seem to be necessarily a third ingredient Concept, C, and the same difficulty will arise as to the Composition of A and C. But the Method of Existential Graphs solves this riddle instantly by showing that, as far as propositions go, and it must evidently be the same with Terms and Arguments, there is but one general way in which their Composition can possibly take place; namely, each component must be indeterminate in some respect or another; and in their composition each determines the other. On the recto this is obvious: "Some man is rich" is composed of "Something is a man" and "something is rich," and the two somethings merely explain each other's vagueness in a measure. Two simultaneous independent assertions are still connected in the same manner; for each is in itself vague as to the Universe or the "Province" in which its truth lies, and the two somewhat define each other in this respect. The composition of a Conditional Proposition is to be explained in the same way. The Antecedent is a Sign which is Indefinite as to its Interpretant; the Consequent is a Sign which is Indefinite as to its Object. They supply each the other's lack. Of course, the explanation of the structure of the Conditional gives the explanation of negation; for the negative is simply that from whose Truth it would be true to say that anything you please would follow de inesse.

In my next paper, the utility of this diagrammatization of thought in the discussion of the truth of Pragmaticism shall be made to appear.

MILFORD, PA.

CHARLES SANTIAGO SANDERS PEIRCE.

PRAGMATISM, OLD AND NEW.

HE metaphysics of pure experience, which, as Pro

is regarded by its exponents as in effect a new philosophy, and results of far-reaching importance are predicted for it. Its pragmatic method and its humanistic point of view are considered as likely to work a fundamental change in our notions concerning reality. In this spirit writes Schiller when he says, "The pragmatic method in philosophy bids fair to be as serviceable as the Darwinian in biology." It is held that pragmatism has reconstructed the meaning of old terms and given them an entirely different content. It promises to reinterpret the world, not in worn-out logical formulæ and musty epistemological concepts, but by categories cast in the moulds of fresh realism and filled with vital experience. On the other hand the critics of pragmatism are accused of using worldold arguments, familiar to Zeno. They are advocates of "temple-like" systems of thought; they deal in verbal subtleties and transcendental hypotheses beyond all possibility of experimental verification or even of imagination.

There is truth in these assertions as to the novelty of the pragmatic principle, and the antiquity of the arguments brought against it, but it is only a half truth. That the pragmatic method is something entirely, or even largely, new I cannot fully convince myself. There is much that is fresh and vigorous about humanism, the

very fact that James and Dewey are among its most zealous advocates would assure this to be the case. These writers and their followers have made many neglected facts vital, have opened up forgotten vistas of truth and emphasized discarded realities; but for all this pragmatism has in it not a little that recalls the návτa pei of Herakleitus and the homo mensura of Protagoras. It is not to be wondered at, then, that these ancient doctrines find responses that date in part from the centuries when philosophic thought first formulated itself into clear expression on Hellenic soil; and we need not be surprised if we again witness a conflict similar to that which idealism once waged against sophism (and here I use the word in no objectionable sense, but in its original philosophical significance); that later realism fought with nominalism; and which in modern times absolutism has carried on with empiricism. It would seem as if we were once more to attempt to decide whether human experience is selfcontaining and self-satisfying; or whether we are not called upon to push beyond all experience, actual and possible, to those transcendent ideals of thought and action that Kant placed at the end of his philosophy.

Under such circumstances it should be of advantage to indicate the points of similarity between humanism and similar philosophical tendencies in the history of thought, and to make a note of the replies that from time to time have been made to the contention that phenomenal reality is "the be-all and the end-all" of existence. Hence it may be of service to gather these thoughts now so much in the air, in order that their trend may be more definitely discovered and their ultimate meaning outlined.

But right here the pragmatist will doubtless object that such a procedure is an attempt to categorize and make static something that can be comprehended only by experiencing it as a living, budding, growing system of real

ity; but I can reply only by saying that to think means to do this very thing that it is impossible to catch experience "on the fly," that it must be made to an extent wooden and dead in order to be comprehended. Description, however real and exact, must always remain description, and to comprehend in any more than from a hand to mouth fashion we must go beyond description; we must bring in (sad as the necessity may be) our logical formulæ and metaphysical categories; we must "prepare" our realities if we wish to cross-section them for examination, we must stain them with the foreign matter of thought if we are to trace their windings and crossings. I know this is not pragmatic, except in so far as it is necessary, or at least useful, and then it should receive the full pragmatic sanction.

Let us then examine more closely what pragmatism means. Its opponents accuse it of subjectivism and pluralism (which the pragmatist denies with greater or less vigor) and its adherents admit its phenomenalism and make much of its utilitarianism. Its empirical and utilitarian aspects are considered to be positive merits, which the absolutists have failed to recognize as such, because of the perversity and hardness of their intellects and because of their own "comparatively slack hold on the realities of the situation." But surely subjectivism, pluralism, phenomenalism and utilitarianism are by no means new doctrines, and for these aspects of pragmatism nothing particularly novel should be claimed. The points of view which these doctrines set forth to-day are in essence the same as they have been in the past, while the objections to them present a not fundamentally different attitude of mind in the present time than in past centuries. This the further discussion will attempt to amplify.

First, however, we must consider briefly the justice of the assertion that pragmatism is subjective and plural

istic. The pragmatist categorically denies that he is a solipsist. Indeed James asserts that the doctrine has a more vital relation with realism than with the subjective scepticism of the English empiricists. Those who bring the accusation make much of the criterion of satisfaction employed by the pragmatist as a test of truth. Satisfaction, it is urged, is an individual matter. Royce, for example, maintains that for pragmatism truth means nothing more than that which just now meets my individual needs. To this the reply is made that the satisfaction which a situation calls forth attaches itself to something clearly objective. The individual consciousness is regarded as an element in the situation which continually develops. Professor Moore writes: "If we remember.... that this sense of freedom and harmony* to which we last appealed is not any bare, detached, unmediated fragment of feeling that we may happen to find, but is the issue of a process of purposing and thinking, including experimentation and verification based on results of previous thoughts and actions, involving as many individual minds and as much of the material world as you will....the last suspicion of subjectivism disappears."

James also writes in a similar vein; "Humanism says that satisfactoriness is what distinguishes the true from the false.... But nothing is more obvious than the fact that both the object and the past experience of the object may be the very things about it that most seem satisfactory and that most incite us to believe in them."

These two statements, as well as others of a similar nature, must be interpreted as meaning that a situation is not true because it is satisfactory, but merely that the truth gives satisfaction. Truth is ultimately conditioned by that which transcends the immediate experience and leads up to it. It is much as if we should say that it is