CHAPTER XX.
THE NATURE OF PRAGMATIC TRUTH.

§ 360. Some time ago my attention was called to the writings of Georg Simmel, who, though his energies have been devoted, for the most part, to the study of Economics and to the history of philosophy, is justly regarded as one of Germany's leading pragmatists.^{1} Between economical values and logical values Herr Simmel finds a resemblance which is not merely external, but deep-rooted in the very nature of value, and for this reason in the third chapter of his Philosophie des Geldes, he gives us a sketch of his views on truth, a sketch which is extremely useful for our purposes, because it provides us with a connecting link between the Relativism implicit in absolute truth and the Humanism which is the chief characteristic of pragmatic truth. Indeed, Herr Simmel has given to pragmatic truth a philosophic setting which seems to present it in its true light, and to give one an appreciation of its real meaning, such as is difficult to obtain from the somewhat disconnected and more rhetorical utterances of Anglo-american pragmatists.

§ 361. Herr Simmel's standpoint is essentially physiological and anthropomorphic.^{2} Like Dr. Schiller, he believes that our 'world' is due to a process whereby we attribute to objective reality forms that we find within our psycho-physical organism, in which an alternation between rest and motion, between anabolism and katabolism is the primary condition of life.^{3}

Then only do we think that we are qualified to enter as part of the universe, provided its form corresponds with the forms of our own inner nature. Accordingly, we organise the irregular co-existences and sequences of our first impressions, in that we distinguish in an object its permanent and essential substance from its motions, colourings and changes whose comings and goings leave the constancy of its essence unchanged. Just as we believe that we perceive within ourselves a psychical being whose existence and character depends upon itself alone, and distinguish this from those thoughts, occurrences, and developments which are what they are only through reference to others; so we look in the world for substances, magnitudes, and forces whose being and meaning is grounded in themselves alone, and distinguish these from all relative determinations which are what they are only through comparison, contact, or reaction with others. . . . [Thus grows up the distinction between absolute and relative.] And though in our psycho-physical being, motion and rest, activity ad extra and aggregation ad intra are bound together in such a way that they find in one another their actuality and their meaning, yet it is the 'rest' and the 'substantial' that we find peculiarly full of value. Hence in the objective world also we look for the self-sufficient and the self-grounded, for substances, spirits, things in themselves, and in this way gain fixed points which direct us in the confused jumble of phenomena and give us the objective counterpart of that which we represent in ourselves as our values and definitives.^{4}

This search for an absolute, however, is only a preliminary stage which must be got over by thinking. [Thus] it is a fundamental characteristic of modern science that it understands phenomena no longer through and as special substances, but as movements whose grounds move further and further away into propertylessness; that it seeks to express the qualities attached to things as quantitative, and therefore as relatively defined; that it teaches instead of organic, physical, ethical and social forms, a restless evolution in which each element acquires a place confined and determinable only through its relation with its before and its after; that it renounces the actual essence of things as such, and contents itself with the establishing of relations which appear between 'things' and our minds, as seen from the standpoint of the latter.^{5}

§ 362. On the other hand. all this seems to postulate a fixed point, an absolute truth. . . . The flux and relativity of physical processes must not affect the presuppositions and rules according to which we first decide whether our actual knowledge really bears this or tnother character. The purely psychological origin into which all objective knowledge has to be analysed, needs fixed axioms which themselves cannot have a purely psychological significance. . . . The truth of any proposition can be known only by reason of criteria which draw their legitimation from yet higher ones, so that there is built up a series of items of knowledge one tove the other, each of which is valid only on condition of another. Yet these series -- lest they hang in the air, or rather in order to be possible at all -- must somewhere have an ultimate ground, a highest court of appeal, which shall give legitimation to all the following links in the chain without needing such itself. This is the schema under which all actual knowledge can be coordinated. But what this absolute knowledge is, we can never know, for the process of analysis into higher principles can never come to an end. There is always the possibility of discovering that what we have taken to be an ultimate proposition is really conditioned by another, as the history of knowledge has shown times without number.^{6} We certainly have axioms which cannot be proved and upon which all derivative proofs depend but thought stops with these only until it can get beyond to something higher which on its side shall prove the hitherto axiomatic.^{7}

