which have so often proved to be stones of stumbling in the path of
those who have employed them. Its watchword is analysis, always
analysis; and a settled distrust of what have so often passed as
"self-evident" truths. It regards it as its task to analyze
experience, while maintaining that only the satisfactory carrying out
of such an analysis can reveal what experience really is, and clear our
notions of it from misinterpretations.

No such attempt to give an account of experience can be regarded as
fundamentally new in its method. Every philosopher, in his own way,
criticises experience, and seeks its interpretation. But one may,
warned by the example of one's predecessors, lay emphasis upon the
danger of half-analyses and hasty assumptions, and counsel the
observance of sobriety and caution.

For convenience, I have called the doctrine _Critical Empiricism_. I
warn the reader against the seductive title, and advise him not to
allow it to influence him unduly in his judgment of the doctrine.

64. PRAGMATISM.--It seems right that I should, before closing this
chapter, say a few words about Pragmatism, which has been so much
discussed in the last few years.

In 1878 Mr. Charles S. Peirce wrote an article for the _Popular Science
Monthly_ in which he proposed as a maxim for the attainment of
clearness of apprehension the following: "Consider what effects, which
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."