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 Table of Contents vii

8. The Global Economy Confronts British Capitalism   194

Initial Global Divergence and Later Convergence  194
Population  197
Agriculture  200
Resources  207
The Development and Diffusion of Technology   208
Prime Movers and Power Production   209
The Rise and Spread of Electricity  211
The Rise and Spread of Petroleum   212
Cheap Steel   212
Transport and Communications  214
The Application of Science   220

9. Institutions Adjust (or Not) to Modern Economic Growth   222

The Institutional Framework  222
Legal Foundations   222
Economic Thought and Policy   225
Class Structure and Class Struggles   227
Education and Literacy   230
Finance and Banking  233
The Role of the State  243
International Relations  247

10. European Economies Adjust (or Not) to Modern Economic

Growth  249
Great Britain  250
The United States  255
France  258
Germany  262
Belgium  268

11. The Growth of the World Economy, 1848–1914   271

Britain Opts for Free Trade   273
The Free Trade Era  275
The “Great Deflation” and the Return to Protectionism  277
The International Gold Standard  282
International Migration and Investment  284

12. The Spread of Development in Europe, 1848–1914   292

Small European Neighbors   293
Switzerland  293
The Netherlands and Scandinavia   296
The Austro-Hungarian Empire   300

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 viii Table of Contents

Southern and Eastern Europe  303

The Iberian Peninsula   304
Italy  306
Southeastern Europe   308
Imperial Russia  310

13. The Spread of Development Beyond Europe, 1848–1914   312

Japan  312
China  316
India  318
Africa  319
Explanations of Imperialism  323
Globalization Backlash, 1890–1914  326

14. International Economic Disintegration, 1914–1945   331

The Economic Consequences of World Wars I and II  331
Economic Consequences of the Peace  335
The Great Contraction, 1929–1933  341
Rival Attempts at Reconstruction  345
The Russian Revolutions and the Soviet Union  349
The Institutional Responses to Disintegration of the
World Economy  353
International Relations   353
The Role of Government   354
The Forms of Enterprise   355
Organized Labor   356
Economic Aspects of World War II  357

15. Rebuilding the World Economy, 1945–1989   360

Rebuilding Western Europe  361
Planning for the Postwar Economy  362
The Marshall Plan and Economic “Miracles”  364
The Era of High Growth  368
The Emergence of the Soviet Bloc  370
The Economics of Decolonization  376
The Travails of the Third World  381
The Origins of the European Union  382
The Emergence of the Second Global Economy  386

16. Overview of the World Economy, 1914–2014   390

The Collapse of the Soviet Bloc  391
The Evolution of the European Union  398
The Long Twentieth Century in Perspective  400

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 Table of Contents ix

Population  402
Demographic Transitions   402
Demographic Dividend   404
Demographic Displacement   405
Resources  411
Technology  414
Institutions  419
Informal Institutions   419
Limits to Growth?  420

Annotated Bibliography   423

Index  457

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00-Neal-FM.indd 10 08/10/15 1:23 PM
 Preface

When the 4th edition of A Concise Economic History of the World: From Paleolithic
Times to the Present by Rondo Cameron and Larry Neal appeared in 2003, fourteen
years had passed since the 1st edition by Rondo alone appeared in 1989. The inter-
vening years had witnessed the resurgence of globalization of the world economy.
The 2nd and 3rd editions appeared in 1993 and 1997. Each one expanded the cover-
age of non-European economies, trying to keep pace with ongoing globalization. At
the time of publication of all four editions, the future of the world economy was
always at risk. Nevertheless, twelve years after the 4th edition, the world economy is
more fully integrated than ever before in human history, despite repeated attacks by
terrorists on what they take as the symbols of globalization and a near-meltdown of
global finance in 2008.
Rondo Cameron’s approach to telling the story of how economic growth across
the globe came to pass in fits and starts over the past centuries has also held up through
successive editions. Using accessible prose rather than abstruse models of the econ-
omy to give comparative examples of economic development (or a lack thereof) in
various regions of the world over the past millennia, Rondo provided a historical,
comparative analysis of how economic development arose gradually in the European
West; contrasted European developments with the rest of the world before industrial-
ization; and then wrote a series of national case studies. These were intended to show
how industrialization, once begun, gradually spread to the rest of the world, and how
it could continue to spread if the complications of the process of economic growth
were better understood. This approach helped Rondo to maintain a “narrative arc,”
which continued to be the basis for each succeeding edition. The accessibility of his
argument and the breadth of his perspective made the book an increasingly popular
introduction to the issues that obsess economists and historians—what accounts for
the success of some economies compared to others, once we figure out how to mea-
sure success? This edition tries to preserve the book’s accessibility to undergraduates
and general readers while also broadening the global perspective. Now the narrative
arc deals more explicitly with the ongoing shocks of globalization and climatic
changes from Paleolithic times to the present and the consequences of the diverse
responses to shocks by different cultures in the world in the past.
In developing the new narrative, I benefited from comments by anonymous ref-
erees and by individual instructors using the book: Molly Cooper, Ethan Doetsch,
Garrett Senney, and Richard Steckel at Ohio State University; Bradley Lepper,

xi

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 xii Preface

archaeologist at the Ohio History Connection; and particularly David Wishart at

Wittenberg University, who labored through the entire manuscript. While the time
between this edition and the previous editions has been much longer than that which
separated earlier editions, its appearance now is due to the efforts of Oxford Univer-
sity Press editors Valerie Ashton and Ann West and, especially, to the desire of
Claydean Cameron, Rondo’s gracious widow, to see his work continued.

Larry Neal
January 2015

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 Author Biography

Larry Neal is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign and Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic
Research. He is the author of The Rise of Financial Capitalism (1990), The Econom-
ics of Europe and the European Union (2007), and “I Am Not Master of Events”:
The Speculations of John Law and Lord Londonderry in the Mississippi and South
Sea Bubbles (2012). He was the editor of Explorations in Economic History from
1981 to 1998 and co-editor of The Cambridge History of Capitalism: From Ancient
Origins to the Present, 2 vols. (2014).

