'i MASTER NEGA TIVE NO. 91-80114 MICROFILMED 1991 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK ..Tj J • as part of the Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project XT A r,^^ Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without pemiission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would mvolve violation of the copyright law. KV AUTHOR: PAGET, VIOLET TITLE: VITAL LIES. PLACE: LONDON DATE: 1912 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOnR APHIC MICROFORM TARHFT Master Negative # 3/ -8011^-3 Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 149.9 P147 Restrictions on Use: [Paget, Violetj 1856i935. raSi ^ w'x'!"'^''' r'^^ '^"^^ ^^"^^*^^« ^^ recent obscu- K YnVwl^T ^'^ f^""^^-^ - London, J. Lane; Mew York, John Lane company; [etc., etc.] 1912 2v. m* $3.00 Humanism. misunderstood. The rehabilitation of obscurity. 1. Truth. 2. Pragmatism. i. Title. Library of Congress 1^ '7 - J ^v| ^ B804.P2 P 13—2023 1% FILM SIZE: J5. '^''^ IMAGE PLACEMENT: DATE FILMED:__ HLMEDBY: RESEAR TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: \^ IB IIB ^ 1. til INITIALS J__/ LICATIONS. INC WOODRRIDGE. CT VOLUME 1 c Association for information and image iManagement 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 1 2 3 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliii TTT Inches 4 5 iliiiiliiiiliiiilii 1 6 7 8 9 10 1.0 I.I 1.25 n 12 13 14 15 mm *"'i'TiT'i'T'!'i"i'T'!'rl"i"!i 1^ II 2.8 ■ 5.0 '"== |Z5 16.3 t 1^ 2.2 If 1^ 2.0 1.8 1.4 1.6 MRNUFfiCTURED TO RUM STfiNDflRDS BY APPLIED IMAGE, INC. ^ !!:- it liiiiiiiiliiii! Hit !l II! li^iiiii; t: i!;i;i li ! ji iiiiiii lii iii 1: !!!!!; i ! iil!!''in li M lIMli Hv. IJIi!!!!iiiiii!ll!!ii!|in|ilt! ii!|jl|i-ii lliiij! H MiilliM ill' ■Jlljl W f i . s .a. ( ^Jiwr ^0 totmnbia Wlnitxtiitp THE LIBRARIES 1^ I yi VITAL LIES ^.'-i^ -r r^ii!rrrs(*i'''if-*?f«s«f^ -«,-.— -^---v-«i-.*. . IVORKS BT THE SAME AUTHOR HORTUS VIT^, Or, THE HANGING GARDENS THE ENCHANTED WOODS THE SPIRIT OF ROME HAUNTINGS: FANTASTIC STORIES THE SENTIMENTAL TRAVELLER POPE JACYNTH AND OTHER FAN- TASTIC TALES GENIUS LOCI : NOTES ON PLACES LIMBO, AND OTHER ESSAYS, to WHICH IS ADDED ARIADNE IN MANTUA LAURUS NOBILIS: CHAPTERS ON ART AND LIFE RENAISSANCE, FANCIES AND STUDIES THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY ALTHEA: DIALOGUES ON ASPIRA- TIONS AND DUTIES VANITAS : POLITE STORIES, includ- iNG A FRIVOLOUS CONVERSA- TION BEAUTY AND UGLINESS VITAL LIES STUDIES OF SOME VARIETIES OF RECENT OBSCURANTISM » » €S BT VERNON LEE '1 ?yi) VOL. I LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN MCMXII ■ia^M*- I I i • t > } > » > J » l> • » » 1 * 4 * a •••••t** ■• •* * 3 h immmm^ r**^ How then may we devise one of those falsehoods in the hour of need, I said, which we lately spoke of— just one royal lie [yevycuoy rt iv yj/evSofiivovs] which may deceiTe the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city ? Plato, Republic, iii. 414 (Jowett's Translation). Relling. I'm fostering the vital lie in him. Gregirs. Vital lie ? Is that what you said ? Helling. Yes— I said vital lie— for illusion, you know, is the stimulating principle. Ibsen, The Wild Duck. V. I .' • ». -• • Titmbull drf SpiakSr^tfkHrs; Eiinburgh^ • • 9 * \ «Wt«9 V«..»***» • » « • • • 4 ft • • t • • • ( • • tt t • >• I* ••••• • 'Cvl • •• *»«'•• » t t t t • » > • t > < >; ci TO THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND GIOVANNI VAILATI WHO, BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE, EXPLAINED THE INCOMPATIBILITY BETWEEN " WILLING TO BELIEVE" AND "MAKING ONE'S IDEAS CLEAR" I A n PREFACE SCIENCE is for ever invalidating some part of its statements, because it is for ever perfecting their whole ; and reason, as it develops, takes its own self as subject for its criticism, asking, with Berkeley, Hume and Kant, and now with the Prag- matism of Peirce : What can we know ? or rather, How do we know ? Encouraged by, and taking advan- tage of this, the minds reluctantly shaken in their rehgious habits, are la3ring about them for excuses to disbeheve whatever has made them unbeUevers. They allege reason's criticism of its own nature and methods to discredit reason's conclusions. They argue that if reUgion is made by man it must be worth re-making. Philological exegesis, anthropological study of myths and institutions, psychology and metaphysical analysis, and all the sciences which have undermined what used to be called religious truths, are now invoked to re-instate some portion of them in the garb of desirable and valuable errors. Some of these thinkers, unable to maintain that the ideas which they chng to are true, put their backs to the wall and explain that their value is symboHc, mythical, in short, dependent upon their being partially false. vii f I ^1 Another group — or the same group at another moment — refuse to forgo the compelling power, or at least the reassuring sound, of the word true; and these apply their logic to re-defining truth in such a way as to include edifying and efficacious fallacy and falsehood. It is to both these groups, and any cross-groups derived from them, that I venture to apply the name of Obscurantists, because they employ, they increase, and, for emotional and sometimes aesthetic reasons, they prefer, a certain amount of darkness, or at all events, a convenient, a reposeful, a suggestive intellectual penumbra. Moreover, these thinkers have attached themselves, without exception, to the philosophical school which makes Life the central and ultimate and paramount mystery. Hence I take the Uberty of symbohzing the various vague creeds (clung to by themselves, or recommended for the use of others) of these intellectual Obscurantists in the formula given by Ibsen's Doctor RelUng, and caUing them, and these studios of them, " Vital lies." » March 1912. N THEMATIC TABLE OF CONTENTS VOL. I FIRST PART THEORETICAL OBSCURANTISM CHAPTER I THE TWO PRAGMATISMS Distinguishes the Pragmatism intended to "make our ideas clear " from the Pragmatism intended to justify the "will to believe." PAQS 7 CHAPTER II WHAT IS TBUTH? 50 Deals with the "will to believe" or "what it would be better to believe," distinguishing such obscurantist Pragmatism. CHAPTER III THE TRUTHS OF MYSTICISM Shows what sort of ideas are considered " better to believe " and recommended to our " will to believe,*' 91 •iujh Vital Lies CHAPTER IV FRUITS FOR LIFE . • • * Shows that obscurantism turns to profit not the truth of ideas, but their power of determining action. SECOND PART APPLIED OBSCURANTISM CHAPTER I FATHER TYRRELL AND MODERNISM Shows the " will to beUeve " in its most candid and respectable form, the believer being hoodwinked by his own imperfectly recognized desires and habits. VOL. II CHAPTER II MR CRAWLEY AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL APOLOGETICS Shows the man of science recommending, as racially beneficial, boUefs of which he has himself demonstrated the origin in the superstitions of primitive man. CHAPTER III MONSIEUR SOREL AND THE SYNDICALIST MYTH Shows the philosophical and practical Moralist pro- claiming that only a myth, because it can never be realized, is productive of a sufficient increment of virtue. FAOR 145 161 61 Vital Lies THIRD PART EPILOGUE CHAPTER I TRUE IN SO FAR AS MISUNDERSTOOD CHAPTER II THE REHABILITATION OF OBSCURITY CHAPTER III HUMANISM XI PAOB 121 149 186 / I PART I '^ / THEORETICAL PRAGMATISM •nnMamHMMi ) \ \ \ i INTRODUCTION TO PART I FIRST of aU let me explain that the whole of this first half of the present book was written- indeed, some of it was ahreadv in type (for the North American Review)~betoK the death