Note 225 — Chapter V · CRITICAL

It would indeed be easy to quote from popular writers of the day, like Mr. Chesterton or Mr. A. C. Benson or Mr. H. G. Wells, to show that a knowledge of the existence of Pragmatism as a newer experimental or “sociological” philosophy is now a commonplace of the day. Take the following, for example, from Mr. Wells’s Marriage (p. 521): “It was to be a pragmatist essay, a sustained attempt to undermine the confidence of all that scholastic logic-chopping which still lingers like the sequelae of a disease in our University philosophy ... a huge criticism and cleaning up of the existing methods of formulation as a preliminary to the wider and freer discussion of those religious and social issues our generation still shrinks from.” “It is grotesque,” he said, “and utterly true that the sanity and happiness of all the world lies in its habits of generalization.”