c. a formality, presumably, which is not held seriously to impair the dependence of truth upor. an already determinate ' fact.' Yet in the same breath a 'selection' is mentioned. If this is notto involve volitional preference and acceptance, what can it mean ? Surely it is something more than a mechanical registration of an outside ' fact ' ? Elsewhere it is admitted that our idea " reacts and then makes the whole situation to be different " (p. 311 ), that " truth may not be truth at all apart from its existence in myself and in other finite subjects, and at least very largely that existence depends on our wills." ^ Nay, our moral ends in their turn ' dictate ' even to truth and beauty (pp. 320-1). Indeed in one aspect at least truth is an ideal construction (pp. 324-5)- Now what are we to make of this double nature of ^ As Prof. Hoernle also notices {Mind, xiv. p. 442, s.f.). 2 P, 320, italics mine. IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 125 Truth ? Is it not clear that if there is to be a real selec- tion there must be real alternatives, which can be chosen ? And is it not almost as clear that even in a ' forced ' choice such alternatives are really presented ? Even the poor bread-and-butter fly (now extinct) that would live only on the ' weak tea with plenty of cream in it ' which it could not get, and consequently * always died,' exempli- fies this. We get then this dilemma : if our * choice,' * selection,' or ' conge d'elire ' does not affect the rigidity of ' fact,' it is an illusion which ought not even to seem to exist, and we have certainly no right to talk about it : if, on the other hand, there really is 'selection' (as is asserted), will it not stultify the assumption of a rigid fact, introduce a possibility of a^'bitrary manipulation, and lead to al- ternative constructions of reality ? In other words, how is a belief in a real selection compatible with the denial of a real freedom of human choice and of a real plasticity in reality at large ? ^ Mr. Bradley's insistence on the * determinateness ' of being does not help us in the least. For he does not specify whether he conceives the determination to be {a) absolute, or ib) partial. If (a), then how is it to be altered by our ' reaction ' ? That reaction too, indeed, must be wholly determinate, and the ' selecting ' must be mere illusion. If {U) the determination is only partial, it will form the starting-point for alternative modes of operating upon ' fact ' and alternative results. That is, * fact ' will be plastic, and responsive to our will. In short, a constructive conception of the relation of Truth to Fact is nowhere to be grasped. Everywhere Mr. Bradley's meaning seems swiftly to evaporate into metaphor or to dissipate into ambiguity. Not that these difficulties are likely to prove a per- manent embarrassment. Eventually, no doubt, some subtlety can be requisitioned from the Christological controversies of the sixth century wherewith to reconcile the ' divine ' with the * human ' nature in the body of the one Truth. But at present what Mr. Joachim signi- 1 Cp. p. 392. 126 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv ficantly calls " the dual nature of human experience " ^ forms the rock on which the logic of Intellectualism deliberately wrecks itself, and one cannot find that it has anything even apparently coherent to substitute for the pragmatist account it rejects so haughtily. § 9. Mr. Bradley's second point concerns the relation of Practice to Theory. The importance of this seems to me to be secondary, because our differences rest largely on the connotation of terms whose meaning is somewhat a matter of convention, and not completely settled. I should not dream, however, of denying that the end must be " the fullest and most harmonious development of our being" (p. 319), and still less than this "coincides with the largest amount of mere doing " — except in so far as I repudiate the notion of 'mere doing'! It is grati- fying also to find Mr. Bradley so emphatic that " every possible side of our life is practical," that there is nothing "to which the moral end is unable to dictate" (p. 320), " and even truth and beauty, however independent, fall under its sway." These dicta ought to be decisive dis- avowals of the old-fashioned intellectualism, and it may be conjectured that, but for lapses of inadvertence, very little more will be heard of it. Difficulties begin when we try to follow Mr. Bradley's attempt nevertheless to provide for an ' independence ' of the theoretical. What precisely does he mean by ' inde- pendence ' ? We are told that though all the ends and aspects of life are practical, yet in a sense they are also not practical. There exists, it seems, an attitude of ' mere ' theory and ' mere ' apprehension, which has indeed to demean itself by ' altering things ' and becoming ' prac- tical,' but " so far as it remains independent " is " essen- tially " not practice. Both truth and beauty therefore are practical " incidentally but not in their essence " and " at once dependent and free " (p. 320), ' free ' in their ' nature,' dependent in their actual functioning. Whether this claims for theoretic truth something like Kant's noumenal freedom and phenomenal necessity it is hard to say. But 1 The Nature of Truth, pp. 163, 170, etc. IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 127 it is clearly an important article of Mr. Bradley's faith : " we believe in short in relative freedom " and " this is even dictated by the interest of the spiritual common- wealth " and identified with " the independent cultivation of any one main side of our nature" (p. 322). Now, quite humbly and sincerely, I must here beg for further elucidation. I cannot in the least conceive how this semi-detached relation is possible. Evidently there is here between us a divergent use of terms which must breed confusion. What (i) means the antithesis of ' incident ' and ' essence ' ? And how are they related to Aristotle's a-vix^e^rjKo^ and ovcria ? ' Essence ' is a word which had a definite, though highly technical, meaning in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, but which has now lost this, and lends itself to much looseness of thought. It clearly does not imply to Mr. Bradley, as it does to a pragmatist, a reference to purpose. But I suppose it means something important. If so, why is it not divulged? Again (2) does it not evince a serious laxity of terminology to equate a ' relative freedom ' with ' independence ' ? It would be instructive to watch Mr. Bradley dealing with the same equation in other contexts, e.g. in pluralistic attempts to derive the ' unity ' of the world. § 10. Whether or not Mr. Bradley sees his way to answer these questions, it must once more be added that, be the argument coherent internally or meaningless, it is at all events irrelevant. It attacks a position which has never been defended ; it fails to repel the real attack. For it is not our intention to turn dualists, to prove that Theory and Practice are fundamentally different, and foreign to each other, and then to enslave Theory to Practice, Intellect to Will. Something of the sort may possibly be extracted from that great matrix of the most various doctrines, the philosophy of Kant.^ But we con- 1 I do not say justly, because I am convinced that if Kant had been twenty years younger when he attained his insight (such as it was) into the nature of postulation, he must have rewritten his Critique of Pure Reason on pragmatist lines. At all events he lays the foundations of Pragmatism in a remark no prag- matist would seek to better, when he says that " all interest is ultimately practical. 128 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv tend rather that there can be no independence of theory (except in popular language) and no opposition to practice, because theory is an outgrowth of practice and incapable of truly ' independent ' existence. And what we try to do is to trace this latent reference to practice, i.e. life, throughout the whole structure, and in all the functions, of the intellect. There is no question therefore of degrading, and still less of annihilating, the intellect, but merely one of its reinterpretation. We deny that properly speaking such a thing as pure or mere intellec- tion can occur. What is loosely so called is really also purposive thought pursuing what seems to it a desirable end. Only in such cases the ends may be illusory, or may appear valuable for reasons other than those which determine their value.^ What, therefore, we have really attempted is to overcome the antithesis of theory and practice, and to unify human life by emphasizing the all- pervading purposiveness of human conduct. Such attempts at unification are not new, but they have usually been conducted with an intellectualist bias, and with the purpose of reducing all ' willing ' and * feel- ing ' to cognition. And this has often been supposed to be something magnificent and inspiring. But how is it spiritually more elevating to say All is Thought than to say all is Feeling or Will} The only advantage which a voluntarist formulation of the unity of the faculties claims over its rivals is that ' will ' is de facto conceived as in a manner intermediate between ' thought ' and ' feeling.' Hence it is easiest to describe all mental life in voluntarist terms. If either of the others is taken as fundamental, ' will ' easily succumbs to an illusory ' analysis ' ; it can be termed the strongest ' desire ' or the ' self-realization ' of ideas. But it is not so easy to describe either of the extremes in terms of the other. Hence ' panlogism ' of the Hegelian type is a height to which intellectualism rarely rises, and even then only by regarding ' feeling ' as and even that of the speculative reason is merely conditional , and only complete in its practical use" (Ky-it. d. prakt. Vem., II. 2, iii. s.f.). 1 Cp. Humanism, pp. 58-60. IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 129 irrational ' contingency ' which is ' nothing for thought,' i.e. inexplicable. More commonly intellectualism has to come to terms with ' feeling,' as in Mr. Bradley's own philosophy, which derides the Hegelian's ' unearthly ballet of bloodless categories,' and as Mr. Sturt has shown, in some respects exalts ' feeling ' even above intellect.