Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)

Their wordsThe history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

Their wordsI offer the oddly-named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds of demand. It can remain religious like the rationalisms, but at the same time, like the empiricisms, it can preserve the richest intimacy with facts.

Their wordsIf no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other's being right.

Their wordsTHEORIES THUS BECOME INSTRUMENTS, NOT ANSWERS TO ENIGMAS, IN WHICH WE CAN REST. We don't lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid.

Their wordsIn this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as a presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification.

Their wordsIF THEOLOGICAL IDEAS PROVE TO HAVE A VALUE FOR CONCRETE LIFE, THEY WILL BE TRUE, FOR PRAGMATISM, IN THE SENSE OF BEING GOOD FOR SO MUCH.

Their wordsThus if no future detail of experience or conduct is to be deduced from our hypothesis, the debate between materialism and theism becomes quite idle and insignificant.

Their wordsTo make our human ethics revolve about the question of 'merit' is a piteous unreality—God alone can know our merits, if we have any.

Their wordsFree-will pragmatically means NOVELTIES IN THE WORLD, the right to expect that in its deepest elements as well as in its surface phenomena, the future may not identically repeat and imitate the past.

Their wordsThe world is one just so far as its parts hang together by any definite connexion. It is many just so far as any definite connexion fails to obtain.

Their wordsMy thesis now is this, that OUR FUNDAMENTAL WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT THINGS ARE DISCOVERIES OF EXCEEDINGLY REMOTE ANCESTORS, WHICH HAVE BEEN ABLE TO PRESERVE THEMSELVES THROUGHOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF ALL SUBSEQUENT TIME.

Their wordsCommon sense is BETTER for one sphere of life, science for another, philosophic criticism for a third; but whether either be TRUER absolutely, Heaven only knows.

Their wordsThe truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth HAPPENS to an idea. It BECOMES true, is MADE true by events.

Their words'The true,' to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.

Their wordsMeanwhile we have to live to-day by what truth we can get to-day, and be ready to-morrow to call it falsehood.

Their wordsIn our cognitive as well as in our active life we are creative. We ADD, both to the subject and to the predicate part of reality.

Their wordsThe essential contrast is that for rationalism reality is ready-made and complete from all eternity, while for pragmatism it is still in the making, and awaits part of its complexion from the future.

Their wordsIt is clear that pragmatism must incline towards meliorism. Some conditions of the world's salvation are actually extant, and she cannot possibly close her eyes to this fact: and should the residual conditions come, salvation would become an accomplished reality.

Their wordsIn the end it is our faith and not our logic that decides such questions, and I deny the right of any pretended logic to veto my own faith.

Their wordsOn pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.