Rondo Cameron was the William Rand Kenan Professor of Economics and History
at Emory University. He was the 1991 recipient of the Editor’s Award for Exceptional
Books for the first edition of A Concise Economic History of the World. He
authored or co-authored several books, including The European World (1970) and
­Civilizations: Western and World (1975), and was the co-editor of International
Banking ­1870–1914 (1991).

xiii

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00-Neal-FM.indd 14 08/10/15 1:23 PM
 1
Introduction: Economic History
and the Global Economy

Why isn’t the whole world developed? That question has plagued humankind for
thousands of years, but especially over the past three centuries, when the economic
performance of Europe became uncoupled from that of the rest of the world. Dealing
with the Great Divergence, as it has come to be called, consumed policymakers ev-
erywhere after the devastations caused by World War II in the middle of the twentieth
century. The issue became ever more urgent with the spread of capitalism globally
after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. As countries in Eastern Europe
emerged from a half-century of central planning under Soviet direction, they looked
with anticipation toward achieving the prosperity enjoyed in the capitalist countries
of Western Europe. Since then, enormous progress has been made in closing the gap
between rich and poor nations, progress charted annually by international agencies
dedicated to improving the material condition of people across the world while miti-
gating conflicts. That progress was halted, one hopes only temporarily, by the crisis
of financial capitalism in 2007–2008 and the Great Recession that followed. While
growth since then has faltered for the most developed countries in the world, major
developing countries have continued to grow economically while confronting envi-
ronmental degradation, disruption of traditional cultures, and social tensions from
rising inequality—problems that are new for them but familiar to more developed
economies. Other countries, primarily those found in sub-Saharan Africa, have not
yet begun to benefit from the possibilities of economic prosperity.
Why not? After all, if some nations are rich and others poor, why don’t the poor
ones adopt the methods and policies that have made the others rich? In fact, such at-
tempts have been made throughout history, but they have often gone astray as a result
of mistaken analyses of what made the rich nations so successful. Whether the at-
tempts underway since 1989 to bring economic progress throughout the Eurasian
continent will succeed or not remains an open question. But it is encouraging that
economists and policymakers have recalibrated their efforts and their thinking re-
peatedly by comparing their progress to that made by other countries on other con-
tinents that have faced the same challenges. The annual reports produced by
international agencies charged with the mission of improving economic conditions
globally have increasingly turned toward broader conceptions of what constitutes
economic progress and deeper appreciation of the historical forces required to

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 2 a concise economic history of the world

sustain economic progress. Economic theorists as well have attempted to construct a

“unified theory of economic growth,” one that is complex enough to cover all the ele-
ments needed to initiate and then sustain economic growth for any given country.
They, like government policymakers today, however, have to look at historical and
comparative economic experiences to see if their theories have sufficient explanatory
power to be persuasive and applicable in practice. The purpose of this book, then, is
to highlight and analyze the various episodes of economic growth that have occurred
in the past, wherever they took place in the world. It also assesses what mistakes
were made or lessons learned from each experience in the hope that past mistakes
may not be repeated and brighter futures may lie ahead for the world economy and
Earth’s inhabitants.
As introductory background to the economic history that follows in succeeding
chapters, it is useful to survey first the changes in outlook by the international agen-
cies charged with promoting and sustaining economic development globally since
the new period of globalization began, and then subsequent attempts to create a “uni-
fied theory of economic growth.” We can date the start of the current period of glo-
balization to either the early 1970s or the late 1980s. Globalization in the financial
world began on August 15, 1971, when the United States unilaterally abrogated the
Bretton Woods Treaty of 1944 that had provided the financial underpinnings for
economic growth and recovery after World War II. Eventually, the effectiveness of
the controls over the international movement of capital that were an essential part of
the Bretton Woods system were undermined, forcing the member countries of the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to make dramatic changes
in their economic policies. Globalization in the real economy continued apace after
the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. After that event, the countries that had
remained outside the international agencies based in Washington, D.C., and charged
with administering the terms of the Bretton Woods Treaty found it advantageous to
join such groups. An immediate incentive was to take advantage of the foreign
­capital now available to finance their economic transitions. But the ultimate incen-
tive was to imitate the institutional framework that had proven so successful in creat-
ing economic prosperity for the countries of Western Europe, epitomized by the
­European Union.
What followed was a confrontation between the “Washington consensus,” the
policy prescriptions that the IMF and World Bank had come up with from their expe-
rience in advising member countries in economic difficulty over the previous forty-
five years, and the “Copenhagen criteria,” the membership requirements laid down by
the European Union for applicant countries based on their experiences from the 1970s.
Basically, the Washington consensus was that the basic institutions needed for a
market economy to operate effectively had to be created immediately: privatize, lib-
eralize, and stabilize, in sum. In contrast, the Copenhagen criteria focused on creating
political, bureaucratic, and economic institutions comparable to those of the European
Union (see Chapter 16 for a full discussion). Ultimately the IMF and World Bank
added institutional capabilities to their prescriptions, first by adding human develop-
ment indicators to their statistical measures of economic development in 1990, and
then by creating their Doing Business index for “ease of doing business” in 2001. Even
capital controls, having shown their usefulness in mitigating financial crises at the end

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 Introduction: Economic History and the Global Economy 3

of the 1990s, have regained limited acceptance by the economists of the IMF in the
aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. Meanwhile, the European Bank for Recon-
struction and Development, which focuses on the transition economies throughout
Eastern Europe and central Asia, issues annual Transition Reports to track the prog-
ress each country has made. Over time, each report has included more indicators of
the institutions needed for achieving economic progress, including, notably, access to
financing and ease of establishing property rights and creating new companies, fac-
tors that go well beyond the original scope of European Union institutions.
Meanwhile, economic theorists have integrated institutional elements into their
models of economic growth. Initially, the dominant idea in economic theory was to
increase the capital stock of an economy, especially the capital stock in the manufac-
turing sector, as economists noted that machinery had embodied the latest technol-
ogy needed to increase labor productivity ever since the adoption of the steam engine
in eighteenth-century Britain. The key factors for maintaining economic growth in
per capita terms, it was thought, were an increasing level of capital per worker and
an increasing number of workers in an economy. Technology came as a gift from the
gods but seemed to keep increasing over time, at least since the eighteenth century.
Eventually, attempts were made to make technology advances the outcome of eco-
nomic inputs, especially by educating the workforce and then by funding scientific
research. By 1990, some economists could even summarize the models for economic
growth in four simple rules: increase investment in manufacturing, raise the educa-
tion level of the labor force, reduce the birth rate so that more of the population is in
the labor force, and increase exports. These four factors had worked well for the
Asian tiger economies coming out of the oil shocks of the 1970s and were starting to
work in some Latin American countries. Then the coup attempt in Russia that failed
in August 1990 brought everyone’s attention to the fate of the Soviet Union economy:
following all four rules for economic growth to excess, the economy had neverthe-
less collapsed, along with the political structure that had sustained it through most of
the twentieth century. More sophisticated versions of institutional elements were
clearly needed in the models of economic growth!
These versions have included various factors to encourage the growth of popula-
tion, participation in the labor force, and the creation and application of technology,
as well as general incentives for seizing economic opportunities. Incentives, to be
effective in operation, require supportive governments that are open to access by
new groups with different, possibly better, ideas and have proved to be very difficult
to establish in practice. Power, once gained by one group, is not readily ceded to
another group, whatever may be the total gains to the economy. Access to external
financing has been the most effective means for enabling new technologies, new
groups, or new authorities to achieve economic progress in the past. How to incorpo-
rate this enabling factor into general models of economic growth remains elusive,
but its importance in practice will be evident throughout the chapters to follow.
Whether one approaches the problem of how to make a nation rich from the per-
spective of a practicing policymaker in government or from the theoretical viewpoint
of an economist in academia, the evidence of past economic experiences is essential
to take into account. The historical approach in this book, however, does not aim at
producing a general, universally applicable theory of economic development, much

