Robin Catalogue: A. MS., G-1909-1, April 6-May 24, 1909, pp. 1-51 (pp. 40-41 missing), with 45 pp. of variants. Only the first sentence of the “Preface” published (7.313n1). CSP’s intellectual autobiography: the Metaphysical Club and the influence of Chauncey Wright and Nicholas St. John Green on his thinking. Abbot, who attended but one meeting of the Metaphysical Club, heard CSP on that occasion arguing in favor of Scholastic realism. Half a generation later, Abbot, in a book entitled “Scientific Theism” urged the same opinion. CSP recalls the occasion of writing the 1877-78 articles for the Popular Science Monthly. Pragmatism and pragmatisism distinguished. The fallibility of human reasoning. Sound reasoning and moral virtue. The plight of university instruction in logic. Whewell and J. S. Mill. Biographical notes on Duns Scotus and Ockham. Realism versus nominalism. Nominalism, concludes CSP, leads to absolute sceptisism. The meaning of “real”; the meaning of “universal.”
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…so far as my pragmatism is a doctrine, it is the doctrine that the significance of any intellectual thought consists in the particular manner in which it tends, and will tend, to regulate the thinker’s conduct.
…the doctrine of the scholastic realists was that some, – not all, – generals have an “objective” truth,
“Virtual,” followed by any common noun, say ‘N,’ makes an appellative phrase which denotes anything which, while it is not an ‘N,’ has, nevertheless, the characteristic behaviour and properties of an ‘N.’
