efficient, it grows more indirect in the performance of its function, this increasing indirectness being intimately correlated with an increase in the organization and mutual dependence of concepts. For in order that our conduct may be successful in meeting the demands of a complex and changing life, it is necessary that the ideas which prompt it should be consistent and systematic. Accordingly there has arisen a characteristic and peculiar interest in the organization and consistency of our concepts for its own sake. Mental behavior comes to be a relatively independent sort of conduct determined by its own specific end, intellectual satisfaction. We must not, of course, fail to recognize that mental behavior can never become more than relatively independent of overt conduct. Its roots are in practical and social life, and the very condition of its health lies in an ever renewed contact with, and adaptation to, the changing phases of such life. Nevertheless it remains equally important for the understanding of the evolution of conceptual thought, to take account of its growing distinctiveness of character. It is naturally to be expected that along with this transformation in the end of thought should go certain modifications of its structure; and these we find.

First, we have to note the existence of a whole class of concepts which have arisen in direct response to the needs of mental behavior, and whose function and meaning are determined with reference to the end of this behavior. Such are the whole body of the abstract concepts of the sciences. While the development of the different special sciences has had a profound effect on practical life, yet the particular advances have been generally made without reference to practical considerations. Nor can the meaning of any single concept taken by itself be interpreted in terms of overt conduct. Many of our scientific concepts have doubtless arisen through the modification of previously existing practical concepts by a sort of analogy-as in the case of mathematical 'continuity' and logical ‘inclusion'. In scientific concepts content and import approach each other very closely, since the conduct to which they refer is itself the discovery of logical

relationships. Yet the distinction does not fade away entirely. In such a concept as evolution, for example, it comes out very clearly. On the side of content, evolution means a process of change distinguished by certain definite characteristics; on the side of import, it means no less than a whole new principle of classification, almost one might claim, of scientific procedure. Moreover, what we found to be true of the formation of the simpler general concepts seems to hold equally of these more complex and abstract ones—namely, that the association of the ideas composing a concept rests primarily upon the common functional significance of the objects denoted by the concept in question. This may perhaps be illustrated by the transformation wrought in the traditional biological classifications by the concept of evolution. The most advantageous principle for the classification of organic groups has come to be descent from a common parent stock. That is to say, common descent is the characteristic which calls for similar intellectual treatment of the organisms possessing it. The concept of the species thus determined accordingly comes to include as essential characteristics other common features of the organisms which it is scarcely conceivable would have been selected and associated for any other reason. Identity of import thus conditions the association of related similarities, which so become content. The basis for no scientific classification is mere unmotived association of likenesses, however striking in themselves.

Secondly, in the later development of general concepts, there is observable the appearance of a tendency which marks the development of all organic structures, namely, the tendency toward fixity and loss of plasticity. In the case of the concept this increase in fixity seems to be reinforced by the necessity of counteracting the unwieldiness of the more general concepts, arising from the great complexity of their organization. The fact that the development of these more complex organizations depends upon their mutual dependence and relationship within a

system makes desirable a growing definiteness and fixity of the internal structure of the concept. This is the phenomenon which we find in definition. Definition is a singling out of certain features or certain elements of the total meaning of a concept and regarding these as essential, while other more loosely associated ideas are more or less effectively excluded. Even before intentional and formal definition takes place, however, this process of centralization has been at work; and to a large extent the formal definition merely recognizes and confirms the segregation which has already taken place. It is of significance that this segregation, or definition, involves the selection of a comparatively small group of associated concepts, the relationships to which become constitutive for the concept in question. What thus takes place in the course of intellectual evolution is that the organization of concepts tends to fall into groups, varying in size and in the closeness of their interrelations.

extreme are the loose apperceptive systems of common life, which vary with occupation, habits, and interests, as well as from individual to individual; at the other, the special sciences. It is within these last, and particularly within the abstract sciences, that the process of integration and fixation of concepts has been carried farthest. Because the special science is so remote in its reference to common life and so entirely controlled in its progress by its own special end, it becomes a system relatively independent of the great body of cognitive experience. The increasing determinateness of its peculiar field, the increasing definiteness of its peculiar presuppositions, impart a high degree of stability to its distinctive concepts.

But it seems impossible that the definiteness and fixity-the 'clearness and distinctness'-of scientific concepts should ever be more than approximate. The meaning of the associated concepts, in terms of which a given concept is defined, must itself be determined in relation to yet other concepts. For if it were possible to restrict the meaning of a group of concepts to the

mutual relationships within the group, the group as a whole would lose all connection with the developing body of cognitive experience it would be simply a useless mass of dead matter. In other words, an uneliminable condition for the continued functioning of a concept is its very plasticity and indeterminateness -its lack of 'clearness and distinctness.'

CHAPTER V

PRAGMATISM AND THE FORM OF THOUGHT

We propose to bring together in this chapter certain considerations bearing upon the contempt for formal logic which prevails among pragmatists. It appears to us, and we shall try to establish the contention, that this contempt and the hostility which it has inspired have no reasonable excuse; that they have arisen from an unwarranted exaggeration of the legitimate consequences of the pragmatist theory of truth.

The general position which we are to criticise may be briefly indicated as follows.

Consciousness is a function of the animal organism which has developed by reason of its utility in various types of situations. The intelligent study of consciousness will not attempt to separate it from the conditions under which its present characteristics have been acquired and to which its various structural relations owe all their functional importance. To make such a separation is to be committed to a formalism as shallow as that of an engineer who should analyze and describe a complicated machine without reference to the work for which it was designed and by which the proportions and interconnections of all its parts were determined.

If consciousness is not to be studied as a thing-in-itself, still less is logical thought. For the latter is but an episode in the life of feeling. It has its rise in the unpleasant strain occasioned by the failure of an habitual mode of behavior; and it has its normal conclusion in the satisfaction attendant upon successful readjustment. All real thought is essentially practical, in the sense that it is devoted to the solving of problems arising out of the exigencies of conduct, and that when a solution is reached behavior is modified accordingly. Thought is therefore not to