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 4 a concise economic history of the world

less a general recipe for success for policymakers. Indeed, such attempts to date to
produce such a “unified growth theory” have not met with acceptance by economic
historians, who deal with uncovering and then analyzing the facts of economic his-
tory as revealed throughout human history and across the world. Instead, historical
analysis focuses on the origins of the presently existing unequal levels of develop-
ment. A correct diagnosis of the origins of this problem does not in itself guarantee
an effective prescription, but without such a diagnosis one can scarcely hope to
remedy the problem. By focusing on instances of growth and decline in the past, the
historical approach isolates the fundamentals of economic development, undis-
tracted by arguments over the efficacy or desirability of particular policies for spe-
cific current problems. In other words, it is an aid to objectivity and clarity of thought.
Policymakers and their staffs of experts, faced with the responsibility of propos-
ing and implementing policies for development, frequently shrug off the potential
contributions of historical analysis to the solution of their problems with the observa-
tion that the contemporary situation is unique and therefore history is irrelevant to
their concerns. Such an attitude contains a double fallacy. In the first place, those
who are ignorant of the past are not qualified to generalize about it. Second, it im-
plicitly denies the uniformity of nature, including that of human behavior and the
behavior of social institutions—an assumption on which all scientific inquiry is
founded. Such attitudes reveal how easy it is, without historical perspective, to mis-
take the symptoms of a problem for its causes. This book is offered as an introduc-
tion to the study of both economic history and economic development. It is not,
however, intended to be comprehensive in either area. There are many valid reasons
for studying history apart from its potential contribution to solving contemporary
practical problems; for a complete understanding of the problem of economic devel-
opment other methods of study and observation must be employed as well. In this
general survey of the economic development of humankind from prehistoric times to
the present, certain “lessons of history” are highlighted. Although some historians
believe their function is to “let the facts speak for themselves,” “facts” respond only
to specific questions posed by the analyst who deals with them; posing such ques-
tions inevitably involves a process of selection, conscious or unconscious, especially
in so brief and synoptic a volume as this.
Before we undertake the historical narrative it is necessary to define certain
terms and to formulate some basic concepts to guide the subsequent analysis.

Development and Underdevelopment

In 2011, the average (or per capita) annual income of residents of the United States
was nearly $50,000. In Norway, the most prosperous country in Europe, it amounted
to nearly $61,500. (These figures are adjusted for purchasing power parity in 2011.)
For the Euro area, which is comparable in population size to the United States
(333 million vs. 312 million), the average was over $35,000. By contrast, the poorest
country in the world, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, had a per capita income
of only $340 on average, well below the minimum subsistence level even in tropical
Africa. The disparity among the world’s economies and peoples therefore continues

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 Introduction: Economic History and the Global Economy 5

to be striking despite substantial progress over the past half-century toward conver-
gence of standards of living in the United States and Canada, on one side of the
North Atlantic, and the countries joined within the European Union on the other.
Major steps forward have been made in the past two decades by the so-called BRIC
countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—as well.
But disparities remain that are substantial and increasingly troublesome. At one
extreme, low-income countries, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa, account for
12 percent of the world’s population but only 1 percent of the world’s economic
income. The lower-middle-income nations of the world make up 36 percent of the
population but only 12 percent of gross national income. Another 36 percent of the
world’s people live in upper-middle-income nations but still have only 33 percent of
the world’s economic income. The 1.135 billion people fortunate enough to live in the
world’s high-income nations make up barely 16 percent of the world’s population but
enjoy over 54 percent of the world’s economic output. The gaps that remain among the
nations and populations of the world are summarized for a select group of representa-
tive countries in Table 1-1. This is the situation that has to be overcome somehow—
but, one hopes, in a peaceable, nonviolent, and mutually productive manner.
Table 1-2 breaks down the implications of these differences in per capita income
and economic structure in terms of various indicators of the quality of life that comes
with different levels of income. Life expectancy at birth for high-income nations is
over 80 years but falls to the low 70s for middle-income countries and even below 50
for low-income countries. Birth rates are lower in high-income countries than in
middle-income and especially low-income countries. Death rates, while higher in
low-income countries, are not that much higher than in middle-income or even high-
income countries, reflecting the general improvements in disease control that have
come from scientific advances in the twentieth century and especially after World
War II. Putting all these factors together into a “human development index,” how-
ever, shows that per capita income correlates clearly with the overall level of achieve-
ment for people across the world. One factor that may help explain both the lower
birth rates in high-income countries and their higher levels of human development is
the participation of women in the formal labor market: female workers represent
close to half of the wage employment in the nonagricultural sector of the economy in
high-income countries but less than one-quarter in some of the middle-income and
low-income countries.
For reasons that will be explored in detail throughout the following chapters,
increasing attention has been paid to institutional arrangements in countries for set-
ting up business, so Table 1-2 includes a column for one of the most revealing mea-
sures for determining the ease of doing business—the time required to register
property on average in number of days. There are substantial differences among
countries within each income category, but the overall pattern is clear—countries
with high levels of human development and high per capita income also have made
it easier for individual households and firms to register their property and gain legal
protection by government authorities.
Despite the many dramatic setbacks to economic activity worldwide after the
financial crisis of 2008, however, the World Bank reported that, just as before the
crisis, more people were living on Earth in 2011 (over 7 billion) and had higher per

