I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. The Letters of William James (1920)
An attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, "categories", supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)