MS 618-627 (1909) - Meaning and Pragmatism

1909 March 26 9:30 AM Meaning 2 among friends of the writer by the name he had proposed for it, which was "Pragmatism". It has been generally acknowledged for the last half century, at least, that no man's philosophy can be well-understood until one knows how he came by it; and since the writer has had more that than the usual difficulty in fulfilling the always difficult task of rendering his philosophical position clear, it seems well that he should make a clean breast of his philosophical life in the following paragraphs.

I was born in 1839 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, my father being recognized as the leading foremost American mathematician. His house might almost be said to have been a rendez-vous of the leading men of science of the country, or, at any rate for those

1909 March 26 7:30 PM Meaning 3

of them who cultivated the exact sciences. Agossig came in every day without ringing, and standing in the porch hall, would call "Ben!". Davis (or [Fuer?] Luieutennant in the Navy and past Rear Admiral would pace up and down with my father by the hour. Bache came twice every year; Joseph Henry only occasionally; but Seand [P?.] Walker and Benjamin A[p?]th[o?]rp [w?]ould very intimetily; Josiah P. [Bo?]oke and Stevey Hunt often; Wolcott [G?]ibbs sometimes, John and Joseph Lec[u?]mte (and once John C. Lec[o?]mte) for for long visits. [U?]riah B[o?]yden and Alvan Clarke would come sometimes.

myself. I early became interested in a childish way in dynamics and physics, and my father's brother being a chemist, I must have been about twelve years old when I set up a chemical laboratory of my own and began to work through Liebig's hundred qualitative analysis and to make such things as vermillion both in the dry and in the wet way and to repeat a great many well-known processes of chemistry. A year or so later, I one day, in the room of my brother, five years older than myself, took up a copy of Whately's Logic and asked my brother what logic was. On receiving his answer, I stretched myself out upon his carpet, with the volume, and believe that within a few days I had tolerably mastered it. When I got to be a Freshman in college, the fact that we were seated in the class-rooms in alpha-