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Making Sense of People
 Also by Samuel Barondes
Cellular Dynamics of the Neuron
Neuronal Recognition
Molecules and Mental Illness
Mood Genes
Better Than Prozac
Before I Sleep: Poems for Children Who Think
 Making Sense of People
The Science of Personality Differences

Samuel Barondes

Second Edition
Publisher: Paul Boger
Editor-in-Chief: Amy Neidlinger
Executive Editor: Jeanne Glasser Levine
Cover Designer: Alan Clements
Managing Editor: Kristy Hart
Project Editor: Andy Beaster
Copy Editor: Language Logistics, LLC
Proofreader: Chuck Hutchinson
Indexer: Joy Lee
Compositor: Nonie Ratcliff
Manufacturing Buyer: Dan Uhrig
© 2016 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Published by Pearson Education, Inc.
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Company and product names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks
of their respective owners.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing November 2015
ISBN-10: 0-13-421500-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-421500-6
Pearson Education LTD.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948629
 For Louann

And for my grandchildren:

Jonah Lazar
Ellen Ariel
Asher Lucca
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents
Preface to Second Edition xi
Introduction: When Intuition Isn’t
Enough 1

Part I: Describing Personality Differences

1 Personality Traits 7
2 Troublesome Patterns 33

Part II: Explaining Personality Differences

3 How Genes Make Us Different 65
4 Building a Personal Brain 87

Part III: Whole Persons, Whole Lives

5 What’s a Good Character? 111
6 Identity: Creating a Personal Story 139
7 Putting It All Together 159
Endnotes 175
References 199
Acknowledgments 221
About the Author 225
Index 227
This page intentionally left blank
Every man is in certain respects

(a) like all other men,

(b) like some other men,

(c) like no other man.

—Clyde Kluckhohn and Henry A. Murray

This page intentionally left blank
 Preface to Second Edition
In 2001, after meeting Vladimir Putin for the first time,
George W. Bush offered his famous impression of the Rus-
sian’s personality:1
I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very
straightforward and trustworthy and we had a good
dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.

Bush’s assessment of Putin as straightforward and trust-

worthy triggered various interpretations. Some took it at face
value and were relieved that the two world leaders had hit it
off. Others felt that Bush had been deceived by the ex-KGB
man and were alarmed by his gullibility. Still others just dis-
missed it as the sort of polite statement politicians make to
warm up their adversaries.
Years later Bush made clear he had meant what he said.
When questioned directly by Hugh Hewitt during the 2010
book tour for his memoir, Decision Points, Bush explained it
this way:2
The reason why I said that is because I remembered
him talking movingly about his mother and the
cross she gave him that she had blessed in Jerusalem.
Nobody knows that, and I never tried to make an
explanation of why I said what I said until the book.

But Bush also saw a different side of Putin, which he revealed

in a portrait he made after retiring from the presidency.3 In
xii Making Sense of People

contrast with his earlier assessment, the portrait does not

depict Putin as being particularly trustworthy or straightfor-
ward. Instead the man Bush painted has been called poker-
faced and unreadable, scary and sinister, brimming with anger,
contempt, and disgust.
How did Bush arrive at this darker view of the Russian
leader? Was it based on his rethinking of Putin’s conduct on
the world stage?
Although that would seem likely, the answer Bush gave
was more personal: It had to do with Putin’s disdain for Bush’s
beloved dog Barney. On two occasions Putin had offended
Bush by mocking Barney’s weakness and small size and by
comparing him unfavorably with his own dog, Koni. In
response Bush apparently painted the face of Putin as the face
of the man who had ridiculed his dear little friend. As Bush
explained it in 2014 on the NBC Today Show:4
Wow, anybody who thinks “My dog is bigger than
your dog” is an interesting character. And the paint-
ing kind of reflects that.

The painting, of course, reflects more than “an interesting

character.” The painting also reflects the difference between
what Bush is comfortable expressing on canvas and what he is
comfortable expressing in words.
George W. Bush is not alone. Many of us find it difficult
to articulate our views of personalities—not only to others,
but also to ourselves. There’s so much to consider, and it’s hard
to convert what we know in our minds into a useful verbal
picture.
 preface to second edition xiii

Nevertheless, we can learn to do better. Making well-

crafted portraits with words is just as teachable as making
them with oils or pastels. In each case what’s needed is good
instruction and a dedicated student.
In the first edition of this book, I explained a step-by-step
system for making better verbal portraits. It combined four
ways of thinking about personalities based on decades of
research by psychologists and psychiatrists. It showed how the
information from these four perspectives could be put together
into a rich and complex picture of each unique person.
Many readers found this helpful, but others had difficulty
integrating the various parts. They wanted more practical
assistance in applying it to the people in their lives. Put simply,
they wanted more “how to.”
This new edition is designed with those people in mind.
The only substantial change I’ve made is to add a section, called
“Practical Summary,” at the end of each chapter to discuss and
illustrate applications. In these sections I also address misun-
derstandings and controversial points. The result I’ve aimed
for is not only more “how to.” It’s also more “here’s why.” At
the end of the last chapter, I sum up the benefits of integrating
information from all four perspectives into an overall portrait.
As a further aid to making the book more meaningful, I
would like you to pick a significant person in your life (whom
I’ll call P) and keep him or her in mind as you go through
the book. Repeatedly relating the material to this person may
help you see what each perspective adds to the whole. To keep
xiv Making Sense of People

reminding you to do this, I will ask you to answer some rel-

evant questions about P at the end of each Practical Summary.

Getting Started with P

To prepare for this focus on P, here are the steps to take
now:
1. Pick a person you’ve spent a lot of time with,
preferably someone who is at least 25 years old.
Make this choice carefully because I’d like you to
stick with it until the end of the book.
2. Think back on the first time you met P and on
important experiences you’ve shared. Mull this
over and notice what characteristics of P come to
mind.
3. Now write a description of P’s personality using
words, phrases, sentences, and full paragraphs as
you see fit. Record the description on paper or an
electronic device and, when you’re done, please
don’t change it. It will serve as a reminder of your
starting point to go back to when you’ve finished
the book. But feel free to keep a separate set of
notes about P as you go from chapter to chapter.
4. When you’re satisfied with your description,
which may be as long or short as you like, read on.
 INTRODUCTION

When Intuition Isn’t Enough

All of us are personality experts. Ever since childhood, we’ve

been paying attention to people’s distinctive ways of being and
trying to figure out what to expect from them. We depend on
this information to get along.
Our innate ability to size people up is an amazing gift we
take for granted. With it, we form an instantaneous impres-
sion of the personality of everyone we meet. Most of our assess-
ments of people are formed in this automatic and unconscious
way.1
But there are times when we want to take a closer look by
consciously and systematically evaluating someone’s personal-
ity.2 We may, for example, want to understand what it is about
our boss that makes us avoid her. We may want to sort through
the reasons we don’t approve of our teenage daughter’s boy-
friend. We may want to decide if the person we’re dating has
the right stuff for a permanent relationship.
That’s when the going gets tough. The difficulty mainly
arises because few of us have been taught a systematic way to
assess personalities. Instead, we are constantly bombarded with
a contradictory mishmash of religious, moral, literary, and psy-
chological ideas that are hard to apply in an orderly manner.
Imagine how we would struggle to do simple arithmetic if we