^ But the truth is that the whole question seems merely one of the convenience and use of psychological classifica- tions, and that none of these descriptions have explanatory value. All three ' faculties ' are at bottom only labels for describing the activities of what may be called indifferently a unitary personality, or a reacting organism. So when Mr. Bradley wonders (p. 327) what I am " to reply when some one chooses to assert that this same whole is intelligence or feeling," I am not dismayed. I should merely underline the *' chooses" and beg both parties to observe that this is what they are severally * choosing to assert^ and therefore arbitrary. Not more arbitrary, doubtless, than my own choice, but far more awkward for tJieir scheme of classification than for mine. For on mine I should expect to find that ultimate questions sooner or later involved acts of choice ; as indeed I have repeatedly, though perhaps too unobtrusively, pointed out.^ Moreover, I have expressly guarded myself against this particular criticism by passages in Personal Idealism (p. 86) and Humanism (p. 53). These no doubt occur in footnotes, but then Mr. Bradley will hardly accuse me of putting too much into footnotes. § 1 1. Finally, before leaving this part of Mr. Bradley's argument I must say something about his definition of Practice (p. 317) as an alteration of existence. This seems altogether too narrow in the sense Mr. Bradley puts upon it. For ( I ) I cannot possibly assent to his proposal ^ to exclude not only theoretic interests, but all values, ethical and aesthetical, from the sphere of ' practice.* It is an integral part of the Humanist position to contend that ^ Idola Theatri, chaps, v. and ix. This homage paid to feeling is, however, really nothing but a reluctant recognition of the difficulties of the situation. 2 E.g. Hzimanism, pp. 49, 153, 157. ^ P. 334. K "v 130 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv ' truths ' are values, and that values are all-important and really efficacious, being the real motives which make, un- make, and alter reality, because the whole of our practical activity aims at their attainment. To take the activity in abstraction from the values it aims at, and to conceive the values without reference to the activity which realizes them, seems to me equally preposterous. Hence (2) the means to an alteration of existence must surely be called practical, and among these are of course included almost all of what have hitherto been called the ' purely theoretic ' functions. If Mr. Bradley will not concede this, cadit quaestio} I, at any rate, should never have asserted the absorption of the theoretical in the practical, if I had thought that the means to an end were to be excluded from the practical. And (3) we do not, even in practice, always seem to aim at altera- tion of existence. The preservation of the desirable seems frequently to be our end. Again (4) the fruition of the end attained would fall outside Mr. Bradley's definition. Whereas to me it would seem intolerable to exclude from Practice, e.g. the 'Evepyeia 'AKivrja-ia'i, which forms the ideal of life and the goal of effort. I could wish only that it were practicable, as well as J Tactical ! It seems necessary, therefore, to conceive 'practice' more broadly as t/te control of experience, and to define as 'practical' whatever serves, directly or indirectly, to control events. So to conceive it will probably render it quite obvious that the aim of the doctrine of the ' subordination ' of ' theory ' to ' practice ' (more properly of the secondary character of the former) is merely voluntarism, merely to make ' practice ' cover practically {i.e. with the exception of certain intel- lectualistic delusions) the whole of life, or in other words to insist on bringing out the active character of experience, and the fact that in virtue of its psychological genesis every thought is an act just as it is the aim of intel- lectualism, alike in its sensationalistic and in its rational- 1 He finally (p. 334 s.f.) seems to concede this when he says " in a secondary sense anything is practical so far as it is taken as subserving a practical change." IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 131 istic forms, to obscure and exclude this character and to declare the conception of activity unmeaning.^ Intellec- tualism, in short, is deeply committed to what Mr. Sturt has well denominated ' the fallacy of Passivism ' in all its forms. If, on the other hand, we press Mr. Bradley's remark that " my practice is the alteration by me of existence inward and outward," it would seem that the notion of an ' independent ' theoretic life must speedily collapse. For even the most ' theoretical ' of thoughts will induce at least an inward ' alteration ' of the thinker. And this, presumably, will show itself in differences of ' outward ' action, and so have ' practical consequences.' If, again, ' alteration of existence ' is not meant un- equivocally to imply the activity of a human agent, if it is intended to cover the possibility that it may come about of itself, or as the result of an immanent self-develop- ment of a non-human Absolute, it would be interesting to know whether Mr. Bradley would attribute ' practice ' also to his Absolute, or whether it would resemble the Aristotelian 'gods' in having none. In short, the formula is woefully lacking in explicitness. But even if we accepted Mr. Bradley's definition, we should continue to be perplexed by his needlessly ambigu- ous use of ' practical.' We seem to find the * practical ' subdivided into the practical and the non-practical (p. 319): we are told (pp. 322 s./. and 333) that Mr. Bradley is dear (!) that in the end there is no distinction between ' theory ' and ' practice ' ; and then again (what I own I had suspected) that there are several senses of ' practical ' such that what in one sense is practical is not so in another (p. 323).^ But is it not the duty of a writer who ^ Cp. Mr. Bradley's teaching on this subject {^Appearance and Reality} pp. 1 16-7 and 483-5) and the comments of Prof. James in his admirable chapter on ' the Experience of Activity ' in The Pluralistic Universe. • In his Note on pp. 332-4 Mr. Bradley recurs to the point in a way which betrays a feeling that his first treatment was not wholly satisfactorj'. After again asserting that the distinction of practical and non-practical is ultimately one of degree, he lays it down that nevertheless a ' practical ' activity may be so called ' ' when and so far as its product directly qualifies the existence which is altered." — This involves a distinct correction of the definition given before. A little later he admits that " in a secondary sense anything is practical so far as it 132 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv confessedly uses a term in several senses to explain distinctly what those senses are ? § 1 2. One hardly knows how much notice to take of an apparently casual remark on page 322 to the effect that if I understood my own doctrine, I should have to hold that any end however perverted was rational, and any idea however mad was truth, so soon as any one insisted on it. For subsequently (p. 329) Mr. Bradley seems graciously to decide that he will not attribute so ' insane ' a doctrine even to me. Why then did he mention it as if it were relevant ? Did he not know that he was merely dishing up an old objection to Protagoras, the effeteness of which even Plato was candid enough to avow ? ^ Since then this caricature has often been exposed, most recently in the explicit account of the development of objective truth out of subjective valuations given in Humanism, pages 58-60. Its reappearance now that the conceptions of variation and selection are in universal use is simply stupefying, and if it is intended as a serious argument, it shows clearly that Mr. Bradley has yet to grasp the essential difference between an axiom and a postulate. In any case Mr. Bradley could do his followers a great service if, instead of so crudely travestying my argument, he supplied them with an alternative to it, and showed them how to deal with the empirical existence of the infinite variety in ends and ideas. Or does he not admit this to constitute a scientific problem, and is it merely in " appearance " that our views diverge ? §13. Mr. Bradley's article is so rich in provocations of all sorts that I forbear to reply to all of them. Still I should have liked to discuss the difficulties he raises about the conception of Will, which seems to be the is taken as subserving a practical change." — This surely would include every- thing and amply account for the ' perception of a horse ' which Mr. Bradley is pleased to call a 'revelation.' For, as the psychologists are daily showing, our very modes of perception are relative to our practical needs. The human eye is not like the eye of an eagle or a cat, because it is used differently, and the per- ception of the horse would never have been attained, unless it had been useful to such of our ancestors as had acquired eyes. Presumably the eyes of Micromegas would be fitted to see a horse as little as Mr. Bradley's are to see a microbe or a ghost. ^ Theaetettis, 166-7, and cp. Essay ii. § 5-6. ,v TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 133 only other point which may be thought to possess some relevance to the controversy, did we not seem so far from agreeing on the meaning of the term. Rather than plunge into a long disquisition on the proper senses of ' Will,' and their proper correlation, I will relinquish the attempt to clear up matters. I will remark only that Mr. Bradley's second definition of (a depersonalized) Will as " a process of passage from idea into existence " is as intellectualistic and as unacceptable as " the self-realiza- tion of an idea," and am curious to know how he gets from one to the other without exemplifying the pragmatist doctrine that definitions are relative to purpose. More- over, it seems arbitrary and inconvenient to deny the volitional quality of an achievement simply because the Will has realized itself, and now accepts and sustains the situation it has created. In the theological language Mr. Bradley affects in this article, this would be equivalent to the assertion that because God is the Creator, He cannot also be the Sustainer, of the universe. I con- clude, therefore, by pointing out that all the arguments which Mr. Bradley bases on his conceptions of Will are to me, once more, corrupted by irrelevance. I shrink, similarly, from meeting many other interest- ing points (most of them highly barbed !) with which Mr. Bradley's paper bristles. The most relevant of these would seem to be his curiosity about Bain's theory of belief (p. 315), but I will not attempt to say how far I think he has refuted it, because I have always found it very hard to recognize it in the account given of it in Mr. Bradley's Logic (as usual without specific