and it requires so much time
and energy to lay hold of them. And yet these same critics charge
pragmatism with adopting subjective and emotional standards!

As a matter of fact, the pragmatic theory of intelligence means that the
function of mind is to project new and more complex ends--to free
experience from routine and from caprice. Not the use of thought to
accomplish purposes already given either in the mechanism of the body or
in that of the existent state of society, but the use of intelligence to
liberate and liberalize action, is the pragmatic lesson. Action
restricted to given and fixed ends may attain great technical
efficiency; but efficiency is the only quality to which it can lay
claim. Such action is mechanical (or becomes so), no matter what the
scope of the preformed end, be it the Will of God or _Kultur_. But the
doctrine that intelligence develops within the sphere of action for the
sake of possibilities not yet given is the opposite of a doctrine of
mechanical efficiency. Intelligence _as_ intelligence is inherently
forward-looking; only by ignoring its primary function does it become a
mere means for an end already given. The latter _is_ servile, even when
the end is labeled moral, religious, or esthetic. But action directed to
ends to which the agent has not previously been attached inevitably
carries with it a quickened and enlarged spirit. A pragmatic
intelligence is a creative intelligence, not a routine mechanic.

All this may read like a defense of pragmatism by one concerned to make
out for it the best case possible. Such is not, however, the intention.
The purpose is to indicate the extent to which intelligence frees action
from a mechanically instrumental character. Intelligence is, indeed,
instrumental _through_ action to the determination of the qualities of
future experience. But the very fact that the concern of intelligence is
with the future, with the as-yet-unrealized (and with the given and the
established only as conditions of the realization of possibilities),
makes the action in which it takes effect generous and liberal; free of
spirit. Just that action which extends and approves intelligence has an
intrinsic value of its own in being instrumental:--the intrinsic value
of being informed with intelligence in behalf of the enrichment of life.
By the same stroke, intelligence becomes truly liberal: knowing is a
human undertaking, not an esthetic appreciation carried on by a refined