THE 

 POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY 



MARCH, 1907 



A DEFENCE OF PRAGMATISM 1 

 I. Its Mediating Office 



By Professor WILLIAM JAMES 

 Harvard University 



["N the preface to that admirable collection of essays of his called 

 -*- Heretics, Mr. Chesterton writes these words: 



There are some people — and I am one of them — who think that the most 

 practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We 

 think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his in- 

 come, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a 

 general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, 

 but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question 

 is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether in the long 

 run anything else affects them. 2 



I think with Mr. Chesterton in this matter. I know that you, 

 ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and 

 that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way 

 in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds. You 

 know the same of me. And yet I confess to a certain tremor at the 

 audacity of the enterprise which I am about to begin. For the 

 philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical 

 matter, it is our more or less dumb smse of what life honestly and 

 deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual 

 way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos. 



1 The first of a course of eight lectures on ' Pragmatism : A new name for 

 an old way of thinking,' given before the Lowell Institute, Boston, and the 

 Departments of Philosophy and Psychology, Columbia University. 



2 G. K. Chesterton, ' Heretics,' London and New York, 1905, p. 15. 



vol. lxx. — 13. 



