It was said of the historic centipede that he was so embarrassed by his multitude of legs that locomotion became impossible. Similarly perhaps it may be said of Pragmatism that it suffered principally from the numerous formulations of its principles, all of which sought to explain it, but many of which left it obviously unexplained. Perhaps that is the reason why the vogue which it had seven years ago, following upon Professor James’ brilliant ‘popular lectures,’ was scarcely maintained. On the other hand, this was probably foreseen by some of the most loyal pragmatists. As one said of it, ‘If Pragmatism is going to live and give life, it will be by its spirit and not by any magic contained in pragmatic dicta.’ And it will be generally agreed that as a contribution to the thought of the twentieth century, it _has_ lived and has perhaps quickened other established modes of thought and feeling. ‘On the pragmatic side,’ writes Professor James, ‘we have only one edition of the universe, unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places _where thinking beings are at work_.’ Meanwhile many people were at work endeavouring to compress the pragmatic point of view into a formula. The most generally accepted definition stated that it represented theory as subordinate to practice. Another popular formula gives it as the doctrine that the truth of an assertion is decided by its consequences. And again—this with the authority of Dr. Schiller—‘the making of truth is necessarily and _ipso facto_ also a making of reality.’ But inasmuch as none of these definitions cover the whole ground, and as we are here concerned with a modern and vital application of the pragmatic issue, it may perhaps be worth our while to retrace the history of the matter in the first place to its source, craving the patience of the reader meanwhile. In the year 1878, at Balliol, there were three men who were destined to exercise strong influence upon the intellectual life of their generation: Benjamin Jowett, the Master; Nettleship, the tutor; and Thomas Hill Green. ‘I do not forget,’ says Professor Wallace, in speaking of the last-named in the preface to his Hegel, ‘what I and others owe to him,—that example of high-souled devotion to truth, and of earnest and intrepid thinking on the deep things of Eternity.’ In his own day perhaps Green was not greatly understood. He was known as the eccentric College tutor; a lecturer in metaphysics (and dry at that) ‘Obscurum per obscurius,’ said a witty undergraduate, though of course a witty undergraduate will say anything. Moreover an idealist, though a member of the City Council; a man of dreams, but a pioneer of evening schools for working men. Such was Green as Oxford knew him, but it is—briefly—with his position in philosophy that we are at the moment concerned.