[Reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. II, No. 5, March 2, 1905. Also reprinted, with slight changes in The Meaning of Truth, pp. 121–135. The author’s corrections have been adopted for the present text. ED.]

HUMANISM is a ferment that has ‘come to stay.’83 It is not a single hypothesis of theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight. Some writers are strongly conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though their own vision may have undergone much change. The result is no small confusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part against the radical ones, as if they wished to count upon the other side.84

83 [Written apropos of the appearance of three articles in Mind, N.S., vol. XIV, No. 53, January, 1905: “‘Absolute’ and ‘Relative’ Truth,” H.H.Joachim; “Professor James on ‘Humanism and Truth,’” H.W.B.Joseph; “Applied Axioms,” A. Sidgwick. Of these articles the second and third “continue the humanistic (or pragmatistic) controversy,” the first “deeply connects with it.” ED.]

84 Professor Baldwin, for example. His address ‘On Selective Thinking’ (Psychological Review, [vol. V], 1898, reprinted in his volume, Development and Evolution) seems to me an unusually well-written pragmatic manifesto. Nevertheless in ‘The Limits of Pragmatism’ (ibid., [vol. XI], 1904), he (much less clearly) joins in the attack.

If humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspective, it is obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change in some degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of things, their foreground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not keep just the same.85 If such pervasive consequences be involved in humanism, it is clear that no pains which philosophers may take, first in defining it, and then in furthering, checking, or steering its progress, will be thrown away.

85 The ethical changes, it seems to me, are beautifully made evident in Professor Dewey’s series of articles, which will never get the attention they deserve till they are printed in a book. I mean: ‘The Significance of Emotions,’ Psychological Review, vol. II, [1895], p. 13; ‘The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,’ ibid., vol. III [1896], p. 357; ‘Psychology and Social Practice,’ ibid., vol. VII, [1900], p. 105; ‘Interpretation of Savage Mind,’ ibid., vol. IX, [1902], p.217; ‘Green’s Theory of the Moral Motive,’ Philosophical Review, vol. I, [1892], p. 593; ‘Self-realization as the Moral Ideal,’ ibid., vol. II, [1893], p. 652; ‘The Psychology of Effort,’ ibid., vol. VI, [1897], p.43; ‘The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality,’ ibid., vol XI, [1902], pp. 107, 353; ‘Evolution and Ethics,’ Monist, vol. VIII, [1898], p.321; to mention only a few.

It suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most systematic advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragmentary programs only; and its bearing on many vital philosophic problems has not been traced except by adversaries who, scenting heresies in advance, have showered blows on doctrines — subjectivism and scepticism, for example — that no good humanist finds it necessary to entertain. By their still greater reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn, perplexed the humanists. Much of the controversy has involved the word ‘truth.’ It is always good in debate to know your adversary’s point of view authentically. But the critics of humanism never define exactly what the word ‘truth’ signifies when they use it themselves. The humanists have to guess at their view; and the result has doubtless been much at beating of the air. Add to all this, great individual differences in both camps, and it becomes clear that nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage which things have reached at present, as a sharper definition by each side of its central point of view.

Whoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to make sure of what’s what and who is who. Anyone can contribute such a definition, and, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own provisional definition of humanism86 now and here, others may improve it, some adversary may be led to define his own creed more sharply by the contrast, and a certain quickening of the crystallization of general opinion may result.

86 [The author employs the term ‘humanism’ either as a synonym for ‘radical empiricism’ (cf. e.g, above, p. 156); or as that general philosophy of life of which ‘radical empiricism’ is the theoretical ground (cf. below, p. 194). For other discussions of ‘humanism,’ cf. below, essay XI, and The Meaning of)Truth, essay III. ED.]
I

The essential service of humanism, as I conceive the situation, is to have seen that though one part of our experience may lean upon another part to make it what it is in any one of several aspects in which it may be considered, experience as a whole is self-containing and leans on nothing.

Since this formula also expresses the main contention of transcendental idealism, it needs abundant explication to make it unambiguous. It seems, at first sight, to confine itself to denying theism and pantheism. But, in fact, it need not deny either; everything would depend on the exegesis; and if the formula ever became canonical, it would certainly develop both right-wing and left-wing interpreters. I myself read humanism theistically and pluralistically. If there be a God, he is no absolute all-experiencer, but simply the experiencer of widest actual conscious span. Read thus, humanism is for me a religion susceptible of reasoned defence, though I am well aware how many minds there are to whom it can appeal religiously only when it has been monistically translated. Ethically the pluralistic form of it takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of — it being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of ‘co’, in which conjunctions do the work. But my primary reason for advocating it is its matchless intellectual economy. It gets rid, not only of the standing ‘problems’ that monism engenders (‘problem of evil,’ ‘problem of freedom,’ and the like), but of other metaphysical mysteries and paradoxes as well.

It gets rid, for example, of the whole agnostic controversy, by refusing to entertain the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality at all. It gets rid of any need for an absolute of the Bradleyan type (avowedly sterile for intellectual purposes) by insisting that the conjunctive relations found within experience are faultlessly real. It gets rid of the need of an absolute of the Roycean type (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic treatment of the problem of knowledge [a treatment of which I have already given a version in two very inadequate articles].87 As the views of knowledge, reality and truth imputed to humanism have been those so far most fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that a sharpening of focus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore to bring the view which I impute to humanism in these respects into focus as briefly as I can.

87 [Omitted from reprint in Meaning of Truth. The articles referred to are ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’ and ‘A World of Pure Experience,’ reprinted above.]
II

If the central humanistic thesis, printed above in italics, be accepted, it will follow that, if there be any such thing at all as knowing, the knower and the object known must both be portions of experience. One part of experience must, therefore, either

(1) Know another part of experience — in other words, parts must, as Professor Woodbridge says,88 represent one another instead of representing realities outside of ‘consciousness’ — this case is that of conceptual knowledge; or else

(2) They must simply exist as so many ultimate thats or facts of being, in the first instance; an then, as a secondary complication, and without doubling up its entitative singleness, any one and the same that must figure alternately as a thing known and as a knowledge of the thing, by reason of two divergent kinds of context into which, in the general course of experience, it gets woven.89

88 In Science, November 4, 1904, p. 599.

89 This statement is probably excessively obscure to any who h............