576 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Even if this contains only a half-truth, it behooves us to try to get 

 our bearings, although philosophical orientation be fraught with all the 

 difficulties that have been claimed. In any event, it is of the utmost 

 importance to get the right point of beginning, so I have thought it 

 advisable to set forth Professor James's exact words when he first 

 announced the principle. 



So far as I have been able to discover, the next time he announced 

 it was in his "Varieties of Eeligious Experience," where he con- 

 densed it. I quote only one sentence: 



To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, we need then 

 only consider what sensations, immediate or remote, we are conceivably to 

 expect from it, and what conduct we must prepare in case the object should 

 be true. 



I should like you to note especially the added words, " immediate 

 or remote." I would also call attention to the fact that none but a 

 pragmatist could have written this truly delightful book. The eight- 

 eenth chapter, bearing the title " Philosophy," is simply a clearly 

 wrought-out application of the principle in the philosophy of religion. 



In Baldwin's " Dictionary of Philosophy," Professor James defines 

 the principle as follows: 



The doctrine that the whole " meaning " of a conception expresses itself 

 in practical consequences, consequences either in the shape of conduct to be 

 recommended, or in that of experience to be expected, if the conception be true; 

 which consequences would be different if it were untrue, and must be different 

 from the consequences by which the meaning of other conceptions is in turn 

 expressed. If a second conception should not appear to have other consequences, 

 then it must really be only the first conception under a different name. In 

 methodology it is certain that to trace and compare their respective conse- 

 quences is an admirable way of establishing the different meanings of different 

 definitions. 



In an article entitled " Humanism and Truth," published in Mind 

 for October, 1904, he says: 



First, as to the word " pragmatism." I myself have only used the term 

 to indicate a method of carrying on an abstract discussion. The serious mean- 

 ing of a concept, says Mr. Peirce, lies in the concrete difference to some one 

 which its being true will make. Strive to bring all debated conceptions to 

 that " pragmatic " test, and you will escape vain wrangling : if it can make 

 no practical difference which of two statements be true, then they are really 

 one statement in two verbal forms; if it can make no practical difference 

 whether a statement be true or false, then the statement has no real meaning. 

 In neither case is there anything fit to quarrel about: we may save our breadth, 

 and pass to more important things. 



All that the pragmatic method implies, then, is that truths should have 

 practical consequences. In England the word has been used more broadly to 

 cover the notion that the truth of any statement consists in the consequences, 

 and particularly in their being good consequences. Here we get beyond affairs 

 of method altogether; and since my pragmatism and this wider pragmatism 

 are so different, and both are important enough to have different names, I 

 think that Mr. Schiller's proposal to call the wider pragmatism by the name 



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