professor has quite understood it. And moreover, it was written some
years ago, and no longer covers the whole ground. The other writings of
the pragmatists have all been too controversial and technical.

The critics of Pragmatism have produced only caricatures so gross as to
be unrecognizable, and so obscure as to be unintelligible. Mr. Murray's
little book alone may claim to be (within its limits) a complete survey
of the field, simply worded, and yet not unmindful of due technicality.
It is also up to date, though in dealing with so progressive a subject
it is impossible to say how long it is destined to remain so.

F.C.S. SCHILLER.




CHAPTER I


THE GENESIS OF PRAGMATISM

There is a curious impression to-day in the world of thought that
Pragmatism is the most audacious of philosophic novelties, the most
anarchical transvaluation of all respectable traditions. Sometimes it is
pictured as an insurgence of emotion against logic, sometimes as an
assault of theology upon the integrity of Pure Reason. One day it is
described as the reckless theorizing of dilettanti whose knowledge of
philosophy is too superficial to require refutation, the next as a
transatlantic importation of the debasing slang of the Wild West. Abroad
it is frequently denounced as an outbreak of the sordid commercialism of