PREFACE 



IX 



least full of future promise, the work of the energetic 

 Chicago School headed by Professor Dewey. 1 It seemed 

 therefore not impolitic, and even imperative, to keep up 

 the agitation for a more hopeful and humaner view of 

 metaphysics, and at the same time to herald the coming 

 of what will doubtless be an epochmaking work, viz., 

 William James s promised Metaphysics. 



II 



The origin of great truths, as of great men, is usually 

 obscure, and by the time that the world has become 

 cognizant of them and interested in their pedigree, they 

 have usually grown old. It is not surprising therefore 

 that the central thought of our present Pragmatism, to wit 

 the purposiveness of our thought and the teleological 

 character of its methods, should have been clearly stated 

 by Professor James so long ago as i879. 2 Similarly I 

 was surprised to find that I had all along been a pragma- 

 tist myself without knowing it, and that little but the 

 name was lacking to my own advocacy of an essentially 

 cognate position in i892. 3 



But Pragmatism is no longer unobserved ; it has by 

 this time reached the Strike, but hear me ! stage, and 

 as the misconceptions due to sheer unfamiliarity are 

 refuted or abandoned it will rapidly enter on the era 

 of profitable employment. It was this latter probability 

 which formed one of my chief motives for publishing 



1 They have published a number of articles in the Decennial Publications of 

 the University ; their Studies in Logical Theory are announced, but have not yet 

 reached me. Though proceeding from a different camp, the works of Dr. J. E. 

 MacTaggart and Prof. G. H. Howison should also be alluded to as adding to 

 the salutary ferment. For while ostensibly (and indeed ostentatiously) employing 

 the methods of the old a priori dogmatism they have managed to reverse its 

 chief conclusions, in a charming but somewhat perplexing way. I have on pur 

 pose confined this enumeration to the English-speaking world ; but in France 

 and even in Germany somewhat similar movements are becoming visible. 



2 In his Sentiment of Rationality in Mind, O.S. No. 15. 

 ^ In Reality and Idealism. Cp. pp. 119-121. 



