174 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



and Hume, that constitutes his greatest contribution to philo- 

 sophical thought, and from which pragmatism especially has 

 most to learn. 



Misappreciation of Mill has not been confined to this side of 

 his thought. His treatment of utilitarianism met much the same 

 fate, and for a similar reason, namely, his own conservative 

 attitude toward his philosophical innovations. Thus, in his 

 treatment of utilitarianism, he advanced, as if it were nothing 

 more than an unimportant modification of the prevailing hedon- 

 ism, the theory that desire, and not pleasure, is the determinant 

 of value a theory which really involved, as is now recognized, 

 a profound transformation of the older utilitarianism. Owing 

 very largely to the modest and conservative mode of presentation, 

 this new theory was criticized, on the one hand, as being open 

 to all the objections applicable to the traditional hedonistic doc- 

 trine, and, on the other hand, as betraying a misunderstanding 

 of the older doctrine and inadvertently going over to the camp 

 of the enemy. In the same fashion, his doctrine of objectivity is 

 advanced as if it involved only a slight amendment of the sub- 

 jective idealism of Berkeley and Hume. And here too he has 

 been accused of misinterpreting the theory he avows and in- 

 advertently throwing wide the door to the admission of a thing- 

 in-itself in but a slight disguise. 



In view of the prevalence of such misconceptions of Mill's 

 position, we shall take the liberty of presenting on our own ac- 

 count what we conceive to be his essential contribution to the 

 theory of objectivity, together with our own reflections upon the 

 actual deficiencies of his treatment and upon the manner in 

 which pragmatism is able both to remedy these defects and 

 greatly to improve its own position. 



Mill's general problem is essentially that of Berkeley; namely, 

 the explanation of the existence of sensible things in psychological 

 terms. Berkeley's solution had been, as it will be remembered, 

 that sensible things are a class of ideas, or perceptions (synony- 

 mous terms for him) , and that accordingly their existnce can mean 



