CHAPTER XXII.
PRAGMATIC CRITERIA OF TRUTH.

§ 393. It is not a little consoling to find that Professor James has set down, as the sixth misunderstanding of Pragmatism, the statement that "Pragmatism explains not what truth is, but only how it is arrived at;"^{1} for so much beside the point do pragmatic definitions of truth seem to me, that I have often wondered whether the pragmatist ever really intended to define truth at all. But although the discussion in the last chapter thus appears not to have been mere waste of words, there is no doubt that the question, 'How is truth validated?' is of supreme importance in the eyes of the pragmatist. In fact, the nature of truth and the validation-process are for him one and the same. Truth is that which makes it! But here we must consider the pragmatist's 'definitions' of truth as statements of truth's criteria.

In Dr. Schiller's opinion, there is no more momentous distinction than that between a truth and a mere claim to truth, and no distinction, he says, which it is more difficult to get the formal logician to recognise. Granted, then, that we start with mere claims, how does a claim get converted into a real truth according to the pragmatist? By its consequences, we are told. That is obvious: there can be no other way, if no truths are self-evident. But what are the consequences of truth? They are, says the pragmatist, consequences which are practically useful, relative to a human purpose and in the furtherance of human life. But from the very particularity of the truth-process it follows that these consequences are many and varied, as varied as the definition of truth itself. Hence if we wish, like good pragmatists, to treat of the criteria of truth in the concrete, we must perforce consider these consequences one by one.

The first characteristic of truth, then, which Pragmatism has selected as one of the most valuable of its criteria, is that truth must make a difference to action. Thought is purposive; its function is to generate belief; and belief results in action. Hence different beliefs should lead to different actions, in reference to which the validity of the belief may be judged. This is the central doctrine of the "Pragmaticism" of Mr. Peirce, and is a corollary of his now-famous dictum that "our conception of the practical bearings or effects of an object constitutes the whole of our conception of that object."^{2}

If this be a mere statement of the psychological fact that ideas tend to find for themselves outward expression, and that sooner or later and directly or indirectly an idea will result in a modification of action; or, again, if this doctrine be applied in a hortatory sense to moral and religious truths, it can hardly be denied that truth often does, and, in the latter case, certainly should, make a difference to action. Moral truths must be 'living truths.' They must make a difference to our lives; and to 'live a truth' consists "in making it an object of the interior life, in which one believes, by which one is nourished, and which one carries out in practice."^{3} But if the doctrine means that all truths, scientific and theoretical as well as religious and moral, must, if they are to be true at all, directly influence conduct, exceptions to the rule are far too numerous and too striking for us to allow it any general applicability or even to concede that it is a rule at all. What practical difference, for instance, can it make to the actions of the ordinary man whether the earth is round or flat, or whether it is the sun that circumnavigates the earth or the earth that revolves on its own axis while the sun is relatively stationary? Yet, I suppose that the ordinary man, in spite of his 'passivity' in this respect, and even if he has not the use of a laboratory or a telescope, is at liberty to form his own opinion on this 'claim to truth' if he chooses to do so.

One is hardly surprised, therefore, that Professor James should have amended the phrase 'difference to action,' and interpreted it as "particular consequences, in our future practical experience, whether active or passive; the point lying rather in the fact that the experience must be particular than in the fact that it must be active."^{4} Truth must make a difference to our experiences, active or passive, practical or theoretical.

Thus, if no future detail of experience or conduct is to be deduced from our hypothesis, the debate between Materialism and Theism becomes quite idle and insignificant. Matter and God, in that event, mean exactly the same thing -- the power, namely, neither more nor less, that can make just this mixed, imperfect, yet completed world -- and a wise man is he who, in such a case, would turn his back on such a supererogatory discussion.^{5}

If theoretical consequences are to count, the wisdom of Professor James's 'wise man' may, I think, be called in question. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly true that with the 'hypothesis' of a God "the actually experienced details of fact . . . grow solid, warm, and altogether full of real significance." But surely the point of such a criterion lies in the kind of difference that it makes to our lives. If 'practical bearings' mean any particular experiences that may result from a hypothesis or claim, 'practical bearings' do not provide us with a very useful criterion of truth; for truth and error alike make a difference to experience. Some further criterion is needed, therefore, in order to distinguish between different kinds of 'differences to experience,' and it has been suggested that only beneficial differences should be regarded as a sign of truth.

