I tell this trivial anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example of what I wish now to speak of as the pragmatic method.  The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable.  Is the world one or many?—­fated or free?—­material or spiritual?—­here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending.  The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences.  What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true?  If 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.

A glance at the history of the idea will show you still better what pragmatism means.  The term is derived from the same Greek word [pi rho alpha gamma mu alpha], meaning action, from which our words ‘practice’ and ‘practical’ come.  It was first introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles Peirce in 1878.  In an article entitled ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear,’ in the ‘Popular Science Monthly’ for January of that year [Footnote:  Translated in the Revue Philosophique for January, 1879 (vol. vii).] Mr. Peirce, after pointing out that our beliefs are really rules for action, said that to develope a thought’s meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce:  that conduct is for us its sole significance.  And the tangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice.  To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—­what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare.  Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all.

This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism.  It lay entirely unnoticed by anyone for twenty years, until I, in an address before Professor Howison’s philosophical union at the university of California, brought it forward again and made a special application of it to religion.  By that date (1898) the times seemed ripe for its reception.  The word ‘pragmatism’ spread, and at present it fairly spots the pages of the philosophic journals.  On all hands we find the ‘pragmatic movement’ spoken of, sometimes with respect, sometimes with contumely, seldom with clear understanding.  It is evident that the term applies itself conveniently to a number of tendencies that hitherto have lacked a collective name, and that it has ‘come to stay.’