Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/465

 PRAGMATISM. J.'il to their wholes. Then, again, the very logic of science, as has been suggested above, shows us that all scientific laws and hypotheses are teleological in the sense that they have to do with purposes, (a) because they are hypotheses and because "every 1 hypothesis is a means to an end, a theoretical organon that may or may not work," and 03) because all hypotheses rest upon the supreme hypothesis that Nature will conform to the conditions of our intelligence. All of these considerations are becoming increasingly evident to men of science who are at all aware of the presuppositions and functions of science, and who know enough about the history of science to see that the idea of substance, the idea of different substances in different individual things and the idea of a substance is general for the whole universe, flies before us as we contemplate it or as we investigate its alleged reality, and is actually disappearing into the idea of causality or the conception (or fact) of measurable energy or modifiable life-process. In particular they are all perfectly well known to Prof. James and receive from him the most explicit kind of recognition in his writings. 2 Why is it however that he cannot, as it were, generalise these results of observation and reflexion into a philosophy of the real on the strength of which as a basis he might maintain, re Pragmatism, that it is the most natural thing in the world to consider the consequences of theories as part of their very nature, part of their very data, seeing that the only possible aim of all theories is to explain the activity and the evolution that is in process all around us that is in fact the essential nature of all reality '? Doubtless, he might urge, for the reason that it is all well enough to say what reality is for purposes of science or psychology or logic, but that it is quite another thing to say what reality is in itself, i.e., we must be able to prove on independent principles that reality is that which sustains a more or less verifiable and determinable relation to our activity, ere we can reach the highest possible use of the Method of Pragmatism with its ideas of the selection of fruitful hypotheses. But this is exactly what German Metaphysic 3 (let Prof. James but think of its "conse- 1 Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii., 253 (italics mine). 2 I am thinking especially of his Principles of Psychology. to fall upon these pages, would in all probability (i.e., judging from his claim that " English " philosophy has rendered German Jphilosoph.v superfluous) withdraw his attention at this very stage. My only claim upon him would be to think of the Kantian Idealism in the light of its
 * I am perfectly aware that Prof. James, if his eye should ever happen