ABSTRACT
'The history of philosophy', as William James observes, 'is to great extent that of certain clash of human temperaments.' Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude. That means the empiricist temper regnant and the rationalist temper sincerely given up. It means the open air and possibilities of nature, as against dogma, artificiality and the pretence of finality in truth. The arguments of pragmatists are almost wholly directed to proving that utility is a criterion; that utility is the meaning of truth is then supposed to follow. But, to return to our illustration of the library, suppose we had conceded that there are no mistakes in the British Museum catalogue. Thus pragmatism would seem to derive its notion of what constitutes belief from cases in which, properly speaking, belief is absent, and in which - what is pragmatically important - there is but slender interest in truth or falsehood as compared to the interest in what 'works'.
