{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_5117/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_5117","id":"gutenberg_5117","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5117","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Pragmatism","Reality","Truth"],"text":"Produced by Steve Harris, Charles Franks and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE MEANING OF TRUTH\n\nA SEQUEL TO 'PRAGMATISM'\n\nBy William James\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\nTHE pivotal part of my book named Pragmatism is its account of the\nrelation called 'truth' which may obtain between an idea (opinion,\nbelief, statement, or what not) and its object. 'Truth,' I there say,\n'is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement,\nas falsity means their disagreement, with reality. Pragmatists and\nintellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course.\n\n'Where our ideas [do] not copy definitely their object, what does\nagreement with that object mean? ... Pragmatism asks its usual question.\n\"Grant an idea or belief to be true,\" it says, \"what concrete difference\nwill its being true make in any one's actual life? What experiences\n[may] be different from those which would obtain if the belief were\nfalse? How will the truth be realized? What, in short, is the truth's\ncash-value in experiential terms?\" The moment pragmatism asks this\nquestion, it sees the answer: TRUE IDEAS ARE THOSE THAT WE CAN\nASSIMILATE, VALIDATE, CORROBORATE, AND VERIFY. FALSE IDEAS ARE THOSE\nTHAT WE CANNOT. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have\ntrue ideas; that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that\ntruth is known as.\n\n'The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth\nHAPPENS to an idea. It BECOMES true, is MADE true by events. Its verity\nIS in fact an event, a process, the process namely of its verifying\nitself, its veriFICATION. Its validity is the process of its validATION.\n[Footnote: But 'VERIFIABILITY,' I add, 'is as good as verification.\nFor one truth-process completed, there are a million in our lives\nthat function in [the] state of nascency. They lead us towards direct\nverification; lead us into the surroundings of the object they envisage;\nand then, if everything, runs on harmoniously, we are so sure that\nverification is possible that we omit it, and are usually justified by\nall that happens.']\n\n'To agree in the widest sense with a reality can only mean to be guided\neither straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into\nsuch working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected\nwith it better than if we disagreed. Better either intellectually or\npractically .... Any idea that helps us to deal, whether practically or\nintellectually, with either the reality or its belongings, that doesn't\nentangle our progress in frustrations, that FITS, in fact, and adapts\nour life to the reality's whole setting, will agree sufficiently to meet\nthe requirement. It will be true of that reality.\n\n'THE TRUE, to put it very briefly, IS ONLY THE EXPEDIENT IN THE WAY OF\nOUR THINKING, JUST AS THE RIGHT IS ONLY THE EXPEDIENT IN THE WAY OF OUR\nBEHAVING. Expedient in almost any fashion, and expedient in the long\nrun and on the whole, of course; for what meets expediently all the\nexperience in sight won't necessarily meet all farther experiences\nequally satisfactorily. Experience, as we know, has ways of BOILING\nOVER, and making us correct our present formulas.'\n\nThis account of truth, following upon the similar ones given by Messrs.\nDewey and Schiller, has occasioned the liveliest discussion. Few critics\nhave defended it, most of them have scouted it. It seems evident that\nthe subject is a hard one to understand, under its apparent simplicity;\nand evident also, I think, that the definitive settlement of it will\nmark a turning-point in the history of epistemology, and consequently\nin that of general philosophy. In order to make my own thought more\naccessible to those who hereafter may have to study the question, I have\ncollected in the volume that follows all the work of my pen that bears\ndirectly on the truth-question. My first statement was in 1884, in the\narticle that begins the present volume. The other papers follow in the\norder of their publication. Two or three appear now for the first time.\n\nOne of the accusations which I oftenest have had to meet is that of\nmaking the truth of our religious beliefs consist in their 'feeling\ngood' to us, and in nothing else. I regret to have given some excuse for\nthis charge, by the unguarded language in which, in the book Pragmatism,\nI spoke of the truth of the belief of certain philosophers in the\nabsolute. Explaining why I do not believe in the absolute myself (p.\n78), yet finding that it may secure 'moral holidays' to those who need\nthem, and is true in so far forth (if to gain moral holidays be a\ngood), [Footnote: Op. cit., p. 75.] I offered this as a conciliatory\nolive-branch to my enemies. But they, as is only too common with such\nofferings, trampled the gift under foot and turned and rent the giver. I\nhad counted too much on their good will--oh for the rarity of\nChristian charity under the sun! Oh for the rarity of ordinary secular\nintelligence also! I had supposed it to be matter of common observation\nthat, of two competing views of the universe which in all other respects\nare equal, but of which the first denies some vital human need while\nthe second satisfies it, the second will be favored by sane men for the\nsimple reason that it makes the world seem more rational. To choose the\nfirst view under such circumstances would be an ascetic act, an act of\nphilosophic self-denial of which no normal human being would be guilty.\nUsing the pragmatic test of the meaning of concepts, I had shown the\nconcept of the absolute to MEAN nothing but the holiday giver, the\nbanisher of cosmic fear. One's objective deliverance, when one says\n'the absolute exists,' amounted, on my showing, just to this, that 'some\njustification of a feeling of security in presence of the universe,'\nexists, and that systematically to refuse to cultivate a feeling of\nsecurity would be to do violence to a tendency in one's emotional life\nwhich might well be respected as prophetic.\n\nApparently my absolutist critics fail to see the workings of their own\nminds in any such picture, so all that I can do is to apologize, and\ntake my offering back. The absolute is true in NO way then, and least of\nall, by the verdict of the critics, in the way which I assigned!\n\nMy treatment of 'God,' 'freedom,' and 'design' was similar. Reducing,\nby the pragmatic test, the meaning of each of these concepts to its\npositive experienceable operation, I showed them all to mean the same\nthing, viz., the presence of 'promise' in the world. 'God or no God?'\nmeans 'promise or no promise?' It seems to me that the alternative is\nobjective enough, being a question as to whether the cosmos has one\ncharacter or another, even though our own provisional answer be made\non subjective grounds. Nevertheless christian and non-christian critics\nalike accuse me of summoning people to say 'God exists,' EVEN WHEN HE\nDOESN'T EXIST, because forsooth in my philosophy the 'truth' of the\nsaying doesn't really mean that he exists in any shape whatever, but\nonly that to say so feels good.\n\nMost of the pragmatist and anti-pragmatist warfare is over what the word\n'truth' shall be held to signify, and not over any of the facts embodied\nin truth-situations; for both pragmatists and anti-pragmatists believe\nin existent objects, just as they believe in our ideas of them. The\ndifference is that when the pragmatists speak of truth, they mean\nexclusively some thing about the ideas, namely their workableness;\nwhereas when anti-pragmatists speak of truth they seem most often to\nmean something about the objects. Since the pragmatist, if he agrees\nthat an idea is 'really' true, also agrees to whatever it says about\nits object; and since most anti-pragmatists have already come round\nto agreeing that, if the object exists, the idea that it does so is\nworkable; there would seem so little left to fight about that I might\nwell be asked why instead of reprinting my share in so much verbal\nwrangling, I do not show my sense of 'values' by burning it all up.\n\nI understand the question and I will give my answer. I am interested\nin another doctrine in philosophy to which I give the name of radical\nempiricism, and it seems to me that the establishment of the pragmatist\ntheory of truth is a step of first-rate importance in making radical\nempiricism prevail. Radical empiricism consists first of a postulate,\nnext of a statement of fact, and finally of a generalized conclusion.\n\nThe postulate is that the only things that shall be debatable among\nphilosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience.\n[Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum, but they\nform no part of the material for philosophic debate.]\n\nThe statement of fact is that the relations between things, conjunctive\nas well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct particular\nexperience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves.\n\nThe generalized conclusion is that therefore the parts of experience\nhold together from next to next by relations that are themselves parts\nof experience. The directly apprehended universe needs, in short, no\nextraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in its own\nright a concatenated or continuous structure.\n\nThe great obstacle to radical empiricism in the contemporary mind is the\nrooted rationalist belief that experience as immediately given is all\ndisjunction and no conjunction, and that to make one world out of this\nseparateness, a higher unifying agency must be there. In the prevalent\nidealism this agency is represented as the absolute all-witness which\n'relates' things together by throwing 'categories' over them like a\nnet. The most peculiar and unique, perhaps, of all these categories is\nsupposed to be the truth-relation, which connects parts of reality in\npairs, making of one of them a knower, and of the other a thing known,\nyet which is itself contentless experientially, neither describable,\nexplicable, nor reduceable to lower terms, and denotable only by\nuttering the name 'truth.'\n\nThe pragmatist view, on the contrary, of the truth-relation is that it\nhas a definite content, and that everything in it is experienceable.\nIts whole nature can be told in positive terms. The 'workableness'\nwhich ideas must have, in order to be true, means particular workings,\nphysical or intellectual, actual or possible, which they may set up\nfrom next to next inside of concrete experience. Were this pragmatic\ncontention admitted, one great point in the victory of radical\nempiricism would also be scored, for the relation between an object and\nthe idea that truly knows it, is held by rationalists to be nothing of\nthis describable sort, but to stand outside of all possible temporal\nexperience; and on the relation, so interpreted, rationalism is wonted\nto make its last most obdurate rally.\n\nNow the anti-pragmatist contentions which I try to meet in this volume\ncan be so easily used by rationalists as weapons of resistance, not only\nto pragmatism but to radical empiricism also (for if the truth-relation\nwere transcendent, others might be so too), that I feel strongly the\nstrategical importance of having them definitely met and got out of\nthe way. What our critics most persistently keep saying is that though\nworkings go with truth, yet they do not constitute it. It is numerically\nadditional to them, prior to them, explanatory OF them, and in no wise\nto be explained BY them, we are incessantly told. The first point for\nour enemies to establish, therefore, is that SOMETHING numerically\nadditional and prior to the workings is involved in the truth of\nan idea. Since the OBJECT is additional, and usually prior, most\nrationalists plead IT, and boldly accuse us of denying it. This leaves\non the bystanders the impression--since we cannot reasonably deny the\nexistence of the object--that our account of truth breaks down, and that\nour critics have driven us from the field. Altho in various places in\nthis volume I try to refute the slanderous charge that we deny real\nexistence, I will say here again, for the sake of emphasis, that the\nexistence of the object, whenever the idea asserts it 'truly,' is the\nonly reason, in innumerable cases, why the idea does work successfully,\nif it work at all; and that it seems an abuse of language, to say\nthe least, to transfer the word 'truth' from the idea to the object's\nexistence, when the falsehood of ideas that won't work is explained by\nthat existence as well as the truth of those that will.\n\nI find this abuse prevailing among my most accomplished adversaries. But\nonce establish the proper verbal custom, let the word 'truth' represent\na property of the idea, cease to make it something mysteriously\nconnected with the object known, and the path opens fair and wide, as\nI believe, to the discussion of radical empiricism on its merits. The\ntruth of an idea will then mean only its workings, or that in it which\nby ordinary psychological laws sets up those workings; it will mean\nneither the idea's object, nor anything 'saltatory' inside the idea,\nthat terms drawn from experience cannot describe.\n\nOne word more, ere I end this preface. A distinction is sometimes made\nbetween Dewey, Schiller and myself, as if I, in supposing the object's\nexistence, made a concession to popular prejudice which they, as more\nradical pragmatists, refuse to make. As I myself understand these\nauthors, we all three absolutely agree in admitting the transcendency of\nthe object (provided it be an experienceable object) to the subject, in\nthe truth-relation. Dewey in particular has insisted almost ad nauseam\nthat the whole meaning of our cognitive states and processes lies in\nthe way they intervene in the control and revaluation of independent\nexistences or facts. His account of knowledge is not only absurd, but\nmeaningless, unless independent existences be there of which our ideas\ntake account, and for the transformation of which they work. But because\nhe and Schiller refuse to discuss objects and relations 'transcendent'\nin the sense of being ALTOGETHER TRANS-EXPERIENTIAL, their critics\npounce on sentences in their writings to that effect to show that they\ndeny the existence WITHIN THE REALM OF EXPERIENCE of objects external\nto the ideas that declare their presence there. [Footnote: It gives me\npleasure to welcome Professor Carveth Read into the pragmatistic church,\nso far as his epistemology goes. See his vigorous book, The Metaphysics\nof Nature, 2d Edition, Appendix A. (London, Black, 1908.) The work What\nis Reality? by Francis Howe Johnson (Boston, 1891), of which I make the\nacquaintance only while correcting these proofs, contains some striking\nanticipations of the later pragmatist view. The Psychology of Thinking,\nby Irving E. Miller (New York, Macmillan Co., 1909), which has just\nappeared, is one of the most convincing pragmatist document yet\npublished, tho it does not use the word 'pragmatism' at all. While I\nam making references, I cannot refrain from inserting one to the\nextraordinarily acute article by H. V. Knox in the Quarterly Review for\nApril, 1909.]\n\nIt seems incredible that educated and apparently sincere critics should\nso fail to catch their adversary's point of view.\n\nWhat misleads so many of them is possibly also the fact that the\nuniverses of discourse of Schiller, Dewey, and myself are panoramas of\ndifferent extent, and that what the one postulates explicitly the other\nprovisionally leaves only in a state of implication, while the reader\nthereupon considers it to be denied. Schiller's universe is the\nsmallest, being essentially a psychological one. He starts with but one\nsort of thing, truth-claims, but is led ultimately to the independent\nobjective facts which they assert, inasmuch as the most successfully\nvalidated of all claims is that such facts are there. My universe is\nmore essentially epistemological. I start with two things, the objective\nfacts and the claims, and indicate which claims, the facts being there,\nwill work successfully as the latter's substitutes and which will not.\nI call the former claims true. Dewey's panorama, if I understand this\ncolleague, is the widest of the three, but I refrain from giving my own\naccount of its complexity. Suffice it that he holds as firmly as I do to\nobjects independent of our judgments. If I am wrong in saying this,\nhe must correct me. I decline in this matter to be corrected at second\nhand.\n\nI have not pretended in the following pages to consider all the critics\nof my account of truth, such as Messrs. Taylor, Lovejoy, Gardiner,\nBakewell, Creighton, Hibben, Parodi, Salter, Carus, Lalande, Mentre,\nMcTaggart, G. E. Moore, Ladd and others, especially not Professor\nSchinz, who has published under the title of Anti-pragmatisme an amusing\nsociological romance. Some of these critics seem to me to labor under an\ninability almost pathetic, to understand the thesis which they seek to\nrefute. I imagine that most of their difficulties have been answered\nby anticipation elsewhere in this volume, and I am sure that my readers\nwill thank me for not adding more repetition to the fearful amount that\nis already there.\n\n95 IRVING ST., CAMBRIDGE (MASS.), August, 1909.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\nI THE FUNCTION OF COGNITION\n\nII THE TIGERS IN INDIA\n\nIII HUMANISM AND TRUTH\n\nIV THE RELATION BETWEEN KNOWER AND KNOWN\n\nV THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM\n\nVI A WORD MORE ABOUT TRUTH\n\nVII PROFESSOR PRATT ON TRUTH\n\nVIII THE PRAGMATIST ACCOUNT OF TRUTH AND ITS MIS-UNDERSTANDERS\n\nIX THE MEANING OF THE WORD TRUTH\n\nX THE EXISTENCE OF JULIUS CAESAR\n\nXI THE ABSOLUTE AND THE STRENUOUS LIFE\n\nXII PROFESSOR HEBERT ON PRAGMATISM\n\nXIII ABSTRACTIONISM AND 'RELATIVISMUS'\n\nXIV TWO ENGLISH CRITICS\n\nXV A DIALOGUE\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE MEANING OF TRUTH\n\n\n\nI\n\nTHE FUNCTION OF COGNITION [Footnote: Read before the Aristotelian\nSociety, December 1, 1884, and first published in Mind, vol. x\n(1885).--This, and the following articles have received a very slight\nverbal revision, consisting mostly in the omission of redundancy.]\n\nThe following inquiry is (to use a distinction familiar to readers of\nMr. Shadworth Hodgson) not an inquiry into the 'how it comes,' but\ninto the 'what it is' of cognition. What we call acts of cognition are\nevidently realized through what we call brains and their events, whether\nthere be 'souls' dynamically connected with the brains or not. But with\nneither brains nor souls has this essay any business to transact. In it\nwe shall simply assume that cognition IS produced, somehow, and limit\nourselves to asking what elements it contains, what factors it implies.\n\nCognition is a function of consciousness. The first factor it implies\nis therefore a state of consciousness wherein the cognition shall take\nplace. Having elsewhere used the word 'feeling' to designate generically\nall states of consciousness considered subjectively, or without respect\nto their possible function, I shall then say that, whatever elements an\nact of cognition may imply besides, it at least implies the existence\nof a FEELING. [If the reader share the current antipathy to the word\n'feeling,' he may substitute for it, wherever I use it, the word 'idea,'\ntaken in the old broad Lockian sense, or he may use the clumsy phrase\n'state of consciousness,' or finally he may say 'thought' instead.]\n\nNow it is to be observed that the common consent of mankind has agreed\nthat some feelings are cognitive and some are simple facts having a\nsubjective, or, what one might almost call a physical, existence, but\nno such self-transcendent function as would be implied in their being\npieces of knowledge. Our task is again limited here. We are not to ask,\n'How is self-transcendence possible?' We are only to ask, 'How comes it\nthat common sense has assigned a number of cases in which it is assumed\nnot only to be possible but actual? And what are the marks used by\ncommon sense to distinguish those cases from the rest?' In short, our\ninquiry is a chapter in descriptive psychology,--hardly anything more.\n\nCondillac embarked on a quest similar to this by his famous hypothesis\nof a statue to which various feelings were successively imparted. Its\nfirst feeling was supposed to be one of fragrance. But to avoid all\npossible complication with the question of genesis, let us not attribute\neven to a statue the possession of our imaginary feeling. Let us rather\nsuppose it attached to no matter, nor localized at any point in space,\nbut left swinging IN VACUO, as it were, by the direct creative FIAT of a\ngod. And let us also, to escape entanglement with difficulties about the\nphysical or psychical nature of its 'object' not call it a feeling\nof fragrance or of any other determinate sort, but limit ourselves\nto assuming that it is a feeling of Q. What is true of it under this\nabstract name will be no less true of it in any more particular shape\n(such as fragrance, pain, hardness) which the reader may suppose.\n\nNow, if this feeling of Q be the only creation of the god, it will of\ncourse form the entire universe. And if, to escape the cavils of that\nlarge class of persons who believe that SEMPER IDEM SENTIRE AC NON\nSENTIRE are the same, [Footnote:1 'The Relativity of Knowledge,' held\nin this sense, is, it may be observed in passing, one of the oddest of\nphilosophic superstitions. Whatever facts may be cited in its favor are\ndue to the properties of nerve-tissue, which may be exhausted by\ntoo prolonged an excitement. Patients with neuralgias that last\nunremittingly for days can, however, assure us that the limits of this\nnerve-law are pretty widely drawn. But if we physically could get a\nfeeling that should last eternally unchanged, what atom of logical or\npsychological argument is there to prove that it would not be felt as\nlong as it lasted, and felt for just what it is, all that time? The\nreason for the opposite prejudice seems to be our reluctance to think\nthat so stupid a thing as such a feeling would necessarily be, should\nbe allowed to fill eternity with its presence. An interminable\nacquaintance, leading to no knowledge-about,--such would be its\ncondition.] we allow the feeling to be of as short a duration as they\nlike, that universe will only need to last an infinitesimal part of a\nsecond. The feeling in question will thus be reduced to its fighting\nweight, and all that befalls it in the way of a cognitive function\nmust be held to befall in the brief instant of its quickly snuffed-out\nlife,--a life, it will also be noticed, that has no other moment of\nconsciousness either preceding or following it.\n\nWell now, can our little feeling, thus left alone in the universe,--for\nthe god and we psychological critics may be supposed left out of\nthe account,--can the feeling, I say, be said to have any sort of a\ncognitive function? For it to KNOW, there must be something to be known.\nWhat is there, on the present supposition? One may reply, 'the feeling's\ncontent q.' But does it not seem more proper to call this the feeling's\nQUALITY than its content? Does not the word 'content' suggest that the\nfeeling has already dirempted itself as an act from its content as\nan object? And would it be quite safe to assume so promptly that the\nquality q of a feeling is one and the same thing with a feeling of the\nquality q? The quality q, so far, is an entirely subjective fact which\nthe feeling carries so to speak endogenously, or in its pocket. If\nany one pleases to dignify so simple a fact as this by the name of\nknowledge, of course nothing can prevent him. But let us keep closer\nto the path of common usage, and reserve the name knowledge for the\ncognition of 'realities,' meaning by realities things that exist\nindependently of the feeling through which their cognition occurs. If\nthe content of the feeling occur nowhere in the universe outside of the\nfeeling itself, and perish with the feeling, common usage refuses\nto call it a reality, and brands it as a subjective feature of the\nfeeling's constitution, or at the most as the feeling's DREAM.\n\nFor the feeling to be cognitive in the specific sense, then, it must be\nself-transcendent; and we must prevail upon the god to CREATE A REALITY\nOUTSIDE OF IT to correspond to its intrinsic quality Q. Thus only can\nit be redeemed from the condition of being a solipsism. If now the new\ncreated reality RESEMBLE the feeling's quality Q I say that the feeling\nmay be held by us TO BE COGNIZANT OF THAT REALITY.\n\nThis first instalment of my thesis is sure to be attacked. But one\nword before defending it 'Reality' has become our warrant for calling\na feeling cognitive; but what becomes our warrant for calling anything\nreality? The only reply is--the faith of the present critic or inquirer.\nAt every moment of his life he finds himself subject to a belief in SOME\nrealities, even though his realities of this year should prove to be his\nillusions of the next. Whenever he finds that the feeling he is studying\ncontemplates what he himself regards as a reality, he must of course\nadmit the feeling itself to be truly cognitive. We are ourselves the\ncritics here; and we shall find our burden much lightened by being\nallowed to take reality in this relative and provisional way. Every\nscience must make some assumptions. Erkenntnisstheoretiker are but\nfallible mortals. When they study the function of cognition, they do\nit by means of the same function in themselves. And knowing that the\nfountain cannot go higher than its source, we should promptly confess\nthat our results in this field are affected by our own liability to\nerr. THE MOST WE CAN CLAIM IS, THAT WHAT WE SAY ABOUT COGNITION MAY BE\nCOUNTED AS TRUE AS WHAT WE SAY ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE. If our hearers agree\nwith us about what are to be held 'realities,' they will perhaps also\nagree to the reality of our doctrine of the way in which they are known.\nWe cannot ask for more.\n\nOur terminology shall follow the spirit of these remarks. We will deny\nthe function of knowledge to any feeling whose quality or content we do\nnot ourselves believe to exist outside of that feeling as well as in\nit. We may call such a feeling a dream if we like; we shall have to see\nlater whether we can call it a fiction or an error.\n\nTo revert now to our thesis. Some persons will immediately cry out, 'How\nCAN a reality resemble a feeling?' Here we find how wise we were to name\nthe quality of the feeling by an algebraic letter Q. We flank the whole\ndifficulty of resemblance between an inner state and an outward reality,\nby leaving it free to any one to postulate as the reality whatever sort\nof thing he thinks CAN resemble a feeling,--if not an outward thing,\nthen another feeling like the first one,--the mere feeling Q in the\ncritic's mind for example. Evading thus this objection, we turn to\nanother which is sure to be urged.\n\nIt will come from those philosophers to whom 'thought,' in the sense of\na knowledge of relations, is the all in all of mental life; and who hold\na merely feeling consciousness to be no better--one would sometimes say\nfrom their utterances, a good deal worse--than no consciousness at all.\nSuch phrases as these, for example, are common to-day in the mouths of\nthose who claim to walk in the footprints of Kant and Hegel rather than\nin the ancestral English paths: 'A perception detached from all others,\n\"left out of the heap we call a mind,\" being out of all relation, has no\nqualities--is simply nothing. We can no more consider it than we can\nsee vacancy.' 'It is simply in itself fleeting, momentary, unnameable\n(because while we name it it has become another), and for the very same\nreason unknowable, the very negation of knowability.' 'Exclude from what\nwe have considered real all qualities constituted by relation, we find\nthat none are left.'\n\nAltho such citations as these from the writings of Professor Green might\nbe multiplied almost indefinitely, they would hardly repay the pains of\ncollection, so egregiously false is the doctrine they teach. Our little\nsupposed feeling, whatever it may be, from the cognitive point of view,\nwhether a bit of knowledge or a dream, is certainly no psychical zero.\nIt is a most positively and definitely qualified inner fact, with a\ncomplexion all its own. Of course there are many mental facts which it\nis NOT. It knows Q, if Q be a reality, with a very minimum of knowledge.\nIt neither dates nor locates it. It neither classes nor names it. And\nit neither knows itself as a feeling, nor contrasts itself with other\nfeelings, nor estimates its own duration or intensity. It is, in short,\nif there is no more of it than this, a most dumb and helpless and\nuseless kind of thing.\n\nBut if we must describe it by so many negations, and if it can say\nnothing ABOUT itself or ABOUT anything else, by what right do we deny\nthat it is a psychical zero? And may not the 'relationists' be right\nafter all?\n\nIn the innocent looking word 'about' lies the solution of this riddle;\nand a simple enough solution it is when frankly looked at. A quotation\nfrom a too seldom quoted book, the Exploratio Philosophica of John Grote\n(London, 1865), p. 60, will form the best introduction to it.\n\n'Our knowledge,' writes Grote, 'may be contemplated in either of two\nways, or, to use other words, we may speak in a double manner of the\n\"object\" of knowledge. That is, we may either use language thus: we\nKNOW a thing, a man, etc.; or we may use it thus: we know such and such\nthings ABOUT the thing, the man, etc. Language in general, following its\ntrue logical instinct, distinguishes between these two applications\nof the notion of knowledge, the one being yvwvai, noscere, kennen,\nconnaitre, the other being eidevai, scire, wissen, savoir. In\nthe origin, the former may be considered more what I have called\nphenomenal--it is the notion of knowledge as ACQUAINTANCE or familiarity\nwith what is known; which notion is perhaps more akin to the phenomenal\nbodily communication, and is less purely intellectual than the other; it\nis the kind of knowledge which we have of a thing by the presentation\nto the senses or the representation of it in picture or type, a\nVorstellung. The other, which is what we express in judgments or\npropositions, what is embodied in Begriffe or concepts without any\nnecessary imaginative representation, is in its origin the more\nintellectual notion of knowledge. There is no reason, however, why we\nshould not express our knowledge, whatever its kind, in either manner,\nprovided only we do not confusedly express it, in the same proposition\nor piece of reasoning, in both.'\n\nNow obviously if our supposed feeling of Q is (if knowledge at all) only\nknowledge of the mere acquaintance-type, it is milking a he-goat, as\nthe ancients would have said, to try to extract from it any deliverance\nABOUT anything under the sun, even about itself. And it is as unjust,\nafter our failure, to turn upon it and call it a psychical nothing, as\nit would be, after our fruitless attack upon the billy-goat, to proclaim\nthe non-lactiferous character of the whole goat-tribe. But the entire\nindustry of the Hegelian school in trying to shove simple sensation out\nof the pale of philosophic recognition is founded on this false issue.\nIt is always the 'speechlessness' of sensation, its inability to make\nany 'statement,'[Footnote: See, for example, Green's Introduction to\nHume's Treatise of Human Nature, p. 36.] that is held to make the very\nnotion of it meaningless, and to justify the student of knowledge in\nscouting it out of existence. 'Significance,' in the sense of standing\nas the sign of other mental states, is taken to be the sole function\nof what mental states we have; and from the perception that our little\nprimitive sensation has as yet no significance in this literal sense,\nit is an easy step to call it first meaningless, next senseless, then\nvacuous, and finally to brand it as absurd and inadmissible. But in\nthis universal liquidation, this everlasting slip, slip, slip, of direct\nacquaintance into knowledge-ABOUT, until at last nothing is left\nabout which the knowledge can be supposed to obtain, does not all\n'significance' depart from the situation? And when our knowledge about\nthings has reached its never so complicated perfection, must there\nnot needs abide alongside of it and inextricably mixed in with it some\nacquaintance with WHAT things all this knowledge is about?\n\nNow, our supposed little feeling gives a WHAT; and if other feelings\nshould succeed which remember the first, its WHAT may stand as subject\nor predicate of some piece of knowledge-about, of some judgment,\nperceiving relations between it and other WHATS which the other feelings\nmay know. The hitherto dumb Q will then receive a name and be no\nlonger speechless. But every name, as students of logic know, has its\n'denotation'; and the denotation always means some reality or content,\nrelationless as extra or with its internal relations unanalyzed,\nlike the Q which our primitive sensation is supposed to know. No\nrelation-expressing proposition is possible except on the basis of a\npreliminary acquaintance with such 'facts,' with such contents, as this.\nLet the Q be fragrance, let it be toothache, or let it be a more complex\nkind of feeling, like that of the full-moon swimming in her blue abyss,\nit must first come in that simple shape, and be held fast in that first\nintention, before any knowledge ABOUT it can be attained. The knowledge\nABOUT it is IT with a context added. Undo IT, and what is added cannot\nbe CONtext. [Footnote: If A enters and B exclaims, 'Didn't you see my\nbrother on the stairs?' we all hold that A may answer, 'I saw him,\nbut didn't know he was your brother'; ignorance of brotherhood not\nabolishing power to see. But those who, on account of the unrelatedness\nof the first facts with which we become acquainted, deny them to be\n'known' to us, ought in consistency to maintain that if A did not\nperceive the relationship of the man on the stairs to B, it was\nimpossible he should have noticed him at all.]\n\nLet us say no more then about this objection, but enlarge our thesis,\nthus: If there be in the universe a Q other than the Q in the feeling,\nthe latter may have acquaintance with an entity ejective to itself; an\nacquaintance moreover, which, as mere acquaintance, it would be hard to\nimagine susceptible either of improvement or increase, being in its way\ncomplete; and which would oblige us (so long as we refuse not to call\nacquaintance knowledge) to say not only that the feeling is cognitive,\nbut that all qualities of feeling, SO LONG AS THERE IS ANYTHING OUTSIDE\nOF THEM WHICH THEY RESEMBLE, are feelings OF qualities of existence, and\nperceptions of outward fact.\n\nThe point of this vindication of the cognitive function of the first\nfeeling lies, it will be noticed, in the discovery that q does exist\nelsewhere than in it. In case this discovery were not made, we could\nnot be sure the feeling was cognitive; and in case there were nothing\noutside to be discovered, we should have to call the feeling a dream.\nBut the feeling itself cannot make the discovery. Its own q is the only\nq it grasps; and its own nature is not a particle altered by having\nthe self-transcendent function of cognition either added to it or taken\naway. The function is accidental; synthetic, not analytic; and falls\noutside and not inside its being. [Footnote: It seems odd to call so\nimportant a function accidental, but I do not see how we can mend the\nmatter. Just as, if we start with the reality and ask how it may come\nto be known, we can only reply by invoking a feeling which shall\nRECONSTRUCT it in its own more private fashion; so, if we start with the\nfeeling and ask how it may come to know, we can only reply by invoking\na reality which shall RECONSTRUCT it in its own more public fashion. In\neither case, however, the datum we start with remains just what it was.\nOne may easily get lost in verbal mysteries about the difference\nbetween quality of feeling and feeling of quality, between receiving\nand reconstructing the knowledge of a reality. But at the end we must\nconfess that the notion of real cognition involves an unmediated dualism\nof the knower and the known. See Bowne's Metaphysics, New York, 1882,\npp. 403-412, and various passages in Lotze, e.g., Logic, Sec. 308.\n['Unmediated' is a bad word to have used.--1909.]]\n\nA feeling feels as a gun shoots. If there be nothing to be felt or\nhit, they discharge themselves ins blaue hinein. If, however, something\nstarts up opposite them, they no longer simply shoot or feel, they hit\nand know.\n\nBut with this arises a worse objection than any yet made. We the\ncritics look on and see a real q and a feeling of q; and because the two\nresemble each other, we say the one knows the other. But what right have\nwe to say this until we know that the feeling of q means to stand for or\nrepresent just that SAME other q? Suppose, instead of one q, a number\nof real q's in the field. If the gun shoots and hits, we can easily\nsee which one of them it hits. But how can we distinguish which one the\nfeeling knows? It knows the one it stands for. But which one DOES\nit stand for? It declares no intention in this respect. It merely\nresembles; it resembles all indifferently; and resembling, per se, is\nnot necessarily representing or standing-for at all. Eggs resemble each\nother, but do not on that account represent, stand for, or know each\nother. And if you say this is because neither of them is a FEELING,\nthen imagine the world to consist of nothing but toothaches, which ARE\nfeelings, feelings resembling each other exactly,--would they know each\nother the better for all that?\n\nThe case of q being a bare quality like that of toothache-pain is quite\ndifferent from that of its being a concrete individual thing. There is\npractically no test for deciding whether the feeling of a bare quality\nmeans to represent it or not. It can DO nothing to the quality beyond\nresembling it, simply because an abstract quality is a thing to which\nnothing can be done. Being without context or environment or principium\nindividuationis, a quiddity with no haecceity, a platonic idea, even\nduplicate editions of such a quality (were they possible), would be\nindiscernible, and no sign could be given, no result altered, whether\nthe feeling I meant to stand for this edition or for that, or whether it\nsimply resembled the quality without meaning to stand for it at all.\n\nIf now we grant a genuine pluralism of editions to the quality q, by\nassigning to each a CONTEXT which shall distinguish it from its mates,\nwe may proceed to explain which edition of it the feeling knows, by\nextending our principle of resemblance to the context too, and saying\nthe feeling knows the particular q whose context it most exactly\nduplicates. But here again the theoretic doubt recurs: duplication and\ncoincidence, are they knowledge? The gun shows which q it points to and\nhits, by BREAKING it. Until the feeling can show us which q it points to\nand knows, by some equally flagrant token, why are we not free to deny\nthat it either points to or knows any one of the REAL q's at all, and to\naffirm that the word 'resemblance' exhaustively describes its relation\nto the reality?\n\nWell, as a matter of fact, every actual feeling DOES show us, quite as\nflagrantly as the gun, which q it points to; and practically in concrete\ncases the matter is decided by an element we have hitherto left out. Let\nus pass from abstractions to possible instances, and ask our obliging\ndeus ex machina to frame for us a richer world. Let him send me,\nfor example, a dream of the death of a certain man, and let him\nsimultaneously cause the man to die. How would our practical instinct\nspontaneously decide whether this were a case of cognition of the\nreality, or only a sort of marvellous coincidence of a resembling\nreality with my dream? Just such puzzling cases as this are what the\n'society for psychical research' is busily collecting and trying to\ninterpret in the most reasonable way.\n\nIf my dream were the only one of the kind I ever had in my life, if the\ncontext of the death in the dream differed in many particulars from\nthe real death's context, and if my dream led me to no action about the\ndeath, unquestionably we should all call it a strange coincidence,\nand naught besides. But if the death in the dream had a long context,\nagreeing point for point with every feature that attended the real\ndeath; if I were constantly having such dreams, all equally perfect, and\nif on awaking I had a habit of ACTING immediately as if they were true\nand so getting 'the start' of my more tardily instructed neighbors,--we\nshould in all probability have to admit that I had some mysterious kind\nof clairvoyant power, that my dreams in an inscrutable way meant just\nthose realities they figured, and that the word 'coincidence' failed\nto touch the root of the matter. And whatever doubts any one preserved\nwould completely vanish, if it should appear that from the midst of my\ndream I had the power of INTERFERING with the course of the reality, and\nmaking the events in it turn this way or that, according as I dreamed\nthey should. Then at least it would be certain that my waking critics\nand my dreaming self were dealing with the SAME.\n\nAnd thus do men invariably decide such a question. THE FALLING OF THE\nDREAM'S PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES into the real world, and the EXTENT\nof the resemblance between the two worlds are the criteria they\ninstinctively use. [Footnote: The thoroughgoing objector might, it is\ntrue, still return to the charge, and, granting a dream which should\ncompletely mirror the real universe, and all the actions dreamed in\nwhich should be instantly matched by duplicate actions in this universe,\nstill insist that this is nothing more than harmony, and that it is as\nfar as ever from being made clear whether the dream-world refers to that\nother world, all of whose details it so closely copies. This objection\nleads deep into metaphysics. I do not impugn its importance, and justice\nobliges me to say that but for the teachings of my colleague, Dr. Josiah\nRoyce, I should neither have grasped its full force nor made my own\npractical and psychological point of view as clear to myself as it is.