F. C. S. SCHILLER
Monosyllabic Definition of Pragmatism
The one way to find out if a thing is true is to try it and see how it works. If it works well for a long time and for all folks, it must have some truth in it. If it works wrong it is false, at least in part. If there is no way to test it, then it has no sense. It means naught to us when we cannot tell what odds it makes if we hold to it or not. A creed is just a guide to life. We must live to learn. If a man would know what is right he must try to do what is right. Then he can find out. Prove all things and hold fast to that which is good. The will to have faith in a thing oft makes the faith come true. So it can be said in a way that we make truth for our own use. What we think must be of use to us in some way, else why should we think it? The truth is what is good for us, what helps us, what gives us joy and strength, what shows us how to act, what ties up fact to fact, so the chain will hold, what makes us see all things clear and straight, and what keeps us from stray paths that turn out wrong in the end. Thought is a tool, a means to an end. Man has to act, and so he must think. In this way he asks the world what it means to him. The need for thought first comes when man asks "Why?" or "Which?" so that he may know what to do to gain his end. The mind as it thinks makes such facts as it can to best serve its use. Out of the facts so come by is made a law, and this law in turn serves as a rule to guide one's acts.
But the reader should be warned that no two pragmatists can be got to agree upon any definition of pragmatism, and that the opponents of pragmatism differ still more widely in their conception of it. Schiller says that the most serious drawback in the name is that "it condemns every exponent of pragmatism to consume at least half an hour of his limited time in explaining the word." Schiller himself employs the term "humanism" instead which being less novel is less disturbing to
[ 193 ]
