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 CONTENTS IN DETAIL

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION
Who Is This Book For?
Python Version(s) and Installation
How Will I Explain OOP?
What’s in the Book
Development Environments
Widgets and Example Games

PART I: INTRODUCING OBJECT-ORIENTED

PROGRAMMING

CHAPTER 1: PROCEDURAL PYTHON EXAMPLES

Higher or Lower Card Game
Representing the Data
Implementation
Reusable Code
Bank Account Simulations
Analysis of Required Operations and Data
Implementation 1—Single Account Without Functions
Implementation 2—Single Account with Functions
Implementation 3—Two Accounts
Implementation 4—Multiple Accounts Using Lists
Implementation 5—List of Account Dictionaries
Common Problems with Procedural Implementation
Object-Oriented Solution—First Look at a Class
Summary

CHAPTER 2: MODELING PHYSICAL OBJECTS WITH OBJECT-

ORIENTED PROGRAMMING
Building Software Models of Physical Objects
State and Behavior: Light Switch Example
Classes, Objects, and Instantiation
Writing a Class in Python
Scope and Instance Variables
Differences Between Functions and Methods
Creating an Object from a Class
Calling Methods of an Object
Creating Multiple Instances from the Same Class
Python Data Types Are Implemented as Classes
Definition of an Object
Building a Slightly More Complicated Class
Representing a More Complicated Physical Object as a Class
Passing Arguments to a Method
Multiple Instances
Initialization Parameters
Classes in Use
OOP as a Solution
Summary

CHAPTER 3: MENTAL MODELS OF OBJECTS AND THE

MEANING OF “SELF”
Revisiting the DimmerSwitch Class
High-Level Mental Model #1
A Deeper Mental Model #2
What Is the Meaning of “self”?
Summary

CHAPTER 4: MANAGING MULTIPLE OBJECTS

Bank Account Class
Importing Class Code
Creating Some Test Code
Creating Multiple Accounts
Multiple Account Objects in a List
Multiple Objects with Unique Identifiers
Building an Interactive Menu
Creating an Object Manager Object
Building the Object Manager Object
Main Code That Creates an Object Manager Object
Better Error Handling with Exceptions
try and except
The raise Statement and Custom Exceptions
Using Exceptions in Our Bank Program
Account Class with Exceptions
Optimized Bank Class
Main Code That Handles Exceptions
Calling the Same Method on a List of Objects
Interface vs. Implementation
Summary

PART II: GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACES WITH

PYGAME

CHAPTER 5: INTRODUCTION TO PYGAME

Installing Pygame
Window Details
The Window Coordinate System
Pixel Colors
Event-Driven Programs
Using Pygame
Bringing Up a Blank Window
Drawing an Image
Detecting a Mouse Click
Handling the Keyboard
Creating a Location-Based Animation
Using Pygame rects
Playing Sounds
Playing Sound Effects
Playing Background Music
Drawing Shapes
Reference for Primitive Shapes
Summary

CHAPTER 6: OBJECT-ORIENTED PYGAME

Building the Screensaver Ball with OOP Pygame
Creating a Ball Class
Using the Ball Class
Creating Many Ball Objects
Creating Many, Many Ball Objects
Building a Reusable Object-Oriented Button
Building a Button Class
Main Code Using a SimpleButton
Creating a Program with Multiple Buttons
Building a Reusable Object-Oriented Text Display
Steps to Display Text
Creating a SimpleText Class
Demo Ball with SimpleText and SimpleButton
Interface vs. Implementation
Callbacks
Creating a Callback
Using a Callback with SimpleButton
Summary

CHAPTER 7: PYGAME GUI WIDGETS

Passing Arguments into a Function or Method
Positional and Keyword Parameters
Additional Notes on Keyword Parameters
Using None as a Default Value
Choosing Keywords and Default Values
Default Values in GUI Widgets
The pygwidgets Package
Setting Up
Overall Design Approach
Adding an Image
Adding Buttons, Checkboxes, and Radio Buttons
Text Output and Input
Other pygwidgets Classes
pygwidgets Example Program
The Importance of a Consistent API
Summary

PART III: ENCAPSULATION, POLYMORPHISM, AND

INHERITANCE

CHAPTER 8: ENCAPSULATION
Encapsulation with Functions
Encapsulation with Objects
Objects Own Their Data
Interpretations of Encapsulation
Direct Access and Why You Should Avoid It
Strict Interpretation with Getters and Setters
Safe Direct Access
Making Instance Variables More Private
Implicitly Private
More Explicitly Private
Decorators and @property
Encapsulation in pygwidgets Classes
A Story from the Real World
Abstraction
Summary

CHAPTER 9: POLYMORPHISM
Sending Messages to Real-World Objects
A Classic Example of Polymorphism in Programming
Example Using Pygame Shapes
The Square Shape Class
The Circle and Triangle Shape Classes
The Main Program Creating Shapes
Extending a Pattern
pygwidgets Exhibits Polymorphism
Polymorphism for Operators
Magic Methods
Comparison Operator Magic Methods
A Rectangle Class with Magic Methods
Main Program Using Magic Methods
Math Operator Magic Methods
Vector Example
Creating a String Representation of Values in an Object
A Fraction Class with Magic Methods
Summary