of the late Professor WiUiam James. And of this I am glad (even though I wince at the ungraciousness of a posthumous attack), because the recent loss of a man so genial in the German as weU as the English sense of the word so impulsively, generously appreciative and creative, wo'uld have made it utterly impossible for me to discuss his works (if indeed at all !) in the tone I have adopted Now this tone is the only one in which such highly personal and personally self-contradictory improvisa- tions could be discussed without absurdity, at least by a reader who, hke myself, was fuU of mixed and warrmg admiration and aversion for their most mixed and warring ideas. Similarly. I want it to be thoroughly understood that m deahng with the work of the late Professor James I am attacking and condemning only that " WiU- to-Beheve " element with which this very suggestive and dehghtful thinker has, in my opinion, alloyed, de- based, diminished so much of his own inteUectual wealth Vital Lies It has been pointed out to me that this inferior, and, I think, worthless admixture in Professor James's work was due to a certain lack of grip and continuity and order which was the drawback of the spon- taneity and impulsive appreciativeness, the passionate hmnanness, of his mind. Of course a greater grip and continuity and order, a greater hardness (to use his favourite expression) would have saved him from the ** Will-to-Beheve " (both as a formulated theory and as an insidious mental practice), even as a better state of health may defend you from infection which is, as people say, in the air. But the infection, the microbe, is not the same thing as the patient's congenital weakness and momentary being below par. And so, although his naturally discontinuous, diffluent thought and his more and more tentative and hurried exposition and expression undoubtedly destined Professor James to become the most illustrious victim of this intellectual epidemic, and also one of its chief centres of infection, the " Will-to-BeUeve " virus would have existed and made havoc in latter-day thought if Professor James had not been there to give it its name and to display, even in his own person, its various distinctive phases. Now it is merely because this " Will-to-BeUeve " philosophy is nowadays rife on every side that I am dealing with Professor James ; and I am deahng with him, as already remarked, only in so far as the chief exponent and the chief example of this particular intellectual tendency. Introduction to Part I 5 Furthermore, I wish to premise that it is also because of the value of that part of Pragmatism which Pro- fessor James (and also Doctor Schiller) took over from Mr. C. S. Peirce, that it seems to me necessary to airaign Pragmatism as a whole for the adoption of that alien and hostile element of " Will-to-Believe " with which these, the two chief theoretical Pragmatists, have con- fused and corrupted it. It is only when we have done with the Pragmatism of James and Schiller that we can duly value and put to use the Pragmatism of Peirce. And by Pragmatism of Peirce I mean, in this connection, a great deal which has been added to it by James and Schiller, inasmuch as disciples and legitimate successors of Peirce, but which both James and Schiller have turned into an unusable confusion by this admixture of their principle of "Will-to Beheve" with Peirce's principle for "making our ideas clear." Finally, and before entering on this examination, I would on no account omit to acknowledge all the help in clearing up my own ideas upon this subject which I have received from the writings and the con- versation of the late Giovanni Vailati, and from those of his collaborator and editor, Mario Calderoni. Maiano, neab Florencb, March 1912. The posthumous volume of " Sorittl di Giovamil Vailati" (Florence, Leipzig, 1911) contains all the many papers originally Vital Lies published in Mind, in the Monist, in the Bevue du Mots, in the Journal of Philosophij, in the Leonardo, in the Rivista di Psicologia Applicata, etc., wherein Giovanni VailatI discussed the formula and method of Ch. S. Peirce and their various applications and misapplications. The "how to make our ideas clear" side of Pragmatism is further represented in articles in the Leonardo (1904-6) by Mario Calderoni ; and in M. Calderoni's " Disarmonie Economiche e Disarmonie Morali " (Florence, Lumachi, 1906), in " La Provision dans la th^orie de la Connaissance " {Rev. de Met. et de Morale, 1907), and in " I'Arbitrario " {Rivista di Psicologia Applicata, March-April 1910, May-June 1910, September-October 1910), by Vailati and Calderoni. Giovanni Vailati was born in Lombardy hi 1863, and died at Rome in 1909. CHAPTER I THE TWO PRAGMATISMS ** . . . The first part of the essay, however, is occupied with showing that, if Truth consists in satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, but must be the satisfaction which wovld ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue. This, I beg to point out, is a very difiFerent position from that of Mr Schiller and the Pragmatists of to-day . . . . Their avowedly undefinable position, if it be not capable of logical characterization, seems to me to be characterized by an angry hatred of strict logic, and even some disposition to rate any exact thought which interferes with their doctrines as all humbug. . . . It seems to me a pity they should allow a philosophy so instinct with life to become infected with seeds of death in such notions as that of the unreality of all ideas of infinity and that of the mutability of truth, and in such confusions of thought as that of active willing (willing to control thought, to doubt, and to weigh reasons) with willing not to exert the will (willing to believe)." — Charles S. Peirce, Hibbert Journal, Vol. II., No. 1 (October 1908), pp. Ill, 112. IN the following pages I shall try, in vulgar parlance, to show up what is nowadays being rather pressed upon our acceptance than offered for our inspec- tion, under the ambiguous name of " Pragmatism." I would therefore premise that I am by no means attack- ing all the ideas connected with the doctrine so called, nor even the bulk thereof. The pecuHarity of Prag- ■^ra matism is (as I hope to demonstrate) its tactics of advancing untenable propositions and faUing back upon received ones ; its shuflling the principle which IS hard to accept in a handful of principles we have willingly accepted ; its medium-hke device (for only successive metaphors can illustrate habits so Protean) of shpping a hand out of the seemingly unbroken circle of concatenated thought, in order to produce aU manner of new and desirable manifestations. And, for this reason, two-thirds of aU that Pragmatists adduce is not only a re-statement— sometimes a really improved and enlarged re-statement-of their opponents' views, but embodies, most admirably stated, the very argu- ments those opponents have used against them. Indeed, as we shaU see, the name of Pragmatism 18 now taken by a doctrine which the inventor of that name, the much-quoted and Httle-read Charles Sanders Peirce, forestalled only to denounce and demoKsh. The result of aU this is that I wish to premise that I am attacking, not certain books, with two-thirds of whose contents I concur; stiU less certain writers from whose analytic talent (in the case of Mr F. C Schiller), from whose wide-sweeping genius (in the case of Professor W. James) I have derived so much advantage ; least of all, the whole mass of doctrine labeUed Pragmatism. I am attacking the views which put Pragmatism and Pragmatists in opposition 1 H