umed below, pp. 137 ff. ED.]

[24] [_Principles of Psychology_, vol. I, pp. 299-305. Cf. below, pp.
169-171 (note).]

II

A WORLD OF PURE EXPERIENCE[25]

It is difficult not to notice a curious unrest in the philosophic
atmosphere of the time, a loosening of old landmarks, a softening of
oppositions, a mutual borrowing from one another on the part of systems
anciently closed, and an interest in new suggestions, however vague, as
if the one thing sure were the inadequacy of the extant
school-solutions. The dissatisfaction with these seems due for the most
part to a feeling that they are too abstract and academic. Life is
confused and superabundant, and what the younger generation appears to
crave is more of the temperament of life in its philosophy, even though
it were at some cost of logical rigor and of formal purity.
Transcendental idealism is inclining to let the world wag
incomprehensibly, in spite of its Absolute Subject and his unity of
purpose. Berkeleyan idealism is abandoning the principle of parsimony
and dabbling in panpsychic speculations. Empiricism flirts with
teleology; and, strangest of all, natural realism, so long decently
buried, raises its head above the turf, and finds glad hands
outstretched from the most unlikely quarters to help it to its feet
again. We are all biased by our personal feelings, I know, and I am
personally discontented with extant solutions; so I seem to read the
signs of a great unsettlement, as if the upheaval of more real
conceptions and more fruitful methods were imminent, as if a true
landscape might result, less clipped, straight-edged and artificial.

If philosophy be really on the eve of any considerable rearrangement,
the time should be propitious for any one who has suggestions of his own
to bring forward. For many years past my mind has been growing into a
certain type of _Weltanschauung_. Rightly or wrongly, I have got to the
point where I can hardly see things in any other pattern. I propose,
therefore, to describe the pattern as clearly as I can consistently with
great brevity, and to throw my description into the bubbling vat of
publicity where, jostled by rivals and torn by critics, it will
eventually either disappear from notice, or else, if better luck befall
it, quietly subside to the profundities, and serve as a possible ferment
of new growths or a nucleus of new crystallization.

I. RADICAL EMPIRICISM

I give the name of 'radical empiricism'