CHAPTER 10: INHERITANCE

Inheritance in Object-Oriented Programming
Implementing Inheritance
Employee and Manager Example
Base Class: Employee
Subclass: Manager
Test Code
The Client’s View of a Subclass
Real-World Examples of Inheritance
InputNumber
DisplayMoney
Example Usage
Multiple Classes Inheriting from the Same Base Class
Abstract Classes and Methods
How pygwidgets Uses Inheritance
Class Hierarchy
The Difficulty of Programming with Inheritance
Summary

CHAPTER 11: MANAGING MEMORY USED BY OBJECTS

Object Lifetime
Reference Count
Garbage Collection
Class Variables
Class Variable Constants
Class Variables for Counting
Putting It All Together: Balloon Sample Program
Module of Constants
Main Program Code
Balloon Manager
Balloon Class and Objects
Managing Memory: Slots
Summary

PART IV: USING OOP IN GAME DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 12: CARD GAMES

The Card Class
The Deck Class
The Higher or Lower Game
Main Program
Game Object
Testing with __name__
Other Card Games
Blackjack Deck
Games with Unusual Card Decks
Summary

CHAPTER 13: TIMERS

Timer Demonstration Program
Three Approaches for Implementing Timers
Counting Frames
Timer Event
Building a Timer by Calculating Elapsed Time
Installing pyghelpers
The Timer Class
Displaying Time
CountUpTimer
CountDownTimer
Summary

CHAPTER 14: ANIMATION

Building Animation Classes
SimpleAnimation Class
SimpleSpriteSheetAnimation Class
Merging Two Classes
Animation Classes in pygwidgets
Animation Class
SpriteSheetAnimation Class
Common Base Class: PygAnimation
Example Animation Program
Summary

CHAPTER 15: SCENES

The State Machine Approach
A pygame Example with a State Machine
A Scene Manager for Managing Many Scenes
A Demo Program Using a Scene Manager
The Main Program
Building the Scenes
A Typical Scene
Rock, Paper, Scissors Using Scenes
Communication Between Scenes
Requesting Information from a Target Scene
Sending Information to a Target Scene
Sending Information to All Scenes
Testing Communications Among Scenes
Implementation of the Scene Manager
run() Method
Main Methods
Communication Between Scenes
Summary

CHAPTER 16: FULL GAME: DODGER

Modal Dialogs
Yes/No and Alert Dialogs
Answer Dialogs
Building a Full Game: Dodger
Game Overview
Implementation
Extensions to the Game
Summary

CHAPTER 17: DESIGN PATTERNS AND WRAP-UP

Model View Controller
File Display Example
Statistical Display Example
Advantages of the MVC Pattern
Wrap-Up

