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least full of future promise, the work of the energetic Chicago School headed by Professor Dewey.[1] It seemed therefore not impolitic, and even imperative, to keep up the agitation for a more hopeful and humaner view of metaphysics; and at the same time to herald the coming of what will doubtless be an epochmaking work, viz., William James's promised Metaphysics.

II

The origin of great truths, as of great men, is usually obscure, and by the time that the world has become cognizant of them and interested in their pedigree, they have usually grown old. It is not surprising therefore that the central thought of our present Pragmatism, to wit the purposiveness of our thought and the teleological character of its methods, should have been clearly stated by Professor James so long ago as 1879.[2] Similarly I was surprised to find that I had all along been a pragmatist myself without knowing it, and that little but the name was lacking to my own advocacy of an essentially cognate position in 1892.[3]

But Pragmatism is no longer unobserved; it has by this time reached the 'Strike, but hear me!' stage, and as the misconceptions due to sheer unfamiliarity are refuted or abandoned it will rapidly enter on the era of profitable employment. It was this latter probability which formed one of my chief motives for publishing

  1. ↑ They have published a number of articles in the Decennial Publications of the University; their Studies in Logical Theory are announced, but have not yet reached me. Though proceeding from a different camp, the works of Dr. J. E. MacTaggart and Prof. G, H. Howison should also be alluded to as adding to the salutary ferment. For while ostensibly (and indeed ostentatiously) employing the methods of the old a priori dogmatism they have managed to reverse its chief conclusions, in a charming but somewhat perplexing way. I have on purpose confined this enumeration to the English-speaking world; but in France and even in Germany somewhat similar movements are becoming visible.
  2. ↑ In his 'Sentiment of Rationality' in Mind, O.S. No. 15.
  3. ↑ In Reality and 'Idealism'. Cp. pp. 119-121.
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