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 6 a concise economic history of the world

Table 1–1. Examples of disparities in national income and structure

Per Capita Sector shares in GDP (%)

Income, 2012
(in 2005 US$); Agriculture Industry Services
High Income
United States $50,610 1 20 79
Australia $43,300 2 20 78
Canada $42,530 2 32 66
Germany $41,890 1 28 71
United Kingdom $36,880 1 22 78
Japan $36,290 1 26 73
Middle Income, High to Low
Bulgaria $15,390 6 31 63
Brazil $11,720 5 26 68
China $9,060 10 47 43
Egypt $6,640 14 37 49
Morocco $5,080 15 30 55
Bolivia $4,960 13 39 49
Low Income
Bangladesh $2,070 18 29 54
Kenya $1,760 29 17 53
Afghanistan $1,400 24 23 52
Ethiopia $1,140 46 11 43
Niger $650 40 17 43
Liberia $600 53 10 37

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2013 (Washington, D.C.).

capita incomes on average ($10,283, US 2005$) than ever before. A sense of triumph,
however, was absent from the report. This financial crisis was different, because
confidence in the policies needed to generate economic growth had been badly
shaken, while more credibility had to be given to possible limits to growth, or even
catastrophic reversals. The situation required an updating of this book, as well as a
rethinking of the conventional wisdom about the possibilities of economic develop-
ment contained in previous editions. No longer is it sensible simply to examine the
variety of paths that modern industrial economies have taken to achieve their suc-
cess in order to extract some common features that could be readily imitated by other
economies. Too many false starts as well as unexpected successes have occurred to
make that strategy plausible. But so many economists and historians have been reex-
amining both their theories and their narratives that this edition of A Concise
­Economic History of the World has the benefit of a wealth of recent key insights and
findings that help to make it a better guide than before to the global economic history
unfolding in the twenty-first century.

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 Table 1–2. Indicators of Economic Development, Selected Countries

Women in Wage

01-Neal-Chap01.indd 7
Per Capita Life Health Human Employ­ment in Time Required
Income, 2012 Death Birth Expect­ancy Expenditure, Development Index Energy Nonagricultural to Register
(in 2005 US$) Rate Rate at Birth Total (% of GDP) Rank, 2013 Use Sector Property, Days
High Income
United States $50,610 8 13 79 17.9 3 6,793 48 12
Australia $43,300 7 13 82 9.0 2 5,893 48 5
Canada $42,530 7 11 81 11.2 11 7,243 50 17
Germany $41,890 10 8 81 11.1 5 3,754 48 40
United Kingdom $36,880 9 13 81 9.3 26 3,043 47 29
Japan $36,290 10 8 83 9.3 10 3,539 42 14
Middle Income, High to Low

7
Bulgaria $15,390 15 10 74 7.3 57 2,615 49 15
Brazil $11,720 6 15 73 8.9 85 1,371 42 34
China $9,060 7 12 73 5.2 101 2,029 n/a 29
Egypt $6,640 5 23 73 4.9 112 978 18 72
Morocco $5,080 6 19 72 6.0 130 539 21 75
Bolivia $4,960 7 26 67 4.9 108 746 37 92
Low Income
Bangladesh $2,070 6 20 69 3.7 146 205 n/a 245
Kenya $1,760 10 37 57 4.5 145 480 n/a 73
Afghanistan $1,400 16 43 49 9.6 175 n/a 18 250
Ethiopia $1,140 9 31 59 4.7 173 381 40 41
Niger $650 13 48 55 5.3 186 n/a 36 35
Liberia $600 11 39 57 19.5 174 n/a n/a 50

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2013 (Washington, D.C.).

08/10/15 1:23 PM
 8 a concise economic history of the world

Modern growth theory, to begin with the contributions of economists, has gone
back to the origins of political economy to analyze the political structures that facili-
tate the start of modern economic growth, defined by Simon Kuznets as a persistent
rise in both population and per capita income. The linkage between rising population
and per capita income and economic growth persists to the present day, as the World
Bank data show. But it clearly does not stretch back to before 1800, as that would
imply levels of per capita income below subsistence levels before then, and economic
historians have found that levels of per capita income in much of the world, and espe-
cially in England, where modern economic growth began, were comfortably above
subsistence level for long periods of time in the past. Much of the economic theory of
growth thus begins with a steady state of economic activity in which both levels
of population and levels of per capita income stay constant over the long run because
of the Malthusian trap—the tendency of the human sex drive to create more babies
than can be fed with the technology available for providing food. Escape from this
trap, which has in fact occurred, can logically come either from outside events of chance
or from lucky discoveries of new techniques or products by insiders. Exogenous
forces may help to explain developments at a local place or particular time, but they
are unsatisfactory for understanding long-run developments on a global scale. That is
why economic theorists have turned toward trying to explain how technology may
first be discovered and then deployed effectively to sustain growth in both population
and per capita incomes—a model known as endogenous growth theory.
Endogenous growth theory begins with the intuitive observation that as popula-
tion pressures increase within a given area subject to the Malthusian trap, there are
also more people available to think up new ways to provide more food. If they can be
allowed to put their ideas into practice, population can continue to increase, bringing
more people with potentially good ideas into existence as well. Clearly, though, the
political organization in place has to create incentives for people to innovate within
the existing society, rather than forcing them to leave in search of better opportuni-
ties elsewhere. Furthermore, what is usually overlooked in the theoretical models but
is very important in practice is that the innovators must be enabled to put their
ideas into practice. Enablements, as well as incentives, have to be provided for the
models of endogenous growth theory to work in practice. All this means that econo-
mists have turned to analyzing the role of institutions that might logically create both
the incentives and the enablements necessary for escape velocity from the Malthusian
trap to be achieved. Douglass North, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in
1993, stated the proposition boldly:

Institutions form the incentive structure of a society and the political and economic
institutions, in consequence, are the underlying determinants of economic
­performance. . . . They are made up of formal constraints (rules, laws, constitu-
tions), informal constraints (norms of behavior, conventions, and self-imposed
codes of conduct), and their enforcement characteristics. . . . It is the interaction
between institutions and organizations that shapes the institutional evolution of an
economy. If institutions are the rules of the game, organizations and their entrepre-
neurs are the players.
(North, Nobel Prize Lecture, 1993)

