The Limits of Pragmatism.

Pragmatism -variously understood, variously approached, variously turned to account -is in the air.I shall not venture to define pragmatism, much less to ascribe any definite form of it to any particular writer; on the contrary, I shall merely state broadl}' the general idea involved in it, as a way of looking at things, and from the outcome try to reach an understanding as to what in fact it is.Broadly speaking, enquiries are pragmatic which, with more or less thoroughness, make such conceptions as thought, existence, truth, reality, etc., relative to other terms in a movement, development, or evolution ; relative to antecedents, consequences, modes of function, ends.All such determinations are not only ends reached in a movment, but also means to ends yet to be reached; and all of them, considered thus functionally, as terms of genetic organization, in so far forbid definition in a static, absolute, once-for-all-fixed system.Now whether or not all those who call themselves pragmatic-not to say pragmatists -admit that this fairly characterizes that feature of their thought, still that is what I now mean, and that is what this paper is about.In the theory of knowledge, it is one of the main claimsand one of the prime advantages -of pragmatic theory, that it avoids and denies any dualism between reality and thought, in the sense that thought, or knowledge, somehow represents or reveals a system of realities which are already fixed, definite, and absolute, apart from the processes of cognition.It claims that reality is determined as truth, and truth is a mode of mental organization.It claims to be able to point out the adequate processes of knowledge and action, of selection and systematization, which determine truth; and thus to yield a theory of