Thus far Green and his influence in the English schools of 1878. But in that same year, in an American journal, there appeared an article by Charles Sanders Pierce, concerning ‘our ideas and “how to make them clear,”’ and entitled ‘The Principle of Pragmatism.’
The article did not attract very great attention on this side of the water. English scholars are apt to be a little shy of the swift and arresting methods of the American; and perhaps if pragmatism had remained the original contribution of Charles Sanders Pierce, it might have sunk into oblivion. But, as everybody knows, it found its ‘vates sacer’ in after years in the late Professor James of Harvard, who ushered it sixteen years ago, with some pomp and circumstance, into the world of English philosophy. Meanwhile, some apt maker of epigram, considering the works of Professor James and his brilliant brother, summed them up as ‘the philosopher who writes novels, and the novelist who writes psychology.’
To do him justice, James said at the outset that pragmatism was no new thing. He took Aristotle indeed to his ancestor, and claimed relationship with the English idealists and even with Hume. He then, by virtue of his vivid and stimulating style, achieved for his subject a certain popularity, and a small following began to arise. When, however, people had learnt to speak of the British pragmatists, they discovered that the other people who spoke of the American pragmatists did not always seem to find their systems identical. And time has emphasised this difference. The pragmatism imported from America by Professor James has remained what it always professed to be—a method,—and, withal, a gentle and peaceable method,—not only of airing its own ideas, but of persuading everybody else that just as M. Jourdain had spoken prose all his life without knowing it, so they, too, had been pragmatists all their lives. The method is, perhaps, at times a little superior, and at times a little irreverent; nor can it clearly claim to have produced a ‘philosophy’ as such. It is, in truth, as its votaries have claimed, a spirit and an attitude towards philosophical problems and towards life. As such it would seem to be a characteristic product of the Anglo-Saxon genius which is essentially practical and values things for their use. ‘In pragmatic principles,’ says James, ‘we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it.’ And elsewhere, ‘Beliefs are rules for actions.’ And again, ‘An idea is true so long as it is profitable to our lives to believe it.’ In all these cases the act, the consequence, the deed are placed, so to speak, in the predicative position. The whole force of the sentence is concentrated upon the consequence, the deed. ‘The proof of the pudding,’ says our homely proverb, ‘is in the eating.’ And we have been reminded that ‘Honesty is the best policy’ from our copy-book days. Here, however, there is a difference between the established ethic—whether idealistic or religious—and the pragmatic view. Honesty, it seems, would win the ‘pragmatic sanction’ because of its results:—it ‘works’ satisfactorily. Therefore it is ‘true.’ There is a shifting of attention from the intrinsic beauty of honesty as a virtue to its consequences; from its moral value to its face value; from the ideal to the actual and empirical. The impartial observer may come to the conclusion that after all the inquiry comes to the same thing. Honesty has been twice blessed: by the pragmatic sanction of its results, and by the moral sanction for those who identify the virtue with the moral imperative of religion. Nevertheless, this attitude of pragmatism is an exceedingly interesting one, and its application to human life and activities is undeniable. It is, in essence, the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, carried into the field of philosophy. The test of an idea, of an ideal, of a ‘movement’ is its working. If it worked well, it was fitted to survive; it was, at any rate, ‘true’ for the epoch wherein it did survive or flourish. On the other hand, a thing cannot be judged until it is tried. It must be known by its results. There must be evolution, shifting, experiment. ‘The universe is always pursuing its adventures’; and truth is always ‘in the making,’—especially where the ‘thinking beings’ are getting to work. Which brings us to the application aforesaid. For assuredly among all the many ‘movements’ which have stirred the surface of the body politic during the last forty years, the so-called ‘woman’s movement’ may in its deeper aspects lay claim to the ‘pragmatic sanction.’ In it undoubtedly many thinking and adventurous persons have been at work. And there are passages in James’ book speaking of ‘our acts as the actual turning places in the great workshop of being where we catch truth in the making,’ to which the hearts of many of our modern women doctors and nurses will respond. On the other hand, the attitude of the many who at every stage have sought to oppose a professional career for women has never been more aptly summed up than in the words of the pragmatist: ‘They are simply afraid: afraid of more experience, afraid of life.’