Again, if one pursues the proof of a proposition into its grounds, and these again into theirs, one often finds that the proof is possible only provided one assumes the first proposition which was to be proved, as already proved. . . . [And] if we do not want to stop dogmatically and once for all at a truth which needs no proof, we had better take this reciprocity of mutual proof as the fundamental form of thought and of completed knowledge. Thus knowledge is a process which hangs freely in the air, so to speak, and of which the elements determine reciprocally their positions, just as masses of matter do theirs in virtue of their weight. And this is no mere coincidence, but a necessity peculiar to our minds, which know truth through proof, and so must either put off its knowability indefinitely, or twist it round in a circle. For one proposition is true only in relation to another, which other is true ultimately only in relation to the first. Thus the whole of knowledge is as little true as the whole of matter is heavy. It is only of the relations of the parts among themselves that these properties are valid. Of the whole they cannot he predicated without a contradiction.^{8}

§ 363. Starting from a physiological point of view, Herr Simmel has led us on to a doctrine of truth which is very similar to the Coherence-theory of Dr. Joachim, except that he lays the chief emphasis on the relativity of the parts rather than on the unity of the whole. But Herr Simmel does not stop here. He finds that the relativity which exists between the inner elements of knowledge is but part of a wider relativity which embraces both the theoretical and the practical interests of life. In knowing we do not copy reality, but all presentation is a function of a special psycho-physical organisation.

From the vast difference which is to be found between the weltbilder of the insect with its facet-eyes, of the eagle with a power of sight the keenness of which is inconceivable, of the proteus anguinus with eyes scarce developed at all, of ourselves and of countless others, we are forced to conclude that no one copies the outer world in its objectively existing form. Our representations are directive of our practical life, of actions through which we place ourselves in connection with the world as it stands relatively independent of our subjectively determined ideas. [And similarly for animals], though their actions are determined by very different forms of the same world. [In both cases] actions undertaken by reason of ideas which certainly in no way resemble objectively existing beings, obtain from the latter results of such a calculability, purposiveness, certainty, that it could not be greater even it we possessed a knowledge of objective relations as they are in themselves; whilst other actions, viz., those which result from 'false' ideas, result only in real injury.^{9}

What, then, can truth mean [asks Herr Simmel], which is wholly different for the animals and for us, which in no way corresponds with objective reality, and which nevertheless leads to the desired results as surely as if this were the case?^{10} [His reply is:] Each species has an organisation suited to its special purpose in life. Hence whether an action prompted by a presentation will lead to useful consequences cannot be determined by the content of that presentation but will depend upon the result to which the presentation leads as a real process within the organism acting in co-operation with the rest of its psycho-physical powers and in reference to the special life-exigencies of each. If, then, we say that man performs actions which support and further life on the basis of true ideas, and actions which are destructive of life on the basis of false ideas, truth, which is different for each species endowed with consciousness and for none is a mirror of the thing in itself, can only mean that idea which in connection with the entire and specific organism its faculties and its needs, leads to useful results. Originally an idea is not useful because it is true; but we give the honourable name of 'true' to those ideas which, working in us as real forces or processes, lead to useful conduct. Hence there are, in the main, as many specifically distinct truths as there are specifically distinct organisations and life exigencies. The sense-form which for the insect is 'truth,' would clearly not be so for the eagle since that very sense-form on the basis of which the insect, in connection with his inner and outer constellations acts usefully, would for the eagle in connection with his lead to wholly meaningless and destructive actions.^{11}

§ 364. That man now has an aggregate of fixed and normative truths is due to his having always exercised a choice in regard to the countless ideas which arise psychologically within him, according to whether the actions which they prompted led to useful or harmful consequences. He has no other criterion of truth except that it leads to the desired consequences. But inasmuch as by means of this process of selection there has been bred within him certain permanently useful ways of perceiving, these together form a kingdom of the theoretical, which now acts as an inner criterion determining the relevance of all fresh ideas. Thus individual items of knowledge reciprocally support one another [v.g., in Geometry] in that norms and facts, once fixed, serve as a proof for others. . . . But the whole itself has validity only in relation to determinate psychophysical organisms, to their conditions of life, and to the useful nature of their actions.^{12}

