Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/586

580 uncertainties of language and the limitations of human thought and understanding will not serve to explain it. It could not really have been asked or expected that the entire essence of the principle should have been compressed into one concise definition or even into one formal or rigid statement. As its protagonist himself has said in an article entitled "Humanism and Truth Once More," published in Mind for April, 1905:

In the same article he says:

It would seem that this was expecting entirely too much. He had also said in The Journal of Philosophy for March 2, 1905:

I am inclined to think that its very simplicity has been the chief barrier in the way of its acceptance. "Unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness." Has it not ever been so in both the philosophical and religious worlds? Would it not find more ready acceptance if it required "some great things "? Perhaps, one barrier in the way of those who have "seriously tried to comprehend what the pragmatic movement may intelligibly mean" is mental myopia, which prevents them from assuming the proper attitude in order to gain the right point of view. They are too wedded to their idols of dogma and authority to experience that change of heart which would enable them to break the shackles which bind them to "absolutists hopes" and acquire the freedom which would permit them to enter into such "conditions of belief." Dr. Schiller has said:

Whether this be true or not, many have failed to understand it simply for the reason that they have not really tried to do so. They "have boggled at every word they could boggle at, and refused to