there is an important distinction between an idea 'seeming clear' and 'its
really being so' and, second, as regards definitions, he insisted that nothing
new is to be learned from analysing them. On the other hand, it would be
unwise to overlook the fact that, despite his criticisms, Peirce did accept
these two grades of clearness as essential for setting existing beliefs in order
at the same time that he sought for a 'higher perspicuity' of thought which
he called the third grade of clearness.

After 1890 Peirce carried the analysis still further in the quest for a
fourth grade of clarity, a conception which seems to have been a critical
response to James' development of the original pragmatic maxim into the
thesis that 'the end of man is action'. ¹ This move seems to be something of
an overreaction on Peirce's part, for he already had enough to contend with
in making clear his own pragmatic maxim which was supposed to reach the
third grade of clarity. But the proposal of a still higher grade suggests not
so much the idea of an increasing order of clarity but rather the sense that
more important than grades of clarity is the problem of making clear what
is meant by the appeal to action, practical consequences, etc., in achieving
clarity of thought. Against James' thesis that the end of man is action,
Peirce argued that action is unintelligible without an end or purpose and
that neither can be set forth without appealing to something 'general' which
is neither a fact nor a singular act. This line of thought is in accord with
the original pragmatic maxim which emphasized the upshot of concepts and
the idea of 'intellectual purport'. The essential point is that the practical
facts to which the application of the pragmatic maxim leads must themselves
be related to an ultimate good or what Peirce called the ideal of 'concrete
reasonableness'. ² This point is made explicitly in the following passage:

[the original pragmatic maxim for attaining the third grade of clearness] should
always be put into practice with conscientious thoroughness, but that, when this
has been done, and not before, a still higher grade of clearness of thought can be
attained by remembering that the only ultimate good which the practical facts to
which it directs attention can subserve is to further the development of concrete
reasonableness; so that the meaning of the concept does not lie in any individual
reactions at all, but in the manner in which those reactions contribute to the
development. ³

Clarifying the pragmatic maxim as expressed in this essay can be more
easily accomplished if we start by sorting out the two distinct lines of
thought which Peirce introduced. On the one side there is the question of
the function of thought as focused by such statements as 'the whole function
of thought is to produce habits of action' ⁴ and, on the other, there is the
maxim itself as a rule for attaining the third grade of clarity with respect
to the 'intellectual purport' of concepts. The sense that Peirce was proposing
to reduce all thought to action or that he was denying the validity of con-
ceptual content not translated into acts has often prevented critics from

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