This notion of truth as the relation of ideas to one another, but as belonging to none as an absolute quality, applies also to the idea of a single object. Kant was right when he said that out of the chaotic manifold of our sense-impressions we pick out individual impressions as belonging to one another and group them into units, which we describe as 'objects.' An object is nothing but a totality of impressions gathered into a unity, and its unity is nothing but the functional inter-connection, inter-relation, and inter-dependence of the individual impressions and perception-materials. . . . As the unity of a social body means the forces of interaction and cohesion exercised by the individuals which compose it, or, in other words, the dynamical relation between them; so the mental realisation of the unity of an object implies nothing more than interaction between the elements which go to form the percept of it. In knowledge, just as in art, isolated elements are neither true nor false in themselves, for they do not copy reality hut their truth consists in the relation of the elements one to another.^{13}

§ 365. One may formulate Relativism in respect to the principles of knowledge thus: Constitutive axioms expressing once and for all the being of things must be transformed into regulative norms which are merely landmarks for advancing knowledge. The highest and most ultimate abstractions, unifications and integrations of thought must give up their dogmatic claim to final knowledge. Instead of saying things are so and so we should rather say knowledge works as if things were so and so. And in this way it is possible to express the mode and manner of the relation of our knowledge to the world. For the constitutive assertions which attempt to fix the being of things having been changed into heuristic principles which only profess to determine our ways of knowing, clearly it is possible for contradictory principles to be valid at one and the same time, since we may use each methodologically just as we may use either the inductive or the deductive method. Thus dogmatic fixity must give place to the living, flowing process of knowledge. Only if we regard ultimate principles not as limits mutually contradictory, but as ways to knowledge, inter-related, inter-dependent, and mutually completing one another, can we ever attain unity in knowledge.^{14}

Of the relativity of ultimate principles Herr Simmel gives many examples:

Our thought is so constructed that it must strive after unity, . . . but as soon as this unity is reached, as in the Substance of Spinoza, it is at once apparent that we cannot use it for the understanding of the world without a second principle. Monism thus passes beyond itself into Dualism and Pluralism, and so we proceed from the many to the one and from the one to the many. Neither principle can be regarded as dogmatic or constitutive both are heuristic, relative and mutually complementary. The monistic principle bids us unify every manifold as if we were going to end in absolute Monism; the pluralistic principle bids us not stop with unity, but analyse it into simpler elements and generating pairs of forces as if the end were to be a pluralistic one.^{15}

Similarly, in political, social and religious sciences we can only understand the present through a knowledge and understanding of the past; while the past of which only fragments, dumb witnesses, and more or less uncertain reports and traditions have come down to us, will be intelligible and living only through the experience of the immediate present.^{16} Again, in Psychology the knowledge of the Ego is our only means of knowing the soul that lies behind mere sound-producing and gesticulating automata; while our knowledge of the Ego, and in particular our distinction of it into an observing and an observed part, is due to our knowledge of other things.^{17} And in like manner the antithesis between the a priori and experience, and in Economics the antithesis between the a priori method and the historical method, will be solved if we regard both as heuristic principles in the application of which each seeks its ultimate ground in the other.^{18} This interactive self-dependence and inter-dependence of opposite pairs of principles is not a mere compromise, but rather opens up to each principle an unlimited sphere of action. And though of these principles each remains somewhat subjective, by means of the relativity of their application is expressed the objective meaning of things. Elements of which each is in content subjective, obtain or determine by means of this reciprocal reference what we call objectivity. Single objects by the cohesion and inter-action of sense-impressions, 'personality' by reciprocal associations and apperceptions, 'right' by the counterbalancing of the subjective interests of the individual, all acquire their objective value. Thus the methods of knowledge may be only subjective and heuristic, and yet inasmuch as each finds in the other its complement and through this its legitimation, they approximate gradually to the ideal of objective truth.^{19}

Truth, then, consists in a relation of reciprocity within a complexus of ideas which are mutually demonstrable one by means of the other. . . . The truth of the greater number of our ideas is at any given moment taken for granted, and the decision we come to in regard to the truth of a new idea will depend upon whether it harmonises with or contradicts the ideas already possessed; and, again, one of the ideas belonging to this complex may become questionable and over it the majority will decide. . . . The reason why we do not notice the relativity of truth is because of the immense quantitative disproportion between the actually questionable and the mass of ideas which we regard as true, just as for a long time the attraction of the apple for the earth passed unnoticed and all that we observed was the attraction of the earth for the apple. Nevertheless relativity is of the very essence of truth. It is not a patchwork, nor yet an added determination which weakens the notion of truth otherwise determined; but it is the specific property in virtue of which objects of desire become valuable. Truth exists in spite of its being a relation. Indeed it exists precisely because it is one.^{20}

