great religious difference lies between the men who insist that the world must and shall be, and those who are contented with believing that the world may be, saved.  The whole clash of rationalistic and empiricist religion is thus over the validity of possibility.  It is necessary therefore to begin by focusing upon that word.  What may the word ‘possible’ definitely mean?

To unreflecting men the possible means a sort of third estate of being, less real than existence, more real than non-existence, a twilight realm, a hybrid status, a limbo into which and out of which realities ever and anon are made to pass.  Such a conception is of course too vague and nondescript to satisfy us.  Here, as elsewhere, the only way to extract a term’s meaning is to use the pragmatic method on it.  When you say that a thing is possible, what difference does it make?

It makes at least this difference that if anyone calls it impossible you can contradict him, if anyone calls it actual you can contradict him, and if anyone calls it necessary you can contradict him too.  But these privileges of contradiction don’t amount to much.  When you say a thing is possible, does not that make some farther difference in terms of actual fact?

It makes at least this negative difference that if the statement be true, it follows that there is nothing extant capable of preventing the possible thing.  The absence of real grounds of interference may thus be said to make things not impossible, possible therefore in the bare or abstract sense.

But most possibles are not bare, they are concretely grounded, or well-grounded, as we say.  What does this mean pragmatically?  It means, not only that there are no preventive conditions present, but that some of the conditions of production of the possible thing actually are here.  Thus a concretely possible chicken means:  (1) that the idea of chicken contains no essential self-contradiction; (2) that no boys, skunks, or other enemies are about; and (3) that at least an actual egg exists.  Possible chicken means actual egg—­ plus actual sitting hen, or incubator, or what not.  As the actual conditions approach completeness the chicken becomes a better-and-better-grounded possibility.  When the conditions are entirely complete, it ceases to be a possibility, and turns into an actual fact.

Let us apply this notion to the salvation of the world.  What does it pragmatically mean to say that this is possible?  It means that some of the conditions of the world’s deliverance do actually exist.  The more of them there are existent, the fewer preventing conditions you can find, the better-grounded is the salvation’s possibility, the more probable does the fact of the deliverance become.

So much for our preliminary look at possibility.