references). I have, however, sufficiently justified my conviction that, so far from refuting Pragmatism by anticipation, Mr. Bradley appears to have very nearly stumbled into it. § 1 4. On page 3 3 1 Mr. Bradley appears to summarize under four heads that part of his paper which may be called argumentative. In the first charge that 'the whole essence ' of truth has been subverted, I would read ' analysed ' for ' subverted.' The second calls it ' a thought- less compromise ' to treat the result of past volitions as 134 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv being my will and choice. But why a ' compromise ' ? With whom or what ? What have I compromised but Mr. Bradley's preconceptions, by declining to ignore the volitional acceptance in the recognition of ' fact ' or to plunge into the flagrant contradictions of his own account ? And why ' thoughtless ' ? Because it does not lend itself to Mr. Bradley's travesties ? The third charge is partly irrelevant, in so far as it rests on definitions of ' will ' which I reject, partly answered by the account I have given of the factual basis in our cognitive procedure. As for Mr. Bradley's fourth difficulty, I should never have guessed from his very perfunctory and obscure exposition of it that he attached any importance to it. And even after I had perceived that it was to be made into a capital charge, it failed to impress me. So it seems sufficient to point out that if knowledge be conceived as secondary without being divorced from action, and if due reflection is thus rendered a useful habit, there is no paradox in holding that it may also profitably reflect on its own genesis. So far from con- demning philosophic reflection, I could even wish that its use, especially when conducted on the right humanist lines, were more extensive. § 15. These replies would perhaps suffice, were it not that Mr. Bradley's paper contains much more than argu- ments. He makes also what looks like an attempt to arouse theological prejudice against us. It is very surprising to observe the general air of religiosity in which Mr. Bradley has enveloped himself. I looked in vain for my beloved bete fioire, the Absolute, and wondered why it had been sent to dwell with Hegel in eternal night. In its place one found not only the old ambiguous use of * God' in all its philosophic deceptive- ness,^ but even allusions to the Jehovah of Mr. Bradley's youth, and wondered why the Baal of ' Jericho ' received no honourable mention. Now, as I had always respected Mr. Bradley's philosophy for never seeking to curry favour with theology by playing on ambiguous phrases, 1 Cp. Essay xii. § 6. IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 135 I was naturally puzzled by this change of face. Was it to be regarded as a reversion, like the return to the ' correspondence ' view of truth, or respected as an indication of a change of heart, of a pathetic recrudes- cence of what Mr. Bradley had learnt (or, as he says, 'imbibed') in his youth about Jehovah (p. 332)? Or were we witnessing a strategic movement of the absolutist host, necessitated by the unexpected force of the enemy, and a recoil of its ' left ' upon its ' right ' wing ? Or lastly, was it to be interpreted, less charitably, as an attempt to enlist religious prejudices against the new philosophy by unfair appeals to a few travestied formulas of a musty theology ? The last seemed the boldest and riskiest strategy, and I should have thought Mr. Bradley too prudent to attempt it. The controversial maxim verketzern gilt nicht has not yet taken such firm root in Oxford that it should be superfluous for us to safeguard ourselves by repudiating an interpretation and an impression which his language may countenance. I must protest therefore against the insinuation that because our views do not conform with the dogmatic definition of religion it has pleased Mr. Bradley to impose, we may fitly be branded as irreligious and as blasphemers against the deity whom Mr. Bradley so strangely denominates " the lord of suffering and of sin and of death" (p. 315). Now I am well aware that the definition of religion is a difficult matter, and that many of its empirical manifestations accord ill with any of its definitions. But since the publication of James's Varieties of Religious Experience, I should have thought that there were two things that even the hardiest apriorist would have shrunk from. The first is dogmatizing concerning what religion 7nust mean, without troubling to inquire what psychologically the various forms of religious senti- ment have meant and do mean. Now if Mr. Bradley had condescended for a moment to contemplate the objective facts of concrete religion, he could not but have been struck with the fact that Humanism has the closest affinities with such important religious phenomena as 136 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv Newman's * grammar of assent ' and the widespread theology of Ritschl. And from James also he might have learnt that amid all the varieties of religious feeling the one most constant conception of the divine has been, not some desiccated formula about the Unity of the Universe, but a demand for something to respond to the outcry of the human heart. I should have thought, therefore, secondly, that what- ever might be said about the logical subversiveness of the new views, their value for religion was secured against attack. For has not James's doctrine of the Will to believe made manifest the pragmatic value of faith, and put the religious postulates on the same footing with those of science ? ^ Nay, has not the common charge against us been that our doctrines pander to all the crudest superstitions of the vulgar ? Mr. Bradley, I suppose, acquits us on this charge ; but his own is far less plausible. When one remembers further how Mr. Bradley has himself described religion as mere ' appearance ' riddled with contradictions and denied that " a God which is all in all is the God of religion," ^ it seems — well — slightly humorous to find him now setting up standards of ' orthodox ' theology and solemnly anathematizing those who have doubted the omnipotence of their ' God ' and the religious value of his (p. 331, cp. p. 316). One is inclined merely to retort in the words of Valentine — " Lass unsern Herr Gott aus dem Spass." His attacks (p. 331) on the two clerical contributors to Personal Idealism, Dr. Rashdall and particularly Dr. Bussell, are peculiarly invidious as being ad captandum appeals to " the more orthodox theologians " and preju- dicial to their professional status. But it seems some- what doubtful whether he will find any one naively * orthodox ' enough to reduce Christianity to a sort of Crypto -Buddhism at the behest of the author of Appearance and Reality. Mr. Bradley must have been well aware that his ^ Essay xvi. §§ 2, 9. 2 Apptarance and Reality, p. 448 (ist ed. ). Cp. Essay xii. § 6. IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 137 language was wholly ' popular.' He must have known, as well as Dr. Rashdall or I, that the 'omnipotence' he claims for his Absolute is not the ' omnipotence ' of the theologians, and that his Absolute is not obviously identical with the superhuman power, adequate to all human needs, which the religious sentiments legitimately postulate. He must know too that in no religion is the Divine, the principle of Help and Justice, ever actually regarded as omnipotent in practice.^ Again, seeing that he has plainly shown us that his Absolute possesses the religious attri- butes only as it possesses all else, and that for all human purposes it is impotent and worthless, was it not most injudicious to attack us on religious grounds ? And has he not justly provoked the retort that we feel his whole Absolutism to be a worthless technicality, if its true character is revealed, and a fulsome fraud upon all man's most sacred feelings, if it is not ? § 16. Curiously enough, however, Mr. Bradley's paper does not close with the enigmatic piety which has provoked these strictures. It is followed by a fit of agnosticism which might have come straight out of Herbert Spencer's Autobiography} The promise of philosophy " even in the end is no clear theory nor any complete understanding or vision " ; " its certain reward is a continual evidence and a heightened apprehension of the ineffable mystery of life." Only Spencer and Mr. Bradley tend in opposite directions : the former, more truly, feels that this final incomprehensibility is a " paralysing thought," and inclines towards the authoritative dogma of some religion that will claim to know ; the latter seems to regard it as edifying, and abandons the religious formulas to dis- burden himself of his contradictions in the bottomless pit of the Absolute. To the one, religion holds out more hopes of knowledge than philosophy, to the other, less. But as a satisfaction to the philosophic craving, to the will-to-know, neither policy, alas, seems to promise much. The philosopher's reasoning is rewarded merely with the sorry privilege accorded by Polyphemus to Odysseus. 1 Cp. Essay xii. § 6. "^ Cp. that work, ii. pp. 469-471. 