INDEX
OBJECT-ORIENTED PYTHON

Master OOP by Building Games and

GUIs

by Irv Kalb
Object-Oriented Python. Copyright © 2022 by Irv Kalb.
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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
experimental and hypothetical method with which he is already
familiar in the physical sciences.
In this version of the work of the three leading pragmatists it is
assumed, of course, that the pragmatist philosophy is the only
philosophy that can show to the average man that philosophy can
really do something useful—can “bake bread,” if you will, can give to
a man the food of a man. It is assumed, too, that it is the only
philosophy which proceeds scientifically, that is to say, by means of
observation and of hypotheses that “work,” and by subsequent
deduction and by “verification.” And again, that it is the only
philosophy that gives to man the realities upon which he can base
his aspirations or his faith in distinction, that is to say, from the mere
abstractions of Rationalism in any form.
By way of a few quotations illustrative of the fundamental
contentions of the pragmatists, we may select the following: “Ideas
become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory
relation with other parts of our experience, to summarise them and
get about among them by conceptional short-cuts instead of
following the interminable succession of particular phenomena. Any
idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us
prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part,
linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving
labour—is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true
29
instrumentally.” “The true is the name of whatever proves itself to
be good in the way of belief, and good for definite and assignable
30
reasons.” From Professor Dewey: “Thinking is a kind of activity
which we perform at specific need, just as at other times we engage
in other sorts of activity, as converse with a friend, draw a plan for a
house, take a walk, eat a dinner, purchase a suit of clothes, etc. etc.
The measure of its success, the standard of its validity is precisely
the degree in which thinking disposes of the difficulty and allows us
to proceed with the more direct modes of experiencing, that are
31
henceforth possessed of more assured and deepened value.”
From Dr. Schiller’s book, Studies in Humanism: “Pragmatism is the
doctrine that when an assertion claims truth, its consequences are
always used to test its claims; that (2) the truth of an assertion
depends on its application; that (3) the meaning of a rule lies in its
application; that (4) all meaning depends on purpose; that (5) all
mental life is purposive. It [Pragmatism] must constitute itself into (6)
a systematic protest against all ignoring of the purposiveness of
actual knowing, alike whether it is abstracted from for the sake of the
imaginary, pure, or absolute reason of the rationalists, or eliminated
for the sake of an equally imaginary or pure mechanism of the
naturalists. So conceived, we may describe it as (7) a conscious
application to logic of a teleological psychology which implies
ultimately a voluntaristic metaphysics.”
From these citations, and from the descriptive remarks of the
preceding two paragraphs, we may perhaps be enabled to infer that
our Anglo-American Pragmatism has progressed from the stage of
(1) a mere method of discussing truth and thinking in relation to the
problem of philosophy as a whole, (2) that of a more or less definite
and detailed criticism of the rationalism that overlooks the practical,
or purposive, character of most of our knowledge, to that of (3) a
humanistic or “voluntaristic” or “personalistic” philosophy, with its
32
many different associations and affiliations. One of the last
developments, for example, of this pragmatist humanism is Dr.
Schiller’s association of philosophy with the metaphysics of
evolution, with the attempt to find the goal of the world-process and
of human history in a changeless society of perfected individuals.
We shall immediately see, however, that this summary
description of the growth of Pragmatism has to be supplemented by
a recognition of (1) some of the different phases Pragmatism has
assumed on the continent of Europe, (2) the different phases that
may be detected in the reception or criticism accorded to it in
different countries, and (3) some of the results of the pragmatist
movement upon contemporary philosophy. All these things have to
do with the making of the complex thing that we think of as
Pragmatism and the pragmatist movement.
 A NOTE ON THE MEANING OF
“PRAGMATISM”
(1) “The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of
the following maxim for obtaining clearness of apprehension: ‘Consider what
effects that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of
our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our
conception of the object’” (Baldwin’s Philosophical Dictionary, vol. ii. p. 321). [We
can see from this citation that the application of its formulæ about “consequences”
to metaphysics, or philosophy generally, must be considered as a part, or aspect,
of the pragmatist philosophy.]
(2) “The doctrine that the whole meaning of a conception expresses itself in
practical consequences; consequences either in the shape of conduct to be
recommended, or in that of experiences to be expected, if the conception be true;
which consequences would be different, if it were untrue, and must be different
from the consequences by which the meaning of other conceptions is in turn
expressed. If a second conception should not appear to have other consequence,
then it must be really only the first conception under a different name. In
methodology, it is certain that to trace and compare their respective consequences
is an admirable way of establishing the different meanings of different conceptions”
(ibid., from Professor James).
(3) “A widely current opinion during the last quarter of a century has been that
‘reasonableness’ is not a good in itself, but only for the sake of something.
Whether it be so or not seems to be a synthetical question [i.e. a question that is
not merely a verbal question, a question of words], not to be settled by an appeal
to the Principle of Contradiction [the principle hitherto relied upon by Rationalism
or Intellectualism].... Almost everybody will now agree that the ultimate good lies in
the evolutionary process in some way. If so, it is not in individual reactions in their
segregation, but in something general or continuous. Synechism is founded on the
notion that the coalescence, the becoming continuous, the becoming governed by
laws, the becoming instinct with general ideas, are but phases of one and the
same process of the growth of reasonableness” (ibid. p. 322. From Dr. Peirce, the
bracket clauses being the author’s).
(4) “It is the belief that ideas invariably strive after practical expression, and
that our whole life is teleological. Putting the matter logically, logic formulates
theoretically what is of regulative importance for life—for our ‘experience’ in view of
practical ends. Its philosophical meaning is the conviction that all facts of nature,
physically and spiritually, find their expressions in ‘will’; will and energy are
identical. This tendency is in agreement with the practical tendencies of American
thought and American life in so far as they both set a definite end before Idealism”
(Ueberweg-Heinze, Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. iv., written and contributed by
Professor Matoon Monroe Curtis, Professor of Philosophy in Western Reserve
University, Cleveland, U.S.A.).
(5) See also an article in Mind for October 1900, vol. ix. N.S., upon
“Pragmatism” by the author of this book on Pragmatism and Idealism, referred to
as one of the early sources in Baldwin’s Philosophical Dictionary (New York and
London) and in Ueberweg-Heinze’s Geschichte, Vierter Teil (Berlin, 1906).
The conclusion that I am inclined to draw from the foregoing official statements
(and also, say, from another official article like that of M. Lalande in the Revue
Philosophique, 1906, on “Pragmatisme et Pragmaticisme”) is that the term
“Pragmatism” is not of itself a matter of great importance, and that there is no
separate, intelligible, independent, self-consistent system of philosophy that may
be called Pragmatism. It is a general name for the Practicalism or Voluntarism or
Humanism or the Philosophy of the Practical Reason, or the Activism, or the
Instrumentalism, or the Philosophy of Hypotheses, or the Dynamic Philosophy of
life and things that is discussed in different ways in this book upon Pragmatism
and Idealism. And it is not and cannot be independent of the traditional body of
philosophical truth in relation to which it can alone be defined.
 CHAPTER II
PRAGMATISM AND THE PRAGMATIST
MOVEMENT