§ 394. 'Beneficial differences' are in general those which satisfy our human needs; but 'differences are to be taken as 'differences for me' and only those which are beneficial to me, which satisfy my purposes and needs, are to be regarded as validating claims to truth. Truth is a "function of agreeable leading," a "function of a leading that is worth while." The consequence of a true idea is that by it we are enabled to handle reality "better than if we disagreed."^{6}

Now one way of judging whether we are better for something that has happened to us, is to ask ourselves whether we feel the better for it, or, in other words, whether we are satisfied emotionally. In The Will to Believe, Professor James assigned to emotional grounds for belief a definite value in cases where the intellect failed to provide a sufficient reason for assenting to doctrines of a religious character, and where it was imperative that some decision should be come to. Pragmatism has taken up this idea and made it a fundamental doctrine applicable to all truth. Indeed, it seemed at one time as if the claims of our 'passional' nature were going to drive out intellectual and logical claims altogether and to constitute themselves the sole pragmatic criterion of truth. The protests of intellectualists, however, have obtained certain concessions on this point. Professor James grants that intellectual claims must be admitted as of equal importance with those of the emotional side of our nature; and Dr. Schiller insists that truth is not merely a value, but a 'logical value,' in the estimation of which the intellect has, at any rate, something to say.

The question may be raised, however, whether the satisfaction of emotional needs has any claim at all to be regarded as a criterion of truth. Have we any right to appeal to the emotions in order to settle whether a theory is true or is not true? Certainly if by an appeal to the emotions is meant an appeal to mere feeling or sentiment; if it merely signifies that the theory in question is pleasant to contemplate, and stirs us up to enthusiasm, without appealing also to our more rational nature, such a criterion is irrational and of little value. For, after all, it is the intellect which must judge and give the final assent, and to subordinate it to mere feeling, to an 'epi-phenomenon,' to a bye-product, as it were, of a confused mass of sensations, of vague and half-formed judgments, and of moods which largely depend on the state of our bodily health, is clearly to degrade it and pervert it from its natural purpose. The emotions are peculiarly unstable; they vary from moment to moment, sometimes filling us with exuberant hope and joy, sometimes plunging us into despair. How, then, if our criterion itself is variable, can it possibly help us to determine truth ? When are we to form our judgment about (v.g.) a future life beyond the grave? When we are in an optimistic mood and such a prospect seems bright, attractive and full of promise, or when we are gloomy and dejected and a future life seems impossible, illusory, incapable of realisation? If we choose in a brighter moment, the promise of a future existence will seem to hold good. But it will hold good only so long as our mood lasts. When the mood passes, our criterion itself has gone, and the doctrine of a future life, unproved and unprovable according to the pragmatist if emotional grounds for belief are excluded, is no longer able to satisfy us. When despondent or distressed we need the doctrine of a future life in order to succour our failing energies but such a doctrine is powerless to help us unless we already believe in its truth. The mere will to believe is of no avail in such a contingency unless assent has already been given on more rational grounds. The emotions and the 'will to believe' may prepare the way for belief; they may even directly influence assent in some cases, and so lead often enough to error; but they cannot generate a permanent assent to the doctrines (v.g.) of a future life or of the existence of God, because the emotions which we experience when contemplating such doctrines will depend upon whether we believe in them or not.

Again, by whose emotions and by whose needs is a claim to truth to be judged? Is each one to judge for himself? If so, we shall have contradictory verdicts, for each one will declare that to be true which seems to him to satisfy his needs. The selfish and carnal who desire only to do as they please and to satisfy their craving for pleasures, regardless of consequences to anyone else, will declare that Naturalism is valid because it gets rid of God and so removes all cause for conscientious scruple or supernatural fear. The upright man, on the other hand, will declare for Theism, because it promises him that some day the mystery of evil and pain will be solved and the good will receive their deserts.^{7}

