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444 W. CALDWELL : of conceptual truth from practical results rests upon prejudice, and that true ideas are really successful ideas ideas that prove themselves fruitful. (5) Of course it is now only too well known that so far as the "legitimacy of the argument from consequences" is concerned, Prof. James's Pragmatism may be associated with the positions of Prof. A. Seth and Mr. Arthur Balfour, both men in whom this agreement is connected with a general metaphysic of reality and a general theory of know- ledge. "The ultima ratio," says Prof. A. Seth, 1 "of every creed, the ultima ratio of truth itself, is that it works ; and no greater condemnation can be passed upon a doctrine or system than that if it were true human life as it has been lived by the best of the race would cease to be reasonable." And again, "The ethical life has also its certainties and postulates ; and a man is not necessarily evading truth, when he rejects a creed, because it has no place within it for these postulates of the ethical or spiritual life which are to him the most fundamental certainties of all. 2 Nor is he convicted of prejudice, because he avows that the defence of these postulates is the motive of his speculative inquiry." And as for Mr. Balfour, the whole of his Foundations of Belief may be regarded as an illustration of what in the spirit and in the letter of Prof. James's pamphlet we may call the "definite differences" that result from the truth or the untruth of different systems of thought. (6) Lastly it might doubtless be said that Pragmatism is manifestly in harmony with the sound instinct of mankind to judge of any tree or growth by its fruits or absence of fruits. This instinct is so deeply rooted in human nature that there never is a time when some form of Criti- cism, be that literary or artistic or philosophical, does not proceed upon the idea of its essential soundness and ration- ality. Enough has perhaps been said to show us that we may (I think) accept Pragmatism as a real enough thing, i.e., a real enough thing in the light of what it purports to be and evidently is (to a large extent) and in the light of the philo- sophical and scientific and common-sense tendencies with which it can most naturally be associated, and in the light of the many important conclusions to which it leads. Taken at its face value, taken as a working principle, it is good as far as it goes. Nearly everything that it represents is good 1 Man's Place in the Cosmo*, p. 307 (italics partly mine). 2 Ibid., p. 308.