The Two Pragmatis ms 9 to every other existing or conceivable philosophy. Or, rather, I am attacking a particular temperament which, imported into philosophy from wholly different fields of thought, tests truth by the standards of worldlv practicaHty, of moral edification, and of religious senti- ment, and thereby passes off as true what may be merely useful or inspiriting delusions, merely practi- cally serviceable, emotionally satisfying, or morally commendable figments. For, at the bottom of this kind of Pragmatism, which the more illustrious of its two promoters has associated with the expression " Will-to-BeUeve " i ^^ * Professor James SQems anxious to withdraw the expression I' will-to-believe "—telling us (" Pragmatism," page 258) that he "unluckily" gave that name to an essay of which the critics (presumably the present writer in a "Fortnightly" article, re- printed in " Gospels of Anarchy ") neglected the meaning in order to " pounce down on the title." Professor James, in the same place, now defines the subject of that essay as the "Right-to- BeUeve." " Right-to-believe," in plain English, usually means the existence of an intellectual alternative, i.e. : "In the face of So-and-so's evidence, I have the right to believe that what hap- pened was this." Or else the absence of coercion by the State : " in this country, people have the right to believe as they choose " ; i.e. differences of opinion are tolerated by the laws and customs. What Professor James argued for in that " Will- to- Believe " essay was the expediency, the occasional personal or moral advantage (exemplified by the courage of men who believe they can r^ist brigands, and the difference in our conduct due to religious belief) of accepting a hypothesis on other than intellectual grounds. Of these he wrote (" WiU-to-Believe," page 9) : " It is only our dead hypotheses that our willing nature is unable to bring to life again. . . . When I say ' willing nature,' I do not mean only such de- liberate volitions as may have set up habits of belief that we cannot ^B! ■"»««««'»~^ ;..«»»^.iy^».-»...^.-g8'... lO Vital Lies -at the bottom of "WiU-to-Believe" Pragmatism there exist the psychological recognition of the in- evitable presence, and the morahst's recognition of the occasional utiUty, of ideas, of opinions, of beUefs, which have not passed muster as true ; the recognition that conduct is frequently based, and can sometimes be based with advantage, on what has not yet been tested as true, on what has not stood the test of truth, or what it is only wished should be true-viz., hypo- theses, assumptions, misconceptions, misstatements, ambiguities, delusions and deceptions, a large proportion of which appears inevitable and perhaps indispensable in the Hfe of the individual and of the race. The recognition and partial rehabilitation of this particular not-true element would show the superior acumen and superior sincerity of modem psychology and of modem ethics. Indeed, the progress of mental science and of utiHtarian morals might culminate in some bolder Nietzsche proclaiming that tmth is by no means the one thing requisite ; that hfe has been rendered now escape from. I mean aU such factors of belief aa fear and hope, prejudice and paaeion, imitation and partisanship, the circumpr^ure of our caste and set." This " wiUing nature " is presumably what Professor James referred to in his title " WiU- h^^:^. ^:;^.^ '^^ °^^ ^^°«^ °^*^^ ^^ ^ subsequent books IS the addition of " truth " as weU as " belief " being de- pendent on such action of our " willing nature." I consider it fair to contmue to designate his particular kind of Pragmatism by that ex- title of his. " Will-to-BeUeve." which I always'take in the sense of willmg nature " as defined in the above paLge The Two P ragmatisms 1 1 liveable, and morahty itself floated or ballasted only by a fortunate output of figment. But the " Will-to-Believe " Pragmatists are not bolder than Nietzsche. They are, on the contrary (as persons concerned with practicality should be), most remarkably attached to consequences, to work- able systems and moral edification ; and, for the benefit of these, they are most conspicuously careful of not coming into open collision with established prejudices. Now, while triUh is by no means always necessary for advantageous and commendable practice, untruth or non-truth (under any of its varieties and synonyms furnished forth by the invaluable Roget) happens to be hampered by a tiresome and paradoxical peculiarity : its utiUty, nine times out of ten, depends upon hiding its own status and keeping up the credit of trath. \ A hope is not a hope, a fear is not a fear, once either is recognized as unfounded. An ambiguity is acceptable only if it is accepted in one of its ambiguous meanings. A delusion is delusive only so long as it is not known to be one. A mistake can be built upon only so long as it is not suspected ; and that consoling, encouraging, sometimes salutary and edifying figment which Ibsen christened " Vital Lie " can be fife-enhancing or fife- saving only when it is mistaken for a ** Vital Tmth.'v The psychologists and morafists who, under the name of Pragmatists, are teaching the unavoidable presence and the practical benefits of a " Will-to-Befieve," have 12 Vital Lies I' therefore veUed in judicious silence the disconcerting, the dangerous, the inunoral fact that error, delusion and deception, when bom of human needs and pur- poses, are occasionaUy efficacious in directing human decisions, in regulating human conduct, and in maldng human life possible. The Pragmatists have refused to proclaim the value of what is possibly not true, and they have appUed themselves to identifying thM which possesses value with truth itself. This they have done by laying hold of a philosophical principle to which its earliest formulator, Mr Charles Sanders Peirce, had given the name of " Pragmatism " ; and by converting this pnnciple, by endless moves revoked whenever detected, mto the very thing which that proto-Prag- matist had invented Pragmatism to expose, disprove confute and reduce for ever to silence. Let us foUow this process, and in so doing obtain, not merely a knowledge of the chief peculiarities of " WiU- to-Beheve " Pragmatism, but an insight also into the Will-to-Beheve," the Pragmatistic, temper of mind and methods. II Professor James heralds his exposition of the prag- matic pnnciple by telling us that, although only f ormu- lated by Mr Peirce in the article entitled " How to Make Things Clear," it has been tacitly applied by The Two Pragmatisms 13 the chief masters of British thought. He writes (" Varieties of Religious Experience," page 443) : " The guiding principle of British philosophy has in fact been that every difference must make a difference, every theoretical difference issue in a practical difference, and [that] the best method of discussing points of theory is to begin by ascertaining what practical differ- ence would result from one alternative or the other being true. What is the particular truth in question known as ? In what facts does it result ? What is its cash- value in terms of particular experience ? This is the characteristic English way of taking up a ques- tion. In this way, you remember, Locke takes up the question of personal identity : * What you mean by it is just your chain of particular memories,' says he. That is the only verifiable part of its signifi,cance. All further ideas about it, such as the oneness or the many- ness of the spiritual substance on which it is based are, therefore, void of intelligible meaning, and