In considering some of the results of pragmatist and voluntarist

doctrines in the case of European writers, to whom the American-
English triumvirate used to look somewhat sympathetically, we may
begin with Italy, which boasted, according to Dr. Schiller (writing in
1907), of a youthful band of avowed pragmatists with a militant
33
organ, the Leonardo. “Fundamentally,” declares Papini, the leader
of this movement, “Pragmatism means an unstiffening of all our
theories and beliefs, by attending to their instrumental value. It
incorporates and harmonizes various ancient tendencies, such as
Nominalism, with its protest against the use of general terms,
Utilitarianism, with its emphasis upon particular aspects and
problems, Positivism, with its disdain of verbal and useless
questions, Kantism, with its doctrine of the primacy of practical
reason, Voluntarism, with its treatment of the intellect as the tool of
the will, and Freedom, and a positive attitude towards religious
questions. It is the tendency of taking all these, and other theories,
for what they are worth, being chiefly a corridor-theory, with doors
and avenues into various theories, and a central rallying-ground for
them all.” These words are valuable as one of the many confessions
of the affiliations of Pragmatism to several other more or less
experiential, or practical, views of philosophy. It is perfectly obvious
from them that Pragmatism stands, in the main, for the apprehension
of all truth as subservient to practice, as but a device for the
“economy” of thought, for the grasping of the multiplicity and the
complexity of phenomena. It looks upon man as made, in the main,
for action, and not for speculation—a doctrine which even Mr. Peirce,
by the way, now speaks of as “a stoical maxim which to me, at the
age of sixty, does not recommend itself so forcibly as it did at
34
thirty.”
“The various ideal worlds are here,” continues Papini, according
35
to the version of James, “because the real world fails to satisfy us.
All our ideal instruments are certainly imperfect. But philosophy can
be regenerated ... it can become pragmatic in the general sense of
the word, a general theory of human action ... so that philosophic
thought will resolve itself into a comparative discussion of all the
possible programmes for man’s life, when man is once for all
regarded as a creative being.... As such, man becomes a kind of
god, and where are we to draw the limits?” In an article called “From
Man to God,” Papini, in the Leonardo, lets his imagination work in
stretching the limits of this way of thinking.
These prophetic, or Promethean, utterances—and we must
never forget that even to the Greeks philosophy was always
something of a religion or a life—may be paralleled by some of the
more enthusiastic and unguarded, early utterances of Dr. Schiller
about “voluntarism” or “metaphysical personalism” as the one
“courageous,” and the only potent, philosophy; or about the
“storming of the Jericho of rationalism” by the “jeers” and the
“trumpetings” of the confident humanists and their pragmatic
confrères. The underlying element of truth in them, and, for that part
of it, in many of the similar utterances of many of our modern
humanists, from Rabelais to Voltaire and from Shelley to Marx and
Nietzsche, is, as we may see, that a true metaphysic must serve, not
36
only as a rational system for the intellect, but as a “dynamic” or
motive for action and achievement, for the conscious activity of
rational, self-conscious beings.
37
As for the matter of any further developments of the free,
creative religion hinted by Papini, we had, in 1903, the solemn
declaration of Professor James that “the programme of the man-god
is one of the great type programmes of philosophy,” and that he
himself had been “slow” in coming to a perception of the full
inwardness of the idea. Then it led evidently in Italy itself to a new
doctrine which was trumpeted there a year or two ago in the public
38
press as “Futurism,” in which “courage, audacity and rebellion”
were the essential elements, and which could not “abide” the mere
mention of such things as “priests” and “ideals” and “professors” and
“moralism.” The extravagances of Prezzolini, who thinks of man as a
“sentimental gorilla,” were apparently the latest outcome of this
anarchical individualism and practicalism. Pragmatism was
converted by him into a sophisticated opportunism and a modern
Machiavellism, a method of attaining contentment in one’s life and of
dominating one’s fellow-creatures by playing upon their fancies and
prejudices as does the religious charlatan or the quack doctor or the
rhetorician.
The reader who may care to contemplate all this radical,
pragmatist enthusiasm for the New Reformation in a more
accessible, and a less exaggerated, form had better perhaps consult
the recent work of Mr. Sturt of Oxford on the Idea of a Free Church.
In this work the principles of Pragmatism are applied, first, critically
and in the main negatively, to the moral dogmas of traditional
Christianity, and then positively to the new conception of religion he
would substitute for all this—the development of personality in
accordance with the claims of family and of national life. A fair-
minded criticism of this book would, I think, lead to the conclusion
that the changes contemplated by Mr. Sturt are already part and
parcel of the programme of liberal Christianity, whether we study this
in the form of the many more or less philosophical presentations of
the same in modern German theology, or in the form of the free,
moral and social efforts of the voluntary religion of America and
England. In America many of the younger thinkers in theology and
philosophy are already writing in a more or less popular manner
upon Pragmatism as a philosophy that bids fair to harmonize
“traditional” and “radical” conceptions of religion. One of these
39
writers, for example, in a recent important commemorative volume,
tries to show how this may be done by interpreting the
“supernatural,” not as the “trans-experimental,” but as the “ethical” in
experience, and by turning “dogmatic” into “historical theology.” And
it would not be difficult to find many books and addresses in which
the same idea is expressed. The more practical wing of this same
party endeavours to connect Pragmatism with the whole philosophy
and psychology of religious conversion, as this has been worked
40 41
over by recent investigators like Stanley Hall, Starbuck, and
others, and, above all, by James in his striking volume The Varieties
42
of Religious Experience.
The fact, of course—and I shall immediately refer to it—that
Pragmatism has been hailed in France as a salutary doctrine, not
merely by Liberals and Evangelicals, but by devout Catholics and
Anti-modernists, is perhaps enough to give us some pause in the
matter of its application in the sphere of theoretical and practical
religion. It is useful, it would seem, sometimes to “liberate” the spirit
of man, and useful, too, at other times to connect the strivings of the
individual with the more or less organized experiences of past ages.
Turning, then, to France, it is, judging from the claims of the
pragmatists, and from some of the literature bearing upon this entire
43
subject, fairly evident that there has been a kind of association or
relationship between Pragmatism and the following tendencies in