138 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv For what profit is it, if break down it must, that it should perish somewhat later ? What a satire too it is upon a philosophic quest that started with the most con- fident anticipations of the rationality of the universe to have to end in such fiasco ! Can Mr. Bradley wonder, if this is really all his philosophy can come to, that philo- sophy is disregarded and despised, or that other philo- sophers prefer to bend their footsteps in more promising directions ? And it seems still stranger that it should be deemed appropriate to scathe all fresh attempts at ex- ploration with unmeasured contumely a priori. Surely a somewhat humbler and less ' hybristic ' note would better become the actual situation ! § 17. One notes indeed with satisfaction that in places Mr. Bradley seems to evince some dim consciousness of the real predicament. At all events he is growing more liberal in throwing open for discussion questions which we have always been assured on his side had been definitively closed. We may welcome, therefore, and note for future use, Mr. Bradley's admission of " well-known difficulties " in the infinity of God (p. 331), his description of pluralism as " a very promising adventure," and the " pleasure " it would give him to learn that its diffi- culties can be surmounted (p. 327). The tone of these admissions, it is true, still smacks of the judge who was * open to conviction, but by Jove would like to see the man who could convince him.' And he hastens to add that there are ' obvious difficulties ' (not stated) on the other side. Nor does he make it clear why, if real anti- nomies exist on these points, he should have so decisively adopted the one alternative, instead of suspending judgment and looking out for a real solution. But on the whole I read these admissions as a hopeful sign that the dwellers in ' Jericho ' are not so content with their gloomy ghettoes as they had seemed, nor so sure that it is in very deed the heavenly Jerusalem. Ere long they may come out to parley of their own accord and offer us terms, nay themselves dismantle antiquated defences that are useless against modern ordnance ! And when the IV TRUTH AND MR. BRADLEY 139 stronghold of the Absolute is once declared an open town, no longer cramped within walls, nor serving as a strait prison for the human soul, it can be refurbished and extended for those to dwell in whose tastes its habitations please. We too shall then have no further motive to molest an Absolutism which has ceased to oppress us and to be a menace to the liberty of thought. We may still decline to go to ' Jericho,' and prefer the open country, abiding in our tents with the household gods who suffice for our needs and need our co-operation because of their "pathetic weakness." -^ But why should we contend against the genial Absolutes of Prof. Taylor, which is finally reduced to an emotional postulate,^ or of Prof. Royce,^ which becomes the ultimate satisfaction of our social instincts and forms a sort of salon where all are at home and can meet their friends, so long as we escape the grim all-compelling monster of Mr. Bradley's nightmare? When we are no longer treated as Ishmaelites, there will be peace in the land, a peace attained, not by what must surely by this time seem the impossible method of snub- bing and snuffing out the new philosophy, but by a mutual toleration based on respect for the various idio- syncrasies of men.* Nor will there then any longer be occasion to reproach Philosophy that its favourite idolon fori is simply Billingsgate. § 1 8. Life will be easier in those days, and with it philo- sophy. For philosophers will have ceased to confound obscurity with profundity, difficulty with truth, and to expect that because some truths are hard, therefore all hard sayings are true. Nor will they any longer feel aggrieved, like Mr. Bradley (p. 335 s.f\ at the prospect of everything that would render philosophy easier and more attractive. For they will realize that the intrinsic 1 In Dr. Bussell's striking phrase [Personal Idealis7n, p. 341). 2 Elements of Metaphysics, p. 317 ; cp. p. 253. Prof. Taylor's disclaimer in Mind, N.S. No. 57, p. 86, upholds the claim to universal cogency and repre- sents the argument for a postulated Absolute as only ad hominem. But my objection to a postulated Absolute is not to the postulation, but merely to the fact that this postulate frustrates itself. ^ On the Eternal and the Practical. * Cp. Essay xii. §§ 8, 10. 140 STUDIES IN HUMANISM iv difficulties of thinking as an exercise of faculty will always suffice to preserve the ' dignity ' of philosophy, and that it is needless to enhance them by adding unintelligibilities and aimless word-play. Philosophy will always be hard, I agree. In some respects and for three reasons : because thinking is the hardest of exercises, because it presupposes much special knowledge to grasp the use of general conceptions which are devoid of meaning in abstraction from the experience they serve to organize, and because to rethink old con- ceptions into new ones is irksome and frequently demands a flash of insight before we can really ' see ' it all. But one might well despair of the human reason if what had once been clearly thought could not always be lucidly expressed. Obscurity of expression is nothing admirable ; it is always a bar to the comprehension of any subject, and it is fatal in a subject where the intrinsic difficulties are so great and the psychological variations of the minds which apprehend them so extreme ; it is, moreover, an easy refuge for confusion of thought. And it is surely one of the quaintest of academic superstitions to think that obscurity and confusion of thought have as such, * pedagogical value.' In view of these facts what reascn can there be for making Philosophy anything like so obscure, hard, repulsive, and unprofitable as the intellectualist systems which have obfuscated us so long ? THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH ^ ARGUMENT The great antithesis between Pragmatism and Intellectualism as to the nature of Truth. I. The predication of truth a specifically human habit. The existence oi false claims to truth. How then s^re false claims to be dis- criminated from true ? Intellectualism fails to answer this, and succumbs to the ambiguity of truth ('claim' and 'validity'). Illustrations from Plato and others. II. Universality and importance of the ambiguity. The refusal of Intellectualism to consider it. III. The pragmatic answer. Relevance and value relative to purpose. Hence ' truth ' a valuation. The convergence of values. IV. The evaluation of claims proceeds pragmatically. ' Truth ' implies relevance and usually reference to proximate ends. V. The pragmatic definition of ' Truth ' : its value for refuting naturalism and simplifying the classification of the sciences. VI. A challenge to Intellectualism to refute Pragmatism by evaluating any truth non-pragmatically . The purpose of this essay is to bring to a clear issue, and so possibly to the prospect of a settlement, the conflict of opinion now raging in the philosophic world as to the nature of the conception of * truth.' This issue is an essential part of the greater conflict between the old in- tellectualist and the new * pragmatist ' school of thought, which extends over the whole field of philosophy. For, in consequence of the difference between the aims and methods of the two schools, there is probably no intel- lectualist treatment of any problem which does not need, and will not bear, restatement in voluntarist terms. But the clash of these two great antithetical attitudes towards life is certainly more dramatic at some points than at others. The influence of belief upon thought, its value ^ A revised form of a paper which appeared in Mind for April 1906 (N.S. No. 58). 141 142 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v and function in knowledge, the relation of ' theory ' to ' practice,' the possibility of abstracting from emotional interest, and of ignoring in ' logic ' the psychological con- ditions of all judgment, the connexion between knowing and being, ' truth ' and ' fact,' ' origin ' and ' validity,' the question of how and how far the real which is said to be ' discovered ' is really ' made,' the ' plasticity ' and deter- minable indetermination of reality, the contribution of voluntary acceptance to the constitution of ' fact,' the nature of purpose and of ' mechanism,' the value of teleo- logy, the all-controlling presence of value-judgments and the interrelations of their various forms, the proper mean- ing of ' reason,' ' faith,' 'thought,' 'will,' ' freedom,' ' necessity,' all these are critical points at which burning questions have arisen or may arise, and at all of them the new philosophy seems able to provide a distinctive and con- sistent treatment. Thus there is throughout the field every promise of interesting discoveries and of a success- ful campaign for a thoroughgoing voluntarism that un- sparingly impugns the intellectualist tradition. But the aim of the present essay must be restricted. It will be confined to one small corner of the battlefield, viz. to the single question of the making of ' truth ' and the nieaning of a term which is more often mouthed in a passion of unreasoning loyalty than subjected to calm and logical analysis. I propose to show, (i) that such analysis is necessary and possible ; (2) that it results in a problem which the current intellectualist logic can neither dismiss nor solve ; (3) that to discard the abstractions of this formal logic at once renders this problem simple and soluble ; (4) that to solve it is to establish the pragmatist criterion of truth ; (5) that the resulting definition of truth unifies experience and rationalizes a well-established classification of the sciences ; and (6) I shall conclude with a twofold challenge to intellectualist logicians, failure to meet which will, I think, bring out with all desirable clearness that their system at present is as devoid of in- tellectual completeness as it is of practical fecundity. This design, it will be seen, deliberately rules out the V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 143 references to questions of belief, desire, and will, and their ineradicable influence upon cognition, with which Volun- tarism has made so much effective play, and this although I am keenly conscious both that their presence as psychical facts in all knowing is hardly open to denial,^ and that their recognition is essential to the full appreciation of our case. But I am desirous of meeting our adversaries on their own ground, that of abstract logic, and of giving them every advantage of position. And so, even at the risk of reducing the real interest of my subject, I will discuss it on the ground of as ' pure,' i.e. as formal^ a logic as is compatible with the continuance of actual thinking. I Let us begin then with the problem of analysing the conception of * truth,' and, to clear up our ideas, let us first observe the extension of the term. We may safely lay it down that the use of truth is Ihiov avOpcoirw, a habit peculiar to man. Animals, that is, do not attain to or use the conception. They do not effect discriminations within their experience by means of the predicates ' true ' and ' false.' Again, even the philosophers who have been most prodigal of dogmas concerning the nature of an ' infinite ' intelligence (whatever that may mean !), have evinced much hesitation about attributing to it the dis- cursive procedures of our own, and have usually hinted that it would transcend the predication of truth and falsehood. As being then a specific peculiarity of the human mind, the conception of ' truth ' seems closely analogous to that of * good ' and of ' beautiful,' which seem as naturally to possess antithetical predicates in the ' bad ' and the ' ugly,' as the ' true ' does in the ' false.' And it may be anticipated that when our psychology has quite outgrown the materialistic prejudices of its adolescence, it will probably regard all these habits of judging ex- ^ In point of fact such denial has never been attempted : inquiries as to how logic can validly consider a 'pure' thought, abstracted from the psychological conditions of actual thinking, have merely been ignored. My Formal Logic may now, however, be said to have established that such ' logic ' is meaningless. 