally at one time may cease to

serve them any longer ; may indeed disserve them and be re

pudiated. Hence the belief was true, but has become false "

(142, 144). In defence of this view of truth and its criterion

Schiller seeks to show (i) that the intellectualist conception of

truth as mental insight into reality, or cognitive assimilation of

reality, issues in contradictions and cannot account for error ;

(2) that no proposition can have any significance as true or false

unless in relation to the practical issues involved in believing it :

by these alone can its truth-claim be tested, and only in relation

to these is such claim at all intelligible; 3 (3) that psychological

analysis proves man to be always, in all his thinking and judging

functions, influenced by affective motives or interests prompted

by biologically evolved tendencies and impulses of an instinctively

utilitarian order. 4

In France, Boutroux, Milhaud, Poincare, and in Germany,

Simmel, Mach, Hertz, Ostwald, etc., among others, had pro

claimed that the theoretical science attained by reason is but a

system of contingent, conventional conceptions formulated by

reason for the convenience of our practical manipulation or utili-

1 SCHILLER, Error, p. 10, apud JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 276, n. 3.

2 " Truth and error . . . are continuous, as history shows. Either may de

velop out of the other, and both are rooted in the same problems of knowing, which

are ultimately problems of living. The truths of one generation become the

errors of the next, when it has achieved more valuable and efficient modes of

interpreting and manipulating the apparent facts, which the new truths are

continuously transforming. And conversely, what is now scouted as error may

hereafter become the fruitful parent of a long progeny of truths." Error, p. n,

apud JEANNIERE, p. 277, n. i.

3 Every true or false proposition is relevant to an intention. Error is never

accepted as such, but always presents itself as a. truth-claim : " Truth-claims that

have worked badly are those condemned as errors ; those which have worked

well are those accepted as truths ". Error, apud JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 276 n.

4 " Purpose, interest, desire, emotion, satisfaction, are more essential to thinking

than steam is to a steam-engine. . . . Without these psychological conditions,

thinking disappears, and with it presumably Logic. The Rationalistic Conception

of Truth (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1909, p. 83), apud JEANNIERE,

I.e., n. 2.

23*

3 ,6 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

zation of experience: symbolizing results and anticipations of

experience but not attaining to the real. Then Bergson, in his

Matiere et Memoire (1897), Essai sur lesdonnees iinmcdiates de la

conscience (1889), and L Evolution Crfatrice (1907), gradually for

mulated the view that intellectual cognition gives us, in its ab

stract, isolated, fixed and static thought-objects, only evanescent

and kaleidoscopic glances at a reality which is essentially dynamic,

continuous and fluent (86) ; that this intellectual mode of cogni

tion is exclusively practical in its purpose and function, evolved

in order to enable us to adapt our action to our environment, and

not at all to inform us as to what reality really is; that the

mistake of intellectual ism has been to interpret this essentially

practical function as a representation that attains to reality itself ;

that in so far as we attain to reality at all, we do so not by

intellect, but by an active, sympathetic identification of ourselves

with the dynamic process or fieri of our immediate vital experi

ence ; that this immediate vital experience of reality as a dynamic

process (elan vital} or evolution that is sui generis, at once thought

and action (la Pensee-Action, les I dees-Forces]^ may be described

as intuitional, as a vital intuition (at once conscious, volitional,

affective, dynamic), in opposition to the static, abstract, intel

lectual, logical, conceptual and judicial processes which were

wrongly supposed to give us a genuine speculative insight into

reality, whereas they are only practical aids to the vital process

wherein we attain to reality by feeling and living it.

Le Roy combined the conception of scientific laws as mere

practical inventions of the intellect, with Bergson s intuition

theory, to form a " new philosophy " in which the test of practical

vital experience would supplant that of intellectual evidence in

the discerning of truth. The "truths" or laws arrived at by

speculation are not representative of the real : they are simply

aids to the concrete, complex, vital process in which alone reality

is attained, not by contemplating it but by living it. 1 That is

1 " Vivre une verite consiste & en faire un object de vie interieure auquel on

croit, dont on se nourrit, que Ton pratique et que Ton aime au point d unifer en lui

toute son ame : cst vraic dcfimiivement ce qui re siste 1 epreuve d une tclle vie. . . .

" Au fond le seul critere c est la vie. Est Evident d abord tout cc qui est vecu a

chaque instant par nous : images, affections, sentiments, idees ou actes, pris en eux-

metnes et en tant que fails. Est ensuite Evident par le progres de la pensee, tout ce

qui . . . rdsiste a I dpreuve de I: 1 , pratique, peut etre assimile par nous, convert!

en notre substance, integre a notre moi, organise avec 1 ensemble de notre vie.

Ainsi 1 evidence appartient a ce qui se montre capable dc durde. Rien n est Evident

de soi, mais tout peut ledevenir." Unposltivismc twuvcau (in the Revue de Mctapli.

cf Morale, 1901), apud JEANNIEKE, op, cit., p. 279, n. 2.

PRAGMATISM 357

true which stands the test of life s experience, which is felt to

assimilate itself in this process ; while that is false which does not

work, which is rejected, repudiated by this experience. Thus

the agreement of the French school with the American and

English Pragmatism and Humanism is apparent. How a belief

works is the test of its truth. By the extension of this theory to

revealed dogma Le Roy attempted a new theology which was

condemned as incompatible with orthodox Christian belief. 1

In Italy, Papini interpreted Pragmatism as a method from

the standpoint of which every conceivable philosophical theory

or system could be seen to have its share of truth, viz. by con

sidering all theories and systems sub specie actionis, i.e. as pos

sessing a greater or less degree of practical value or utility in the

progressive evolution of humanity : a value which, apparently,

would be tested and determined automatically by the touchstone

of experience, sifting the wheat from the chaff, assimilating the

" useful " or " true " and rejecting the " noxious " or " erroneous ".

This interpretation W. James has felicitously described as " the

corridor-theory " of truth.