Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/261

Charles S. Peirce 243 ceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply."' In his earlier statements of the pragmatic maxim Peirce^ emphasized the consequences for conduct that follow from the acceptance or rejection of an idea; but the stoical maxim that the end of man is action did not appeal to him as much at sixty as it did at thirty. Indeed, if we want to clarify the meaning of the idea of pragmatism, let us apply the pragmatic maxim to it. What will be the effect of accepting it? Obviously it will be to develop certain general ideas or habits of looking at things. As Peirce accepts the view that the good must be in the evolu- tionary process, he concludes that it cannot be in individual reactions in their segregation, but rather in something general or continuous, namely, in the growth of concrete reasonable- ness, "becoming governed by law, becoming instinct with general ideas."' In this emphasis on general ideas Peirce's pragmatism differs sharply from that of his follower, James, ; who, like most modem psychologists, was a thorough nominalist : and always emphasized particular sensible experience. Peirce's"] belief in the reality and potency of general ideas was connected in his mind with a vast philosophic system of which he left only some fragmentary outlines." He called it f,ynechistic tychisti c |^ agapism (from the Greek words for continuity, chance, and love). It assumed the primacy of mind and chance and re- garded matter and law as the result of habit. The principal j law of mind is that ideas literally spread themselves and be- come more general or inclusive, so that people who form com- munities or churches develop distinct general ideas. The nourishing love which parents have for their children or thinkers for their own ideas is the creative cause of evolution. Stated thus baldly these views sound fantastic. But Peirce re-enforces them with such a wealth of illustration from modem mathe- matics and physics as to make them extraordinarily suggestive to all whose minds are not closed against new ideas. Peirce was one of the very few modern scientific thinkers to lay hands on that sacred cow of philosophy, the belief thati ' Monist, vol. XV, p. 162. ' Popular Science Monthly, 1878-9. 3 These phrases (from the article on Pragmatism in Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy) strongly suggest the central idea of Santayana's philosophy, but the present writer does not know whether Santayana was ever acquainted with Peirce's writings. " See his articles in the Monist, vols, i, ii, and iii. 1