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 Introduction: Economic History and the Global Economy 9

Beyond the basic elements of economic activity that are observable from the
past, therefore, economic historians must also pay attention to the organizations such
as guilds, corporations, governments, and legal systems that operated within and
enforced the “rules of the game.” Furthermore, less observable elements such as in-
formal institutions and mental models that govern individual responses to external
conditions—a society’s culture, in other words—may determine the effectiveness of
organizations and institutions in creating and then sustaining economic growth.
Continued re-allocation of resources within an economy is essential for economic
growth to be sustained or regained after any setback, whether caused by war, famine,
natural disaster, disease, or financial crisis. Market signals can be useful for guiding
the re-allocation of resources and directing the effort required. The sources of fi-
nancing for the transition to the new state of the economy, however, may or may not
be driven by market signals depending on the existence of capital markets and the
exigencies of command economies. Much attention has to be paid, therefore, to
sources of financing and its effective deployment in the past, especially the financing
of long-distance trade and long-lived projects that have been essential for sustaining
economic growth given the technology of the time.
For this part of our project, we can take advantage of work by scholars who take
a much longer time perspective, justifying our initial presumption in beginning the
economic history of the world in Paleolithic times. These scholars have been paying
more and more attention to the bulk of the population’s means of making a living by
devising a variety of novel measures of standards of living that can be used to com-
pare economic achievements across space and over time. Earlier editions of this
book focused mainly on the well-studied economies of Europe and its settlement
colonies, but increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the economic his-
tory of Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the economic exchanges among and
within the various regions of the Earth.

Growth, Development, and Progress

In ordinary discourse the terms growth, development, and progress are frequently
used as though they were synonymous. For scientific purposes, however, it is neces-
sary to distinguish among them, even if the distinctions are somewhat arbitrary.
Economic growth is defined in this book as a sustained increase in the total output
of goods and services produced by a given society. In recent decades this total output
has been measured as gross domestic product (GDP), the total of all goods and ser-
vices produced within the territory of a country. In today’s global economy, it is in-
creasingly difficult for statistical authorities to keep track of income payments
between countries, especially when goods and services are produced by their citi-
zens in other countries. These payments have to be netted out to measure gross na-
tional income (GNI) and gross national product (GNP). For most discussions in this
book, the difference in the concepts of GDP, GNI, and GNP can be ignored because
the three aggregates almost always move together in the same direction. Although no
national income data exist for earlier epochs, they can in some cases be estimated; in

01-Neal-Chap01.indd 9 08/10/15 1:23 PM

 10 a concise economic history of the world

any case, even without specific quantitative data, one can usually determine, on the
basis of indirect evidence, whether total product increased, decreased, or remained
roughly constant during any given period.
Growth in total output may occur either because the inputs of the factors of pro-
duction (land, labor, and capital) increase or because equivalent quantities of the
inputs are being used more efficiently. If population is increasing, there may be growth
in total output but not in output per capita; indeed, the latter may even decrease if the
rate of population growth exceeds that of output. For welfare comparisons, economic
growth is meaningful only if it is measured in terms of output per capita.
Difficulties also arise in comparing the outputs of two different societies or out-
puts within the same society at widely different points in time, for two main reasons.
As a rule, national income and similar measures are given in monetary units, but
values of monetary units are notoriously unstable and frequently difficult to com-
pare. In principle, what is wanted is a measure of “real” income—that is, income
measured in units of constant real value. We are not concerned here with the practi-
cal obstacles to obtaining such a measure but assume that the reader will bear them
in mind in evaluating the comparisons made hereafter. A second difficulty is that of
comparing the values of outputs of two different economies when the composition of
the two outputs differs greatly—for example, when one consists mainly of vegetable
products consumed directly or with negligible processing and the other consists
largely of highly processed manufactured goods. This problem has no clear-cut, de-
finitive solution, but normally its quantitative dimensions do not hinder fruitful
analysis.
Economic development, as the term is used in this book, means economic growth
accompanied by a substantial structural or organizational change in the economy,
such as a shift from a local subsistence economy to markets and trade or the growth
of manufacturing and service outputs relative to agriculture. The structural or orga-
nizational change may be the “cause” of growth—although sometimes the causal
sequence moves in the opposite direction—or the two changes may be the joint prod-
uct of still other changes within or outside the economy. The concepts of economic
structure and structural change are discussed in somewhat greater detail later in this
chapter.
Economic growth, as defined here, is a reversible process—that is, it may be fol-
lowed by decline. Logically, economic development is equally reversible, although
organizations or structures rarely revert to precisely the same forms as existed ear-
lier. More often, during or following a prolonged period of economic decline, some
form of economic retrogression takes place—a reversion to forms of organization
simpler than, though not usually identical with, those that formerly existed.
Although they are widely regarded as “good things,” both growth and develop-
ment are, in principle, value-free terms in that they can be measured and described
without reference to ethical norms. Such is clearly not the case with the term eco-
nomic progress, unless it is given a highly restrictive definition. In modern secular
ethics, growth and development are frequently equated with progress, but no connec-
tion necessarily exists between them. By some ethical standards, an increase in ma-
terial well-being might be regarded as harmful to the spiritual nature of human
beings. Even by contemporary standards the increased production of the means of

01-Neal-Chap01.indd 10 08/10/15 1:23 PM

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Title: Pragmatism and idealism

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PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM ***
PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM
 AGENTS
America The Macmillan Company
64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, New York
AustralasiaThe Oxford University Press
205 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Canada The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd.
St Martin’s House, 70 Bond Street, Toronto
India Macmillan & Company, Ltd.
Macmillan Building, Bombay
309 Bow Bazaar Street, Calcutta
 P R A G M AT I S M
AND

IDEALISM
BY

WILLIAM CALDWELL, M.A., D.Sc.[Edinr.]

