WHAT PRAGMATISM IS 583 



must naturally follow if we agree with Mr. E. P. Marett, who has said : 

 There is at least a half-truth at the back of the view that a man is born 

 either a Platonist or an Aristotelian, a Stoic or an Epicurean, an intuitionist 

 or a utilitarian, an idealist or a materialist. We are spiritually-minded or 

 worldly-minded, believers or sceptics, romanticists or realists, and so forth, 

 primarily at least in virtue of a certain fundamental endowment of massive 

 sentiment. 



Our " great student of the human soul " has said, this particular 

 difference in temperament " has counted in literature, art, government 

 and manners as well as in philosophy." He should have added religion, 

 for in no other department of life has temperament played a most 

 important role, as he himself has superbly exemplified in his " Vari- 

 eties." This furnishes the key to the explanation of why " God has two 

 families of children on this earth, the once-born and the twice-born," 

 to use Francis W. Newman's significant phrase. There is no escaping 

 it. By shaping our faith for us it largely " divides us into possibility 

 men and anti-possibility men " and explains why " each of us dichotom- 

 izes the Kosmos in a different place," thereby each making for himself 

 the world in which he lives. "We have certain rules by which we can 

 calculate with approximate correctness the variation of the magnetic 

 needle from the true North and South line, but, most unfortunately, 

 we have no rule for computing temperamental variation. 



Pragmatism, therefore, being primarily a method of thought, " an 

 attitude of orientation," neither designates nor leads to any " specific 

 philosophic creed " ; and is not a system or a metaphysic. Dr. Schiller 

 has cogently said that it is " an epistemological method which really 

 describes the facts of actual knowing." That it should somewhat 

 definitely point to a metaphysic and also prove to be " a genetic theory 

 of what is meant by truth" should prove no surprise to us, but, as 

 important as all this is, it must be considered as secondary. One of 

 its chief beauties and attractions is that it leaves each one of us 

 perfectly free to develop his own particular " ideals and over-beliefs, 

 the most interesting and valuable things about a man." Thus it has 

 led Professor James to " radical empiricism," Mr. Peirce to " prag- 

 maticism," Professor Dewey to " instrumentalism" or " immediate 

 empiricism," Dr. Schiller to " humanism," and others to " the thirteen 

 pragmatisms," of which we have been hearing so much of late. All this 

 is as it should be and is greatly to its credit. But these different terms 

 should not be confounded with each other, used interchangeably as 

 though they were synonymous, or identified with pragmatism, as has 

 been done by some friends and many foes of the movement. At all 

 hazards, the pragmatic method must not be permitted to become identi- 

 fied with any one of them. That would be only the first step towards 

 its crystallization into a creed or petrifaction into a dogma. That 

 would be but to follow blindly in the footsteps of those teachers who 