\nOn this occasion I prefer to stick steadfastly to that point of view;\nbut I hope that Dr. Royce's more fundamental criticism of the function\nof cognition may ere long see the light. [I referred in this note to\nRoyce's religious aspect of philosophy, then about to be published. This\npowerful book maintained that the notion of REFERRING involved that of\nan inclusive mind that shall own both the real q and the mental q, and\nuse the latter expressly as a representative symbol of the former.\nAt the time I could not refute this transcendentalist opinion. Later,\nlargely through the influence of Professor D. S. Miller (see his essay\n'The meaning of truth and error,' in the Philosophical Review for 1893,\nvol. 2 p. 403) I came to see that any definitely experienceable workings\nwould serve as intermediaries quite as well as the absolute mind's\nintentions would.]] All feeling is for the sake of action, all feeling\nresults in action,--to-day no argument is needed to prove these truths.\nBut by a most singular disposition of nature which we may conceive\nto have been different, MY FEELINGS ACT UPON THE REALITIES WITHIN MY\nCRITIC'S WORLD. Unless, then, my critic can prove that my feeling does\nnot 'point to' those realities which it acts upon, how can he continue\nto doubt that he and I are alike cognizant of one and the same real\nworld? If the action is performed in one world, that must be the world\nthe feeling intends; if in another world, THAT is the world the feeling\nhas in mind. If your feeling bear no fruits in my world, I call it\nutterly detached from my world; I call it a solipsism, and call its\nworld a dream-world. If your toothache do not prompt you to ACT as if\nI had a toothache, nor even as if I had a separate existence; if you\nneither say to me, 'I know now how you must suffer!' nor tell me of\na remedy, I deny that your feeling, however it may resemble mine, is\nreally cognizant of mine. It gives no SIGN of being cognizant, and such\na sign is absolutely necessary to my admission that it is.\n\nBefore I can think you to mean my world, you must affect my world;\nbefore I can think you to mean much of it, you must affect much of it;\nand before I can be sure you mean it AS I DO, you must affect it JUST\nAS I SHOULD if I were in your place. Then I, your critic, will gladly\nbelieve that we are thinking, not only of the same reality, but that we\nare thinking it ALIKE, and thinking of much of its extent.\n\nWithout the practical effects of our neighbor's feelings on our own\nworld, we should never suspect the existence of our neighbor's feelings\nat all, and of course should never find ourselves playing the critic as\nwe do in this article. The constitution of nature is very peculiar. In\nthe world of each of us are certain objects called human bodies, which\nmove about and act on all the other objects there, and the occasions of\ntheir action are in the main what the occasions of our action would be,\nwere they our bodies. They use words and gestures, which, if we used\nthem, would have thoughts behind them,--no mere thoughts uberhaupt,\nhowever, but strictly determinate thoughts. I think you have the notion\nof fire in general, because I see you act towards this fire in my room\njust as I act towards it,--poke it and present your person towards it,\nand so forth. But that binds me to believe that if you feel 'fire'\nat all, THIS is the fire you feel. As a matter of fact, whenever we\nconstitute ourselves into psychological critics, it is not by dint of\ndiscovering which reality a feeling 'resembles' that we find out which\nreality it means. We become first aware of which one it means, and then\nwe suppose that to be the one it resembles. We see each other looking\nat the same objects, pointing to them and turning them over in various\nways, and thereupon we hope and trust that all of our several feelings\nresemble the reality and each other. But this is a thing of which we\nare never theoretically sure. Still, it would practically be a case of\ngrubelsucht, if a ruffian were assaulting and drubbing my body, to spend\nmuch time in subtle speculation either as to whether his vision of my\nbody resembled mine, or as to whether the body he really MEANT to insult\nwere not some body in his mind's eye, altogether other from my own. The\npractical point of view brushes such metaphysical cobwebs away. If what\nhe have in mind be not MY body, why call we it a body at all? His mind\nis inferred by me as a term, to whose existence we trace the things\nthat happen. The inference is quite void if the term, once inferred, be\nseparated from its connection with the body that made me infer it,\nand connected with another that is not mine at all. No matter for the\nmetaphysical puzzle of how our two minds, the ruffian's and mine, can\nmean the same body. Men who see each other's bodies sharing the same\nspace, treading the same earth, splashing the same water, making the\nsame air resonant, and pursuing the same game and eating out of the\nsame dish, will never practically believe in a pluralism of solipsistic\nworlds.\n\nWhere, however, the actions of one mind seem to take no effect in the\nworld of the other, the case is different. This is what happens in\npoetry and fiction. Every one knows Ivanhoe, for example; but so long as\nwe stick to the story pure and simple without regard to the facts of its\nproduction, few would hesitate to admit that there are as many different\nIvanhoes as there are different minds cognizant of the story. [Footnote:\nThat is, there is no REAL 'Ivanhoe,' not even the one in Sir Walter\nScott's mind as he was writing the story. That one is only the FIRST\none of the Ivanhoe-solipsisms. It is quite true we can make it the real\nIvanhoe if we like, and then say that the other Ivanhoes know it or do\nnot know it, according as they refer to and resemble it or no. This is\ndone by bringing in Sir Walter Scott himself as the author of the real\nIvanhoe, and so making a complex object of both. This object, however,\nis not a story pure and simple. It has dynamic relations with the world\ncommon to the experience of all the readers. Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe\ngot itself printed in volumes which we all can handle, and to any one of\nwhich we can refer to see which of our versions be the true one, i.e.,\nthe original one of Scott himself. We can see the manuscript; in short\nwe can get back to the Ivanhoe in Scott's mind by many an avenue and\nchannel of this real world of our experience,--a thing we can by no\nmeans do with either the Ivanhoe or the Rebecca, either the Templar or\nthe Isaac of York, of the story taken simply as such, and detached from\nthe conditions of its production. Everywhere, then, we have the same\ntest: can we pass continuously from two objects in two minds to a third\nobject which seems to be in BOTH minds, because each mind feels every\nmodification imprinted on it by the other? If so, the first two objects\nnamed are derivatives, to say the least, from the same third object, and\nmay be held, if they resemble each other, to refer to one and the same\nreality.] The fact that all these Ivanhoes RESEMBLE each other does\nnot prove the contrary. But if an alteration invented by one man in his\nversion were to reverberate immediately through all the other versions,\nand produce changes therein, we should then easily agree that all\nthese thinkers were thinking the SAME Ivanhoe, and that, fiction or no\nfiction, it formed a little world common to them all.\n\nHaving reached this point, we may take up our thesis and improve it\nagain. Still calling the reality by the name of q and letting the\ncritic's feeling vouch for it, we can say that any other feeling will\nbe held cognizant of q, provided it both resemble q, and refer to q,\nas shown by its either modifying q directly, or modifying some other\nreality, p or r, which the critic knows to be continuous with q. Or more\nshortly, thus: THE FEELING OF q KNOWS WHATEVER REALITY IT RESEMBLES,\nAND EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY OPERATES ON. If it resemble without\noperating, it is a dream; if it operate without resembling, it is an\nerror. [Footnote: Among such errors are those cases in which our feeling\noperates on a reality which it does partially resemble, and yet does not\nintend: as for instance, when I take up your umbrella, meaning to take\nmy own. I cannot be said here either to know your umbrella, or my own,\nwhich latter my feeling more completely resembles. I am mistaking them\nboth, misrepresenting their context, etc.\n\nWe have spoken in the text as if the critic were necessarily one mind,\nand the feeling criticised another. But the criticised feeling and its\ncritic may be earlier and later feelings of the same mind, and here it\nmight seem that we could dispense with the notion of operating, to prove\nthat critic and criticised are referring to and meaning to represent\nthe SAME. We think we see our past feelings directly, and know what they\nrefer to without appeal. At the worst, we can always fix the intention\nof our present feeling and MAKE it refer to the same reality to\nwhich any one of our past feelings may have referred. So we need no\n'operating' here, to make sure that the feeling and its critic mean the\nsame real q. Well, all the better if this is so! We have covered the\nmore complex and difficult case in our text, and we may let this easier\none go. The main thing at present is to stick to practical psychology,\nand ignore metaphysical difficulties.\n\nOne more remark. Our formula contains, it will be observed, nothing to\ncorrespond to the great principle of cognition laid down by Professor\nFerrier in his Institutes of Metaphysic and apparently adopted by all\nthe followers of Fichte, the principle, namely, that for knowledge to\nbe constituted there must be knowledge of the knowing mind along with\nwhatever else is known: not q, as we have supposed, but q PLUS MYSELF,\nmust be the least I can know. It is certain that the common sense\nof mankind never dreams of using any such principle when it tries to\ndiscriminate between conscious states that are knowledge and conscious\nstates that are not. So that Ferrier's principle, if it have any\nrelevancy at all, must have relevancy to the metaphysical possibility\nof consciousness at large, and not to the practically recognized\nconstitution of cognitive consciousness. We may therefore pass it by\nwithout further notice here.] It is to be feared that the reader may\nconsider this formula rather insignificant and obvious, and hardly worth\nthe labor of so many pages, especially when he considers that the only\ncases to which it applies are percepts, and that the whole field of\nsymbolic or conceptual thinking seems to elude its grasp. Where the\nreality is either a material thing or act, or a state of the critic's\nconsciousness, I may both mirror it in my mind and operate upon it--in\nthe latter case indirectly, of course--as soon as I perceive it. But\nthere are many cognitions, universally allowed to be such, which neither\nmirror nor operate on their realities.\n\nIn the whole field of symbolic thought we are universally held both\nto intend, to speak of, and to reach conclusions about--to know\nin short--particular realities, without having in our subjective\nconsciousness any mind-stuff that resembles them even in a remote\ndegree. We are instructed about them by language which awakens no\nconsciousness beyond its sound; and we know WHICH realities they are by\nthe faintest and most fragmentary glimpse of some remote context they\nmay have and by no direct imagination of themselves. As minds may differ\nhere, let me speak in the first person. I am sure that my own current\nthinking has WORDS for its almost exclusive subjective material, words\nwhich are made intelligible by being referred to some reality that lies\nbeyond the horizon of direct consciousness, and of which I am only aware\nas of a terminal MORE existing in a certain direction, to which the\nwords might lead but do not lead yet. The SUBJECT, or TOPIC, of the\nwords is usually something towards which I mentally seem to pitch them\nin a backward way, almost as I might jerk my thumb over my shoulder to\npoint at something, without looking round, if I were only entirely sure\nthat it was there. The UPSHOT, or CONCLUSION, of the words is something\ntowards which I seem to incline my head forwards, as if giving assent to\nits existence, tho all my mind's eye catches sight of may be some tatter\nof an image connected with it, which tatter, however, if only endued\nwith the feeling of familiarity and reality, makes me feel that the\nwhole to which it belongs is rational and real, and fit to be let pass.\n\nHere then is cognitive consciousness on a large scale, and yet what\nit knows, it hardly resembles in the least degree. The formula last laid\ndown for our thesis must therefore be made more complete. We may\nnow express it thus: A PERCEPT KNOWS WHATEVER REALITY IT DIRECTLY OR\nINDIRECTLY OPERATES ON AND RESEMBLES; ACONCEPTUAL FEELING, OR THOUGHT\nKNOWS A REALITY, WHENEVER IT ACTUALLY OR POTENTIALLY TERMINATES IN A\nPERCEPT THAT OPERATES ON, OR RESEMBLES THAT REALITY, OR IS OTHERWISE\nCONNECTED WITH IT OR WITH ITS CONTEXT. The latter percept may be either\nsensation or sensorial idea; and when I say the thought must TERMINATE\nin such a percept, I mean that it must ultimately be capable of leading\nup thereto,--by the way of practical [missing section] is an incomplete\n'thought about' that reality, that reality is its 'topic,' etc.\nexperience, if the terminal feeling be a sensation; by the way of\nlogical or habitual suggestion, if it be only an image in the mind.\n\nLet an illustration make this plainer. I open the first book I take up,\nand read the first sentence that meets my eye: 'Newton saw the handiwork\nof God in the heavens as plainly as Paley in the animal kingdom.' I\nimmediately look back and try to analyze the subjective state in which I\nrapidly apprehended this sentence as I read it. In the first place there\nwas an obvious feeling that the sentence was intelligible and rational\nand related to the world of realities. There was also a sense of\nagreement or harmony between 'Newton,' 'Paley,' and 'God.' There was no\napparent image connected with the words 'heavens,' or 'handiwork,' or\n'God'; they were words merely. With 'animal kingdom' I think there was\nthe faintest consciousness (it may possibly have been an image of the\nsteps) of the Museum of Zoology in the town of Cambridge where I write.\nWith 'Paley' there was an equally faint consciousness of a small\ndark leather book; and with 'Newton' a pretty distinct vision of the\nright-hand lower corner of curling periwig. This is all the mind-stuff I\ncan discover in my first consciousness of the meaning of this sentence,\nand I am afraid that even not all of this would have been present had I\ncome upon the sentence in a genuine reading of the book, and not picked\nit out for an experiment. And yet my consciousness was truly cognitive.\nThe sentence is 'about realities' which my psychological critic--for we\nmust not forget him--acknowledges to be such, even as he acknowledges\nmy distinct feeling that they ARE realities, and my acquiescence in the\ngeneral rightness of what I read of them, to be true knowledge on my\npart.\n\nNow what justifies my critic in being as lenient as this? This\nsingularly inadequate consciousness of mine, made up of symbols that\nneither resemble nor affect the realities they stand for,--how can he be\nsure it is cognizant of the very realities he has himself in mind?\n\nHe is sure because in countless like cases he has seen such inadequate\nand symbolic thoughts, by developing themselves, terminate in percepts\nthat practically modified and presumably resembled his own. By\n'developing' themselves is meant obeying their tendencies, following up\nthe suggestions nascently present in them, working in the direction in\nwhich they seem to point, clearing up the penumbra, making distinct the\nhalo, unravelling the fringe, which is part of their composition, and in\nthe midst of which their more substantive kernel of subjective content\nseems consciously to lie. Thus I may develop my thought in the Paley\ndirection by procuring the brown leather volume and bringing the\npassages about the animal kingdom before the critic's eyes. I may\nsatisfy him that the words mean for me just what they mean for him,\nby showing him IN CONCRETO the very animals and their arrangements, of\nwhich the pages treat. I may get Newton's works and portraits; or if\nI follow the line of suggestion of the wig, I may smother my critic in\nseventeenth-century matters pertaining to Newton's environment, to show\nthat the word 'Newton' has the same LOCUS and relations in both our\nminds. Finally I may, by act and word, persuade him that what I mean by\nGod and the heavens and the analogy of the handiworks, is just what he\nmeans also.\n\nMy demonstration in the last resort is to his SENSES. My thought makes\nme act on his senses much as he might himself act on them, were he\npursuing the consequences of a perception of his own. Practically\nthen MY thought terminates in HIS realities. He willingly supposes it,\ntherefore, to be OF them, and inwardly to RESEMBLE what his own thought\nwould be, were it of the same symbolic sort as mine. And the pivot and\nfulcrum and support of his mental persuasion, is the sensible operation\nwhich my thought leads me, or may lead, to effect--the bringing of\nPaley's book, of Newton's portrait, etc., before his very eyes.\n\nIn the last analysis, then, we believe that we all know and think about\nand talk about the same world, because WE BELIEVE OUR PERCEPTS ARE\nPOSSESSED BY US IN COMMON. And we believe this because the percepts\nof each one of us seem to be changed in consequence of changes in the\npercepts of someone else. What I am for you is in the first instance a\npercept of your own. Unexpectedly, however, I open and show you a book,\nuttering certain sounds the while. These acts are also your percepts,\nbut they so resemble acts of yours with feelings prompting them, that\nyou cannot doubt I have the feelings too, or that the book is one\nbook felt in both our worlds. That it is felt in the same way, that my\nfeelings of it resemble yours, is something of which we never can be\nsure, but which we assume as the simplest hypothesis that meets\nthe case. As a matter of fact, we never ARE sure of it, and, as\nERKENNTNISSTHEORETIKER, we can only say that of feelings that should NOT\nresemble each other, both could not know the same thing at the same\ntime in the same way. [Footnote: Though both might terminate in the same\nthing and be incomplete thoughts 'about' it.] If each holds to its own\npercept as the reality, it is bound to say of the other percept, that,\nthough it may INTEND that reality, and prove this by working change upon\nit, yet, if it do not resemble it, it is all false and wrong. [Footnote:\nThe difference between Idealism and Realism is immaterial here. What\nis said in the text is consistent with either theory. A law by which my\npercept shall change yours directly is no more mysterious than a law\nby which it shall first change a physical reality, and then the reality\nchange yours. In either case you and I seem knit into a continuous\nworld, and not to form a pair of solipsisms.]\n\nIf this be so of percepts, how much more so of higher modes of thought!\nEven in the sphere of sensation individuals are probably different\nenough. Comparative study of the simplest conceptual elements seems to\nshow a wider divergence still. And when it comes to general theories\nand emotional attitudes towards life, it is indeed time to say with\nThackeray, 'My friend, two different universes walk about under your hat\nand under mine.'\n\nWhat can save us at all and prevent us from flying asunder into a chaos\nof mutually repellent solipsisms? Through what can our several minds\ncommune? Through nothing but the mutual resemblance of those of our\nperceptual feelings which have this power of modifying one another,\nWHICH ARE MERE DUMB KNOWLEDGES-OF-ACQUAINTANCE, and which must also\nresemble their realities or not know them aright at all. In such pieces\nof knowledge-of-acquaintance all our knowledge-about must end, and\ncarry a sense of this possible termination as part of its content.\nThese percepts, these termini, these sensible things, these mere\nmatters-of-acquaintance, are the only realities we ever directly know,\nand the whole history of our thought is the history of our substitution\nof one of them for another, and the reduction of the substitute to the\nstatus of a conceptual sign. Contemned though they be by some thinkers,\nthese sensations are the mother-earth, the anchorage, the stable rock,\nthe first and last limits, the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem\nof the mind. To find such sensational termini should be our aim with all\nour higher thought. They end discussion; they destroy the false conceit\nof knowledge; and without them we are all at sea with each other's\nmeaning. If two men act alike on a percept, they believe themselves to\nfeel alike about it; if not, they may suspect they know it in differing\nways. We can never be sure we understand each other till we are able to\nbring the matter to this test. [Footnote: 'There is no distinction of\nmeaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of\npractice.... It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the [highest]\ngrade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects,\nwhich might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object\nof our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the\nwhole of our conception of the object.' Charles S. Peirce: 'How to make\nour Ideas clear,' in Popular Science Monthly, New York, January, 1878,\np. 293.] This is why metaphysical discussions are so much like fighting\nwith the air; they have no practical issue of a sensational kind.\n'Scientific' theories, on the other hand, always terminate in definite\npercepts. You can deduce a possible sensation from your theory and,\ntaking me into your laboratory, prove that your theory is true of my\nworld by giving me the sensation then and there. Beautiful is the\nflight of conceptual reason through the upper air of truth. No wonder\nphilosophers are dazzled by it still, and no wonder they look with some\ndisdain at the low earth of feeling from which the goddess launched\nherself aloft. But woe to her if she return not home to its\nacquaintance; Nirgends haften dann die unsicheren Sohlen--every crazy\nwind will take her, and, like a fire-balloon at night, she will go out\namong the stars.\n\nNOTE.--The reader will easily see how much of the account of the\ntruth-function developed later in Pragmatism was already explicit in\nthis earlier article, and how much came to be defined later. In this\nearlier article we find distinctly asserted:--\n\n1. The reality, external to the true idea;\n\n2. The critic, reader, or epistemologist, with his own belief, as\nwarrant for this reality's existence;\n\n3. The experienceable environment, as the vehicle or medium connecting\nknower with known, and yielding the cognitive RELATION;\n\n4. The notion of POINTING, through this medium, to the reality, as one\ncondition of our being said to know it;\n\n5. That of RESEMBLING it, and eventually AFFECTING it, as determining\nthe pointing to IT and not to something else.\n\n6. The elimination of the 'epistemological gulf,' so that the whole\ntruth-relation falls inside of the continuities of concrete experience,\nand is constituted of particular processes, varying with every object\nand subject, and susceptible of being described in detail.\n\nThe defects in this earlier account are:--\n\n1. The possibly undue prominence given to resembling, which altho a\nfundamental function in knowing truly, is so often dispensed with;\n\n2. The undue emphasis laid upon operating on the object itself, which in\nmany cases is indeed decisive of that being what we refer to, but which\nis often lacking, or replaced by operations on other things related to\nthe object.\n\n3. The imperfect development of the generalized notion of the\nWORKABILITY of the feeling or idea as equivalent to that SATISFACTORY\nADAPTATION to the particular reality, which constitutes the truth of\nthe idea. It is this more generalized notion, as covering all such\nspecifications as pointing, fitting, operating or resembling, that\ndistinguishes the developed view of Dewey, Schiller, and myself.\n\n4. The treatment, [earlier], of percepts as the only realm of reality. I\nnow treat concepts as a co-ordinate realm.\n\nThe next paper represents a somewhat broader grasp of the topic on the\nwriter's part.\n\n\n\nII\n\nTHE TIGERS IN INDIA [Footnote: Extracts from a presidential address\nbefore the American Psychological Association, published in the\nPsychological Review, vol. ii, p. 105 (1895).]\n\nTHERE are two ways of knowing things, knowing them immediately or\nintuitively, and knowing them conceptually or representatively. Altho\nsuch things as the white paper before our eyes can be known intuitively,\nmost of the things we know, the tigers now in India, for example, or\nthe scholastic system of philosophy, are known only representatively or\nsymbolically.\n\nSuppose, to fix our ideas, that we take first a case of conceptual\nknowledge; and let it be our knowledge of the tigers in India, as we sit\nhere. Exactly what do we MEAN by saying that we here know the tigers?\nWhat is the precise fact that the cognition so confidently claimed is\nKNOWN-AS, to use Shadworth Hodgson's inelegant but valuable form of\nwords?\n\nMost men would answer that what we mean by knowing the tigers is having\nthem, however absent in body, become in some way present to our thought;\nor that our knowledge of them is known as presence of our thought to\nthem. A great mystery is usually made of this peculiar presence in\nabsence; and the scholastic philosophy, which is only common sense\ngrown pedantic, would explain it as a peculiar kind of existence, called\nINTENTIONAL EXISTENCE of the tigers in our mind. At the very least,\npeople would say that what we mean by knowing the tigers is mentally\nPOINTING towards them as we sit here.\n\nBut now what do we mean by POINTING, in such a case as this? What is the\npointing known-as, here?\n\nTo this question I shall have to give a very prosaic answer--one\nthat traverses the pre-possessions not only of common sense and\nscholasticism, but also those of nearly all the epistemological writers\nwhom I have ever read. The answer, made brief, is this: The pointing of\nour thought to the tigers is known simply and solely as a procession of\nmental associates and motor consequences that follow on the thought, and\nthat would lead harmoniously, if followed out, into some ideal or real\ncontext, or even into the immediate presence, of the tigers. It is known\nas our rejection of a jaguar, if that beast were shown us as a tiger; as\nour assent to a genuine tiger if so shown. It is known as our ability\nto utter all sorts of propositions which don't contradict other\npropositions that are true of the real tigers. It is even known, if we\ntake the tigers very seriously, as actions of ours which may terminate\nin directly intuited tigers, as they would if we took a voyage to India\nfor the purpose of tiger-hunting and brought back a lot of skins of\nthe striped rascals which we had laid low. In all this there is no\nself-transcendency in our mental images TAKEN BY THEMSELVES. They are\none phenomenal fact; the tigers are another; and their pointing to the\ntigers is a perfectly commonplace intra-experiential relation, IF YOU\nONCE GRANT A CONNECTING WORLD TO BE THERE. In short, the ideas and the\ntigers are in themselves as loose and separate, to use Hume's language,\nas any two things can be; and pointing means here an operation as\nexternal and adventitious as any that nature yields.[Footnote: A\nstone in one field may 'fit,' we say, a hole in another field. But the\nrelation of 'fitting,' so long as no one carries the stone to the hole\nand drops it in, is only one name for the fact that such an act MAY\nhappen. Similarly with the knowing of the tigers here and now. It is\nonly an anticipatory name for a further associative and terminative\nprocess that MAY occur.]\n\nI hope you may agree with me now that in representative knowledge there\nis no special inner mystery, but only an outer chain of physical or\nmental intermediaries connecting thought and thing. TO KNOW AN OBJECT IS\nHERE TO LEAD TO IT THROUGH A CONTEXT WHICH THE WORLD SUPPLIES. All this\nwas most instructively set forth by our colleague D. S. Miller at our\nmeeting in New York last Christmas, and for re-confirming my sometime\nwavering opinion, I owe him this acknowledgment. [Footnote: See Dr.\nMiller's articles on Truth and Error, and on Content and Function, in\nthe Philosophical Review, July, 1893, and Nov., 1895.]\n\nLet us next pass on to the case of immediate or intuitive acquaintance\nwith an object, and let the object be the white paper before our eyes.\nThe thought-stuff and the thing-stuff are here indistinguishably the\nsame in nature, as we saw a moment since, and there is no context of\nintermediaries or associates to stand between and separate the thought\nand thing. There is no 'presence in absence' here, and no 'pointing,'\nbut rather an allround embracing of the paper by the thought; and it is\nclear that the knowing cannot now be explained exactly as it was when\nthe tigers were its object. Dotted all through our experience are states\nof immediate acquaintance just like this. Somewhere our belief always\ndoes rest on ultimate data like the whiteness, smoothness, or squareness\nof this paper. Whether such qualities be truly ultimate aspects of\nbeing, or only provisional suppositions of ours, held-to till we get\nbetter informed, is quite immaterial for our present inquiry. So long as\nit is believed in, we see our object face to face. What now do we mean\nby 'knowing' such a sort of object as this? For this is also the way\nin which we should know the tiger if our conceptual idea of him were to\nterminate by having led us to his lair?\n\nThis address must not become too long, so I must give my answer in the\nfewest words. And let me first say this: So far as the white paper or\nother ultimate datum of our experience is considered to enter also into\nsome one else's experience, and we, in knowing it, are held to know it\nthere as well as here; so far, again, as it is considered to be a mere\nmask for hidden molecules that other now impossible experiences of our\nown might some day lay bare to view; so far it is a case of tigers in\nIndia again--the things known being absent experiences, the knowing can\nonly consist in passing smoothly towards them through the intermediary\ncontext that the world supplies. But if our own private vision of the\npaper be considered in abstraction from every other event, as if it\nconstituted by itself the universe (and it might perfectly well do so,\nfor aught we can understand to the contrary), then the paper seen and\nthe seeing of it are only two names for one indivisible fact which,\nproperly named, is THE DATUM, THE PHENOMENON, OR THE EXPERIENCE. The\npaper is in the mind and the mind is around the paper, because paper\nand mind are only two names that are given later to the one experience,\nwhen, taken in a larger world of which it forms a part, its connections\nare traced in different directions. [Footnote: What is meant by this is\nthat 'the experience' can be referred to either of two great associative\nsystems, that of the experiencer's mental history, or that of the\nexperienced facts of the world. Of both of these systems it forms part,\nand may be regarded, indeed, as one of their points of intersection.\nOne might let a vertical line stand for the mental history; but the\nsame object, O, appears also in the mental history of different persons,\nrepresented by the other vertical lines. It thus ceases to be the\nprivate property of one experience, and becomes, so to speak, a shared\nor public thing. We can track its outer history in this way, and\nrepresent it by the horizontal line. (It is also known representatively\nat other points of the vertical lines, or intuitively there again,\nso that the line of its outer history would have to be looped and\nwandering, but I make it straight for simplicity's sake.)] In any case,\nhowever, it is the same stuff figures in all the sets of lines.\n\nTO KNOW IMMEDIATELY, THEN, OR INTUITIVELY, IS FOR MENTAL CONTENT AND\nOBJECT TO BE IDENTICAL. This is a very different definition from that\nwhich we gave of representative knowledge; but neither definition\ninvolves those mysterious notions of self-transcendency and presence in\nabsence which are such essential parts of the ideas of knowledge, both\nof philosophers and of common men. [Footnote: The reader will observe\nthat the text is written from the point of view of NAIF realism or\ncommon sense, and avoids raising the idealistic controversy.]\n\n\n\nIII\n\nHUMANISM AND TRUTH [Footnote: Reprinted, with slight verbal revision,\nfrom Mind, vol. xiii, N. S., p. 457 (October, 1904). A couple of\ninterpolations from another article in Mind, 'Humanism and truth once\nmore,' in vol. xiv, have been made.]\n\nRECEIVING from the Editor of Mind an advance proof of Mr. Bradley's\narticle on 'Truth and Practice,' I understand this as a hint to me to\njoin in the controversy over 'Pragmatism' which seems to have seriously\nbegun. As my name has been coupled with the movement, I deem it wise to\ntake the hint, the more so as in some quarters greater credit has been\ngiven me than I deserve, and probably undeserved discredit in other\nquarters falls also to my lot.\n\nFirst, as to the word 'pragmatism.' I myself have only used the term\nto indicate a method of carrying on abstract discussion. The serious\nmeaning of a concept, says Mr. Peirce, lies in the concrete difference\nto some one which its being true will make. Strive to bring all\ndebated conceptions to that' pragmatic' test, and you will escape\nvain wrangling: if it can make no practical difference which of two\nstatements be true, then they are really one statement in two verbal\nforms; if it can make no practical difference whether a given statement\nbe true or false, then the statement has no real meaning. In neither\ncase is there anything fit to quarrel about: we may save our breath, and\npass to more important things.\n\nAll that the pragmatic method implies, then, is that truths should HAVE\npractical [Footnote: 'Practical' in the sense of PARTICULAR, of course,\nnot in the sense that the consequences may not be MENTAL as well as\nphysical.] consequences. In England the word has been used more broadly\nstill, to cover the notion that the truth of any statement CONSISTS in\nthe consequences, and particularly in their being good consequences.\nHere we get beyond affairs of method altogether; and since my pragmatism\nand this wider pragmatism are so different, and both are important\nenough to have different names, I think that Mr. Schiller's proposal\nto call the wider pragmatism by the name of 'humanism' is excellent and\nought to be adopted. The narrower pragmatism may still be spoken of as\nthe 'pragmatic method.'\n\nI have read in the past six months many hostile reviews of Schiller's\nand Dewey's publications; but with the exception of Mr. Bradley's\nelaborate indictment, they are out of reach where I write, and I have\nlargely forgotten them. I think that a free discussion of the subject\non my part would in any case be more useful than a polemic attempt at\nrebutting these criticisms in detail. Mr. Bradley in particular can be\ntaken care of by Mr. Schiller. He repeatedly confesses himself unable\nto comprehend Schiller's views, he evidently has not sought to do so\nsympathetically, and I deeply regret to say that his laborious article\nthrows, for my mind, absolutely no useful light upon the subject.\nIt seems to me on the whole an IGNORATIO ELENCHI, and I feel free to\ndisregard it altogether.\n\nThe subject is unquestionably difficult. Messrs. Dewey's and Schiller's\nthought is eminently an induction, a generalization working itself free\nfrom all sorts of entangling particulars. If true, it involves much\nrestatement of traditional notions. This is a kind of intellectual\nproduct that never attains a classic form of expression when first\npromulgated. The critic ought therefore not to be too sharp and\nlogic-chopping in his dealings with it, but should weigh it as a whole,\nand especially weigh it against its possible alternatives. One should\nalso try to apply it first to one instance, and then to another to see\nhow it will work. It seems to me that it is emphatically not a case\nfor instant execution, by conviction of intrinsic absurdity or of\nself-contradiction, or by caricature of what it would look like if\nreduced to skeleton shape. Humanism is in fact much more like one of\nthose secular changes that come upon public opinion overnight, as it\nwere, borne upon tides 'too deep for sound or foam,' that survive all\nthe crudities and extravagances of their advocates, that you can pin\nto no one absolutely essential statement, nor kill by any one decisive\nstab.\n\nSuch have been the changes from aristocracy to democracy, from classic\nto romantic taste, from theistic to pantheistic feeling, from static to\nevolutionary ways of understanding life--changes of which we all have\nbeen spectators. Scholasticism still opposes to such changes the method\nof confutation by single decisive reasons, showing that the new view\ninvolves self-contradiction, or traverses some fundamental principle.\nThis is like stopping a river by planting a stick in the middle of its\nbed. Round your obstacle flows the water and 'gets there all the same.'\nIn reading some of our opponents, I am not a little reminded of those\ncatholic writers who refute darwinism by telling us that higher species\ncannot come from lower because minus nequit gignere plus, or that the\nnotion of transformation is absurd, for it implies that species tend to\ntheir own destruction, and that would violate the principle that every\nreality tends to persevere in its own shape. The point of view is too\nmyopic, too tight and close to take in the inductive argument. Wide\ngeneralizations in science always meet with these summary refutations in\ntheir early days; but they outlive them, and the refutations then sound\noddly antiquated and scholastic. I cannot help suspecting that the\nhumanistic theory is going through this kind of would-be refutation at\npresent.\n\nThe one condition of understanding humanism is to become\ninductive-minded oneself, to drop rigorous definitions, and follow lines\nof least, resistance 'on the whole.' 'In other words,' an opponent might\nsay, 'resolve your intellect into a kind of slush.' 'Even so,' I make\nreply,--'if you will consent to use no politer word.' For humanism,\nconceiving the more 'true' as the more 'satisfactory' (Dewey's term),\nhas sincerely to renounce rectilinear arguments and ancient ideals\nof rigor and finality. It is in just this temper of renunciation, so\ndifferent from that of pyrrhonistic scepticism, that the spirit of\nhumanism essentially consists. Satisfactoriness has to be measured by\na multitude of standards, of which some, for aught we know, may fail in\nany given case; and what is more satisfactory than any alternative in\nsight, may to the end be a sum of PLUSES and MINUSES, concerning which\nwe can only trust that by ulterior corrections and improvements\na maximum of the one and a minimum of the other may some day be\napproached. It means a real change of heart, a break with absolutistic\nhopes, when one takes up this inductive view of the conditions of\nbelief.\n\nAs I understand the pragmatist way of seeing things, it owes its being\nto the break-down which the last fifty years have brought about in the\nolder notions of scientific truth. 'God geometrizes,' it used to be\nsaid; and it was believed that Euclid's elements literally reproduced\nhis geometrizing. There is an eternal and unchangeable 'reason'; and its\nvoice was supposed to reverberate in Barbara and Celarent. So also\nof the 'laws of nature,' physical and chemical, so of natural history\nclassifications--all were supposed to be exact and exclusive duplicates\nof pre-human archetypes buried in the structure of things, to which the\nspark of divinity hidden in our intellect enables us to penetrate. The\nanatomy of the world is logical, and its logic is that of a university\nprofessor, it was thought. Up to about 1850 almost every one believed\nthat sciences expressed truths that were exact copies of a definite\ncode of non-human realities. But the enormously rapid multiplication of\ntheories in these latter days has well-nigh upset the notion of any one\nof them being a more literally objective kind of thing than another.\nThere are so many geometries, so many logics, so many physical and\nchemical hypotheses, so many classifications, each one of them good for\nso much and yet not good for everything, that the notion that even the\ntruest formula may be a human device and not a literal transcript\nhas dawned upon us. We hear scientific laws now treated as so much\n'conceptual shorthand,' true so far as they are useful but no farther.\nOur mind has become tolerant of symbol instead of reproduction, of\napproximation instead of exactness, of plasticity instead of rigor.\n'Energetics,' measuring the bare face of sensible phenomena so as to\ndescribe in a single formula all their changes of 'level,' is the last\nword of this scientific humanism, which indeed leaves queries enough\noutstanding as to the reason for so curious a congruence between the\nworld and the mind, but which at any rate makes our whole notion of\nscientific truth more flexible and genial than it used to be.