i THE ETHICAL BASIS OF METAPHYSICS 5 



life as a whole, and it therefore becomes an urgent need 

 to find a philosophy which will support, or at least will 

 not paralyse, moral effort. The new method of philoso 

 phizing will supply this desideratum in an almost perfect 

 way. It has been called Pragmatism by the chief author 

 of its importance, Professor William James, whose Varieties 

 of Religious Experience so many others besides the pro 

 fessional readers of philosophic literature have been 

 enjoying. But the name in this case does even less 

 than usual to explain the meaning, and as the nature of 

 Pragmatism has been greatly and conspicuously misunder 

 stood, we must try to put it in a clearer light. 



We may best begin by mentioning a few of the ways 

 in which Pragmatism may be reached, before explaining 

 how it should be defined. For many have conceived a 

 considerable prejudice against it by reason of the method 

 by which William James approached it 



James first unequivocally advanced the pragmatist 

 doctrine in connexion with what he called the Will to 

 believe. * Now this Will to believe was put forward as 

 an intellectual right (in certain cases) to decide between 

 alternative views, each of which seemed to make a 

 legitimate appeal to our nature, by other than purely 

 intellectual considerations, viz. their emotional interest and 

 practical value. Although James laid down a number of 

 conditions limiting the applicability of his Will-to-believe, 

 the chief of which was the willingness to take the risks 

 involved and to abide by the results of subsequent ex 

 perience, it was not perhaps altogether astonishing that 

 his doctrine should be decried as rank irrationalism. 



Irrationalism seemed a familiar and convenient label 

 for the new doctrine. For irrationalism is a permanent 

 or continually recrudescent attitude of the moral con 

 sciousness, the persistent vogue of which it has always 

 been hard to explain. It is ably and brilliantly 



1 He had, however, laid the foundation of his doctrine long before in an article 

 in Mind (1879). And, though the name is new, anticipations of the thing run 

 through the whole history of thought. Indeed, this was to be expected, seeing 

 that the actual procedure of the human mind has always been (unconsciously) 

 pragmatist. 



