434 W. CALDWELL : already resulted in publications 1 of value to philosophy) a pamphlet by Prof. James, entitled Philosophical Concep- tions and Practical Results, that has "the uncommon merit of being its author's chief or only express treatment of the question of philosophical method".' 2 In what follows I intend to keep in view the justifications as well as the limitations of the point of view therein termed Pragmatism. I welcome the very expression not only as giving a name to a point of view revealed in this pamphlet and in that important volume of essays called The Will to Believe, but as characterising to some extent a few of the various tendencies of what is being called by critics 3 as well as by apologists 4 the " New Ethical Philosophy ". I have elsewhere written upon this so-called new " ethical " philosophy under the title of "Philosophy and the Activity Experience" 5 indicating thus by my very title as well as (I hope) by my conclusions that I prefer on the whole to think of the use that philosophy may make of certain facts that have been emphasised and re- emphasised by recent psychology and epistemology than of a new philosophy. It is at once true that every age or genera- tion may be said to have its characteristic philosophy, and yet at the same time that there is throughout the ages only one philosophy or metaphysic the science of the categories or of the points of view from which the world may be regarded. Philosophy is continually enriching itself in a material regard by including within its synthesis the ac- credited discoveries of science and of scientific method, and is a formal regard by the elaboration of a greater internal coherence between its different parts or doctrines, and between these doctrines and the logical whole of which they form part. For example, a whole realm of fact and a whole realm of theory have been opened up in the present attempted in this article. Some of its ideas are mentioned by Prof. Watson in the International Journal of Ethics (July 1899, "The New ' Ethical ' Philosophy " an article professing to be occasioned by my article in the same Journal for July, 1898, on " Philosophy and the Activity Experience "), but are not treated with the same fulness as are the ideas of Mr. Balfour and Prof. A. Seth. 1 To wit The Conception of God a discussion by Prof. Royce and others, and Prof. Watson's Christianity and Idealism. 2 Philosophical Review, March, 1899. 'E.g., by Prof. Watson, in the article mentioned in the first footnote. 4 See e.g., Discussion in the International Journal of Ethics, January, 1900, by Rev. Jas. Lindsay. 5 1 do not wish to be understood as drawing any such absolute distinc- tions between an older and a newer idealism as Prof. Watson and Rev. Jas. Lindsay would seem to suggest.
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