- ject of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these
effects is the whole of our conception of the object."[1] "Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects," and if we have any doubt as to whether we really believe the effects to be sensible or no, we have only to ask ourselves whether or no we should act any differently in their presence. In short, our own responses to sensory stimuli are the ultimate, or testing, ingredients in our conception of an object. In the literal sense of the word pragmatist, therefore, Peirce is more of a pragmatist than James.
He is also less of a nominalist. That is to say, he emphasizes much less the particular sensible consequence, and much more the habit, the generic attitude of response, set up in consequence of experiences with a thing. In the passage in the Dictionary already quoted he speaks as if in his later life he attached less importance to action, and more to "concrete reasonableness" than in his earlier writing. It may well be that the relative emphasis had shifted. But there is at most but a difference of emphasis. For in his later doctrine, concrete rationality means a change in existence brought about through action, and through action which embodies conceptions whose own specific existence consists in habitual attitudes of response. In his earlier writing, the emphasis upon habits, as something generic, is explicit. "What a thing means is simply what habits it involves."[2] More elaborately, "Induction infers a rule. Now the belief of a rule is a habit. That a habit is a rule, active in us, is evident. That every belief is of the nature of a habit, in so far as it is of a general character, has been shown in the earlier papers of this series."[10]
The difference between Peirce and James which next strikes us is the greater emphasis placed by the former upon the method of procedure. As the quotations already made show, everything ultimately turned, for Peirce, upon the trustworthiness of the procedures of inquiry. Hence his high estimate of logic, as compared with James—at least James in his later days. Hence also
