THE PRINCIPLES OF PRAGMATISM 121 



chology, as in chemistry and physics, the dogma of the absolutely 

 simple has no longer any place. This change has been facilitated 

 by the application of evolutionary methods in psychological in- 

 vestigation and the adoption of the functional standpoint. It is 

 not that the modern functional psychologist would necessarily 

 deny the possibility of the analysis of psychological phenomena 

 into irreducible elements, but rather that it is not in such terms 

 that the problems he has to face are to be solved. The essential 

 thing to be explained about a given process is, on the one hand, 

 its functional relations to other processes, and, on the other hand, 

 its genetic relationships. The mere analysis into structural ele- 

 ments is of secondary importance, subservient to the functional 

 problem. 



It is, then, on the basis of the functional interpretation of 

 psychological problems, that the pragmatist urges so insistently 

 the psychological treatment of logical theory. The traditional 

 contention of the Hegelian school, that psychological method is 

 fundamentally incapable of dealing with logical problems, is 

 based, he believes, upon the conception of psychology as aiming 

 at a merely mechanical explanation of mental processes. That 

 the contention had some force against the procedure of the old 

 empiricists, he would admit. Certainly the pragmatist would 

 as readily as the absolute idealist point out the inadequacy of 

 such alogical elements as the Berkeleyan idea and the Humian 

 impression to provide an explanation of logical processes. But 

 what he is more anxious to insist on is the greater anachronism 

 involved in the Hegelian attempt to treat the processes of re- 

 flective thought in abstraction from their genetic and functional 

 relations to other human activities. 



There is a more general sense, in which the temper of pragma- 

 tism is empirical ; and that is in its self-professed affiliation with 

 the empirical sciences. For pragmatism is not, at least in its 

 inception, a system of metaphysics. It has stood first of all 

 for the application of empirical scientific methods and this has 

 meant for the most part the methods of functional psychology 