§ 366. The view of truth set forth in the preceding paragraphs does not differ essentially from the doctrine of other pragmatists. Herr Simmel's point of view and consequently the general tone and emphases of his doctrine may be different; but, apart from this personal tinge, his theory of truth is fundamentally the same as that of the Anglo-american pragmatist. Ideas are set over against reality, and to them alone the property of truth belongs. But truth does not copy reality. Rather it is a mental function which has proved itself useful in dealing with an objective environment, and has thus become habitual. This latter point -- truth conceived as a way of thinking or perceiving which has become habitual on account of its utility -- is hardly noticed in the essentially psychological account of truth given by Professor James, though we have already come across it in the thoroughly pragmatic philosophy of M. Abel Rey, and shall find that it is also characteristic of Dr. Schiller's view. So, too, is the relativity of truth, though on this point some divergence of opinion is manifest. In any case, both these characteristics of Herr Simmel's theory may, I think, justly be regarded as corollaries to the general pragmatic doctrine; and in other respects Herr Simmel is, as Professor James has said, a genuine pragmatist. It will be well, however, to consider more in detail the leading characteristics of truth as conceived by the leaders of the pragmatic movement in America and England.

§ 367. Professor James has again and again assured us that epistemologically he is a realist. "Our beliefs are in realities, and if no realities are there our beliefs are false."^{21} Consequently he starts from the standpoint of Dualism.^{22} On the one side we have objective facts, on the other side claims; on the one side ideas and judgments, on the other side reality; and truth is, as common-sense regards it, a peculiar sort of relation between these two poles.^{23} But in a philosophy of Pure Experience reality is identical with experience. Hence, although Professor James postulates "a standing reality independent of the idea that knows it,"^{24} we find him frequently substituting for "reality" some form of sense-experience -- sensations or a percept.^{25} Thus, speaking of the humanistic development of Pragmatism, he says that "by 'reality' Humanism means nothing more than the other conceptual or perceptual experiences (including of course any amount of empirical reality independent of the knower) with which a given present experience may find itself in point of fact mixed up."^{26} And it is only on this hypothesis of the identity of reality and experience that he is able to get rid of the salto mortale of the common-sense realist, and to maintain his thesis that "the truth of our mental operations must always be an intra-experiential affair."^{27} Experiences know one another and represent one another. They do not know or represent realities outside of 'consciousness.' In experiences of the acquaintance-type "object and subject fuse in the fact of 'presentation' or sense-perception."^{28} And though the philosopher gets beyond this stage -- which Professor James calls (wrongly, I think) the stage of common-sense -- and 'interpolates' or 'exterpolates' his realities, if a humanist, he still regards them as experiences of some kind or other, actual or possible.^{29} Experiences of the acquaintance-type are ultimate thats or facts of being, and to these it is the function of conceptual experiences to lead. Truth thus means, says Professor James, "the relation of less fixed parts of experience (predicates) to other relatively more fixed parts (subjects); and we are not required to seek it in a relation of experience, as such, to anything beyond itself."^{30} It is "a relation, not of our ideas to non-human realities, but of conceptual parts of our experience to sensational parts;"^{31} while "cognition, whenever we take it concretely, means determinate 'ambulation,' through intermediaries (i.e., intervening experiences) from a terminus a quo to a terminus ad quem."^{32} In a similar sense must be understood the following remark of Professor Dewey:

Truth and falsity are not properties of any experience or thing, in and of itself or in its first intention; but of things where the problem of assurance consciously enters in. Truth and falsity present themselves as significant facts only in situations in which specific meanings and their already experienced fulfilments and non-fulfilments are intentionally compared and contrasted with reference to the question of worth, as to the reliability of meaning or class of meanings.^{33}

§ 368. What Professor James calls an 'ambulatory' process from idea through definite tracts of experience to some other experience, actual or possible, is of the very essence of pragmatic truth.^{34} And from this two important consequences follow. First, truth can be both defined and described in terms of experience.^{35} It is a process. Truth is made.^{36} Secondly, that process is a particular one, and varies with the particular case in hand. Verity in act means verifications (in the plural).^{37}