144 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v periences as just as distinctive and ultimate features of mental process as are the ultimate facts of our perception. In a sense, therefore, the predications of ' good ' and ' bad,' ' true ' and ' false,' etc., may take rank with the experiences of * sweet,' * red,' ' loud,' ' hard,' etc, as ultimate facts which need be analysed no further.^ We may next infer that by a truth we mean a pro- position to which this attribute ' true ' has somehow been attached, and which, consequently, is envisaged sub specie veri. The Truths therefore, is the totality of things to which this mode of treatment is applied or applicable, whether or not this extends over the whole of our ex- perience. If now all propositions which involve this predication of truth really deserved it, if all that professes and seems to be ' true ' were really true, no difficulty would arise. Things would be ' true ' or ' false ' as simply and un- ambiguously as they are ' sweet ' or * sour,' ' red ' or ' blue,' and nothing could disturb our judgments or convict them of illusion. But in the sphere of knowledge such, notori- ously, is not the case. Our anticipations are often falsi- fied, our claims prove frequently untenable. Our truths may turn out to be false, our goods to be bad : falsehood and error are as rampant as evil in the world of our experience. This fact compels us (i) to an enlargement, and (2) to a distinction, in the realm of truth. For the logician * truth ' becomes a problem, enlarged so as to include * falsity ' as well, and so, strictly, our problem is the con- templation of experience sub specie veri et falsi. Secondly, if not all that claims truth is true, must we not distinguish this initial claim from whatever procedure subsequently justifies or validates it ? Truth, therefore, ivill become ambiguous. It will mean primarily a claim which may or may not turn out to be valid. It will mean, secondarily, such a claim after it has been tested and ratified, by 1 The purport of this very elementary remark, which is still very remote from the real problem of truth, is to confute the notion, which seems dimly to underlie some intellectualist criticisms, that the specific character of the truth- predication is ignored in pragmatist quarters. V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 145 processes which it behoves us to examine. In the first sense, as a claim, it will always have to be regarded with suspicion. For we shall not know whether it is really and fully true, and we shall tend to reserve this honour- able predicate for what has victoriously sustained its claim. And once we realize that a claim to truth is involved in every assertion as such^ our vigilance will be sharpened. A claim to truth, being inherent in assertion as such, will come to seem a formal and trivial thing, worth noting once for all, but possessing little real interest for knowledge. A formal logic, therefore, which restricts itself to the registration of such formal claims, we shall regard as solemn trifling ; but it will seem a matter of vital importance and of agonized inquiry what it is that validates such claims and makes them really true. And with regard to any ' truth ' that has been asserted, our first demand will be to know what is de facto its condition, whether what it sets forth has been fully validated, or whether it is still a mere, and possibly a random, claim. For this evidently will make all the difference to its meaning and logical value. That '2 + 2 = 4' ^rid that ' truth is indefinable ' stand, e.g. logically on a very different footing : the one is part of a tried and tested system of arithmetical truth, the other the desperate refuge of a bankrupt or indolent theory. Under such conditions far-reaching confusions could be avoided only by the unobtrusive operation of a bene- ficent providence. But that such miraculous intervention should guard logicians against the consequences of their negligence was hardly to be hoped for. Accordingly we find a whole cloud of witnesses to this confusion, from Plato, the great originator of the intellectualistic in- terpretation of life, down to the latest ' critics ' of Pragma- tism with all their pathetic inability to do more than reiterate the confusions of the Theaetetus. For example, this is how Plato conducts his refutation of Protagoras in a critical stage of his polemic : — ^ ^''Socrates. And how about Protagoras himself? If ^ Theaetetus, 170 E-171 B, Jovvett's translation. Italics mine. 146 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v neither he nor the multitude thought, as indeed they do not think, that man is the measure of all things, must it not follow that the truth {validity) of which Protagoras wrote would be true {claim) to no one ? But if you suppose that he himself thought this, and that the multi- tude does not agree with him, you must begin by allowing that in whatever proportion the many are more than one, his truth {validity) is more untrue {claim) than true ? " (not necessarily, for all truths start their career in a minority of one, as an individual's claims, and obtain recognition only after a long struggle). " Theodorus. That would follow if the truth {validity) is supposed to vary with individual opinion. " Socrates. And the best of the joke is that he acknow- ledges the truth {as claim, Protagoras ; as validity, Plato) of their opinion who believe his own opinion to be false ; for he admits that the opinions of all men are true " {as claims ; cp. also p. 309). For a more compact expression of the same ambiguity we may have recourse to Mr. Bradley, " About the truth of this Law " (of Contradiction) " so far as it applies, there is in my opinion no question. The question will be rather as to how far the Law applies and how far therefore it is tru,.!^ ^ The first proposition is either a truism or false. It is a truism if ' truth ' is taken in the sense of ' claim ' ; for it then only states that a claim is good if the ques- tion of its application is waived. In any other sense of ' truth ' it is false (or rather self-contradictory), since it admits that there is a question about the application of the ' Law,' and it is not until the application is attempted that validity can be tested. In the second proposition it is implied that ' truth ' depends, not on the mere claim, but on the possibility of application. Or, again, let us note how Prof. A. E. Taylor betters his master's instruction in an interesting article on ' Truth and Practice ' in the Phil. Rev. for May 1 905. He first lays it down that " true propositions are those which have an unconditional claim on our recognition " (of their validity, ^ Mind, V. N.S. , 20, p. 470. Italics mine. V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 147 or merely of their claim ?), and then pronounces that " truth is just the system of propositions which have an unconditional claim to be recognized as valid^ ^ And lest he should not have made the paradox of this confusion evident enough, he repeats (p. 273) that "the truth of a statement means not the actual fact of its recognition " {i.e. of its de facto validity), "but its rightful claim on our recognition" (p. 274)." In short, as he does not distin- guish between ' claim ' and ' right,' he cannot see that the question of truth is as to when and how a ' claim ' is to be recognized as ' rightful.' And though he wisely refrains from even attempting to tell us how the clamorousness of a claim is going to establish its validity, it is clear that his failure to observe the distinction demolishes his definition of truth. Mr. Joachim's Nature of Truth does not exemplify this confusion so clearly merely because it does not get to the point at which it is revealed. His theory of truth breaks down before this point is reached. He conceives the nature of truth to concern only the question of what ' the ideal ' should be, even though it should be unattainable by man, as indeed it turns out to be. Thus the problem of how we validate claims to truth is treated as irrelevant.^ Hence it is only casually that phrases like 'entitled to claim' occur (p. 109), or that the substantiating of a claim to truth is said to consist in its recognition and adoption " by all intelligent people" (p. 27). Still on p. 118 it seems to be implied that a " thought which claims truth as affirming universal meaning " need not undergo any further verification. It is evident, in short, that not much can be expected from theories which have overlooked so vital a distinction. Their unawareness of it will vitiate all their discussions of the nature of ' truth,' by which they will mean now the one sense, now the other, and now both, in inextricable fallacy. ' Pp. 271, 288. Italics mine. - Cp. also pp. 276 and 278. ^ As it is by Mr. Bradley, who, as Prof. Hoernle remarks, "deals with the question how ive correct our errors in a footnote ! " {Mind xiv. 321). 148 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v II Our provisional analysis, therefore, has resulted in our detecting an important ambiguity in the conception of truth which, unless it can be cleared up, must hopelessly vitiate all discussion. In view of this distressing situation it becomes our bounden duty to inquire Jiow an accepted truth may be distinguished from a mere claim, and how a claim to truth may be validated. For any logic which aims at dealing with actual thinking the urgency of this inquiry can hardly be exaggerated. But even the most ' purely ' intellectual and futilely formal theory of know- ledge can hardly refuse to undertake it. For the ambiguity which raises the problem is absolutely all- pervading. As we saw, a formal claim to truth is co- extensive with the sphere of logical judgment. No judgment proclaims its own fallibility ; its formal claim is always to be true. We are always liable, therefore, to misinterpret every judgment. We may take as a validated truth what in point of fact is really an unsupported claim. But inasmuch as such a claim may always be erroneous, we are constantly in danger of accepting as validly true what, if tested, would be utterly untenable. Every asirsrtion is ambiguous, and as it shows no outward indication of what it really means, we can hardly be said to know the meaning of any assertion whatsoever. On any view of logic, the disastrous and demoralizing consequences of such a situation may be imagined. It is imperative therefore to distinguish sharply between the formal inclusion of a statement in the sphere of ti'uth-or-falsity, and its incorporation into a system of tested truth. For unless we do so, we simply court deception. This possibility of deception, moreover, becomes the more serious when we realize how impotent our formal logic is to conceive this indispensable distinction and to guard us against so fatal a confusion. Instead of proving a help to the logician it here becomes a snare, by reason of the fundamental abstraction of its standpoint. For if, V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 149 following Mr. Alfred Sidgwick's brilliant lead, we regard as Formal Logic every treatment of our cognitive processes which abstracts from the concrete application of our logical functions to actual cases of knowing, it is easy to see that no such logic can help us, because the meaning of an asser- tion can never be determined apart from the actual applica- tion.