582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a still further explanation may be found in the fact that pragmatism 

 undertook to act as a mediator and reconciler between the contending 

 systems and, in consequence thereof, has suffered the proverbial fate 

 of the peacemaker. 



Whether or not I have been successful in pointing out the true 

 causes which have induced the fierce onslaughts which have been made 

 against the movement, it must be admitted that they have signally 

 failed to check it, and that it is growing, in spite of all the hostile 

 criticisms and gross misrepresentations. It would seem that it has 

 come into the world to stay. It might well be that its critics would 

 have fared better from the beginning if they had remembered that 

 " good humor is a philosophic state of mind," even if it be not true 

 " that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile." It un- 

 doubtedly would have been more in unison with the true philosophic 

 spirit, and, perhaps, attended with better results, if they had set to 

 work in good earnest to refute the arguments advanced by Professor 

 James and the other leaders, instead of contenting themselves with 

 giving pragmatism a bad name and bestowing upon it abuse and oppro- 

 brious epithets. If they were simply following the old maxim, " give 

 a dog a bad name and it will hang him," they were on a false trail. 



As I have said, entire harmony has not existed in pragmatist ranks, 

 of which fact the critics have made the most. Even so, such differ- 

 ences furnish no justification for the failure of the professional philos- 

 ophers to understand the lucid statements of Professor James, or of 

 the other two leaders, Dr. Schiller and Professor Dewey, as some of 

 them seem to have done. The points of divergence among them are 

 easily discernible by those who really try to see and understand the 

 movement. 



However, pragmatism, being what its protagonist says it is, ought 

 not to be expected to mean the same thing or to make a like appeal 

 to different minds. Evidently, it was with deep design that Professor 

 James began the first lecture in his " Pragmatism " with that para- 

 doxical quotation from Mr. Chesterton's " Heretics," as to the most 

 important thing about a man being his philosophy. It contains a 

 greater modicum of truth than most paradoxes, for as a man's 

 philosophy is, so will be " his view of the universe," and, as that view 

 is, so will be his life. Erom this paradox our pragmatist proceeds to 

 develop the thesis that " the history of philosophy is to a great extent 

 that of a certain clash of human temperaments," and to show us how 

 temperament " loads the evidence " not only for philosophers, but for 

 all of us. In this he follows Eichte, who has said somewhere, " what 

 system of philosophy you hold depends wholly upon what manner of 

 man you are." So Dr. Schiller has said, " the fit of a man's philosophy 

 is (and ought to be) as individual as the fit of his clothes." All this 