To the description of the process by which truth is made and in which, for the pragmatist, its nature consists, Professor James has devoted a very considerable portion both of Pragmatism and of The Meaning of Truth. Yet the very particularity of the process makes the task of the psychological epistemologist an extremely difficult one and, despite his valiant attempts, Professor James' descriptions are considerably bewildering and, at times, decidedly vague. He defines truth, in the first place, as property of ideas, in virtue of which they are said to 'agree' with reality.^{38} But 'agreement' does not always mean 'copying.' It is only our ideas of sensible things that copy reality.^{39} And even here not always, but only when the 'idea' in question is an image. Copying is not essential to truth.^{40} "In strict theory the mental terms themselves need not answer to the real terms in the sense of severally copying them, symbolic terms being enough, if only the real dates and places be copied." Indeed, "much even of common dscriptive truth is couched in verbal symbols." And "if our symbols fit the world, in the sense of determining our expectations rightly, they may even be the better for not copying its terms."^{41} But if, in the realm of phenomenal fact, there is no need of copying in every case, still less is there any need of assuming archetypes in the abstract spheres of Geometry and Logic. Their objects can be better interpreted as being created step by step by men, as fast as they successively conceive them. Triangles and genera are of our own production. They are improvised human 'artefacts;' and precisely because they are so, their relations are eternal; we can keep them invariant if we choose.^{42}

§ 369. A true idea, then, for Professor James, is not necessarily one that copies reality. A symbol which fits the world, a substitute which works practically, an abstract concept which enlarges mentally our momentary experiences by adding to them the consequences conceived, a thought which gets in 'touch' with reality by innumerable paths of verification,^{43} even a name, may be true.^{44} In each individual case "the 'workableness' which ideas must have, in order to be true, means particular workings, physical or intellectual, actual or possible, which they may set up from next to next inside of concrete experience." And this working, in which the truth of an idea consists, is essentially "a concrete working in the actual experience of human beings, among their ideas, feelings, perceptions, beliefs and acts, as well as among the physical things of their environment, and the relations must be understood as being possible as well as actual."^{45} Consequently the familiar terms, which common-sense and the intellectualist apply to the truth-relation, have to be re-translated and re-interpreted by the pragmatist in an experiential sense. We 'correspond' in some way, says Professor James, with anything with which we enter into any relation at all, whether it be thing of which we produce an exact copy, or which we feel as an existent in a certain place; a demand which we obey without knowing anything more about it than its push; a proposition which we let pass without contradicting it; a relation between two things, upon the first of which we act so as to bring ourselves out where the second will be; or something inaccessible, for which we substitute a hypothetical object, having the same consequences and therefore enabling us to cipher out real results.^{46} To 'represent' reality, again, means either to be substitutable for it in our thinking, because the experience that represents leads to the same associates; or to 'point to it' through a chain of other experiences that either intervene or may intervene.^{47} While to 'agree' with a reality means "to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed -- better, either intellectually or practically."^{48}

Actual verification, however, is not necessary in every case. "Indirectly verifying processes may be true as well as full verification-processes."^{49}

That on innumerable occasions men do substitute truth in posse or verifiability for verification or truth in act, is a fact to which no one attributes more importance than the pragmatist: he emphasises the practical utility of such a habit. But he does not on that account consider truth in posse, -- truth not alive enough ever to have been asserted or questioned or contradicted -- to be the metaphysically prior thing, to which truths in act are tributary and subsidiary.^{50}

For one truth-process completed there are a million in our lives that function in this state of nascency; [that] turn us towards direct verification [that] lead us into the surroundings of the objects they invisage; and then, if everything runs on harmoniously, we are so sure that verification is possible that we omit it, and are usually justified by all that happens. Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. You accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another. . . . But beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts of the whole superstructure.^{51}