1
2 Making Sense of People

kept getting contradictory instructions on how to work with

numbers. Yet we’re expected to make sense of people without
having been taught a coherent arithmetic of personality.
This lack of education may be responsible for some of our
biggest mistakes. It can lead us to pick the wrong suitor, take
the wrong job, or misguide our children. It can cause us to
misinterpret a coworker’s intentions and become inappropri-
ately defensive, or compliant, or aggressive. It can keep us from
building satisfying relationships, gracefully avoiding conflicts,
or developing plans to protect our interests by fighting back.
In this book, I describe a system for thinking about per-
sonalities that may help you avoid such mistakes. Based on
decades of research, each chapter will make it easier for you to
organize the data you already have about particular people and
to start noticing characteristics that you may have overlooked.
Sorting through this information will give you a clearer sense
of each person and how to relate to them.
To get started, I will show you how to combine two vocab-
ularies that professionals use to organize their observations.
One breaks down personality into five well-defined tenden-
cies, such as conscientiousness and agreeableness, each of
which has several components. This makes it easier to think
things through using a well-defined set of words.
The other vocabulary shifts attention from these tenden-
cies to ten potentially troublesome patterns of behavior, such
as compulsiveness or paranoia. Mild versions of these patterns
may simply be notable parts of a well-functioning personality.
But some of us have inflexible and maladaptive versions of one
or a few of them, versions that frequently bring grief to those
 Introduction 3

we deal with—and to ourselves. More than the rest of us, such

people are prisoners of personality who are locked into ways of
being they seem unable to escape.
Combining these two easy-to-learn vocabularies will not
only help you make clearer assessments of everyone you meet,
but will also raise questions about the reasons people get to be
so different from each other. In the second part of the book, I
will describe the development of the brain circuits that control
our distinctive combinations of tendencies and patterns. I will
also show that the decades-long developmental process that
builds these brain circuits is strongly influenced by the two
great accidents of our birth: the specific set of genes we happen
to be born with and the specific world we happen to live in.
But there’s more to a personality than tendencies and pat-
terns. In the third part of the book, I will turn to the values
and goals that give meaning and purpose to people’s lives. To
flesh out this view, I will show you how to apply universal and
culture-specific standards of morality to assess that aspect of
personality called character. I will also encourage you to pay
attention to the stories people tell about their personal history
and future plans, which will help you figure out what they
stand for and their sense of identity.
Systematically organizing all this information about ten-
dencies, patterns, character, and identity will help you make
sense of anyone. It may also influence the approach you choose
to engage with them. In some cases, this may encourage you to
shrug off their disquieting idiosyncrasies in favor of forgive-
ness and compassion. In other cases, it may alert you to telltale
signs of danger so that you can take protective actions. In still
4 Making Sense of People

other cases, it may open your heart to warm feelings of love

and respect. In all cases, it will enhance your appreciation of
human diversity in the same way that those who know a lot
about wine, or music, or baseball get the added pleasure that
comes from thoughtful attention to the details. Augment-
ing your pleasure in understanding and dealing with people,
whether you like them or not, is the main aim of this book.
 Part i

Describing
Personality Differences

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.

—Chinese Proverb

5
This page intentionally left blank
 ONE

Personality Traits

W hen I was in high school, I signed up for the student

newspaper. To get me started, the editor offered some
standard advice on how to write a story. He said I should be sure
to answer five questions: What happened? Who was involved?
When? Where? Why? He said that knowing about these “five
Ws” served as a check for completeness because novices some-
times left out one or more of them. He then assured me that
I wouldn’t need them for long because answering these ques-
tions was something I was already inclined to do intuitively.
Intuition is also what journalists rely on when they size up
people. Through years of practice, they develop a knack for
identifying distinctive personality traits and finding the words
to describe them. The gifted among them are so good at it that
they can create a revealing portrait in a single paragraph. Con-
sider, for example, Joe Klein’s description of the personality of
an American politician:
There was a physical, almost carnal, quality to his
public appearances. He embraced audiences and was
aroused by them in turn. His sonar was remarkable in
retail political situations. He seemed able to sense
what audiences needed and deliver it to

7
8 Making Sense of People

them—trimming his pitch here, emphasizing differ-

ent priorities there, always aiming to please. This was
one of his most effective, and maddening qualities in
private meetings as well: He always grabbed on to
some point of agreement, while steering the conversa-
tion away from larger points of disagreement—
leaving his seducee with the distinct impression that
they were in total harmony about everything. …
There was a needy, high cholesterol quality to it all;
the public seemed enthralled by his vast, messy
humanity. Try as he might to keep in shape, jogging
for miles with his pale thighs jiggling, he still tended
to a raw fleshiness. He was famously addicted to junk
food. He had a reputation as a womanizer. All of
these were of a piece.1
Notice that Klein needs only a handful of evocative words
to highlight the main characteristics of his subject: carnal,
needy, messy, maddening, fleshiness, addicted, and woman-
izer. To round out his description, he uses a few short phrases,
such as “his sonar was remarkable,” “high cholesterol quality,”
and “aiming to please.” When he can’t find a simple word or
phrase to describe something that he considers particularly
revealing, he makes up a whole sentence: “he always grabbed
on to some point of agreement, while steering the conversation
away from larger points of disagreement—leaving his seducee
with the distinct impression that they were in total harmony
about everything.” By using words and phrases that all of us
can understand, Klein tells us a great deal about the personal-
ity of an extraordinary public figure: Bill Clinton.
 Personality Traits 9

The combination of words and phrases is, of course, criti-

cal. There are other people who are needy but who are neither
carnal nor womanizers. Some of them may also have remark-
able sonar but without being messy or maddening. What
makes Klein’s description so recognizable is that, as he points
out, all the traits “were of a piece.”
So how did Klein do it? Was he intuitively asking himself
a set of questions that are as obvious to him as the five Ws?
Did he leave out anything important? Can we learn a tech-
nique to make our own descriptions of people more incisive
and complete?