propositions touching such ideas may be indifferently affirmed or denied. So Berkeley with his * Matter.' The cash- value of matter is our physical sensations. That is what it is known as, all that we concretely verify of its conception. That, therefore, is the whole meaning of the term ' Matter ' ; any other pretended meaning is mere wind of words. Hume does the same thing with Causation. It is known as habitual antecedence, and as tending on our part to look for something definite H Vital Lies to come. Apart from this practical meaning it has no significance whatever, and books about it may be committed to the flames, says Hume." Throughout this quotation we are shown the prag- matic method applied to ascertain the contents of a thought as a prehminary to testing that thought's truth. Professor James represents Locke and Berkeley and Hume as refusing to discuss severally Human Identity, Matter and Causation, except in so far as each of these words can be translated into terms of experience. Pragmatism is being employed, as the title of Mr Peirce's famous article has it, "to make our ideas clear." The expression "practical differ- ence " means in this connection difference in the facts y in the experience, implied in the definition : so when we say that the concept " match," imphes the property of igniting, cceteris paribus, on friction with a specified surface, we verify whether a certain object is a match by rubbing it, cceteris paribus, against such a surface and watching whether it does or does not ignite. " Practical difference " refers to our real or imagined experiment ; and the " cash-value in terms of experi- ence " means the translation of an abstract statement into such inferred results as will by their happening or not happening declare whether that abstract state- ment is in the particular relation to objective reahty which we designate as truth. The pragmatic method, as Professor James represents it as practised by these The Two Pragmatisms 15 philosophical worthies, is based upon the recognition that the idea of a thing implies qiuilities in the thing, and that the qmlities of a thing are a convenient name given to our prevision of how that thing will, under specified circumstances, act. The practical difference referred to is a difference in the mode of proceeding of the thing discussed ; whether or not there ensues a practical difference in the action of ourselves or other folk, in the action of any except that particular discussed thing, is a totally separate question. The " Pragmatic Principle," as exemplified in Professor James's account of its application by Locke, Berkeley and Hume, is, therefore, neither more nor less than the formula of scientific thinking, in contradistinction to such dis- cussion of mere meaningless words as has been not unfairly reproached to " metaphysics." Thus under- stood, the " Pragmatic Principle " of Mr Peirce, the formula of " cash- value in experience," would, no doubt, have interested the philosophers already men- tioned, and those others, particularly the Mills and Bain, whom Professor James enumerates as having been pragmatists without knowing it. It would have interested also that most suggestive and genial man of science, the writer of William James's great ** Psychology " and of so many invaluable obiter dicta even in the works intended to convert us to the " Will-to-Believe." But when it comes to that particular Professor William James who has dis- 1..V i6 Vital Lies tinguished himself by the invention of the ** WiU-to- BeUeve," there seems no reason for his feeling par- ticularly attracted, but rather (as we shall see later on) for his being particularly alienated, by the " Prag- matic Principle" and the "Cash-value in terms of experience " when interpreted in the above manner. For the Pragmatic Principle and, more particularly, its cash-value formulation are open also to another interpretation. " Practical difference " may also be taken as mean- ing difference in the actions or habits of human beings, difference such as concerns practical persons in contra- distinction to thinkers and investigators— for instance, educators and legislators, bent upon directly furthering prosperity and good behaviour. Or, in other words, " practical difference " may be taken in the sense of implying such practice as is no longer the test of an opinion, but the application of an opinion once ac- cepted, whether previously tested or not. The two meanings of " Practical Difference " are in continual interconmiunication, since everybody must admit that " practical difference " implying safe and desirable decisions about conduct, often follows upon the recog- nition of such "practical difference" between ideas as we have previously spoken of ; nay, that though some of our practical differences in conduct happen to be due to our not knowing the practical differences between what is and what is not true, as when (so Pro- > The Two Pragmatisms 17 fessor James often urges) we wager, we take risks in which the gain is great and the loss trifling ; yet the majority of our practical decisions are undoubtedly founded upon ourselves or some one else having ** made ideas clear " and tested suppositions by actual or supposed experiment. Indeed, the two meanings of " practical difference " are in such close proximity that the thought of even the maker dear of our ideas, of even Mr Peirce himself, has occasionally wavered between the two. Since, in that very article " How to Make Our Ideas Clear," we come upon the following ambiguous develop- ments of that ambiguous expression " practical " : " To develop its meaning we have . . . simply to determine : what habits it produces ; for what a thing means is simply what habits it involves " (page 292). " What, then, is belief ? ... it involves the estab- lishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say, for short, a habit " (page 291). " The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit, and different beUefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise " (page 291). " There is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice " (page 293). It is this ambiguity in Mr Peirce's words, if not in his thought, which probably commended the " Prag- matic Principle " to Professor James. B i8 Vital Lies III It is the object of the following pages,i not to discuss the intrinsic merits of the "Pragmatic Principle," but to expose the "development or transmogrifica- tion " of the Pragmatism of " How to Make Our Ideas Clear" into the Pragmatism of the Will-to-BeUeve and of the Making of Truth. And, while doing this, 1 The above had already been written when Mr Peirce published the following passage in an article in the Hibbert Journal (October 1908) : " In 1871, in a Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I used to preach this principle as a sort of logical gospel, repre- senting the unformulated method followed by Berkeley, and in conversation about it I called it ' Pragmatism.' In December 1877 and January 1878 I set forth the doctrine in the Popidar Science Monthly ; and the two parts of my essay were printed in French in the Revue Philosophique, vols. vi. and vii. Of course, the doctrine attracted no particular attention, for, as I had remarked in my opening sentence, very few people care for logic. But in 1897 Professor James remodelled the matter, and transmogrified it into a doctrine of philosophy, some parts of which I highly approved, while other and more prominent parts I regarded, and still regard, as opposed to sound logic. About the time Professor Papirie [sic, query Papini, V. L.] discovered, to the delight of the Pragmatist school, that this doctrine was incapable of definition, which would certainly seem to distinguish it from every other doctrine in whatever branch of science, I was coming to the con- clusion that my poor little maxim should be called by another name ; and accordingly, in April 1905, I renamed it ' Prag- maticism.