Truth-processes are also useful. In The Meaning of Truth 'utility' is not so prominent as it is in the writings of other pragmatists, though Professor James by no means overlooks this aspect of pragmatic truth. In Pragmatism, for instance, he tells us that "the possession of true thoughts means everywhere the possession of invaluable instruments of action."^{52} "True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience."^{53} "Primarily, and on the common-sense level, the truth of a state of mind means this function of a leading that is worth while."^{54} " 'The true,' to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in our way of behaving."^{55} But in The Meaning of Truth Professor James carefully points out that in saying that 'the meaning of any proposition can always be brought down to some particular consequence in our future practical experience, whether passive or active,' the point of the statement lies "rather in the fact that the experience must be particular than in the fact that it must be 'active,' -- by 'active' meaning here 'practical' in the narrow literal sense. Particular consequences may be of a theoretical nature."^{56} Hence the 'cash-value' of truth in experiential terms is that

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we can not. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known-as.^{57}

§ 370. Dr. Schiller takes a wider view of truth than that set forth by Professor James. He considers it in its historic setting. Consequently his emphases are somewhat different, and more akin to those of Herr Simmel's exposition of the doctrine of truth. The Riddles of the Sphinx is a philosophy of Evolution, and evolutionary ideas permeate and affect the whole of Dr. Schiller's epistemological speculations. Applying these ideas in Axioms as Postulates to the fundamental principles of human thought, he concludes that these are not axiomatic, but postulatory in character. Generalising the doctrine in Humanism, Dr. Schiller applies it to every sphere of human knowledge, to Logic, to Metaphysics, to Ethics, and to Religion. In all these spheres of human thought, he says, the method is the same, viz., the postulation of hypotheses and their verification in experience, differences being due chiefly to variations in the mode and extent of the verification^{58}

Now, in the evolution of life, and still more so in the evolution of human experience and human modes of thought, the supreme idea which governs the whole is not that of the 'real' or of the 'true,' but of the 'good.' All life is purposive. It is purpose that prompts man to postulate guided by it that he experiments; under its influence that he evaluates results. Pure reason is a pure figment the practical use which has developed it must have stamped itself upon its inmost structure, even if it has not moulded it out of pre-rational instincts. And this being so, we must bear in mind that all our realities are related to the ends of our practical life; that "human valuations hold sway over every region of our experience, and cannot validly be eliminated from the contemplation of any reality that we know." "Our knowing is driven and guided at every step by our subjective interests, our desires, our needs and our ends. Hence our effort, determined by our powers and will to know, enters as a necessary and irradicable factor into whatever revelation of reality we can attain." "That the 'real' has a determinate nature which the knowing reveals but does not affect, is a gratuitous assumption incapable of rational defence."^{59}

From this humanistic and evolutionary view of knowledge, it follows (1) that theory is subordinate to practice, the 'true' to the 'good;' and (2) that the 'true' is identical with the 'useful.' In both these respects it seems to me that Dr. Schiller goes further than his colleague, Professor James. He does not ignore theory or deny its value; but that value in the end is practical. His position is, as he himself has pointed out, the reverse of the Platonic view that action presupposes knowledge, and that the 'true' is the source of the 'good.' He makes action primary; knowledge is always derivative, secondary, subservient, useful. It is not sufficient to say that theôria is praxis in the sense that it is a characteristic of human activity. The true is the true for us as practical beings.^{60} In the second of Dr. Schiller's essays in Humanism, the practical aspect of truth is even more prominent. There he endeavours to establish the thesis that 'whatever is true is useful;' and all exceptions are ruled out of court on the ground that either the utility of the apparent truth has not yet been discovered, or else it is really useless knowledge, and therefore no truth at all. Utility, therefore, is of the essence of the truth-relation for Dr. Schiller, as it is for Herr Simmel. He is also equally explicit in his rejection of the copy-view of truth; though he rejects it on different grounds.^{61} Unlike Professor James, he does not even accept provisionally the Dualism of Common-sense, but starts from a 'chaotic experience' or 'primary reality,' in which, as yet, there is no distinction of 'appearance' and 'reality,' but from which, as from 'the raw material of the cosmos,' 'real fact' and 'true reality' are, in course of time, experimentally evolved.^{62} 'Reality,' as we ordinarily understand it, 'does not pre-exist the cognitive functioning,' but is a fact within knowing, immanently deposited or 'precipitated' by thought.^{63} Both Dr. Schiller and Professor James regard truth from the standpoint of experience, in which it and its object alike are immanent. For both, the aim of the pragmatist is to describe as best he can 'the continuous cognitive process,' to trace out the actual 'making of truth,' and thence to derive 'the method of determining the nature of truth.'^{64} But, for Dr. Schiller, the ratio essendi of the cognitive process is not merely to engender systems of truth and of reality, but "to refine them into more and more adequate means for the control of our experience."^{65} He does not under-estimate the particularity and the experiential character of truth; but, owing, I think, chiefly to his essentially genetic standpoint, he lays still more stress upon the active and practical aspect of the making of truth, or, in other words, upon its utility. The consequences by which truth-claims are validated, he insists, must be both 'practical' and 'good:' 'practical' in that sooner or later they affect our action; 'good' in that they further our interests and satisfy our purpose.^{66} Truth, in short, is that peculiar kind of utility which belongs to an idea, or results from the functioning of an idea.

