WILL-TO-BELIEVE 22 1 



is a mere addendum, which contributes nothing to the force of 

 the argument. 



The pragmatic method, then, is either fallacious or superfluous. 



In current philosophical literature the name 'pragmatism' has 

 been used to cover any sort of attempt to eliminate ambiguity 

 in the use of terms perhaps from the conviction that any other 

 mode of thought is at bottom mere verbalism. Thus the dis- 

 tinction of various senses in which the world may be said to be 

 'one' or 'many' is called pragmatic, though it is carried on as the 

 veriest scholastic would require. To 'go around' an animal may 

 mean to go north and east and south and west of him ; or it may 

 mean to go in front, on one side, in the rear, and on the other 

 side of him; and to note the two-fold usage though without 

 the remotest suggestion of any practical difference to the animal 

 or his satellite is called pragmatism. But this simply robs the 

 term of any controversial importance; and it has no warrant 

 in the formal descriptions of the method, given by its advocates. 



A second feature of pragmatism, which we believe to be foreign 

 to its deeper spirit, but which is popularly regarded as constitut- 

 ing its very essence, is the theory of the 'will-to-believe.' It may 

 be formulated as follows : Where alternative hypotheses are pre- 

 sented, whose probability, so far as determined by existing evi- 

 dence, seems fairly equal ; and where the belief in the one alter- 

 native, were it verified by the event, would produce a satisfaction 

 so far greater than would in any case follow either from un- 

 certainty or from the acceptance of the other alternative, that 

 any relative deficiency of happiness which might arise from the 

 acceptance of the former, in case it were not verified, would be 

 negligible in comparison ; there a belief in the former hypothesis 

 is warranted that is to say, the former hypothesis may rightly 

 be regarded as indefinitely the more probable. 



It must be noted that the above statement of the theory differs 

 in one important respect from Professor James's enunciation. 

 We have omitted the proviso that a choice of alternatives be 



