Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Popular Lectures on Philosophy by William James. Longmans, Green & Co., $1.25. One of the most valuable features of Professor James's writings, as one of their greatest charms, is the breadth and depth of human sympathy which animates them. His Varieties of Religious Experience well deserved its subsidiary title of "A Study of Human Nature." Professor James was a psychologist before he was a philosopher, and his primary interest has remained with the individual. He is first a lover of man, and only secondarily of wisdom. It is, therefore, not surprising that in this latest series of popular lectures the metaphysical and philosophic system which he presents should be frankly humanistic and individualistic. These are good names. The quarrel which many laymen have with philosophy, as with science, is that it seems to deal only in abstractions. It reduces the world in which we live, which we feel vibrant and rich with possibility, with warmth and color and feeling and will, to a series of abstractions, a bare skeleton of a world in which all we value in life seems to have no place, and we ourselves to be squeezed out of reality. We are left chilled before its cold perfection. It seems to have no practical bearing on our every-day lives; it may all be so; but what of it? After all, is it not a mere matter of words and names? What difference does it make to you or me? When we approach philosophy or science, or anything whatsoever, in that attitude we are adopting the pragmatic method. The term "Pragmatism," Professor James tells us, is derived from the Greek word pragma, meaning action, from which our words "practice" and "practical" also come. It was introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles Peirce in 1878. In an article entitled "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," Mr. Peirce, after pointing out that our ideas are really rules for action, said that to develop a thought's meaning we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for us its sole significance. "To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object," he maintained, "we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve what sensations we are to expect from it and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is for us the whole of our conception of the object, as far as that conception has positive significance at all." Distinctions that make no practical difference are without meaning. This is the principle of pragmatism. It is the every-day attitude of most of us. It is not new in philosophy. As Professor James says, "Socrates was an adept at it. Aristotle used it methodically. Locke, Berkeley and Hume made momentous contributions to truth by its means. But these forerunners of pragmatism used it in fragments: they were a prelude only. Not until our own time has it generalized itself, become conscious of a universal mission, pretended to a conquering destiny." For twenty years Peirce's article was left unnoticed. Then Professor James revived the term, and has now made its method the basis of his metaphysical system-a system which numbers strong adherents and which pretends to "a universal mission and a conquering destiny." It is these pretensions which we are called upon to consider. From what has been already said it is clear that pragmatism has small respect for abstractions as such. To it they are man-made products, whose origin is in concrete experience, and whose function is to lead us back advantageously to further experience. They are fruitful ways of regarding reality. Just so far as they are advantageous and useful they are true; just so far and no further. This is much the attitude of science. The atomic theory of matter had its origin in experiments, in the behavior of concrete substances. Once furmulated it proved useful. Matter acted as though it were composed of these minute indivisible particles, and the theory led us back again to further experience, to the discovery of new facts. To this extent the theory was true. But with the discovery of radium and its phenomena this theory ceased to be useful. It no longer led us back into experience such as we desired. To this extent it ceased to be true, and the ionic and electric theory of matter has taken its place, and that is now true. Pragmatism has made of this a definition of truth. Truth is a matter of correct leading. It is that which it is advantageous to believe. But pragmatism does not particularly like the term the Truth. "The Truth" is, to it, an abstraction; on a par with "the Absolute" or "the All Knowing Intelligence," to be retained only if, as concepts, they prove useful. "The question 'What is the truth?" Professor James says, "is no real question (being irrelative to all conditions). The whole notion of the truth is an abstraction from the fact of truths in the plural, a mere useful summarizing phrase like the Latin Language or the Law." This brings clearly into view the closeness with which pragmatism adheres to the concrete. Professor James continues (p. 240): "Common-law judges sometimes talk about the law, and schoolmasters talk about