WHAT PRAGMATISM 18 575 



active or passive; the point lying rather in the fact that the experience must 

 be particular, than in the fact that it must be active. 



All this seems to be perfectly plain and simple, but, in view of 

 the misunderstandings that are still current concerning the principle, 

 due largely to flagrant, if not wilful misrepresentations, and as this 

 is the beginning point of the " new philosophy," I trust that you will 

 pardon still further extracts. The gifted lecturer tells us that " to 

 take in the importance of this principle, one must get accustomed to 

 applying it to concrete cases," and the entire address is devoted to 

 such applications along religious and philosophical lines. He says: 



This is one of its first consequences. Suppose there are two different 

 philosophical definitions, or propositions, or maxims, or what not, which seem 

 to contradict each other, and about which men dispute. If, by supposing the 

 truth of the one, you can see no conceivable practical consequences to anybody 

 at any time or place, which is different from what you would foresee if you 

 supposed the truth of the other, why then the difference between the two 

 propositions is no difference, — it is only a specious and verbal difference, un- 

 worthy of further contention. Both formulas mean radically the same thing, 

 although they may say it in such different words. It is astonishing to see 

 how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you 

 subject them to this simple test. There can be no difference which doesn't 

 make a difference — no difference in abstract truth which does not express 

 itself in a difference of concrete fact, and of conduct consequent upon the 

 fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere, and somewhen. 



After stating that " it is the English-speaking philosophers who 



first introduced the custom of interpreting the meaning of conceptions 



by asking what difference they make for life," he adds: 



Mr. Peirce has only expressed in the form of an explicit maxim what their 

 sense for reality led them all instinctively to do. The great English way of 

 investigating a conception is to ask yourself right off, What is it known as? 

 In what facts does it result? What is its cash-value, in terms of particular 

 experience? And what special difference would come into the world according 

 as it were true or false? 



Finally, he says: 



For what seriousness can possibly remain in debating philosophic proposi- 

 tions that will never make an appreciable difference to us in action? And 

 what matters it, when all propositions are practically meaningless, which of 

 them be called true or false? 



Expressed in these different ways but all meaning the same thing, 



it would seem that Dr. Schiller was right in saying that the principle 



ought to be regarded as the greatest truism, if it had not pleased intellectualists 

 to take it as the greatest paradox. 



After all that has been written on the subject, a writer has quite 

 recently said : 



Ninety-five per cent., and a little more, of all who have rallied so valiantly 

 to the pragmatic banner totally misunderstand the new philosophy. And it is 

 even nearer the truth to say that one hundred per cent, of all the critics who 

 to their own satisfaction have completely demolished the pragmatic structure 

 have fired their shots at the wrong target. 