recent French philosophy: (1) the “freedom” and “indeterminism”
44
philosophy of Renouvier and other members of the Neo-Critical
school, and of Boutroux and Bergson, who, “although differing from
each other in many important respects,” all “belong to the same
movement of thought, the reaction against Hegelianism and the cult
of science which has dominated France since the decline of the
45
metaphysics of the school of Cousin”; (2) the philosophy of
science and scientific hypotheses represented by writers like
46 47 48
Poincaré, Brunschvicg, Le Roy, Milhaud, Abel Rey, and
others; (3) the religious philosophy and the fideism of the followers of
the spiritualistic metaphysic of Bergson, many of whom go further
than he does, and “make every effort to bring him to the confessional
49
faith”; and (4) the French philosophy of to-day that definitely bears
50
the name of Pragmatism, that of M. Blondel, who in 1893 wrote a
suggestive work entitled L’Action, and who claims to have coined the
word Pragmatism, after much careful consideration and
discrimination, as early as 1888—many years before the California
pamphlet of James.
The first of these points of correspondence or relationship we
can pass over with the remark that we shall have a good deal to say
about the advantage enjoyed by Pragmatism over Rationalism in the
treatment of “freedom” and the “volitional” side of human nature, and
also about the general pragmatist reaction against Rationalism.
And as for the philosophy of science, it has been shown that our
English-speaking pragmatists cannot exactly pride themselves in the
somewhat indiscriminate manner of James and Schiller upon the
supposed support for their “hypothetical” conception of science and
philosophy to be found in the work of their French associates upon
the logic of science. “The men of great learning who were named as
sponsors of this new philosophy have more and more testified what
reservations they make, and how greatly their conclusions differ from
51
those which are currently attributed to them.” Both Brunschvicg
and Poincaré, in fact, take the greatest pains in their books to
dissociate themselves from anything like the appearance of an
acceptance of the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, from the
signs of any lack of faith in the idea that science, as far as it goes,
gives us a true revelation of the nature of reality.
Then in regard to (3) the French pragmatist philosophy or
religion we have only to read the reports and the quotations of M.
Lalande to see in this philosophy the operation of an uncritical
dogmatism or a blind “fideism” to which very few other philosophers,
either in France or in any other country, would care to subscribe. “La
Revue de Philosophie, which is directed by ecclesiastics, recently
extolled pragmatism as a means of proving orthodox beliefs.” ...
“This system solves a great many difficulties in philosophy; it
explains the necessity of principles marvellously.” ... “The existence
of God, Providence and Immortality are demonstrated by their happy
effects upon our terrestrial life.” ... “If we can consider the matter
carefully, it will be seen that the Good is the useful; for not to be
good in anything is synonymous with being bad, and everywhere the
52
true is the useful. It is in this assertion that Pragmatism consists.”
And as to the fourth tendency, there is, at its outset, according to
M. Lalande, a more rational or ethical basis for the fideism of M.
Blondel’s book upon action, which starts off with a criticism of
philosophic dilettantism quite analogous with that which Mr. Peirce
follows in How to Make Our Ideas Clear. But M. Blondel “does not
continue in the same manner, and his conclusion is very different.
Rejecting all philosophical formalism, he puts his trust in moral
experience, and consults it directly. He thinks that moral experience
shows that action is not wholly self-contained, but that it
presupposes a reality which transcends the world in which we
53
participate.”
Finally, maintains M. Blondel, “we are unable, as Pascal already
said, either to live, or to understand ourselves, by ourselves alone.
So that, unless we mutilate our nature by renouncing all earnestness
of life, we are necessarily led to recognize in ourselves the presence
of God. Our problem, therefore, can only be solved by an act of
absolute faith in a positive religion [Catholicism in his case]. This
completes the series of acts of faith, without which no action, not
even our daily acts, could be accomplished, and without which we
should fall into absolute barrenness, both practical and
54
intellectual.”
Now again these words about our being unable to understand
ourselves “by ourselves alone” contain an element of truth which we
may associate with the pragmatist tendency to believe in a socialized
55
(as distinguished from an individualistic) interpretation of our
common moral life, to believe, that is to say, in a society of persons
as the truth (or the reality) of the universe, rather than in an
interpretation of the universe as the thinking experience of a single
absolute intelligence. This, however, is also a point which we are
56
obliged to defer until we take up the general subject of the
relations between Pragmatism and Rationalism. The other words of
the paragraph, in respect of our absolute need of faith in some
positive religion, are, of course, expressive again of the uncritical
fideism to which reference has already been made. As an offset or
alternative to the “free” religion of Papini and James and to the
experimental or practical religion of different Protestant bodies, it is
57
enough of itself to give us pause in estimating the real drift of
Pragmatism in regard to religious faith and the philosophy of
58
religion.
59
We shall meantime take leave of French Pragmatism with the
reflection that it is thus obviously as complex and as confusing and
confused a thing as is the Pragmatism of other countries. It is now
almost a generation since we began to hear of a renascence of
60
spiritualism and idealism in France in connexion not merely with
61
the work of philosophers like Renouvier and Lachelier and Fouillée
and Boutroux, but with men of letters like De Vogué, Lavisse,
62
Faguet, Desjardins and the rest, and some of the French
Pragmatism of to-day is but one of the more specialized phases of
the broader movement.
And as for the special question of the influence of James and his
philosophy upon Bergson, and of that of the possible return influence
63
of Bergson upon James, the evidence produced by Lalande from
Bergson himself is certainly all to the effect that both men have
worked very largely independently of each other, although perfectly
cognisant now and then of each other’s publications. Both men,
along with their followers (and this is all that needs interest us), have
obviously been under the influence of ideas that have long been in
64
the air about the need of a philosophy that is “more truly empirical”
than the traditional philosophy, and more truly inclined to “discover
what is involved in our actions in the ultimate recess, when,
unconsciously and in spite of ourselves, we support existence and
65
cling to it whether we completely understand it or not.”
As for Pragmatism and pragmatist achievements in Germany,
there is, as might well be supposed, little need of saying much. The
