First, as to the word ‘pragmatism.’  I myself have only used the term to indicate a method of carrying on abstract discussion.  The serious meaning of a concept, says Mr. Peirce, lies in the concrete difference to some one which its being true will make.  Strive to bring all debated conceptions to that’ pragmatic’ test, and you will escape vain wrangling:  if it can make no practical difference which of two statements be true, then they are really one statement in two verbal forms; if it can make no practical difference whether a given statement be true or false, then the statement has no real meaning.  In neither case is there anything fit to quarrel about:  we may save our breath, and pass to more important things.

All that the pragmatic method implies, then, is that truths should have practical [Footnote:  ‘Practical’ in the sense of particular, of course, not in the sense that the consequences may not be mental as well as physical.] consequences.  In England the word has been used more broadly still, to cover the notion that the truth of any statement consists in the consequences, and particularly in their being good consequences.  Here we get beyond affairs of method altogether; and since my pragmatism and this wider pragmatism are so different, and both are important enough to have different names, I think that Mr. Schiller’s proposal to call the wider pragmatism by the name of ‘humanism’ is excellent and ought to be adopted.  The narrower pragmatism may still be spoken of as the ‘pragmatic method.’

I have read in the past six months many hostile reviews of Schiller’s and Dewey’s publications; but with the exception of Mr. Bradley’s elaborate indictment, they are out of reach where I write, and I have largely forgotten them.  I think that a free discussion of the subject on my part would in any case be more useful than a polemic attempt at rebutting these criticisms in detail.  Mr. Bradley in particular can be taken care of by Mr. Schiller.  He repeatedly confesses himself unable to comprehend Schiller’s views, he evidently has not sought to do so sympathetically, and I deeply regret to say that his laborious article throws, for my mind, absolutely no useful light upon the subject.  It seems to me on the whole an ignoratio ELENCHI, and I feel free to disregard it altogether.

The subject is unquestionably difficult.  Messrs. Dewey’s and Schiller’s thought is eminently an induction, a generalization working itself free from all sorts of entangling particulars.  If true, it involves much restatement of traditional notions.  This is a kind of intellectual product that never attains a classic form of expression when first promulgated.  The critic ought therefore not to be too sharp and logic-chopping in his dealings with it, but should weigh it as a whole, and especially weigh it against its possible alternatives.  One should also try to apply it first to one instance, and then to another