PRAGMATISM. 441 be regarded as competitive action-tendencies whose validity and truth may be demonstrated by their power to survive in the life of the race. " The fittest conceptions survive, and with them the names of their champions," says James. 1 If all this be true, as it undoubtedly is, it is certainly natural to conclude that an important clue to the meaning of a thought may be found -the influence it wields over the life of man, in its relative efficiency or inefficiency. " It is far too little recognised how entirely the intellect is made up of practical interests." Mr. Peirce (to Prof. James the champion of Pragmatism) even maintains that the "sole motive and function of thought " is to " produce action and volition " through the intermediary help of "belief" belief being, in his eyes, only a " stadium " of mental action, and not the goal of thought. This is apt to strike the student of philo- sophy as going somewhat too far, although a moment's reflexion upon the history of civilisation will perhaps con- vince us that the persistence (merely as an instinct) of the metaphysical impulse is intelligible only on the ground of its organic connexion with the highest interests of the human race as a whole. I have uo intention of confounding the metaphysic of knowledge with the psychology of thinking, 2 but it is simply a most pertinent question whether the reality of that section of metaphysic 3 called teleology has not in our day been vitally strengthened by the discovery of the fact that all thinking is necessarily teleological the search for the intermediary steps in a process, the discovery of means to an end or of the relations between certain events and certain other events, the discovery of the relation of " external " events (or of external nature itself) to the world of our activity, etc. The Pure Keason of the early Kantian writers in Germany and in England has been reduced to being simply ' The Will to Believe, p. 93. J /.f . , the question of the necessary categories of knowledge as know- ledge with the fact pointed out, e.g., by Dr. Stout in the words " simple attentiveness tends to pass into conation," or by Sigwart (Loyii; vol. ii., pp. 54^-549), "the ultimate basis of all the mental activities, for the right conduct of which we seek a clue in methodology, is a will which seta below itself definite ends ; and to this is due the motive force which impels us to investigation, while the most general principles of the investi- gation are derived from the ends pursued by it ". I have such faith in the reality of metaphysic that I believe its positions to be good irre- spective of the psychology of the discovery of truth by the individual. ( )n the other hand the wise metaphysician will never care to philosophise in ignorance of certain accredited facts, say those of biology and psycho- logy about the utility and tendencies of knowledge. 3 See my Hchopenhrmfrx Xii*t<'n> /// It* Phuotophical chaps, iii., iv. and ix.