the Latin tongue in a way to make their hearers think they mean entities pre-existent to the decisions or the words and syntax determining them unequivocally and requiring them to obey. But the slightest exercise of reflexion makes us see that, instead of being principles of this kind, both law and Latin are results. Distinctions between the lawful and unlawful in conduct, or between the correct and incorrect in speech, have grown up incidentally among the interactions of men's experiences in detail; and in no other way do distinctions between the true and the false in belief ever grow up. Truth grafts itself on previous truth, modifying it in the process, just as idiom grafts itself on previous idiom, and law on previous law. Previous truth; fresh facts:-and our mind finds a new truth. All the while, however, we pretend that the eternal is unrolling, that the one previous justice, grammar or truth are simply fulgurating and not being made. These things make themselves as we go. Our rights, wrongs, prohibitions, penalties, words, forms, idioms, beliefs are so many new creations that add themselves as fast as history proceeds. Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results." This doctrine that truths are man-made products is the "Humanism" of which Mr. Shiller at Oxford is the foremost exponent, and which Professor James defends. In this system "the world is what we make it." [Professor James quotes from Mr. Shiller's Personal Idealism]: "It is fruitless to define it by what it originally was or by what it is apart from us; it is what is made of it. Hence the world is plastic." "We can learn the limit of that plasticity only by trying, and we ought," he says, "to start as if it were wholly plastic, acting methodically on that assumption, and stopping only when decisively rebuked." We have now before us the essential doctrine of Pragmatism and Humanism. It expresses a frank contempt for intellectualism as such. It pleads that all opinion is to be judged by its fruits. It would, therefore, be of small use to dwell upon such intellectual inconsistency as it is not difficult to discover. Let us rather apply to it the criterion for which it asks. First, then, we see how it faces forward into reality, insisting that beliefs must be lived: that a belief is no belief unless it is acted upon, unless it makes a difference to our lives. It bids us stop all metaphysical hair-splitting and empty speculation. It teaches that the function of the mind is to guide the will; that not only our own life, but the whole world as well, is what we make it. Every fact, every belief, comes to us with a challenge: What are you going to do about me? And if we do nothing, then that fact or belief ceases to exist for us. Such an attitude must be continually stimulating, and it is a corrective to many harmful tendencies. But on the other hand, if the pragmatic attitude liberates the will, we cannot but feel that, in the extreme guise in which Professor James has presented it, it dwarfs and imprisons the spirit. It is not alone an anthropocentric philosophy, in which the whole universe it measured by man's needs, but it inculcates a very narrow view of man himself. Man's life is not bounded by the concrete. Nor are abstractions the crude averages Professor James depicts. The schoolmaster and young lawyer of whom Professor James makes such easy sport are not so distant from the truth. A people's tongue and a people's law are something more than the sum totals of words and rulings. They have a spirit and a genius of their own, which could not be other than it is. It is not by accident that our language is formed; its roots are in our blood and temper. Truly it grew, but equally there was that behind it which guided its growth-and this racial genius is no small part of the individual. The reality of man's life, that which is most himself, is as far from concrete facts-the accidents of his outer life-as it is from the barren formularies of logic. He is himself a dweller in abstractions, and Truth, the Truth, may be more to him than all the plural truths and all the concrete facts the world can give. The deeper, truer part of man is not anthropocentric in any such sense as is this philosophy; and the cosmocentric "abstractions" of his reveries and worship may become for him the essential fact of his individual existence. To the extent that pragmatism and humanism isolate man from the whole of which he is part-cause him to view this Whole as a figment of his own separate thinking, or as a concept to be used for his own separate advantageto that extent pragmatism falsifies itself, for it leads us not back into reality but into the miasmic phantasmagoria of our own delusions. H. B. M. The Martyrdom of a Philosopher. By Paul Carus. Everything Dr. Carus writes or edits has a certain quality of sincerity in it; he always has some idea, principle or movement, in which he genuinely believes, and whose ends he seeks to further. In the present book, he adds wit to sincerity, and gives us a satirical story, which makes very entertaining reading. The Philosopher, whose martyrdom we are invited to witness, is a disciple