^ From the mere verbal form, that is, we cannot tell whether we are dealing with a valid judgment or a sheer claim. To settle this, we must go behind the statement : we must go into the rights of the case. Meaning depends upon purpose, and purpose is a question of psychical fact, of the context and use of the form of words in actual knowing. But all this is just what the abstract standpoint of Formal Logic forbids us to examine. It conceives the meaning of a proposition to be somehow inherent in it as a form of words, apart from its use. So when it finds that the same words may be used to convey a variety of meanings in various contexts, it supposes itself to have the same form, not of words, but of judgment, and solemnly declares it to be as such ambiguous, even though in each actual case of use the meaning intended may be perfectly clear to the meanest understanding ! It seems more than doubtful, therefore, whether a genuine admission of the validity of our distinction could be extracted from any formal logician. For even if he could be induced to admit it in words, he would yet insist on treating it too as purely formal, and rule out on principle attempts to determine how de facto the distinction was established and employed. Although, therefore, our distinction appears to be as clear as it is important, it does not seem at all certain that it would be admitted by the logicians who are so enamoured of truth in the abstract that they have ceased to recognize it in the concrete. More probably they would protest that logic was being conducted back to the old puzzle of a general criterion of truth and error, and would adduce the failures of their predecessors as a valid excuse for their present apathy. Or at most they ^ Cp. Essays i. § 2, and iii. § lo. 150 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v might concede that a distinction between a truth and a claim to truth must indeed be made, but allege that it could not take any but a negative form. The sole criterion of truth, that is, which can be given, is that truth is not self-contradictory or incoherent. This statement, in the first place, means a refusal to go into the actual question how truth is made : it is an attempt to avoid the test of application, and to conceive truth as inherent in the logical terms in the abstract. But this is really to render ' truth ' wholly verbal. For the inherent meanings are merely the established meanings of the words employed. It is, secondly, merely dogmatic assertion : it can hardly inspire confidence so long as it precedes and precludes examination of the positive solu- tions of the problem, and assumes the conceptions of ' self- contradiction ' or ' incoherence ' as the simplest things in the world. In point of fact neither of them has been adequately analysed by intellectualist logicians, nor is either of them naturally so translucent as to shed a flood of light on any subject. As, however, we cannot now enter upon their obscurities, and examine what (if any- thing) either ' coherence ' or * consistency ' really means, it must suffice to remark that Capt. H. V. Knox's masterly article in the April (1905) number of Mind^ contains ample justification for what I have said about the principle of contradiction. If on the other hand the ' negative criterion ' be stated in the form of incoherence, I would inquire merely how intellectualist logic proposes to distinguish the logical coherence, to which it appeals, from the psychological coherence, which it despises. Until this difficult (or impossible ?) feat has been achieved, we may safely move on.^ Ill Let us proceed therefore to discard old prejudices and to consider how in point of fact we sift claims and discriminate between ' claims ' and ' truths,' how the raw ^ N.S. No. 54; cp. Formal Logic, ch. x. ^ Cf. also Hicmanis7n, pp. 52-53. V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 151 material of a science is elaborated into its final structure, how, in short, truth is made. Now this question is not intrinsically a hopeless one. It is not even particularly difficult in theory. For it concerns essentially facts which may be observed, and with care and attention it should be possible to determine whether the procedures of the various sciences have anything in common, and if so what. By such an inductive appeal to the facts, therefore, we greatly simplify our problem, and may possibly discover its solution. Any obstacle which we may encounter will come merely from the difficulty of intelligently observing the special procedures of so many sciences and of seizing their salient points and general import ; we shall not be foredoomed to failure by any intrinsic absurdity of our enterprise. Now it would be possible to arrive at our solution by a critical examination of every known science in detail, but it is evident that this procedure would be very long and laborious. It seems better, therefore, merely to state the condensed results of such investigations. They will in this shape stand out more clearly and better exhibit the trend of an argument which runs as follows : — It being taken as established that the sphere of logic is that of the antithetical valuations ' true ' and * false,' we observe, in the first place, that in every science the effective truth or falsity of an answer depends on its relevance to the question raised in that science. It does not matter that a physicist's language should reek of ' crude realism ' or an engineer's calculations lack ' exact- ness,' if both are right enough for their immediate purpose. Whereas, when an irrelevant answer is given, it is justly treated as non-existent for that science ; no question is raised whether it is ' true ' or ' false.' We observe, secondly, that every science has a definitely circumscribed subject-matter, a definite method of treating it, and a definitely articulated body of interpretations. Every science, in other words, forms a system of truths about some subject. But inasmuch as every science is con- cerned with some aspect of our total experience, and no 152 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v science deals with that whole under every aspect, it is clear that sciences arise by the limitation of subjects, the selection of standpoints, and the specialization of methods. All these operations, however, are artificial, and in a sense arbitrary, and none of them can be conceived to come about except by the action of a purposing intelli- gence. It follows that the nature of the purpose which is pursued in a science will yield the deepest insight into its nature ; for what we want to know in the science will determine the questions we put, and their bearing on the questions put will determine the standing of the answers we attain. If we can take the answers as relevant to our questions and conducive to our ends, they will yield ' truth ' ; if we cannot, ' falsity.' ^ Seeing thus that everywhere truth and falsity depend on the purpose which constitutes the science and are bestowed accordingly, we begin to perceive, what we ought never to have forgotten, that the predicates ' true ' and ' false ' are not unrelated to ' good ' and * bad.' For good and bad also (in their wider and primary sense) have reference to purpose. ' Good ' is what conduces to, ' bad ' what thwarts, a purpose. And so it would seem that ' true ' and ' false ' were valuations, forms of the ' good '-or-* bad ' which indicates a reference to an end. Or, as Aristotle said long ago, " in the case of the intelligence which is theoretical, and neither practical nor productive, its ' good ' and ' bad ' is ' truth ' and ' falsehood.' " ' Truth, then, being a valuation, has reference to a purpose. What precisely that reference is will depend on the purpose, which may extend over the whole range of human interest. But it is only in its primary aspect, as valued by individuals, that the predication of ' truth ' will refer thus widely to any purpose any one may entertain in a cognitive operation. For it stands to reason that the power of constituting ' objective ' truth 1 But cp. note on p. 154. "^ Eth. Nic. vi. 2, 3. Cp. De Anim. iii. 7, 431 b 10, where it is stated that " the true and false are in the same class with the good and bad," i.e. are valuations. V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 153 is not granted so easily. Society exercises almost as severe a control over the intellectual as over the moral eccentricities and nonconformities of its members ; indeed it often so organizes itself as to render the recognition of new truth nearly impossible. Whatever, therefore, individuals may recognize and value as ' true,' the ' truths ' which de facto prevail and are recognized as objective will only be a selection from those we are subjectively tempted to propound. There is, therefore, no real danger lest this analysis should destroy the ' objectivity ' of truth and enthrone subjective licence in its place. A further convergence in our truth-valuations is pro- duced by the natural tendency to subordinate all ends or purposes to the ultimate end or final purpose, ' the Good.' For in theory, at least, the ' goods,' and therefore the ' truths,' of all the sciences are unified and validated by their relation to the Supreme Good. In practice no doubt this ideal is far from being realized, and there arise at various points conflicts between the various sorts of values or goods, which doubtless will continue until a perfect harmony of all our purposes, scientific, moral, aesthetic, and emotional has been achieved. Such conflicts may, of course, be made occasions for theatrically opposing ' truth ' to (moral) ' goodness,' ' virtue ' to ' happiness,' ' science ' to ' art,' etc., and afford much scope for dithyrambic declama- tion. But a sober and clear-headed thought will not be intolerant nor disposed to treat such oppositions as final and absolute : even where under the circumstances their reality must provisionally be admitted, it will essay rather to evaluate each claim with reference to the highest conception of ultimate good which for the time being seems attainable. It will be very chary, therefore, of sacrificing either side beyond recall ; it will neither allow the claims of truth to oppress those of moral virtue nor those of moral virtue to suppress art. But it will still more decidedly hold aloof from the quixotic attempt to conceive the sphere of each valuation as independent and as wholly severed from the rest. 154 STUDIES IN HUMANISM IV We have seen so far that truth is a form of value, and the logical judgment a valuation ; but we have not yet raised the question as to what prompts us in bestowing or withholding this value, what are our guiding principles in thus evaluating our experience. The answer to this question takes us straight into the heart of Pragmatism. Nay, the answer to this question is Pragmatism, and gives the sense in which Pragmatism professes to have a criterion of truth. For the pragmatist contends that he has an answer which is simple, and open to inspection and easily tested. He simply bids us go to the facts and observe the actual operations of our knowing. If we will but do this, we shall ' discover ' that in all actual knowing the question whether an assertion is ' true ' or ' false ' is decided uniformly and very simply. It is decided, that is, by its consequences, by its bearing on the interest which prompted to the assertion, by its relation to the purpose which put the question. To add to this that the conse- quences must be good is superfluous. For if and so far as an assertion satisfies or forwards the purpose of the inquiry to which it owes its being, it is so far ' true ' ; if and so far as it thwarts or baffles it, it is unworkable, unserviceable, ' false.' And * true ' and ' false,' we have seen, are the intellectual forms of ' good ' and * bad.' Or in other words, a ' truth ' is what is useful in building up a science ; a ' falsehood ' what is useless or noxious for this same purpose.^ A * science,' similarly, is ' good ' if it can be used to harmonize our life ; if it cannot, it is a pseudo-science or a game. To determine therefore whether any answer to any question is ' true ' or * false,' we have merely to note its effect upon the inquiry in which we are interested, and in relation to which it has arisen. And if these effects are favourable, the answer is ' true ' and ' good ' for our purpose, and ' useful ' as a means to the 1 After allowance has been made for methodological assumptions, which may turn out to be ' fictions. ' ' Lies ' exist as such only after they have been detected ; but then they have usually ceased to be useful. V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 155 end we pursue.^ Here, then, we have exposed to view the whole rationale of Pragmatism, the source of the famous paradoxes that ' truth ' depends on its conse- quences, that the ' true ' must be ' good ' and ' useful ' and ' practical.' I confess that to me they have never seemed more than truisms so simple that I used to fear lest too elaborate an insistence on them should be taken as an insult to the intelligence of my readers. But experience has shown that I was too sanguine, and now I even feel impelled to guard still further against two possible mis- apprehensions into which an unthinking philosopher might fall. I will point out, in the first place, that when we said that truth was estimated by its consequences for some purpose, we were speaking subject to the social character of truth, and quite generally. What consequences are relevant to what purposes depends, of course, on the subject-matter of each science, and may sometimes be in doubt, when the question may be interpreted in several contexts. But as a rule the character of the question sufficiently defines the answer which can be treated as relevantly true. It is not necessary, therefore, seriously to contemplate absurdities such as, e.g., the intrusion of ethical or aesthetical motives into the estimation of mathe- matical truths, or to refute claims that the isosceles triangle is more virtuous than the scalene, or an integer nobler than a vulgar fraction, or that heavenly bodies must move not in ellipses but in circles, because the circle is the most perfect figure. Pragmatism is far less likely to countenance such confusions than the intellectualist theories from which I drew my last illustration. In some cases, doubtless, as in many problems of history and religion, there will be found deep-seated and enduring differences of opinion as to what consequences and what 1 Strictly both the 'true' and the 'false' answers are, as Mr. Sidgwick says, subdivisions of the 'relevant,' and the irrelevant is really unmeaning. But the unmeaning often seems to be relevant until it is detected ; it is as baffling to our purpose as the ' false ' ; while the ' false ' answer grows more and more ' irrelevant ' as we realize its ' falsity ' ; it does not mean what we meant to get, viz. something we can work with. Hence it is so far unmeaning, and in a sense all thatyiziVj us may be treated as 'false.' 156 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v tests may be adduced as relevant ; but these differences already exist, and are in no wise created by being recognized and explained. Pragmatism, however, by enlarging our notions of what constitutes relevant evidence, and insisting on some testing, is far more likely to conduce to their amicable settlement than the intellectualisms which condemn all faith as inherently irrational and irrelevant to knowledge. And, ideally and in principle, such disagreements as to the ends which are relevant to the estimation of any evidence are always capable of being composed by an appeal to the supreme purpose which unifies and harmonizes all our ends : in practice, no doubt, we are hardly aware of this, nor agreed as to what it is ; but the blame, surely, attaches to the distracted state of our thoughts and not to the prag- matic analysis of truth. For it would surely be pre- posterous to expect a mere theory of knowledge to adjudicate upon and settle offhand, by sheer dint of logic, all the disputed questions in all the sciences. My second caution refers to the fact that I have made the predication of truth dependent on relevance to a proxi- mate rather than an ultimate scientific purpose. This represents, I believe, our actual procedure. The ordinary ' truth 5 ' we predicate have but little concern with ultimate ends and realities. They are true (at least pro tern.) if they serve their immediate purpose. If any one hereafter chooses to question them he is at liberty to do so, and if he can make out his case, to reject them for their I inadequacy for his ulterior purposes. But even when the venue and the context of the question have thus been changed, and so its meaning, the truth of the original answer is not thereby abolished. It may have been degraded and reduced to a methodological status, but this is merely to affirm that what is true and service- able for one purpose is not necessarily so for another. And in any case it is time perhaps to cease complaining that a truth capable of being improved on, i.e. capable of growing, is so far not absolutely true, and therefore some- what false and worthy of contempt. For such complaints V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 157 spring from an arbitrary interpretation of a situation that might more sensibly be envisaged as meaning that none of the falsehoods, out of which our knowledge struggles in its growth, is ever wholly false. But in actual knowing we are not concerned with such arbitrary phrases, but with the bearing of an answer on a question actually pro- pounded. And whatever really answers is really ' true,' even though it may at once be turned into a stepping- stone to higher truth.^ ^ Cp. Essay viii. § 5. If therefore we realize that we are concerned with human ' truth ' alone, and that truth is ambiguous, there is no paradox in affirma- tively answering Prof. A. E. Taylor's question {Phil. Rev. xiv. 268) as to whether " the truth of a newly discovered theorem is created " (it should be " made," i.e. out of earlier 'truth') " by the fact of its discovery. " He asks "did the doc- trine of the earth's motion become true when enunciated by the Pythagoreans, false again when men forgot the Pythagorean astronomy, and true a second time on the publication of the book of Copernicus?" The ambiguity in this question may be revealed by asking : ' Do you mean " true " to refer to the valuation of the new "truth" by us, or to the re-valuation of the old ? ' For the 'discovery' in- volves both, and both are products of human activity. If then we grant (what is, I suppose, the case) that the Pythagorean, Ptolemaic and Copernican systems represent stages in the progress of a successful calculation of celestial motions, it is clear that each of them was valued as ' true ' while it seemed adequate, and re- valued as ' false ' when it was improved on. And ' true ' in Prof. Taylor's question does not, for science, mean 'absolutely true.' The relativity of motion renders the demand for absolute answers scientifically unmeaning. As well might one ask, ' What exactly is the distance of the earth from the sun ? ' Moving bodies, measured by human instruments, have no fixed distance, no absolute place. The successive scientific truths about them are only better recalculations. Hence a very slight improvement will occasion a change in their valuation. Prof. Taylor has failed to observe that he has conceived the scientific problem too loosely in grouping together the Pythagorean and the Copernican theory as alike cases of the earth's motion. No doubt they may both be so denominated, but the scientific value of the two theories was very different, and the Ptolemaic system is intermediate in value as well as in time. He might as well have taken a more modern instance and argued that the emission theory of light was true ' all along ' because the discovery of radio-activity has forced its undulatory rival to admit that light is sometimes produced by the impact of ' corpuscles. ' The reason then why it seems paradoxical to make the very existence of truth depend on its ' discovery ' by us, is that in some cases there ensues upon the