\n\nIt is to be doubted whether any theorizer to-day, either in mathematics,\nlogic, physics or biology, conceives himself to be literally re-editing\nprocesses of nature or thoughts of God. The main forms of our thinking,\nthe separation of subjects from predicates, the negative, hypothetic\nand disjunctive judgments, are purely human habits. The ether, as Lord\nSalisbury said, is only a noun for the verb to undulate; and many of our\ntheological ideas are admitted, even by those who call them 'true,' to\nbe humanistic in like degree.\n\nI fancy that these changes in the current notions of truth are what\noriginally gave the impulse to Messrs. Dewey's and Schiller's views.\nThe suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of\nour formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal\n'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its\n'elegance' or its congruity with our residual beliefs. Yielding to these\nsuspicions, and generalizing, we fall into something like the humanistic\nstate of mind. Truth we conceive to mean everywhere, not duplication,\nbut addition; not the constructing of inner copies of already complete\nrealities, but rather the collaborating with realities so as to bring\nabout a clearer result. Obviously this state of mind is at first full of\nvagueness and ambiguity. 'Collaborating' is a vague term; it must at\nany rate cover conceptions and logical arrangements. 'Clearer' is vaguer\nstill. Truth must bring clear thoughts, as well as clear the way to\naction. 'Reality' is the vaguest term of all. The only way to test such\na programme at all is to apply it to the various types of truth, in the\nhope of reaching an account that shall be more precise. Any hypothesis\nthat forces such a review upon one has one great merit, even if in\nthe end it prove invalid: it gets us better acquainted with the total\nsubject. To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself\neventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset by\nabstract accusations of self-contradiction. I think therefore that\na decided effort at sympathetic mental play with humanism is the\nprovisional attitude to be recommended to the reader.\n\nWhen I find myself playing sympathetically with humanism, something like\nwhat follows is what I end by conceiving it to mean.\n\nExperience is a process that continually gives us new material to\ndigest. We handle this intellectually by the mass of beliefs of which\nwe find ourselves already possessed, assimilating, rejecting, or\nrearranging in different degrees. Some of the apperceiving ideas are\nrecent acquisitions of our own, but most of them are common-sense\ntraditions of the race. There is probably not a common-sense tradition,\nof all those which we now live by, that was not in the first instance\na genuine discovery, an inductive generalization like those more recent\nones of the atom, of inertia, of energy, of reflex action, or of fitness\nto survive The notions of one Time and of one Space as single continuous\nreceptacles; the distinction between thoughts and things, matter and\nmind between permanent subjects and changing attributes; the conception\nof classes with sub classes within them; the separation of fortuitous\nfrom regularly caused connections; surely all these were once definite\nconquests made at historic dates by our ancestors in their attempt\nto get the chaos of their crude individual experiences into a more\nshareable and manageable shape. They proved of such sovereign use as\ndenkmittel that they are now a part of the very structure of our mind.\nWe cannot play fast and loose with them. No experience can upset them.\nOn the contrary, they apperceive every experience and assign it to its\nplace.\n\nTo what effect? That we may the better foresee the course of our\nexperiences, communicate with one another, and steer our lives by rule.\nAlso that we may have a cleaner, clearer, more inclusive mental view.\n\nThe greatest common-sense achievement, after the discovery of one Time\nand one Space, is probably the concept of permanently existing things.\nWhen a rattle first drops out of the hand of a baby, he does not look to\nsee where it has gone. Non-perception he accepts as annihilation until\nhe finds a better belief. That our perceptions mean BEINGS, rattles\nthat are there whether we hold them in our hands or not, becomes an\ninterpretation so luminous of what happens to us that, once employed,\nit never gets forgotten. It applies with equal felicity to things and\npersons, to the objective and to the ejective realm. However a Berkeley,\na Mill, or a Cornelius may CRITICISE it, it WORKS; and in practical\nlife we never think of 'going back' upon it, or reading our incoming\nexperiences in any other terms. We may, indeed, speculatively imagine\na state of 'pure' experience before the hypothesis of permanent objects\nbehind its flux had been framed; and we can play with the idea that some\nprimeval genius might have struck into a different hypothesis. But we\ncannot positively imagine today what the different hypothesis could have\nbeen, for the category of trans-perceptual reality is now one of the\nfoundations of our life. Our thoughts must still employ it if they are\nto possess reasonableness and truth.\n\nThis notion of a FIRST in the shape of a most chaotic pure experience\nwhich sets us questions, of a SECOND in the way of fundamental\ncategories, long ago wrought into the structure of our consciousness and\npractically irreversible, which define the general frame within which\nanswers must fall, and of a THIRD which gives the detail of the answers\nin the shapes most congruous with all our present needs, is, as I take\nit, the essence of the humanistic conception. It represents experience\nin its pristine purity to be now so enveloped in predicates historically\nworked out that we can think of it as little more than an OTHER, of\na THAT, which the mind, in Mr. Bradley's phrase, 'encounters,' and to\nwhose stimulating presence we respond by ways of thinking which we\ncall 'true' in proportion as they facilitate our mental or physical\nactivities and bring us outer power and inner peace. But whether the\nOther, the universal THAT, has itself any definite inner structure, or\nwhether, if it have any, the structure resembles any of our predicated\nWHATS, this is a question which humanism leaves untouched. For us, at\nany rate, it insists, reality is an accumulation of our own intellectual\ninventions, and the struggle for 'truth' in our progressive dealings\nwith it is always a struggle to work in new nouns and adjectives while\naltering as little as possible the old.\n\nIt is hard to see why either Mr. Bradley's own logic or his\nmetaphysics should oblige him to quarrel with this conception. He might\nconsistently adopt it verbatim et literatim, if he would, and simply\nthrow his peculiar absolute round it, following in this the good example\nof Professor Royce. Bergson in France, and his disciples, Wilbois the\nphysicist and Leroy, are thoroughgoing humanists in the sense defined.\nProfessor Milhaud also appears to be one; and the great Poincare misses\nit by only the breadth of a hair. In Germany the name of Simmel offers\nitself as that of a humanist of the most radical sort. Mach and his\nschool, and Hertz and Ostwald must be classed as humanists. The view is\nin the atmosphere and must be patiently discussed.\n\nThe best way to discuss it would be to see what the alternative\nmight be. What is it indeed? Its critics make no explicit statement,\nProfessor Royce being the only one so far who has formulated anything\ndefinite. The first service of humanism to philosophy accordingly seems\nto be that it will probably oblige those who dislike it to search their\nown hearts and heads. It will force analysis to the front and make\nit the order of the day. At present the lazy tradition that truth is\nadaequatio intellectus et rei seems all there is to contradict it with.\nMr. Bradley's only suggestion is that true thought 'must correspond to\na determinate being which it cannot be said to make,' and obviously that\nsheds no new light. What is the meaning of the word to 'correspond'?\nWhere is the 'being'? What sort of things are 'determinations,' and what\nis meant in this particular case by 'not to make'?\n\nHumanism proceeds immediately to refine upon the looseness of these\nepithets. We correspond in SOME way with anything with which we enter\ninto any relations at all. If it be a thing, we may produce an exact\ncopy of it, or we may simply feel it as an existent in a certain place.\nIf it be a demand, we may obey it without knowing anything more about it\nthan its push. If it be a proposition, we may agree by not contradicting\nit, by letting it pass. If it be a relation between things, we may act\non the first thing so as to bring ourselves out where the second will\nbe. If it be something inaccessible, we may substitute a hypothetical\nobject for it, which, having the same consequences, will cipher out for\nus real results. In a general way we may simply ADD OUR THOUGHT TO IT;\nand if it SUFFERS THE ADDITION, and the whole situation harmoniously\nprolongs and enriches itself, the thought will pass for true.\n\nAs for the whereabouts of the beings thus corresponded to, although they\nmay be outside of the present thought as well as in it, humanism sees\nno ground for saying they are outside of finite experience itself.\nPragmatically, their reality means that we submit to them, take account\nof them, whether we like to or not, but this we must perpetually do with\nexperiences other than our own. The whole system of what the present\nexperience must correspond to 'adequately' may be continuous with the\npresent experience itself. Reality, so taken as experience other than\nthe present, might be either the legacy of past experience or the\ncontent of experience to come. Its determinations for US are in any\ncase the adjectives which our acts of judging fit to it, and those are\nessentially humanistic things.\n\nTo say that our thought does not 'make' this reality means pragmatically\nthat if our own particular thought were annihilated the reality would\nstill be there in some shape, though possibly it might be a shape\nthat would lack something that our thought supplies. That reality is\n'independent' means that there is something in every experience that\nescapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible experience it coerces\nour attention; if a sequence, we cannot invert it; if we compare two\nterms we can come to only one result. There is a push, an urgency,\nwithin our very experience, against which we are on the whole powerless,\nand which drives us in a direction that is the destiny of our belief.\nThat this drift of experience itself is in the last resort due to\nsomething independent of all possible experience may or may not be true.\nThere may or may not be an extra-experiential 'ding an sich' that keeps\nthe ball rolling, or an 'absolute' that lies eternally behind all the\nsuccessive determinations which human thought has made. But within our\nexperience ITSELF, at any rate, humanism says, some determinations show\nthemselves as being independent of others; some questions, if we ever\nask them, can only be answered in one way; some beings, if we ever\nsuppose them, must be supposed to have existed previously to the\nsupposing; some relations, if they exist ever, must exist as long as\ntheir terms exist.\n\nTruth thus means, according to humanism, the relation of less fixed\nparts of experience (predicates) to other relatively more fixed\nparts (subjects); and we are not required to seek it in a relation of\nexperience as such to anything beyond itself. We can stay at home, for\nour behavior as exponents is hemmed in on every side. The forces both of\nadvance and of resistance are exerted by our own objects, and the notion\nof truth as something opposed to waywardness or license inevitably grows\nup SOLIPSISTICALLY inside of every human life.\n\nSo obvious is all this that a common charge against the humanistic\nauthors 'makes me tired.' 'How can a deweyite discriminate sincerity\nfrom bluff?' was a question asked at a philosophic meeting where I\nreported on Dewey's Studies. 'How can the mere [Footnote: I know of no\n'mere' pragmatist, if MERENESS here means, as it seems to, the denial of\nall concreteness to the pragmatist's THOUGHT.] pragmatist feel any duty\nto think truly?' is the objection urged by Professor Royce. Mr. Bradley\nin turn says that if a humanist understands his own doctrine, 'he must\nhold any idea, however mad, to be the truth, if any one will have it\nso.' And Professor Taylor describes pragmatism as believing anything one\npleases and calling it truth.\n\nSuch a shallow sense of the conditions under which men's thinking\nactually goes on seems to me most surprising. These critics appear to\nsuppose that, if left to itself, the rudderless raft of our experience\nmust be ready to drift anywhere or nowhere. Even THO there were\ncompasses on board, they seem to say, there would be no pole for them\nto point to. There must be absolute sailing-directions, they insist,\ndecreed from outside, and an independent chart of the voyage added to\nthe 'mere' voyage itself, if we are ever to make a port. But is it not\nobvious that even THO there be such absolute sailing-directions in the\nshape of pre-human standards of truth that we OUGHT to follow, the\nonly guarantee that we shall in fact follow them must lie in our human\nequipment. The 'ought' would be a brutum fulmen unless there were a felt\ngrain inside of our experience that conspired. As a matter of fact the\nDEVOUTEST believers in absolute standards must admit that men fail to\nobey them. Waywardness is here, in spite of the eternal prohibitions,\nand the existence of any amount of reality ante rem is no warrant\nagainst unlimited error in rebus being incurred. The only REAL guarantee\nwe have against licentious thinking is the CIRCUMPRESSURE of experience\nitself, which gets us sick of concrete errors, whether there be a\ntrans-empirical reality or not. How does the partisan of absolute\nreality know what this orders him to think? He cannot get direct sight\nof the absolute; and he has no means of guessing what it wants of him\nexcept by following the humanistic clues. The only truth that he\nhimself will ever practically ACCEPT will be that to which his finite\nexperiences lead him of themselves. The state of mind which shudders\nat the idea of a lot of experiences left to themselves, and that\naugurs protection from the sheer name of an absolute, as if, however\ninoperative, that might still stand for a sort of ghostly security, is\nlike the mood of those good people who, whenever they hear of a\nsocial tendency that is damnable, begin to redden and to puff, and\nsay 'Parliament or Congress ought to make a law against it,' as if an\nimpotent decree would give relief.\n\nAll the SANCTIONS of a law of truth lie in the very texture of\nexperience. Absolute or no absolute, the concrete truth FOR US will\nalways be that way of thinking in which our various experiences most\nprofitably combine.\n\nAnd yet, the opponent obstinately urges, your humanist will always\nhave a greater liberty to play fast and loose with truth than will your\nbeliever in an independent realm of reality that makes the standard\nrigid. If by this latter believer he means a man who pretends to know\nthe standard and who fulminates it, the humanist will doubtless prove\nmore flexible; but no more flexible than the absolutist himself if the\nlatter follows (as fortunately our present-day absolutists do follow)\nempirical methods of inquiry in concrete affairs. To consider hypotheses\nis surely always better than to DOGMATISE ins blaue hinein.\n\nNevertheless this probable flexibility of temper in him has been used\nto convict the humanist of sin. Believing as he does, that truth lies in\nrebus, and is at every moment our own line of most propitious reaction,\nhe stands forever debarred, as I have heard a learned colleague say,\nfrom trying to convert opponents, for does not their view, being THEIR\nmost propitious momentary reaction, already fill the bill? Only the\nbeliever in the ante-rem brand of truth can on this theory seek to\nmake converts without self-stultification. But can there be\nself-stultification in urging any account whatever of truth? Can\nthe definition ever contradict the deed? 'Truth is what I feel like\nsaying'--suppose that to be the definition. 'Well, I feel like saying\nthat, and I want you to feel like saying it, and shall continue to say\nit until I get you to agree.' Where is there any contradiction? Whatever\ntruth may be said to be, that is the kind of truth which the saying\ncan be held to carry. The TEMPER which a saying may comport is an\nextra-logical matter. It may indeed be hotter in some individual\nabsolutist than in a humanist, but it need not be so in another. And the\nhumanist, for his part, is perfectly consistent in compassing sea and\nland to make one proselyte, if his nature be enthusiastic enough.\n\n'But how can you be enthusiastic over any view of things which you\nknow to have been partly made by yourself, and which is liable to alter\nduring the next minute? How is any heroic devotion to the ideal of truth\npossible under such paltry conditions?'\n\nThis is just another of those objections by which the anti-humanists\nshow their own comparatively slack hold on the realities of the\nsituation. If they would only follow the pragmatic method and ask:\n'What is truth KNOWN-AS? What does its existence stand for in the way of\nconcrete goods?'--they would see that the name of it is the inbegriff\nof almost everything that is valuable in our lives. The true is\nthe opposite of whatever is instable, of whatever is practically\ndisappointing, of whatever is useless, of whatever is lying and\nunreliable, of whatever is unverifiable and unsupported, of whatever is\ninconsistent and contradictory, of whatever is artificial and eccentric,\nof whatever is unreal in the sense of being of no practical account.\nHere are pragmatic reasons with a vengeance why we should turn to\ntruth--truth saves us from a world of that complexion. What wonder that\nits very name awakens loyal feeling! In particular what wonder that all\nlittle provisional fool's paradises of belief should appear contemptible\nin comparison with its bare pursuit! When absolutists reject humanism\nbecause they feel it to be untrue, that means that the whole habit of\ntheir mental needs is wedded already to a different view of reality, in\ncomparison with which the humanistic world seems but the whim of a few\nirresponsible youths. Their own subjective apperceiving mass is what\nspeaks here in the name of the eternal natures and bids them reject\nour humanism--as they apprehend it. Just so with us humanists, when\nwe condemn all noble, clean-cut, fixed, eternal, rational, temple-like\nsystems of philosophy. These contradict the DRAMATIC TEMPERAMENT of\nnature, as our dealings with nature and our habits of thinking have so\nfar brought us to conceive it. They seem oddly personal and artificial,\neven when not bureaucratic and professional in an absurd degree. We turn\nfrom them to the great unpent and unstayed wilderness of truth as we\nfeel it to be constituted, with as good a conscience as rationalists\nare moved by when they turn from our wilderness into their neater and\ncleaner intellectual abodes. [Footnote: I cannot forbear quoting as an\nillustration of the contrast between humanist and rationalist tempers of\nmind, in a sphere remote from philosophy, these remarks on the Dreyfus\n'affaire,' written by one who assuredly had never heard of humanism or\npragmatism. 'Autant que la Revolution, \"l'Affaire\" est desormais une de\nnos \"origines.\" Si elle n'a pas fait ouvrir le gouffre, c'est elle du\nmoins qui a rendu patent et visible le long travail souterrain qui,\nsilencieusement, avait prepare la separation entre nos deux camps\nd'aujourd'hui, pour ecarter enfin, d'un coup soudain, la France\ndes traditionalistes (poseurs de principes, chercheurs d'unite,\nconstructeurs de systemes a priori) el la France eprise du fait positif\net de libre examen;--la France revolutionnaire et romantique si l'on\nveut, celle qui met tres haut l'individu, qui ne veut pas qu'un juste\nperisse, fut-ce pour sauver la nation, et qui cherche la verite dans\ntoutes ses parties aussi bien que dans une vue d'ensemble ... Duclaux ne\npouvait pas concevoir qu'on preferat quelque chose a la verite. Mais il\nvoyait autour de lui de fort honnetes gens qui, mettant en balance la\nvie d'un homme et la raison d'Etat, lui avouaient de quel poids leger\nils jugeaient une simple existence individuelle, pour innocente qu'elle\nfut. C'etaient des classiques, des gens a qui l'ensemble seul importe.'\nLa Vie de Emile Duclaux, par Mme. Em. D., Laval, 1906, pp. 243,\n247-248.]\n\nThis is surely enough to show that the humanist does not ignore the\ncharacter of objectivity and independence in truth. Let me turn next to\nwhat his opponents mean when they say that to be true, our thoughts must\n'correspond.'\n\nThe vulgar notion of correspondence here is that the thoughts must COPY\nthe reality--cognitio fit per assimiliationem cogniti et cognoscentis;\nand philosophy, without having ever fairly sat down to the question,\nseems to have instinctively accepted this idea: propositions are held\ntrue if they copy the eternal thought; terms are held true if they copy\nextra-mental realities. Implicitly, I think that the copy-theory has\nanimated most of the criticisms that have been made on humanism.\n\nA priori, however, it is not self-evident that the sole business of\nour mind with realities should be to copy them. Let my reader suppose\nhimself to constitute for a time all the reality there is in the\nuniverse, and then to receive the announcement that another being is to\nbe created who shall know him truly. How will he represent the knowing\nin advance? What will he hope it to be? I doubt extremely whether it\ncould ever occur to him to fancy it as a mere copying. Of what use to\nhim would an imperfect second edition of himself in the new comer's\ninterior be? It would seem pure waste of a propitious opportunity. The\ndemand would more probably be for something absolutely new. The reader\nwould conceive the knowing humanistically, 'the new comer,' he would\nsay, 'must TAKE ACCOUNT OF MY PRESENCE BY REACTING ON IT IN SUCH A WAY\nTHAT GOOD WOULD ACCRUE TO US BOTH. If copying be requisite to that end,\nlet there be copying; otherwise not.' The essence in any case would not\nbe the copying, but the enrichment of the previous world.\n\nI read the other day, in a book of Professor Eucken's, a phrase, 'Die\nerhohung des vorgefundenen daseins,' which seems to be pertinent here.\nWhy may not thought's mission be to increase and elevate, rather than\nsimply to imitate and reduplicate, existence? No one who has read Lotze\ncan fail to remember his striking comment on the ordinary view of the\nsecondary qualities of matter, which brands them as 'illusory' because\nthey copy nothing in the thing. The notion of a world complete in\nitself, to which thought comes as a passive mirror, adding nothing\nto fact, Lotze says is irrational. Rather is thought itself a most\nmomentous part of fact, and the whole mission of the pre-existing and\ninsufficient world of matter may simply be to provoke thought to produce\nits far more precious supplement.\n\n'Knowing,' in short, may, for aught we can see beforehand to the\ncontrary, be ONLY ONE WAY OF GETTING INTO FRUITFUL RELATIONS WITH\nREALITY whether copying be one of the relations or not.\n\nIt is easy to see from what special type of knowing the copy-theory\narose. In our dealings with natural phenomena the great point is to be\nable to foretell. Foretelling, according to such a writer as Spencer, is\nthe whole meaning of intelligence. When Spencer's 'law of intelligence'\nsays that inner and outer relations must 'correspond,' it means that the\ndistribution of terms in our inner time-scheme and space-scheme must\nbe an exact copy of the distribution in real time and space of the real\nterms. In strict theory the mental terms themselves need not answer to\nthe real terms in the sense of severally copying them, symbolic mental\nterms being enough, if only the real dates and places be copied. But\nin our ordinary life the mental terms are images and the real ones are\nsensations, and the images so often copy the sensations, that we\neasily take copying of terms as well as of relations to be the natural\nsignificance of knowing. Meanwhile much, even of this common descriptive\ntruth, is couched in verbal symbols. If our symbols FIT the world, in\nthe sense of determining our expectations rightly, they may even be the\nbetter for not copying its terms.\n\nIt seems obvious that the pragmatic account of all this routine of\nphenomenal knowledge is accurate. Truth here is a relation, not of our\nideas to non-human realities, but of conceptual parts of our experience\nto sensational parts. Those thoughts are true which guide us to\nBENEFICIAL INTERACTION with sensible particulars as they occur, whether\nthey copy these in advance or not.\n\nFrom the frequency of copying in the knowledge of phenomenal fact,\ncopying has been supposed to be the essence of truth in matters rational\nalso. Geometry and logic, it has been supposed, must copy archetypal\nthoughts in the Creator. But in these abstract spheres there is no need\nof assuming archetypes. The mind is free to carve so many figures out of\nspace, to make so many numerical collections, to frame so many classes\nand series, and it can analyze and compare so endlessly, that the very\nsuperabundance of the resulting ideas makes us doubt the 'objective'\npre-existence of their models. It would be plainly wrong to suppose a\nGod whose thought consecrated rectangular but not polar co-ordinates, or\nJevons's notation but not Boole's. Yet if, on the other hand, we assume\nGod to have thought in advance of every POSSIBLE flight of human fancy\nin these directions, his mind becomes too much like a Hindoo idol\nwith three heads, eight arms and six breasts, too much made up of\nsuperfoetation and redundancy for us to wish to copy it, and the whole\nnotion of copying tends to evaporate from these sciences. Their objects\ncan be better interpreted as being created step by step by men, as fast\nas they successively conceive them.\n\nIf now it be asked how, if triangles, squares, square roots, genera,\nand the like, are but improvised human 'artefacts,' their properties\nand relations can be so promptly known to be 'eternal,' the humanistic\nanswer is easy. If triangles and genera are of our own production we can\nkeep them invariant. We can make them 'timeless' by expressly decreeing\nthat on THE THINGS WE MEAN time shall exert no altering effect, that\nthey are intentionally and it may be fictitiously abstracted from every\ncorrupting real associate and condition. But relations between\ninvariant objects will themselves be invariant. Such relations cannot\nbe happenings, for by hypothesis nothing shall happen to the objects.\nI have tried to show in the last chapter of my Principles of Psychology\n[Footnote: Vol. ii, pp. 641 ff.] that they can only be relations of\ncomparison. No one so far seems to have noticed my suggestion, and I am\ntoo ignorant of the development of mathematics to feel very confident\nof my own view. But if it were correct it would solve the difficulty\nperfectly. Relations of comparison are matters of direct inspection. As\nsoon as mental objects are mentally compared, they are perceived to\nbe either like or unlike. But once the same, always the same, once\ndifferent, always different, under these timeless conditions. Which\nis as much as to say that truths concerning these man-made objects are\nnecessary and eternal. We can change our conclusions only by changing\nour data first.\n\nThe whole fabric of the a priori sciences can thus be treated as a\nman-made product. As Locke long ago pointed out, these sciences have no\nimmediate connection with fact. Only IF a fact can be humanized by being\nidentified with any of these ideal objects, is what was true of the\nobjects now true also of the facts. The truth itself meanwhile was\noriginally a copy of nothing; it was only a relation directly perceived\nto obtain between two artificial mental things. [Footnote: Mental things\nwhich are realities of course within the mental world.]\n\nWe may now glance at some special types of knowing, so as to see better\nwhether the humanistic account fits. On the mathematical and logical\ntypes we need not enlarge further, nor need we return at much length to\nthe case of our descriptive knowledge of the course of nature. So far\nas this involves anticipation, tho that MAY mean copying, it need, as\nwe saw, mean little more than 'getting ready' in advance. But with many\ndistant and future objects, our practical relations are to the last\ndegree potential and remote. In no sense can we now get ready for the\narrest of the earth's revolution by the tidal brake, for instance; and\nwith the past, tho we suppose ourselves to know it truly, we have no\npractical relations at all. It is obvious that, altho interests strictly\npractical have been the original starting-point of our search for\ntrue phenomenal descriptions, yet an intrinsic interest in the bare\ndescribing function has grown up. We wish accounts that shall be true,\nwhether they bring collateral profit or not. The primitive function has\ndeveloped its demand for mere exercise. This theoretic curiosity seems\nto be the characteristically human differentia, and humanism recognizes\nits enormous scope. A true idea now means not only one that prepares us\nfor an actual perception. It means also one that might prepare us for\na merely possible perception, or one that, if spoken, would suggest\npossible perceptions to others, or suggest actual perceptions which the\nspeaker cannot share. The ensemble of perceptions thus thought of\nas either actual or possible form a system which it is obviously\nadvantageous to us to get into a stable and consistent shape; and here\nit is that the common-sense notion of permanent beings finds triumphant\nuse. Beings acting outside of the thinker explain, not only his actual\nperceptions, past and future, but his possible perceptions and those\nof every one else. Accordingly they gratify our theoretic need in a\nsupremely beautiful way. We pass from our immediate actual through\nthem into the foreign and the potential, and back again into the future\nactual, accounting for innumerable particulars by a single cause. As\nin those circular panoramas, where a real foreground of dirt, grass,\nbushes, rocks and a broken-down cannon is enveloped by a canvas picture\nof sky and earth and of a raging battle, continuing the foreground so\ncunningly that the spectator can detect no joint; so these conceptual\nobjects, added to our present perceptual reality, fuse with it into the\nwhole universe of our belief. In spite of all berkeleyan criticism, we\ndo not doubt that they are really there. Tho our discovery of any one of\nthem may only date from now, we unhesitatingly say that it not only\nIS, but WAS there, if, by so saying, the past appears connected more\nconsistently with what we feel the present to be. This is historic\ntruth. Moses wrote the Pentateuch, we think, because if he didn't, all\nour religious habits will have to be undone. Julius Caesar was real, or\nwe can never listen to history again. Trilobites were once alive, or\nall our thought about the strata is at sea. Radium, discovered only\nyesterday, must always have existed, or its analogy with other natural\nelements, which are permanent, fails. In all this, it is but one portion\nof our beliefs reacting on another so as to yield the most satisfactory\ntotal state of mind. That state of mind, we say, sees truth, and the\ncontent of its deliverances we believe.\n\nOf course, if you take the satisfactoriness concretely, as something\nfelt by you now, and if, by truth, you mean truth taken abstractly\nand verified in the long run, you cannot make them equate, for it is\nnotorious that the temporarily satisfactory is often false. Yet at each\nand every concrete moment, truth for each man is what that man 'troweth'\nat that moment with the maximum of satisfaction to himself; and\nsimilarly, abstract truth, truth verified by the long run, and abstract\nsatisfactoriness, long-run satisfactoriness, coincide. If, in short, we\ncompare concrete with concrete and abstract with abstract, the true\nand the satisfactory do mean the same thing. I suspect that a certain\nmuddling of matters hereabouts is what makes the general philosophic\npublic so impervious to humanism's claims.\n\nThe fundamental fact about our experience is that it is a process of\nchange. For the 'trower' at any moment, truth, like the visible area\nround a man walking in a fog, or like what George Eliot calls 'the\nwall of dark seen by small fishes' eyes that pierce a span in the wide\nOcean,' is an objective field which the next moment enlarges and of\nwhich it is the critic, and which then either suffers alteration or is\ncontinued unchanged. The critic sees both the first trower's truth and\nhis own truth, compares them with each other, and verifies or confutes.\nHIS field of view is the reality independent of that earlier trower's\nthinking with which that thinking ought to correspond. But the critic\nis himself only a trower; and if the whole process of experience should\nterminate at that instant, there would be no otherwise known independent\nreality with which HIS thought might be compared.\n\nThe immediate in experience is always provisionally in this situation.\nThe humanism, for instance, which I see and try so hard to defend, is\nthe completest truth attained from my point of view up to date. But,\nowing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can\never be THE last one. Every one is insufficient and off its balance, and\nresponsible to later points of view than itself. You, occupying some of\nthese later points in your own person, and believing in the reality of\nothers, will not agree that my point of view sees truth positive, truth\ntimeless, truth that counts, unless they verify and confirm what it\nsees.\n\nYou generalize this by saying that any opinion, however satisfactory,\ncan count positively and absolutely as true only so far as it agrees\nwith a standard beyond itself; and if you then forget that this standard\nperpetually grows up endogenously inside the web of the experiences,\nyou may carelessly go on to say that what distributively holds of\neach experience, holds also collectively of all experience, and that\nexperience as such and in its totality owes whatever truth it may be\npossessed-of to its correspondence with absolute realities outside of\nits own being. This evidently is the popular and traditional position.\nFrom the fact that finite experiences must draw support from one\nanother, philosophers pass to the notion that experience uberhaupt must\nneed an absolute support. The denial of such a notion by humanism lies\nprobably at the root of most of the dislike which it incurs.\n\nBut is this not the globe, the elephant and the tortoise over again?\nMust not something end by supporting itself? Humanism is willing to let\nfinite experience be self-supporting. Somewhere being must immediately\nbreast nonentity. Why may not the advancing front of experience,\ncarrying its immanent satisfactions and dissatisfactions, cut against\nthe black inane as the luminous orb of the moon cuts the caerulean\nabyss? Why should anywhere the world be absolutely fixed and finished?\nAnd if reality genuinely grows, why may it not grow in these very\ndeterminations which here and now are made?\n\nIn point of fact it actually seems to grow by our mental determinations,\nbe these never so 'true.' Take the 'great bear' or 'dipper'\nconstellation in the heavens. We call it by that name, we count the\nstars and call them seven, we say they were seven before they were\ncounted, and we say that whether any one had ever noted the fact or not,\nthe dim resemblance to a long-tailed (or long-necked?) animal was always\ntruly there. But what do we mean by this projection into past eternity\nof recent human ways of thinking? Did an 'absolute' thinker actually\ndo the counting, tell off the stars upon his standing number-tally, and\nmake the bear-comparison, silly as the latter is? Were they explicitly\nseven, explicitly bear-like, before the human witness came? Surely\nnothing in the truth of the attributions drives us to think this.\nThey were only implicitly or virtually what we call them, and we human\nwitnesses first explicated them and made them 'real.' A fact virtually\npre-exists when every condition of its realization save one is already\nthere. In this case the condition lacking is the act of the counting and\ncomparing mind. But the stars (once the mind considers them) themselves\ndictate the result. The counting in no wise modifies their previous\nnature, and, they being what and where they are, the count cannot fall\nout differently. It could then ALWAYS be made. NEVER could the number\nseven be questioned, IF THE QUESTION ONCE WERE RAISED.\n\nWe have here a quasi-paradox. Undeniably something comes by the counting\nthat was not there before. And yet that something was ALWAYS TRUE. In\none sense you create it, and in another sense you FIND it. You have to\ntreat your count as being true beforehand, the moment you come to treat\nthe matter at all.\n\nOur stellar attributes must always be called true, then; yet none the\nless are they genuine additions made by our intellect to the world of\nfact. Not additions of consciousness only, but additions of 'content.'\nThey copy nothing that pre-existed, yet they agree with what\npre-existed, fit it, amplify it, relate and connect it with a 'wain,'\na number-tally, or what not, and build it out. It seems to me that\nhumanism is the only theory that builds this case out in the good\ndirection, and this case stands for innumerable other kinds of case. In\nall such eases, odd as it may sound, our judgment may actually be said\nto retroact and to enrich the past.\n\nOur judgments at any rate change the character of FUTURE reality by\nthe acts to which they lead. Where these acts are acts expressive of\ntrust,--trust, e.g., that a man is honest, that our health is good\nenough, or that we can make a successful effort,--which acts may be a\nneeded antecedent of the trusted things becoming true. Professor Taylor\nsays [Footnote: In an article criticising Pragmatism (as he conceives\nit) in the McGill University Quarterly published at Montreal, for May,\n1904.] that our trust is at any rate UNTRUE WHEN IT IS MADE, i. e;\nbefore the action; and I seem to remember that he disposes of anything\nlike a faith in the general excellence of the universe (making the\nfaithful person's part in it at any rate more excellent) as a 'lie in\nthe soul.' But the pathos of this expression should not blind us to\nthe complication of the facts. I doubt whether Professor Taylor would\nhimself be in favor of practically handling trusters of these kinds as\nliars. Future and present really mix in such emergencies, and one can\nalways escape lies in them by using hypothetic forms. But Mr. Taylor's\nattitude suggests such absurd possibilities of practice that it seems\nto me to illustrate beautifully how self-stultifying the conception of\na truth that shall merely register a standing fixture may become.\nTheoretic truth, truth of passive copying, sought in the sole interests\nof copying as such, not because copying is GOOD FOR SOMETHING, but\nbecause copying ought schlechthin to be, seems, if you look at it\ncoldly, to be an almost preposterous ideal. Why should the universe,\nexisting in itself, also exist in copies? How CAN it be copied in the\nsolidity of its objective fulness? And even if it could, what would the\nmotive be? 'Even the hairs of your head are numbered.' Doubtless they\nare, virtually; but why, as an absolute proposition, OUGHT the number to\nbecome copied and known? Surely knowing is only one way of interacting\nwith reality and adding to its effect.\n\nThe opponent here will ask: 'Has not the knowing of truth any\nsubstantive value on its own account, apart from the collateral\nadvantages it may bring? And if you allow theoretic satisfactions to\nexist at all, do they not crowd the collateral satisfactions out of\nhouse and home, and must not pragmatism go into bankruptcy, if she\nadmits them at all?' The destructive force of such talk disappears as\nsoon as we use words concretely instead of abstractly, and ask, in our\nquality of good pragmatists, just what the famous theoretic needs are\nknown as and in what the intellectual satisfactions consist.\n\nAre they not all mere matters of CONSISTENCY--and emphatically NOT of\nconsistency between an absolute reality and the mind's copies of it,\nbut of actually felt consistency among judgments, objects, and habits of\nreacting, in the mind's own experienceable world? And are not both our\nneed of such consistency and our pleasure in it conceivable as\noutcomes of the natural fact that we are beings that do develop mental\nHABITS--habit itself proving adaptively beneficial in an environment\nwhere the same objects, or the same kinds of objects, recur and follow\n'law'? If this were so, what would have come first would have been the\ncollateral profits of habit as such, and the theoretic life would have\ngrown up in aid of these. In point of fact, this seems to have been the\nprobable case. At life's origin, any present perception may have been\n'true'--if such a word could then be applicable. Later, when reactions\nbecame organized, the reactions became 'true' whenever expectation was\nfulfilled by them. Otherwise they were 'false' or 'mistaken' reactions.\nBut the same class of objects needs the same kind of reaction, so the\nimpulse to react consistently must gradually have been established, and\na disappointment felt whenever the results frustrated expectation.\nHere is a perfectly plausible germ for all our higher consistencies.\nNowadays, if an object claims from us a reaction of the kind habitually\naccorded only to the opposite class of objects, our mental machinery\nrefuses to run smoothly. The situation is intellectually unsatisfactory.