MS 319-324 (1907) - Pragmatism - Variants

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Page 1 Ms. 319 Pragmastism

The philosophical journals the world over are just now brimming with discussion of pragmatism. The number of Leonardo [work] came to me today has some excellent observations on the subject by Giovanni [Papini?]. Yesterday brought news of some disenssions on the subject in New Zealand. Often, however, one comes across glib remakrs that betray complete misunderstandings of this new ingredient of the thought of our time; and I am glad to accept an invitation form the Nation to explain what it really is, how it came in to being, and what it is expected to lead to. A philosophical doctrine which should be completely new could hardly fail to prove completely false; and the beginnings of pragmastism may be traced back almost as far as one with Kanh picked up the method from Kerkeley, onan impcomparable master of it. Locke's Essay [on carrying?] [?] understanding [?] [?] to remember this

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Prag 2 was written before the humane was divorced from the human,) derives most of its illuminating definitions from the same practice. Aristotelianism had a tinge of it derived from Socrates; while [the monstrous errors of Descartes and all his star multitudinous progrency mark his, and all their, blindness to light of this color. But this particluar recognition of the light, this fliniging often of the curtains which agnesticism and John Allen's individualistic nominalism has needlessly drawn , was originally the act of very humble hands. It was in the early seventies that a [knot?] of us young men, calling ourselves semi-ironically, semi-defiantly the "metaphysical Club,' use to meet, sometime in my study in Old Cambridge, sometimes in William James's. It may be that some of our old confederates would not care to have such wild oat sowings publicly remembered

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Prag 3

today. But I do not believe that Mr. Justic Holmes will object, mind is, or Joseph Warner Esq. Nicholas St. John Green was a learned lawyer and had a truly extraordianry power of disrobing the living and greathings both of the draperies of old abstractions.Chauncy Wright,almost a philosophical celbrity of that day, who was never absent, was, I was going to say ourcorypheus, but he was rather our boxing mater against when we stood up to be pounded. He had abandoned his former Hamiltoneanism for the doctrine of will and was trying to weld to that and to its cognate agnosticisim the fundamentally in congreeous ideas of Darwin. John Fishe and Francis Ellingwood Abbot were , sometimes present, to express a general approval of our efforts but held themselves aloof. Our communications were all winged words; nothis was set down on paper; until at length, lest the club shouldl be dissolved without leaving a material souvenir behind it, I drew up a

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little paper expression some of the view which I had been urging and had been calling pragmatism. It was received with such unlooked for kindness that I was encouraged, half a dozen years later, on the invitiation of Mr. Williams Eggleton to print it, somewhat enlarged, in the Popular Science Monthly of Nov. 1877 and Jan 1878, though it did not more that half please the editor Mr. Edward Youmans, It also appeared in a French redaction in the Revue Philosophique, Vol VI & VII 39 1879 In those medieval times I did not dare to have such a word as "pragmatism" set up in type. The authority of Mr. Principal Campbell weighed heavily upon me; and I did not yet perceive that if philosophy is to be made a science literary elegance must be sacrificed so far as to encourage, nay to require writes who have scientifically exact concepts to express, to coin new words

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for the purpose, as freely as they would in chemistry or biology. Indeed as late as 1893, when I might have procured its admission to the "Centruy Dictionary," it did not seem to me to enjoy a vogue sufficient to warrant that step. But it is time to say what pragmaticsm is; first, however, removing a widespread misapprehension by telling of something that is not, It is not a doctine of metaphysics, but is only the forerunner of a new metaphysical light. (Not having an English Testament by me, I will use the quaint Latin of the Vulgato.)" Non erat ill lux. Et hoc est testieum; Tuquis es?Propheta es tu? et dixit: Non sum Dixerunt ergo ei; Quis es, ut responsum demus his, qui miserunt nos? Quid dices de te ipso? Ait:ego rox clamantis in deserto." It is no doctrine of

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