A few years ago the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission published a weighty record of the usefulness of women in municipal work, suggesting further outlets for their energies; but the writers certainly did not foresee the astonishing influx of female labour into the many departments of public service consequent upon the exigencies of the present time. On the face of it we must own that some of these occupations seem little suited to the worker’s capacity. One can imagine the chorus of disapproval that would have risen from the ranks of the acutely feminine if such innovations as women postmen, ’bus conductors, and window-cleaners had offered themselves a few years ago. Even now it is probably only the most seasoned philosophers who regard them with perfect equanimity; the rest comfort themselves with the reflection that they are the unnatural products of an abnormal time: a sort of epiphenomena thrown up from an underworld of chaos and destined to disappear again in the natural course of things. There is little doubt that this will be so in the end. Post delivery and window cleaning will scarcely become common occupations for girls any more than it will be usual for them to go into the trenches in the firing line, as some gallant Russian women have been doing in order to succour the starving Poles. All these things are exceptional, and exceptional things are generally the outcome of a strong emotion. As Professor Jebb has observed, ‘The feeling that covers a thousand square miles must, we instantly perceive, be a strong feeling.’ We have had many opportunities for such observation during the present war, but nowhere more emphatically than among women. In adapting themselves to the requirements of social service they have taken to heart that excellent advice of Mr. Wells: they have ‘flung themselves into their job, and have done it with passion.’ But now after eliminating the exceptional, after allowing moreover for a natural ebb in the warm flowing tide of patriotic emotion, there undoubtedly remains a record of efficiency which is destined to have far-reaching results. The women whose former status in the industrial world was so precarious and unsatisfactory have now been swept into that world in increasing thousands because the industries of the country could not be maintained without them. The Government appeal of 1915 offered a curious comment upon the popular axiom that the woman’s ‘sphere is the home.’ In the face of the wholesale slaughter of the bread-winners, and the consequent invitation to all unoccupied women to rise to the country’s need, this unimpeachable motto has a pathetic look like that of a picture turned face to the wall. Pathetic because it was always true, even obviously true; but the relativity of truth makes so many isolated truths look out of focus. Anyhow, the fact remains that, in this universe which just now is ‘pursuing its adventures’ at a remarkably accelerated pace, women have been called out of their homes into very unexpected places; and it is with the result that we are just now especially concerned. Evidence at first hand is not far to seek. It comes from all quarters, from the magnificently organised hospitals of the Scottish women in Serbia, from the railway companies, from the Women’s Service Aircraft Department, from the engineers’ shops in some of the industrial centres, and from the munition factories themselves. As to the hospitals, it is doubtful whether the public entirely realise the extent of the work that has been done.
At the Knightsbridge Exhibition in November 1915, one of the most interesting exhibits was that representing the Anglo-Russian hospital which, with its eight surgeons and thirty nurses, and complete unit of bedding and outfit, was sent as a gift to Petrograd; and several delightful articles have been written about the beautiful old Cistercian Abbey in Northern France which was turned into a hospital and staffed entirely by women for the necessities of the war. Of these institutions there has been an ever-increasing number both at home and abroad; one of the Suffrage societies has to its credit the financing and equipment of eight hospital units in France and Serbia. But all this is still the acknowledged sphere of women. As nurses and even doctors they are accepted as a matter of course by a generation which has scarcely heard of the criticisms once thrown at Florence Nightingale. It is in the other departments of social service that they are challenging the public estimates of their capacity, and here the facts must speak for themselves. Some of the factories have published statistics regarding their output of work; and the following comparisons were made in one of the engineers’ shops of the Midland Railway Company.
Average percentage earned by men on Group No. 17 by the week, 42·5.
Average percentage earned by women on Group No. 17 by the week, 49·6.
The two hundred women thus employed had only lately displaced the male workers, and Sir Guy Granet, manager of the Midland Railway, remarked that ‘the efficiency of women in certain directions had been a revelation to him.’ Something must be added for the absence of any organised ‘restrictions of outputs,’ but in fact there has been a reiterated note of surprise in most of the testimonials to the women workers’ capacity, as though we were being faced with a new phenomenon, uncaused and spontaneous, instead of the outcome of underlying forces in the vanished world before the war.
‘I am not sure,’ wrote Mr. A. G. Gardiner in the Daily News, ‘that the future will not find in the arrival of women the biggest social and economic result of the war.... Woman has won her place in the ranks beyond challenge.’
In Manchester, last June, one of the great attractions was the ploughing demonstration made by women ‘on the land.’ Lancashire criticism was sparing of words, but here again it was appreciative. ‘Ay, they frame well,’ said the men. The same results are recorded from clerks’ offices, from the tramcars, from motor driving, and, perhaps most unexpectedly, from the factories where women are in charge of delicate and intricate machinery. In all these branches of manual and intellectual labour, the women workers have risen to their opportunities and have made good. The comment by Punch gave to the general view its own characteristic expression.