CHAPTER V 



PRAGMATISM AND THE FORM OF THOUGHT 



We propose to bring together in this chapter certain considera- 

 tions bearing upon the contempt for formal logic which prevails 

 among pragmatists. It appears to us, and we shall try to estab- 

 lish the contention, that this contempt and the hostility which 

 it has inspired have no reasonable excuse ; that they have arisen 

 from an unwarranted exaggeration of the legitimate consequences 

 of the pragmatist theory of truth. 



The general position which we are to criticise may be briefly 

 indicated as follows. 



Consciousness is a function of the animal organism which has 

 developed by reason of its utility in various types of situations. 

 The intelligent study of consciousness will not attempt to sepa- 

 rate it from the conditions under which its present characteristics 

 have been acquired and to which its various structural relations 

 owe all their functional importance. To make such a separation 

 is to be committed to a formalism as shallow as that of an engineer 

 who should analyze and describe a complicated machine without 

 reference to the work for which it was designed and by which 

 the proportions and interconnections of all its parts were deter- 

 mined. 



If consciousness is not to be studied as a thing-in-itself, still 

 less is logical thought. For the latter is but an episode in the 

 life of feeling. It has its rise in the unpleasant strain occasioned 

 by the failure of an habitual mode of behavior; and it has its 

 normal conclusion in the satisfaction attendant upon successful 

 readjustment. All real thought is essentially practical, in the 

 sense that it is devoted to the solving of problems arising out 

 of the exigencies of conduct, and that when a solution is reached 

 behavior is modified accordingly. Thought is therefore not to 



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