There appears to me to be a serious defect in the pragmatist conception and application of the principle of utility; it is based on a conception altogether too narrow. A theory that condemns any purely logical process as resulting in "useless" knowledge can only justify itself by insisting on an application of the principle of utility that will be found to exclude not merely the Absolute of philosophy but most if not all of the results of pure mathematics and physics, for these sciences apply a method of pure logical deduction and induction indistinguishable from that which pragmatism condemns. The intellectual nature of man is an endowment which sharply distinguishes him from other forms of living creatures. So supreme a position does our intellect assign to us, so wide is the gap that separates {57} us from other creatures little different from ourselves in respect of perfection of material organisation and adaptation to environment, that it seems almost natural to suppose that our intellect is that for which we exist, and not merely a mode of controlling, directing, and advancing our life. Now it is possible to hold--and this is the view that I shall endeavour in what follows to develop--that the intellect is subservient to life, and that we can show the manner and method of its working and the purpose it serves. So far we may agree with the pragmatist, but it is not the same thing to say that the intellect serves a useful purpose and to say that truth, the ideal of the intellect, the end which it strives for, is itself only a utility. Were there no meaning in truth except that it is what works, were there no meaning independent of and altogether distinct from the practical consequences of belief, of what value to us would the intellect be? If the meaning the intellect assigns to truth is itself not true, how can the intellect serve us? The very essence of its service is reduced to nought; for what else but the conception of an objective truth, a logical reality independent of any and every psychological condition, is the utility that the intellect puts us in possession of? It is this conception alone that constitutes it an effective mode of activity. Therefore, if we hold with the pragmatist that the intellect is subservient to life, truth is indeed a utility, but it is a utility just because it has a meaning distinct from usefulness. On the other hand, to condemn any knowledge as "useless" is to deny utility to the intellect. Before I try to show that the logical method of the idealist philosophy, which pragmatism condemns because it leads to "useless" knowledge, is identical in every respect with the method employed in pure mathematics and physics, I will give for comparison two illustrations {58} that seem to me instances of a narrow and of a wide use of the concept of utility.