-to ends not their own. But the same implication resides in that more democratic conception of society which makes virtue for the individual to consist in being "a useful member" devoted to the common good. It may happen that in his social function, however humble, the individual finds food for his imagination and an enjoyment of life. But this consideration is irrelevant, and even confusing, to the idea of "a useful member". The ideally useful member is literally the machine; which alone exhibits a single-minded devotion to what it is designed to do.

The conception of utility is illustrated "in thine own person" so far as one part of life is treated as a means for another part as end. This is what we mean when we refer to the utilitarian motive most of the activities involved in making a living. What is implied is that no one makes shoes from any interest in shoes, but only for the money to be received for them. And perhaps the best picture of the utilitarian life is that of the business man who, as conventionally conceived, spends weary years in business in the hope of retiring on a fortune, or of the wage-earner who patiently accumulates savings in the hope of living to enjoy them. Such are the typically "useful" lives, and the question I raise is whether they are the ideally moral lives. And the question may be extended to cover all of those conceptions in which life is viewed under the form of a "vocation" or a "career" subject to the issue of "failure" or "success"—even though success be defined in no sordid terms. Life may be good or bad, but I wonder in what sense, except as a means to alien ends, it may be said to involve the issue of success.

This is not of course a proposal to banish utility from

life. The utilitarian organization of life into a system of means and ends is a necessity of getting things done; and there can be no doubt that things must be done. But this is not to say that the system of ends and means is an ideal conception of life.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRAGMATIC ATTITUDE

§ 27. The forward-looking attitude.

§ 28. Anticipation vs.

retrospection. § 29. Imagination and the specious present. § 30. Reflective intelligence and the flux of life.

A

S a significant and interesting expression of the utilitarian motive (or at least as a means of further

defining that motive) I shall consider now the pragmatic attitude as represented by Professor John Dewey, an attitude also defined as "experimental" or "empirical". The attitude is significant as expressing the spirit of the age embodied in the conception of "modern progress". And it is interesting as a basis of criticism because Professor Dewey is a thorough-going critic of orthodox morality, who conceives morality to be coextensive with the meaning of "life", and conceives life as a process of reflective intelligence.

What remains, then, to give a utilitarian cast to the pragmatic attitude? I will put it as follows. For Professor Dewey it seems that the essence of immorality lies in the adoption of "fixed ends"; in taking any part of life to be of absolute and supreme importance, to which the rest of life is subordinate; or, as I should put it, in conceiving life as a matter of means and ends. He who adopts the orthodox program of fixed principles and unchanging moral laws has forsworn moral choice and made of himself a mechanism for the illustration of "moral law". But he will be no less of a mechanism, no less of a non-moral

being, if he has committed himself absolutely to the attainment of any specific end. The moral attitude will be at every moment an attitude of open-mindedness. "We are in a non-moral condition whenever we want anything intensely", i. e., absolutely, so as to limit the possibilities of choice.

So far I follow him; and I should take this to mean that a man's life is imperfectly moral so far as he sacrifices any part of himself, past or present. But now it seems, as I understand Professor Dewey (and I will not claim to understand him finally), that for him morality does consist precisely in the constant sacrifice of the past-to the future or to the present. This is the essence of the pragmatic attitude. And what it means is that the morality of openmindedness is committed to a progressive as against a conservative attitude. For Professor Dewey it seems that progressive and conservative are the equivalents of moral and immoral. In this progressive attitude I seem to see life defined and limited by the utilitarian-more concretely, by the modern business man's point of view.

§ 27

According to Professor Dewey, "anticipation is more primary than recollection; projection than summoning of the past; the prospective than the retrospective." This passage, from the essay in "Creative Intelligence" 1 states the essence, the quintessence, of the pragmatic attitude. The pragmatic attitude is the forward-looking as against the backward-looking attitude. What it means is, Waste no

time over unfulfilled hopes.

Let the dead bury the dead,

1 Creative Intelligence. Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude. (By Dewey and others), 1917. I am repeating here some of the things said in my review of this book in The Nation (New York) for July 26, 1917.

What you wanted in the The past is dead and gone,

and don't cry over spilled milk. past is of no consequence now. hence non-existent and unreal; the real lies all ahead-in the future, Professor Dewey seemed to me formerly to say, in the present as he seems more definitely to say now; in any case in a present which for its aims looks forward only.

This forward-looking attitude is also for Professor Dewey the reflective attitude. One who looks forward intelligently must of course also look back; and thus it happens that in point of fact "reflection" constitutes the central topic of most of Professor Dewey's writings. By him, however, the function of reflection appears to be strictly limited. "Imaginative recovery of the bygone is indispensable to successful invasion of the future, but its status is that of an instrument." 2 This states the "instrumental" theory of reflection, of intelligence or of thought. According to this view, thought is a means for action as an end. The instrumental view is thus the opposite of any view (such as what I call the critical view) which looks for the realization of life in reflection itself and finds in unthinking action rather the vehicle, or means. The instrumental theory of intelligence is likewise a biological theory. It means, if I may state it crudely, that God has endowed us with reflective intelligence for the purpose of preserving our lives and of getting on in the world. For this practical purpose it is obviously necessary that we look back and recall which of the methods used in the past have been successful in attaining their ends. To do this is the function of thought just as reproduction is the function of sex; and therefore any preoccupation of thought in other directions-indulgence in retrospective enjoyment, sympathetic contemplation of dead hopes, revival of forgotten ambitions, any care 2 Creative Intelligence, p. 14.