. He is faced with the
necessity of a continuous reconstruction of beliefs. This influence of
Darwin has inspired the logical theories of Professor Dewey and the
'Chicago School' of Pragmatists. Thought in their writings is
essentially the instrument of this readjustment. Its function is to
effect the necessary changes in beliefs as economically and usefully as
possible. It is an evolving process which keeps pace with the evolution
of reality and the changing situations of mortal life.

3. It is not, however, entirely the reaction of science upon philosophy
which has given birth to Pragmatism. Philosophy itself has been rent by
internal convulsions. These have been emphasized in the work of Dr.
F.C.S. Schiller, who has shown that already in the days of Plato the
distinction between 'truth' and 'error' was baffling philosophy, that
Plato's _Theaetetus_ has failed to establish it, and that the famous
dictum of Protagoras, 'Man is the measure of all things,' distinctly
foreshadows the 'Pragmatic,' or, as he calls it, the 'Humanist,'
solution of the difficulty.

Elsewhere Dr. Schiller has commented on the controversies raised by
Hume's criticism of dogmatism. He has shown that Kant failed to answer
Hume because he accepted Hume's psychology, and that no _a priori_
philosophers have since been able to devise any consistent and tenable
doctrine. The idealistic theories of the 'Absolute' reveal their
futility by their want of application to the genuine problems of life,
and by the theoretic agnosticism from which they cannot escape. Hence
the need for a new Theory of Knowledge and a thorough reform of Logic.

4. At this point he joins forces with Mr. Alfred Sidgwick, who has long
been urging a radical criticism of the procedures of Formal Logic, and
shown the gulf between them and the processes of concrete thought.
Sidgwick has demonstrated that the belief in formal truth renders Logic
merely verbal, and that the actual _meaning_ of assertions completely
escapes it.

5. The most sensational approach to Pragmatism, however, is that from
the side of religion. The Pragmatic method of deciding religious
problems, which asserts the legitimacy of a 'Faith' that precedes
knowledge, has always been, more or less consciously, practised by the
religious. It is brilliantly advocated in the _Thoughts_ of Pascal, and
clearly and forcibly defended in that most remarkable essay in
unprofessional philosophy, Cardinal Newman's _Grammar of