394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS EMPHASIZED BY 

 PRAGMATISM 



By Pkofessob JOSIAH ROYCE 

 haevaed uniteksitt 



XT is not my purpose upon this occasion to enter into the philosophical 

 aspect of the discussion regarding pragmatism, excepting in so 

 far as may be necessary to call attention to the psychological problems 

 that I now have in mind. I presuppose, of course, a familiarity on 

 the part of all of you with the main outlines of the recent discussions 

 concerning the problem of truth. But I shall not try with any exact- 

 ness to define what the term pragmatism means. I recognize that the 

 word as now used refers to a considerable variety of opinions, and that 

 the comparison of a " holding company,'" which Professor Dewey has, 

 I believe, on one occasion emplo3'ed, is not altogether inapt. It is 

 enough for our present purpose that by the name pragmatism we all of 

 us mean a certain set of tendencies in recent discussion which lay stress 

 upon the importance of defining the truth of propositions or judgments 

 or ideas in terms of those empirical facts and relations of facts which 

 are said to constitute the "workings" of the propositions, or judg- 

 ments, or ideas which are in question. The favorite summary of prag- 

 matism, to the effect that from the point of view of pragmatism a propo- 

 sition, or judgment, or idea is true " if it works," is sufficient to serve 

 as a general indication of the tendencies of opinion which are here in 

 question. 



"What pragmatism asserts about truth may be considered from the 

 point of view of a general theory of knowledge, or of a metaphysic. 

 But pragmatism itself especially emphasizes its relation to psychology, 

 on the one hand, and to the recognized methods of empirical science, on 

 the other. As Mr. Schiller said to me during the Philosophical Con- 

 gress of 1908 at Heidelberg, "What is most essential to pragmatism is 

 that it insists that the relations and values of the thinking process must 

 be estimated in psj'chological terms. Success tests truth, and success is 

 itself a matter of experience that can best be understood when it is de- 

 fined psycliologically." Another way of stating the essence of pragma- 

 tism is to insist, as Professor Dewey has so often done, upon the fact 

 that the method which pragmatism proposes to apply to all problems is 

 the method already used by the various sciences of experience. They em- 

 ploy "working hypotheses." They test these working hypotheses by 