Words from the Dictionary

The development of a simple technique to describe personali-
ties was set in motion in the 1930s by Gordon Allport, a pro-
fessor of psychology at Harvard. Although Allport was well
aware of the uniqueness of each individual, he also knew that
scientific fields get started by breaking down complex systems
into simple components. Just as understanding the great vari-
ety of chemical compounds depended on identifying a limited
number of elements, understanding the great variety of per-
sonalities may depend on identifying a limited number of criti-
cal ingredients. But what exactly are those ingredients?
Allport’s answer was traits: the enduring dispositions to act
and think and feel in certain ways that are described by words
found in all human languages. Just as chemical elements such
as carbon and hydrogen can combine with many others to
form endless numbers of complicated substances, traits such as
10 Making Sense of People

being outgoing and being reliable can combine with many oth-
ers to form endless numbers of complicated personalities. But
how many traits are there? And how could Allport find out?
To answer this question, Allport and his colleague, H.S.
Odbert, made a list of the words about personality from Web-
ster’s New International Dictionary.2 By analyzing this list,
they hoped to identify the essential components of personal-
ity that were so obvious to our ancestors that they invented a
great many words to describe them. Instead of just concoct-
ing an inventory of personality traits out of their own heads,
Allport and Odbert would be guided by the cumulative ver-
bal creations of countless minds over countless generations, as
recorded in a dictionary.3
It soon became clear that these researchers had bitten off
more than they could chew. The list of words “to distinguish
the behavior of one human being from another” had 17,953
entries! Faced with this staggering number, they whittled
it down using several criteria. First, they eliminated about a
third, such as attractive, because the entries were considered
evaluative rather than essential: “[W]hen we say a woman is
attractive, we are talking not about a disposition ‘inside the
skin’ but about her effect on other people.”4 Another fourth
hit the cutting room floor because they described temporary
states of mind, such as frantic and rejoicing, rather than the
enduring dispositions that are defining features of personality
traits. Others were thrown out because they were considered
ambiguous. In the end, about 4,500 entries met the research-
ers’ criteria for stable traits.
 Personality Traits 11

This doesn’t mean that personality has 4,500 different

components; many of the words on the list are easily identifi-
able as synonyms. For example, outgoing and sociable are used
interchangeably. Furthermore, antonyms, such as solitary,
describe the same general category of behavior, but at its oppo-
site pole—instead of saying “not sociable” or “not outgoing,”
we might say “solitary.” In fact, a wonderful feature of natural
language is that it lends itself so well to a graded (or dimen-
sional) description of specific components of personality, from
extremely outgoing at one pole to extremely solitary at the
other, with modifiers to specify points in between. Put simply,
the ancestors who gradually built our language—and all lan-
guages—left us with many choices for describing ingredients
of personality.
Recognizing that outgoing and solitary both refer to aspects
of an identical trait, how many other words also fit into this
category? When I looked up outgoing in my thesaurus, I found
these synonyms, among others: gregarious, companionable,
convivial, friendly, and jovial. When I looked up solitary, I got,
among others, retiring, isolated, lonely, private, and friendless.
This tells me that the group of experts who put together this
thesaurus decided that all these words belong in a box that can
be labeled Outgoing–Solitary. Needless to say, each word in
the box may also have some special spin of its own. For exam-
ple, solitary, lonely, and private don’t mean exactly the same
thing, and writers such as Joe Klein may mull them over to get
just the right one. Nevertheless, we all know that these words
have a lot in common. To psychologists such as Allport, they
all refer to a single overarching trait.
12 Making Sense of People

Beyond Synonyms and Antonyms

Does this mean that we can identify the essential building
blocks of personality by simply getting a list from a dictionary
and then lumping together the synonyms and antonyms from
a thesaurus? Can we base a nomenclature of personality on the
analysis of professional lexicographers? Or can we use a more
open-source approach that pays attention to the ways ordinary
people employ words to describe personalities?
The answer psychologists settled on was both. First, profes-
sionals reduced the list to a more manageable number—about
a thousand. Then they asked ordinary people to use these
words to describe themselves and their acquaintances. To get
an idea of the way this was done, please apply the ten words
in the following list to someone you know well. In expressing
your opinion, use a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 indicating that the
person ranks very high, 1 indicating that the person ranks very
low, and the other numbers indicating that the person falls
somewhere in between.
1. Outgoing 1234567
2. Bold 1234567
3. Talkative 1234567
4. Energetic 1234567
5. Assertive 1234567
6. Reliable 1234567
7. Practical 1234567
8. Hardworking 1234567
9. Organized 1234567
10. Careful 1234567
 Personality Traits 13

I have no way of knowing what numbers you selected. But

chances are good that they will have a characteristic relation-
ship: The numbers you picked for the first five items probably
are similar, and the numbers you picked for the second five
items probably are similar. Furthermore, I can say with confi-
dence that most people who give someone a certain score for
outgoing give them a similar score for bold, talkative, energetic,
and assertive; and that the score they give someone for reliable
is likely similar to the one they give for practical, hardworking,
organized, and careful. Even though none of the words in each
quintet are synonyms, people who are ranked a certain way on
one word from each tend to get similar scores on the others. In
contrast, people’s scores on the first quintet are independent
of their scores on the second quintet. This implies that these
nonsynonymous words are grouped together in our minds
because each refers to some aspect of a related component of
personality.
Could any other words be lumped together with outgoing or
reliable to flesh out these two big categories? How many other
groupings like this would be discovered if people were asked to
make judgments using all the thousand words that the original
list was pared down to? And what statistical techniques would
be needed to identify these categories? In making the list, All-
port set the stage for research on these questions.5

Bundling Traits
A statistical technique for studying the relationships between
these words was invented in the nineteenth century by Francis
Galton, a founder of modern research on personality, whom
14 Making Sense of People