§ 371. The emphasis thus laid on the practical value of truth influences Dr. Schiller's views on abstract truth, which he seems to treat with somewhat less courtesy than Professor James. An abstract truth, until it is applied, is a mere claim which "must always be regarded with suspicion; and if it will not (or cannot) submit to verification, is not properly true at all. Its truth is at best potential, its meaning null or unintelligible, or at most conjectural and dependent on an unfulfilled condition. "Truths must be used to become true, and (in the end) to stay true." A purely formal logic is little more than "solemn trifling;" and even the truths of arithmetic and geometry are not fully true until they are applied; and they will not apply in every case. The honourable predicate of 'true' should be "reserved for what has victoriously satisfied its claim." "Real truths must have shown themselves to be useful; they must have been applied to some problem of actual knowing, by usefulness in which they were tested and verified.^{67} Dr. Schiller does not, of course, deny, any more than does Herr Simmel, either the value or the validity of abstract systems of truth; but, regarding such systems from an evolutionary and pragmatic standpoint as products of human thought slowly evolved to the end that man may more easily and more successfully deal with his environment, his tendency is to make both their value and their validity depend upon the practically useful purposes which they serve. Closely connected with this point is another on which Dr. Schiller's views coincide to a large extent with those of the German pragmatist. We cannot determine the utility of a truth without examination, just as we cannot at once decide upon the expediency of a certain line of conduct. We must first select our truth, whether it be a general doctrine, a principle, or a fact, and then test it by experiment.^{68} A claim to truth, whether it be on the level of perception or on the higher level of thought, must be allowed to work; for only thus can it be validated. It is only when a mode of perception or of thought has become more or less habitual, only when it has, by a long series of successful experiments, proved itself a useful instrument enabling us to act more easily and more rapidly in the way best suited to the furtherance of life, that it becomes a true mode of perceiving or thinking. Regarded from this point of view, we may say, I think, that truth is for Dr. Schiller, as for other pragmatists, a useful habit. Human knowledge and human truth consist in certain habits of perception and of thought, which are, as M. Rey puts it, les résultantes nécessaires et les seules possibles des conditions dans lesquelles elles ont contractées -- la science, c'est nous.^{69}

It is clear, however, that one of the fundamental needs of our nature is that we should be able to communicate with our fellow-men; and, to do this, we must perceive and think and live more or less in the same way as they do. Hence the social factor plays no small part in the building up of habit and in the making of truth. Society exercises a severe control over the intellectual and the perceptual, as well as the moral, eccentricities of its members. Only some of the truths which we, as individuals, deem valuable come to be recognised by society, and so to be regarded as 'objective.' Similarly, in the lower sphere of sense-experience, those who have managed to perceive things in practically the same way, have prospered at the expense of those who could not; and hence certain ways of perceiving have become habitual and more or less common throughout the race. As our experience grows, we adapt ourselves to our environment and to one another; but the process is none the less practical, useful and teleological throughout. Whether our adaptation be objective or intra-subjective, the determining factor of survival and permanence is that it should lead to useful, practical consequences.^{70}

§ 372. One other point in regard to the relation of Dr. Schiller's views to those of Herr Simmel is deserving of mention. Both are agreed that truth is relative to our faculties. Dr. Schiller, in fact, frankly adopts the Protagorean principle that man is the measure of all things; a principle which is capable, he says, of a two-fold interpretation. In the individual sense it means that "Whatever appears to each, that really is for him; and in the generic sense it means that "reality for us is relative to our faculties."^{71} But Dr. Schiller says little or nothing of that other aspect of truth's relativity, upon which Herr Simmel insists so much, viz., the relativity of truths inter se. True, in a chapter^{72} dealing with the relation of the postulate of Freedom to that of complete Determinism, he treats these principles as to some extent reciprocal and complementary.^{73} But this is the only place, so far as I am aware, where the reciprocity of truth is touched upon. To Herr Simmel, then, belongs the honour of having discovered this aspect of pragmatic truth though it is, I think, a corollary to the doctrine that truth is a value, and that its value is primarily useful or practical.

