Note 309 — Chapter VII · PRAGMATISM AS AMERICANISM

We may quote, I think, the following passage from Professor Perry to show that the open-mindedness of James was not merely a temperamental and an American characteristic in his case, but a quality or attitude that rested upon an intellectual conviction in respect of the function of ideas. “Since it is their office [i.e. the office of ideas] to pave the way for direct knowledge, or to be temporarily substituted for it, then efficiency is conditioned by their unobtrusiveness, by the readiness with which they subordinate themselves. The commonest case of an idea in James’s sense is the word, and the most notable example of his pragmatic or empirical method is his own scrupulous avoidance of verbalism. It follows that since ideas are in and of themselves of no cognitive value, since they are essentially instrumental, they are always on trial, and ‘liable to modification in the course of future experience.’”—Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 364 (italics mine).