genius of the country is against both; and if there is any Pragmatism
in Germany, it must have contrived somehow to have been “born
66
again” of the “spirit” before obtaining official recognition. So much
even might be inferred from the otherwise generous recognition
accorded to the work of James by scholars and thinkers like Eucken
67
and Stein and the rest. Those men cannot see Pragmatism save in
the broad light of the “humanism” that has always characterised
philosophy, when properly appreciated, and understood in the light of
its true genesis. Pragmatism has in fact been long known in
Germany under the older names of “Voluntarism” and “Humanism,”
although it may doubtless be associated there with some of the more
pronounced tendencies of the hour, such as the recent insistence of
the “Göttingen Fries School” upon the importance of the “genetic”
and the “descriptive” point of view in regard even to the matter of the
supposed first principles of knowledge, the hypothetical and
methodological conception of philosophy taken by philosophical
68
scientists like Mach and Ostwald and their followers, the
69
“empiricism” and “realism” of thinkers like the late Dr. Avenarius of
Zurich.
Then the so-called “teleological,” or “practical,” character of our
human thinking has also been recognized in modern German
thought long before the days of Peirce and Dewey, even by such
strictly academic thinkers as Lotze and Sigwart. The work of the
latter thinker upon Logic, by the way, was translated into English
under distinctly Neo-Hegelian influences. In the second portion of
this work the universal presuppositions of knowledge are considered,
not merely as a priori truths, but as akin in some important respects
“to the ethical principles by which we are wont to determine and
70
guide our free conscious activity.” But even apart from this matter
of the natural association of Pragmatism with the Voluntarism that
71
has long existed in German philosophy, we may undoubtedly pass
to the following things in contemporary and recent German thought
as sympathetic, in the main, to the pragmatist tendencies of James
and Dewey and Schiller: (1) the practical conception of science and
philosophy, as both of them a kind of “economy of the attention,” a
72
sort of “conceptual shorthand” (for the purposes of the
“description” of our environment) that we have referred to in the case
of Mach and Ostwald; (2) the close association between the
73
“metaphysical” and the “cultural” in books like those of Jerusalem
74
and Eleutheropulos; (3) the sharp criticism of the Rationalism of
the Critical Idealism by the two last-mentioned thinkers, and by some
75
of the members of the new Fichte School like Schellwien; and last
76
but not least, (4) the tendency to take a psychological and a
77
sociological (instead of a merely logical) view of the functions of
thought and philosophy, that is just as accentuated in Germany at
the present time as it is elsewhere.
James and Schiller have both been fond of referring to the work
of many of these last-mentioned men as favourable to a conception
of philosophy less as a “theory of knowledge” (or a “theory of being”)
in the old sense than as a Weltanschauungslehre (a view of the
world as whole), a “discussion of the various possible programmes
for man’s life” to which reference has already been made in the case
of Papini and others. And we might associate with their predilections
and persuasions in this regard the apparent Pragmatism also of a
78
great scholar like Harnack in reference to the subordination of
religious dogma to the realities of the religious life, or the
79
Pragmatism of Ritschl himself, in regard to the subordinate place
in living religion of mere intellectual theory, or even some of the
tendencies of the celebrated value-philosophy of Rickert and
80 81
Windelband and Münsterberg and the rest. But again the main
trouble about all this quasi-German support for the pragmatists is
that most of these contemporary thinkers have taken pains to trace
the roots of their teaching back into the great systems of the past.
The pragmatists, on the other hand, have been notoriously careless
about the matter of the various affiliations of their “corridor-like” and
eclectic theory.
 There are many reasons, however, against regarding even the
philosophical expression of many of the practical and scientific
tendencies of Germany as at all favourable to the acceptance of
Pragmatism as a satisfactory philosophy from the German point of
view. Among these reasons are: (1) The fact that it is naturally
impossible to find any real support in past or present German
philosophy for the impossible breach that exists in Pragmatism
between the “theoretical” and the “practical,” and (2) the fact that
Germany has only recently passed through a period of sharp conflict
between the psychological (or the “genetic”) and the logical point of
view regarding knowledge, resulting in a confessed victory for the
latter. And then again (3) even if there is a partial correspondence
between Pragmatism and the quasi economic (or “practical”)
conception taken of philosophy by some of the younger men in
Germany who have not altogether outlived their reaction against
Rationalism, there are other tendencies there that are far more
characteristic of the spirit and of the traditions of the country. Among
these are the New Idealism generally, the strong Neo-Kantian
82
movement of the Marburg school and their followers in different
83
places, the revived interest in Hegel and in Schelling, the Neo-
Romanticism of Jena, with its booklets upon such topics as The
84
Culture of the Soul, Life with Nature, German Idealism, and so on.
And then (4) there are just as many difficulties in the way of
regarding the psychological and sociological philosophy of men like
Jerusalem and Eleutheropulos as anything like a final philosophy of
knowledge, as there is in attempting to do the same thing with the
merely preliminary and tentative philosophy of James and his
associates.
Returning now to America and England, although Pragmatism is
85
eminently an American doctrine, it would, of course, be absurd to
imagine that Pragmatism has carried the entire thought of the United
86
States with it. It encountered there, even at the outset, at least
something of the contempt and the incredulity and the hostility that it
met with elsewhere, and also much of the American shrewd
indifference to a much-advertised new article. The message of
James as a philosopher, too, was doubtless discounted (at least by
the well-informed) in the light of his previous brilliant work as a
descriptive psychologist, and also, perhaps, in the light of his
87
wonderfully suggestive personality.
What actually happened in America in respect of the pragmatist
movement was, first of all, the sudden emergence of a magazine
88
literature in connexion with the Will-to-Believe philosophy of James
and the California address, and in connexion (according to the
generous testimony of James) with Deweyism or “Instrumentalism.”
Much of this tiresome and hair-splitting magazine discussion of
“ideas as instruments of thought,” and of the “consequences”
(“theoretical” or “practical” or what not) by which ideas were to be
“tested,” was pronounced by James, in 1906, to be largely crude and
superficial. It had the indirect merit, however, of yielding one or two