SIR WILLIAM MACDONALD PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY,
McGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL

LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1913
 PREFACE
What is attempted in this book is an examination of the Pragmatist
philosophy in its relations to older and newer tendencies in the
thought and practice of mankind.
While a good deal has been written within the last ten years
upon Pragmatism, the issue that it represents is still an open one—to
judge at least from recent books and reviews, and from recent official
discussions. And there seems to be a favourable opportunity for a
general account of the whole subject and for an estimate of its
significance.
In the opening chapter and elsewhere, both in the text and in the
footnotes, I have put together some things about the development
and the affiliations of Pragmatism, and of pragmatist tendencies, that
may not be altogether new to the professional student. Such a
presentation, or general conspectus, I have found to be a necessity
in the way of a basis both for discussion and for rational
comprehension. Taken along with the original pronouncements of
James and his confrères it affords an indication of the philosophy to
which the pragmatists would fain attain, and of the modification of
rationalistic philosophy they would fain effect.
The chapter upon Pragmatism as Americanism is put forth in the
most tentative spirit possible, and I have thought more than once of
withholding it. Something in this connexion, however, is, in my
opinion, needed to cause us to regard the pragmatist philosophy as
resting upon a very real tendency of the civilized world of to-day—a
tendency that is affecting us all whether we like it or not.
The chapter upon Pragmatism and Anglo-Hegelian Rationalism
is also offered with some degree of reservation and misgiving, for,
like many of my contemporaries, I owe nearly everything in the way
of my introduction to philosophy to the great Neo-Kantian and Neo-
Hegelian movement. In its place, I had some months ago a more
general chapter upon Pragmatism and Rationalism, containing the
results of material that I had been elaborating upon the development
of English Neo-Hegelianism. At the last moment I substituted what is
here offered upon the significant high-water output of Hegelianism
represented in Dr. Bosanquet’s Edinburgh Gifford Lectures.
In regard to the note upon the Pragmatist elements in the
philosophy of Bergson I ought, perhaps, to say that I kept away from
Bergson’s last two books until I had written out what had been
growing up in my own mind about the activism of Pragmatism and its
relations to Idealism. I have found confirmation for much of my own
thought in the teaching of this remarkable and significant thinker, and
I regret the partial representation of it that is here submitted.
Having crossed the ocean for the printing of my book, I have in
some cases lost or misplaced references that I intended to use or to
verify. For this I crave the indulgence of readers and critics.
I am indebted to the following gentlemen for much kind help and
criticism in the revision of my manuscript and proof-sheets for the
press: my brother, the Rev. Victor Caldwell, M.A., of Patna, Ayrshire;
Professor John Laird of Queen’s University, Belfast; Professor
James Seth of the University of Edinburgh; Professor P. T. Lafleur of
M’Gill University. I also owe much in this same connexion to recent
conversations with Professors A. Lalande and D. Parodi of Paris,
upon Pragmatism and contemporary philosophy generally.
London, September 1913.
 CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. Introductory 1
Note on the Meaning of “Pragmatism” 21
II. Pragmatism and the Pragmatist Movement 23
III. Some Fundamental Characteristics 58
IV. Pragmatism and Human Activity 93
Appendix to Chapter IV.—Philosophy and the
Activity-Experience 109
V. Critical 116
VI. Pragmatism as Humanism 141
VII. Pragmatism as Americanism 168
VIII. Pragmatism and Anglo-Hegelian Rationalism 196
IX. Pragmatism and Idealism in the Philosophy
of Bergson 234
Concluding Remarks 262

INDEX 267
PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM
 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

