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THE work of William James has largely been a defense of that type of philosophy which now goes by the name of
“pragmatism.” It is of the essence of pragmatism not to waste any time in defining abstract philosophical notions and, least of all, the notion of philosophy in general. Yet, in his well-known
essay on Philosophy and Its Critics, James has felt it necessary at least once “to tarry a moment over the matter of definition.” To this happy scruple we are indebted for a highly suggestive page,
which I beg to reproduce in full, because its deepest significance lies perhaps less in what he says than in his peculiar way of saying Limited by the omission of the special sciences, the name of Philosophy has come more and more to denote ideas of universal scope exclusively. The principles of explanation that underlie all
things without exception, the elements common to gods and men and animals and stones, the first whence and the last whither of the whole cosmic procession, the conditions of all knowing, and the
most general rules of human action-these furnish the problems commonly deemed philosophic par excellence, and the philosopher is a man who finds the most to say about them. Philosophy
is defined in the usual Scholastic textbooks as ‘the knowledge of things in general by their ultimate causes, so far as natural reason can attain to such knowledge. This means that explan-
ation of the universe at large, not description of its details, is what philosophy must aim at; and so it happens that a view of anything is termed philosophic just in proportion as it is broad and connected with other views, and as it uses principles not proximate, or intermediate, but ultimate and all-embracing,to justify itself. Any very sweeping view of the world is a
philosophy in this sense, even though it may be a vague one.It is a Weltanschauung and intellectualized attitude towards life. Professor Dewey well describes the constitution of all the
philosophies that actually exist, when he says that philosophy expresses a certain attitude, purpose, and temper of  conjoined intellect and will, rather than a discipline whose boundaries can be really marked off.