operation of natural selection; it has not passed the test; and to talk of its truth is therefore out of the question. During the last fifty years the biologists have climbed to a great height on the tree of knowledge; but, in making evolution into the sole principle of explanation, they are painfully and deliberately sawing off the branch on which they are themselves supported.

The contradiction in which this view ends suggests a reflection on the method of evolution. In the course of years the theory has been gradually extended from its primary reference. It began as an explanation of the modifications undergone by successive forms of life; it became allied with the theories that concern the movements of inorganic matter, cosmical and atomic; and it proved to admit of application to the phenomena of mind and society. Thus the whole realm of knowledge seemed subject to it. Little attention was paid to the different factors introduced as the theory was applied first to one department of knowledge and then to another. The biological method was held to be the universal type; natural selection was even spoken of, on the one hand, as if it could have been operative in the evolution of the heavens; and, on the other, as if it sufficed to explain the whole function and all the objects of human thought. Almost unconsciously also the question of origin led to the question of validity; and it was assumed that the same solution held for both. This is one way of looking at the theory. It takes evolution as the ultimate principle of interpretation, and does not pause to enquire whether evolution itself may not need explaining. It may be called the mechanical interpretation, because there is usually present in the background the thesis that life must be capable of mechanical explanation; and indeed this thesis is necessary to make the explanation complete. But, as it is allowed to be without proof, the view might be named, after its most obvious feature, the biological interpretation. By whatever name it is called, it has been shown to lead to a conclusion which renders its own claim invalid.

The difficulties of the mechanical interpretation become acute at certain points-at the beginnings of life, of sentience, and of self-consciousness. These difficulties have

been often urged. It is admitted that the gulf remains unbridged between the inorganic and the organic; and Dr A. R. Wallace, who shares with Darwin the distinction of having discovered the principle of natural selection, has maintained from the first that its operation cannot account for the moral, intellectual, and spiritual faculties of man. The suggestion that these faculties are a sort of by-product of other functions, which natural selection has preserved, leaves their development unexplained. And yet Dr Wallace seems to have experienced, at the hands of leading biologists, the same fate as that which, according to Hume, befell Bishop Berkeley: 'his arguments admit of no answer, and produce no conviction.' And the reason why they produce no conviction is that their truth has been taken to imply a succession of arbitrary breaches of continuity on the part of a force external to the universe.

But the unity of reality is not destroyed if it be found to be more than a mechanism. Whatever mode of explanation we adopt, it is clear that the history of the universe has been a process from nature to spirit. At the beginning only movements of masses and of molecules can be traced; in the end-at the highest stage we know-matter is the vehicle of morality and reason. The mechanical explanation of life has never been successful; but life is a unity which includes mechanical processes within it. The biological explanation of consciousness has never been successful; but the self-conscious being is a unity, and his morality, art, religion, and philosophy are not found severed from the mechanism and the vital processes of his body. These are incomplete aspects of the one being-the man. If the continuity of evolution is to be saved, it must be by an interpretation which does not ignore, but is not limited by, the mechanical and biological methods. The key to interpretation will be found, not in the factors which appear earliest, but in those which complete the process. We must interpret the less developed by the more developed; and, from this point of view, the process of evolution will be regarded as fundamentally teleological, and the explanation of its purpose will be sought in

consciousness.

W. R. SORLEY.

Art. 4.-PRAGMATISM; THE EVOLUTION OF TRUTH. 1. The Will to Believe, and other Essays in Popular Philosophy. By William James. London: Longmans, 1897. 2. Pragmatism: a New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking. By the same. London: Longmans, 1907. 3. Studies in Logical Theory. By J. Dewey and others. Chicago: University Press, 1903.

4. Axioms as Postulates. By F. C. S. Schiller. In 'Personal Idealism,' edited by Henry Sturt. London: Macmillan, 1902.

5. Humanism: Philosophical Essays. By F. C. S. Schiller. London: Macmillan, 1903.

6. Studies in Humanism. By the same.

millan, 1907.

London: Mac

7. Plato or Protagoras? being a Critical Examination of the Protagoras Speech in the Theatetus,' with some remarks upon Error. By the same. Oxford: Black

well; London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1908.

8. Distinction and the Criticism of Beliefs. By Alfred Sidgwick. London: Longmans, 1892.

9. The Use of Words in Reasoning. By the same. London: Black, 1901.

10. The Nature of Truth: an Essay. By Harold H. Joachim. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.

And other works.

