It regards it as its task to analyze
experience, while maintaining that only the satisfactory carrying out
of such an analysis can reveal what experience really is, and clear our
notions of it from misinterpretations.

No such attempt to give an account of experience can be regarded as
fundamentally new in its method. Every philosopher, in his own way,
criticises experience, and seeks its interpretation. But one may,
warned by the example of one's predecessors, lay emphasis upon the
danger of half-analyses and hasty assumptions, and counsel the
observance of sobriety and caution.

For convenience, I have called the doctrine _Critical Empiricism_. I
warn the reader against the seductive title, and advise him not to
allow it to influence him unduly in his judgment of the doctrine.

64. PRAGMATISM.--It seems right that I should, before closing this
chapter, say a few words about Pragmatism, which has been so much
discussed in the last few years.

In 1878 Mr. Charles S. Peirce wrote an article for the _Popular Science
Monthly_ in which he proposed as a maxim for the attainment of
clearness of apprehension the following: "Consider what effects, which
might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of
our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the
whole of our conception of the object."

This thought has been taken up by others and given a development which
Mr. Peirce regards with some suspicion. He refers[4] especially to the
development it has received at the hands of Professor William James, in
his two essays, "The Will to Believe" and "Philosophical Conceptions
and Practical Results." [5] Professor James is often regarded as
foremost among the pragmatists.

I shall not attempt to define pragmatism, for I do not believe that the
doctrine has yet attained to that definiteness of formulation which
warrants a definition. We seem to have to do not so much with a
clear-cut doctrine, the limits and consequences of which have been
worked out in detail, as with a tendency which makes itself apparent in
the works of various writers under somewhat different forms.

I may roughly describe it as the tendency to take that to be _true_
which is _useful_ or _serviceable_. It is well illustrated in the two
essays to which reference is made above.

Thus, Professor James dwells upon the unsatisfactoriness and
uncertainty of philosophical and scientific knowledge: "Objective
evidence