you read more about later. The technique is used to calcu-

late a correlation coefficient, a number between 1.0 and –1.0
that measures the degree of sameness (positive correlation) or
oppositeness (negative correlation). Although Galton invented
the technique for other purposes, he also happened to be
interested in categorizing the words that we use for personal-
ity traits,6 and he would have been pleased to learn about this
application.
To get a feel for this calculation, let’s think about the posi-
tive correlations we would find if we asked people to rank
someone on outgoing, sociable, and gregarious by using a scale
of 1 to 7. Knowing that these words are synonyms, we would
expect to find that if John ranks Mary a 6 on outgoing, he
likely will rank her around 6 on each of the others. If he then
ranks Jane as a 4 on outgoing, he likely will rank her around 4
on each of the others. And if Jennifer ranks Jim a 1 on outgo-
ing, she likely will rank him around 1 on each of the others.
Plugging these scores into Galton’s formula would indicate a
great deal of sameness.
Now what sort of correlations would we find between the
words in the first nonsynonymous quintet (outgoing–bold–
talkative–energetic–assertive)? Studies show that these words
are correlated strongly, but not as strongly as synonyms, and
similar positive correlations are found among the words in the
second nonsynonymous quintet (reliable–practical–hard-
working–organized–careful). In contrast, when we compare
the scores for words such as outgoing from the first group with
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
experimental and hypothetical method with which he is already
familiar in the physical sciences.
In this version of the work of the three leading pragmatists it is
assumed, of course, that the pragmatist philosophy is the only
philosophy that can show to the average man that philosophy can
really do something useful—can “bake bread,” if you will, can give to
a man the food of a man. It is assumed, too, that it is the only
philosophy which proceeds scientifically, that is to say, by means of
observation and of hypotheses that “work,” and by subsequent
deduction and by “verification.” And again, that it is the only
philosophy that gives to man the realities upon which he can base
his aspirations or his faith in distinction, that is to say, from the mere
abstractions of Rationalism in any form.
By way of a few quotations illustrative of the fundamental
contentions of the pragmatists, we may select the following: “Ideas
become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory
relation with other parts of our experience, to summarise them and
get about among them by conceptional short-cuts instead of
following the interminable succession of particular phenomena. Any
idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us
prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part,
linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving
labour—is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true
29
instrumentally.” “The true is the name of whatever proves itself to
be good in the way of belief, and good for definite and assignable
30
reasons.” From Professor Dewey: “Thinking is a kind of activity
which we perform at specific need, just as at other times we engage
in other sorts of activity, as converse with a friend, draw a plan for a
house, take a walk, eat a dinner, purchase a suit of clothes, etc. etc.
The measure of its success, the standard of its validity is precisely
the degree in which thinking disposes of the difficulty and allows us
to proceed with the more direct modes of experiencing, that are
31
henceforth possessed of more assured and deepened value.”
From Dr. Schiller’s book, Studies in Humanism: “Pragmatism is the
doctrine that when an assertion claims truth, its consequences are
always used to test its claims; that (2) the truth of an assertion
depends on its application; that (3) the meaning of a rule lies in its
application; that (4) all meaning depends on purpose; that (5) all
mental life is purposive. It [Pragmatism] must constitute itself into (6)
a systematic protest against all ignoring of the purposiveness of
actual knowing, alike whether it is abstracted from for the sake of the
imaginary, pure, or absolute reason of the rationalists, or eliminated
for the sake of an equally imaginary or pure mechanism of the
naturalists. So conceived, we may describe it as (7) a conscious
application to logic of a teleological psychology which implies
ultimately a voluntaristic metaphysics.”
From these citations, and from the descriptive remarks of the
preceding two paragraphs, we may perhaps be enabled to infer that
our Anglo-American Pragmatism has progressed from the stage of
(1) a mere method of discussing truth and thinking in relation to the
problem of philosophy as a whole, (2) that of a more or less definite
and detailed criticism of the rationalism that overlooks the practical,
or purposive, character of most of our knowledge, to that of (3) a
humanistic or “voluntaristic” or “personalistic” philosophy, with its
32
many different associations and affiliations. One of the last
developments, for example, of this pragmatist humanism is Dr.
Schiller’s association of philosophy with the metaphysics of
evolution, with the attempt to find the goal of the world-process and
of human history in a changeless society of perfected individuals.
We shall immediately see, however, that this summary
description of the growth of Pragmatism has to be supplemented by
a recognition of (1) some of the different phases Pragmatism has
assumed on the continent of Europe, (2) the different phases that
may be detected in the reception or criticism accorded to it in
different countries, and (3) some of the results of the pragmatist
movement upon contemporary philosophy. All these things have to
do with the making of the complex thing that we think of as
Pragmatism and the pragmatist movement.
 A NOTE ON THE MEANING OF
“PRAGMATISM”
(1) “The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of
the following maxim for obtaining clearness of apprehension: ‘Consider what
effects that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of
our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our
conception of the object’” (Baldwin’s Philosophical Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 321). [We
can see from this citation that the application of its formulæ about “consequences”
to metaphysics, or philosophy generally, must be considered as a part, or aspect,
of the pragmatist philosophy.]
(2) “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 experiences 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 consequence,
then it must be really only the first conception under a different name. In
methodology, it is certain that to trace and compare their respective consequences
is an admirable way of establishing the different meanings of different conceptions”
(ibid., from Professor James).
(3) “A widely current opinion during the last quarter of a century has been that
‘reasonableness’ is not a good in itself, but only for the sake of something.
Whether it be so or not seems to be a synthetical question [i.e. a question that is
not merely a verbal question, a question of words], not to be settled by an appeal
to the Principle of Contradiction [the principle hitherto relied upon by Rationalism
or Intellectualism].... Almost everybody will now agree that the ultimate good lies in
the evolutionary process in some way. If so, it is not in individual reactions in their
segregation, but in something general or continuous. Synechism is founded on the
notion that the coalescence, the becoming continuous, the becoming governed by
laws, the becoming instinct with general ideas, are but phases of one and the
same process of the growth of reasonableness” (ibid. p. 322. From Dr. Peirce, the
bracket clauses being the author’s).
(4) “It is the belief that ideas invariably strive after practical expression, and
that our whole life is teleological. Putting the matter logically, logic formulates
theoretically what is of regulative importance for life—for our ‘experience’ in view of
practical ends. Its philosophical meaning is the conviction that all facts of nature,
physically and spiritually, find their expressions in ‘will’; will and energy are
identical. This tendency is in agreement with the practical tendencies of American
thought and American life in so far as they both set a definite end before Idealism”
(Ueberweg-Heinze, Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. iv., written and contributed by
Professor Matoon Monroe Curtis, Professor of Philosophy in Western Reserve
University, Cleveland, U.S.A.).
(5) See also an article in Mind for October 1900, vol. ix. N.S., upon
“Pragmatism” by the author of this book on Pragmatism and Idealism, referred to
as one of the early sources in Baldwin’s Philosophical Dictionary (New York and
London) and in Ueberweg-Heinze’s Geschichte, Vierter Teil (Berlin, 1906).
The conclusion that I am inclined to draw from the foregoing official statements
(and also, say, from another official article like that of M. Lalande in the Revue
Philosophique, 1906, on “Pragmatisme et Pragmaticisme”) is that the term
“Pragmatism” is not of itself a matter of great importance, and that there is no
separate, intelligible, independent, self-consistent system of philosophy that may
be called Pragmatism. It is a general name for the Practicalism or Voluntarism or
Humanism or the Philosophy of the Practical Reason, or the Activism, or the
Instrumentalism, or the Philosophy of Hypotheses, or the Dynamic Philosophy of
life and things that is discussed in different ways in this book upon Pragmatism
and Idealism. And it is not and cannot be independent of the traditional body of
philosophical truth in relation to which it can alone be defined.
 CHAPTER II
PRAGMATISM AND THE PRAGMATIST
MOVEMENT