An appeal to the emotions as such, then, has little, if any, value as a criterion of truth; for, as Newman has said, the strength which the emotions seem to give to assent is "adventitious and accidental; it may come, it may go; it does not (or at any rate it should not) interfere with the genuineness and perfection of the act of assent."^{8}

§ 395. But we may interpret an appeal to the emotions quite differently. In the emotions the fundamental needs of our nature are expressed and an appeal to them may mean that after a careful consideration of the fundamental demands of our nature, of its psychological structure, its functions and its purposes, we have come to the conclusion that unless these demands are satisfied, our nature will be meaningless, futile, inexplicable; and if this is what is meant, then our argument may be valid. For now we are no longer allowing our judgment to be determined by the emotions or by our felt needs; but we are rationally considering those needs, distinguishing the fundamental from the accidental, separating those which are peculiar to the individual from those which are common to human nature; in a word, judging rationally and intellectually of the significance and purpose of man.

Such an appeal as this is of quite a different nature from that which is merely emotional; and the value of 'psychological' arguments of this kind was recognised long before any pragmatist ever thought of taking them up. Even so thorough an intellectualist as Mr. Bradley, though insisting that the will and the emotions have no right 'to dictate to the intellect,'^{9} yet admits that "the realisation of any aspect of human nature should -- to speak in general -- be limited by due regard to the whole."^{10} Truth, for Mr. Bradley, is, as it should be, primarily an affair of the intellect, and the aim of metaphysics is 'to find a general view which will satisfy the intellect;' yet he also affirms that "truth is harmony, and harmony is attended with an emotional accompaniment. Hence the absence of the latter is an indication that something is wrong."^{11} Intellectualists, then, are not loth to admit that it is legitimate to base arguments on the rational demands of our nature; but this, they maintain, is a very different thing from allowing our emotions to influence beliefs, without previously considering whether they express a fundamental need or whether they are quasi-hysterical and wholly irrational feelings dependent on we know not what. Yet the pragmatist hardly seems to have grasped this distinction, vital as it is to the right evaluation of truth-claims.

§ 396. Emotional criteria, however, no matter what interpretation we put upon them, are applicable in comparatively few cases. The scientist is not helped much by his emotions in deciding whether he will accept or reject the principle of the Conservation of Mass; nor are emotional considerations of great account when it is a question of determining the probable effects of Fiscal Reform on English commerce, or of a rise in the value of certain stocks upon market prices in general. Hence the pragmatist has to look for a further test of truth, and he finds it in that other aspect of a 'beneficial difference,' utility, or the value of truth as a means of manipulating reality.

To agree with reality in the widest sense [says Professor James], can only mean to be guided straight up to it or its surroundings, or to be put in such working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed.^{12}

Now utility ordinarily means that which satisfies some practical need as opposed to a theoretical or moral need; and in this sense all things are useful more or less, for all things are, as the scholastic puts it, et unum et bonum et verum. Chairs, tables, walking-sticks, aeroplanes, flowers, fields, fresh air, indeed the majority of the things which we find around us, are useful to somebody or to something, though they may not be useful to me. Utility, however, cannot be taken in this ontological sense, if it is to serve as a criterion of logical truth; for otherwise things themselves would be logically true. Clearly, then, the utility which is to be our criterion must be an experienced utility; and hence arises the question, utility for whom?

This question is not easy to answer. For if you reply utility for anybody, I must then point out first that the earthquake in Messina and such like catastrophes are apparently not useful to anybody; and, secondly, that you need some criterion by which to tell when things are really useful to other people, for it is you who must judge of their utility. And if you reply, 'useful' means useful for me, I must enquire of what use it is to you that someone should have broken a pane of glass in your conservatory, or that your neighbour should insist upon playing 'Home, sweet Home' on a badly-tuned piano. It is useful, you tell me, to know that the pane of glass has been broken, because you can then have it repaired; and it is useful to know that your neighbour is not a musician, because then you may try to persuade him to give up practising, or may take up your abode elsewhere. But it may be questioned whether these consequences are really useful, especially in the latter case, for if your persuasion fails to take effect, you will be put to considerable expense. And even if the ultimate consequences are useful, they will be useful only provided your knowledge of the original facts was true. For if the facts were not real but illusory, your endeavour to escape their immediate consequences has been so much waste of time. The utility or uselessness of particular consequences, therefore, does not show whether what you take to be fact is or is not really fact. What you perceive may be useful, and yet be fact as mutilated by your perception of it; and conversely it may be quite useless, and yet be real fact.

