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148 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



Pragmatism is notable for the first unreserved adoption of the 

 evolutionary standpoint and method in logical research. Its ad 

 vocates have been most bitterly reproached by conservative 

 thinkers for admitting into philosophy a developing truth. We 

 believe, however, that a more valid criticism might be expressed 

 in precisely opposite terms. The pragmatists hold that truths 

 have developed : by which they mean no more than that doctrines 

 which in former times were entitled to the most complete possible 

 credence have given way to others which we now know to be 

 more adequate. But of truth itself they have an altogether 

 static theory, a theory couched in a definition which applies 

 equally to the crudest anticipation of the brute and to the subtlest 

 abstraction of the scientist nay, even to absolute truth, if such 

 there should ever be. 1 That the ascription of truth should mean 

 more at one level of human experience than at another that 

 there should been have a development of the species of truth of 

 which judgment is capable 1 they have apparently not contem 

 plated as a real possibility. In short, our opposition to the 

 pragmatists, like their own to Herbert Spencer, is due to the 

 fact that they have not carried their evolutionism far enough 

 that the leaven of the old dogmatism still works in them. 



And yet all the materials for an evolutionary conception were 

 present to their hand ; and in one way or another some account 

 is taken of them with the result of leaving the subject in an 

 almost inextricable confusion. Thus, according to Pragmatism, 

 the truth of an idea is experienced as its agreement with reality ; 

 reality consisting of (i) the things and relations of common 

 sense, (2) relations between purely mental ideas, and (3) other 

 accepted truths; while agreement is agreeable leading-on from 

 the idea in question to other parts of experience. Now, in the 

 first place, this agreeable leading is diversely described, some 

 times as pleasant on its own account by reason of a peculiar 

 human susceptibility to the harmoniousness of experiences this 



x Cf. James, The Meaning of Truth, pp. 182-3. 



2 The suggestion might have come from Hegel, had he been more sympathetically 

 read. 