\n\nTheoretic truth thus falls WITHIN the mind, being the accord of some\nof its processes and objects with other processes and objects--'accord'\nconsisting here in well-definable relations. So long as the satisfaction\nof feeling such an accord is denied us, whatever collateral profits\nmay seem to inure from what we believe in are but as dust in the\nbalance--provided always that we are highly organized intellectually,\nwhich the majority of us are not. The amount of accord which satisfies\nmost men and women is merely the absence of violent clash between\ntheir usual thoughts and statements and the limited sphere of\nsense-perceptions in which their lives are cast. The theoretic truth\nthat most of us think we 'ought' to attain to is thus the possession of\na set of predicates that do not explicitly contradict their subjects.\nWe preserve it as often as not by leaving other predicates and subjects\nout.\n\nIn some men theory is a passion, just as music is in others. The form\nof inner consistency is pursued far beyond the line at which collateral\nprofits stop. Such men systematize and classify and schematize and\nmake synoptical tables and invent ideal objects for the pure love of\nunifying. Too often the results, glowing with 'truth' for the inventors,\nseem pathetically personal and artificial to bystanders. Which is as\nmuch as to say that the purely theoretic criterion of truth can leave us\nin the lurch as easily as any other criterion, and that the absolutists,\nfor all their pretensions, are 'in the same boat' concretely with those\nwhom they attack.\n\nI am well aware that this paper has been rambling in the extreme. But\nthe whole subject is inductive, and sharp logic is hardly yet in order.\nMy great trammel has been the non-existence of any definitely stated\nalternative on my opponents' part. It may conduce to clearness if I\nrecapitulate, in closing, what I conceive the main points of humanism to\nbe. They are these:--\n\n1. An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must conform to reality in\norder to be true.\n\n2. By 'reality' humanism means nothing more than the other conceptual\nor perceptual experiences with which a given present experience may find\nitself in point of fact mixed up. [Footnote: This is meant merely to\nexclude reality of an 'unknowable' sort, of which no account in either\nperceptual or conceptual terms can be given. It includes of course any\namount if empirical reality independent of the knower. Pragmatism, is\nthus 'epistemologically' realistic in its account.]\n\n3. By 'conforming,' humanism means taking account-of in such a way as to\ngain any intellectually and practically satisfactory result.\n\n4. To 'take account-of' and to be 'satisfactory' are terms that admit\nof no definition, so many are the ways in which these requirements can\npractically be worked out.\n\n5. Vaguely and in general, we take account of a reality by preserving\nit in as unmodified a form as possible. But, to be then satisfactory, it\nmust not contradict other realities outside of it which claim also to be\npreserved. That we must preserve all the experience we can and minimize\ncontradiction in what we preserve, is about all that can be said in\nadvance.\n\n6. The truth which the conforming experience embodies may be a positive\naddition to the previous reality, and later judgments may have\nto conform to it. Yet, virtually at least, it may have been true\npreviously. Pragmatically, virtual and actual truth mean the same thing:\nthe possibility of only one answer, when once the question is raised.\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE RELATION BETWEEN KNOWER AND KNOWN\n\n[Footnote: Extract from an article entitled 'A World of Pure\nExperience,' in the Journal of Philosophy, etc., September 29,1904.]\n\nThroughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object\nhave been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities; and thereupon\nthe presence of the latter to the former, or the 'apprehension' by the\nformer of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical character which all\nsorts of theories had to be invented to overcome. Representative\ntheories put a mental 'representation,' 'image,' or 'content' into\nthe gap, as a sort of intermediary. Commonsense theories left the gap\nuntouched, declaring our mind able to clear it by a self-transcending\nleap. Transcendentalist theories left it impossible to traverse by\nfinite knowers, and brought an absolute in to perform the saltatory\nact. All the while, in the very bosom of the finite experience, every\nconjunction required to make the relation intelligible is given in full.\nEither the knower and the known are:\n\n(1) the self-same piece of experience taken twice over in different\ncontexts; or they are\n\n(2) two pieces of ACTUAL experience belonging to the same subject, with\ndefinite tracts of conjunctive transitional experience between them; or\n\n(3) the known is a POSSIBLE experience either of that subject or\nanother, to which the said conjunctive transitions WOULD lead, if\nsufficiently prolonged.\n\nTo discuss all the ways in which one experience may function as the\nknower of another, would be incompatible with the limits of this essay.\nI have treated of type 1, the kind of knowledge called perception, in\nan article in the Journal of Philosophy, for September 1, 1904, called\n'Does consciousness exist?' This is the type of case in which the mind\nenjoys direct 'acquaintance' with a present object. In the other types\nthe mind has 'knowledge-about' an object not immediately there. Type 3\ncan always formally and hypothetically be reduced to type 2, so that\na brief description of that type will now put the present reader\nsufficiently at my point of view, and make him see what the actual\nmeanings of the mysterious cognitive relation may be.\n\nSuppose me to be sitting here in my library at Cambridge, at ten\nminutes' walk from 'Memorial Hall,' and to be thinking truly of the\nlatter object. My mind may have before it only the name, or it may have\na clear image, or it may have a very dim image of the hall, but such an\nintrinsic difference in the image makes no difference in its cognitive\nfunction. Certain extrinsic phenomena, special experiences of\nconjunction, are what impart to the image, be it what it may, its\nknowing office.\n\nFor instance, if you ask me what hall I mean by my image, and I can\ntell you nothing; or if I fail to point or lead you towards the Harvard\nDelta; or if, being led by you, I am uncertain whether the Hall I see\nbe what I had in mind or not; you would rightly deny that I had 'meant'\nthat particular hall at all, even tho my mental image might to some\ndegree have resembled it. The resemblance would count in that case as\ncoincidental merely, for all sorts of things of a kind resemble one\nanother in this world without being held for that reason to take\ncognizance of one another.\n\nOn the other hand, if I can lead you to the hall, and tell you of its\nhistory and present uses; if in its presence I feel my idea, however\nimperfect it may have been, to have led hither and to be now TERMINATED;\nif the associates of the image and of the felt hall run parallel, so\nthat each term of the one context corresponds serially, as I walk, with\nan answering term of the other; why then my soul was prophetic, and\nmy idea must be, and by common consent would be, called cognizant of\nreality. That percept was what I MEANT, for into it my idea has passed\nby conjunctive experiences of sameness and fulfilled intention. Nowhere\nis there jar, but every later moment continues and corroborates an\nearlier one.\n\nIn this continuing and corroborating, taken in no transcendental sense,\nbut denoting definitely felt transitions, LIES ALL THAT THE KNOWING OF\nA PERCEPT BY AN IDEA CAN POSSIBLY CONTAIN OR SIGNIFY. Wherever such\ntransitions are felt, the first experience KNOWS the last one. Where\nthey do not, or where even as possibles they can not, intervene, there\ncan be no pretence of knowing. In this latter case the extremes will be\nconnected, if connected at all, by inferior relations--bare likeness or\nsuccession, or by 'withness' alone. Knowledge of sensible realities thus\ncomes to life inside the tissue of experience. It is MADE; and made\nby relations that unroll themselves in time. Whenever certain\nintermediaries are given, such that, as they develop towards their\nterminus, there is experience from point to point of one direction\nfollowed, and finally of one process fulfilled, the result is that THEIR\nSTARTING-POINT THEREBY BECOMES A KNOWER AND THEIR TERMINUS AN OBJECT\nMEANT OR KNOWN. That is all that knowing (in the simple case considered)\ncan be known-as, that is the whole of its nature, put into experiential\nterms. Whenever such is the sequence of our experiences we may freely\nsay that we had the terminal object 'in mind' from the outset, even\naltho AT the outset nothing was there in us but a flat piece of\nsubstantive experience like any other, with no self-transcendency about\nit, and no mystery save the mystery of coming into existence and of\nbeing gradually followed by other pieces of substantive experience, with\nconjunctively transitional experiences between. That is what we MEAN\nhere by the object's being 'in mind.' Of any deeper more real way of its\nbeing in mind we have no positive conception, and we have no right to\ndiscredit our actual experience by talking of such a way at all.\n\nI know that many a reader will rebel at this. 'Mere intermediaries,' he\nwill say, 'even tho they be feelings of continuously growing fulfilment,\nonly SEPARATE the knower from the known, whereas what we have in\nknowledge is a kind of immediate touch of the one by the other, an\n\"apprehension\" in the etymological sense of the word, a leaping of the\nchasm as by lightning, an act by which two terms are smitten into one\nover the head of their distinctness. All these dead intermediaries of\nyours are out of each other, and outside of their termini still.'\n\nBut do not such dialectic difficulties remind us of the dog dropping his\nbone and snapping at its image in the water? If we knew any more real\nkind of union aliunde, we might be entitled to brand all our empirical\nunions as a sham. But unions by continuous transition are the only ones\nwe know of, whether in this matter of a knowledge-about that terminates\nin an acquaintance, whether in personal identity, in logical prediction\nthrough the copula 'is,' or elsewhere. If anywhere there were more\nabsolute unions, they could only reveal themselves to us by just such\nconjunctive results. These are what the unions are worth, these are all\nthat we can ever practically mean by union, by continuity. Is it not\ntime to repeat what Lotze said of substances, that to act like one is to\nbe one? Should we not say here that to be experienced as continuous is\nto be really continuous, in a world where experience and reality come to\nthe same thing? In a picture gallery a painted hook will serve to hang\na painted chain by, a painted cable will hold a painted ship. In a world\nwhere both the terms and their distinctions are affairs of experience,\nconjunctions that are experienced must be at least as real as anything\nelse. They will be 'absolutely' real conjunctions, if we have no\ntransphenomenal absolute ready, to derealize the whole experienced world\nby, at a stroke.\n\nSo much for the essentials of the cognitive relation where the knowledge\nis conceptual in type, or forms knowledge 'about' an object. It consists\nin intermediary experiences (possible, if not actual) of continuously\ndeveloping progress, and, finally, of fulfilment, when the sensible\npercept which is the object is reached. The percept here not only\nVERIFIES the concept, proves its function of knowing that percept to\nbe true, but the percept's existence as the terminus of the chain of\nintermediaries CREATES the function. Whatever terminates that chain was,\nbecause it now proves itself to be, what the concept 'had in mind.'\n\nThe towering importance for human life of this kind of knowing lies\nin the tact that an experience that knows another can figure as its\nREPRESENTATIVE, not in any quasi-miraculous 'epistemological' sense,\nbut in the definite, practical sense of being its substitute in various\noperations, sometimes physical and sometimes mental, which lead us to\nits associates and results. By experimenting on our ideas of reality, we\nmay save ourselves the trouble of experimenting on the real experiences\nwhich they severally mean. The ideas form related systems, corresponding\npoint for point to the systems which the realities form; and by letting\nan ideal term call up its associates systematically, we may be led to a\nterminus which the corresponding real term would have led to in case\nwe had operated on the real world. And this brings us to the general\nquestion of substitution.\n\nWhat, exactly, in a system of experiences, does the 'substitution' of\none of them for another mean?\n\nAccording to my view, experience as a whole is a process in time,\nwhereby innumerable particular terms lapse and are superseded by others\nthat follow upon them by transitions which, whether disjunctive or\nconjunctive in content, are themselves experiences, and must in general\nbe accounted at least as real as the terms which they relate. What the\nnature of the event called 'superseding' signifies, depends altogether\non the kind of transition that obtains. Some experiences simply abolish\ntheir predecessors without continuing them in any way. Others are felt\nto increase or to enlarge their meaning, to carry out their purpose, or\nto bring us nearer to their goal. They 'represent' them, and may fulfil\ntheir function better than they fulfilled it themselves. But to 'fulfil\na function' in a world of pure experience can be conceived and defined\nin only one possible way. In such a world transitions and arrivals (or\nterminations) are the only events that happen, tho they happen by so\nmany sorts of path. The only function that one experience can perform is\nto lead into another experience; and the only fulfilment we can speak of\nis the reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads\nto (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function. But\nthe whole system of experiences as they are immediately given presents\nitself as a quasi-chaos through which one can pass out of an initial\nterm in many directions and yet end in the same terminus, moving from\nnext to next by a great many possible paths.\n\nEither one of these paths might be a functional substitute for\nanother, and to follow one rather than another might on occasion be an\nadvantageous thing to do. As a matter of fact, and in a general way,\nthe paths that run through conceptual experiences, that is, through\n'thoughts' or 'ideas' that 'know' the things in which they terminate,\nare highly advantageous paths to follow. Not only do they yield\ninconceivably rapid transitions; but, owing to the 'universal' character\n[Footnote: Of which all that need be said in this essay is that it also\nan be conceived as functional, and defined in terms of transitions, or\nof the possibility of such.] which they frequently possess, and to\ntheir capacity for association with one another in great systems, they\noutstrip the tardy consecutions of the things themselves, and sweep us\non towards our ultimate termini in a far more labor-saving way than the\nfollowing of trains of sensible perception ever could. Wonderful are\nthe new cuts and the short-circuits the thought-paths make. Most\nthought-paths, it is true, are substitutes for nothing actual; they end\noutside the real world altogether, in wayward fancies, utopias, fictions\nor mistakes. But where they do re-enter reality and terminate therein,\nwe substitute them always; and with these substitutes we pass the\ngreater number of our hours. [Footnote: This is why I called our\nexperiences, taken all together, a quasi-chaos. There is vastly more\ndiscontinuity in the sum total of experiences than we commonly suppose.\nThe objective nucleus of every man's experience, his own body, is, it is\ntrue, a continuous percept; and equally continuous as a percept (though\nwe may be inattentive to it) is the material environment of that body,\nchanging by gradual transition when the body moves. But the distant\nparts of the physical world are at all times absent from us, and form\nconceptual objects merely, into the perceptual reality of which our\nlife inserts itself at points discrete and relatively rare. Round their\nseveral objective nuclei, partly shared and common partly discrete of\nthe real physical world, innumerable thinkers, pursuing their several\nlines of physically true cogitation, trace paths that intersect one\nanother only at discontinuous perceptual points, and the rest of\nthe time are quite incongruent; and around all the nuclei of shared\n'reality' floats the vast cloud of experiences that are wholly\nsubjective, that are non-substitutional, that find not even an eventual\nending for themselves in the perceptual world--the mere day-dreams and\njoys and sufferings and wishes of the individual minds. These exist WITH\none another, indeed, and with the objective nuclei, but out of them it\nis probable that to all eternity no inter-related system of any kind\nwill ever be made.]\n\nWhosoever feels his experience to be something substitutional even while\nhe has it, may be said to have an experience that reaches beyond itself.\nFrom inside of its own entity it says 'more,' and postulates reality\nexisting elsewhere. For the transcendentalist, who holds knowing to\nconsist in a salto motale across an 'epistemological chasm,' such an\nidea presents no difficulty; but it seems at first sight as if it might\nbe inconsistent with an empiricism like our own. Have we not explained\nthat conceptual knowledge is made such wholly by the existence of things\nthat fall outside of the knowing experience itself--by intermediary\nexperiences and by a terminus that fulfils?\n\nCan the knowledge be there before these elements that constitute its\nbeing have come? And, if knowledge be not there, how can objective\nreference occur?\n\nThe key to this difficulty lies in the distinction between knowing as\nverified and completed, and the same knowing as in transit and on its\nway. To recur to the Memorial Hall example lately used, it is only when\nour idea of the Hall has actually terminated in the percept that we know\n'for certain' that from the beginning it was truly cognitive of THAT.\nUntil established by the end of the process, its quality of knowing\nthat, or indeed of knowing anything, could still be doubted; and yet\nthe knowing really was there, as the result now shows. We were VIRTUAL\nknowers of the Hall long before we were certified to have been its\nactual knowers, by the percept's retroactive validating power. Just\nso we are 'mortal' all the time, by reason of the virtuality of the\ninevitable event which will make us so when it shall have come.\n\nNow the immensely greater part of all our knowing never gets beyond this\nvirtual stage. It never is completed or nailed down. I speak not merely\nof our ideas of imperceptibles like ether-waves or dissociated 'ions,'\nor of 'ejects' like the contents of our neighbors' minds; I speak also\nof ideas which we might verify if we would take the trouble, but which\nwe hold for true altho unterminated perceptually, because nothing says\n'no' to us, and there is no contradicting truth in sight. TO CONTINUE\nTHINKING UNCHALLENGED IS, NINETY-NINE TIMES OUT OF A HUNDRED, OUR\nPRACTICAL SUBSTITUTE FOR KNOWING IN THE COMPLETED SENSE. As each\nexperience runs by cognitive transition into the next one, and we\nnowhere feel a collision with what we elsewhere count as truth or fact,\nwe commit ourselves to the current as if the port were sure. We live, as\nit, were, upon the front edge of an advancing wave-crest, and our sense\nof a determinate direction in falling forward is all we cover of the\nfuture of our path. It is as if a differential quotient should be\nconscious and treat itself as an adequate substitute for a traced-out\ncurve. Our experience, inter alia, is of variations of rate and of\ndirection, and lives in these transitions more than in the journey's\nend. The experiences of tendency are sufficient to act upon--what more\ncould we have DONE at those moments even if the later verification comes\ncomplete?\n\nThis is what, as a radical empiricist, I say to the charge that the\nobjective reference which is so flagrant a character of our experiences\ninvolves a chasm and a mortal leap. A positively conjunctive transition\ninvolves neither chasm nor leap. Being the very original of what we\nmean by continuity, it makes a continuum wherever it appears. Objective\nreference is an incident of the fact that so much of our experience\ncomes as an insufficient and consists of process and transition. Our\nfields of experience have no more definite boundaries than have our\nfields of view. Both are fringed forever by a MORE that continuously\ndevelops, and that continuously supersedes them as life proceeds. The\nrelations, generally speaking, are as real here as the terms are, and\nthe only complaint of the transcendentalist's with which I could at\nall sympathize would be his charge that, by first making knowledge to\nconsist in external relations as I have done, and by then confessing\nthat nine-tenths of the time these are not actually but only virtually\nthere, I have knocked the solid bottom out of the whole business, and\npalmed off a substitute of knowledge for the genuine thing. Only the\nadmission, such a critic might say, that our ideas are self-transcendent\nand 'true' already; in advance of the experiences that are to terminate\nthem, can bring solidity back to knowledge in a world like this, in\nwhich transitions and terminations are only by exception fulfilled.\n\nThis seems to me an excellent place for applying the pragmatic method.\nWhat would the self-transcendency affirmed to exist in advance of\nall experiential mediation or termination, be KNOWN-AS? What would it\npractically result in for US, were it true?\n\nIt could only result in our orientation, in the turning of our\nexpectations and practical tendencies into the right path; and the right\npath here, so long as we and the object are not yet face to face (or\ncan never get face to face, as in the case of ejects), would be the\npath that led us into the object's nearest neighborhood. Where direct\nacquaintance is lacking, 'knowledge about' is the next best thing, and\nan acquaintance with what actually lies about the 'object, and is most\nclosely related to it, puts such knowledge within our grasp. Ether-waves\nand your anger, for example, are things in which my thoughts will never\nPERCTEPTUALLY terminate, but my concepts of them lead me to their very\nbrink, to the chromatic fringes and to the hurtful words and deeds which\nare their really next effects.\n\nEven if our ideas did in themselves possess the postulated\nself-transcendency, it would still remain true that their putting us\ninto possession of such effects WOULD BE THE SOLE CASH-VALUE OF THE\nSELF-TRANSCENDENCY FOR US. And this cash-value, it is needless to\nsay, is verbatim et liberatim what our empiricist account pays in. On\npragmatist principles therefore, a dispute over self-transcendency is a\npure logomachy. Call our concepts of ejective things self-transcendent\nor the reverse, it makes no difference, so long as we don't differ about\nthe nature of that exalted virtue's fruits--fruits for us, of course,\nhumanistic fruits.\n\nThe transcendentalist believes his ideas to be self-transcendent only\nbecause he finds that in fact they do bear fruits. Why need he quarrel\nwith an account of knowledge that insists on naming this effect? Why not\ntreat the working of the idea from next to next as the essence of its\nself-transcendency? Why insist that knowing is a static relation out of\ntime when it practically seems so much a function of our active life?\nFor a thing to be valid, says Lotze, is the same as to make itself\nvalid. When the whole universe seems only to be making itself valid and\nto be still incomplete (else why its ceaseless changing?) why, of all\nthings, should knowing be exempt? Why should it not be making itself\nvalid like everything else? That some parts of it may be already valid\nor verified beyond dispute; the empirical philosopher, of course, like\nany one else, may always hope.\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM\n\n[Footnote: Reprinted from the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods, vol. ii. No. 5, March 2, 1905.]\n\nHumanism is a ferment that has 'come to stay.' It is not a single\nhypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a\nslow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear\nas from a new centre of interest or point of sight. Some writers are\nstrongly conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though\ntheir own vision may have undergone much change. The result is no small\nconfusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part\nagainst the radical ones, as if they wished to count upon the other\nside. [Footnote: Professor Baldwin, for example. His address 'Selective\nThinking' (Psychological Review, January, 1898, reprinted in his volume,\n'Development and Evolution') seems to me an unusually well written\npragmatic manifesto. Nevertheless in 'The Limits of Pragmatism' (ibid;\nJanuary, 1904), he (much less clearly) joins in the attack.]\n\nIf humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspective, it\nis obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change\nin some degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of things, their\nforeground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not\nkeep just the same. [Footnote: The ethical changes, it seems to me, are\nbeautifully made evident in Professor Dewey's series of articles, which\nwill never get the attention they deserve till they are printed in a\nbook. I mean: 'The Significance of Emotions,' Psychological Review,\nvol. ii, 13; 'The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,' ibid; iii, 357;\n'Psychology and Social Practice,' ibid., vii, 105; 'Interpretation\nof Savage Mind,' ibid; ix, 2l7; 'Green's Theory of the Moral Motive,'\nPhilosophical Review, vol. i, 593; 'Self-realization as the Moral\nIdeal,' ibid; ii, 652; 'The Psychology of Effort,' ibid; vi, 43;\n'The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality,' ibid; xi, 107,353;\n'Evolution and Ethics,' Monist, vol. viii, 321; to mention only a few.]\nIf such pervasive consequences be involved in humanism, it is clear that\nno pains which philosophers may take, first in defining it, and then in\nfurthering, checking, or steering its progress, will be thrown away.\n\nIt suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most\nsystematic advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragmentary\nprogrammes only; and its bearing on many vital philosophic problems has\nnot been traced except by adversaries who, scenting heresies in advance,\nhave showered blows on doctrines--subjectivism and scepticism, for\nexample--that no good humanist finds it necessary to entertain. By their\nstill greater reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn, perplexed\nthe humanists. Much of the controversy has involved the word 'truth.'\nIt is always good in debate to know your adversary's point of view\nauthentically. But the critics of humanism never define exactly what the\nword 'truth' signifies when they use it themselves. The humanists have\nto guess at their view; and the result has doubtless been much beating\nof the air. Add to all this, great individual differences in both camps,\nand it becomes clear that nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage\nwhich things have reached at present, as a sharper definition by each\nside of its central point of view.\n\nWhoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to make sure\nof what's what and who is who. Any one can contribute such a definition,\nand, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own\nprovisional definition of humanism now and here, others may improve it,\nsome adversary may be led to define his own creed more sharply by the\ncontrast, and a certain quickening of the crystallization of general\nopinion may result.\n\nThe essential service of humanism, as I conceive the situation, is to\nhave seen that THO ONE PART OF OUR EXPERIENCE MAY LEAN UPON ANOTHER PART\nTO MAKE IT WHAT IT IS IN ANY ONE OF SEVERAL ASPECTS IN WHICH IT MAY\nBE CONSIDERED, EXPERIENCE AS A WHOLE IS SELF-CONTAINING AND LEANS\nON NOTHING. Since this formula also expresses the main contention\nof transcendental idealism, it needs abundant explication to make it\nunambiguous. It seems, at first sight, to confine itself to denying\ntheism and pantheism. But, in fact, it need not deny either; everything\nwould depend on the exegesis; and if the formula ever became canonical,\nit would certainly develop both right-wing and left-wing interpreters.\nI myself read humanism theistically and pluralistically. If there be a\nGod, he is no absolute all-experiencer, but simply the experiencer of\nwidest actual conscious span. Read thus, humanism is for me a religion\nsusceptible of reasoned defence, tho I am well aware how many minds\nthere are to whom it can appeal religiously only when it has been\nmonistically translated. Ethically the pluralistic form of it takes for\nme a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of--it\nbeing essentially a SOCIAL philosophy, a philosophy of 'CO,' in which\nconjunctions do the work. But my primary reason for advocating it is its\nmatchless intellectual economy. It gets rid, not only of the standing\n'problems' that monism engenders ('problem of evil,' 'problem of\nfreedom,' and the like), but of other metaphysical mysteries and\nparadoxes as well.\n\nIt gets rid, for example, of the whole agnostic controversy, by refusing\nto entertain the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality at all. It gets\nrid of any need for an absolute of the bradleyan type (avowedly sterile\nfor intellectual purposes) by insisting that the conjunctive relations\nfound within experience are faultlessly real. It gets rid of the need\nof an absolute of the roycean type (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic\ntreatment of the problem of knowledge. As the views of knowledge,\nreality and truth imputed to humanism have been those so far most\nfiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that a sharpening of\nfocus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore to bring the\nviews which I impute to humanism in these respects into focus as briefly\nas I can.\n\nII\n\nIf the central humanistic thesis, printed above in italics, be accepted,\nit will follow that, if there be any such thing at all as knowing, the\nknower and the object known must both be portions of experience. One\npart of experience must, therefore, either\n\n(1) Know another part of experience--in other words, parts must, as\nProfessor Woodbridge says, [Footnote: In Science, November 4, 1904, p.\n599.] represent ONE ANOTHER instead of representing realities outside of\n'consciousness'--this case is that of conceptual knowledge; or else\n\n(2) They must simply exist as so many ultimate THATS or facts of being,\nin the first instance; and then, as a secondary complication, and\nwithout doubling up its entitative singleness, any one and the same\nTHAT in experience must figure alternately as a thing known and as a\nknowledge of the thing, by reason of two divergent kinds of context into\nwhich, in the general course of experience, it gets woven. [Footnote:\nThis statement is probably excessively obscure to any one who has not\nread my two articles 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure\nExperience' in the Journal of Philosophy, vol. i, 1904.]\n\nThis second case is that of sense-perception. There is a stage of\nthought that goes beyond common sense, and of it I shall say more\npresently; but the common-sense stage is a perfectly definite\nhalting-place of thought, primarily for purposes of action; and, so long\nas we remain on the common-sense stage of thought, object and subject\nFUSE in the fact of 'presentation' or sense-perception-the pen and hand\nwhich I now SEE writing, for example, ARE the physical realities which\nthose words designate. In this case there is no self-transcendency\nimplied in the knowing. Humanism, here, is only a more comminuted\nIDENTITATSPHILOSOPHIE.\n\nIn case (1), on the contrary, the representative experience DOES\nTRANSCEND ITSELF in knowing the other experience that is its object.\nNo one can talk of the knowledge of the one by the other without seeing\nthem as numerically distinct entities, of which the one lies beyond the\nother and away from it, along some direction and with some interval,\nthat can be definitely named. But, if the talker be a humanist, he\nmust also see this distance-interval concretely and pragmatically, and\nconfess it to consist of other intervening experiences--of possible\nones, at all events, if not of actual. To call my present idea of my\ndog, for example, cognitive of the real dog means that, as the actual\ntissue of experience is constituted, the idea is capable of leading into\na chain of other experiences on my part that go from next to next and\nterminate at last in vivid sense-perceptions of a jumping, barking,\nhairy body. Those ARE the real dog, the dog's full presence, for my\ncommon sense. If the supposed talker is a profound philosopher, altho\nthey may not BE the real dog for him, they MEAN the real dog, are\npractical substitutes for the real dog, as the representation was a\npractical substitute for them, that real dog being a lot of atoms,\nsay, or of mind-stuff, that lie WHERE the sense-perceptions lie in his\nexperience as well as in my own.\n\nIII\n\nThe philosopher here stands for the stage of thought that goes beyond\nthe stage of common sense; and the difference is simply that he\n'interpolates' and 'extrapolates,' where common sense does not. For\ncommon sense, two men see the same identical real dog. Philosophy,\nnoting actual differences in their perceptions points out the duality\nof these latter, and interpolates something between them as a more real\nterminus--first, organs, viscera, etc.; next, cells; then, ultimate\natoms; lastly, mind-stuff perhaps. The original sense-termini of the two\nmen, instead of coalescing with each other and with the real dog-object,\nas at first supposed, are thus held by philosophers to be separated by\ninvisible realities with which, at most, they are conterminous.\n\nAbolish, now, one of the percipients, and the interpolation changes\ninto 'extrapolation.' The sense-terminus of the remaining percipient is\nregarded by the philosopher as not quite reaching reality. He has only\ncarried the procession of experiences, the philosopher thinks, to a\ndefinite, because practical, halting-place somewhere on the way towards\nan absolute truth that lies beyond.\n\nThe humanist sees all the time, however, that there is no absolute\ntranscendency even about the more absolute realities thus conjectured or\nbelieved in. The viscera and cells are only possible percepts following\nupon that of the outer body. The atoms again, tho we may never attain\nto human means of perceiving them, are still defined perceptually.\nThe mind-stuff itself is conceived as a kind of experience; and it is\npossible to frame the hypothesis (such hypotheses can by no logic be\nexcluded from philosophy) of two knowers of a piece of mind-stuff and\nthe mind-stuff itself becoming 'confluent' at the moment at which our\nimperfect knowing might pass into knowing of a completed type. Even so\ndo you and I habitually conceive our two perceptions and the real dog\nas confluent, tho only provisionally, and for the common-sense stage\nof thought. If my pen be inwardly made of mind-stuff, there is no\nconfluence NOW between that mind-stuff and my visual perception of the\npen. But conceivably there might come to be such confluence; for, in\nthe case of my HAND, the visual sensations and the inward feelings of\nthe hand, its mind-stuff, so to speak, are even now as confluent as any\ntwo things can be.\n\nThere is, thus, no breach in humanistic epistemology. Whether knowledge\nbe taken as ideally perfected, or only as true enough to pass muster\nfor practice, it is hung on one continuous scheme. Reality, howsoever\nremote, is always defined as a terminus within the general possibilities\nof experience; and what knows it is defined as an experience THAT\n'REPRESENTS' IT, IN THE SENSE OF BEING SUBSTITUTABLE FOR IT IN OUR\nTHINKING because it leads to the same associates, OR IN THE SENSE\nOF 'POINTING TO IT THROUGH A CHAIN OF OTHER EXPERIENCES THAT EITHER\nINTERVENE OR MAY INTERVENE.\n\nAbsolute reality here bears the same relation to sensation as sensation\nbears to conception or imagination. Both are provisional or final\ntermini, sensation being only the terminus at which the practical man\nhabitually stops, while the philosopher projects a 'beyond,' in the\nshape of more absolute reality. These termini, for the practical and the\nphilosophical stages of thought respectively, are self-supporting. They\nare not 'true' of anything else, they simply ARE, are REAL. They 'lean\non nothing,' as my italicized formula said. Rather does the whole\nfabric of experience lean on them, just as the whole fabric of the\nsolar system, including many relative positions, leans, for its absolute\nposition in space, on any one of its constituent stars. Here, again, one\ngets a new IDENTITATSPHILOSOPHIE in pluralistic form.\n\nIV\n\nIf I have succeeded in making this at all clear (tho I fear that brevity\nand abstractness between them may have made me fail), the reader\nwill see that the 'truth' of our mental operations must always be an\nintra-experiential affair. A conception is reckoned true by common sense\nwhen it can be made to lead to a sensation. The sensation, which\nfor common sense is not so much 'true' as 'real,' is held to be\nPROVISIONALLY true by the philosopher just in so far as it COVERS (abuts\nat, or occupies the place of) a still more absolutely real experience,\nin the possibility of which, to some remoter experient, the philosopher\nfinds reason to believe.\n\nMeanwhile what actually DOES count for true to any individual trower,\nwhether he be philosopher or common man, is always a result of his\nAPPERCEPTIONS. If a novel experience, conceptual or sensible, contradict\ntoo emphatically our pre-existent system of beliefs, in ninety-nine\ncases out of a hundred it is treated as false. Only when the older and\nthe newer experiences are congruous enough to mutually apperceive and\nmodify each other, does what we treat as an advance in truth result.\nIn no case, however, need truth consist in a relation between our\nexperiences and something archetypal or trans-experiential. Should we\never reach absolutely terminal experiences, experiences in which we all\nagreed, which were superseded by no revised continuations, these would\nnot be TRUE, they would be REAL, they would simply BE, and be indeed\nthe angles, corners, and linchpins of all reality, on which the truth of\neverything else would be stayed. Only such OTHER things as led to these\nby satisfactory conjunctions would be 'true.' Satisfactory connection of\nsome sort with such termini is all that the word 'truth' means. On the\ncommon-stage of thought sense-presentations serve as such termini. Our\nideas and concepts and scientific theories pass for true only so far as\nthey harmoniously lead back to the world of sense.\n\nI hope that many humanists will endorse this attempt of mine to trace\nthe more essential features of that way of viewing things. I feel almost\ncertain that Messrs. Dewey and Schiller will do so. If the attackers\nwill also take some slight account of it, it may be that discussion will\nbe a little less wide of the mark than it has hitherto been.\n\n\n\nVI\n\nA WORD MORE ABOUT TRUTH\n\n[Footnote: Reprint from the Journal of Philosophy, July 18,1907.]\n\nMy failure in making converts to my conception of truth seems, if I\nmay judge by what I hear in conversation, almost complete. An ordinary\nphilosopher would feel disheartened, and a common choleric sinner would\ncurse God and die, after such a reception. But instead of taking counsel\nof despair, I make bold to vary my statements, in the faint hope that\nrepeated droppings may wear upon the stone, and that my formulas may\nseem less obscure if surrounded by something more of a 'mass' whereby to\napperceive them.\n\nFor fear of compromising other pragmatists, whoe'er they be, I will\nspeak of the conception which I am trying to make intelligible, as my\nown conception. I first published it in the year 1885, in the first\narticle reprinted in the present book. Essential theses of this article\nwere independently supported in 1893 and 1895 by Professor D. S. Miller\n[Footnote: Philosophical Review, vol. ii, p. 408, and Psychological\nReview, vol. ii, p. 533.] and were repeated by me in a presidential\naddress on 'The knowing of things together' [Footnote: The relevant\nparts of which are printed above, p. 43.] in 1895. Professor Strong,\nin an article in the Journal of Philosophy, etc., [Footnote: Vol. i,\np. 253.] entitled 'A naturalistic theory of the reference of thought\nto reality,' called our account 'the James-Miller theory of cognition,'\nand, as I understood him, gave it his adhesion. Yet, such is the\ndifficulty of writing clearly in these penetralia of philosophy, that\neach of these revered colleagues informs me privately that the account\nof truth I now give--which to me is but that earlier statement more\ncompletely set forth--is to him inadequate, and seems to leave the gist\nof real cognition out. If such near friends disagree, what can I hope\nfrom remoter ones, and what from unfriendly critics?\n\nYet I feel so sure that the fault must lie in my lame forms of statement\nand not in my doctrine, that I am fain to try once more to express\nmyself.\n\nAre there not some general distinctions which it may help us to agree\nabout in advance? Professor Strong distinguishes between what he calls\n'saltatory' and what he calls 'ambulatory' relations. 