Still another general characteristic of American life of which we may well think in connexion with Pragmatism is the sociological interest of the country, the pressure of which upon the pragmatists and their writings has already been referred to. The social problem in America has now become[295] the one problem that is present with everybody, and present most of all, perhaps, with the European immigrant, who has for various reasons hoped that he had left this problem behind him. The effect of this upon Pragmatism is to be seen, not merely in the very living hold that it is inclined to take of philosophy and philosophical problems,[296] but in the fact of its boast of being a “way of living” as well as a “way of thinking.” We have examined this idea in our remarks upon the ethics of Pragmatism. Of course the outstanding temperamental American characteristic that is most clearly seen in Pragmatism is the great fact of the inevitable bent of the American mind to action and to accomplishment,--its positive inability to entertain any idea, or any set of ideas upon any subject whatsoever, without experiencing at the same time the inclination to use these ideas for invention and contrivance,[297] for organization and exploitation. Any one who has lived in the United States must in fact have become so habituated and so accustomed to think of his thought and his knowledge and his capacities in terms of their possible social utility, that he simply cannot refrain from judging of any scheme of thought or of any set of ideas in the same light. Anywhere, to be sure, in the United States will they allow a man to think all he pleases about anything whatsoever--even pre-Socratic philosophy, say, or esoteric Buddhism. And there is nothing indeed of which the country is said, by those who know it best, to stand so much in need as the most persistent and the most profound thought about all important matters. But such thought, it is always added, must prove to be constructive and positive in character, to be directed not merely to the solution of useless questions or of questions which have long ago been settled by others. We shall now endeavour to think of the value[298] to philosophy and to the thought and practice of the world (the two things are inseparable) of some or all of these general and special characteristics which we have sought to illustrate in Pragmatism.