* I had never before dignified it by any name in print, except that, at Professor Baldwin's request, I wrote a definition of it for his ' Dictionary of Psychology and Philosophy.' I did not insert the word in the ' Century Dictionary,' though I had charge of the philosophical definitions of that work ; for I have a perhaps exaggerated dislike of riclame." The Two Pragmatisms 19 we shall incidentally afford the reader an example of the apphcation of the Pragmatic method itself. Like Locke asking the meaning of "Human Identity," hke Berkeley asking the meaning of "Matter," like Hume asking the meaning of " Causation," we humble people will, in our turn, ask the meaning of "Practical Difference," and test it by examining whether the attitude toward opinion and truth taken up by Mr Peirce is the same attitude as that taken up toward opinion and truih by Professor James and Mr Schiller; or whether the difference in the resulting attitude does not prove a corresponding difference between the " Pragmatic Principle " as in- tended by Mr Peirce, and the " Pragmatic Principle " as employed by Mr. Peirce's ostensible disciples : *' Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects [itaUcs mine] is the whole of our conception of the object^ " A figment is the product of somebody's imagination ; it has such characters as his thought impresses upon it (A). That whose characters are independent of how you or I think [itaUcs mine] is an external reahty." (A) " Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what any- body may think them to be.'' (B) " These minds do not seem to beUeve that disputation is ever to cease ; they seem to think that the opinion which is natural for one 20 Vital Lies if man is not so for another, and that belief will conse- quently never be settled. In contenting themselves with fixing their own opinion by a method which would lead another man to a different result, (A) they betray their feeble hold of the conception of what trvth is. On ihe other hand, all the followers of science are fuUy persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to every question to which they can be appUed, . . . Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them hy a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. (A) This activity of thought hy which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a fore-ordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reaUty. (A) " The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to hy all who investigate is what is meant hy truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. (A) That is the way I would explain reaUty." " But it may be said that this view is opposed to the abstract definition which I have given of reahty, inasmuch as it makes the character of the real to depend on what is ultimately thought about them. But the answer to this is that, on the other hand, reahty is independent, The Two Pragmat isms 2 1 not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it ; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet (B) what that opinion is does not depend on what you or I or any man thinks." (C) " Our perversity and that of others may indefinitely postpone the settlement of opinion ; it might even conceivably cause an arbitrary proposition to be universally accepted as long as the human race should last. Yet even that would not change the nature of the behef which could alone be the result of investigation carried suificiently far ; and if, after the extinction of our race, another should arise with faculties and dispositions for investigation, that true opinion must be the one which they would ulti- mately come to. Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, and the opinion which would -finally result from investigation does not depend on how anybody may actually think " [itaUcs mine]. " A person who arbi- trarily chooses the proposition he will adopt can use the word ' truth ' only to emphasize the expression of his determination to hold to his choice." ^ These quotations from "How to Make Our Ideas Clear " (to which might be added others from the essays constituting the first and third instalments of the series, * C. S. Peirce, " Illustration of the Logic of Science : II. How to Make Our Ideas Clear" {Popular Science MonOdy, New York, Appleton & Co., No. Ixix., January 1878, pp. 286 to 302). f I 22 Vital Lies " Illustrations of the Logic of Science ") display Mr Peirce's attitude of mind regarding the relations of " truth " with what Professor James calls our " wiUing nature " — and which it is convenient to call by his essay title, " Will-to-BeUeve." The following quota- tions display the attitude on this subject of the two chief philosophers who have accepted Mr Peirce's principle and name of Pragmatism. I letter both sets of quotations, in order to faciUtate the comparison between them. Schiller : " Studies in Humanism," page 18 : (B) " Two men, therefore, with different fortunes, histories and temperaments, (mght not to arrive at the same metaphysic . . . each should react individiuilly on the food for thought which his personal life affords, and the resulting differences ought not to be set aside as void of ultimate significance." (ItaUcs in the original.) Schiller : " Axioms as Postulates— Personal Ideal- ism," page 59 : (A) "What we have seen to be untrue, viz., that there is an objective world given independently of us and constraining us to recognize it." Schiller : " Studies in Humanism," page 189 : (A) " He (the Pragmatist) thinks that the coercive- ness of ' fact ' has been enormously exaggerated by a iti Mf s' ssmMs a u The Two Pragmatisms 23 failure to observe that it is never sheer coercion but always mitigated by his acceptance." Schiller : " Studies in Humanism," page 208 : (A) (Pragmatic truth) " is fluid, not rigid, temporal and temporary, not eternal and everlasting ; chosen, not inevitable ; born of passion and sprung (like Aphro- dite) from a foaming sea of desires, not ' dispassionate ' nor * purely intellectual ' ; incomplete, not perfect ; faUible, not inerrant ; absorbed in the attaining of what is not yet achieved ; purposive and strugghng towards ends." Schiller : ** Axioms as Postulates — Personal Ideal- ism," page 120 : (B) " What are these mechanical explanations which have so successfully occupied the fertile field of science ? They are devices of our own . . . ideals conceived by our intelligence to which we are coaxing reahty to approximate.' jj Schiller : " Studies in Humanism," page 12 : (C) "... The human reason is ever gloriously human ... it mercifully interposes an impenetrable veil between us and any truth or reahty which is wholly alien to our nature.''