'Difference,' for\nexample, is saltatory, jumping as it were immediately from one term\nto another, but 'distance' in time or space is made out of intervening\nparts of experience through which we ambulate in succession. Years ago,\nwhen T. H. Green's ideas were most influential, I was much troubled\nby his criticisms of english sensationalism. One of his disciples in\nparticular would always say to me, 'Yes! TERMS may indeed be possibly\nsensational in origin; but RELATIONS, what are they but pure acts of\nthe intellect coming upon the sensations from above, and of a higher\nnature?' I well remember the sudden relief it gave me to perceive one\nday that SPACE-relations at any rate were homogeneous with the terms\nbetween which they mediated. The terms were spaces, and the relations\nwere other intervening spaces. [Footnote: See my Principles of\nPsychology, vol. ii, pp. 148-153.] For the Greenites space-relations had\nbeen saltatory, for me they became thenceforward ambulatory.\n\nNow the most general way of contrasting my view of knowledge with the\npopular view (which is also the view of most epistemologists) is to call\nmy view ambulatory, and the other view saltatory; and the most general\nway of characterizing the two views is by saying that my view describes\nknowing as it exists concretely, while the other view only describes its\nresults abstractly taken.\n\nI fear that most of my recalcitrant readers fail to recognize that what\nis ambulatory in the concrete may be taken so abstractly as to appear\nsaltatory. Distance, for example, is made abstract by emptying out\nwhatever is particular in the concrete intervals--it is reduced thus\nto a sole 'difference,' a difference of 'place,' which is a logical or\nsaltatory distinction, a so-called 'pure relation.'\n\nThe same is true of the relation called 'knowing,' which may connect\nan idea with a reality. My own account of this relation is ambulatory\nthrough and through. I say that we know an object by means of an idea,\nwhenever we ambulate towards the object under the impulse which the idea\ncommunicates. If we believe in so-called 'sensible' realities, the idea\nmay not only send us towards its object, but may put the latter into our\nvery hand, make it our immediate sensation. But, if, as most reflective\npeople opine, sensible realities are not 'real' realities, but only\ntheir appearances, our idea brings us at least so far, puts us in touch\nwith reality's most authentic appearances and substitutes. In any case\nour idea brings us into the object's neighborhood, practical or ideal,\ngets us into commerce with it, helps us towards its closer acquaintance,\nenables us to foresee it, class it, compare it, deduce it,--in short, to\ndeal with it as we could not were the idea not in our possession.\n\nThe idea is thus, when functionally considered, an instrument for\nenabling us the better to HAVE TO DO with the object and to act about\nit. But it and the object are both of them bits of the general sheet\nand tissue of reality at large; and when we say that the idea leads us\ntowards the object, that only means that it carries us forward\nthrough intervening tracts of that reality into the object's closer\nneighborhood, into the midst of its associates at least, be these its\nphysical neighbors, or be they its logical congeners only. Thus carried\ninto closer quarters, we are in an improved situation as regards\nacquaintance and conduct; and we say that through the idea we now KNOW\nthe object better or more truly.\n\nMy thesis is that the knowing here is MADE by the ambulation through the\nintervening experiences. If the idea led us nowhere, or FROM that object\ninstead of towards it, could we talk at all of its having any cognitive\nquality? Surely not, for it is only when taken in conjunction with the\nintermediate experiences that it gets related to THAT PARTICULAR OBJECT\nrather than to any other part of nature. Those intermediaries determine\nwhat particular knowing function it exerts. The terminus they guide\nus to tells us what object it 'means,' the results they enrich us\nwith 'verify' or 'refute' it. Intervening experiences are thus as\nindispensable foundations for a concrete relation of cognition as\nintervening space is for a relation of distance. Cognition, whenever\nwe take it concretely, means determinate 'ambulation,' through\nintermediaries, from a terminus a quo to, or towards, a terminus ad\nquem. As the intermediaries are other than the termini, and connected\nwith them by the usual associative bonds (be these 'external' or be they\nlogical, i.e., classificatory, in character), there would appear to\nbe nothing especially unique about the processes of knowing. They fall\nwholly within experience; and we need use, in describing them, no\nother categories than those which we employ in describing other natural\nprocesses.\n\nBut there exist no processes which we cannot also consider abstractly,\neviscerating them down to their essential skeletons or outlines; and\nwhen we have treated the processes of knowing thus, we are easily led to\nregard them as something altogether unparalleled in nature. For we first\nempty idea, object and intermediaries of all their particularities, in\norder to retain only a general scheme, and then we consider the latter\nonly in its function of giving a result, and not in its character of\nbeing a process. In this treatment the intermediaries shrivel into the\nform of a mere space of separation, while the idea and object retain\nonly the logical distinctness of being the end-terms that are separated.\nIn other words, the intermediaries which in their concrete particularity\nform a bridge, evaporate ideally into an empty interval to cross, and\nthen, the relation of the end-terms having become saltatory, the whole\nhocus-pocus of Erkenntnistheorie begins, and goes on unrestrained\nby further concrete considerations. The idea, in 'meaning' an object\nseparated by an 'epistemological chasm' from itself, now executes what\nProfessor Ladd calls a 'salto mortale'; in knowing the object's nature,\nit now 'transcends' its own. The object in turn becomes 'present' where\nit is really absent, etc.; until a scheme remains upon our hands, the\nsublime paradoxes of which some of us think that nothing short of an\n'absolute' can explain.\n\nThe relation between idea and object, thus made abstract and saltatory,\nis thenceforward opposed, as being more essential and previous, to its\nown ambulatory self, and the more concrete description is branded as\neither false or insufficient. The bridge of intermediaries, actual\nor possible, which in every real case is what carries and defines the\nknowing, gets treated as an episodic complication which need not even\npotentially be there. I believe that this vulgar fallacy of opposing\nabstractions to the concretes from which they are abstracted, is the\nmain reason why my account of knowing is deemed so unsatisfactory, and I\nwill therefore say a word more on that general point.\n\nAny vehicle of conjunction, if all its particularities are abstracted\nfrom it, will leave us with nothing on our hands but the original\ndisjunction which it bridged over. But to escape treating the resultant\nself-contradiction as an achievement of dialectical profundity, all we\nneed is to restore some part, no matter how small, of what we have taken\naway. In the case of the epistemological chasm the first reasonable step\nis to remember that the chasm was filled with SOME empirical material,\nwhether ideational or sensational, which performed SOME bridging\nfunction and saved us from the mortal leap. Restoring thus the\nindispensable modicum of reality to the matter of our discussion, we\nfind our abstract treatment genuinely useful. We escape entanglement\nwith special cases without at the same time falling into gratuitous\nparadoxes. We can now describe the general features of cognition, tell\nwhat on the whole it DOES FOR US, in a universal way.\n\nWe must remember that this whole inquiry into knowing grows up on a\nreflective level. In any real moment of knowing, what we are thinking of\nis our object, not the way in which we ourselves are momentarily knowing\nit. We at this moment, as it happens, have knowing itself for our\nobject; but I think that the reader will agree that his present knowing\nof that object is included only abstractly, and by anticipation, in\nthe results he may reach. What he concretely has before his mind, as he\nreasons, is some supposed objective instance of knowing, as he conceives\nit to go on in some other person, or recalls it from his own past. As\nsuch, he, the critic, sees it to contain both an idea and an object, and\nprocesses by which the knower is guided from the one towards the other.\nHe sees that the idea is remote from the object, and that, whether\nthrough intermediaries or not, it genuinely HAS TO DO with it. He sees\nthat it thus works beyond its immediate being, and lays hold of a\nremote reality; it jumps across, transcends itself. It does all this by\nextraneous aid, to be sure, but when the aid has come, it HAS done it\nand the result is secure. Why not talk of results by themselves, then,\nwithout considering means? Why not treat the idea as simply grasping\nor intuiting the reality, of its having the faculty anyhow, of shooting\nover nature behind the scenes and knowing things immediately and\ndirectly? Why need we always lug in the bridging?--it only retards our\ndiscourse to do so.\n\nSuch abstract talk about cognition's results is surely convenient; and\nit is surely as legitimate as it is convenient, SO LONG AS WE DO NOT\nFORGET OR POSITIVELY DENY, WHAT IT IGNORES. We may on occasion say\nthat our idea meant ALWAYS that particular object, that it led us there\nbecause it was OF it intrinsically and essentially. We may insist that\nits verification follows upon that original cognitive virtue in it--and\nall the rest--and we shall do no harm so long as we know that these are\nonly short cuts in our thinking. They are positively true accounts of\nfact AS FAR AS THEY GO, only they leave vast tracts of fact out of the\naccount, tracts of tact that have to be reinstated to make the accounts\nliterally true of any real case. But if, not merely passively ignoring\nthe intermediaries, you actively deny them [Footnote: This is the\nfallacy which I have called 'vicious intellectualism' in my book A\nPluralistic Universe, Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.] to be even potential\nrequisites for the results you are so struck by, your epistemology goes\nto irremediable smash. You are as far off the track as an historian\nwould be, if, lost in admiration of Napoleon's personal power, he were\nto ignore his marshals and his armies, and were to accuse you of\nerror in describing his conquests as effected by their means. Of such\nabstractness and one-sidedness I accuse most of the critics of my own\naccount.\n\nIn the second lecture of the book Pragmatism, I used the illustration\nof a squirrel scrambling round a tree-trunk to keep out of sight of\na pursuing man: both go round the tree, but does the man go round the\nsquirrel? It all depends, I said, on what you mean by going round.' In\none sense of the word the man 'goes round,' in another sense he does\nnot. I settled the dispute by pragmatically distinguishing the senses.\nBut I told how some disputants had called my distinction a shuffling\nevasion and taken their stand on what they called 'plain honest English\ngoing-round.'\n\nIn such a simple case few people would object to letting the term in\ndispute be translated into its concreter equivalents. But in the case\nof a complex function like our knowing they act differently. I give full\nconcrete particular value for the ideas of knowing in every case I can\nthink of, yet my critics insist that 'plain honest English knowing' is\nleft out of my account. They write as if the minus were on my side and\nthe plus on theirs.\n\nThe essence of the matter for me is that altho knowing can be both\nabstractly and concretely described, and altho the abstract descriptions\nare often useful enough, yet they are all sucked up and absorbed without\nresiduum into the concreter ones, and contain nothing of any essentially\nother or higher nature, which the concrete descriptions can be justly\naccused of leaving behind. Knowing is just a natural process like any\nother. There is no ambulatory process whatsoever, the results of which\nwe may not describe, if we prefer to, in saltatory terms, or represent\nin static formulation. Suppose, e.g., that we say a man is 'prudent.'\nConcretely, that means that he takes out insurance, hedges in betting,\nlooks before he leaps. Do such acts CONSTITUTE the prudence? ARE they\nthe man qua prudent?\n\nOr is the prudence something by itself and independent of them? As a\nconstant habit in him, a permanent tone of character, it is convenient\nto call him prudent in abstraction from any one of his acts, prudent in\ngeneral and without specification, and to say the acts follow from the\npre-existing prudence. There are peculiarities in his psycho-physical\nsystem that make him act prudently; and there are tendencies to\nassociation in our thoughts that prompt some of them to make for truth\nand others for error. But would the man be prudent in the absence of\neach and all of the acts? Or would the thoughts be true if they had no\nassociative or impulsive tendencies? Surely we have no right to oppose\nstatic essences in this way to the moving processes in which they live\nembedded.\n\nMy bedroom is above my library. Does the 'aboveness' here mean\naught that is different from the concrete spaces which have to be\nmoved-through in getting from the one to the other? It means, you may\nsay, a pure topographic relation, a sort of architect's plan among the\neternal essences. But that is not the full aboveness, it is only an\nabbreviated substitute that on occasion may lead my mind towards truer,\ni.e., fuller, dealings with the real aboveness. It is not an aboveness\nante rem, it is a post rem extract from the aboveness in rebus. We\nmay indeed talk, for certain conveniences, as if the abstract scheme\npreceded, we may say 'I must go up stairs because of the essential\naboveness,' just as we may say that the man 'does prudent acts because\nof his ingrained prudence,' or that our ideas 'lead us truly because of\ntheir intrinsic truth.' But this should not debar us on other occasions\nfrom using completer forms of description. A concrete matter of fact\nalways remains identical under any form of description, as when we say\nof a line, now that it runs from left to right, and now that it runs\nfrom right to left. These are but names of one and the same fact, one\nmore expedient to use at one time, one at another. The full facts of\ncognition, whatever be the way in which we talk about them, even when\nwe talk most abstractly, stand inalterably given in the actualities and\npossibilities of the experience-continuum. [Footnote 1: The ultimate\nobject or terminus of a cognitive process may in certain instances lie\nbeyond the direct experience of the particular cognizer, but it, of\ncourse, must exist as part of the total universe of experience whose\nconstitution, with cognition in it, the critic is discussing.] But my\ncritics treat my own more concrete talk as if IT were the kind that\nsinned by its inadequacy, and as if the full continuum left something\nout.\n\nA favorite way of opposing the more abstract to the more concrete\naccount is to accuse those who favor the latter of 'confounding\npsychology with logic.' Our critics say that when we are asked what\ntruth MEANS, we reply by telling only how it is ARRIVED-AT. But since a\nmeaning is a logical relation, static, independent of time, how can it\npossibly be identified, they say, with any concrete man's experience,\nperishing as this does at the instant of its production? This, indeed,\nsounds profound, but I challenge the profundity. I defy any one to show\nany difference between logic and psychology here. The logical relation\nstands to the psychological relation between idea and object only as\nsaltatory abstractness stands to ambulatory concreteness. Both relations\nneed a psychological vehicle; and the 'logical' one is simply the\n'psychological' one disemboweled of its fulness, and reduced to a bare\nabstractional scheme.\n\nA while ago a prisoner, on being released, tried to assassinate the\njudge who had sentenced him. He had apparently succeeded in conceiving\nthe judge timelessly, had reduced him to a bare logical meaning, that\nof being his 'enemy and persecutor,' by stripping off all the concrete\nconditions (as jury's verdict, official obligation, absence of personal\nspite, possibly sympathy) that gave its full psychological character to\nthe sentence as a particular man's act in time. Truly the sentence WAS\ninimical to the culprit; but which idea of it is the truer one, that\nbare logical definition of it, or its full psychological specification?\nThe anti-pragmatists ought in consistency to stand up for the criminal's\nview of the case, treat the judge as the latter's logical enemy, and bar\nout the other conditions as so much inessential psychological stuff.\n\nII\n\nA still further obstacle, I suspect, stands in the way of my account's\nacceptance. Like Dewey and like Schiller, I have had to say that\nthe truth of an idea is determined by its satisfactoriness. But\nsatisfactoriness is a subjective term, just as idea is; and truth\nis generally regarded as 'objective.' Readers who admit that\nsatisfactoriness is our only MARK of truth, the only sign that we\npossess the precious article, will still say that the objective relation\nbetween idea and object which the word 'truth' points to is left out of\nmy account altogether. I fear also that the association of my poor name\nwith the 'will to believe' (which 'will,' it seems to me, ought to play\nno part in this discussion) works against my credit in some quarters.\nI fornicate with that unclean thing, my adversaries may think, whereas\nyour genuine truth-lover must discourse in huxleyan heroics, and feel as\nif truth, to be real truth, ought to bring eventual messages of death to\nall our satisfactions. Such divergences certainly prove the complexity\nof the area of our discussion; but to my mind they also are based on\nmisunderstandings, which (tho with but little hope of success) I will\ntry to diminish by a further word of explanation.\n\nFirst, then, I will ask my objectors to define exactly what SORT of\nthing it is they have in mind when they speak of a truth that shall be\nabsolute, complete and objective; and then I will defy them to show me\nany conceivable standing-room for such a kind of truth outside the terms\nof my own description. It will fall, as I contend, entirely within the\nfield of my analysis.\n\nTo begin with, it must obtain between an idea and a reality that is the\nidea's object; and, as a predicate, it must apply to the idea and not\nto the object, for objective realities are not TRUE, at least not in the\nuniverse of discourse to which we are now confining ourselves, for there\nthey are taken as simply BEING, while the ideas are true OF them. But we\ncan suppose a series of ideas to be successively more and more true\nof the same object, and can ask what is the extreme approach to being\nabsolutely true that the last idea might attain to.\n\nThe maximal conceivable truth in an idea would seem to be that it should\nlead to an actual merging of ourselves with the object, to an utter\nmutual confluence and identification. On the common-sense level\nof belief this is what is supposed really to take place in\nsense-perception. My idea of this pen verifies itself through\nmy percept; and my percept is held to BE the pen for the time\nbeing--percepts and physical realities being treated by common sense as\nidentical. But the physiology of the senses has criticised common sense\nout of court, and the pen 'in itself' is now believed to lie beyond my\nmomentary percept. Yet the notion once suggested, of what a completely\nconsummated acquaintance with a reality might be like, remains over for\nour speculative purposes. TOTAL CONFLUX OF THE MIND WITH THE REALITY\nwould be the absolute limit of truth, there could be no better or more\nsatisfying knowledge than that.\n\nSuch total conflux, it is needless to say, is ALREADY EXPLICITLY\nPROVIDED FOR, AS A POSSIBILITY, IN MY ACCOUNT OF THE MATTER. If an idea\nshould ever lead us not only TOWARDS, or UP TO, or AGAINST, a reality,\nbut so close that we and the reality should MELT TOGETHER, it would be\nmade absolutely true, according to me, by that performance.\n\nIn point of fact philosophers doubt that this ever occurs. What happens,\nthey think, is only that we get nearer and nearer to realities,\nwe approximate more and more to the all-satisfying limit; and the\ndefinition of actually, as distinguished from imaginably, complete and\nobjective truth, can then only be that it belongs to the idea that\nwill lead us as CLOSE UP AGAINST THE OBJECT as in the nature of our\nexperience is possible, literally NEXT to it, for instance.\n\nSuppose, now, there were an idea that did this for a certain objective\nreality. Suppose that no further approach were possible, that nothing\nlay between, that the next step would carry us right INTO the reality;\nthen that result, being the next thing to conflux, would make the idea\ntrue in the maximal degree that might be supposed practically attainable\nin the world which we inhabit.\n\nWell, I need hardly explain that THAT DEGREE OF TRUTH IS ALSO PROVIDED\nFOR IN MY ACCOUNT OF THE MATTER. And if satisfactions are the marks of\ntruth's presence, we may add that any less true substitute for such a\ntrue idea would prove less satisfactory. Following its lead, we should\nprobably find out that we did not quite touch the terminus. We should\ndesiderate a closer approach, and not rest till we had found it.\n\nI am, of course, postulating here a standing reality independent of the\nidea that knows it. I am also postulating that satisfactions grow pari\npassu with our approximation to such reality. [Footnote 1: Say, if\nyou prefer to, that DISsatisfactions decrease pari passu with\nsuch approximation. The approximation may be of any kind\nassignable--approximation in time or in space, or approximation in kind,\nwhich in common speech means 'copying.'] If my critics challenge this\nlatter assumption, I retort upon them with the former. Our whole notion\nof a standing reality grows up in the form of an ideal limit to the\nseries of successive termini to which our thoughts have led us and\nstill are leading us. Each terminus proves provisional by leaving us\nunsatisfied. The truer idea is the one that pushes farther; so we\nare ever beckoned on by the ideal notion of an ultimate completely\nsatisfactory terminus. I, for one, obey and accept that notion. I can\nconceive no other objective CONTENT to the notion of ideally perfect\ntruth than that of penetration into such a terminus, nor can I conceive\nthat the notion would ever have grown up, or that true ideas would ever\nhave been sorted out from false or idle ones, save for the greater\nsum of satisfactions, intellectual or practical, which the truer ones\nbrought with them. Can we imagine a man absolutely satisfied with an\nidea and with all its relations to his other ideas and to his sensible\nexperiences, who should yet not take its content as a true account of\nreality? The matter of the true is thus absolutely identical with the\nmatter of the satisfactory. You may put either word first in your ways\nof talking; but leave out that whole notion of SATISFACTORY WORKING or\nLEADING (which is the essence of my pragmatistic account) and call truth\na static logical relation, independent even of POSSIBLE leadings or\nsatisfactions, and it seems to me you cut all ground from under you.\n\nI fear that I am still very obscure. But I respectfully implore those\nwho reject my doctrine because they can make nothing of my stumbling\nlanguage, to tell us in their own name--und zwar very concretely and\narticulately!--just how the real, genuine and absolutely 'objective'\ntruth which they believe in so profoundly, is constituted and\nestablished. They mustn't point to the 'reality' itself, for truth is\nonly our subjective relation to realities. What is the nominal\nessence of this relation, its logical definition, whether or not it be\n'objectively' attainable by mortals?\n\nWhatever they may say it is, I have the firmest faith that my account\nwill prove to have allowed for it and included it by anticipation, as\none possible case in the total mixture of cases. There is, in short,\nno ROOM for any grade or sort of truth outside of the framework of\nthe pragmatic system, outside of that jungle of empirical workings and\nleadings, and their nearer or ulterior terminations, of which I seem to\nhave written so unskilfully.\n\n\n\nVII\n\nPROFESSOR PRATT ON TRUTH\n\nI\n\n[Footnote: Reprinted from the Journal of Philosophy, etc., August 15,\n1907 (vol. iv, p. 464).]\n\nProfessor J. B. Pratt's paper in the Journal of Philosophy for June 6,\n1907, is so brilliantly written that its misconception of the pragmatist\nposition seems doubly to call for a reply.\n\nHe asserts that, for a pragmatist, truth cannot be a relation between\nan idea and a reality outside and transcendent of the idea, but must\nlie 'altogether within experience,' where it will need 'no reference to\nanything else to justify it'--no reference to the object, apparently.\nThe pragmatist must 'reduce everything to psychology,' aye, and to the\npsychology of the immediate moment. He is consequently debarred from\nsaying that an idea that eventually gets psychologically verified WAS\nalready true before the process of verifying was complete; and he is\nequally debarred from treating an idea as true provisionally so long as\nhe only believes that he CAN verify it whenever he will.\n\nWhether such a pragmatist as this exists, I know not, never having\nmyself met with the beast. We can define terms as we like; and if that\nbe my friend Pratt's definition of a pragmatist, I can only concur with\nhis anti-pragmatism. But, in setting up the weird type, he quotes words\nfrom me; so, in order to escape being classed by some reader along with\nso asinine a being, I will reassert my own view of truth once more.\n\nTruth is essentially a relation between two things, an idea, on the one\nhand, and a reality outside of the idea, on the other. This relation,\nlike all relations, has its fundamentum, namely, the matrix of\nexperiential circumstance, psychological as well as physical, in which\nthe correlated terms are found embedded. In the case of the relation\nbetween 'heir' and 'legacy' the fundamentum is a world in which there\nwas a testator, and in which there is now a will and an executor; in the\ncase of that between idea and object, it is a world with circumstances\nof a sort to make a satisfactory verification process, lying around\nand between the two terms. But just as a man may be called an heir and\ntreated as one before the executor has divided the estate, so an idea\nmay practically be credited with truth before the verification process\nhas been exhaustively carried out--the existence of the mass of\nverifying circumstance is enough. Where potentiality counts for\nactuality in so many other cases, one does not see why it may not so\ncount here. We call a man benevolent not only for his kind acts paid in,\nbut for his readiness to perform others; we treat an idea as 'luminous'\nnot only for the light it has shed, but for that we expect it will\nshed on dark problems. Why should we not equally trust the truth of our\nideas? We live on credits everywhere; and we use our ideas far oftener\nfor calling up things connected with their immediate objects, than for\ncalling up those objects themselves. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred\nthe only use we should make of the object itself, if we were led up to\nit by our idea, would be to pass on to those connected things by its\nmeans. So we continually curtail verification-processes, letting our\nbelief that they are possible suffice.\n\nWhat CONSTITUTES THE RELATION known as truth, I now say, is just the\nEXISTENCE IN THE EMPIRICAL WORLD OF THIS FUNDAMENTUM OF CIRCUMSTANCE\nSURROUNDING OBJECT AND IDEA and ready to be either short-circuited\nor traversed at full length. So long as it exists, and a satisfactory\npassage through it between the object and the idea is possible, that\nidea will both BE true, and will HAVE BEEN true of that object, whether\nfully developed verification has taken place or not. The nature and\nplace and affinities of the object of course play as vital a part in\nmaking the particular passage possible as do the nature and associative\ntendencies of the idea; so that the notion that truth could fall\naltogether inside of the thinker's private experience and be something\npurely psychological, is absurd. It is BETWEEN the idea and the object\nthat the truth-relation is to be sought and it involves both terms.\n\nBut the 'intellectualistic' position, if I understand Mr. Pratt rightly,\nis that, altho we can use this fundamentum, this mass of go-between\nexperience, for TESTING truth, yet the truth-relation in itself remains\nas something apart. It means, in Mr. Pratt's words, merely 'THIS SIMPLE\nTHING THAT THE OBJECT OF WHICH ONE IS THINKING IS AS ONE THINKS IT.'\n\nIt seems to me that the word 'as,' which qualifies the relation here,\nand bears the whole 'epistemological' burden, is anything but simple.\nWhat it most immediately suggests is that the idea should be LIKE the\nobject; but most of our ideas, being abstract concepts, bear almost no\nresemblance to their objects. The 'as' must therefore, I should say, be\nusually interpreted functionally, as meaning that the idea shall lead\nus into the same quarters of experience AS the object would. Experience\nleads ever on and on, and objects and our ideas of objects may both\nlead to the same goals. The ideas being in that case shorter cuts, we\nSUBSTITUTE them more and more for their objects; and we habitually waive\ndirect verification of each one of them, as their train passes through\nour mind, because if an idea leads AS the object would lead, we can say,\nin Mr. Pratt's words, that in so far forth the object is AS we think it,\nand that the idea, verified thus in so far forth, is true enough.\n\nMr. Pratt will undoubtedly accept most of these facts, but he will deny\nthat they spell pragmatism. Of course, definitions are free to every\none; but I have myself never meant by the pragmatic view of truth\nanything different from what I now describe; and inasmuch as my use of\nthe term came earlier than my friend's, I think it ought to have the\nright of way. But I suspect that Professor Pratt's contention is not\nsolely as to what one must think in order to be called a pragmatist. I\nam cure that he believes that the truth-relation has something MORE in\nit than the fundamentum which I assign can account for. Useful to\ntest truth by, the matrix of circumstance, he thinks, cannot found the\ntruth-relation in se, for that is trans-empirical and 'saltatory.'\n\nWell, take an object and an idea, and assume that the latter is true of\nthe former--as eternally and absolutely true as you like. Let the object\nbe as much 'as' the idea thinks it, as it is possible for one thing to\nbe 'as' another. I now formally ask of Professor Pratt to tell what this\n'as'-ness in itself CONSISTS in--for it seems to me that it ought to\nconsist in something assignable and describable, and not remain a pure\nmystery, and I promise that if he can assign any determination of it\nwhatever which I cannot successfully refer to some specification of what\nin this article I have called the empirical fundamentum, I will confess\nmy stupidity cheerfully, and will agree never to publish a line upon\nthis subject of truth again.\n\n\nII\n\nProfessor Pratt has returned to the charge in a whole book, [Footnote\n1: J. B. Pratt: What is Pragmatism. New York, The Macmillan Company,\n1909.--The comments I have printed were written in March, 1909, after\nsome of the articles printed later in the present volume.] which for\nits clearness and good temper deserves to supersede all the rest of\nthe anti-pragmatistic literature. I wish it might do so; for its author\nadmits all MY essential contentions, simply distinguishing my account\nof truth as 'modified' pragmatism from Schiller's and Dewey's, which he\ncalls pragmatism of the 'radical' sort. As I myself understand Dewey and\nSchiller, our views absolutely agree, in spite of our different modes of\nstatement; but I have enough trouble of my own in life without having to\ndefend my friends, so I abandon them provisionally to the tender mercy\nof Professor Pratt's interpretations, utterly erroneous tho I deem these\nto be. My reply as regards myself can be very short, for I prefer to\nconsider only essentials, and Dr. Pratt's whole book hardly takes the\nmatter farther than the article to which I retort in Part I of the\npresent paper.\n\nHe repeats the 'as'-formula, as if it were something that I, along with\nother pragmatists, had denied, [Footnote: Op. cit., pp. 77-80.] whereas\nI have only asked those who insist so on its importance to do something\nmore than merely utter it--to explicate it, for example, and tell us\nwhat its so great importance consists in. I myself agree most cordially\nthat for an idea to be true the object must be 'as' the idea declares\nit, but I explicate the 'as'-ness as meaning the idea's verifiability.\n\nNow since Dr. Pratt denies none of these verifying 'workings' for which\nI have pleaded, but only insists on their inability to serve as the\nfundamentum of the truth-relation, it seems that there is really nothing\nin the line of FACT about which we differ, and that the issue between us\nis solely as to how far the notion of workableness or verifiability\nis an essential part of the notion of 'trueness'--'trueness' being Dr.\nPratt's present name for the character of as-ness in the true idea.\nI maintain that there is no meaning left in this notion of as-ness or\ntrueness if no reference to the possibility of concrete working on the\npart of the idea is made.\n\nTake an example where there can be no possible working. Suppose I have\nan idea to which I give utterance by the vocable 'skrkl,' claiming at\nthe same time that it is true. Who now can say that it is FALSE, for why\nmay there not be somewhere in the unplumbed depths of the cosmos some\nobject with which 'skrkl' can agree and have trueness in Dr. Pratt's\nsense? On the other hand who can say that it is TRUE, for who can lay\nhis hand on that object and show that it and nothing else is what I MEAN\nby my word? But yet again, who can gainsay any one who shall call my\nword utterly IRRELATIVE to other reality, and treat it as a bare fact in\nmy mind, devoid of any cognitive function whatever. One of these\nthree alternatives must surely be predicated of it. For it not to be\nirrelevant (or not-cognitive in nature), an object of some kind must be\nprovided which it may refer to. Supposing that object provided, whether\n'skrkl' is true or false of it, depends, according to Professor Pratt,\non no intermediating condition whatever. The trueness or the falsity is\neven now immediately, absolutely, and positively there.\n\nI, on the other hand, demand a cosmic environment of some kind to\nestablish which of them is there rather than utter irrelevancy.\n[Footnote: Dr. Pratt, singularly enough, disposes of this primal\npostulate of all pragmatic epistemology, by saying that the pragmatist\n'unconsciously surrenders his whole case by smuggling in the idea of a\nconditioning environment which determines whether or not the experience\ncan work, and which cannot itself be identified with the experience or\nany part of it' (pp. 167-168). The 'experience' means here of course the\nidea, or belief; and the expression 'smuggling in' is to the last degree\ndiverting. If any epistemologist could dispense with a conditioning\nenvironment, it would seem to be the antipragmatist, with his immediate\nsaltatory trueness, independent of work done. The mediating pathway\nwhich the environment supplies is the very essence of the pragmatist's\nexplanation.] I then say, first, that unless some sort of a natural path\nexists between the 'skrkl' and THAT object, distinguishable among the\ninnumerable pathways that run among all the realities of the universe,\nlinking them promiscuously with one another, there is nothing there to\nconstitute even the POSSIBILITY OF ITS REFERRING to that object rather\nthan to any other.\n\nI say furthermore that unless it have some TENDENCY TO FOLLOW UP THAT\nPATH, there is nothing to constitute its INTENTION to refer to the\nobject in question.\n\nFinally, I say that unless the path be strown with possibilities\nof frustration or encouragement, and offer some sort of terminal\nsatisfaction or contradiction, there is nothing to constitute its\nagreement or disagreement with that object, or to constitute the as-ness\n(or 'not-as-ness') in which the trueness (or falseness) is said to\nconsist.\n\nI think that Dr. Pratt ought to do something more than repeat the name\n'trueness,' in answer to my pathetic question whether that there be not\nsome CONSTITUTION to a relation as important as this. The pathway, the\ntendency, the corroborating or contradicting progress, need not in every\ncase be experienced in full, but I don't see, if the universe doesn't\ncontain them among its possibilities of furniture, what LOGICAL MATERIAL\nFOR DEFINING the trueness of my idea is left. But if it do contain them,\nthey and they only are the logical material required.\n\nI am perplexed by the superior importance which Dr. Pratt attributes\nto abstract trueness over concrete verifiability in an idea, and I wish\nthat he might be moved to explain. It is prior to verification, to be\nsure, but so is the verifiability for which I contend prior, just as a\nman's 'mortality' (which is nothing but the possibility of his death) is\nprior to his death, but it can hardly be that this abstract priority of\nall possibility to its correlative fact is what so obstinate a quarrel\nis about. I think it probable that Dr. Pratt is vaguely thinking\nof something concreter than this. The trueness of an idea must mean\nSOMETHING DEFINITE IN IT THAT DETERMINES ITS TENDENCY TO WORK, and\nindeed towards this object rather than towards that. Undoubtedly there\nis something of this sort in the idea, just as there is something in man\nthat accounts for his tendency towards death, and in bread that accounts\nfor its tendency to nourish. What that something is in the case of truth\npsychology tells us: the idea has associates peculiar to itself, motor\nas well as ideational; it tends by its place and nature to call these\ninto being, one after another; and the appearance of them in succession\nis what we mean by the 'workings' of the idea. According to what they\nare, does the trueness or falseness which the idea harbored come to\nlight. These tendencies have still earlier conditions which, in a\ngeneral way, biology, psychology and biography can trace. This whole\nchain of natural causal conditions produces a resultant state of things\nin which new relations, not simply causal, can now be found, or into\nwhich they can now be introduced,--the relations namely which we\nepistemologists study, relations of adaptation, of substitutability, of\ninstrumentality, of reference and of truth.\n\nThe prior causal conditions, altho there could be no knowing of any\nkind, true or false, without them, are but preliminary to the question\nof what makes the ideas true or false when once their tendencies have\nbeen obeyed. The tendencies must exist in some shape anyhow, but their\nfruits are truth, falsity, or irrelevancy, according to what they\nconcretely turn out to be. They are not 'saltatory' at any rate, for\nthey evoke their consequences contiguously, from next to next only; and\nnot until the final result of the whole associative sequence, actual\nor potential, is in our mental sight, can we feel sure what its\nepistemological significance, if it have any, may be. True knowing is,\nin fine, not substantially, in itself, or 'as such,' inside of the idea\nfrom the first, any more than mortality AS SUCH is inside of the man, or\nnourishment AS SUCH inside of the bread. Something else is there first,\nthat practically MAKES FOR knowing, dying or nourishing, as the case may\nbe. That something is the 'nature' namely of the first term, be it idea,\nman, or bread, that operates to start the causal chain of processes\nwhich, when completed, is the complex fact to which we give whatever\nfunctional name best fits the case. Another nature, another chain of\ncognitive workings; and then either another object known or the same\nobject known differently, will ensue.\n\nDr. Pratt perplexes me again by seeming to charge Dewey and Schiller\n[Footnote: Page 200] (I am not sure that he charges me) with an account\nof truth which would allow the object believed in not to exist, even\nif the belief in it were true. 'Since the truth of an idea,' he writes,\n'means merely the fact that the idea works, that fact is all that you\nmean when you say the idea is true' (p. 206). 'WHEN YOU SAY THE IDEA IS\nTRUE'--does that mean true for YOU, the critic, or true for the believer\nwhom you are describing? The critic's trouble over this seems to come\nfrom his taking the word 'true' irrelatively, whereas the pragmatist\nalways means 'true for him who experiences the workings.' 'But is the\nobject REALLY true or not?'--the critic then seems to ask,--as if\nthe pragmatist were bound to throw in a whole ontology on top of his\nepistemology and tell us what realities indubitably exist. 'One world at\na time,' would seem to be the right reply here.\n\nOne other trouble of Dr. Pratt's must be noticed. It concerns the\n'transcendence' of the object. When our ideas have worked so as to bring\nus flat up against the object, NEXT to it, 'is our relation to it then\nambulatory or saltatory?' Dr. Pratt asks. If YOUR headache be my object,\n'MY experiences break off where yours begin,' Dr. Pratt writes,\nand 'this fact is of great importance, for it bars out the sense of\ntransition and fulfilment which forms so important an element in the\npragmatist description of knowledge--the sense of fulfilment due to a\ncontinuous passage from the original idea to the known object. If this\ncomes at all when I know your headache, it comes not with the object,\nbut quite on my side of the \"epistemological gulf.