WITH the appearance of Prof. James' 'Pragmatism,' the interesting philosophical movement which, during the past ten years, has created an unparalleled disturbance in the circle of professional philosophers, may be said to make its first definite appeal to the cultivated public. It seems, therefore, not inappropriate to attempt, on the one hand, to give an estimate of its character and value, and, on the other, to set in a clear light the fundamental question which the controversy raises. For, as is usually the case among philosophers, the main point has been needlessly obscured by a multitude of side-issues; and the catchwords of the combatants are confusing rather than illuminating. For example, the formulas in common use to express the pragmatic method are by no means self-explanatory. To say that truth depends upon

consequences, that truth is practical, that all truths are useful, and that meaning depends on application and on purpose—all these statements seem paradoxical and are calculated to arrest attention, but hardly appear at first sight to concern the central problem of all thought. In point of fact, however, what they are really intended to raise is the whole problem of 'meaning.' What, that is, is the difference between a real and a sham assertionbetween an assertion that conveys a meaning and one that does not? As Mr Alfred Sidgwick says ('Mind' (N.S.), 67, p. 368), 'The straightforward question is whether the pragmatist contention about the need of a meaning, and the nature of a meaning, is sound or not.'

When it is said that truth depends on application, what is meant is that a 'truth' which cannot be applied can have no meaning. When it is said that all truths are useful, what is meant is that to apply them is to use them; and that, consequently, whatever is possessed of meaning must be capable of use. When it is said that truth is practical, what is meant is that in the process of application the final term must always be application to some concrete situation; and hence any so-called theory that avowedly makes no conceivable difference in practice stands confessed as meaningless. To say that the truth of an assertion depends upon its consequences, is, again, only another way of saying that the penalty of claiming a one-sided independence of theory from practice is the impossibility of assigning any meaning to the so-called theory. Lastly, the contention that meaning depends on purpose sharply challenges the inveterate convention that logic, in its examination of thought, is bound to abstract from the personality of the thinker.

Hence the ironical humbleness of some defences of the pragmatic principle is somewhat deceptive. When Pragmatism professes to be merely a method of testing truths and disclaims the ambitions of a metaphysic, it is fully conscious that a method which works may be far more valuable than a metaphysic which is pursued as an intellectual game; and that a philosophy which has not yet made good its claim to a meaning can hardly make good its claim to absolute truth. Another very disconcerting feature of this line of criticism is the willingness of Pragmatism to be judged by its own standards. Prag

matism tests the truth of assertions by the success of their applications; it will confess itself erroneous if any truth can be found to retain a meaning while evading this test. Contrast with this the rival doctrine which initially defines truth as coherence and finally discovers that this view of truth cannot itself be made coherent.

Before, however, we plunge into the whirlpool of philosophic controversy, the history of the subject brings up a point of nomenclature. Is 'Pragmatism' the best name for the new teaching, or will it sound more attractive if denominated 'Humanism'? It is easy to understand Dr Schiller's preference for the latter term.* 'Pragmatism' sounds technical and learned and needs much explanation; it is therefore unsuited for a philosophy which wishes to appeal to all men. As Dr Schiller formulates the distinction, Humanism is

'the philosophic attitude which, without wasting thought upon attempts to construct experience a priori, is content to take human experience as the clue to the world of human experience, content to take Man on his own merits, just as he is to start with, without insisting that he must first be disembowelled of his interests and have his individuality evaporated and translated into technical jargon, before he can be deemed deserving of scientific notice. To remember that Man is the measure of all things, i.e. of his whole experienceworld, and that if our standard measure be proved false all our measurements are vitiated; to remember that Man is the maker of the sciences which subserve his human purposes; to remember that an ultimate philosophy which analyses us away is thereby merely exhibiting its failure to achieve its purpose that, and more that might be stated to the same effect, is the real root of Humanism, whence all its auxiliary doctrines spring.' ('Humanism,' pp. xix, xx.)

Pragmatism may then be conceived as merely 'the

In adapting the word 'Humanism' to the uses of philosophy, Dr Schiller has in reality merely regularised a usage which was already vaguely current in philosophical literature. The employment of the word for philosophical purposes has also since been sanctioned by an absolutist philosopher, Prof. J. S. Mackenzie, in his 'Lectures on Humanism.' But, as Dr Schiller has pointed out ('Mind' (N.8.), No. 64, p. 605), Prof. Mackenzie deprives the term of any definite meaning by blurring its antithesis to absolutism.