valuable estimates of the many inconsistencies in Pragmatism, and
of the many different kinds of Pragmatism or instrumentalism that
there seemed to be, and of the value of Pragmatism as a “theory of
knowledge,” and as a “philosophical generalization.” The upshot of
the whole preliminary discussion was (1) the discovery that,
Pragmatism having arisen (as Dewey himself put it) out of a
multitude of conflicting tendencies in regard to what we might call the
“approach” to philosophy, would probably soon “dissolve itself” back
89
again into some of the streams out of which it had arisen, and (2)
the discovery that all that this early “methodological” pragmatism
amounted to was the harmless doctrine that the meaning of any
conception expressed itself in the past or future conduct or
experience of actual, or possible, sentient creatures.
90
We shall again take occasion to refer to this comparative
failure of Pragmatism to give any systematic or unified account of the
consequences by which it would seek to test the truth of
propositions. Its failure, however, in this connexion is a matter of
91
secondary importance in comparison with the great lesson to be
drawn from its idea that there can be for man no objective truth
 92
about the universe, apart from the idea of its meaning or
significance to his experience and to his conscious activity.
What is now taking place in America in this second decade [i.e.
in the years after 1908] of the pragmatist movement is apparently (1)
the sharpest kind of official rationalist condemnation of Pragmatism
as an imperfectly proved and a merely “subjective” and a highly
unsystematic philosophy; (2) the appearance of a number of
93
instructive booklets upon Pragmatism and the pragmatist
movement, some of them expository and critical, some of them in the
main sympathetic, some of them condemnatory and even
contemptuous, and some of them attempts at further constructive
work along pragmatist lines; (3) indications here and there of the
acceptance and the promulgation of older and newer doctrines
antithetic and hostile to Pragmatism—some of them possibly as
typically American as Pragmatism itself.
As a single illustration of the partly constructive work that is
being attempted in the name and the spirit of pragmatism, we may
94
instance the line of reflection entered upon by Professor Moore in
consequence of his claim that to Pragmatism the fundamental thing
in any judgment or proposition is not so much its consequences, but
its “value.” This claim may, no doubt, be supported by the many
declarations of James and Schiller that the “true,” like the “good” and
the “beautiful,” is simply a “valuation,” and not the fetish that the
rationalists make it out to be. It is doubtful, however, as we may try to
indicate, whether this “value” interpretation of Pragmatism can be
carried out independently of the more systematic attempts at a
general philosophy of value that are being made to-day in Germany
and America and elsewhere. And then it would be a matter of no
ordinary difficulty to clear up the inconsistency that doubtless exists
between Pragmatism as a value philosophy and Pragmatism as a
mere philosophy of “consequences.” It is “immediate,” and
“verifiable,” and “definitely appreciated” consequences, rather than
the higher values of our experience that (up to the present time)
seem to have bulked largely in the argumentations of the
pragmatists.
 And as an illustration of a doctrine that is both American and
95
hostile to pragmatism, we may instance the New Realism that was
recently launched in a collective manifesto in The Journal of
Philosophy and Scientific Methods. This realism is, to be sure,
hostile to every form of “subjectivism” or personalism, and may in a
certain sense be regarded as the emergence into full daylight of the
96
realism or dualism that we found to be lurking in James’s “radical
empiricism.” It is, therefore, as it were, one of the signs that
Pragmatism is perhaps breaking up in America into some of the
more elemental tendencies out of which it developed—in this case
the American desire for operative (or effective) realism and for a
97
“direct” contact with reality instead of the indirect contact of so
many metaphysical systems.
It is only necessary to add here that it is to the credit of American
rationalism of the Neo-Hegelian type that it has shown itself, notably
98
in the writings of Professor Royce, capable, not only of criticising
Pragmatism, but of seeking to incorporate, in a constructive
philosophy of the present, some of the features of the pragmatist
emphasis upon “will” and “achievement” and “purpose.” It is,
therefore, in this respect at least in line with some of the best
tendencies in contemporary European philosophy.
Lastly, there are certain tendencies of recent English philosophy
with which Pragmatism has special affinities. Among these may be
99
mentioned: (1) the various general and specific criticisms that have
been made there for at least two generations on the more or less
formal and abstract character of the metaphysic of our Neo-Kantians
and our Neo-Hegelians; (2) the concessions that have recently been
made by prominent rationalists to the undoubtedly purposive, or
“teleological,” character of our human thinking, and to the connexion
of our mental life with our entire practical and spiritual activity. Many
of these concessions are now regarded as the merest
commonplaces of speculation, and we shall probably refer to them in
our next chapter. Then there is (3) the well-known insistence of some
100
of our foremost psychologists, like Ward and Stout, upon the
reality of activity and “purpose” in mental process, and upon the part
played by them in the evolution of our intellectual life, and of our
adjustment to the world in which we find ourselves. And (4) the
ethical and social idealism of such well-known members of our Neo-
Hegelian school as Professors Jones, Mackenzie, and Muirhead.
These scholars and thinkers are just as insistent as the pragmatists
upon the idea that philosophy and thought are, and should be, a
practical social “dynamic”—that is to say, “forces” and “motives”
making for the perfection of the common life. (5) A great deal of the
philosophy of science and of the philosophy of axioms and
postulates to be found in British writers, from Mill and Jevons to Karl
101
Pearson and Mr. A. Sidgwick and many others.
Apart from all this, however, or rather, in addition to it, it may be
truly said that one of the striking things about recent British
102
philosophical literature is the stir and the activity that have been
excited in the rationalist camp by the writings of the pragmatists and
the “personal idealists,” and by the critics of these newer modes of
thought. All this has led to many such re-statements of the problems
of philosophy as are to be found in the books of men like
103 104 105 106
Joachim, Henry Jones, A. E. Taylor, Boyce-Gibson,
107 108 109
Henry H. Sturt, S. H. Mellone, J. H. B. Joseph, and others,
and even, say, in such a representative book as that of Professor
Stewart upon the classical theme of Plato’s Theory of Ideas. In this
work an attempt is made to interpret Plato’s “Ideas” in the light of
pragmatist considerations as but “categories” or “points of view”
which we find it convenient to use in dealing with our sense
experience.
 CHAPTER III
SOME FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS

