criterion by which the divergent claims of rival creeds and philosophies—­to be possessed of unconditional truth—­can be scientifically tested?  The sceptic’s sneer, that the shifting systems of philosophy illustrate only the changing fashions of a great illusion about man’s capacity for truth, plunges dogmatism into a ‘Dilemma,’ from which it can emerge only by finding a way of discriminating a ‘truth’ from an ‘error,’ and so solving the ’problem of Truth and Error.’  The weird verbalism of the traditional Logic suggests a problem which strikes deeper even than the question, ’What do you mean by truth?’ viz.:  ‘Do you mean anything?’ and so the ’problem of Meaning’ is propounded by the failure of Formal Logic.  Is Logic not concerned at all with meaning, is it only juggling with empty forms of words?  Lastly, if from all this there springs up a conviction of ’The Bankruptcy of Intellectualism,’ the question suggests itself whether the relation between abstract thinking and concrete experience, between ‘Thought’ and ‘Life,’ has been rightly grasped.  Is life worth living only for the sake of philosophic contemplation, or is thinking only worth doing to aid us in the struggle for life?  Are ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ two separate kingdoms with rigid frontiers, strictly guarded, or does it appear that theories which cannot be applied have, in the end, neither worth, nor truth, nor even meaning?

It is plain from this catalogue of inquiries that Pragmatism makes no abrupt breach in tradition.  It is not the petroleuse of philosophy.  It does not wipe out the history of speculation in order to announce a millennium of new ideas; it claims, on the contrary, to be the culmination and denoument of that history.  It cannot rightly be represented as trying either to sell new lamps for old, or to jerry-build a new metaphysical system on the ruins of all previous achievements.  Its real task is singularly modest.  It aims merely at instructing system-builders in the elementary laws which condition the stability of such structures and conduce to their conservation.

It is therefore a grave mistake to regard it as a parochial eccentricity, as a specific Americanism.  Nor is it the product of the misplaced ingenuity of individual paradox-mongers.  It has come into being by the convergence of distinct lines of thought pursued in different countries by different thinkers.

1.  One of the most interesting of these has originated in the scientific world.  The immense growth of scientific knowledge during the last century was bound to react on human conceptions of scientific procedure.  The enormous number of new facts brought to light by manipulating hypotheses could not but modify our view of scientific law.  Laws no longer seem to scientists the immutable foundations of an eternal order, but are inevitably treated as man-made formulae for grouping and predicting the events which verify them.