Pragmatism has by this time received so much attention in the

reflective literature of the day that any writer upon the subject may
now fairly presume upon a general acquaintance with its main
principles and contentions. Indeed, it is probable that most thinking
people may be credited with the ability to have formed some sort of
judgment of their own about a philosophy whose main contention is
that true ideas are working ideas, and that truth itself, like a creed or
a belief, is simply a working valuation of reality. There are still,
however, some things to be said, at least in English, upon the place
and the meaning of Pragmatism in the philosophical reconstruction
that is generally felt to be so necessary to-day.
As far as the external signs of any such vital relation between
Pragmatism and our recent academic philosophy are concerned, the
reader may be aware, to begin with, that there have been many
1
important concessions made to pragmatists by such representative
rationalists as Mr. Bradley and Professor Taylor, not to speak of
2
others, and Pragmatism has certainly had a very powerful effect
upon the professional philosophy of both England and Germany,
judging at least from the extent to which many of the more prominent
representatives of philosophy in these countries have apparently
3
been compelled to accord to it at least an official recognition.
Pragmatism, again, in consequence of the different receptions
that it has met with at the hands of its friends and its foes, has
undergone various phases of exposition and of modification,
although it has not yet, nor is it on the whole likely to have, a
philosophical output comparable to that of Idealism. It has become
more and more conscious of its own affiliations and relations to
older, and to broader doctrines, declaring itself, in the hands of
Professor James and his friends, to be but a new name for older
ways of thinking. And it has succeeded, in a measure, in clearing
itself from liability to the superficial interpretation that it met with a
few years ago, when it was scoffed at for teaching that you may
believe “what you like,” for speaking, for example, as if the
“theoretical” consequences of truth were not to be considered as well
as the “practical.” Although still resting in the main upon an
outspoken declaration of war against Rationalism, it is no longer
blind to the place and the value of thought or the “concept,” in the
matter of the interpretation of our experience.
Pragmatism, as the theory is generally understood, rests in the
main upon the work of three men, Professors James and Dewey of
America, and Dr. Schiller of Oxford. The fact, along doubtless with
other things, that these men have ere now been spoken of as
occupying a right, a left, and a centre in the new movement, is
presumably an indication that it has already received its highest
theoretical expression—presumably in the California pamphlet of
Professor James, or in the famous Popular Science Monthly article
of Peirce, canonized as the patron saint of the movement by James.
Whether this be so or not, it has been in the main the work of
James to set forth the meaning of Pragmatism as a philosophy of
everyday life, as the theory of the attitude of man as man to the
world in which he finds himself. Dr. Schiller, again, it is claimed, has
done much to set forth Pragmatism to the world as an essentially
humanistic philosophy, recognizing and providing for the rights of
faith and of feeling in determining our beliefs and our theories about
things. This philosophy has “much in common with what in other
quarters is called Personalism.” It cannot, however, be differentiated
so sharply as Dr. Schiller apparently would have us believe from the
many manifestations of this philosophy that abound in modern times,
from Fichte, and from Lotze, down to men who are still living—
Eucken and others. The ingenious Professor Dewey, moreover, is
the champion of the scientific, or the empirical, or the “instrumental”
method in philosophy, and has worked hard and successfully at the
reform which he thinks must take place in logical and philosophical
conceptions when interpreted as simply tools or devices for the
economy of our thought.
When, in pragmatist fashion, we seek to judge of Pragmatism by
this last-mentioned matter of its results, by the things it has enabled
its advocates to accomplish, we find that we may, to begin with,
speak in the following terms of the work of Professor James. He has
certainly indicated how the pragmatist method may be applied to the
solution of some of the ordinary difficulties of reflective thought;
about, for example, the nature of matter or the nature of the soul, or
about the old opposition between the “one” and the “many,” about
such concepts as “thing,” “kinds,” “time,” “space,” the “fancied,” the
“real,” and so on. In all such cases an answer, he holds, is obtained
by putting, say, the initial difficulty in the following form: “What
practical difference can it make now that the world should be run by
matter or by spirit?”
A fair illustration of his meaning here would be his own
characteristic attitude, so far as the philosophy of religion is
concerned, to the so-called “theistic” proofs that have been part of
the stock in trade of rational theology. A “necessary being” and a
4
“whole of truth” and the “Absolute” are not, he would hold, what the
average man understands by God; they have hardly any perceptible
effect upon life and conduct—the all-important matter in the thought
of God as he conceives it. Only those notions, he would have it,
which can be interpreted by the thought of the “difference” they make
to our practical conduct are real notions at all—“Providence,” say, or
“God” as the guarantor of the reality and the permanence of the
moral order, and so on. The “soul,” again, he would hold, “is good for
just so much and no more.” And a similar thing, too, would be true
5
about Berkeley’s “matter,” or about the “matter” of the materialists.
This latter, for instance, cannot possibly do all it is claimed to be able
to do in the way of an explanation of the order of the world and the
phenomena of life.
Then again, James has written a great many pages upon the so-
called deeper view of human nature (as inclusive of will and
“emotion” in addition to mere thought) taken by Pragmatism in
comparison with that entertained by Rationalism. We shall have
occasion to return to this point.
He has made it clear, too, that it was an unfair interpretation of
Pragmatism to take it as a plea for believing what you like, as was
said above. Our experience, he puts it, must be consistent, the “parts
with the parts,” and the “parts with the whole.” Beliefs must not clash
with other beliefs, the mind being wedged tightly between the
coercion of the sensible order and that of the ideal order. By
“consequences,” too, he contends we may mean intellectual or
theoretical consequences as well as practical consequences.
He has also, along with his brother-pragmatists, raised the
question of the nature of Truth, attaining to such important results as
the following: (1) there is no such thing as pure truth, or ready-made
6
truth; (2) the “copy-theory” of truth is unintelligible. We shall later be
obliged to examine the more controversial positions that (3) truth is
not an end in itself, but a means towards vital satisfaction; (4) truth is
7
the “expedient” in the way of thinking, as the right is the expedient
in the way of acting, and so on.
Further, Professor James finds that Pragmatism leaves us with
the main body of our common-sense beliefs [Peirce holds practically
the same thing], such as the belief in “freedom”—as a “promise and
a relief,” he adds; and the belief in the religious outlook upon life, in
so far as it “works.” This is the attitude and the tenor of the well-
known books on The Will to Believe and The Varieties of Religious
8
Experience. “Our acts, our turning-places, where we seem to
ourselves to make ourselves and grow, are the parts of the world to
which we are closest, the parts of which our knowledge is the most
intimate and complete. Why should we not take them at their face-
value?” And yet, as against this attitude, Professor James elsewhere
finds himself unable to believe “that our human experience is the
highest form of experience extant in the universe.” It is the
emergence of many such incoherences in his writings that gives to
his pragmatist philosophy of religion a subjective and temperamental
character, and makes it seem to be lacking in any objective basis. “If
radically tough, the hurly-burly of the sensible facts of nature will be
enough for you, and you will need no religion at all. If radically
tender, you will take up with the more monistic form of religion: the
pluralistic form—that is, reliance on possibilities that are not
9
necessities—will not seem to offer you security enough.” He
“inclines,” on the whole, to “Meliorism,” treating satisfaction as
neither necessary nor impossible; the pragmatist lives in “the world
of possibilities.”
These words show clearly how difficult it is to pin down Professor
James to any single intelligible philosophy of belief, if belief be
interpreted as in any sense a “commerce” of the soul with objective
realities, as something more than a merely generous faith in the
gradual perfection or betterment of human society.
“Religious experience,” as he puts it in his Pluralistic Universe,
“peculiarly so called, needs, in my opinion, to be carefully considered
and interpreted by every one who aspires to reason out a more
complete philosophy.” In this same book, it is declared, however, on
the one hand, that “we have outgrown the old theistic orthodoxy, the
God of our popular Christianity being simply one member of a
pluralistic system”; and yet, on the other hand, and with equal
emphasis, that “we finite minds may simultaneously be conscious
10