In considering some of the results of pragmatist and voluntarist

doctrines in the case of European writers, to whom the American-
English triumvirate used to look somewhat sympathetically, we may
begin with Italy, which boasted, according to Dr. Schiller (writing in
1907), of a youthful band of avowed pragmatists with a militant
33
organ, the Leonardo. “Fundamentally,” declares Papini, the leader
of this movement, “Pragmatism means an unstiffening of all our
theories and beliefs, by attending to their instrumental value. It
incorporates and harmonizes various ancient tendencies, such as
Nominalism, with its protest against the use of general terms,
Utilitarianism, with its emphasis upon particular aspects and
problems, Positivism, with its disdain of verbal and useless
questions, Kantism, with its doctrine of the primacy of practical
reason, Voluntarism, with its treatment of the intellect as the tool of
the will, and Freedom, and a positive attitude towards religious
questions. It is the tendency of taking all these, and other theories,
for what they are worth, being chiefly a corridor-theory, with doors
and avenues into various theories, and a central rallying-ground for
them all.” These words are valuable as one of the many confessions
of the affiliations of Pragmatism to several other more or less
experiential, or practical, views of philosophy. It is perfectly obvious
from them that Pragmatism stands, in the main, for the apprehension
of all truth as subservient to practice, as but a device for the
“economy” of thought, for the grasping of the multiplicity and the
complexity of phenomena. It looks upon man as made, in the main,
for action, and not for speculation—a doctrine which even Mr. Peirce,
by the way, now speaks of as “a stoical maxim which to me, at the
age of sixty, does not recommend itself so forcibly as it did at
34
thirty.”
“The various ideal worlds are here,” continues Papini, according
35
to the version of James, “because the real world fails to satisfy us.
All our ideal instruments are certainly imperfect. But philosophy can
be regenerated ... it can become pragmatic in the general sense of
the word, a general theory of human action ... so that philosophic
thought will resolve itself into a comparative discussion of all the
possible programmes for man’s life, when man is once for all
regarded as a creative being.... As such, man becomes a kind of
god, and where are we to draw the limits?” In an article called “From
Man to God,” Papini, in the Leonardo, lets his imagination work in
stretching the limits of this way of thinking.
These prophetic, or Promethean, utterances—and we must
never forget that even to the Greeks philosophy was always
something of a religion or a life—may be paralleled by some of the
more enthusiastic and unguarded, early utterances of Dr. Schiller
about “voluntarism” or “metaphysical personalism” as the one
“courageous,” and the only potent, philosophy; or about the
“storming of the Jericho of rationalism” by the “jeers” and the
“trumpetings” of the confident humanists and their pragmatic
confrères. The underlying element of truth in them, and, for that part
of it, in many of the similar utterances of many of our modern
humanists, from Rabelais to Voltaire and from Shelley to Marx and
Nietzsche, is, as we may see, that a true metaphysic must serve, not
36
only as a rational system for the intellect, but as a “dynamic” or
motive for action and achievement, for the conscious activity of
rational, self-conscious beings.
37
As for the matter of any further developments of the free,
creative religion hinted by Papini, we had, in 1903, the solemn
declaration of Professor James that “the programme of the man-god
is one of the great type programmes of philosophy,” and that he
himself had been “slow” in coming to a perception of the full
inwardness of the idea. Then it led evidently in Italy itself to a new
doctrine which was trumpeted there a year or two ago in the public
38
press as “Futurism,” in which “courage, audacity and rebellion”
were the essential elements, and which could not “abide” the mere
mention of such things as “priests” and “ideals” and “professors” and
“moralism.” The extravagances of Prezzolini, who thinks of man as a
“sentimental gorilla,” were apparently the latest outcome of this
anarchical individualism and practicalism. Pragmatism was
converted by him into a sophisticated opportunism and a modern
Machiavellism, a method of attaining contentment in one’s life and of
dominating one’s fellow-creatures by playing upon their fancies and
prejudices as does the religious charlatan or the quack doctor or the
rhetorician.
The reader who may care to contemplate all this radical,
pragmatist enthusiasm for the New Reformation in a more
accessible, and a less exaggerated, form had better perhaps consult
the recent work of Mr. Sturt of Oxford on the Idea of a Free Church.
In this work the principles of Pragmatism are applied, first, critically
and in the main negatively, to the moral dogmas of traditional
Christianity, and then positively to the new conception of religion he
would substitute for all this—the development of personality in
accordance with the claims of family and of national life. A fair-
minded criticism of this book would, I think, lead to the conclusion
that the changes contemplated by Mr. Sturt are already part and
parcel of the programme of liberal Christianity, whether we study this
in the form of the many more or less philosophical presentations of
the same in modern German theology, or in the form of the free,
moral and social efforts of the voluntary religion of America and
England. In America many of the younger thinkers in theology and
philosophy are already writing in a more or less popular manner
upon Pragmatism as a philosophy that bids fair to harmonize
“traditional” and “radical” conceptions of religion. One of these
39
writers, for example, in a recent important commemorative volume,
tries to show how this may be done by interpreting the
“supernatural,” not as the “trans-experimental,” but as the “ethical” in
experience, and by turning “dogmatic” into “historical theology.” And
it would not be difficult to find many books and addresses in which
the same idea is expressed. The more practical wing of this same
party endeavours to connect Pragmatism with the whole philosophy
and psychology of religious conversion, as this has been worked
40 41
over by recent investigators like Stanley Hall, Starbuck, and
others, and, above all, by James in his striking volume The Varieties
42
of Religious Experience.
The fact, of course—and I shall immediately refer to it—that
Pragmatism has been hailed in France as a salutary doctrine, not
merely by Liberals and Evangelicals, but by devout Catholics and
Anti-modernists, is perhaps enough to give us some pause in the
matter of its application in the sphere of theoretical and practical
religion. It is useful, it would seem, sometimes to “liberate” the spirit
of man, and useful, too, at other times to connect the strivings of the
individual with the more or less organized experiences of past ages.
Turning, then, to France, it is, judging from the claims of the
pragmatists, and from some of the literature bearing upon this entire
43
subject, fairly evident that there has been a kind of association or
relationship between Pragmatism and the following tendencies in
recent French philosophy: (1) the “freedom” and “indeterminism”
44
philosophy of Renouvier and other members of the Neo-Critical
school, and of Boutroux and Bergson, who, “although differing from
each other in many important respects,” all “belong to the same
movement of thought, the reaction against Hegelianism and the cult
of science which has dominated France since the decline of the
45
metaphysics of the school of Cousin”; (2) the philosophy of
science and scientific hypotheses represented by writers like
46 47 48
Poincaré, Brunschvicg, Le Roy, Milhaud, Abel Rey, and
others; (3) the religious philosophy and the fideism of the followers of
the spiritualistic metaphysic of Bergson, many of whom go further
than he does, and “make every effort to bring him to the confessional
49
faith”; and (4) the French philosophy of to-day that definitely bears
50
the name of Pragmatism, that of M. Blondel, who in 1893 wrote a
suggestive work entitled L’Action, and who claims to have coined the
word Pragmatism, after much careful consideration and
discrimination, as early as 1888—many years before the California
pamphlet of James.
The first of these points of correspondence or relationship we
can pass over with the remark that we shall have a good deal to say
about the advantage enjoyed by Pragmatism over Rationalism in the
treatment of “freedom” and the “volitional” side of human nature, and
also about the general pragmatist reaction against Rationalism.
And as for the philosophy of science, it has been shown that our
English-speaking pragmatists cannot exactly pride themselves in the
somewhat indiscriminate manner of James and Schiller upon the
supposed support for their “hypothetical” conception of science and
philosophy to be found in the work of their French associates upon
the logic of science. “The men of great learning who were named as
sponsors of this new philosophy have more and more testified what
reservations they make, and how greatly their conclusions differ from
51
those which are currently attributed to them.” Both Brunschvicg
and Poincaré, in fact, take the greatest pains in their books to
dissociate themselves from anything like the appearance of an
acceptance of the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, from the
signs of any lack of faith in the idea that science, as far as it goes,
gives us a true revelation of the nature of reality.
Then in regard to (3) the French pragmatist philosophy or
religion we have only to read the reports and the quotations of M.
Lalande to see in this philosophy the operation of an uncritical
