James

istic of his quick response to every sort of nov-
elty and idealism. He was deeply moved not
only by the human suffering and heroism which
the earthquake of 1906 occasioned in California,
but by the earthquake itself,—a new variety of
experience, to be relished and described (Mem-
ories and Studies). During the years 1904 and
1905, he published the remarkable series of arti-
cles which he designed as parts of a larger work
and which was brought together after his death
under the title, Essays in Radical Empiricism
(1912). James was prepared to take reality for
what it appeared to be, even when this ran
counter to the usual philosophical bias. In this
sense his pluralism and "tychism" were radical,
as manifesting a willingness to accept the prima
jade multiplicity and waywardness of things de-
spite their offense to the philosophic norms of
unity and order. His empiricism was radical,
in the second place, in its rigorous adherence to
the maxim that things shall be assumed to be
what they are experienced as] the effect of this
maxim being the exclusion from existence of
all substances, unknowables, and abstractions.
Thirdly, James's empiricism was radical in the
more positive and fruitful sense of finding expe-
rience to be richer and philosophically more ade-
quate than was customarily supposed. Thus ex-
perience itself provides conjunctions as well as
disjunctions, and does not need to be pieced out
by a Kantian apparatus of intellectual forms;
it is structurally self-sufficient, and does not need
to be supported by a metaphysical substructure
or frame such as the "Absolute" of the idealists.
Finally, experience is more fundamental than
either mind or matter, and provides the common
measure in terms of which this duality can be
understood and overcome. Consciousness is not
an entity but a kind of relationship. The terms
which enter into it are the same as those which
in other relationships compose the so-called
physical world. This view, set forth in the essay,
"Does 'Consciousness* Exist?" (Journal of
Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,
Sept. i, 1904), was one of James's most original
and significant philosophical contributions. It
had been approximated by others, and anticipated
by Ernst Mach, in his Beitrdge zur Analyse der
Empfindungen (1886); but it remained for
James to give it effect, and to deal a decisive
blow at the Cartesian dualism which had infect-
ed European philosophy for two centuries.

These active and fruitful years culminated in
the famous Pragmatism, published in 1907, and
consisting of public lectures given in that year
at Coltnnbia University, and in the preceding
before, the Lowell Institute in Boston. In

James

1898 James had given a lecture at Berkeley, Cal.,
entitled "Philosophical Conceptions and Prac-
tical Results," the central idea of which he at-
tributed to his old friend and fellow student
Charles S. Peirce [g.v.]. This writer had also
(Popular Science Monthly, Jan. 1878) used the
name "pragmatism/* and despite Peirce's just
protest that he meant something different by it,
and the various misunderstandings to which it
gave rise, this became the label by which James's
teaching was thereafter known. Pragmatism
was not a new departure, even for James him-
self. It can be found in the concluding chapter
of the Principles of Psychology, and in every
book of James published after that time. It is
the doctrine that the meaning of an idea consists
in the particular consequences to which it leads.
Particular consequences may be perceptual,
practical, or emotional. If an, idea has no such
consequences, it means nothing. If the conse-
quences of two ideas are the same then there is
really only one idea. Stress the perceptual conse-
quences and one finds James's empiricist maxim,
that a thing is what it is experienced as; stress
the practical and emotional consequences, and
one finds his voluntaristic doctrine that subjec-
tive motives play, and deserve to play, an im-
portant part in human beliefs. These more gen-
eral doctrines now received, however, a new
and striking application to the problem of
"truth." This term, said James, should properly
be applied, not to reality, but to our beliefs about
it. There are then two important things to note:
first, a particular truth must be "about" some-
thing in particular; second, it must "work,"
that is, satisfy the purpose or interest for which
it was adopted. Now in what does this relation
"about" consist? James answered that an idea
is about a certain object,—that object "of" which
it is true, if it is true at all—only, when directly
or indirectly, it "leads" to that object. Even to
be false an idea must have a specific reference of
this sort,—a reference that can be construed, he
argued, only in terms of future behavior. Then
if the belief is to have not only objective refer-
ence, but also truth, the dealings to which it
leads must be prosperous, whether in terms of
fulfilled expectation, control, or emotional tone.
The publication of Pragmatism at once gave
rise to active controversy. James himself was
anxious to make converts, and was greatly
cheered by the agreement of G. Papini in Italy,
as well as F. C. S. Schiller in England and John
Dewey in America. There was, however, a
storm of criticism, to which James replied in
innumerable letters as well as in the articles
afterwards collected and published under the;

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