Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

In his earlier statements of the pragmatic maxim Peirce² emphasized the consequences for conduct that follow from the acceptance or rejection of an idea; but the stoical maxim that the end of man is action did not appeal to him as much at sixty as it did at thirty. Indeed, if we want to clarify the meaning of the idea of pragmatism, let us apply the pragmatic maxim to it. What will be the effect of accepting it? Obviously it will be to develop certain general ideas or habits of looking at things. As Peirce accepts the view that the good must be in the evolutionary process, he concludes that it cannot be in individual reactions in their segregation, but rather in something general or continuous, namely, in the growth of concrete reasonableness, ‘becoming governed by law, becoming instinct with general ideas.’³ In this emphasis on general ideas Peirce's pragmatism differs sharply from that of his follower, James, who, like most modem psychologists, was a thorough nominalist and always emphasized particular sensible experience. Peirce's belief in the reality and potency of general ideas was connected in his mind with a vast philosophic system of which he left only some fragmentary outlines.⁴ He called it synechistic tychistic agapism (from the Greek words for continuity, chance, and love). It assumed the primacy of mind and chance and regarded matter and law as the result of habit. The principal law of mind is that ideas literally spread themselves and become more general or inclusive, so that people who form communities or churches develop distinct general ideas. The nourishing love which parents have for their children or thinkers for their own ideas is the creative cause of evolution. Stated thus baldly these views sound fantastic. But Peirce re-enforces them with such a wealth of illustration from modern mathematics and physics as to make them extraordinarily suggestive to all whose minds are not closed against new ideas.

Peirce was one of the very few modern scientific thinkers to lay hands on that sacred cow of philosophy, the belief that