dogmatism or a blind “fideism” to which very few other philosophers,
either in France or in any other country, would care to subscribe. “La
Revue de Philosophie, which is directed by ecclesiastics, recently
extolled pragmatism as a means of proving orthodox beliefs.” ...
“This system solves a great many difficulties in philosophy; it
explains the necessity of principles marvellously.” ... “The existence
of God, Providence and Immortality are demonstrated by their happy
effects upon our terrestrial life.” ... “If we can consider the matter
carefully, it will be seen that the Good is the useful; for not to be
good in anything is synonymous with being bad, and everywhere the
52
true is the useful. It is in this assertion that Pragmatism consists.”
And as to the fourth tendency, there is, at its outset, according to
M. Lalande, a more rational or ethical basis for the fideism of M.
Blondel’s book upon action, which starts off with a criticism of
philosophic dilettantism quite analogous with that which Mr. Peirce
follows in How to Make Our Ideas Clear. But M. Blondel “does not
continue in the same manner, and his conclusion is very different.
Rejecting all philosophical formalism, he puts his trust in moral
experience, and consults it directly. He thinks that moral experience
shows that action is not wholly self-contained, but that it
presupposes a reality which transcends the world in which we
53
participate.”
Finally, maintains M. Blondel, “we are unable, as Pascal already
said, either to live, or to understand ourselves, by ourselves alone.
So that, unless we mutilate our nature by renouncing all earnestness
of life, we are necessarily led to recognize in ourselves the presence
of God. Our problem, therefore, can only be solved by an act of
absolute faith in a positive religion [Catholicism in his case]. This
completes the series of acts of faith, without which no action, not
even our daily acts, could be accomplished, and without which we
should fall into absolute barrenness, both practical and
54
intellectual.”
Now again these words about our being unable to understand
ourselves “by ourselves alone” contain an element of truth which we
may associate with the pragmatist tendency to believe in a socialized
55
(as distinguished from an individualistic) interpretation of our
common moral life, to believe, that is to say, in a society of persons
as the truth (or the reality) of the universe, rather than in an
interpretation of the universe as the thinking experience of a single
absolute intelligence. This, however, is also a point which we are
56
obliged to defer until we take up the general subject of the
relations between Pragmatism and Rationalism. The other words of
the paragraph, in respect of our absolute need of faith in some
positive religion, are, of course, expressive again of the uncritical
fideism to which reference has already been made. As an offset or
alternative to the “free” religion of Papini and James and to the
experimental or practical religion of different Protestant bodies, it is
57
enough of itself to give us pause in estimating the real drift of
Pragmatism in regard to religious faith and the philosophy of
58
religion.
59
We shall meantime take leave of French Pragmatism with the
reflection that it is thus obviously as complex and as confusing and
confused a thing as is the Pragmatism of other countries. It is now
almost a generation since we began to hear of a renascence of
60
spiritualism and idealism in France in connexion not merely with
61
the work of philosophers like Renouvier and Lachelier and Fouillée
and Boutroux, but with men of letters like De Vogué, Lavisse,
62
Faguet, Desjardins and the rest, and some of the French
Pragmatism of to-day is but one of the more specialized phases of
the broader movement.
And as for the special question of the influence of James and his
philosophy upon Bergson, and of that of the possible return influence
63
of Bergson upon James, the evidence produced by Lalande from
Bergson himself is certainly all to the effect that both men have
worked very largely independently of each other, although perfectly
cognisant now and then of each other’s publications. Both men,
along with their followers (and this is all that needs interest us), have
obviously been under the influence of ideas that have long been in
64
the air about the need of a philosophy that is “more truly empirical”
than the traditional philosophy, and more truly inclined to “discover
what is involved in our actions in the ultimate recess, when,
unconsciously and in spite of ourselves, we support existence and
65
cling to it whether we completely understand it or not.”
As for Pragmatism and pragmatist achievements in Germany,
there is, as might well be supposed, little need of saying much. The
genius of the country is against both; and if there is any Pragmatism
in Germany, it must have contrived somehow to have been “born
66
again” of the “spirit” before obtaining official recognition. So much
even might be inferred from the otherwise generous recognition
accorded to the work of James by scholars and thinkers like Eucken
67
and Stein and the rest. Those men cannot see Pragmatism save in
the broad light of the “humanism” that has always characterised
philosophy, when properly appreciated, and understood in the light of
its true genesis. Pragmatism has in fact been long known in
Germany under the older names of “Voluntarism” and “Humanism,”
although it may doubtless be associated there with some of the more
pronounced tendencies of the hour, such as the recent insistence of
the “Göttingen Fries School” upon the importance of the “genetic”
and the “descriptive” point of view in regard even to the matter of the
supposed first principles of knowledge, the hypothetical and
methodological conception of philosophy taken by philosophical
68
scientists like Mach and Ostwald and their followers, the
69
“empiricism” and “realism” of thinkers like the late Dr. Avenarius of
Zurich.
Then the so-called “teleological,” or “practical,” character of our
human thinking has also been recognized in modern German
thought long before the days of Peirce and Dewey, even by such
strictly academic thinkers as Lotze and Sigwart. The work of the
latter thinker upon Logic, by the way, was translated into English
under distinctly Neo-Hegelian influences. In the second portion of
this work the universal presuppositions of knowledge are considered,
not merely as a priori truths, but as akin in some important respects
“to the ethical principles by which we are wont to determine and
70
guide our free conscious activity.” But even apart from this matter
of the natural association of Pragmatism with the Voluntarism that
71
has long existed in German philosophy, we may undoubtedly pass
to the following things in contemporary and recent German thought
as sympathetic, in the main, to the pragmatist tendencies of James
and Dewey and Schiller: (1) the practical conception of science and
philosophy, as both of them a kind of “economy of the attention,” a
72
sort of “conceptual shorthand” (for the purposes of the
“description” of our environment) that we have referred to in the case
of Mach and Ostwald; (2) the close association between the
73
“metaphysical” and the “cultural” in books like those of Jerusalem
74
and Eleutheropulos; (3) the sharp criticism of the Rationalism of
the Critical Idealism by the two last-mentioned thinkers, and by some
75
of the members of the new Fichte School like Schellwien; and last
76
but not least, (4) the tendency to take a psychological and a
77
sociological (instead of a merely logical) view of the functions of
thought and philosophy, that is just as accentuated in Germany at
the present time as it is elsewhere.
James and Schiller have both been fond of referring to the work
of many of these last-mentioned men as favourable to a conception
of philosophy less as a “theory of knowledge” (or a “theory of being”)
in the old sense than as a Weltanschauungslehre (a view of the
world as whole), a “discussion of the various possible programmes
for man’s life” to which reference has already been made in the case
of Papini and others. And we might associate with their predilections
and persuasions in this regard the apparent Pragmatism also of a
78
great scholar like Harnack in reference to the subordination of
religious dogma to the realities of the religious life, or the
79
Pragmatism of Ritschl himself, in regard to the subordinate place
in living religion of mere intellectual theory, or even some of the
tendencies of the celebrated value-philosophy of Rickert and
80 81
Windelband and Münsterberg and the rest. But again the main
trouble about all this quasi-German support for the pragmatists is
that most of these contemporary thinkers have taken pains to trace
the roots of their teaching back into the great systems of the past.
The pragmatists, on the other hand, have been notoriously careless
about the matter of the various affiliations of their “corridor-like” and
eclectic theory.
 There are many reasons, however, against regarding even the
philosophical expression of many of the practical and scientific
tendencies of Germany as at all favourable to the acceptance of
Pragmatism as a satisfactory philosophy from the German point of
view. Among these reasons are: (1) The fact that it is naturally
impossible to find any real support in past or present German
philosophy for the impossible breach that exists in Pragmatism
between the “theoretical” and the “practical,” and (2) the fact that
Germany has only recently passed through a period of sharp conflict
between the psychological (or the “genetic”) and the logical point of
view regarding knowledge, resulting in a confessed victory for the
latter. And then again (3) even if there is a partial correspondence
between Pragmatism and the quasi economic (or “practical”)
conception taken of philosophy by some of the younger men in
