Note 15 — INTRODUCTION

The letter to Mrs. Ladd-Franklin quoted before, explains why James, though always loyal to Peirce and anxious to give him credit whenever possible, could not understand the latter’s lectures on pragmatism. Peirce’s incidental judgments on others is worth quoting here:

“Modern psychologists are so soaked with sensationalism that they cannot understand anything that does not mean that. How can I, to whom nothing seems so thoroughly real as generals, and who regards Truth and Justice as literally the most powerful powers in the world, expect to be understood by the thoroughgoing Wundtian? But the curious thing is to see absolute idealists tainted with this disease,—or men who, like John Dewey, hover between Absolute Idealism and Sensationalism. Royce’s opinions as developed in his World and Individualism are extremely near to mine. His insistence on the elements of purpose in intellectual concepts is essentially the pragmatic position.”