* WiUiam James : " Pragmatism," page 273 : (B) " On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any " ■i i ! »PjlgJ- " "J!i;!!lLa Nt ¥ I r 24 Vital Lies hypothesis if consequences useful to hfe flow from it. Universal conceptions . . . have indeed no meaning and no reality if they have no use. But if they have any use, they have that amount of meaning, and the meaning will be true if the use squares well with Ufe's other uses." WiUiam James : " Pragmatism," page 76 : (B) " But in this world . . . certain ideas are not only agreeable to think about, or agreeable as support- ing other ideas that we are fond of, but they are also helpful in hfe's practical struggles. If there be any hfe that it is really better we should lead, and if there be any idea which, beheved in, would help us to lead that hfe, then it would be really heUer for us [itahcs sic] to believe in that idea, unless, indeed, belief in it inci- dentally clashed with other, greater vital benefits. (Itahcs 9ic.) (B) "What would be better for us to beheve ! This sounds very like a definition of truth. [Itahcs mine. ] It comes very near to saying what we ought [itahcs sic] to beheve ! And in that definition none of you would find any oddity. Ought we ever not to beheve what it is better for us to beheve ? And can we then keep the notion of what is better for us and what is true for us [itahcs mine] permanently apart ? Pragmatism says no, and I fully agree with her ! " Wilham James : " Pragmatism," page 204 : J ! ^? The Two Pragmatisms 25 (A) '* You can say of it either that : it is useful because it is true ; or that it is true because it is useful. True is the name for whatever starts the verification process ; ^ useful is the name for its completed function in experience." Wilham James : " Pragmatism," page 73 : (B) " If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete hfe, they will be true, for Pragmatism, in the sense that they are good for so much." Wilham James : " Pragmatism," page 299 : (A) " On pragmatic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true." (B) " Now, whatever its residual difficulties may be, experience shows that it certainly does work and that the problem is ... to determine it so that it will combine with all the other working truths." Wilham James : " Pragmatism," page 200 : (B) " Pragmatism asks its usual question : Grant an idea or a behef to be true, it says, what concrete ^C. S. Peirce, "How to Make Our Ideas Qear," page 289: "... the action of thought is excited by the irritation of doubt and ceases when belief is attained ; so that production of belief is the sole function of thought." This shows that for Peirce dovbt " is the name of what starts the verification process " — truth what ends that process when it has been properiy carried through. Note Professor James's Implying that we know truih before em- barking on the process of ascertaining it ! The Two Pragmatisms 27 ij ii U difference wiU its being true make in any one's actual life ? " Schiller : " Humanism," page 260 et seq. : (B) " In the end the world is human experience, and a world which we neither did or could experience would not be one we need argue or trouble about, " What would be our attitude towards the world in which the ultimate significance of our ideals was denied ... and in which the hope of happiness was nothing but a delusion ? " SchiUer : " Humanism," page 199 et seq. : (B) " Knowledge is power, because we decUne to recognize as knowledge whatever does not satisfy our lust for power." " It foUows that ultimate reahty must be absolutely satisfactory." (A) " There is a serious faUacy in the notion that the pursuit of truth could reveal a chamber of horrors in the innermost shrine (B) If this were true we should decKne to beheve it and to accept it as true. And even if we could be forced to the admission that the pursuit of truth necessarily and inevitably brought us face to face with some unbearable atrocity [C] as soon as the pursuit of truth was generally recog- nized to be practicaUy noxious, we should simply give (C)J*If its misguided votaries persisted in their M diabolical pursuit of truth regardless of the conse- quences, they would be stamped out as the Indian Government has stamped out the Thugs. . . . The thing has happened over and over again. All through the Middle Ages most branches of knowledge were under black suspicion as hostile to human welfare. They languished accordingly." Schiller : " Axioms as Postulates— Personal Ideal- ism," page 122 : (B) " There is no intelligibility without conformity to human nature, and human nature is teleological. ... A world which can be * fully explained,' but only in mechanical or barely intellectual terms, is not fully intelligible, is not fully explained. " An intelligent reader may perhaps gather . . . why the personality of God should be esteemed an indispensable postulate. Is immortaUty a postulate ? At present we are too profoundly ignorant as to what men actually desire in the matter, and why and how to decide what they ought to desire." WiUiam James : " Pragmatism," concluding sen- tence : (B) " Between the two extremes, of crude natural- ism on the one hand and transcendental absolutism on the other, you may find that what I take the liberty of calling the pragmatistic or melioristic type of theism, is exactly what you require." 28 Vital Lies I 1 1 IV Such, then, is the attitude towards Truth and the WiU-to-BeUeve of Mr C. S. Peirce, and such the atti- tude of Messrs James and SchiUer. Applying in this case that selfsame method for " making our ideas clear » which bids us test the meaning of an idea by the results of that possible meaning, we see that the Pragmatic Principle involved by Messrs James and Schiller must differ from the Pragmatic Principle formulated by Mr Peirce, inasmuch as the consequences not only deducible but actuaUy deduced from the one are in flagrant contradiction with the consequences deduced from the other. The contradiction amounts to this, that while Mr Peirce makes trvth into an inteUectual imperative which sooner or later imposes Itself (or would impose itself but for human " per- versity ») on (ypiwUm, Messrs James and Schiller (besides constantly confusing " Truth " with its ob- jective correlate - Reahty ») calmly identify trvlh with belief, and belief with (xpinion, and they test truth (which is itself beUef's and opinion's standard) by the beneficial or agreeable, the useful consequences due to holding a given behef or opinion. The contradiction between the two attitudes toward truth can be practi- caMy tested by substituting the word " opinion » for the word " truth " in the quotations severally from i> i., *i ft 5i The Two Pragmatisms 29 Mr Peirce and from his self-styled disciples. In the quotations from Mr Peirce, this substitution results in nonsense : no one could mean that " opinion " [in original "truth"] "is that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be," nor that " opinion " [" truth "] " is the fore-ordained conclusion of scientific investigation if pushed far enough " ; nor that " opinion " [" truth "] " is pro- duced by a force outside of ourselves and similar to destiny"; still less that "opinion" ["truth"] " crushed to earth shall rise again independent of what any one thinks," even if it have to await the coming of another race of human beings ; least of all, that we may expect unanimity of " opinion " [" truth "] from individuals starting with different bias, character, and methods. It is obvious, therefore, that, when Mr Peirce speaks of truth, he does not mean the same thing as opinixm. But if we perform this little experiment upon the quotations from Messrs James and Schiller, we shall find ourselves in front of a totally different " practical result." So far from turning the sentences into nonsense, the substitution of "opinion" for "truth" will make them not only clear and reasonable, but frequently truistic and platitudinous : two individuals may, in- deed, be expected to arrive at opinions as different as their lives and fortunes. Acceptance of an opinion is r 30 Vital Lies The Two Pragmatisms 3 1 % \ certainly different from coercion by fact. Opinion