Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/590

584 have be treated the Christian religion, thereby creating schisms, sectarianism, and that intolerant party spirit "which blights and cankers the truth itself." Whatever Christianity may be now, primarily it was a method of living, a principle of life—not a creed or dogma.

For us, in this day and time, to repeat this blunder would simply be indefensible and unpardonable. However desirable unity may be, it should never be purchased at the expense of truth and freedom. Dr. Schiller says:

Consequently, the pragmatic method will not prevent the formation of different systems of philosophy, which may be expected to "abound as before, and be as various as ever." They will still "have their day and cease to be," in the future as in the past, being necessarily only "broken lights," but pragmatism will not fall with them, for the reason that it will be "more than they" and, therefore, not identified with any of them.

That pragmatism should have encountered bitter opposition was what might have been expected. Has it not been so with every great movement in human thought from the time of Protagoras, with his famous dictum, "man is the measure of all things," down to the present time? It seems inevitable that all must run the gauntlet of criticism. Perhaps, this helps to determine "the survival of the fittest." Professor James E. Angell has recently said:

This would seem to be true, since even Mr. Bradley has said of Professor James's last book:

However, the distinguished author of "Appearance and Reality" may have made this statement in a Pickwickian sense. If it be true, as has been somewhat sneeringly said, that pragmatism has made comparatively few converts among the professional philosophers, but has made its strongest appeal to the men in the street, it may be fittingly replied that this has been likewise true of the greatest movements in the world's history. That the common people have heard its teachers gladly may prove to be, not its reproach, but its honor and its glory. Again and again it has happened that "not many wise men after the