WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS


Some years ago, being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned from a solitary ramble to find everyone engaged in a ferocious metaphysical
dispute.



The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel—a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree's
opposite side a human being was imagined to stand.


This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no
matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and the man, so that
never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical problem now is this:
DOES THE MAN GO ROUND THE SQUIRREL OR NOT?



He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he go round the
squirrel?


In the unlimited leisure of the wilderness, discussion had been worn threadbare. Everyone had taken sides, and was obstinate; and the
numbers on both sides were even.



Each side, when I appeared, therefore
appealed to me to make it a majority.
Mindful of the scholastic adage that
whenever you meet a contradiction you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and found one, as follows: "Which party is right," I said,
"depends on what you PRACTICALLY MEAN by 'going round' the squirrel.


If you mean passing from the north of him to the east, then to the south, then
to the west, and then to the north of him again, obviously the man does go
round him, for he occupies these successive positions.



But if on the contrary
you mean being first in front of him, then on the right of him, then behind him, then on his left, and finally in front again, it is quite as obvious that the
man fails to go round him, for by the compensating movements the squirrel
makes, he keeps his belly turned towards the man all the time, and his back
turned away.


Make the distinction, and there is no occasion for any farther dispute. You are both right and both wrong according as you conceive the
verb 'to go round' in one practical fashion or the other."


Although one or two of the hotter disputants called my speech a shuffling
evasion, saying they wanted no quibbling or scholastic hair-splitting, but meant just plain honest English 'round,' the majority seemed to think that the distinction had assuaged the dispute.

I tell this trivial anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example of what I wish now to speak of as
THE PRAGMATIC METHOD.




The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable.



Is the world one or many?—fated or free?—material or spiritual?—here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of
the world; and disputes over such notions are unending.


The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its
respective practical consequences.


What difference would it practically
make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true?

If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean
practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle.




Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must
follow from one side or the other's being right.

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