may, indeed, be " chosen,not inevitable " ; " temporary, not eternal " ; " fluid, not rigid " ; " passionate, not unbiassed " ; nor could anything be more appro- priate than Mr Schiller's simile of opinion rising, hke Aphrodite, " out of a foaming sea of desire." We can all think of cases when human reason's "glorious humanness " has interposed a veil, merciful or other- wise, between mankind and opinions " aHen to its nature " ; and history does show (as Mr Peirce remarks in the first of his articles on the " Logic of Science ") no end of violent repressions of opinions which were deemed dangerous or odious. Professor James would be not less logical, but a deal more so, if he said that it is opinion which " starts the verification-process " ; more logical, because that verification-process results in a tryth which sometimes dispels an opinion. People much less subtle than IVIr Schiller have talked of "making up their minds," or "making themselves an opinion " ; and no one, subtle or not, would deny that many opinions are purposive. And, finally, this very fluid, temporal, temporary, individual, biassed, passionate, human-made (even officially made) thing opinion, can be arranged, tested, accepted, welcomed, scouted, anathematized, on the score of being or not being useful, beneficent, conducive to fife. For in- stance, basing ourselves on Lafcadio Heam, we might quite admit that the opinions summed up under ' \ the title " Ancestor- Worship " had been (to quote Professor James's rather commercial phrase of recom- mendation) " exactly what was required " by the former inhabitants of Japan ; but few of us would be ready to describe those " Ancestor-worship " opinions as " independent of what any one thought," and " fore- ordained to be ultimately arrived at by investigators despite all individual and temporary bias," as Mr Peirce describes trtUh. For, so far from opinion being identifiable with truth, it frequently happens that an opinion may be extremely efficacious, practically and morally, and yet on the contrary, false. Now, it is exactly because opinim, while possessing all the characteristics attributed by Messrs James and Schiller to truth, by no means always answers to Mr Peirce's definition of truth, that we must set our face against the identification, even against the partial confusion of opinion with truth : the two words must be kept separate because they answer to separate, to occasionally overiapping but by no means equivalent, notions. And the tendencies leading to this identi- fication of truth and opinion, leading to this testing truth by practical, moral, extrinsic value, are tendencies requiring to be checked, not because they exist in dis- 32 Vital Lies The Two Pragmatisms 33 'M' tinguished thinkers like Messrs James and Schiller, but because they exist in all of us, and are such that all philosophy is not too much to keep them in order. The " WiU-to-BeKeve," the " Consent of our WiUing Nature," the " Purposive Making of Truth " are labels for human instincts as universal as the instincts bidding us seek pleasure, repose, and advantage wherever they can be got, and without consideration for the pleasure, the repose, the advantage of other beings. Most of our thoughts, and probably the whole of our faculty for thinking, have arisen at the bidding of an interested purpose, of a self-seeking will ; and this accounts for many of the absurdities that have been thought, and perhaps for most of the vices of our methods of think- ing. But, thanks to the pressure of universal and averaged purposes and interests upon individuals, thanks to the conflict of opinions, of purposively made trvihs and of beliefs which are willed, there has been evolved in our thinking nature an automatic check, a counteracting force, to those interested motives and emotional preferences without which there would have been no thinking faculty at all. That check is the particular conception defined by Mr Peirce as truth. That counteracting force is constituted by the taste, the passion, the instinctive and imperious re- spect for truth, which plays in our intellectual hfe the part played in our individual and social hfe bv the instincts of justice and chastity. In the same way I that our hfe as human beings would be laid waste with- out these other two great altruistic instincts, so also, were it not for the passion for truth, our intellectual hfe would have been perpetually jeopardized by the natural tendency to beheve (or pretend to beUeve) what- soever appeals to individual or momentary interests and preferences. Mankind has always wanted, perhaps always required, and certainly always made itself, a stock of delusions and sophisms, of vital lies or of white lies. Every human being's thought, consciously or un- consciously, tends to accommodate itself to some wish, some use, some habit. Every opinion tends to identify itself with truth. The Will-to-Beheve, the Purposive Making of Truth, are unceasingly at work. This is the reason why we have no use for the kind of Pragmatism which teaches the testing of truth by its utihty, the identification of truth with opinion, which preaches this universal and ineradicable vice of all our thinking as a self-righteous, a self-assertive virtue. VI At this point of my proceedings against what has usurped the name of Pragmatism, but what I would rather describe as the pragmatistic temperament in philosophy, it is quite natural that the reader should interrupt with the perhaps indignant suggestion that ii 34 Vital Lies I must be grossly misunderstanding, if not misrepre- senting, my adversaries. If, as I hope, he has himself read some of the books under accusation, he will point out with perfect justice that quite one half of their contents is in absolute contradiction with my summing up, and in absolute agreement with Mr Peirce's and everyone else's defini- tion of truth. And if, on the other hand, the reader pos- sesses no first-hand acquaintance with the incriminated writings, he will be even less able to believe my asser- tion that the philosophers calling themselves Pragma- tists should persistently and consistently deduce from Mr Peirce's principle a doctrine so flagrantly in opposi- tion to his own, and should claim as their remoter intellectual progenitors (Pragamatists, we are told, before Pragmatism) philosophers so extraordinarily imlike themselves as Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Mill. Now this fact, which seems incredible to the reader, is the hicy the gravamen of the whole question of Pragmatism, and the chief reason for suspecting and discountenancing the self-styled pragmatistic attitude, and, I might add, complexion of mind. The bad business about Messrs James's and Schiller's contra- dictory additions to the Pragmatism of Mr Peirce, is precisely that the principles thus inserted by them into the original formula of Pragmatism are neither consistently applied nor persistently maintained, but flicker in and out of existence with perfect intermittence The Two Pragma tisms 3 5 and inconsistency. That Truth which is fltiid not rigidy temporary and individual, that truth which is whit it would he good to heUeve, that truth which has been got by an act of vohtion and choice, occasionallv by a wager, that goddess of Mr Schiller's, risen not out of the old-fashioned well, hut, like Aphrodite, out of a foaming sea of desires, thal^ brand new and at the same time comfortingly old-fashioned sort of truth (" a new name for some old ways of thinking "),i is never invoked in connection with any notion of which we are already certain, nor applied to any