ACTIVE SOCIAL ADAPTATION 287 
absolutists in philosophy, whether materialistic or spiritualistic, 
he does not pretend to think through these contradictions and 
resolve them into an ultimate harmony.’ For him, real freedom 
is a datum of experience hence a fact to be reckoned with in every 
attempt to interpret life in terms of thought.2. The outcome of 
his philosophy is a “ pluralistic universe ” * on the one hand and 
“ pragmatism ”’ on the other; i.e., philosophy for him has no 
value except for life, no truth except as it is true to life, and no 
test of truth save the test of life, and as thought cannot inter- 
pret all the facts of life in terms of unity it must use those of 
plurality. 
From this point of view it is natural that he should criticize the 
monism of Spencer and the attempts of all strictly logical evolu- 
tionists to evolve the complexities of the universe as we know it 
and of life as we experience it, from one primordial principle 
whether matter, force, or matter-force. 
Turning specifically to the subject of this chapter, James made 
a notable contribution in an article in the Atlantic Monthly in 
1880 on “ Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment.” 5 
He proposes this problem: “‘ What are the causes that make com- 
munities change from generation to generation, — that make the 
England of Queen Anne so different from the England of Eliza- 
beth, the Harvard College of today so different from that of 
thirty years ago?” and answers, ‘‘ The difference is due to the 
accumulated influences of individuals, of their examples, their 
initiatives, and their decisions.’”’ He sets his own solution over 
against that of Spencer and his followers who hold, according to 
James, that ‘‘ the changes go on irrespective of persons, and are 
independent of individual control”; that ‘“‘ they are due to the 
environment, to the circumstances, the physical geography, the 
ancestral conditions, the increasing experience of outer relations, 
to everything, in fact, except the Grants, and the Bismarcks, the 
Joneses and the Smiths.” § 
1 Pragmatism, pp. 20 f. 3 Pragmatism, p. 161. 
2 The Will to Believe, p. 175. 4 Tbid., Lecture II. 
® Reprinted in The Will to Believe, pp. 216 ff. 
6 John Fiske as a follower of Spencer repudiates this interpretation (Excursions 
of an Evolutionist, ch. VI), and quotes Spencer as saying that sociology “ has in 