{1} cf. The Meaning of Truth, p. 66,

{2} cf. supra, § 205.

{3} The following paragraphs have been translated from the third chapter of Herr Simmel's Philosophie des Geldes, pp. 58 et seq. The aim of the translator has been to give the sense, rather than an exact literal rendering, of the author; and many phrases and passages of minor importance have, of course, been omitted.

{4} pp. 58, 59. cf. The Meaning of Truth, pp. 61 et seq.

{5} p. 60.

{6} pp. 60, 61.

{7} p. 63.

{8} pp. 63, 64.

{9} p. 64.

{10} p. 64.

{11} pp. 65, 66.

{12} p. 66.

{13} p. 67.

{14} pp. 68, 69.

{15} p. 69.

{16} p. 70.

{17} p. 70.

{18} p. 71.

{19} p. 72.

{20} pp. 72, 73.

{21} The Meaning of Truth, pp. 241, 242.

{22} Ibid., p. 217.

{23} Ibid., Preface, p. xix., and p. 163.

{24} Ibid., p. 158.

{25} Ibid., p. 81

{26} Ibid., p. 100.

{27} Ibid., p. 133.

{28} Ibid., pp. 127, 128, and cf. p. 103.

{29} Ibid., pp. 129 et seq.

{30} Ibid., p. 70.

{31} Ibid., p. 82.

{32} Ibid., p. 142.

{33} Mind, N.S. 59, p. 305.

{34} The Meaning of Truth, p. 234.

{35} Ibid., pp. 234, 235, 142, 143, and Preface, p. xiv.

{36} Ibid p. 235, and Pragmatism, pp. 201, 218.

{37} Ibid., pp. 212, 235.

{38} Pragmatism, p. 198.

{39} Ibid., p. 199.

{40} Ibid., pp. 223, 235, and The Meaning of Truth, pp. 79 et seq.

{41} The Meaning of Truth, p. 82.

{42} Ibid., pp. 82, 83, and cf. Pragmatism, pp. 209 et seq.

{43} Ibid., pp. 208, 218, 248, 214.

{44} Pragmatism, p. 213. The Meaning of Truth, Preface, p. xiv.

{45} Ibid., p. 262.

{46} Ibid., p.67.

{47} Ibid., p. 132.

{48} Pragmatism, pp. 212, 213.

{49} Ibid., pp. 208, 209.

{50} The Meaning of Truth, p. 205.

{51} Pragmatism, pp. 207, 208.

{52} Ibid., p. 202.

{53} Ibid., p. 204.

{54} Ibid., p. 205.

{55} Ibid., p. 222,

{56} The Meaning of Truth, p. 210.

{57} Pragmatism, p. 201.

{58} cf. Preface to Humanism.

{59} Humanism, pp. 1-11.

{60} Ibid., p. 30.

{61} cf. Ibid., pp. 45, 46; Studies in Humanism, p. 425; and Mind, N.S. 72, p. 573.

{62} Ibid., pp. 186, 187; cf. pp. 428 et seq.; and The Meaning of Truth, p. 242.

{63} Ibid., p. 426, and cf. pp. 182, 183.

{64} Ibid., p. 5.

{65} Ibid., p. 426.

{66} Ibid., pp. 6, 7.

{67} Ibid., pp. 8, 9; 112, 113 144, 145. (Italics, where used, are mine.)

{68} 'Axioms as Postulates,' §§ 1, 2 and 24 ; Studies in Humanism, pp. 186, 187.

{69} La Théorie de la Physique, p. 395.

{70} cf. Humanism, pp. 31 et seq.; Studies in Humanism, p. 153.

{71} Studies in Humanism, pp. 33, 34.

{72} Ibid., chap. xviii.

{73} cf. Professor James' treatment of Unity and Plurality, Pragmatism, pp. 129 et seq.