To Dickinson S. Miller

Lincoln, Mass., Aug. 5, 1907.

Dear Miller,—I got your letter about "Pragmatism," etc., some time ago. I hear that you are booked to review it for the "Hibbert Journal." Lay on, Macduff! as hard as you can—I want to have the weak places pointed out. I sent you a week ago a "Journal of Philosophy" with a word more about Truth in it, written at you mainly; but I hardly dare hope that I have cleared up my position. A letter from Strong, two days ago, written after receiving a proof of that paper, still thinks that I deny the existence of realities outside of the thinker; and [R. B.] Perry, who seems to me to have written far and away the most important critical remarks on Pragmatism (possibly the only important ones), accused Pragmatists (though he doesn't name me) of ignoring or denying that the real object plays any part in deciding what ideas are true. I confess that such misunderstandings seem to me hardly credible, and cast a "lurid light" on the mutual understandings of philosophers generally. Apparently it all comes from the word Pragmatism—and a most unlucky word it may prove to have been. I am a natural realist. The world per se may be likened to a cast of beans on a table. By themselves they spell nothing. An onlooker may group them as he likes. He may simply count them all and map them. He may select groups and name these capriciously, or name them to suit certain extrinsic purposes of his. Whatever he does, so long as he takes account of them, his account is neither false nor irrelevant. If neither, why not call it true? It fits the beans-minus-him, and expresses the total fact, of beans-plus-him. Truth in this total sense is partially ambiguous, then. If he simply counts or maps, he obeys a subjective interest as much as if he traces figures. Let that stand for pure "intellectual" treatment of the beans, while grouping them variously stands for non-intellectual interests. All that Schiller and I contend for is that there is no "truth" without some interest, and that non-intellectual interests play a part as well as intellectual ones. Whereupon we are accused of denying the beans, or denying being in anyway constrained by them! It's too silly!...