with which I cordially agree.  I cannot agree
with his separating the notion of efficacy from
that of activity altogether (this I understand
to be one contention of his) for activities are
efficacious whenever they are real activities at
all.  But the inner nature both of efficacy and
of activity are superficial problems, I understand
Royce to say; and the only point for us
in solving them would be their possible use in
helping us to solve the far deeper problem of
the course and meaning of the world of life.
Life, says our colleague, is full of significance,
of meaning, of success and of defeat, of hoping
and of striving, of longing, of desire, and of
inner value.  It is a total presence that embodies
worth.  To live our own lives better in
---

   1 _Mind_, N.S., vol. VI, 1897; cf. pp. 392-393.

188
this presence is the true reason why we wish to
know the elements of things; so even we psychologists
must end on this pragmatic note.

     The urgent problems of activity are thus
more concrete.  They are all problems of the
true relation of longer-span to shorter-span
activities.  When, for example, a number of
'ideas' (to use the name traditional in psychology)
grow confluent in a larger field of
consciousness, do the smaller activities still
co-exist with the wider activities then experienced
by the conscious subject?  And, if so,
do the wide activities accompany the narrow
ones inertly, or do they exert control?  Or do
they perhaps utterly supplant and replace
them and short-circuit their effects?  Again,
when a mental activity-process and a brain-
cell series of activities both terminate in the
same muscular movement, does the mental
process steer the neural processes or not?  Or,
on the other hand, does it independently short-
circuit their effects?  Such are the questions
that we must begin with.  But so far am I from
suggesting any definitive answer to such questions,

189
that I hardly yet can put them clearly.
They lead, however, into that region of pan-
psychic and ontologic speculation of which
Professors Bergson and Strong have lately enlarged
the literature in so able and interesting
a way.(1)  The result of these authors seem
in many respects dissimilar, and I understand
them as yet but imperfectly; but I cannot help
suspecting that the direction of their work is
very promising, and that they have the hunter's
instinct for the fruitful trails.
---

   1 [Cf. _A_Pluralistic_Universe_, Lect. VI (on Bergson); H. Bergson:
_Creative_Evolution_, trans. by A. Mitchell; C.A. Strong:
_Why_the_Mind_Has_a_Body_, ch. XII.  ED.]

190

                         VII

               THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM(1)

HUMANISM is a ferment that has 'come to
stay.'(2)  It is not a single hypothesis of theorem,
and it dwells on no new facts.  It is
rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective,
making things appear as from a new
centre of interest or point of sight.  Some
writers are strongly conscious of the shifting,
others half unconscious, even though their own
vision may have undergone much change.  The
result is no small confusion in debate, the half-conscious
humanists often taking part against
the radical ones, as if they wished to count
upon the other side.(3)
---

   1 [Reprinted from
_The_Journal_of_Philosophy,_Psychology_and_Scientific_Methods_, vol. II,
No. 5, March 2, 1905.  Also reprinted, with slight changes in
_The_Meaning_of_Truth_, pp. 121-135.  The author's corrections have been
adopted for the present text.  ED.]

   2 [Written _apropos_ of the appearance of three articles in _Mind_,
N.S., vol. XIV, No. 53, January, 1905:  "'Absolute' and 'Relative'
Truth," H.H.Joachim; "Professor James on 'Humanism and Truth,'"
H.W.B.Joseph; "Applied Axioms," A. Sidgwick.  Of these articles the
second and third "continue the humanistic (or pragmatistic)
controversy," the first "deeply connects with it." ED.]

   3 Professor Baldwin, for example.  His address 'On Selective