\" The gulf is still\nthere to be transcended.' (p. 158).\n\nSome day of course, or even now somewhere in the larger life of\nthe universe, different men's headaches may become confluent or be\n'co-conscious.' Here and now, however, headaches do transcend each other\nand, when not felt, can be known only conceptually. My idea is that\nyou really have a headache; it works well with what I see of your\nexpression, and with what I hear you say; but it doesn't put me in\npossession of the headache itself. I am still at one remove, and the\nheadache 'transcends' me, even tho it be in nowise transcendent of human\nexperience generally. Bit the 'gulf' here is that which the pragmatist\nepistemology itself fixes in the very first words it uses, by\nsaying there must be an object and an idea. The idea however doesn't\nimmediately leap the gulf, it only works from next to next so as to\nbridge it, fully or approximately. If it bridges it, in the pragmatist's\nvision of his hypothetical universe, it can be called a 'true' idea.\nIf it only MIGHT bridge it, but doesn't, or if it throws a bridge\ndistinctly AT it, it still has, in the onlooking pragmatist's eyes, what\nProfessor Pratt calls 'trueness.' But to ask the pragmatist thereupon\nwhether, when it thus fails to coalesce bodily with the object, it is\nREALLY true or has REAL trueness,--in other words whether the headache\nhe supposes, and supposes the thinker he supposes, to believe in, be\na real headache or not,--is to step from his hypothetical universe of\ndiscourse into the altogether different world of natural fact.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE PRAGMATIST ACCOUNT OF TRUTH AND ITS MISUNDERSTANDERS [Footnote:\nReprint from the Philosophical Review, January, 1908 (vol. xvii, p. 1).]\n\nThe account of truth given in my volume entitled Pragmatism,\ncontinues to meet with such persistent misunderstanding that I\nam tempted to make a final brief reply. My ideas may well deserve\nrefutation, but they can get none till they are conceived of in their\nproper shape. The fantastic character of the current misconceptions\nshows how unfamiliar is the concrete point of view which pragmatism\nassumes. Persons who are familiar with a conception move about so\neasily in it that they understand each other at a hint, and can converse\nwithout anxiously attending to their P's and Q's. I have to admit, in\nview of the results, that we have assumed too ready an intelligence,\nand consequently in many places used a language too slipshod. We should\nnever have spoken elliptically. The critics have boggled at every word\nthey could boggle at, and refused to take the spirit rather than the\nletter of our discourse. This seems to show a genuine unfamiliarity in\nthe whole point of view. It also shows, I think, that the second stage\nof opposition, which has already begun to express itself in the stock\nphrase that 'what is new is not true, and what is true not new,' in\npragmatism, is insincere. If we said nothing in any degree new, why\nwas our meaning so desperately hard to catch? The blame cannot be laid\nwholly upon our obscurity of speech, for in other subjects we have\nattained to making ourselves understood. But recriminations are\ntasteless; and, as far as I personally am concerned, I am sure that some\nof the misconception I complain of is due to my doctrine of truth being\nsurrounded in that volume of popular lectures by a lot of other opinions\nnot necessarily implicated with it, so that a reader may very naturally\nhave grown confused. For this I am to blame,--likewise for omitting\ncertain explicit cautions, which the pages that follow will now in part\nsupply.\n\nFIRST MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM IS ONLY A RE-EDITING OF POSITIVISM.\n\nThis seems the commonest mistake. Scepticism, positivism, and\nagnosticism agree with ordinary dogmatic rationalism in presupposing\nthat everybody knows what the word 'truth' means, without further\nexplanation. But the former doctrines then either suggest or declare\nthat real truth, absolute truth, is inaccessible to us, and that we\nmust fain put up with relative or phenomenal truth as its next best\nsubstitute. By scepticism this is treated as an unsatisfactory state of\naffairs, while positivism and agnosticism are cheerful about it, call\nreal truth sour grapes, and consider phenomenal truth quite sufficient\nfor all our 'practical' purposes.\n\nIn point of fact, nothing could be farther from all this than what\npragmatism has to say of truth. Its thesis is an altogether previous\none. It leaves off where these other theories begin, having contented\nitself with the word truth's DEFINITION. 'No matter whether any mind\nextant in the universe possess truth or not,' it asks, 'what does\nthe notion of truth signify IDEALLY?' 'What kind of things would true\njudgments be IN CASE they existed?' The answer which pragmatism offers\nis intended to cover the most complete truth that can be conceived of,\n'absolute' truth if you like, as well as truth of the most relative and\nimperfect description. This question of what truth would be like if it\ndid exist, belongs obviously to a purely speculative field of inquiry.\nIt is not a theory about any sort of reality, or about what kind of\nknowledge is actually possible; it abstracts from particular terms\naltogether, and defines the nature of a possible relation between two of\nthem.\n\nAs Kant's question about synthetic judgments had escaped previous\nphilosophers, so the pragmatist question is not only so subtile as to\nhave escaped attention hitherto, but even so subtile, it would seem,\nthat when openly broached now, dogmatists and sceptics alike fail to\napprehend it, and deem the pragmatist to be treating of something wholly\ndifferent. He insists, they say (I quote an actual critic), 'that the\ngreater problems are insoluble by human intelligence, that our need of\nknowing truly is artificial and illusory, and that our reason, incapable\nof reaching the foundations of reality, must turn itself exclusively\ntowards ACTION.' There could not be a worse misapprehension.\n\nSECOND MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM IS PRIMARILY AN APPEAL TO ACTION.\n\nThe name 'pragmatism,' with its suggestions of action, has been an\nunfortunate choice, I have to admit, and has played into the hands of\nthis mistake. But no word could protect the doctrine from critics so\nblind to the nature of the inquiry that, when Dr. Schiller speaks of\nideas 'working' well, the only thing they think of is their immediate\nworkings in the physical environment, their enabling us to make money,\nor gain some similar 'practical' advantage. Ideas do work thus, of\ncourse, immediately or remotely; but they work indefinitely inside of\nthe mental world also. Not crediting us with this rudimentary insight,\nour critics treat our view as offering itself exclusively to engineers,\ndoctors, financiers, and men of action generally, who need some sort\nof a rough and ready weltanschauung, but have no time or wit to study\ngenuine philosophy. It is usually described as a characteristically\nAmerican movement, a sort of bobtailed scheme of thought, excellently\nfitted for the man on the street, who naturally hates theory and wants\ncash returns immediately.\n\nIt is quite true that, when the refined theoretic question that\npragmatism begins with is once answered, secondary corollaries of a\npractical sort follow. Investigation shows that, in the function called\ntruth, previous realities are not the only independent variables. To\na certain extent our ideas, being realities, are also independent\nvariables, and, just as they follow other reality and fit it, so, in\na measure, does other reality follow and fit them. When they add\nthemselves to being, they partly redetermine the existent, so that\nreality as a whole appears incompletely definable unless ideas also\nare kept account of. This pragmatist doctrine, exhibiting our ideas\nas complemental factors of reality, throws open (since our ideas are\ninstigators of our action) a wide window upon human action, as well as a\nwide license to originality in thought. But few things could be sillier\nthan to ignore the prior epistemological edifice in which the window is\nbuilt, or to talk as if pragmatism began and ended at the window. This,\nnevertheless, is what our critics do almost without exception. They\nignore our primary step and its motive, and make the relation to action,\nwhich is our secondary achievement, primary.\n\nTHIRD MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISTS CUT THEMSELVES OFF FROM THE RIGHT TO\nBELIEVE IN EJECTIVE REALITIES.\n\nThey do so, according to the critics, by making the truth of our beliefs\nconsist in their verifiability, and their verifiability in the way in\nwhich they do work for us. Professor Stout, in his otherwise admirable\nand hopeful review of Schiller in Mind for October, 1897, considers that\nthis ought to lead Schiller (could he sincerely realize the effects of\nhis own doctrine) to the absurd consequence of being unable to believe\ngenuinely in another man's headache, even were the headache there.\nHe can only 'postulate' it for the sake of the working value of the\npostulate to himself. The postulate guides certain of his acts and leads\nto advantageous consequences; but the moment he understands fully that\nthe postulate is true ONLY (!) in this sense, it ceases (or should\ncease) to be true for him that the other man really HAS a headache. All\nthat makes the postulate most precious then evaporates: his interest in\nhis fellow-man 'becomes a veiled form of self-interest, and his world\ngrows cold, dull, and heartless.'\n\nSuch an objection makes a curious muddle of the pragmatist's universe\nof discourse. Within that universe the pragmatist finds some one with\na headache or other feeling, and some one else who postulates that\nfeeling. Asking on what condition the postulate is 'true' the pragmatist\nreplies that, for the postulator at any rate, it is true just\nin proportion as to believe in it works in him the fuller sum of\nsatisfactions. What is it that is satisfactory here? Surely to BELIEVE\nin the postulated object, namely, in the really existing feeling of\nthe other man. But how (especially if the postulator were himself a\nthoroughgoing pragmatist) could it ever be satisfactory to him NOT\nto believe in that feeling, so long as, in Professor Stout's words,\ndisbelief 'made the world seem to him cold, dull, and heartless'?\nDisbelief would seem, on pragmatist principles, quite out of the\nquestion under such conditions, unless the heartlessness of the world\nwere made probable already on other grounds. And since the belief in the\nheadache, true for the subject assumed in the pragmatist's universe of\ndiscourse, is also true for the pragmatist who for his epitemologizing\npurposes has assumed that entire universe, why is it not true in that\nuniverse absolutely? The headache believed in is a reality there, and no\nextant mind disbelieves it, neither the critic's mind nor his subject's!\nHave our opponents any better brand of truth in this real universe of\nours that they can show us? [Footnote: I see here a chance to forestall\na criticism which some one may make on Lecture III of my Pragmatism,\nwhere, on pp. 96-100, I said that 'God' and 'Matter' might be regarded\nas synonymous terms, so long as no differing future consequences were\ndeducible from the two conceptions. The passage was transcribed from my\naddress at the California Philosophical Union, reprinted in the Journal\nof Philosophy, vol. i, p. 673. I had no sooner given the address than\nI perceived a flaw in that part of it; but I have left the passage\nunaltered ever since, because the flaw did not spoil its illustrative\nvalue. The flaw was evident when, as a case analogous to that of a\ngodless universe, I thought of what I called an 'automatic sweetheart,'\nmeaning a soulless body which should be absolutely indistinguishable\nfrom a spiritually animated maiden, laughing, talking, blushing, nursing\nus, and performing all feminine offices as tactfully and sweetly as if\na soul were in her. Would any one regard her as a full equivalent?\nCertainly not, and why? Because, framed as we are, our egoism craves\nabove all things inward sympathy and recognition, love and admiration.\nThe outward treatment is valued mainly as an expression, as a\nmanifestation of the accompanying consciousness believed in.\nPragmatically, then, belief in the automatic sweetheart would not work,\nand is point of fact no one treats it as a serious hypothesis. The\ngodless universe would be exactly similar. Even if matter could do\nevery outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as\nsatisfactorily, because the chief call for a God on modern men's part\nis for a being who will inwardly recognize them and judge them\nsympathetically. Matter disappoints this craving of our ego, so God\nremains for most men the truer hypothesis, and indeed remains so for\ndefinite pragmatic reasons.]\n\nSo much for the third misunderstanding, which is but one specification\nof the following still wider one.\n\nFOURTH MISUNDERSTANDING: NO PRAGMATIST CAN BE A REALIST IN HIS\nEPISTEMOLOGY.\n\nThis is supposed to follow from his statement that the truth of our\nbeliefs consists in general in their giving satisfaction. Of course\nsatisfaction per se is a subjective condition; so the conclusion is\ndrawn that truth falls wholly inside of the subject, who then may\nmanufacture it at his pleasure. True beliefs become thus wayward\naffections, severed from all responsibility to other parts of\nexperience.\n\nIt is difficult to excuse such a parody of the pragmatist's opinion,\nignoring as it does every element but one of his universe of discourse.\nThe terms of which that universe consists positively forbid any\nnon-realistic interpretation of the function of knowledge defined there.\nThe pragmatizing epistemologist posits there a reality and a mind with\nideas. What, now, he asks, can make those ideas true of that reality?\nOrdinary epistemology contents itself with the vague statement that the\nideas must 'correspond' or 'agree'; the pragmatist insists on being more\nconcrete, and asks what such 'agreement' may mean in detail. He finds\nfirst that the ideas must point to or lead towards THAT reality and no\nother, and then that the pointings and leadings must yield satisfaction\nas their result. So far the pragmatist is hardly less abstract than the\nordinary slouchy epistemologist; but as he defines himself farther, he\ngrows more concrete. The entire quarrel of the intellectualist with him\nis over his concreteness, intellectualism contending that the vaguer and\nmore abstract account is here the more profound. The concrete pointing\nand leading are conceived by the pragmatist to be the work of other\nportions of the same universe to which the reality and the mind belong,\nintermediary verifying bits of experience with which the mind at one\nend, and the reality at the other, are joined. The 'satisfaction,' in\nturn, is no abstract satisfaction ueberhaupt, felt by an unspecified\nbeing, but is assumed to consist of such satisfactions (in the plural)\nas concretely existing men actually do find in their beliefs. As we\nhumans are constituted in point of fact, we find that to believe in\nother men's minds, in independent physical realities, in past events, in\neternal logical relations, is satisfactory. We find hope satisfactory.\nWe often find it satisfactory to cease to doubt. Above all we find\nCONSISTENCY satisfactory, consistency between the present idea and the\nentire rest of our mental equipment, including the whole order of our\nsensations, and that of our intuitions of likeness and difference, and\nour whole stock of previously acquired truths.\n\nThe pragmatist, being himself a man, and imagining in general no\ncontrary lines of truer belief than ours about the 'reality' which he\nhas laid at the base of his epistemological discussion, is willing to\ntreat our satisfactions as possibly really true guides to it, not as\nguides true solely for US. It would seem here to be the duty of his\ncritics to show with some explicitness why, being our subjective\nfeelings, these satisfactions can not yield 'objective' truth. The\nbeliefs which they accompany 'posit' the assumed reality, 'correspond'\nand 'agree' with it, and 'fit' it in perfectly definite and assignable\nways, through the sequent trains of thought and action which form\ntheir verification, so merely to insist on using these words abstractly\ninstead of concretely is no way of driving the pragmatist from the\nfield,--his more concrete account virtually includes his critic's. If\nour critics have any definite idea of a truth more objectively grounded\nthan the kind we propose, why do they not show it more articulately?\nAs they stand, they remind one of Hegel's man who wanted 'fruit,' but\nrejected cherries, pears, and grapes, because they were not fruit in the\nabstract. We offer them the full quart-pot, and they cry for the empty\nquart-capacity.\n\nBut here I think I hear some critic retort as follows: 'If satisfactions\nare all that is needed to make truth, how about the notorious fact that\nerrors are so often satisfactory? And how about the equally notorious\nfact that certain true beliefs may cause the bitterest dissatisfaction?\nIsn't it clear that not the satisfaction which it gives, but the\nrelation of the belief TO THE REALITY is all that makes it true? Suppose\nthere were no such reality, and that the satisfactions yet remained:\nwould they not then effectively work falsehood? Can they consequently be\ntreated distinctively as the truth-builders? It is the INHERENT RELATION\nTO REALITY of a belief that gives us that specific TRUTH-satisfaction,\ncompared with which all other satisfactions are the hollowest humbug.\nThe satisfaction of KNOWING TRULY is thus the only one which the\npragmatist ought to have considered. As a PSYCHOLOGICAL SENTIMENT,\nthe anti-pragmatist gladly concedes it to him, but then only as a\nconcomitant of truth, not as a constituent. What CONSTITUTES truth\nis not the sentiment, but the purely logical or objective function of\nrightly cognizing the reality, and the pragmatist's failure to reduce\nthis function to lower values is patent.'\n\nSuch anti-pragmatism as this seems to me a tissue of confusion. To begin\nwith, when the pragmatist says 'indispensable,' it confounds this with\n'sufficient.' The pragmatist calls satisfactions indispensable for\ntruth-building, but I have everywhere called them insufficient unless\nreality be also incidentally led to. If the reality assumed were\ncancelled from the pragmatist's universe of discourse, he would\nstraightway give the name of falsehoods to the beliefs remaining, in\nspite of all their satisfactoriness. For him, as for his critic, there\ncan be no truth if there is nothing to be true about. Ideas are so\nmuch flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives\nthem cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatist I have so carefully\nposited 'reality' AB INITIO, and why, throughout my whole discussion, I\nremain an epistemological realist. [Footnote: I need hardly remind\nthe reader that both sense-percepts and percepts of ideal relation\n(comparisons, etc.) should be classed among the realities. The bulk of\nour mental 'stock' consists of truths concerning these terms.]\n\nThe anti-pragmatist is guilty of the further confusion of imagining\nthat, in undertaking to give him an account of what truth formally\nmeans, we are assuming at the same time to provide a warrant for\nit, trying to define the occasions when he can be sure of materially\npossessing it. Our making it hinge on a reality so 'independent' that\nwhen it comes, truth comes, and when it goes, truth goes with it,\ndisappoints this naive expectation, so he deems our description\nunsatisfactory. I suspect that under this confusion lies the still\ndeeper one of not discriminating sufficiently between the two notions,\ntruth and reality. Realities are not TRUE, they ARE; and beliefs are\ntrue OF them. But I suspect that in the anti-pragmatist mind the two\nnotions sometimes swap their attributes. The reality itself, I fear, is\ntreated as if 'true' and conversely. Whoso tells us of the one, it is\nthen supposed, must also be telling us of the other; and a true idea\nmust in a manner BE, or at least YIELD without extraneous aid, the\nreality it cognitively is possessed of.\n\nTo this absolute-idealistic demand pragmatism simply opposes its non\npossumus. If there is to be truth, it says, both realities and beliefs\nabout them must conspire to make it; but whether there ever is such a\nthing, or how anyone can be sure that his own beliefs possess it, it\nnever pretends to determine. That truth-satisfaction par excellence\nwhich may tinge a belief unsatisfactory in other ways, it easily\nexplains as the feeling of consistency with the stock of previous\ntruths, or supposed truths, of which one's whole past experience may\nhave left one in possession.\n\nBut are not all pragmatists sure that their own belief is right? their\nenemies will ask at this point; and this leads me to the\n\nFIFTH MISUNDERSTANDING: WHAT PRAGMATISTS SAY IS INCONSISTENT WITH THEIR\nSAYING SO.\n\nA correspondent puts this objection as follows: 'When you say to your\naudience, \"pragmatism is the truth concerning truth,\" the first truth is\ndifferent from the second. About the first you and they are not to be at\nodds; you are not giving them liberty to take or leave it according as\nit works satisfactorily or not for their private uses. Yet the second\ntruth, which ought to describe and include the first, affirms this\nliberty. Thus the INTENT of your utterance seems to contradict the\nCONTENT of it.'\n\nGeneral scepticism has always received this same classic refutation.\n'You have to dogmatize,' the rationalists say to the sceptics,' whenever\nyou express the sceptical position; so your lives keep contradicting\nyour thesis.' One would suppose that the impotence of so hoary an\nargument to abate in the slightest degree the amount of general\nscepticism in the world might have led some rationalists themselves to\ndoubt whether these instantaneous logical refutations are such\nfatal ways, after all, of killing off live mental attitudes. General\nscepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is\na permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each\nsuccessive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic\nthan you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking. This is why it is\nso irritating. Your consistent sceptic never puts his scepticism into\na formal proposition,--he simply chooses it as a habit. He provokingly\nhangs back when he might so easily join us in saying yes, but he is\nnot illogical or stupid,--on the contrary, he often impresses us by his\nintellectual superiority. This is the REAL scepticism that rationalists\nhave to meet, and their logic does not even touch it.\n\nNo more can logic kill the pragmatist's behavior: his act of utterance,\nso far from contradicting, accurately exemplifies the matter which he\nutters. What is the matter which he utters? In part, it is this, that\ntruth, concretely considered, is an attribute of our beliefs, and that\nthese are attitudes that follow satisfactions. The ideas around which\nthe satisfactions cluster are primarily only hypotheses that\nchallenge or summon a belief to come and take its stand upon them.\nThe pragmatist's idea of truth is just such a challenge. He finds it\nultra-satisfactory to accept it, and takes his own stand accordingly.\nBut, being gregarious as they are, men seek to spread their beliefs,\nto awaken imitation, to infect others. Why should not YOU also find the\nsame belief satisfactory? thinks the pragmatist, and forthwith endeavors\nto convert you. You and he will then believe similarly; you will hold\nup your subject-end of a truth, which will be a truth objective and\nirreversible if the reality holds up the object-end by being itself\npresent simultaneously. What there is of self-contradiction in all this\nI confess I cannot discover. The pragmatist's conduct in his own case\nseems to me on the contrary admirably to illustrate his universal\nformula; and of all epistemologists, he is perhaps the only one who is\nirreproachably self-consistent.\n\nSIXTH MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM EXPLAINS NOT WHAT TRUTH IS, BUT ONLY\nHOW IT IS ARRIVED AT.\n\nIn point of fact it tells us both, tells us what it is incidentally to\ntelling us how it is arrived at,--for what IS arrived at except just\nwhat the truth is? If I tell you how to get to the railroad station,\ndon't I implicitly introduce you to the WHAT, to the being and nature of\nthat edifice? It is quite true that the abstract WORD 'how' hasn't\nthe same meaning as the abstract WORD 'what,' but in this universe of\nconcrete facts you cannot keep hows and whats asunder. The reasons why\nI find it satisfactory to believe that any idea is true, the HOW of my\narriving at that belief, may be among the very reasons why the idea IS\ntrue in reality. If not, I summon the anti-pragmatist to explain the\nimpossibility articulately.\n\nHis trouble seems to me mainly to arise from his fixed inability to\nunderstand how a concrete statement can possibly mean as much, or be as\nvaluable, as an abstract one. I said above that the main quarrel between\nus and our critics was that of concreteness VERSUS abstractness. This is\nthe place to develop that point farther.\n\nIn the present question, the links of experience sequent upon an idea,\nwhich mediate between it and a reality, form and for the pragmatist\nindeed ARE, the CONCRETE relation of truth that may obtain between the\nidea and that reality. They, he says, are all that we mean when we speak\nof the idea 'pointing' to the reality, 'fitting' it, 'corresponding'\nwith it, or 'agreeing' with it,--they or other similar mediating trains\nof verification. Such mediating events make the idea 'true.' The idea\nitself, if it exists at all, is also a concrete event: so pragmatism\ninsists that truth in the singular is only a collective name for truths\nin the plural, these consisting always of series of definite events; and\nthat what intellectualism calls the truth, the inherent truth, of any\none such series is only the abstract name for its truthfulness in act,\nfor the fact that the ideas there do lead to the supposed reality in a\nway that we consider satisfactory.\n\nThe pragmatist himself has no objection to abstractions. Elliptically,\nand 'for short,' he relies on them as much as any one, ending upon\ninnumerable occasions that their comparative emptiness makes of them\nuseful substitutes for the overfulness of the facts he meets, with. But\nhe never ascribes to them a higher grade of reality. The full reality\nof a truth for him is always some process of verification, in which the\nabstract property of connecting ideas with objects truly is workingly\nembodied. Meanwhile it is endlessly serviceable to be able to talk of\nproperties abstractly and apart from their working, to find them the\nsame in innumerable cases, to take them 'out of time,' and to treat\nof their relations to other similar abstractions. We thus form whole\nuniverses of platonic ideas ante rem, universes in posse, tho none of\nthem exists effectively except in rebus. Countless relations obtain\nthere which nobody experiences as obtaining,--as, in the eternal\nuniverse of musical relations, for example, the notes of Aennchen von\nTharau were a lovely melody long ere mortal ears ever heard them. Even\nso the music of the future sleeps now, to be awakened hereafter. Or, if\nwe take the world of geometrical relations, the thousandth decimal of\n'pi' sleeps there, tho no one may ever try to compute it. Or, if we take\nthe universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless\nboots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically FITTED; countless\nstones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually.\nIn the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths\nare valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.\n\nFor the anti-pragmatist these prior timeless relations are the\npresupposition of the concrete ones, and possess the profounder dignity\nand value. The actual workings of our ideas in verification-processes\nare as naught in comparison with the 'obtainings' of this discarnate\ntruth within them.\n\nFor the pragmatist, on the contrary,--all discarnate truth is static,\nimpotent, and relatively spectral, full truth being the truth that\nenergizes and does battle. Can any one suppose that the sleeping quality\nof truth would ever have been abstracted or have received a name, if\ntruths had remained forever in that storage-vault of essential timeless\n'agreements' and had never been embodied in any panting struggle of\nmen's live ideas for verification? Surely no more than the abstract\nproperty of 'fitting' would have received a name, if in our world\nthere had been no backs or feet or gaps in walls to be actually fitted.\nEXISTENTIAL truth is incidental to the actual competition of opinions.\nESSENTIAL truth, the truth of the intellectualists, the truth with no\none thinking it, is like the coat that fits tho no one has ever tried\nit on, like the music that no ear has listened to. It is less real, not\nmore real, than the verified article; and to attribute a superior\ndegree of glory to it seems little more than a piece of perverse\nabstraction-worship. As well might a pencil insist that the outline\nis the essential thing in all pictorial representation, and chide\nthe paint-brush and the camera for omitting it, forgetting that THEIR\npictures not only contain the whole outline, but a hundred other things\nin addition. Pragmatist truth contains the whole of intellectualist\ntruth and a hundred other things in addition. Intellectualist truth is\nthen only pragmatist truth in posse. That on innumerable occasions men\ndo substitute truth in posse or verifiability, for verification or truth\nin act, is a fact to which no one attributes more importance than the\npragmatist: he emphasizes the practical utility of such a habit. But\nhe does not on that account consider truth in posse,--truth not alive\nenough ever to have been asserted or questioned or contradicted, to be\nthe metaphysically prior thing, to which truths in act are tributary and\nsubsidiary. When intellectualists do this, pragmatism charges them with\ninverting the real relation. Truth in posse MEANS only truths in act;\nand he insists that these latter take precedence in the order of logic\nas well as in that of being.\n\nSEVENTH MINUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM IGNORES THE THEORETICAL INTEREST.\n\nThis would seem to be an absolutely wanton slander, were not a\ncertain excuse to be found in the linguistic affinities of the word\n'pragmatism,' and in certain offhand habits of speech of ours which\nassumed too great a generosity on our reader's part. When we spoke of\nthe meaning of ideas consisting \"in their 'practical' consequences\",\nor of the 'practical' differences which our beliefs make to us; when we\nsaid that the truth of a belief consists in its 'working' value, etc.;\nour language evidently was too careless, for by 'practical' we were\nalmost unanimously held to mean OPPOSED to theoretical or genuinely\ncognitive, and the consequence was punctually drawn that a truth in our\neyes could have no relation to any independent reality, or to any other\ntruth, or to anything whatever but the acts which we might ground on it\nor the satisfactions they might bring. The mere existence of the idea,\nall by itself, if only its results were satisfactory, would give full\ntruth to it, it was charged, in our absurd pragmatist epistemology.\nThe solemn attribution of this rubbish to us was also encouraged by two\nother circumstances. First, ideas ARE practically useful in the narrow\nsense, false ideas sometimes, but most often ideas which we can verify\nby the sum total of all their leadings, and the reality of whose objects\nmay thus be considered established beyond doubt. That these ideas should\nbe true in advance of and apart from their utility, that, in other\nwords, their objects should be really there, is the very condition of\ntheir having that kind of utility,--the objects they connect us with are\nso important that the ideas which serve as the objects' substitutes grow\nimportant also. This manner of their practical working was the first\nthing that made truths good in the eyes of primitive men; and\nburied among all the other good workings by which true beliefs are\ncharacterized, this kind of subsequential utility remains.\n\nThe second misleading circumstance was the emphasis laid by Schiller\nand Dewey on the fact that, unless a truth be relevant to the mind's\nmomentary predicament, unless it be germane to the 'practical'\nsituation,--meaning by this the quite particular perplexity,--it is\nno good to urge it. It doesn't meet our interests any better than a\nfalsehood would under the same circumstances. But why our predicaments\nand perplexities might not be theoretical here as well as narrowly\npractical, I wish that our critics would explain. They simply assume\nthat no pragmatist CAN admit a genuinely theoretic interest. Having used\nthe phrase 'cash-value' of an idea, I am implored by one correspondent\nto alter it, 'for every one thinks you mean only pecuniary profit and\nloss.' Having said that the true is 'the expedient in our thinking,' I\nam rebuked in this wise by another learned correspondent:\n\n'The word expedient has no other meaning than that of self-interest. The\npursuit of this has ended by landing a number of officers of national\nbanks in penitentiaries. A philosophy that leads to such results must be\nunsound.'\n\nBut the word 'practical' is so habitually loosely used that more\nindulgence might have been expected. When one says that a sick man has\nnow practically recovered, or that an enterprise has practically failed,\none usually means I just the opposite of practically in the literal\nsense. One means that, altho untrue in strict practice, what one says\nis true in theory, true virtually, certain to be true. Again, by the\npractical one often means the distinctively concrete, the individual,\nparticular, and effective, as opposed to the abstract, general, and\ninert. To speak for myself, whenever I have emphasized the practical\nnature of truth, this is mainly what has been in my mind. 'Pragmata' are\nthings in their plurality; and in that early California address, when I\ndescribed pragmatism as holding that the meaning of any proposition\ncan always be brought down to some particular consequence in our future\npractical experience, whether passive or active, expressly added these\nqualifying words: the point lying rather in the fact that the experience\nmust be particular than in the fact that it must be active,--by 'active'\nmeaning here 'practical' in the narrow literal sense. [Footnote: The\nambiguity of the word 'practical' comes out well in these words of a\nrecent would-be reporter of our views: 'Pragmatism is an Anglo-Saxon\nreaction against the intellectualism and rationalism of the Latin\nmind.... Man, each individual man is the measure of things. He is able\nto conceive one but relative truths, that is to say, illusions. What\nthese illusions are worth is revealed to him, not by general theory, but\nby individual practice. Pragmatism, which consists in experiencing\nthese illusions of the mind and obeying them by acting them out, is a\nPHILOSOPHY WITHOUT WORDS, a philosophy of GESTURES AND OF ACTS,\nwhich abandons what is general and olds only to what is particular.'\n(Bourdeau, in Journal des. debats, October 89, 1907.)] But particular\nconsequences can perfectly well be of a theoretic nature. Every remote\nfact which we infer from an idea is a particular theoretic consequence\nwhich our mind practically works towards. The loss of every old opinion\nof ours which we see that we shall have to give up if a new opinion\nbe true, is a particular theoretic as well as a particular practical\nconsequence. After man's interest in breathing freely, the greatest of\nall his interests (because it never fluctuates or remits, as most of his\nphysical interests do), is his interest in consistency, in feeling\nthat what he now thinks goes with what he thinks on other occasions.\nWe tirelessly compare truth with truth for this sole purpose. Is the\npresent candidate for belief perhaps contradicted by principle number\none? Is it compatible with fact number two? and so forth. The particular\noperations here are the purely logical ones of analysis, deduction,\ncomparison, etc.; and altho general terms may be used ad libitum, the\nsatisfactory practical working of the candidate--idea consists in\nthe consciousness yielded by each successive theoretic consequence in\nparticular. It is therefore simply idiotic to repeat that pragmatism\ntakes no account of purely theoretic interests. All it insists on\nis that verity in act means VERIFICATIONS, and that these are always\nparticulars. Even in exclusively theoretic matters, it insists that\nvagueness and generality serve to verify nothing.\n\nEIGHTH MISUNDERSTANDING: PRAGMATISM IS SHUT UP TO SOLIPSISM.\n\nI have already said something about this misconception under the third\nand fourth heads, above, but a little more may be helpful. The objection\nis apt to clothe itself in words like these: 'You make truth to consist\nin every value except the cognitive value proper; you always leave your\nknower at many removes (or, at the uttermost, at one remove) from his\nreal object; the best you do is to let his ideas carry him towards it;\nit remains forever outside of him,' etc.\n\nI think that the leaven working here is the rooted intellectualist\npersuasion that, to know a reality, an idea must in some inscrutable\nfashion possess or be it. [Footnote: Sensations may, indeed, possess\ntheir objects or coalesce with them, as common sense supposes that they\ndo; and intuited differences between concepts may coalesce with the\n'eternal' objective differences; but to simplify our discussion. here\nwe can afford to abstract from these very special cases of knowing.]\nFor pragmatism this kind of coalescence is inessential. As a rule our\ncognitions are only processes of mind off their balance and in motion\ntowards real termini; and the reality of the termini, believed in by the\nstates of mind in question, can be guaranteed only by some wider knower\n[Footnote: The transcendental idealist thinks that, in some inexplicable\nway, the finite states of mind are identical with the transfinite\nall-knower which he finds himself obliged to postulate in order to\nsupply a fundamentum far the relation of knowing, as he apprehends it.\nPragmatists can leave the question of identity open; but they cannot do\nwithout the wider knower any more than they can do without the reality,\nif they want to prove a case of knowing. They themselves play the part\nof the absolute knower for the universe of discourse which serves them\nas material for epistemologizing. They warrant the reality there,\nand the subject's true knowledge, there, of it. But whether what they\nthemselves say about that whole universe is objectively true, i.e.,\nwhether the pragmatic theory of truth is true really, they cannot\nwarrant,--they can only believe it To their hearers they can only\npropose it, as I propose it to my readers, as something to be verified\nambulando, or by the way is which its consequences may confirm it]. But\nif there is no reason extant in the universe why they should be doubted,\nthe beliefs are true in the only sense in which anything can be true\nanyhow: they are practically and concretely true, namely. True in the\nmystical mongrel sense of an Identitatsphilosophie they need not be; nor\nis there any intelligible reason why they ever need be true otherwise\nthan verifiably and practically. It is reality's part to possess its\nown existence; it is thought's part to get into 'touch' with it by\ninnumerable paths of verification.\n\nI fear that the 'humanistic' developments of pragmatism may cause a\ncertain difficulty here. We get at one truth only through the rest of\ntruth; and the reality, everlastingly postulated as that which all our\ntruth must keep in touch with, may never be given to us save in the\nform of truth other than that which we are now testing. But since Dr.\nSchiller has shown that all our truths, even the most elemental, are\naffected by race-inheritance with a human coefficient, reality per se\nthus may appear only as a sort of limit; it may be held to shrivel to\nthe mere PLACE for an object, and what is known may be held to be only\nmatter of our psyche that we fill the place with. It must be confessed\nthat pragmatism, worked in this humanistic way, is COMPATIBLE with\nsolipsism. It joins friendly hands with the agnostic part of kantism,\nwith contemporary agnosticism, and with idealism generally. But worked\nthus, it is a metaphysical theory about the matter of reality, and flies\nfar beyond pragmatism's own modest analysis of the nature of the knowing\nfunction, which analysis may just as harmoniously be combined with less\nhumanistic accounts of reality. One of pragmatism's merits is that it\nis so purely epistemological. It must assume realities; but it prejudges\nnothing as to their constitution, and the most diverse metaphysics can\nuse it as their foundation. It certainly has no special affinity with\nsolipsism.\n\nAs I look back over what I have written, much of it gives me a queer\nimpression, as if the obvious were set forth so condescendingly that\nreaders might well laugh at my pomposity. It may be, however, that\nconcreteness as radical as ours is not so obvious. The whole originality\nof pragmatism, the whole point in it, is its use of the concrete way of\nseeing. It begins with concreteness, and returns and ends with it. Dr.\nSchiller, with his two 'practical' aspects of truth, (1) relevancy to\nsituation, and (2) subsequential utility, is only filling the cup of\nconcreteness to the brim for us. Once seize that cup, and you cannot\nmisunderstand pragmatism. It seems as if the power of imagining the\nworld concretely MIGHT have been common enough to let our readers\napprehend us better, as if they might have read between our lines, and,\nin spite of all our infelicities of expression, guessed a little\nmore correctly what our thought was. But alas! this was not on fate's\nprogramme, so we can only think, with the German ditty:--\n\n   \"Es waer' zu schoen gewesen, Es hat nicht sollen sein.