dis- covery a transvaluation of our former values, which are now re-valued as ' false,' while the new ' truth ' is antedated as having been true all along. This, however, is conditioned by the special character of the case, and would have been impos- sible but for the human attempt to verify the claim. When what is ' discovered ' is gold in a rock, it is supposed to have been there ' all along ' ; when it is a burglar in a house, oiu- common-sense rejects such antedating. So the whole distinc- tion remains within the human evaluation of truth, and affords no occasion for attributing to ' truth ' any real independence of human cognition : the attempt to do so really misrepresents our procedure ; it is a mere error of abstraction to think that because a ' truth ' may be judged ' independent ' after human manipu- lation, it is so per se, irrespectively of the procedure to which it owes its ' inde- pendent ' existence. And to infer further that therefore logic should wholly abstract from the human side in knowing, is exactly like arguing that because children grow ' independent ' of their parents, they must be conceived as essenti- ally independent, and must have been so ' all along. ' 158 STUDIES IN HUMANISM V We now find ourselves in a position to lay down some Humanist definitions. Truth we may define as logical value, and a claim to truth as a claim to possess such value. The validation of such claims proceeds, we hold, by the pragmatic test, i.e. by experience of their effect upon the bodies of established truth which they affect. It is evident that in this sense truth will admit of degrees, extending from the humble truth which satisfies some purpose, even though it only be the lowly purpose of some subordinate end, to that ineffable ideal which would satisfy every purpose and unify all endeavours. But the main emphasis will clearly fall on the former : for to perfect truth we do not yet attain, and after all even the humblest truth may hold its ground without suffering rejection. No truth, moreover, can do more than do its duty and fulfil its function. These definitions should have sufficiently borne out the claim made at the beginning (p. 142), that the pragmatic view of truth unifies experience and rationalizes the classification of the normative sciences ; but it may not be amiss to add a few words on both these topics. That, in the first place, the conception of the logical judgment as a form of valuation connects it with our other valuations, and represents it as an integral part of the €(f)€at<; Tov dyaOov, of the purposive reaction upon the universe which bestows dignity and grandeur upon the struggle of human life is, I take it, evident. The theoretic importance of this conception is capital. It is easily and absolutely fatal to every form of Naturalism. For if every ' fact ' upon which any naturalistic system relies is at bottom a valuation, arrived at by selection from a larger whole, by rejection of what seemed irrelevant, and by purposive manipulation of what seemed important, there is a manifest absurdity in eliminating the human reference from results which have implied it at every step. The Humanist doctrine, therefore, affords a protection V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH 159 against Naturalism which ought to be the more appreciated by those interested in taking a ' spiritual ' view of life now that it has become pretty clear that the protection afforded by idealistic absolutism is quite illusory. For the ' spiritual nature of the Absolute ' does nothing to succour the human aspirations strangled in the coils of materialism : * absolute spirit ' need merely be conceived naturalistically to become as impotent to aid the theologian and the moralist as it has long been seen to be to help the scientist.^ The unification of logic with the other normative sciences is even more valuable practically than theoreti- cally. For it vindicates man's right to present his claims upon the universe in their integrity, as a demand not for Truth alone, but for Goodness, Beauty, and Happiness as well, commingled with each other in a fusion one and indiscerptible ; and what perhaps is for the moment more important still, it justifies our efforts to bring about such a union as we desire. Whether this ideal can be attained cannot, of course, be certainly predicted ; but a philosophy which gives us the right to aspire, and inspires us with the daring to attempt, is surely a great improvement on monisms which, like Spinoza's, essay to crush us with blank and illogical denials of the relevance of human valuations to the truth of things. In technical philosophy, however, it is good form to profess more interest in the formal relations of the sciences than in the cosmic claims and destinies of man, and so we may hasten to point out the signal aid which Humanism affords to a symmetrical classification of the sciences. If truth also is a valuation, we can understand why logic should attempt normative judgments, like ethics and aesthetics : if all the natural sciences make use of logical judgments and lay claim to logical values, we can understand also how and why the normative sciences should have dominion over them. And lastly, we find that the antithetical valuations and the distinction ^ Essay xii. § 5. i6o STUDIES IN HUMANISM v between claims and their selection into norms run through all the normative sciences in a perfectly analogous way. Just as not everything is true which claims truth, so not everything is good or right or beautiful which claims to be so, while ultimately all these claims are judged by their relation to the perfect harmony which forms our final aspiration. VI This essay was pledged at the outset to conclude with a twofold challenge, and now that it has set forth some of the advantages proffered by the pragmatic view of truth, we must revert to this challenge, in a spirit not of conten- tiousness so much as of anxious inquiry. For it is to be feared that a really resolute adherent of the intellectualist tradition would be unmoved and unconvinced by anything we, or any one, could say. He would simply close his eyes and seal his ears, and recite his creed. And perhaps no man yet was ever convinced of philosophic truth against his will. But there are beginning to be signs (and even wonders) that our intellectualism is growing less resolute. So perhaps even those who are not yet willing to face the new solutions can be brought to see the gaps in the old. If therefore we bring these to their notice very humbly, but very persistently, we may enable them to see that the old intellectualism has left its victims unprovided with answers to two momentous questions. Let us ask, therefore, how, upon its assumptions, they propose (i) to evaluate a claim to truth, and (2) to dis- criminate between such a claim and an established truth ? These two questions constitute the first part of my challenge. They are, clearly, good questions, and such that from any theory of knowledge with pretensions to completeness an answer may fairly be demanded. And if such an answer exists, it is so vital to the whole case of intellectualism, that we may fairly require it to be pro- duced. If it is not produced, we will be patient, and hope that some day we may be vouchsafed a revelation of V THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH i6i esoteric truth ; but human nature is weak, and the longer the delay the stronger will grow the suspicion that there is nothing to produce. The second part of our challenge refers to the intel- lectualist's rejection of our solution. If we are so very wrong in our very plain and positive assertion that the truth (validity) of a truth (claim) is tested and established by the value of its consequences, there ought surely to be no difficulty about producing abundant cases in which the truth (validity) of a doubtful assertion is established in some other way. I would ask, therefore, for the favour of one clear case of this kind} And I make only one stipulation. It should be a case in which there really was a question, so that the true answer might have, before examination, turned out false. For without this proviso we should get no illustration of actual knowing, such as was contemplated by the pragmatist, whose theory pro- fesses to discriminate cases in which there is a real chance of acquiring truth and a real risk of falling into falsity. If on the other hand specimens merely of indubitable or verbal truths were adduced, and it were asserted that these were true not because they were useful, but simply because they were true, we should end merely in a wrangle about the historical pedigree of the truth. We should contend that it was at one time doubtful, and accepted as true because of its tested utility : our opponent would dispute our derivation and assert that it had always been true. We should agree that it was now indisputable, we should disagree about the origin of this feature ; and the past history would usually be too little known to establish either view. And so we should get no nearer to a settlement. By observing on the other hand truth in the making, inferences may be drawn to the nature of truth already made. And whether truth is by nature pragmatic, or whether this is a foul aspersion on her character, it is 1 Prof. Taylor attempted to answer an earlier form of this challenge in Mind, N.S. No. 57. My reply in N.S. No. 59, entitled ' Pragmatism and Pseudo- Pragmatism," showed that he had misunderstood even the elementary 'principle of Peirce. ' M i62 STUDIES IN HUMANISM v surely most desirable that this point should be settled. Hitherto the chief obstacle to such a decision has been the fact that while in public (and still more in private) there has been much misconception, misrepresentation and abuse of our views, there have been no serious attempts to contest directly, unequivocally, and outright, any of our cardinal assertions.^ And what perhaps is still more singular, our critics have been completely reticent as to what alternative solutions to the issues raised they felt themselves in a position to propound. They have not put forward either any account of truth which can be said ultimately to have a meaning, or one that renders it possible to discriminate between the ' true ' and the ' false.' The whole situation is so strange, and so discreditable to the prestige of philosophy, that it is earnestly to be hoped that of the many renowned logicians who so vehemently differ from us some should at length see (and show us !) their way to refute these ' heresies,' as clearly and articulately as their ^u/^oeiSe? ^ permits their ov,^ and as boldly as their