We shall now attempt a somewhat detailed treatment of a few of the

more characteristic tendencies of Pragmatism. The following have
already been mentioned in our general sketch of its development
and of the appearance of the pragmatist philosophy in Europe and
America: (1) the attempted modification by Pragmatism of the
extremes of Rationalism, and its dissatisfaction with the rationalism
of both science and philosophy; (2) its progress from the stage of a
mere practical and experimental theory of truth to a broad humanism
in which philosophy itself becomes (like art, say) merely an important
“dynamic” element in human culture; (3) its preference in the matter
of first principles for “faith” and “experience” and a trust in our
instinctive “beliefs”; (4) its readiness to affiliate itself with the various
liberal and humanistic tendencies in human thought, such as the
philosophy of “freedom,” and the “hypothetical method” of science,
modern ethical and social idealism, the religious reaction of recent
years, the voluntaristic trend in German post-Kantian philosophy,
and so on. Our subject in this chapter, however, is rather that of the
three or four more or less characteristic assumptions and
contentions upon which all these and the many other pragmatist
tendencies may be said to rest.
The first and foremost of these assumptions is the position that
all truth is “made” truth, “human” truth, truth related to human
attitudes and purposes, and that there is no “objective” or
“independent” truth, no truth “in whose establishment the function of
giving human satisfaction, in marrying previous parts of experience
with newer parts, has played no rôle.” Truths were “nothing,” as it
were, before they were “discovered,” and the most ancient truths
were once “plastic,” or merely susceptible of proof or disproof. Truth
is “made” just like “health,” or “wealth,” or “value,” and so on.
Insistence, we might say, upon this one note, along with the entire
line of reflection that it awakens in him, is really, as Dewey reminds
us, the main burden of James’s book upon Pragmatism. Equally
characteristic is it too of Dewey himself who is for ever reverting to
his doctrine of the factitious character of truth. There is no “fixed
distinction,” he tells us, “between the empirical values of the
unreflective life and the most abstract process of rational thought.”
And to Schiller, again, this same thought is the beginning of
everything in philosophy, for with an outspoken acceptance of this
doctrine of the “formation” of all truth, Pragmatism, he thinks, can do
at least two things that Rationalism is for ever debarred from doing:
(1) distinguish adequately “truth” from “fact,” and (2) distinguish
adequately truth from error. Whether these two things be, or be not,
110
the consequences of the doctrine in question [and we shall return
to the point] we may perhaps accept it as, on the whole, harmonious
with the teaching of psychology about the nature of our ideas as
mental habits, or about thinking as a restrained, or a guided, activity.
It is in harmony, too, with the palpable truism that all “truth” must be
truth that some beings or other who have once “sought” truth (for
some reasons or other) have at last come to regard as satisfying
their search and their purposes. And this truism, it would seem, must
remain such in spite of, or even along with, any meaning that there
may be in the idea of what we call “God’s truth.” By this expression
men understand, it would seem, merely God’s knowledge of truths or
facts of which we as men may happen to be ignorant. But then there
can have been no time in which God can be imagined to have been
ignorant of these or any other matters. It is therefore not for Him truth
as opposed to falsehood.
And then, again, this pragmatist position about all truth being
111
“made” truth would seem to be valid in view of the difficulty (Plato
spoke of it) of reconciling God’s supposed absolute knowledge of
112
reality with our finite and limited apprehension of the same.
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