ABSTRACT
No doubt pragmatism is, as William James insisted, a new name for some very old ways of thinking. Certainly few teachers of American literature can reserve the word specifically for the intellectual milieu of Peirce and James. The result is probably a lessening of the world’s supply of clear and distinct ideas, but it seems somehow unavoidable when there are so many temptations. But one may recognize this evidence of a sort of pragmatism deeply rooted in the American character and still hesitate in the case of Henry Adams. Several critics have already noted in passing certain pragmatic tendencies in Adams’ thought, chiefly in connection with Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres; one even points to a direct connection between him and the members of the Harvard Metaphysical Club of the early 1870s where pragmatism as a coherent system was formulated.
