The mission of Pragmatism is to bring Philosophy into relation to real Life and Action. So far from regarding Thought as a self-centred, self-enclosed activity, Pragmatism insists upon replacing it in its context among the other functions of life, and in measuring its value by its effect upon them. So far, again, from regarding the abstract intellect as a vast Juggernaut machine which absorbs and crushes the individual thinker, it treats him individually as having his own constitution, _raison d'être,_ and intrinsic interest, and credits him with a power to make new truths and to enrich the resources of thought. Each thinker has before him an individual situation, a system of aims and values, a stock of knowledge and of means from which he must select what is relevant to his ends, and so cannot escape in any judgment from the responsibilities of a personal decision. Thus, for Pragmatism _every thought is an act_ with a person behind it, who is responsible for launching it into the world of fact. The result of this change of attitude is immediate. In the first place, as has been shown in Chapter V., by bringing thought face to face with the whole experience upon which it claims to work, we are enabled to find a tangible rule for evaluating its assertions and distinguishing truth from error. And, secondly, by recognizing that the mind is not an apparatus which functions in a vacuum, but is a constituent of an individual organism, we see that thinking always depends upon a purpose; for it is the purpose of an inquiry which gives reflection its cue, and determines its scope and (most essential of all) its meaning. We are thus led from the narrower logical question, 'What constitutes the "truth" of a statement?' to a wider outlook, from which we can survey the place of knowing in human life at large. This may be called the transition from Pragmatism to Humanism. This last word was introduced into philosophic terminology by Dr. Schiller in order to describe his general philosophical position as distinct from the original question of the theory of knowledge, which had been treated by James under the name of Pragmatism.