of philosophic ideas and in deciding their vogue. Yet we are well within limits when we say that ideas which were evoked in correspondence with concrete social conditions served to articulate and consolidate the latter. Even if we went so far as to say that reigning philosophies simply reflect as in a mirror contemporary social struggles, we should have to add that seeing one's self in a mirror is a definite practical aid in carrying on one's undertaking to its completion.
When what a people sees in its intellectual looking glass is its own organization and its own historic evolution as an organic instrument of the accomplishment of an Absolute Will and Law, the articulating and consolidating efficacy of the reflection is immensely intensified. Outside of Germany, the career of the German idealistic philosophy has been mainly professional and literary. It has exercised considerable influence upon the teaching of philosophy in France, England and this country. Beyond professorial circles, its influence has been considerable in theological directions. Without doubt, it has modulated for many persons the transition from a supernatural to a spiritual religion; it has enabled them to give up historical and miraculous elements as indifferent accretions and to retain the moral substance and emotional values of Christianity. But the Germans are quite right in feeling that only in Germany is this form of idealistic thinking both indigenous and widely applied.
A crisis like the present forces upon thoughtful persons a consideration of the value for the general aims of civilization of a philosophy of the a priori, the Absolute, and of their immanent evolution through the medium of an experience which as just experience is only a superficial and negligible vehicle of transcendent Laws and Ends. It forces a consideration of what type of general ideas is available for the articulation and guidance of our own life in case we find ourselves looking upon the present world scene as an a priori and an absolutistic philosophy gone into bankruptcy.
In Europe, speaking generally, "Americanism" is a synonym for crude empiricism and a materialistic utilitarianism. It is no part of my present task to try to show how largely this accusation is due to misunderstanding. It is simpler to inquire how far the charge points to the problem which American life, and therefore philosophy in America, must meet. It is difficult to see how any a priori philosophy, or any systematic absolutism, is to get a footing among us, at least beyond narrow and professorial circles. Psychologists talk about learning by the method of trial and error or success. Our social organization commits us to this philosophy of life. Our working principle is to try: to find out by trying, and to measure the worth of the ideas and theories tried by the success with which they meet the test of application in practice. Concrete consequences rather than a priori rules supply our guiding principles. Hegel found it "superficial and absurd to regard as objects of choice" social constitutions; to him "they were necessary structures in the path of development." To us they are the cumulative result of a multitude of daily and ever-renewed choices.
That such an experimental philosophy of life means a dangerous experiment goes without saying. It permits, sooner or later it may require, every alleged sacrosanct principle to submit to ordeal by fire—to trial by service rendered. From the standpoint of a priorism, it is hopelessly anarchic; it is doomed, a priori, to failure. From its own standpoint, it is itself a theory to be tested by experience. Now experiments are of all kinds, varying from those generated by blind impulse and appetite to those guided by intelligently formed ideas. They are as diverse as the attempt of a savage to get rain by sprinkling water and scattering thistledown, and that control of electricity in the laboratory from which issue wireless telegraphy and rapid traction. Is it not likely that in this distinction we have the key to the failure or success of the experimental method generalized into a philosophy of life, that is to say, of social matters—the only application which procures complete generalization?
An experimental philosophy differs from empirical philosophy as empiricism has been previously formulated. Historical empiricisms have been stated in terms of precedents; their generalizations have been summaries of what has previously happened. The truth and falsity of these generalizations depended then upon the accuracy with which they catalogued, under appropriate heads, a multiplicity of past occurrences. They were perforce lacking in directive power except so far as the future might be a routine repetition of the past. In an experimental philosophy of life, the question of the past, of precedents, of origins, is quite subordinate to prevision, to guidance and control amid future possibilities. Consequences rather than antecedents measure the worth of theories. Any scheme or project may have a fair hearing provided it promise amelioration in the future; and no theory or standard is so sacred that it may be accepted simply on the basis of past performance.
But this difference between a radically experimental philosophy and an empiristic philosophy only emphasizes the demand for careful and comprehensive reflection with respect to the ideas which are to be tested in practice. If an a priori philosophy has worked at all in Germany it is because it has been based on an a priori social constitution—that is to say, on a state whose organization is such as to determine in advance the main activities of classes of individuals, and to utilize their particular activities by linking them up with one another in definite ways. It is a commonplace to say that Germany is a monument to what can be done by means of conscious method and organization. An experimental philosophy of life in order to succeed must not set less store upon methodic and organized intelligence, but more. We must learn from Germany what methodic and organized work means. But instead of confining intelligence to the technical means of realizing ends which are predetermined by the State (or by something called the historic Evolution of the Idea), intelligence must, with us, devote itself as well to construction of the ends to be acted upon.
The method of trial and error or success is likely, if not directed by a trained and informed imagination, to score an undue proportion of failures. There is no possibility of disguising the fact that an experimental philosophy of life means a hit-and-miss philosophy in the end. But it means missing rather than hitting, if the aiming is done in a happy-go-lucky way instead of by bringing to bear all the resources of inquiry upon locating the target, constructing propulsive machinery and figuring out the curve of trajectory. That this work is, after all, but hypothetical and tentative till it issue from thought into action does not mean that it might as well be random guesswork; it means that we can do still better next time if we are sufficiently attentive to the causes of success and failure this time.
America is too new to afford a foundation for an a priori philosophy; we have not the requisite background of law, institutions and achieved social organization. America is too new to render congenial to our imagination an evolutionary philosophy of the German type. For our history is too obviously future. Our country is too big and too unformed, however, to enable us to trust to an empirical philosophy of muddling along, patching up here and there some old piece of machinery which has broken down by reason of its antiquity. We must have system, constructive method, springing from a widely inventive imagination, a method checked up at each turn by results achieved. We have said long enough that America means opportunity; we must now begin to ask: Opportunity for what, and how shall the opportunity be achieved? I can but think that the present European situation forces home upon us the need for constructive planning. I can but think that while it gives no reason for supposing that creative power attaches ex officio to general ideas, it does encourage us to believe that a philosophy which should articulate and consolidate the ideas to which our social practice commits us would clarify and guide our future endeavor.
Time permits of but one illustration. The present situation presents the spectacle of the breakdown of the whole philosophy of Nationalism, political, racial and cultural. It is by the accident of position rather than any virtue of our own that we are not sharers in the present demonstration of failure. We have borrowed the older philosophy of isolated national sovereignty and have lived upon it in a more or less half-hearted way. In our internal constitution we are actually interracial and international. It remains to see whether we have the courage to face this fact and the wisdom to think out the plan of action which it indicates. Arbitration treaties, international judicial councils, schemes of international disarmament, peace funds and peace movements, are all well in their way. But the situation calls for more radical thinking than