But, you tell me, it is useful to regard as objectively real whatever is perceived in a particular way (i.e., by external perception) ; and if what is perceived in this way is in general to be regarded as objectively real, we must not make arbitrary exceptions. Doubtless this is true. The question is, however, not whether we are to make arbitrary exceptions, but whether we are to allow any exceptions at all, and, if so, under what circumstances. If the objective reality of facts is not self-evident, as the pragmatist asserts, we need some criterion by which to decide whether a fact that claims to be real is really real, and for this purpose the criterion of utility is, to say the least, inadequate. When applied to 'facts' it breaks down completely. There are innumerable 'facts' observed by us every day, of which many are not of the slightest utility to us personally, and some are distinctly harmful and unpleasant; yet we do not for this reason regard them as pragmatically false. And conversely there are many facts which would be extremely useful to us, could we regard them as 'really' facts; but which cannot be so regarded because their claims to truth are obviously unfounded. The pragmatic criterion of utility, therefore, is not of the least value when it is a question of distinguishing between facts which are 'really real,' and facts which only claim to be real yet this is a distinction which we must make, and actually do make, on innumerable occasions in the course of a single day; and, further, it is a distinction upon which the possibility of all higher kinds of knowledge depends. I do not mean to say, of course, that to be able to distinguish between facts which are 'really real' and those which are illusory, is not something of the greatest practical value. I willingly grant that all knowledge has a practical value greater or less in degree and extent but I maintain that in deciding upon a claim to factual reality we never do use the criterion of utility, nor would it prove of any service to us if we were to try so to do.

§ 397. Still keeping to the ordinary sense of the term 'utility' (viz., that which satisfies a practical need), we may apply it now to theory. Theory, we are told, enables us to 'deal efficiently with reality; which may mean either that it determines our expectations rightly, or that it enables us to control the course of events by inventions and appliances of various descriptions in such a way as to make them subservient to the practical needs of life. In either case the theory is useful; but can its utility be employed as a test of its truth? Is it not rather a consequence of truth already established? Of course, if by saying that a theory is useful in that it determines our expectations rightly, you merely mean that particular consequences deduced from the theory harmonise approximately with empirical facts, there can be no question that 'utility' in this sense is a criterion of truth; but this is not the sense in which the term utility is ordinarily used. Moreover, we need other criteria, (1) by which to distinguish the particular hypothesis from which our consequences have been deduced from the rest of the theory; (2) by which to decide whether that hypothesis really does lead to these consequences; (3) by which to know whether these are the only consequences to which it can lead and 'utility' for these purposes is of no avail.

It is not utility, then, in the ordinary sense of that term, which is used by the scientist as a criterion by which he tests the truth of his theories. Nor do I think that the fact that truth leads to 'inventions' which can be applied to useful practical purposes, can be of any use as a criterion of truth. Can we regard the utility of the Forth Bridge, for instance, as testifying to the truth of mechanical principles? The existence of the Forth Bridge and the fact that it carries the weights that it was intended to carry, undoubtedly testifies to the truth of the principles which guided the architect in its construction. But this is not quite the same thing as to say that the Forth Bridge is useful for purposes of actual transit. The truth of the mechanical principles in question would be verified just as well by shunting train-loads of sand backwards and forwards from one end of the bridge to the other, as by the actual use of the bridge in practical life as a means of getting from Edinburgh to Perth.

In so far, then, as a theory determines, our expectations rightly, it is true; but the 'utility' of the theory seems to depend rather upon the possibility of applying it to practical purposes, which is an afterthought, as it were, and is not essential to the truth of the theory; though inasmuch as it is a particular case of expectations which have been rightly determined, it goes to confirm. the theory itself. The right determination of our expectations again, is doubtless itself useful; but it is useful because it is 'right,' not 'right' because it is useful. Hence, to call this right determination of our expectations 'utility' is misleading; for in 'utility' we seem to have a new criterion of truth, whereas the criterion of conformity of fact with expectation, to which it is reducible, is as old as science itself.

