NEW PHILOSOPHY CALLED PRAGMATISM 63 



the hypothesis of scientific method as truly as the act of obedience in 

 religion — not, however, in the sense of the child Mr. Schiller quotes, 

 who says that faith is believing what you know isn't true, but in the 

 sense rather of a legitimate speculation where all the factors are uncer- 

 tain, in the sense of a prudent gambling or betting on your partial 

 knowledge. If faith lies at the basis of our credit system in business 

 and is the only sanction of the inductive leap in scientific generaliza- 

 tion, why should it not be legitimate to take the risk of there being a 

 God or a future life ? For all we know, the wish and the will to believe 

 may be a factor in determining the reality — as he who thinketh his 

 friend to be true maketh him true. 



Pragmatism, in this respect, is a protest against the cold intel- 

 lectualism of the philosophy and science of the age. In mastering the 

 means of living we have forgotten the ends of life. We confuse money 

 with wealth, the church with religion, politics with government, the 

 school with education, leisure with culture. But he fails in the having 

 who spendeth his days in the getting. The values of life, as Hume 

 long since taught us, lie in the alogical forces of the soul. Eeason and 

 the ratiocinative processes find their only justification in serving at once 

 to satisfy and to modify the feelings and desires which underlie all 

 other aspects of personality. 



But still a third objection is frequently raised to philosophy by the 

 man of science, and the pragmatic reply to this is contained in the new 

 instrumental or functional theory of knowledge of Professor Dewey and 

 his school. The man of science criticizes philosophy for being too 

 theoretical in the sense of speculative. " not sticking to the facts." The 

 metaphysician is prone, he says, to spin a universe out of his own inner 

 consciousness, and tries to make the facts fit this ideal system. Once 

 again, pragmatism meets the objector by admitting the force of his 

 objection so far as past systems of philosophy are concerned, and seeks 

 to win the cooperation of the scientist in constructing a philosophy 

 which will be scientific in its method. 



But the pragmatist reminds the man of science that he is not free 

 from speculation in his own enterprise, that indeed hypothesis is one 

 of the leading instruments of scientific research, while his whole pro- 

 cedure is shot through and through with metaphysical presuppositions 

 which are the more prejudicial because unsuspected. The aim of a 

 pragmatic philosophy is to bring metaphysical speculation to the test 

 of scientific exactness, on the one hand, and, on the other, to help the 

 scientist to bring to clear self-consciousness his own logical assump- 

 tions. This involves, not only a new conception of philosophy, but a 

 new conception of science in relation to philosophy. 



The wings of metaphysical speculation are clipped, but philosophy 

 no longer is relegated to the left-overs. Its subject-matter as ordinarily 

 conceived is the methodological scrap-heap of the scientist. All the 