\"\n\n\n\nIX\n\nTHE MEANING OF THE WORD TRUTH [Footnote: Remarks at the meeting of the\nAmerican Philosophical Association, Cornell University, December, 1907.]\n\nMy account of truth is realistic, and follows the epistemological\ndualism of common sense. Suppose I say to you 'The thing exists'--is\nthat true or not? How can you tell? Not till my statement has developed\nits meaning farther is it determined as being true, false, or irrelevant\nto reality altogether. But if now you ask 'what thing?' and I reply 'a\ndesk'; if you ask 'where?' and I point to a place; if you ask 'does it\nexist materially, or only in imagination?' and I say 'materially'; if\nmoreover I say 'I mean that desk' and then grasp and shake a desk\nwhich you see just as I have described it, you are willing to call\nmy statement true. But you and I are commutable here; we can exchange\nplaces; and, as you go bail for my desk, so I can go bail for yours.\n\nThis notion of a reality independent of either of us, taken from\nordinary social experience, lies at the base of the pragmatist\ndefinition of truth. With some such reality any statement, in order\nto be counted true, must agree. Pragmatism defines 'agreeing' to mean\ncertain ways of 'working,' be they actual or potential. Thus, for my\nstatement 'the desk exists' to be true of a desk recognized as real by\nyou, it must be able to lead me to shake your desk, to explain myself\nby words that suggest that desk to your mind, to make a drawing that is\nlike the desk you see, etc. Only in such ways as this is there sense in\nsaying it agrees with THAT reality, only thus does it gain for me the\nsatisfaction of hearing you corroborate me. Reference then to something\ndeterminate, and some sort of adaptation to it worthy of the name\nof agreement, are thus constituent elements in the definition of any\nstatement of mine as 'true'.\n\nYou cannot get at either the reference or the adaptation without using\nthe notion of the workings. THAT the thing is, WHAT it is, and WHICH it\nis (of all the possible things with that what) are points determinable\nonly by the pragmatic method. The 'which' means a possibility of\npointing, or of otherwise singling out the special object; the 'what'\nmeans choice on our part of an essential aspect to conceive it by (and\nthis is always relative to what Dewey calls our own 'situation');\nand the 'that' means our assumption of the attitude of belief, the\nreality-recognizing attitude. Surely for understanding what the word\n'true' means as applied to a statement, the mention of such workings is\nindispensable. Surely if we leave them out the subject and the object\nof the cognitive relation float-in the same universe, 'tis true--but\nvaguely and ignorantly and without mutual contact or mediation.\n\nOur critics nevertheless call the workings inessential. No functional\npossibilities 'make' our beliefs true, they say; they are true\ninherently, true positively, born 'true' as the Count of Chambord was\nborn 'Henri-Cinq.' Pragmatism insists, on the contrary, that statements\nand beliefs are thus inertly and statically true only by courtesy:\nthey practically pass for true; but you CANNOT DEFINE WHAT YOU MEAN by\ncalling them true without referring to their functional possibilities.\nThese give its whole LOGICAL CONTENT to that relation to reality on a\nbelief's part to which the name 'truth' is applied, a relation which\notherwise remains one of mere coexistence or bare withness.\n\n\n\nThe foregoing statements reproduce the essential content of the lecture\non Truth in my book PRAGMATISM. Schiller's doctrine of 'humanism,'\nDewey's 'Studies in logical theory,' and my own 'radical empiricism,'\nall involve this general notion of truth as 'working,' either actual or\nconceivable. But they envelop it as only one detail in the midst of much\nwider theories that aim eventually at determining the notion of what\n'reality' at large is in its ultimate nature and constitution.\n\n\n\nX\n\nTHE EXISTENCE OF JULIUS CAESAR [Footnote: Originally printed under the\ntitle of 'Truth versus Truthfulness,' in the Journal of Philosophy.]\n\nMy account of truth is purely logical and relates to its definition\nonly. I contend that you cannot tell what the WORD 'true' MEANS, as\napplied to a statement, without invoking the CONCEPT OF THE STATEMENTS\nWORKINGS.\n\nAssume, to fix our ideas, a universe composed of two things only:\nimperial Caesar dead and turned to clay, and me, saying 'Caesar really\nexisted.' Most persons would naively deem truth to be thereby uttered,\nand say that by a sort of actio in distans my statement had taken direct\nhold of the other fact.\n\nBut have my words so certainly denoted THAT Caesar?--or so certainly\nconnoted HIS individual attributes? To fill out the complete measure\nof what the epithet 'true' may ideally mean, my thought ought to bear\na fully determinate and unambiguous 'one-to-one-relation' to its own\nparticular object. In the ultrasimple universe imagined the reference is\nuncertified. Were there two Caesars we shouldn't know which was meant.\nThe conditions of truth thus seem incomplete in this universe of\ndiscourse so that it must be enlarged.\n\nTranscendentalists enlarge it by invoking an absolute mind which,\nas it owns all the facts, can sovereignly correlate them. If it intends\nthat my statement SHALL refer to that identical Caesar, and that the\nattributes I have in mind SHALL mean his attributes, that intention\nsuffices to make the statement true.\n\nI, in turn, enlarge the universe by admitting finite intermediaries\nbetween the two original facts. Caesar HAD, and my statement HAS,\neffects; and if these effects in any way run together, a concrete medium\nand bottom is provided for the determinate cognitive relation, which, as\na pure ACTIO IN DISTANS, seemed to float too vaguely and unintelligibly.\n\nThe real Caesar, for example, wrote a manuscript of which I see a\nreal reprint, and say 'the Caesar I mean is the author of THAT.' The\nworkings of my thought thus determine both its denotative and its\nconnotative significance more fully. It now defines itself as neither\nirrelevant to the real Caesar, nor false in what it suggests of him. The\nabsolute mind, seeing me thus working towards Caesar through the cosmic\nintermediaries, might well say: 'Such workings only specify in detail\nwhat I meant myself by the statement being true. I decree the cognitive\nrelation between the two original facts to mean that just that kind of\nconcrete chain of intermediaries exists or can exist.'\n\nBut the chain involves facts prior to the statement the logical\nconditions of whose truth we are defining, and facts subsequent to it;\nand this circumstance, coupled with the vulgar employment of the terms\ntruth and fact as synonyms, has laid my account open to misapprehension.\n'How,' it is confusedly asked, 'can Caesar's existence, a truth already\n2000 years old, depend for its truth on anything about to happen now?\nHow can my acknowledgment of it be made true by the acknowledgment's own\neffects? The effects may indeed confirm my belief, but the belief was\nmade true already by the fact that Caesar really did exist.'\n\nWell, be it so, for if there were no Caesar, there could, of course,\nbe no positive truth about him--but then distinguish between 'true' as\nbeing positively and completely so established, and 'true' as being so\nonly 'practically,' elliptically, and by courtesy, in the sense of\nnot being positively irrelevant or UNtrue. Remember also that Caesar's\nhaving existed in fact may make a present statement false or irrelevant\nas well as it may make it true, and that in neither case does it itself\nhave to alter. It being given, whether truth, untruth, or irrelevancy\nshall be also given depends on something coming from the statement\nitself. What pragmatism contends for is that you cannot adequately\nDEFINE the something if you leave the notion of the statement's\nfunctional workings out of your account. Truth meaning agreement with\nreality, the mode of the agreeing is a practical problem which the\nsubjective term of the relation alone can solve.\n\nNOTE. This paper was originally followed by a couple of paragraphs meant\nto conciliate the intellectualist opposition. Since you love the word\n'true' so, and since you despise so the concrete working of our ideas,\nI said, keep the word 'truth' for the saltatory and incomprehensible\nrelation you care so much for, and I will say of thoughts that know\ntheir objects in an intelligible sense that they are 'truthful.'\n\nLike most offerings, this one has been spurned, so I revoke it,\nrepenting of my generosity. Professor Pratt, in his recent book, calls\nany objective state of FACTS 'a truth,' and uses the word 'trueness'\nin the sense of 'truth' as proposed by me. Mr. Hawtrey (see below, page\n281) uses 'correctness' in the same sense. Apart from the general evil\nof ambiguous vocabularies, we may really forsake all hope, if the term\n'truth' is officially to lose its status as a property of our beliefs\nand opinions, and become recognized as a technical synonym for 'fact.'\n\n\n\nXI\n\nTHE ABSOLUTE AND THE STRENUOUS LIFE [Footnote: Reprinted from the\nJournal of Philosophy, etc., 1906.]\n\nProfessor W. A. Brown, in the Journal for August 15, approves my\npragmatism for allowing that a belief in the absolute may give\nholidays to the spirit, but takes me to task for the narrowness of this\nconcession, and shows by striking examples how great a power the same\nbelief may have in letting loose the strenuous life.\n\nI have no criticism whatever to make upon his excellent article, but let\nme explain why 'moral holidays' were the only gift of the absolute which\nI picked out for emphasis. I was primarily concerned in my lectures with\ncontrasting the belief that the world is still in process of making\nwith the belief that there is an 'eternal' edition of it ready-made\nand complete. The former, or 'pluralistic' belief, was the one that my\npragmatism favored. Both beliefs confirm our strenuous moods. Pluralism\nactually demands them, since it makes the world's salvation depend upon\nthe energizing of its several parts, among which we are. Monism permits\nthem, for however furious they may be, we can always justify ourselves\nin advance for indulging them by the thought that they WILL HAVE BEEN\nexpressions of the absolute's perfect life. By escaping from your finite\nperceptions to the conception of the eternal whole, you can hallow any\ntendency whatever. Tho the absolute DICTATES nothing, it will SANCTION\nanything and everything after the fact, for whatever is once there will\nhave to be regarded as an integral member of the universe's perfection.\nQuietism and frenzy thus alike receive the absolute's permit to exist.\nThose of us who are naturally inert may abide in our resigned passivity;\nthose whose energy is excessive may grow more reckless still. History\nshows how easily both quietists and fanatics have drawn inspiration from\nthe absolutistic scheme. It suits sick souls and strenuous ones equally\nwell.\n\nOne cannot say thus of pluralism. Its world is always vulnerable, for\nsome part may go astray; and having no 'eternal' edition of it to draw\ncomfort from, its partisans must always feel to some degree insecure.\nIf, as pluralists, we grant ourselves moral holidays, they can only be\nprovisional breathing-spells, intended to refresh us for the morrow's\nfight. This forms one permanent inferiority of pluralism from the\npragmatic point of view. It has no saving message for incurably sick\nsouls. Absolutism, among its other messages, has that message, and is\nthe only scheme that has it necessarily. That constitutes its chief\nsuperiority and is the source of its religious power. That is why,\ndesiring to do it full justice, I valued its aptitude for moral-holiday\ngiving so highly. Its claims in that way are unique, whereas its\naffinities with strenuousness are less emphatic than those of the\npluralistic scheme.\n\nIn the last lecture of my book I candidly admitted this inferiority of\npluralism. It lacks the wide indifference that absolutism shows. It\nis bound to disappoint many sick souls whom absolutism can console.\nIt seems therefore poor tactics for absolutists to make little of this\nadvantage. The needs of sick souls are surely the most urgent; and\nbelievers in the absolute should rather hold it to be great merit in\ntheir philosophy that it can meet them so well.\n\nThe pragmatism or pluralism which I defend has to fall back on a certain\nultimate hardihood, a certain willingness to live without assurances or\nguarantees. To minds thus willing to live on possibilities that are\nnot certainties, quietistic religion, sure of salvation ANY HOW, has a\nslight flavor of fatty degeneration about it which has caused it to be\nlooked askance on, even in the church. Which side is right here, who can\nsay? Within religion, emotion is apt to be tyrannical; but philosophy\nmust favor the emotion that allies itself best with the whole body\nand drift of all the truths in sight. I conceive this to be the more\nstrenuous type of emotion; but I have to admit that its inability to\nlet loose quietistic raptures is a serious deficiency in the pluralistic\nphilosophy which I profess.\n\n\n\nXII\n\nPROFESSOR HEBERT ON PRAGMATISM [Footnote: Reprint from the Journal of\nPhilosophy for December 3, 1908 (vol. v, p. 689), of a review of Le\nPragmatisme et ses Diverses Formes Anglo-Americaines, by Marcel Hebert.\n(Paris: Librairie critique Emile Nourry. 1908. Pp. 105.)]\n\nProfessor Marcel Hebert is a singularly erudite and liberal thinker\n(a seceder, I believe, from the Catholic priesthood) and an uncommonly\ndirect and clear writer. His book Le Divin is one of the ablest reviews\nof the general subject of religious philosophy which recent years have\nproduced; and in the small volume the title of which is copied above he\nhas, perhaps, taken more pains not to do injustice to pragmatism than\nany of its numerous critics. Yet the usual fatal misapprehension of its\npurposes vitiates his exposition and his critique. His pamphlet seems to\nme to form a worthy hook, as it were, on which to hang one more attempt\nto tell the reader what the pragmatist account of truth really means.\n\nM. Hebert takes it to mean what most people take it to mean, the\ndoctrine, namely, that whatever proves subjectively expedient in the way\nof our thinking is 'true' in the absolute and unrestricted sense of the\nword, whether it corresponds to any objective state of things outside of\nour thought or not. Assuming this to be the pragmatist thesis, M. Hebert\nopposes it at length. Thought that proves itself to be thus expedient\nmay, indeed, have every OTHER kind of value for the thinker, he says,\nbut cognitive value, representative value, VALEUR DE CONNAISSANCE\nPROPREMENT DITE, it has not; and when it does have a high degree of\ngeneral utility value, this is in every case derived from its previous\nvalue in the way of correctly representing independent objects that have\nan important influence on our lives. Only by thus representing things\ntruly do we reap the useful fruits. But the fruits follow on the truth,\nthey do not constitute it; so M. Hebert accuses pragmatism of telling us\neverything about truth except what it essentially is. He admits, indeed,\nthat the world is so framed that when men have true ideas of realities,\nconsequential utilities ensue in abundance; and no one of our critics,\nI think, has shown as concrete a sense of the variety of these utilities\nas he has; but he reiterates that, whereas such utilities are secondary,\nwe insist on treating them as primary, and that the connaissance\nobjective from which they draw all their being is something which we\nneglect, exclude, and destroy. The utilitarian value and the strictly\ncognitive value of our ideas may perfectly well harmonize, he says--and\nin the main he allows that they do harmonize--but they are not logically\nidentical for that. He admits that subjective interests, desires,\nimpulses may even have the active 'primacy' in our intellectual life.\nCognition awakens only at their spur, and follows their cues and aims;\nyet, when it IS awakened, it is objective cognition proper and not\nmerely another name for the impulsive tendencies themselves in the state\nof satisfaction. The owner of a picture ascribed to Corot gets uneasy\nwhen its authenticity is doubted. He looks up its origin and is\nreassured. But his uneasiness does not make the proposition false, any\nmore than his relief makes the proposition true, that the actual Corot\nwas the painter. Pragmatism, which, according to M. Hebert, claims that\nour sentiments MAKE truth and falsehood, would oblige us to conclude\nthat our minds exert no genuinely cognitive function whatever.\n\nThis subjectivist interpretation of our position seems to follow from my\nhaving happened to write (without supposing it necessary to explain that\nI was treating of cognition solely on its subjective side) that in the\nlong run the true is the expedient in the way of our thinking, much as\nthe good is the expedient in the way of our behavior! Having previously\nwritten that truth means 'agreement with reality,' and insisted that the\nchief part of the expediency of any one opinion is its agreement\nwith the rest of acknowledged truth, I apprehended no exclusively\nsubjectivistic reading of my meaning. My mind was so filled with the\nnotion of objective reference that I never dreamed that my hearers\nwould let go of it; and the very last accusation I expected was that\nin speaking of ideas and their satisfactions, I was denying realities\noutside. My only wonder now is that critics should have found so silly\na personage as I must have seemed in their eyes, worthy of explicit\nrefutation.\n\nThe object, for me, is just as much one part of reality as the idea\nis another part. The truth of the idea is one relation of it to the\nreality, just as its date and its place are other relations. All three\nrelations CONSIST of intervening parts of the universe which can in\nevery particular case be assigned and catalogued, and which differ in\nevery instance of truth, just as they differ with every date and place.\n\nThe pragmatist thesis, as Dr. Schiller and I hold it,--I prefer to let\nProfessor Dewey speak for himself,--is that the relation called 'truth'\nis thus concretely DEFINABLE. Ours is the only articulate attempt in the\nfield to say positively what truth actually CONSISTS OF. Our denouncers\nhave literally nothing to oppose to it as an alternative. For them, when\nan idea is true, it IS true, and there the matter terminates; the word\n'true' being indefinable. The relation of the true idea to its object,\nbeing, as they think, unique, it can be expressed in terms of nothing\nelse, and needs only to be named for any one to recognize and understand\nit. Moreover it is invariable and universal, the same in every single\ninstance of truth, however diverse the ideas, the realities, and the\nother relations between them may be.\n\nOur pragmatist view, on the contrary, is that the truth-relation is a\ndefinitely experienceable relation, and therefore describable as well\nas namable; that it is not unique in kind, and neither invariable nor\nuniversal. The relation to its object that makes an idea true in any\ngiven instance, is, we say, embodied in intermediate details of reality\nwhich lead towards the object, which vary in every instance, and which\nin every instance can be concretely traced. The chain of workings which\nan opinion sets up IS the opinion's truth, falsehood, or irrelevancy,\nas the case may be. Every idea that a man has works some consequences\nin him, in the shape either of bodily actions or of other ideas. Through\nthese consequences the man's relations to surrounding realities are\nmodified. He is carried nearer to some of them and farther from others,\nand gets now the feeling that the idea has worked satisfactorily, now\nthat it has not. The idea has put him into touch with something that\nfulfils its intent, or it has not.\n\nThis something is the MAN'S OBJECT, primarily. Since the only realities\nwe can talk about are such OBJECTS-BELIEVED-IN, the pragmatist, whenever\nhe says 'reality,' means in the first instance what may count for the\nman himself as a reality, what he believes at the moment to be such.\nSometimes the reality is a concrete sensible presence. The idea, for\nexample, may be that a certain door opens into a room where a glass of\nbeer may be bought. If opening the door leads to the actual sight and\ntaste of the beer, the man calls the idea true. Or his idea may be\nthat of an abstract relation, say of that between the sides and the\nhypothenuse of a triangle, such a relation being, of course, a reality\nquite as much as a glass of beer is. If the thought of such a relation\nleads him to draw auxiliary lines and to compare the figures they make,\nhe may at last, perceiving one equality after another, SEE the relation\nthought of, by a vision quite as particular and direct as was the taste\nof the beer. If he does so, he calls THAT idea, also, true. His idea\nhas, in each case, brought him into closer touch with a reality felt at\nthe moment to verify just that idea. Each reality verifies and validates\nits own idea exclusively; and in each case the verification consists in\nthe satisfactorily-ending consequences, mental or physical, which\nthe idea was able to set up. These 'workings' differ in every single\ninstance, they never transcend experience, they consist of particulars,\nmental or sensible, and they admit of concrete description in every\nindividual case. Pragmatists are unable to see what you can possibly\nMEAN by calling an idea true, unless you mean that between it as a\nterminus a quo in some one's mind and some particular reality as a\nterminus ad quem, such concrete workings do or may intervene. Their\ndirection constitutes the idea's reference to that reality, their\nsatisfactoriness constitutes its adaptation thereto, and the two things\ntogether constitute the 'truth' of the idea for its possessor.\nWithout such intermediating portions of concretely real experience the\npragmatist sees no materials out of which the adaptive relation called\ntruth can be built up.\n\nThe anti-pragmatist view is that the workings are but evidences of the\ntruth's previous inherent presence in the idea, and that you can wipe\nthe very possibility of them out of existence and still leave the truth\nof the idea as solid as ever. But surely this is not a counter-theory\nof truth to ours. It is the renunciation of all articulate theory. It is\nbut a claim to the right to call certain ideas true anyhow; and this is\nwhat I meant above by saying that the anti-pragmatists offer us no real\nalternative, and that our account is literally the only positive theory\nextant. What meaning, indeed, can an idea's truth have save its power of\nadapting us either mentally or physically to a reality?\n\nHow comes it, then, that our critics so uniformly accuse us of\nsubjectivism, of denying the reality's existence? It comes, I think,\nfrom the necessary predominance of subjective language in our analysis.\nHowever independent and elective realities may be, we can talk about\nthem, in framing our accounts of truth, only as so many objects\nbelieved-in. But the process of experience leads men so continually\nto supersede their older objects by newer ones which they find it more\nsatisfactory to believe in, that the notion of an ABSOLUTE reality\ninevitably arises as a grenzbegriff, equivalent to that of an object\nthat shall never be superseded, and belief in which shall be endgueltig.\nCognitively we thus live under a sort of rule of three: as our private\nconcepts represent the sense-objects to which they lead us, these being\npublic realities independent of the individual, so these sense-realities\nmay, in turn, represent realities of a hypersensible order, electrons,\nmind-stuff. God, or what not, existing independently of all human\nthinkers. The notion of such final realities, knowledge of which would\nbe absolute truth, is an outgrowth of our cognitive experience from\nwhich neither pragmatists nor anti-pragmatists escape. They form an\ninevitable regulative postulate in every one's thinking. Our notion of\nthem is the most abundantly suggested and satisfied of all our beliefs,\nthe last to suffer doubt. The difference is that our critics use this\nbelief as their sole paradigm, and treat any one who talks of\nhuman realities as if he thought the notion of reality 'in itself'\nillegitimate. Meanwhile, reality-in-itself, so far as by them TALKED OF,\nis only a human object; they postulate it just as we postulate it; and\nif we are subjectivists they are so no less. Realities in themselves\ncan be there FOR any one, whether pragmatist or anti-pragmatist, only by\nbeing believed; they are believed only by their notions appearing true;\nand their notions appear true only because they work satisfactorily.\nSatisfactorily, moreover, for the particular thinker's purpose. There is\nno idea which is THE true idea, of anything. Whose is THE true idea of\nthe absolute? Or to take M. Hebert's example, what is THE true idea of a\npicture which you possess? It is the idea that most satisfactorily meets\nyour present interest. The interest may be in the picture's place, its\nage, its 'tone,' its subject, its dimensions, its authorship, its price,\nits merit, or what not. If its authorship by Corot have been doubted,\nwhat will satisfy the interest aroused in you at that moment will be\nto have your claim to own a Corot confirmed; but, if you have a normal\nhuman mind, merely calling it a Corot will not satisfy other demands of\nyour mind at the same time. For THEM to be satisfied, what you learn of\nthe picture must make smooth connection with what you know of the rest\nof the system of reality in which the actual Corot played his part.\nM. Hebert accuses us of holding that the proprietary satisfactions of\nthemselves suffice to make the belief true, and that, so far as we are\nconcerned, no actual Corot need ever have existed. Why we should be thus\ncut off from the more general and intellectual satisfactions, I know\nnot; but whatever the satisfactions may be, intellectual or proprietary,\nthey belong to the subjective side of the truth-relation. They found our\nbeliefs; our beliefs are in realities; if no realities are there, the\nbeliefs are false but if realities are there, how they can even be KNOWN\nwithout first being BELIEVED; or how BELIEVED except by our first having\nideas of them that work satisfactorily, pragmatists find it impossible\nto imagine. They also find it impossible to imagine what makes the\nanti-pragmatists' dogmatic 'ipse dixit' assurance of reality\nmore credible than the pragmatists conviction based on concrete\nverifications. M. Hebert will probably agree to this, when put in\nthis way, so I do not see our inferiority to him in the matter of\nconnaissance proprement dite.\n\nSome readers will say that, altho I may possibly believe in realities\nbeyond our ideas Dr. Schiller, at any rate, does not. This is a great\nmisunderstanding, for Schiller's doctrine and mine are identical,\nonly our exposition follow different directions. He starts from the\nsubjective pole of the chain, the individual with his beliefs, as the\nmore concrete and immediately given phenomenon. 'An individual claims\nhis belief to be true,' Schiller says, 'but what does he mean by true?\nand how does he establish the claim?' With these questions we embark\non a psychological inquiry. To be true, it appears, means, FOR THAT\nINDIVIDUAL, to work satisfactorily for him; and the working and the\nsatisfaction, since they vary from case to case, admit of no universal\ndescription. What works is true and represents a reality, for the\nindividual for whom it works. If he is infallible, the reality is\n'really' there; if mistaken it is not there, or not there as he thinks\nit. We all believe, when our ideas work satisfactorily; but we don't yet\nknow who of us is infallible; so that the problem of truth and that of\nerror are EBENBURTIG and arise out of the same situations. Schiller,\nremaining with the fallible individual, and treating only\nof reality-for-him, seems to many of his readers to ignore\nreality-in-itself altogether. But that is because he seeks only to tell\nus how truths are attained, not what the content of those truths, when\nattained, shall be. It may be that the truest of all beliefs shall be\nthat in transsubjective realities. It certainly SEEMS the truest for\nno rival belief is as voluminously satisfactory, and it is probably\nDr. Schiller's own belief; but he is not required, for his immediate\npurpose, to profess it. Still less is he obliged to assume it in advance\nas the basis of his discussion.\n\nI, however, warned by the ways of critics, adopt different tactics. I\nstart from the object-pole of the idea-reality chain and follow it in\nthe opposite direction from Schiller's. Anticipating the results of the\ngeneral truth-processes of mankind, I begin with the abstract notion\nof an objective reality. I postulate it, and ask on my own account, I\nVOUCHING FOR THIS REALITY, what would make any one else's idea of it\ntrue for me as well as for him. But I find no different answer from that\nwhich Schiller gives. If the other man's idea leads him, not only\nto believe that the reality is there, but to use it as the reality's\ntemporary substitute, by letting it evoke adaptive thoughts and acts\nsimilar to those which the reality itself would provoke, then it is\ntrue in the only intelligible sense, true through its particular\nconsequences, and true for me as well as for the man.\n\nMy account is more of a logical definition; Schiller's is more of a\npsychological description. Both treat an absolutely identical matter of\nexperience, only they traverse it in opposite ways.\n\nPossibly these explanations may satisfy M. Hebert, whose little\nbook, apart from the false accusation of subjectivism, gives a fairly\ninstructive account of the pragmatist epistemology.\n\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\nABSTRACTIONISM AND 'RELATIVISMUS'\n\nAbstract concepts, such as elasticity, voluminousness, disconnectedness,\nare salient aspects of our concrete experiences which we find it useful\nto single out. Useful, because we are then reminded of other things\nthat offer those same aspects; and, if the aspects carry consequences in\nthose other things, we can return to our first things, expecting those\nsame consequences to accrue.\n\nTo be helped to anticipate consequences is always a gain, and such being\nthe help that abstract concepts give us, it is obvious that their use is\nfulfilled only when we get back again into concrete particulars by their\nmeans, bearing the consequences in our minds, and enriching our notion\nof the original objects therewithal.\n\nWithout abstract concepts to handle our perceptual particulars by,\nwe are like men hopping on one foot. Using concepts along with the\nparticulars, we become bipedal. We throw our concept forward, get\na foothold on the consequence, hitch our line to this, and draw our\npercept up, travelling thus with a hop, skip and jump over the surface\nof life at a vastly rapider rate than if we merely waded through the\nthickness of the particulars as accident rained them down upon our\nheads. Animals have to do this, but men raise their heads higher and\nbreathe freely in the upper conceptual air.\n\nThe enormous esteem professed by all philosophers for the\nconceptual form of consciousness is easy to understand. From Plato's\ntime downwards it has been held to be our sole avenue to essential\ntruth. Concepts are universal, changeless, pure; their relations are\neternal; they are spiritual, while the concrete particulars which they\nenable us to handle are corrupted by the flesh. They are precious in\nthemselves, then, apart from their original use, and confer new dignity\nupon our life.\n\nOne can find no fault with this way of feeling about concepts so long as\ntheir original function does not get swallowed up in the admiration\nand lost. That function is of course to enlarge mentally our momentary\nexperiences by ADDING to them the consequences conceived; but\nunfortunately, that function is not only too often forgotten by\nphilosophers in their reasonings, but is often converted into its exact\nopposite, and made a means of diminishing the original experience\nby DENYING (implicitly or explicitly) all its features save the one\nspecially abstracted to conceive it by.\n\nThis itself is a highly abstract way of stating my complaint, and it\nneeds to be redeemed from obscurity by showing instances of what is\nmeant. Some beliefs very dear to my own heart have been conceived in\nthis viciously abstract way by critics. One is the 'will to believe,' so\ncalled; another is the indeterminism of certain futures; a third is the\nnotion that truth may vary with the standpoint of the man who holds it.\nI believe that the perverse abuse of the abstracting function has led\ncritics to employ false arguments against these doctrines, and often has\nled their readers to false conclusions. I should like to try to save the\nsituation, if possible, by a few counter-critical remarks.\n\nLet me give the name of 'vicious abstractionism' to a way of using\nconcepts which may be thus described: We conceive a concrete situation\nby singling out some salient or important feature in it, and classing it\nunder that; then, instead of adding to its previous characters all the\npositive consequences which the new way of conceiving it may bring, we\nproceed to use our concept privatively; reducing the originally rich\nphenomenon to the naked suggestions of that name abstractly taken,\ntreating it as a case of 'nothing but' that concept, and acting as if\nall the other characters from out of which the concept is abstracted\nwere expunged. [Footnote: Let not the reader confound the fallacy here\ndescribed with legitimately negative inferences such as those drawn in\nthe mood 'celarent' of the logic-books.] Abstraction, functioning in\nthis way, becomes a means of arrest far more than a means of advance\nin thought. It mutilates things; it creates difficulties and finds\nimpossibilities; and more than half the trouble that metaphysicians and\nlogicians give themselves over the paradoxes and dialectic puzzles of\nthe universe may, I am convinced, be traced to this relatively simple\nsource. THE VICIOUSLY PRIVATIVE EMPLOYMENT OF ABSTRACT CHARACTERS AND\nCLASS NAMES is, I am persuaded, one of the great original sins of the\nrationalistic mind.\n\nTo proceed immediately to concrete examples, cast a glance at the belief\nin 'free will,' demolished with such specious persuasiveness recently\nby the skilful hand of Professor Fullerton. [Footnote: Popular Science\nMonthly, N. Y., vols. lviii and lix.] When a common man says that his\nwill is free, what does he mean? He means that there are situations of\nbifurcation inside of his life in which two futures seem to him equally\npossible, for both have their roots equally planted in his present and\nhis past. Either, if realized, will grow out of his previous motives,\ncharacter and circumstances, and will continue uninterruptedly the\npulsations of his personal life. But sometimes both at once are\nincompatible with physical nature, and then it seems to the naive\nobserver as if he made a choice between them NOW, and that the question\nof which future is to be, instead of having been decided at the\nfoundation of the world, were decided afresh at every passing moment in\nI which fact seems livingly to grow, and possibility seems, in turning\nitself towards one act, to exclude all others.\n\nHe who takes things at their face-value here may indeed be deceived. He\nmay far too often mistake his private ignorance of what is predetermined\nfor a real indetermination of what is to be. Yet, however imaginary\nit may be, his picture of the situation offers no appearance of breach\nbetween the past and future. A train is the same train, its passengers\nare the same passengers, its momentum is the same momentum, no matter\nwhich way the switch which fixes its direction is placed. For the\nindeterminist there is at all times enough past for all the different\nfutures in sight, and more besides, to find their reasons in it, and\nwhichever future comes will slide out of that past as easily as the\ntrain slides by the switch. The world, in short, is just as CONTINUOUS\nWITH ITSELF for the believers in free will as for the rigorous\ndeterminists, only the latter are unable to believe in points of\nbifurcation as spots of really indifferent equilibrium or as containing\nshunts which there--and there only, NOT BEFORE--direct existing motions\nwithout altering their amount.\n\nWere there such spots of indifference, the rigorous determinists think,\nthe future and the past would be separated absolutely, for, ABSTRACTLY\nTAKEN, THE WORD 'INDIFFERENT' SUGGESTS DISCONNECTION SOLELY. Whatever\nis indifferent is in so far forth unrelated and detached. Take the\nterm thus strictly, and you see, they tell us, that if any spot of\nindifference is found upon the broad highway between the past and the\nfuture, then no connection of any sort whatever, no continuous momentum,\nno identical passenger, no common aim or agent, can be found on both\nsides of the shunt or switch which there is moved. The place is an\nimpassable chasm.\n\nMr. Fullerton writes--the italics are mine--as follows:--\n\n'In so far as my action is free, what I have been, what I am, what I\nhave always done or striven to do, what I most earnestly wish or resolve\nto do at the present moment--these things can have NO MORE TO DO WITH\nITS FUTURE REALIZATION THAN IF THEY HAD NO EXISTENCE.... The possibility\nis a hideous one; and surely even the most ardent free-willist will,\nwhen he contemplates it frankly, excuse me for hoping that if I am free\nI am at least not very free, and that I may reasonably expect to find\nSOME degree of consistency in my life and actions. ... Suppose that I\nhave given a dollar to a blind beggar. Can I, if it is really an act\nof free-will, be properly said to have given the money? Was it given\nbecause I was a man of tender heart, etc., etc.? ... What has all\nthis to do with acts of free-will? If they are free, they must not be\nconditioned by antecedent circumstances of any sort, by the misery of\nthe beggar, by the pity in the heart of the passer-by. They must be\ncauseless, not determined. They must drop from a clear sky out of the\nvoid, for just in so far as they can be accounted for, they are not\nfree.' [Footnote: Loc. cit., vol. lviii, pp. 189, 188.]\n\nHeaven forbid that I should get entangled here in a controversy about\nthe rights and wrongs of the free-will question at large, for I am only\ntrying to illustrate vicious abstractionism by the conduct of some\nof the doctrine's assailants. The moments of bifurcation, as the\nindeterminist seems to himself to experience them, are moments both of\nre-direction and of continuation. But because in the 'either--or' of the\nre-direction we hesitate, the determinist abstracts this little element\nof discontinuity from the superabundant continuities of the experience,\nand cancels in its behalf all the connective characters with which the\nlatter is filled. Choice, for him, means henceforward DISconnection pure\nand simple, something undetermined in advance IN ANY RESPECT WHATEVER,\nand a life of choices must be a raving chaos, at no two moments of which\ncould we be treated as one and the same man. If Nero were 'free' at. the\nmoment of ordering his mother's murder, Mr. McTaggart [Footnote: Some\nDogmas of Religion, p. 179.] assures us that no one would have the\nright at any other moment to call him a bad man, for he would then be an\nabsolutely other Nero.\n\nA polemic author ought not merely to destroy his victim. He ought to try\na bit to make him feel his error--perhaps not enough to convert him,\nbut enough to give him a bad conscience and to weaken the energy of his\ndefence. These violent caricatures of men's beliefs arouse only contempt\nfor the incapacity of their authors to see the situations out of which\nthe problems grow. To treat the negative character of one abstracted\nelement as annulling all the positive features with which it coexists,\nis no way to change any actual indeterminist's way of looking on the\nmatter, tho it may make the gallery applaud.\n\nTurn now to some criticisms of the 'will to believe,' as another example\nof the vicious way in which abstraction is currently employed. The right\nto believe in things for the truth of which complete objective proof is\nyet lacking is defended by those who apprehend certain human situations\nin their concreteness. In those situations the mind has alternatives\nbefore it so vast that the full evidence for either branch is missing,\nand yet so significant that simply to wait for proof, and to doubt while\nwaiting, might often in practical respects be the same thing as weighing\ndown the negative side. Is life worth while at all? Is there any general\nmeaning in all this cosmic weather? Is anything being permanently bought\nby all this suffering? Is there perhaps a transmundane experience in\nBeing, something corresponding to a 'fourth dimension,' which, if we had\naccess to it, might patch up some of this world's zerrissenheit and\nmake things look more rational than they at first appear? Is there a\nsuperhuman consciousness of which our minds are parts, and from which\ninspiration and help may come? Such are the questions in which the right\nto take sides practically for yes or no is affirmed by some of us, while\nothers hold that this is methodologically inadmissible, and summon us to\ndie professing ignorance and proclaiming the duty of every one to refuse\nto believe.