with one another in a supernatural intelligence.”
The book on The Meaning of Truth seems to return, in the main,
to the American doctrine of the strenuous life as the only
courageous, and therefore true, attitude to beliefs, as the life that
contains, in the plenitude of its energizing, the answer to all
questions. “Pluralism affords us,” it openly confesses, “no moral
holidays, and it is unable to let loose quietistic raptures, and this is a
serious deficiency in the pluralistic philosophy which we have
professed.” Professor James here again attacks Absolutism in the
old familiar manner, as somehow unequal to the complexity of
things, or the pulsating process of the world, casting himself upon
the philosophy of experience, and upon the evident reality of the
“many” and of the endless variety of the relations of things, in
opposition to the abstract simplicity of the “one,” and the limited
range of a merely logical, or mathematical, manner of conceiving of
reality. “The essential service of Humanism, as I conceive the
situation, is to have seen that, though one part of experience may
lean upon another part to make it what it is in any one of several
aspects in which it may be considered, experience as a whole is self-
sustaining and leans on nothing.... “It gets rid of the standing
problems of Monism and of other metaphysical systems and
11
paradoxes.”
Professor James exhibits, however, at the same time a very
imperfect conception of philosophy, holding that it gives us, in
general, “no new range of practical power,” ignoring, as it were, the
difference between philosophy and poetry and religion and mere
personal enthusiasm. And he leaves the whole question of the first
principles of both knowledge and conduct practically unsettled.
12
These things are to him but conceptual tools, and “working” points
of departure for our efforts, and there seems in his books to be no
way of reducing them to any kind of system. And he makes, lastly, a
most unsuccessful attempt at a theory of reality. Reality is to him
sometimes simply a moving equilibrium of experience, the “flux” we
have already referred to; sometimes the fleeting generations of men
who have thought out for us all our philosophies and sciences and
cults and varied experiences, and sometimes the “common-sense
world in which we find things partly joined and partly disjoined.” It is
sometimes, too, other things even than these. In a chapter of the
13
book upon Pragmatism it is stated in italics that “reality is, in
general, what truths have to take account of,” and that it has three
parts: (1) “the flux of our sensations,” and (2) the “relations that
obtain between our sensations, or between their copies in our
minds,” and (3) “the previous truths of which every new inquiry takes
14
account.” Then again, in A Pluralistic Universe, it is declared that
“there may ultimately never be an All-form at all, that the substance
of reality may never get totally collected ... and that a distributive
form of reality, the Each-form, is logically as acceptable and
empirical and probable as the All-form.” This is the theory of the
15
outspoken “radical empiricism” which is the contention of the
volume upon The Meaning of Truth, the main effort of which seems
to be to show again that the world is still in the process of making. It
has the additional drawback of bringing Pragmatism down not only to
the level of radical empiricism, but to that of common-sense realism
or dualism [the belief in the two independent realities of matter and
16
mind], and to that of the “copy-theory” of truth, from which both
Pragmatism and Radical Empiricism are especially supposed to
deliver us. “I will say here again, for the sake of emphasis, that the
existence of the object ... is the only reason, in innumerable cases,
why the idea does work successfully.... Both Dewey and I hold firmly
17
... to objects independent of our own judgments.” Much of all this
is, no doubt, like surrendering philosophy altogether.
In the case of Dr. Schiller, we may notice first his frequent and
successful exhibition of the extent to which human activity enters into
the constitution not only of “truth,” but of “reality,” of what we mean
by reality. This is interwoven in his books with his whole philosophy
of truth as something merely human, as “dependent upon human
purposes,” as a “valuation” expressive of the satisfactory, or the
unsatisfactory, nature of the contents of “primary reality.” It is
interwoven, too, with his doctrine that reality is essentially a ὕλη,
something that is still in the making, something that human beings
can somehow re-make and make perfect. Then this position about
truth and reality is used by him, as by James, as a ground of attack
against Absolutism, with its notion of a “pre-existing ideal” of
knowledge and reality, as already existing in a super-sensible world,
that descends magically into the passively recipient soul of man.
There is no such thing, he claims, as absolute truth, and the
conception of an “absolute reality” is both futile and pernicious.
18
Absolutism, too, has an affinity to Solipsism, the difficulties of
which it can escape only by self-elimination.
19
Then Absolutism is, Schiller continues, “essentially irreligious,”
although it was fostered at first in England for essentially religious
20
purposes. It has developed there now at last, he reminds us, a
21
powerful left wing which, as formerly in Germany, has opened a
quarrel with theology. In Absolutism, the two phases of Deity—God
as moral principle, and God as an intellectual principle—“fall apart,”
and absolutist metaphysic has really no connexion with genuine
religion. Humanism can “renew Hegelianism” by treating the making
of truth as also the making of reality. Freedom is real, and may
22
possibly “pervade the universe.” All truth implies belief, and it is
obviously one of the merits of Pragmatism to bring truth and reason
together. Beliefs and ideas and wishes are really essential and
integral features in real knowing, and if knowing, as above, really
transforms our experience, they must be treated as “real forces,”
23
which cannot be ignored by philosophy.
Against all this would-be positive, or constructive, philosophy we
must, however, record the fact that the pragmatism of Dr. Schiller
breaks down altogether in the matter of the recognition of a
distinction between the “discovering” of reality and the “making” of
reality. And despite the ingenuity of his essay in the first edition of
24
Humanism upon “Activity and Substance,” there is not in his
writings, any more than in those of James, any coherent or adequate
theory of reality. And this is the case whether we think of the “primary
reality” upon which we human beings are said to “react,” in our
knowledge and in our action, or of the supreme reality of God’s
existence, of which such an interesting speculative account is given
in the essay referred to. Nor is there in Dr. Schiller, any more than in
James, any adequate conception, either of philosophy as a whole, or
of the theory of knowledge, or of the relation of Pragmatism as a
“method” (it is modestly claimed to be only such, but the position is
25
not adhered to) to philosophy as such. “For the pragmatic theory of
knowledge initial principles are literally ἀρχαί, mere starting-points
variously, arbitrarily, casually selected, from which we hope to try to
advance to something better. Little we care what their credentials
may be.... And as far as the future is concerned, systems of
philosophy will abound as before, and will be as various as ever, but
they will probably be more brilliant in colouring and more attractive in
their form, for they will certainly have to be put forward and
acknowledged as works of art that bear the impress of a unique and
26
individual soul.”
The main result of pragmatist considerations in the case of
Professor Dewey is perhaps that reconsideration of the problems of
logic and knowledge in the light of the facts of genetic and functional
psychology which has now become fairly general on the part of
English and American students of philosophy. It is through his
influence generally that pragmatists seem always to be talking about
the way in which we “arrive at” our beliefs, about ideas as
“instruments” for the interpretation and arrangement of our
experience, about the “passage” from cognitive expectation to
“fulfilment,” about ideas as “plans of action” and mental habits, about
the growth and the utility of the truth, about the “instrumental”
character of all our thinking, about beliefs as more fundamental than
knowledge, and so on.
Professor Dewey has also written many more or less popular,
but none the less highly valuable, short studies upon the application
of an instrumentalist conception of philosophy to education and to
social questions. One of his last pieces of service in this connection
is a volume in which he associates Pragmatism with the general
revolution effected in the entire range of the mental and moral
sciences by Darwinism, with the present tendency in philosophy to
turn away from ultimate questions to specific problems, and with the
27
reform which, in his opinion, is necessary in our educational ideals
generally.
These three leading exponents of Pragmatism may be regarded
as meeting the objections to philosophy urged respectively by the
“man of affairs,” by the “mystical, religious” man, and by the “man of
28
science.” By this it is meant that the man of affairs will find in
James an exposition of philosophy as the study of different ways of
looking at the world; the mystical, religious man will find in Schiller a
treatment of philosophy as the justification of an essentially spiritual
philosophy of life; and that the scientific man will find in the writings
of Dewey and his associates a treatment of philosophy as nothing
else than an extension into the higher regions of thought of the same