problem upon which certainty seems proximately forthcoming. The will to beUeve, even the right to believe, is indeed invoked in the obscure problems of the relation between body and soul ; ^ but we are not referred to it for solutions of the problems of chemistry or physics. Still less are we recommended to apply to the disputes of Lamarckians and neo-Darwinians that test of suitability to public morals or private consolation which we are earnestly pressed to bring to bear upon the tenets of optimistic theism and the hypotheses of mediumistic spiritualism. We are recommended to beUeve as we choose only in the cases where rational beUef cannot yet exist, and cheered onwards to make up our mind only where our judgment is necessarily * " A new name for some old ways of thinking.' Professor James's volume " Pragmatism." • W. James, " Human Immortality," p. 39^e< seq. Subtitle of 36 Vital Lies suspended. Wherever it is controlled by observation, experiment, calculation, or any of the ordinary methods for attaining truth. Pragmatism drops into what Mr Schiller describes as its original humility,^ it shrinks into being once more Mr Peirce's method " for making our ideas clear '* — it curtseys a welcome to unanswerable facts, to indisputable generalizations, and recites the " humble " formula in which, as we are told. Professor Peirce summed up the practice of British philosophers from Locke to Mill and Bain. But on one or two points where science decUnes or delays to answer ; in fact, where truth in Mr Peirce's sense does not close the door in the Pragmatist's face, then Pragmatism reveals herself the real " Aphrodite born of the foaming sea of desires," and goddess-Uke creates truths which are conformable to the " ideals," the " hope of happiness," the *' what it would be better to beheve," the " vital hope of mankind," the " what is exactly what you require " of her high priests James and Schiller. Incessu patet dea. To the sceptic, the scoffer, to the reader in hopeless confusion of mind. Pragmatism is at last revealed in aU her miraculous and beneficent glory. 1 Schiller, " Pragmatism and Pseudo- Pragmatism," in Mind, p. 390: "... if pragmatist epistemology is more revolutionary, it is also more systematic and adequate tlian its humble beginnings in Dr Peirce's magazine article appeared to portend. The Two Pragmatisms 37 VII I began this paper by stating that my chief reason for faUing foul of Will-to-BeUeve Pragmatism is because it exemphfies an intellectual temperament which, even while examining into the nature and uses of Truth, indulges in continual ambiguities, revokes of state- ments, quibbles and distortions of meaning, in such tentative disingenuousness as is not easily detected by others and perhaps not easily suspected by oneself. Of such dupUcity there luckily presented itself to my hand an initial example whose detection, hke that of some medium's sleight of hand, was calculated to arouse in my reader's mind a justified state of distrust. That initial disingenuousness which I have already dealt with is the adoption of the name and employment of the intel- lectual credit of a logical method — Mr Peirce's method for " making our ideas clear " — which, as I have shown by a comparison between the conclusions of Mr Peirce and those of his self-styled disciples, is utterly incom- patible with the pretensions of a " Will-to-Beheve " or the " purposive " " Making of Truth." This chapter being insufficient for the intricate pro- cesses of showing up any other of these philosophical conjurors' feats of logical skill, I shall devote its remain- ing pages to mere further arousing of the reader's suspiciousness, first by the exhibition of some of these 38 Vital Lies Pragmatists' choicest self-advertisements and ** testi- monials " ; and then by the discovery of the cat which lurks at the bottom of these Pragmatists' very hetero- genous bag-full. Of the testimonial to Will-to-Beheve Pragmatism extracted by the initial parade of Mr Peirce's " Prin- ciple " and the subsequent hiding of Mr Peirce's con- clusions, we have re-valued the value by apphcation of the Peirce method to quotations from Messrs James and Schiller compared with quotations from Mr Peirce himself. The already quoted account of Pragmatism in Professor James's " Varieties of ReUgious Experi- ence " (p. 443) contains another " testimonial " in favour of the doctrine. The reader will remember that the Pragmatistic method is here described as being impUcit in the philosophy of the chief British philo- sophers and illustrated by the proceedings of Locke, of Berkeley and of Hume ; while Brown, Dugald Stewart, the Mills and James Bain are further adduced more briefly as having practised the method later to be called " Pragmatic " by Mr Peirce. But Professor James does not add that these philosophical worthies, three of whom at least, Hume, Mill and Bain, were rationahfatic stalwarts, employed the pragmatic method merely in the Peircean sense of defining and verifying ideas by reference to possible experience ; and that, even like Mr Peirce himself, they never employed it in the James-Schiller sense of " Willing to Beheve " or The Two Pragmatisms 39 "Making Truth" in obedience to life's needs and ideals. And by this display of one half of the facts and omission of the other half of them. Professor James produces on the reader's mind the impression that the doctrine of Right-to-BeHeve, or Will-to-BeUeve, which he has foisted upon Mr Peirce's Pragmatism, is not only identical with it, but has been acted upon, long before it was ever given a name or formula, by the very philosophers who notoriously did most against those practically useful theological and mystical assumptions which they denounced as preferred, desired, " chosen," in fact, as " willed " beUefs. The lay pubhc, the public hungry for " religious experiences " like those to whose advantages Professor James has devoted so many pages, are therefore comfortably able to say : '* You know the Will-to-Believe was the philosophic method not only of that great Mr Peirce who invented Pragmatism, but also of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, the Mills, Professor Bain and all the people who we thought were sceptics and rationalists, it is the characteristimlly British Philosophy.'^ After identifying his views as characteristically British (not made in Germany, he is careful to point out, although as historical fact Kant, with his " Practical Reason," did encourage the Will-to-Believe) Professor James renders them further attractive to an American or English audience by comparison with Protestantism. Pragmatism, he tells us, impHes an alteration in the 40 Vital Lies " seat of authority " ; he and his WiU-to-Bdieveists are like the Reformers; their " ultra-rationalist " opponents are the Papists. Thus Reason is made to play the part of mediaeval ecclesiastical dogmatism, and the Will-to- BeUeve falls into the gallant attitude of sixteenth- century free thought ; ^ and (by a mere juxtaposition of things and quahties not necessarily connected) the impression is left in the reader that Will-to-Believe Pragmatism being a philosophical heresy, the orthodox philosophy of rationalism must on the contrary be dogmatic, unscientific, illiberal and stick in the mud, while Will-to-Behevism is not only scientific and pro- gressive, but also, like the Protestantism which went to the rack and the stake, eminently scrupulous and courageous. And since we are upon the subject of fine gallant attitudes, let me point out the self-advertisement which treats belief due to ivilUng as a risk which the believer