\n\nI say nothing of the personal inconsistency of some of these critics,\nwhose printed works furnish exquisite illustrations of the will to\nbelieve, in spite of their denunciations of it as a phrase and as a\nrecommended thing. Mr. McTaggart, whom I will once more take as an\nexample, is sure that 'reality is rational and righteous' and 'destined\nsub specie temporis to become perfectly good'; and his calling this\nbelief a result of necessary logic has surely never deceived any reader\nas to its real genesis in the gifted author's mind. Mankind is made on\ntoo uniform a pattern for any of us to escape successfully from acts of\nfaith. We have a lively vision of what a certain view of the universe\nwould mean for us. We kindle or we shudder at the thought, and our\nfeeling runs through our whole logical nature and animates its workings.\nIt CAN'T be that, we feel; it MUST be this. It must be what it OUGHT\nto be, and OUGHT to be this; and then we seek for every reason, good\nor bad, to make this which so deeply ought to be, seem objectively the\nprobable thing. We show the arguments against it to be insufficient, so\nthat it MAY be true; we represent its appeal to be to our whole nature's\nloyalty and not to any emaciated faculty of syllogistic proof. We\nreinforce it by remembering the enlargement of our world by music, by\nthinking of the promises of sunsets and the impulses from vernal woods.\nAnd the essence of the whole experience, when the individual swept\nthrough it says finally 'I believe,' is the intense concreteness of\nhis vision, the individuality of the hypothesis before him, and the\ncomplexity of the various concrete motives and perceptions that issue in\nhis final state.\n\nBut see now how the abstractionist treats this rich and intricate vision\nthat a certain state of things must be true. He accuses the believer of\nreasoning by the following syllogism:--\n\nAll good desires must be fulfilled; The desire to believe this\nproposition is a good desire;\n\nErgo, this proposition must be believed.\n\nHe substitutes this abstraction for the concrete state of mind of the\nbeliever, pins the naked absurdity of it upon him, and easily proves\nthat any one who defends him must be the greatest fool on earth. As if\nany real believer ever thought in this preposterous way, or as if any\ndefender of the legitimacy of men's concrete ways of concluding ever\nused the abstract and general premise, 'All desires must be fulfilled'!\nNevertheless, Mr. McTaggart solemnly and laboriously refutes the\nsyllogism in sections 47 to 57 of the above-cited book. He shows that\nthere is no fixed link in the dictionary between the abstract concepts\n'desire,' 'goodness' and 'reality'; and he ignores all the links which\nin the single concrete case the believer feels and perceives to be\nthere! He adds:--\n\n'When the reality of a thing is uncertain, the argument encourages us to\nsuppose that our approval of a thing can determine its reality. And when\nthis unhallowed link has once been established, retribution overtakes\nus. For when the reality of the thing is independently certain, we\n[then] have to admit that the reality of the thing should determine our\napproval of that thing. I find it difficult to imagine a more degraded\nposition.'\n\nOne here feels tempted to quote ironically Hegel's famous equation of\nthe real with the rational to his english disciple, who ends his chapter\nwith the heroic words:--\n\n'For those who do not pray, there remains the resolve that, so far as\ntheir strength may permit, neither the pains of death nor the pains\nof life shall drive them to any comfort in that which they hold to be\nfalse, or drive them from any comfort [discomfort?] in that which they\nhold to be true.'\n\nHow can so ingenious-minded a writer fail to see how far over the heads\nof the enemy all his arrows pass? When Mr. McTaggart himself believes\nthat the universe is run by the dialectic energy of the absolute idea,\nhis insistent desire to have a world of that sort is felt by him to\nbe no chance example of desire in general, but an altogether peculiar\ninsight-giving passion to which, in this if in no other instance, he\nwould be stupid not to yield. He obeys its concrete singularity, not\nthe bare abstract feature in it of being a 'desire.' His situation is as\nparticular as that of an actress who resolves that it is best for her\nto marry and leave the stage, of a priest who becomes secular, of a\npolitician who abandons public life. What sensible man would seek\nto refute the concrete decisions of such persons by tracing them\nto abstract premises, such as that 'all actresses must marry,' 'all\nclergymen must be laymen,' 'all politicians should resign their posts'?\nYet this type of refutation, absolutely unavailing though it be for\npurposes of conversion, is spread by Mr. McTaggart through many pages of\nhis book. For the aboundingness of our real reasons he substitutes\none narrow point. For men's real probabilities he gives a skeletonized\nabstraction which no man was ever tempted to believe.\n\nThe abstraction in my next example is less simple, but is quite as\nflimsy as a weapon of attack. Empiricists think that truth in general is\ndistilled from single men's beliefs; and the so-called pragmatists 'go\nthem one better' by trying to define what it consists in when it comes.\nIt consists, I have elsewhere said, in such a working on the part of the\nbeliefs as may bring the man into satisfactory relations with objects to\nwhich these latter point. The working is of course a concrete working\nin the actual experience of human beings, among their ideas, feelings,\nperceptions, beliefs and acts, as well as among the physical things\nof their environment, and the relations must be understood as being\npossible as well as actual. In the chapter on truth of my book\nPragmatism I have taken pains to defend energetically this view. Strange\nindeed have been the misconceptions of it by its enemies, and many have\nthese latter been. Among the most formidable-sounding onslaughts on the\nattempt to introduce some concreteness into our notion of what the truth\nof an idea may mean, is one that has been raised in many quarters to the\neffect that to make truth grow in any way out of human opinion is but\nto reproduce that protagorean doctrine that the individual man is\n'the measure of all things,' which Plato in his immortal dialogue, the\nThaeatetus, is unanimously said to have laid away so comfortably in\nits grave two thousand years ago. The two cleverest brandishers of this\nobjection to make truth concrete, Professors Rickert and Munsterberg,\nwrite in German, [Footnote: Munsterberg's book has just appeared in an\nEnglish version: The Eternal Values, Boston, 1909.] and 'relativismus'\nis the name they give to the heresy which they endeavor to uproot.\n\nThe first step in their campaign against 'relativismus' is entirely\nin the air. They accuse relativists--and we pragmatists are typical\nrelativists--of being debarred by their self-adopted principles,\nnot only from the privilege which rationalist philosophers enjoy, of\nbelieving that these principles of their own are truth impersonal and\nabsolute, but even of framing the abstract notion of such a truth, in\nthe pragmatic sense, of an ideal opinion in which all men might agree,\nand which no man should ever wish to change. Both charges fall wide\nof their mark. I myself, as a pragmatist, believe in my own account of\ntruth as firmly as any rationalist can possibly believe in his. And I\nbelieve in it for the very reason that I have the idea of truth which\nmy learned adversaries contend that no pragmatist can frame. I expect,\nnamely, that the more fully men discuss and test my account, the more\nthey will agree that it fits, and the less will they desire a change.\nI may of course be premature in this confidence, and the glory of\nbeing truth final and absolute may fall upon some later revision and\ncorrection of my scheme, which later will then be judged untrue in\njust the measure in which it departs from that finally satisfactory\nformulation. To admit, as we pragmatists do, that we are liable to\ncorrection (even tho we may not expect it) involves the use on our\npart of an ideal standard. Rationalists themselves are, as individuals,\nsometimes sceptical enough to admit the abstract possibility of their\nown present opinions being corrigible and revisable to some degree, so\nthe fact that the mere NOTION of an absolute standard should seem to\nthem so important a thing to claim for themselves and to deny to us is\nnot easy to explain. If, along with the notion of the standard, they\ncould also claim its exclusive warrant for their own fulminations now,\nit would be important to them indeed. But absolutists like Rickert\nfreely admit the sterility of the notion, even in their own hands. Truth\nis what we OUGHT to believe, they say, even tho no man ever did or shall\nbelieve it, and even tho we have no way of getting at it save by the\nusual empirical processes of testing our opinions by one another and\nby facts. Pragmatically, then, this part of the dispute is idle. No\nrelativist who ever actually walked the earth [Footnote: Of course\nthe bugaboo creature called 'the sceptic' in the logic-books, who\ndogmatically makes the statement that no statement, not even the one he\nnow makes, is true, is a mere mechanical toy--target for the rationalist\nshooting-gallery--hit him and he turns a summersault--yet he is the only\nsort of relativist whom my colleagues appear able to imagine to exist.]\nhas denied the regulative character in his own thinking of the notion of\nabsolute truth. What is challenged by relativists is the pretence on any\none's part to have found for certain at any given moment what the shape\nof that truth is. Since the better absolutists agree in this, admitting\nthat the proposition 'There is absolute truth' is the only absolute\ntruth of which we can be sure, [Footnote: Compare Bickert's Gegenstand\nder Erkentniss, pp. 187, 138. Munsterberg's version of this first truth\nis that 'Es gibt eine Welt,'--see his Philosophie der Werte, pp. 38 and\n74 And, after all, both these philosophers confess in the end that the\nprimal truth of which they consider our supposed denial so irrational\nis not properly an insight at all, but a dogma adopted by the will which\nany one who turns his back on duty may disregard! But if it all reverts\nto 'the will to believe,' pragmatists have that privilege as well as\ntheir critics.] further debate is practically unimportant, so we may\npass to their next charge.\n\nIt is in this charge that the vicious abstractionism becomes most\napparent. The antipragmatist, in postulating absolute truth, refuses\nto give any account of what the words may mean. For him they form a\nself-explanatory term. The pragmatist, on the contrary, articulately\ndefines their meaning. Truth absolute, he says, means an ideal set\nof formulations towards which all opinions may in the long run of\nexperience be expected to converge. In this definition of absolute truth\nhe not only postulates that there is a tendency to such convergence\nof opinions, to such ultimate consensus, but he postulates the other\nfactors of his definition equally, borrowing them by anticipation from\nthe true conclusions expected to be reached. He postulates the existence\nof opinions, he postulates the experience that will sift them, and the\nconsistency which that experience will show. He justifies himself in\nthese assumptions by saying that they are not postulates in the strict\nsense but simple inductions from the past extended to the future by\nanalogy; and he insists that human opinion has already reached a pretty\nstable equilibrium regarding them, and that if its future development\nfails to alter them, the definition itself, with all its terms included,\nwill be part of the very absolute truth which it defines. The hypothesis\nwill, in short, have worked successfully all round the circle and proved\nself-corroborative, and the circle will be closed.\n\nThe anti-pragmatist, however, immediately falls foul of the word\n'opinion' here, abstracts it from the universe of life, and uses it as\na bare dictionary-substantive, to deny the rest of the assumptions which\nit coexists withal. The dictionary says that an opinion is 'what some\none thinks or believes.' This definition leaves every one's opinion free\nto be autogenous, or unrelated either to what any one else may think or\nto what the truth may be.\n\nTherefore, continue our abstractionists, we must conceive it as\nessentially thus unrelated, so that even were a billion men to sport the\nsame opinion, and only one man to differ, we could admit no collateral\ncircumstances which might presumptively make it more probable that he,\nnot they, should be wrong. Truth, they say, follows not the counting of\nnoses, nor is it only another name for a majority vote. It is a relation\nthat antedates experience, between our opinions and an independent\nsomething which the pragmatist account ignores, a relation which, tho\nthe opinions of individuals should to all eternity deny it, would still\nremain to qualify them as false. To talk of opinions without referring\nto this independent something, the anti-pragmatist assures us, is to\nplay Hamlet with Hamlet's part left out.\n\nBut when the pragmatist speaks of opinions, does he mean any such\ninsulated and unmotived abstractions as are here supposed? Of course\nnot, he means men's opinions in the flesh, as they have really formed\nthemselves, opinions surrounded by their causes and the influences\nthey obey and exert, and along with the whole environment of social\ncommunication of which they are a part and out of which they take\ntheir rise. Moreover the 'experience' which the pragmatic definition\npostulates is the independent something which the anti-pragmatist\naccuses him of ignoring. Already have men grown unanimous in the opinion\nthat such experience is of an independent reality, the existence of\nwhich all opinions must acknowledge, in order to be true. Already do\nthey agree that in the long run it is useless to resist experience's\npressure; that the more of it a man has, the better position he stands\nin, in respect of truth; that some men, having had more experience, are\ntherefore better authorities than others; that some are also wiser by\nnature and better able to interpret the experience they have had; that\nit is one part of such wisdom to compare notes, discuss, and follow the\nopinion of our betters; and that the more systematically and thoroughly\nsuch comparison and weighing of opinions is pursued, the truer the\nopinions that survive are likely to be. When the pragmatist talks\nof opinions, it is opinions as they thus concretely and livingly and\ninteractingly and correlatively exist that he has in mind; and when the\nanti-pragmatist tries to floor him because the word 'opinion' can also\nbe taken abstractly and as if it had no environment, he simply ignores\nthe soil out of which the whole discussion grows. His weapons cut\nthe air and strike no blow. No one gets wounded in the war against\ncaricatures of belief and skeletons of opinion of which the German\nonslaughts upon 'relativismus' consists. Refuse to use the word\n'opinion' abstractly, keep it in its real environment, and the withers\nof pragmatism remain unwrung. That men do exist who are 'opinionated,'\nin the sense that their opinions are self-willed, is unfortunately a\nfact that must be admitted, no matter what one's notion of truth in\ngeneral may be. But that this fact should make it impossible for truth\nto form itself authentically out of the life of opinion is what no\ncritic has yet proved. Truth may well consist of certain opinions, and\ndoes indeed consist of nothing but opinions, tho not every opinion need\nbe true. No pragmatist needs to dogmatize about the consensus of opinion\nin the future being right--he need only postulate that it will probably\ncontain more of truth than any one's opinion now.\n\n\n\nXIV\n\nTWO ENGLISH CRITICS\n\nMr. Bertrand Russell's article entitled 'Transatlantic Truth,'\n[Footnote: In the Albany Review for January, 1908.] has all the\nclearness, dialectic subtlety, and wit which one expects from his pen,\nbut it entirely fails to hit the right point of view for apprehending\nour position. When, for instance, we say that a true proposition is one\nthe consequences of believing which are good, he assumes us to mean that\nany one who believes a proposition to be true must first have made\nout clearly that its consequences be good, and that his belief must\nprimarily be in that fact,--an obvious absurdity, for that fact is the\ndeliverance of a new proposition, quite different from the first one and\nis, moreover, a fact usually very hard to verify, it being 'far easier,'\nas Mr. Russell justly says, 'to settle the plain question of fact: \"Have\npopes always been infallible?\"' than to settle the question whether the\neffects of thinking them infallible are on the whole good.'\n\nWe affirm nothing as silly as Mr. Russell supposes. Good consequences\nare not proposed by us merely as a sure sign, mark, or criterion, by\nwhich truth's presence is habitually ascertained, tho they may indeed\nserve on occasion as such a sign; they are proposed rather as the\nlurking motive inside of every truth-claim, whether the 'trower' be\nconscious of such motive, or whether he obey it blindly. They are\nproposed as the causa existendi of our beliefs, not as their logical cue\nor premise, and still less as their objective deliverance or content.\nThey assign the only intelligible practical meaning to that difference\nin our beliefs which our habit of calling them true or false comports.\n\nNo truth-claimer except the pragmatist himself need ever be aware of the\npart played in his own mind by consequences, and he himself is aware\nof it only abstractly and in general, and may at any moment be quite\noblivious of it with respect to his own beliefs.\n\nMr. Russell next joins the army of those who inform their readers that\naccording to the pragmatist definition of the word 'truth' the belief\nthat A exists may be 'true' even when A does not exist. This is the\nusual slander repeated to satiety by our critics. They forget that in\nany concrete account of what is denoted by 'truth' in human life, the\nword can only be used relatively to some particular trower. Thus, I may\nhold it true that Shakespeare wrote the plays that bear his name, and\nmay express my opinion to a critic. If the critic be both a pragmatist\nand a baconian, he will in his capacity of pragmatist see plain that the\nworkings of my opinion, I being who I am, make it perfectly true for\nme, while in his capacity of baconian he still believes that Shakespeare\nnever wrote the plays in question. But most anti-pragmatist critics\ntake the wont 'truth' as something absolute, and easily play on their\nreader's readiness to treat his OWE truths as the absolute ones. If\nthe reader whom they address believes that A does not exist, while we\npragmatists show that those for whom tho belief that it exists works\nsatisfactorily will always call it true, he easily sneers at the naivete\nof our contention, for is not then the belief in question 'true,' tho\nwhat it declares as fact has, as the reader so well knows, no existence?\nMr. Russell speaks of our statement as an 'attempt to get rid of fact'\nand naturally enough considers it 'a failure' (p. 410). 'The old notion\nof truth reappears,' he adds--that notion being, of course, that when a\nbelief is true, its object does exist.\n\nIt is, of course, BOUND to exist, on sound pragmatic principles.\nConcepts signify consequences. How is the world made different for me\nby my conceiving an opinion of mine under the concept 'true'? First, an\nobject must be findable there (or sure signs of such an object must be\nfound) which shall agree with the opinion. Second, such an opinion must\nnot be contradicted by anything else I am aware of. But in spite of\nthe obvious pragmatist requirement that when I have said truly that\nsomething exists, it SHALL exist, the slander which Mr. Russell repeats\nhas gained the widest currency.\n\nMr. Russell himself is far too witty and athletic a ratiocinator simply\nto repeat the slander dogmatically. Being nothing if not mathematical\nand logical, he must prove the accusation secundum artem, and convict us\nnot so much of error as of absurdity. I have sincerely tried to follow\nthe windings of his mind in this procedure, but for the life of me I\ncan only see in it another example of what I have called (above, p. 249)\nvicious abstractionism. The abstract world of mathematics and pure logic\nis so native to Mr. Russell that he thinks that we describers of the\nfunctions of concrete fact must also mean fixed mathematical terms\nand functions. A mathematical term, as a, b, c, x, y, sin., log.,\nis self-sufficient, and terms of this sort, once equated, can be\nsubstituted for one another in endless series without error. Mr.\nRussell, and also Mr. Hawtrey, of whom I shall speak presently, seem to\nthink that in our mouth also such terms as 'meaning,' 'truth,' 'belief,'\n'object,' 'definition,' are self-sufficients with no context of varying\nrelation that might be further asked about. What a word means is\nexpressed by its definition, isn't it? The definition claims to be exact\nand adequate, doesn't it? Then it can be substituted for the word--since\nthe two are identical--can't it? Then two words with the same definition\ncan be substituted for one another, n'est--ce pas? Likewise two\ndefinitions of the same word, nicht wahr, etc., etc., till it will be\nindeed strange if you can't convict some one of self-contradiction and\nabsurdity.\n\nThe particular application of this rigoristic treatment to my own little\naccount of truth as working seems to be something like what follows.\nI say 'working' is what the 'truth' of our ideas means, and call it a\ndefinition. But since meanings and things meant, definitions and things\ndefined, are equivalent and interchangeable, and nothing extraneous to\nits definition can be meant when a term is used, it follows that who so\ncalls an idea true, and means by that word that it works, cannot\nmean anything else, can believe nothing but that it does work, and in\nparticular can neither imply nor allow anything about its object or\ndeliverance. 'According to the pragmatists,' Mr. Russell writes, 'to say\n\"it is true that other people exist\" means \"it is useful to believe\nthat other people exist.\" But if so, then these two phrases are merely\ndifferent words for the same proposition; therefore when I believe the\none, I believe the other' (p. 400). [Logic, I may say in passing, would\nseem to require Mr. Russell to believe them both at once, but he ignores\nthis consequence, and considers that other people exist' and 'it is\nuseful to believe that they do EVEN IF THEY DON'T,' must be identical\nand therefore substitutable propositions in the pragmatist mouth.]\n\nBut may not real terms, I now ask, have accidents not expressed in their\ndefinitions? and when a real value is finally substituted for the result\nof an algebraic series of substituted definitions, do not all these\naccidents creep back? Beliefs have their objective 'content' or\n'deliverance' as well as their truth, and truth has its implications\nas well as its workings. If any one believe that other men exist, it is\nboth a content of his belief and an implication of its truth, that they\nshould exist in fact. Mr. Russell's logic would seem to exclude,\n'by definition,' all such accidents as contents, implications, and\nassociates, and would represent us as translating all belief into a sort\nof belief in pragmatism itself--of all things! If I say that a speech is\neloquent, and explain 'eloquent' as meaning the power to work in certain\nways upon the audience; or if I say a book is original, and define\n'original' to mean differing from other books, Russell's logic, if I\nfollow it at all, would seem to doom me to agreeing that the speech is\nabout eloquence, and the book about other books. When I call a belief\ntrue, and define its truth to mean its workings, I certainly do not mean\nthat the belief is a belief ABOUT the workings. It is a belief about the\nobject, and I who talk about the workings am a different subject, with\na different universe of discourse, from that of the believer of whose\nconcrete thinking I profess to give an account.\n\nThe social proposition 'other men exist' and the pragmatist proposition\n'it is expedient to believe that other men exist' come from different\nuniverses of discourse. One can believe the second without being\nlogically compelled to believe the first; one can believe the first\nwithout having ever heard of the second; or one can believe them both.\nThe first expresses the object of a belief, the second tells of one\ncondition of the belief's power to maintain itself. There is no identity\nof any kind, save the term 'other men' which they contain in common, in\nthe two propositions; and to treat them as mutually substitutable, or\nto insist that we shall do so, is to give up dealing with realities\naltogether.\n\nMr. Ralph Hawtrey, who seems also to serve under the banner of\nabstractionist logic, convicts us pragmatists of absurdity by arguments\nsimilar to Mr. Russell's. [Footnote: See The New Quarterly, for March,\n1908.]\n\nAs a favor to us and for the sake of the argument, he abandons the\nword 'true' to our fury, allowing it to mean nothing but the fact that\ncertain beliefs are expedient; and he uses the word 'correctness' (as\nMr. Pratt uses the word 'trueness') to designate a fact, not about the\nbelief, but about the belief's object, namely that it is as the belief\ndeclares it. 'When therefore,' he writes, 'I say it is correct to say\nthat Caesar is dead, I mean \"Caesar is dead.\" This must be regarded as\nthe definition of correctness.' And Mr. Hawtrey then goes on to demolish\nme by the conflict of the definitions. What is 'true' for the pragmatist\ncannot be what is 'correct,' he says, 'for the definitions are not\nlogically interchangeable; or if we interchange them, we reach the\ntautology:\n\n\"Caesar is dead\" means \"it is expedient to believe that Caesar is dead.\"\nBut what is it expedient to believe? Why, \"that Caesar is dead.\" A\nprecious definition indeed of 'Caesar is dead.'\n\nMr. Hawtrey's conclusion would seem to be that the pragmatic definition\nof the truth of a belief in no way implies--what?--that the believer\nshall believe in his own belief's deliverance?--or that the pragmatist\nwho is talking about him shall believe in that deliverance? The two\ncases are quite different. For the believer, Caesar must of course\nreally exist; for the pragmatist critic he need not, for the pragmatic\ndeliverance belongs, as I have just said, to another universe of\ndiscourse altogether. When one argues by substituting definition for\ndefinition, one needs to stay in the same universe.\n\nThe great shifting of universes in this discussion occurs when we carry\nthe word 'truth' from the subjective into the objective realm, applying\nit sometimes to a property of opinions, sometimes to the facts which the\nopinions assert. A number of writers, as Mr. Russell himself, Mr. G.\nE. Moore, and others, favor the unlucky word 'proposition,' which seems\nexpressly invented to foster this confusion, for they speak of truth as\na property of 'propositions.' But in naming propositions it is almost\nimpossible not to use the word 'that.'\n\nTHAT Caesar is dead, THAT virtue is its own reward, are propositions.\n\nI do not say that for certain logical purposes it may not be useful to\ntreat propositions as absolute entities, with truth or falsehood\ninside of them respectively, or to make of a complex like\n'that--Caesar--is--dead' a single term and call it a 'truth.' But the\n'that' here has the extremely convenient ambiguity for those who wish to\nmake trouble for us pragmatists, that sometimes it means the FACT that,\nand sometimes the BELIEF that, Caesar is no longer living. When I then\ncall the belief true, I am told that the truth means the fact; when I\nclaim the fact also, I am told that my definition has excluded the fact,\nbeing a definition only of a certain peculiarity in the belief--so that\nin the end I have no truth to talk about left in my possession.\n\nThe only remedy for this intolerable ambiguity is, it seems to me, to\nstick to terms consistently. 'Reality,' 'idea' or 'belief,' and the\n'truth of the idea or belief,' which are the terms I have consistently\nheld to, seem to be free from all objection.\n\nWhoever takes terms abstracted from all their natural settings,\nidentifies them with definitions, and treats the latter more algebraico,\nnot only risks mixing universes, but risks fallacies which the man in\nthe street easily detects. To prove 'by definition' that the statement\n'Caesar exists' is identical with a statement about 'expediency' because\nthe one statement is 'true' and the other is about 'true statements,'\nis like proving that an omnibus is a boat because both are vehicles. A\nhorse may be defined as a beast that walks on the nails of his middle\ndigits. Whenever we see a horse we see such a beast, just as whenever\nwe believe a 'truth' we believe something expedient. Messrs. Russell and\nHawtrey, if they followed their antipragmatist logic, would have to say\nhere that we see THAT IT IS such a beast, a fact which notoriously no\none sees who is not a comparative anatomist.\n\nIt almost reconciles one to being no logician that one thereby escapes\nso much abstractionism. Abstractionism of the worst sort dogs Mr.\nRussell in his own trials to tell positively what the word 'truth'\nmeans. In the third of his articles on Meinong, in Mind, vol. xiii, p.\n509 (1904), he attempts this feat by limiting the discussion to three\nterms only, a proposition, its content, and an object, abstracting from\nthe whole context of associated realities in which such terms are found\nin every case of actual knowing. He puts the terms, thus taken in a\nvacuum, and made into bare logical entities, through every possible\npermutation and combination, tortures them on the rack until nothing is\nleft of them, and after all this logical gymnastic, comes out with the\nfollowing portentous conclusion as what he believes to be the correct\nview: that there is no problem at all in truth and falsehood, that some\npropositions are true and some false, just as some roses are red and\nsome white, that belief is a certain attitude towards propositions,\nwhich is called knowledge when they are true, error when they are\nfalse'--and he seems to think that when once this insight is reached the\nquestion may be considered closed forever!\n\nIn spite of my admiration of Mr. Russell's analytic powers, I wish,\nafter reading such an article, that pragmatism, even had it no other\nfunction, might result in making him and other similarly gifted men\nashamed of having used such powers in such abstraction from reality.\nPragmatism saves us at any rate from such diseased abstractionism as\nthose pages show.\n\nP. S. Since the foregoing rejoinder was written an article on Pragmatism\nwhich I believe to be by Mr. Russell has appeared in the Edinburgh\nReview for April, 1909. As far as his discussion of the truth-problem\ngoes, altho he has evidently taken great pains to be fair, it seems\nto me that he has in no essential respect improved upon his former\narguments. I will therefore add nothing further, but simply refer\nreaders who may be curious to pp. 272-280 of the said article.\n\n\n\nXV\n\nA DIALOGUE\n\nAfter correcting the proofs of all that precedes I imagine a residual\nstate of mind on the part of my reader which may still keep him\nunconvinced, and which it may be my duty to try at least to dispel. I\ncan perhaps be briefer if I put what I have to say in dialogue form. Let\nthen the anti-pragmatist begin:--\n\nAnti-Pragmatist:--You say that the truth of an idea is constituted by\nits workings. Now suppose a certain state of facts, facts for example\nof antediluvian planetary history, concerning which the question may be\nasked:\n\n'Shall the truth about them ever be known?' And suppose (leaving the\nhypothesis of an omniscient absolute out of the account) that we assume\nthat the truth is never to be known. I ask you now, brother pragmatist,\nwhether according to you there can be said to be any truth at all about\nsuch a state of facts. Is there a truth, or is there not a truth, in\ncases where at any rate it never comes to be known?\n\nPragmatist:--Why do you ask me such a question?\n\nAnti-Prag.:--Because I think it puts you in a bad dilemma.\n\nPrag.:--How so?\n\nAnti-Prag.:--Why, because if on the one hand you elect to say that\nthere is a truth, you thereby surrender your whole pragmatist theory.\nAccording to that theory, truth requires ideas and workings to\nconstitute it; but in the present instance there is supposed to be no\nknower, and consequently neither ideas nor workings can exist. What then\nremains for you to make your truth of?\n\nPrag.:--Do you wish, like so many of my enemies, to force me to make the\ntruth out of the reality itself? I cannot: the truth is something\nknown, thought or said about the reality, and consequently numerically\nadditional to it. But probably your intent is something different; so\nbefore I say which horn of your dilemma I choose, I ask you to let me\nhear what the other horn may be.\n\nAnti-Prag.:--The other horn is this, that if you elect to say that there\nis no truth under the conditions assumed, because there are no ideas or\nworkings, then you fly in the face of common sense. Doesn't common sense\nbelieve that every state of facts must in the nature of things be truly\nstatable in some kind of a proposition, even tho in point of fact the\nproposition should never be propounded by a living soul?\n\nPrag.:--Unquestionably common sense believes this, and so do I. There\nhave been innumerable events in the history of our planet of which\nnobody ever has been or ever will be able to give an account, yet of\nwhich it can already be said abstractly that only one sort of possible\naccount can ever be true. The truth about any such event is thus already\ngenerically predetermined by the event's nature; and one may accordingly\nsay with a perfectly good conscience that it virtually pre-exists.\nCommon sense is thus right in its instinctive contention.\n\nAnti-Prag.:--Is this then the horn of the dilemma which you stand for?\nDo you say that there is a truth even in cases where it shall never be\nknown?\n\nPrag.:--Indeed I do, provided you let me hold consistently to my own\nconception of truth, and do not ask me to abandon it for something which\nI find impossible to comprehend.--You also believe, do you not, that\nthere is a truth, even in cases where it never shall be known?\n\nAnti-Prag.:--I do indeed believe so.\n\nPrag.:--Pray then inform me in what, according to you, this truth\nregarding the unknown consists.\n\nAnti-Prag.:--Consists?--pray what do you mean by 'consists'? It\nconsists in nothing but itself, or more properly speaking it has neither\nconsistence nor existence, it obtains, it holds.\n\nPrag.:--Well, what relation does it bear to the reality of which it\nholds?\n\nAnti-Prag.:-How do you mean, 'what relation'? It holds of it, of course;\nit knows it, it represents it.\n\nPrag.:--Who knows it? What represents it?\n\nAnti-Prag.:--The truth does; the truth knows it; or rather not exactly\nthat, but any one knows it who possesses the truth. Any true idea of the\nreality represents the truth concerning it.\n\nPrag.:--But I thought that we had agreed that no knower of it, nor any\nidea representing it was to be supposed.\n\nAnti-Prag.:--Sure enough!\n\nPrag.:--Then I beg you again to tell me in what this truth consists, all\nby itself, this tertium quid intermediate between the facts per se, on\nthe one hand, and all knowledge of them, actual or potential, on the\nother. What is the shape of it in this third estate? Of what stuff,\nmental, physical, or 'epistemological,' is it built? What metaphysical\nregion of reality does it inhabit?\n\nAnti-Prag.:--What absurd questions! Isn't it enough to say that it is\ntrue that the facts are so-and-so, and false that they are otherwise?\n\nPrag.:--'It' is true that the facts are so-and-so--I won't yield to the\ntemptation of asking you what is true; but I do ask you whether your\nphrase that 'it is true that' the facts are so-and-so really means\nanything really additional to the bare being so-and-so of the facts\nthemselves.\n\nAnti-Prag.:--It seems to mean more than the bare being of the facts. It\nis a sort of mental equivalent for them, their epistemological function,\ntheir value in noetic terms. Prag.:--A sort of spiritual double or ghost\nof them, apparently! If so, may I ask you where this truth is found.\n\nAnti-Prag.:--Where? where? There is no 'where'--it simply obtains,\nabsolutely obtains.\n\nPrag.:--Not in any one's mind?\n\nAnti-Prag.:--No, for we agreed that no actual knower of the truth should\nbe assumed.\n\nPrag.:--No actual knower, I agree. But are you sure that no notion of a\npotential or ideal knower has anything to do with forming this strangely\nelusive idea of the truth of the facts in your mind?\n\nAnti-Prag.:--Of course if there be a truth concerning the facts, that\ntruth is what the ideal knower would know. To that extent you can't keep\nthe notion of it and the notion of him separate. But it is not him first\nand then it; it is it first and then him, in my opinion.\n\nPrag.:--But you still leave me terribly puzzled as to the status of this\nso-called truth, hanging as it does between earth and heaven, between\nreality and knowledge, grounded in the reality, yet numerically\nadditional to it, and at the same time antecedent to any knower's\nopinion and entirely independent thereof. Is it as independent of the\nknower as you suppose? It looks to me terribly dubious, as if it might\nbe only another name for a potential as distinguished from an actual\nknowledge of the reality. Isn't your truth, after all, simply what\nany successful knower would have to know in case he existed? And in a\nuniverse where no knowers were even conceivable would any truth about\nthe facts there as something numerically distinguishable from the facts\nthemselves, find a place to exist in? To me such truth would not only be\nnon-existent, it would be unimaginable, inconceivable.\n\nAnti-Prag.:--But I thought you said a while ago that there is a truth of\npast events, even tho no one shall ever know it.\n\nPrag.:--Yes, but you must remember that I also stipulated for permission\nto define the word in my own fashion. The truth of an event, past,\npresent, or future, is for me only another name for the fact that if\nthe event ever does get known, the nature of the knowledge is already to\nsome degree predetermined. The truth which precedes actual knowledge of\na fact means only what any possible knower of the fact will eventually\nfind himself necessitated to believe about it. He must believe something\nthat will bring him into satisfactory relations with it, that will prove\na decent mental substitute for it. What this something may be is of\ncourse partly fixed already by the nature of the fact and by the sphere\nof its associations. This seems to me all that you can clearly mean when\nyou say that truth pre-exists to knowledge. It is knowledge anticipated,\nknowledge in the form of possibility merely.\n\nAnti-Prag.:--But what does the knowledge know when it comes? Doesn't it\nknow the truth? And, if so, mustn't the truth be distinct from either\nthe fact or the knowledge?\n\nPrag.:--It seems to me that what the knowledge knows is the fact itself,\nthe event, or whatever the reality may be. Where you see three distinct\nentities in the field, the reality, the knowing, and the truth, I see\nonly two. Moreover, I can see what each of my two entities is known-as,\nbut when I ask myself what your third entity, the truth, is known-as, I\ncan find nothing distinct from the reality on the one hand, and the ways\nin which it may be known on the other. Are you not probably misled by\ncommon language, which has found it convenient to introduce a hybrid\nname, meaning sometimes a kind of knowing and sometimes a reality known,\nto apply to either of these things interchangeably? And has philosophy\nanything to gain by perpetuating and consecrating the ambiguity? If you\ncall the object of knowledge 'reality,' and call the manner of its\nbeing cognized 'truth,' cognized moreover on particular occasions, and\nvariously, by particular human beings who have their various businesses\nwith it, and if you hold consistently to this nomenclature, it seems to\nme that you escape all sorts of trouble.\n\nAnti-Prag.:--Do you mean that you think you escape from my dilemma?\n\nPrag.:--Assuredly I escape; for if truth and knowledge are terms\ncorrelative and interdependent, as I maintain they are, then wherever\nknowledge is conceivable truth is conceivable, wherever knowledge\nis possible truth is possible, wherever knowledge is actual truth is\nactual. Therefore when you point your first horn at me, I think of truth\nactual, and say it doesn't exist. It doesn't; for by hypothesis there is\nno knower, no ideas, no workings. I agree, however, that truth possible\nor virtual might exist, for a knower might possibly be brought to birth;\nand truth conceivable certainly exists, for, abstractly taken, there\nis nothing in the nature of antediluvian events that should make the\napplication of knowledge to them inconceivable. Therefore when you try\nto impale me on your second horn, I think of the truth in question as a\nmere abstract possibility, so I say it does exist, and side with common\nsense.\n\nDo not these distinctions rightly relieve me from embarrassment? And\ndon't you think it might help you to make them yourself?\n\nAnti-Prag.:--Never!--so avaunt with your abominable hair-splitting and\nsophistry! Truth is truth; and never will I degrade it by identifying it\nwith low pragmatic particulars in the way you propose.\n\nPrag.:--Well, my dear antagonist, I hardly hoped to convert an eminent\nintellectualist and logician like you; so enjoy, as long as you live,\nyour own ineffable conception. Perhaps the rising generation will\ngrow up more accustomed than you are to that concrete and empirical\ninterpretation of terms in which the pragmatic method consists. Perhaps\nthey may then wonder how so harmless and natural an account of truth as\nmine could have found such difficulty in entering the minds of men far\nmore intelligent than I can ever hope to become, but wedded by education\nand tradition to the abstractionist manner of thought.","title":"The Meaning of Truth","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":57444}