of Life.

CHAPTER VIII

THOUGHT AND LIFE

The mission of Pragmatism is to bring Philosophy into relation to real
Life and Action. So far from regarding Thought as a self-centred,
self-enclosed activity, Pragmatism insists upon replacing it in its
context among the other functions of life, and in measuring its value by
its effect upon them. So far, again, from regarding the abstract
intellect as a vast Juggernaut machine which absorbs and crushes the
individual thinker, it treats him individually as having his own
constitution, _raison d'etre,_ and intrinsic interest, and credits him
with a power to make new truths and to enrich the resources of thought.
Each thinker has before him an individual situation, a system of aims
and values, a stock of knowledge and of means from which he must select
what is relevant to his ends, and so cannot escape in any judgment from
the responsibilities of a personal decision.

Thus, for Pragmatism _every thought is an act_ with a person behind it,
who is responsible for launching it into the world of fact. The result
of this change of attitude is immediate. In the first place, as has been
shown in Chapter V., by bringing thought face to face with the whole
experience upon which it claims to work, we are enabled to find a
tangible rule for evaluating its assertions and distinguishing truth
from error. And, secondly, by recognizing that the mind is not an
apparatus which functions in a vacuum, but is a constituent of an
individual organism, we see that thinking always depends upon a purpose;
for it is the purpose of an inquiry which gives reflection its cue, and
determines its scope and (most essential of all) its meaning.

We are thus led from the narrower logical question, 'What constitutes
the "truth" of a statement?' to a wider outlook, from which we can
survey the place of knowing in human life at large. This may be called
the transition from Pragmatism to Humanism. This last word was
introduced into philosophic terminology by Dr. Schiller in order to
describe his general philosophical position as distinct from the
original question of the theory of knowledge, which had been treated by
James under the name of Pragmatism.

To the Humanist the best definition of life is one which displays it as
throughout purposive, as a rational pursuit of ends. This raises the
question of the validity of valuations. Valuation is a widespread human
practice. In their most general aspect