of the English school of Utilitarians, whose prophets, like Jeremy Bentham, adhere to the principle of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Further, this philosopher is wedded to the Agnosticism of Herbert Spencer to such an extent that, heedless of Latin etymology, he changes his name from Mr. Green to Mr. Agnosco, in proof of his faith. He forms a Philosophical Society, in the Paris of Napoleon III, and we are introduced to a choice collection of cranks, including a tricky Spiritualist and a rascally little adherent of Socialism, who marries the heroine and, when the curtain falls, is busy plotting to get possession of her bonds. She, on her side, has decided that she will endure anything, even divorce, rather than be sundered from the said bonds, which, by the way, she seems to have sequestered from her uncle's desk, he being the Mr. Green who has become Mr. Agnosco. We are left in doubt as to who gets those bonds. As to Mr. Green, he is wrecked on a cannibal island, and ministers to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, at a cannibal banquet, at which he seems to have given universal satisfaction. The purpose of the satire is to show that utilitarianism, Socialism and similar schemes of collective enjoyment are at heart perfectly selfish, and that it is an abuse of the word morality to call them moral. Morality rests on the ideal of duty, not on any calculation of well-being. Those who are familiar with Carlyle will remember that he has pitched into the "greatest happiness" principle on exactly the same grounds. Č. J. The Dharma. By Paul Carus (Open Court Publishing Co.) This is a new edition of one of the little manuals of Buddhism which Dr. Carus has published at intervals for several years, and of which his "Gospel of Buddha" is probably the best known. The Dharma, which means "The Law," is not a continuous narrative, but a selection of characteristic excerpts, such as the Noble Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, and similar passages, many of which Dr. Carus has turned into verse. We confess, though perhaps ours is a minority view, that we prefer the most literal prose translation in all such works. But it seems that Dr. Carus has been somewhat oppressed with the baldness and dryness of the Pali Buddhist books. It has always seemed to us that most of these books should be compared, not with the books of the New Testament, but with the brain-spun treatises of the medieval Schoolmen; they all show that they have passed through the minds of dried-up ecclesiastics, and we must seek for the source of the religious enthusiasm which made Buddhism a great missionary religion, elsewhere than in these almost algebraic treatises. We are inclined to take exception to Dr. Carus' description of the Vedanta, and especially the Upanishads, as "Brahmanism." Real Brahmanism consisted of the Vedic sacrificial system, lined by ancestorworship. The Upanishads, as they themselves tell us, convey the teaching, not of the Brahmans, but of the Rajputs, and sharply attack the Brahmanical system. So does the Bhagavad Gita, which declares itself to be the doctrine of "the Rajput sages." ." Buddhism is the third Rajput revelation, and only to be understood in connection with its two predecessors. After all, it seems to us that Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia" remains far the truest Western presentation of the religion of "Siddhartha the Compassionate." C. J. MAGAZINE LITERATURE. The Open Court for October, November and December. Notable among the articles in the October number is the Rev. E. H. Rumball's study of "Sin in the Upanishads," wherein he shows that the root of sin from the Brahmanical standpoint is ignorance, while from the Christian standpoint it is selfishness. He believes the Brahmanical conception a valuable one, well worth serious consideration. Poultney Bigelow, writing on Japan, thinks Christian missionaries to Japan a political blunder, and indeed an insult to a friendly nation; for what it has of most value, it owes to just what the missionaries go there to combat, that is, the so-called worship of ancestors. Both this and the November number contain articles on the recent syllabus of Pius X, which is discussed at length in this issue of the QUARTERLY. There is also in the November number an interesting “Criticism of Modern Theology," by Herman F. Bell, of New York, which the editor of the Open Court thinks an evidence that the seed of progress is working most successfully in the heart of the growing generation. In December, Orlando J. Smith attacks the God-problem, and, like most of his other work, while containing nothing new, restates old ideas in such a modern and clear and forceful manner that we feel as we read that the work was well worth while. Mr. Smith is a firm convert to Reincarnation, and makes it the basis of a part of his argument. There is a brief article on Jacob Boehme, and the conclusion of Dr. Carus's article on "St. Catherine of Alexandria." Father Hyacinthe Loyson's criticisms of the Syllabus are continued. The Theosophsches Leben for the current month contains the usual symposium of translations