63.  CRITICAL EMPIRICISM.—­We have seen that the trouble with the rationalists seemed to be that they made an appeal to “eternal truths,” which those who followed them could not admit to be eternal truths at all.  They proceeded on a basis of assumptions the validity of which was at once called in question.

Locke, the empiricist, repudiated all this, and then also made assumptions which others could not, and cannot, approve.  Kant did something of much the same sort; we cannot regard his “criticism” as wholly critical.

How can we avoid such errors?  How walk cautiously, and go around the pit into which, as it seems to us, others have fallen?  I may as well tell the reader frankly that he sets his hope too high if he expects to avoid all error and to work out for himself a philosophy in all respects unassailable.  The difficulties of reflective thought are very great, and we should carry with us a consciousness of that fact and a willingness to revise our most cherished conclusions.

Our initial difficulty seems to be that we must begin by assuming something, if only as material upon which to work.  We must begin our philosophizing somewhere.  Where shall we begin?  May we not fall into error at the very outset?

The doctrine set forth in the earlier chapters of this volume maintains that we must accept as our material the revelation of the mind and the world which seems to be made in our common experience, and which is extended and systematized in the sciences.  But it insists that we must regard such an acceptance as merely provisional, must subject our concepts to a careful criticism, and must always be on our guard against hasty assumptions.

It emphasizes the value of the light which historical study casts upon the real meaning of the concepts which we all use and must use, but 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.