[213] It might be added here that Logic has always recognized the validity, to some extent, of the argument “from consequences” of which Pragmatism makes so much. The form of argumentation that it calls the Dilemma is a proof of this statement. A chain of reasoning that leads to impossible consequences, or that leads to consequences inconsistent with previously admitted truths, is necessarily unsound. That this test of tenable or untenable consequences has often been used in philosophy in the large sense of the term must be known only too well to the well-informed reader. As Sidgwick says in his _Method of Ethics_: “The truth of a philosopher’s premises will always be tested by the acceptability of his conclusions; if in any important point he is found in flagrant conflict with common opinion, his method will be declared invalid.” Reid used the argument from consequences in his examination of the sceptical philosophy of Hume. It is used with effect in Mr. Arthur Balfour’s _Foundations of Belief_ in regard to the supposed naturalism of physical science. Edmund Burke applied it to some extent to political theories, or to the abstract philosophical theories upon which some of them were supposedly based. [214] Pragmatism has been called by some critics a “new-Humism” on the ground of its tendency to do this very thing that is mentioned here in respect of Hume. But the justice or the injustice of this appellation is a very large question, into which it is needless for us to enter here. [215] Cf. “Intelligence is the aptitude to modify conduct in conformity to the circumstances of each case” (_The Positive Philosophy_, Martineau, i. 465). [216] _Principles of Philosophy_, Part II. iii. It is also an eminently pragmatist idea on the part of Descartes to hold that “I should find much more truth in the reasoning of each individual with reference to the affairs in which he is personally interested, and the issue of which must presently punish him if he has judged amiss, than in those conducted by a man of letters in his study, regarding speculative matters that are of no practical moment” (_Method_, Veitch’s edition, p. 10). [217] _Principles of Philosophy_, Part II. iii. p. 233. [218] See _Principles of Psychology_, ch. ii., “Assumption of Metaphysicians,” and also elsewhere in his Essays. [219] “Any power of doing or suffering in a degree however slight was held by us to be the definition of existence” (Sophist, Jowett’s _Plato_, iv. p. 465). [220] _The Theory of Knowledge_, Preface, p. ix. [221] “The independence of the doctrines of any science from the social life, the prevalent thought of the generation in which they arise, is indeed a fiction, a superstition of the scientist which we would fain shatter beyond all repair; but the science becomes all the sounder for recognizing its origins and its resources, its present limitations and its need of fresh light from other minds, from different social moulds” (pp. 215–216). [222] See p. 81.