and original articles. In September Ernst John contributes the principal article on "Practical Theosophy." In October, the feature is a study of the Secret Doctrine, while the November number is chiefly composed of translations of a "Fragment" by Cavè, and an article on the "Mission of Jesus" by Charles Johnston. The Annals of Psychical Science for the quarter contain the usual discussion of spiritualistic phenomena from the scientific point of view. Professor Bozzano is collecting a large mass of testimony regarding the apparition of dying persons to distant friends, and is endeavoring to classify this type of phenomena. Dr. Henry Fotherby discusses the relations between emotions and color, a subject which has received considerable attention of late. He endeavors to give an evolutionary and purely materialistic explanation of the undoubted association between color and emotion, which exists in nearly all minds, but his theory, while ingenious, is entirely unconvincing. Professor Bottazzi, director of the Physiological Institute at the University of Naples, gives an account of his experiments with the famous Italian medium, Eusepia Paladino. He began as a complete skeptic and ended-a contributor to The Annals! International Journal of Ethics presents the usual symposium of articles on its specialties by learned writers from all over the world. Justice Brewer discourses on "Law and Ethics," and combats the common opinion that all lawyers are rascals. Frank A. Freeman writes on the "Ethics of Gambling," and points out many of the evils of this almost universal curse. The book reviews, as usual, are excellent. ANSWERS QUESTION 78.-To what extent should one submit to social usage? ANSWER.-Good manners alone, apart from good feeling (which is the model of good manners), would dictate conformance to the social usages of the place in which our lives are cast. The moment we pass beyond the limits of the unit life, we have laws of association; there are rules which govern every structure, and from which the social structure is by no means exempt. We see such rules everywhere; in the workshop as on the playing field; in a home as in a Government. Roughly speaking, we call them the "rules of the game"; and we say of a man who regards all these rules, wherever he may be, that "he plays the game"; he accepts the conditions of association in any given set of conditions. Life itself sets the example. If a man does not regard the rules of Life, he is passed along to another place which we call Death; and here there are doubtless rules also, for no state of manifestation is without its laws. Hence the philosopher accepts the usages of the state in which he finds himself; he knows them to be the strict conditions of learning, of attrition, of association, and thus of Evolution. "But how," do you say, "if these usages be evil?" Let us discriminate. We shall not find "usages" evil; we may at times find evil customs prevailing here and there. But we shall not, I venture to think, find evil accepted as a social usage. There may be things which we may not hold wise, such as irreverence, the use of alcohol, the playing of games of chance, and so on. But these are customs, matters of the individual; we need not do these things ourselves. Usages are different, and these we should follow, or remain apart. J. K. ANSWER.-All depends upon one's aim in life, the philosophy, or lack of it. If a short life and a merry one be the standard; if idle, careless drifting seems the greatest good, then accept and make the most possible of all social usages. If you belong by choice to the eminently respectable class, or the solid money power of the world, then by all means give sanction to all these helpful usages of society, all those usages which assist you to appear large in the eyes of others; all those usages which build up your reputation and position in the social world. Why not? But if perchance you have paused sometime to look up into the dark midnight sky, and down into your own heart. If you have realized that love is greater than knowledge; that the Divine law of life is unity and continuity. If you accept the woes of repeated births, and would follow "the small old path the Seers knew," striving to "keep the heart with all diligence, as out of it are the issues of life," realizing that only as you "point out the way" to another, will the light brighten for you then you will submit only to those usages of society which give the opportunity to lift your other selves, and to broaden and brighten the real pathway of the soul. E. M. ANSWER.-Social usages, in their true and original form, are intended to facilitate social intercourse, and should be followed just so far as they make things pleasanter for those around one. The purely arbitrary rules of social life, such as dressing for dinner, generally have some good reason behind them, but wherever they conflict with our spiritual growth, they should be promptly set aside, proIvided that in so doing we do not offend a friend, or mistake for a lofty disregard of trifles what is apt to be simple laziness. K. H. QUESTION 79.-Can a man injure himself without injuring others? |