Philosophy in the modern world a new history of western philosophy, volume 4 (new history of western philosophy) ( PDFDrive ) (1) 63

PEIRCE TO STRAWSON

object may be satisfactory without that object actually existing (in which
case he is open to the charge of preferring wishful thinking to genuine
inquiry).
In the same year as he published The Meaning of Truth James published
A Pluralistic Universe, in which he applied pragmatism in support of a
religious world-view. He spoke of our awareness of a ‘wider self from
which saving experiences flow in’ and of a ‘mother sea of consciousness’.
He believed, however, that the amount of suffering in the world prevents
us from believing in an infinite, absolute divinity: the superhuman consciousness is limited either in power, or in knowledge, or in both. Even God
cannot determine or predict the future; whether the world will become
better or worse depends on the choices of human beings in cooperation
with him.
In his old age James, a genial and affable personality and a great
communicator, was revered by many inside and outside the United States.
Peirce, on the other hand, was isolated and destitute, and in 1907 was
discovered by one of James’s students nearly dead from starvation in a
Cambridge lodging house. James organized a fund which supplied Peirce’s
basic needs until his death from cancer in 1914. James himself died of heart
disease in 1910; on his deathbed in Cambridge he asked his brother Henry to
remain close for six weeks to receive any messages he could send to him
from beyond the grave. No messages are recorded.
James died before completing his metaphysical system, but his pragmatist programme was continued by others after his death. John Dewey
(1859–1952), in a long academic career at Ann Arbor, Chicago, and Columbia in New York, applied it most particularly in the area of American
education, but he also wrote influential books on many social and political
topics. His constant aim was to explore how far methods of inquiry that
had been so successful in physical science and in technology could be
extended into other areas of human endeavour.
In England F. C. S. Schiller (1864–1937) developed a version of pragmatism that he called ‘humanism’. Schiller was a graduate of Balliol College,
Oxford, and taught for a while at Cornell University in upstate New York,

where he met James, before returning to a fellowship at Corpus Christi
College. He was a lonely figure at Oxford because in the last years of the
nineteenth century, philosophy departments in the major universities of

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