352 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



shuffling evasion, saying they wanted no quibbling or scholastic hair- 

 splitting, but meant just plain honest English ' round,' the majority 

 seemed to think that the distinction had assuaged the dispute. 



1 tell this trivial anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example 

 of what I wish now to speak of as the pragmatic method. The prag- 

 matic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes 

 that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many? — 

 fated or free? — material or spiritual? — here are notions either of 

 which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such 

 notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try 

 to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. 

 What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion 

 rather than that one were true? If no practical difference whatever 

 can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, 

 and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be 

 able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side 

 or the other's being right. 



A glance at the history of the idea will show you still better what 

 pragmatism means. The word is derived from the same Greek term 

 npaypia, meaning action, from which our words ' practise ' and ' prac- 

 tical ' come. It was first introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles 

 Peirce in 1878. In an article in the Popular Science Monthly 

 for that year 2 Mr. Peirce, after pointing out that our beliefs are really 

 rules for action, said that, to develop a thought's meaning, we need 

 only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is 

 for us its sole significance. And the tangible fact at the root of all 

 our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is no one of 

 them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of prac- 

 tise. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, 

 we need only consider what effects of a conceivably practical kind the 

 object may involve — what sensations we are to expect from it, and 

 what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, 

 whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our concep- 

 tion of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance 

 at all. 



This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism. It lay 

 entirely unnoticed by any one for twenty years, until I, in an address 

 before Professor Howison's Philosophical Union at the University of 

 California, brought it forward again, quoting Peirce, and making a 

 certain application of it to religion. By that date (1898) the times 

 seemed ripe for its reception. The word ' pragmatism ' spread, and at 

 present it fairly spots the pages of the philosophic journals. On all 

 hands we find the ' pragmatic movement ' spoken of, sometimes with 

 respect, sometimes with contumely, seldom with clear understanding. 



2 January, 1878, * How to Make Our Ideas Clear.' 



