It may seem paradoxical to suggest, of a doctrine essentially impatient of the absolute, that it bids fair to become the chief bulwark of an absolutism the more tyrannical because it is false. Yet a democracy forgetting freedom, and a philosophy careless of principles, do, in fact, go hand in hand together. Nowhere better than in politics could the pragmatic creed be applied; and nowhere does it become more immediately clear that pragmatism has no creed. In this it is the motto of democracy in action, which is abandoning more and more not only creeds as creeds, but even the very creed that brought it into being.

In doing so, democracy threatens to entrammel men for a time more effectively than ever they were trammelled in the past, through the very optimism of its crude practicality; seeking to achieve in one generation, and by extraneous rules, the blessings which only the long discipline of character can ever bring to the world. Lovers of liberty, then, if they would serve her now, must see that a philosophy without a standard, a wisdom that will not criticise, a doctrine that will not lead, is the greatest foe of all they have to fight.

An irreverent critic once remarked that doubtless we should all like to be pragmatists if only we knew what we should be if we were pragmatists. I am sure that it would be very easy for any accommodating person to find out that he was on the whole a pragmatist.