Germany who have not altogether outlived their reaction against
Rationalism, there are other tendencies there that are far more
characteristic of the spirit and of the traditions of the country. Among
these are the New Idealism generally, the strong Neo-Kantian
82
movement of the Marburg school and their followers in different
83
places, the revived interest in Hegel and in Schelling, the Neo-
Romanticism of Jena, with its booklets upon such topics as The
84
Culture of the Soul, Life with Nature, German Idealism, and so on.
And then (4) there are just as many difficulties in the way of
regarding the psychological and sociological philosophy of men like
Jerusalem and Eleutheropulos as anything like a final philosophy of
knowledge, as there is in attempting to do the same thing with the
merely preliminary and tentative philosophy of James and his
associates.
Returning now to America and England, although Pragmatism is
85
eminently an American doctrine, it would, of course, be absurd to
imagine that Pragmatism has carried the entire thought of the United
86
States with it. It encountered there, even at the outset, at least
something of the contempt and the incredulity and the hostility that it
met with elsewhere, and also much of the American shrewd
indifference to a much-advertised new article. The message of
James as a philosopher, too, was doubtless discounted (at least by
the well-informed) in the light of his previous brilliant work as a
descriptive psychologist, and also, perhaps, in the light of his
87
wonderfully suggestive personality.
What actually happened in America in respect of the pragmatist
movement was, first of all, the sudden emergence of a magazine
88
literature in connexion with the Will-to-Believe philosophy of James
and the California address, and in connexion (according to the
generous testimony of James) with Deweyism or “Instrumentalism.”
Much of this tiresome and hair-splitting magazine discussion of
“ideas as instruments of thought,” and of the “consequences”
(“theoretical” or “practical” or what not) by which ideas were to be
“tested,” was pronounced by James, in 1906, to be largely crude and
superficial. It had the indirect merit, however, of yielding one or two
valuable estimates of the many inconsistencies in Pragmatism, and
of the many different kinds of Pragmatism or instrumentalism that
there seemed to be, and of the value of Pragmatism as a “theory of
knowledge,” and as a “philosophical generalization.” The upshot of
the whole preliminary discussion was (1) the discovery that,
Pragmatism having arisen (as Dewey himself put it) out of a
multitude of conflicting tendencies in regard to what we might call the
“approach” to philosophy, would probably soon “dissolve itself” back
89
again into some of the streams out of which it had arisen, and (2)
the discovery that all that this early “methodological” pragmatism
amounted to was the harmless doctrine that the meaning of any
conception expressed itself in the past or future conduct or
experience of actual, or possible, sentient creatures.
90
We shall again take occasion to refer to this comparative
failure of Pragmatism to give any systematic or unified account of the
consequences by which it would seek to test the truth of
propositions. Its failure, however, in this connexion is a matter of
91
secondary importance in comparison with the great lesson to be
drawn from its idea that there can be for man no objective truth
 92
about the universe, apart from the idea of its meaning or
significance to his experience and to his conscious activity.
What is now taking place in America in this second decade [i.e.
in the years after 1908] of the pragmatist movement is apparently (1)
the sharpest kind of official rationalist condemnation of Pragmatism
as an imperfectly proved and a merely “subjective” and a highly
unsystematic philosophy; (2) the appearance of a number of
93
instructive booklets upon Pragmatism and the pragmatist
movement, some of them expository and critical, some of them in the
main sympathetic, some of them condemnatory and even
contemptuous, and some of them attempts at further constructive
work along pragmatist lines; (3) indications here and there of the
acceptance and the promulgation of older and newer doctrines
antithetic and hostile to Pragmatism—some of them possibly as
typically American as Pragmatism itself.
As a single illustration of the partly constructive work that is
being attempted in the name and the spirit of pragmatism, we may
94
instance the line of reflection entered upon by Professor Moore in
consequence of his claim that to Pragmatism the fundamental thing
in any judgment or proposition is not so much its consequences, but
its “value.” This claim may, no doubt, be supported by the many
declarations of James and Schiller that the “true,” like the “good” and
the “beautiful,” is simply a “valuation,” and not the fetish that the
rationalists make it out to be. It is doubtful, however, as we may try to
indicate, whether this “value” interpretation of Pragmatism can be
carried out independently of the more systematic attempts at a
general philosophy of value that are being made to-day in Germany
and America and elsewhere. And then it would be a matter of no
ordinary difficulty to clear up the inconsistency that doubtless exists
between Pragmatism as a value philosophy and Pragmatism as a
mere philosophy of “consequences.” It is “immediate,” and
“verifiable,” and “definitely appreciated” consequences, rather than
the higher values of our experience that (up to the present time)
seem to have bulked largely in the argumentations of the
pragmatists.
 And as an illustration of a doctrine that is both American and
95
hostile to pragmatism, we may instance the New Realism that was
recently launched in a collective manifesto in The Journal of
Philosophy and Scientific Methods. This realism is, to be sure,
hostile to every form of “subjectivism” or personalism, and may in a
certain sense be regarded as the emergence into full daylight of the
96
realism or dualism that we found to be lurking in James’s “radical
empiricism.” It is, therefore, as it were, one of the signs that
Pragmatism is perhaps breaking up in America into some of the
more elemental tendencies out of which it developed—in this case
the American desire for operative (or effective) realism and for a
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“direct” contact with reality instead of the indirect contact of so
many metaphysical systems.
It is only necessary to add here that it is to the credit of American
rationalism of the Neo-Hegelian type that it has shown itself, notably
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in the writings of Professor Royce, capable, not only of criticising
Pragmatism, but of seeking to incorporate, in a constructive
philosophy of the present, some of the features of the pragmatist
emphasis upon “will” and “achievement” and “purpose.” It is,
therefore, in this respect at least in line with some of the best
tendencies in contemporary European philosophy.
Lastly, there are certain tendencies of recent English philosophy
with which Pragmatism has special affinities. Among these may be
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mentioned: (1) the various general and specific criticisms that have
been made there for at least two generations on the more or less
formal and abstract character of the metaphysic of our Neo-Kantians
and our Neo-Hegelians; (2) the concessions that have recently been
made by prominent rationalists to the undoubtedly purposive, or
“teleological,” character of our human thinking, and to the connexion
of our mental life with our entire practical and spiritual activity. Many
of these concessions are now regarded as the merest
commonplaces of speculation, and we shall probably refer to them in
our next chapter. Then there is (3) the well-known insistence of some
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of our foremost psychologists, like Ward and Stout, upon the
reality of activity and “purpose” in mental process, and upon the part
played by them in the evolution of our intellectual life, and of our
adjustment to the world in which we find ourselves. And (4) the
ethical and social idealism of such well-known members of our Neo-
Hegelian school as Professors Jones, Mackenzie, and Muirhead.
These scholars and thinkers are just as insistent as the pragmatists
upon the idea that philosophy and thought are, and should be, a
practical social “dynamic”—that is to say, “forces” and “motives”
making for the perfection of the common life. (5) A great deal of the
philosophy of science and of the philosophy of axioms and
postulates to be found in British writers, from Mill and Jevons to Karl
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Pearson and Mr. A. Sidgwick and many others.
Apart from all this, however, or rather, in addition to it, it may be
truly said that one of the striking things about recent British
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philosophical literature is the stir and the activity that have been
excited in the rationalist camp by the writings of the pragmatists and
the “personal idealists,” and by the critics of these newer modes of
thought. All this has led to many such re-statements of the problems
of philosophy as are to be found in the books of men like
103 104 105 106
Joachim, Henry Jones, A. E. Taylor, Boyce-Gibson,
107 108 109
Henry H. Sturt, S. H. Mellone, J. H. B. Joseph, and others,
and even, say, in such a representative book as that of Professor
Stewart upon the classical theme of Plato’s Theory of Ideas. In this
work an attempt is made to interpret Plato’s “Ideas” in the light of
pragmatist considerations as but “categories” or “points of view”
which we find it convenient to use in dealing with our sense
experience.
 CHAPTER III
SOME FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS

We shall now attempt a somewhat detailed treatment of a few of the

more characteristic tendencies of Pragmatism. The following have
already been mentioned in our general sketch of its development
and of the appearance of the pragmatist philosophy in Europe and
America: (1) the attempted modification by Pragmatism of the
extremes of Rationalism, and its dissatisfaction with the rationalism
of both science and philosophy; (2) its progress from the stage of a
mere practical and experimental theory of truth to a broad humanism
in which philosophy itself becomes (like art, say) merely an important
“dynamic” element in human culture; (3) its preference in the matter
of first principles for “faith” and “experience” and a trust in our
instinctive “beliefs”; (4) its readiness to affiliate itself with the various
liberal and humanistic tendencies in human thought, such as the
philosophy of “freedom,” and the “hypothetical method” of science,
modern ethical and social idealism, the religious reaction of recent
years, the voluntaristic trend in German post-Kantian philosophy,
and so on. Our subject in this chapter, however, is rather that of the
three or four more or less characteristic assumptions and
contentions upon which all these and the many other pragmatist
tendencies may be said to rest.
The first and foremost of these assumptions is the position that
all truth is “made” truth, “human” truth, truth related to human
attitudes and purposes, and that there is no “objective” or
“independent” truth, no truth “in whose establishment the function of
giving human satisfaction, in marrying previous parts of experience
with newer parts, has played no rôle.” Truths were “nothing,” as it
were, before they were “discovered,” and the most ancient truths
were once “plastic,” or merely susceptible of proof or disproof. Truth
is “made” just like “health,” or “wealth,” or “value,” and so on.
Insistence, we might say, upon this one note, along with the entire
line of reflection that it awakens in him, is really, as Dewey reminds
us, the main burden of James’s book upon Pragmatism. Equally
characteristic is it too of Dewey himself who is for ever reverting to
his doctrine of the factitious character of truth. There is no “fixed
distinction,” he tells us, “between the empirical values of the
unreflective life and the most abstract process of rational thought.”
And to Schiller, again, this same thought is the beginning of
everything in philosophy, for with an outspoken acceptance of this
doctrine of the “formation” of all truth, Pragmatism, he thinks, can do
at least two things that Rationalism is for ever debarred from doing:
(1) distinguish adequately “truth” from “fact,” and (2) distinguish
adequately truth from error. Whether these two things be, or be not,
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the consequences of the doctrine in question [and we shall return
to the point] we may perhaps accept it as, on the whole, harmonious
with the teaching of psychology about the nature of our ideas as
mental habits, or about thinking as a restrained, or a guided, activity.
It is in harmony, too, with the palpable truism that all “truth” must be
truth that some beings or other who have once “sought” truth (for
some reasons or other) have at last come to regard as satisfying
their search and their purposes. And this truism, it would seem, must
remain such in spite of, or even along with, any meaning that there
may be in the idea of what we call “God’s truth.” By this expression
men understand, it would seem, merely God’s knowledge of truths or
facts of which we as men may happen to be ignorant. But then there
can have been no time in which God can be imagined to have been
ignorant of these or any other matters. It is therefore not for Him truth
as opposed to falsehood.
And then, again, this pragmatist position about all truth being
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“made” truth would seem to be valid in view of the difficulty (Plato
spoke of it) of reconciling God’s supposed absolute knowledge of
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reality with our finite and limited apprehension of the same.