§ 398. It is important that the point of the above argument should be clearly grasped, for what I have said applies also to the next criterion which we have to discuss. I am not trying to prove that the pragmatist ignores the theoretic interest, which, as Professor James remarks, would be 'simply idiotic.' What I wish to show is (1) that many of the criteria of truth which Pragmatism offers us are as old as truth itself, and were recognised as 'consequences' of truth which might be used in order to verify it long before Pragmatism was invented; and (2) that the pragmatist has no right to identify these consequences, directly or indirectly, with the practical utility of truth.

Now Professor James frequently insists that an idea is a 'substitute' for some sentient experience, and that in order to be true it must ultimately lead to the sense-experience for which it has been substituted. "A conception," he says, "is reckoned true by common-sense when it can be made to lead to a sensation." "Our ideas and concepts and scientific theories pass for true only so far as they harmoniously lead us back to the world of sense;"^{13} and "such simple and fully verified leadings are the originals and prototypes of the truth-process."^{14}

Here, once again, we have a very old criterion of truth rehabilitated in pragmatic dress. Apparently there is nothing new about this criterion, except the form in which it is expressed. Everyone will admit that scientific hypotheses and theories, to be true, must lead to conclusions which harmonise, coalesce, or agree with empirical facts. The only questions are (1) What does the pragmatist mean when he says that truth must lead us to reality, put us in working touch with it, and enable us to deal with it beneficially and satisfactorily; and (2) is this criterion the only criterion of truth, the original or prototype of all truth-processes?

Now 'handling,' 'controlling,' 'manipulating,' 'getting into working touch with' reality or with sensation, all suggest 'practical utility.' Hence one is inclined to think that in using such expressions the pragmatist is really trying to bring the old and well-established criterion of 'verification by the senses' into line with his pragmatic doctrine that truth is ultimately verified by its practical consequences. And if this is so, it is necessary again to point out that it is by the coincidence of fact with particular conclusions deduced from hypothesis or theory that the latter are verified, and not by any practically useful results that may ensue. But perhaps the second question is the more important one in this connection.

Is 'verification by the senses' really the fundamental form of all verification? Is there no other criteria of which this is not the prototype? What about 'relations between ideas,' the propositions of mathematics and geometry, statements about events in the past, and the validity of deductive processes of reasoning? Here it is that, according to Professor James, "indirectly or only potentially verifying processes"^{15} come in; yet these, although they do not lead directly to sense-termini, do so indirectly, and hence conform to the prototype of all truth-processes.

True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse. They lead away from eccentricity and isolation, from foiled and barren thinking. The untrammelled flowing of the leading-process, its general freedom from clash and contradiction, passes for its indirect verification; but all roads lead to Rome, and in the end, and eventually, all true processes lead to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences somewhere, which somebody's ideas have copied.^{16}

Professor James admits that this is a "large loose way" of speaking. Nevertheless it describes more or less accurately what happens in regard to the verification of some truths of the conceptual order; but does it apply to all? Sometimes we hold a proposition in mathematics or geometry to be true, because it leads to, or follows from, other truths already established; and, again, we verify a process of reasoning by examining whether it conforms to logical rules. But how do we test our ultimate principles, our mathematical axioms and our logical rules? And how do we know that our reasoning conforms to these rules? Intuition has to be called in here, and Professor James does not hesitate to invoke it. As we have seen, he admits that sometimes truths are "perceptually obvious at a glance;" but in his anxiety to reduce all truth-processes to one pragmatic prototype, he forgets this. Yet intuition is needed as the very foundation of conceptual truth. 'Relations between ideas' do, indeed, lead us at times to the face of sensible experiences; but that process of leading is a process of application, not of verification. The relations themselves are true eternally, in advance of any such special application to objects in the concrete. Moreover, it is difficult to see how ideas of past events can lead even indirectly to sense-termini; while facts, on the other hand, may be truly as we apprehend them, yet do not lead to immediate experience, since it is in immediate experience that they are given. We are forced to conclude, therefore, that the criterion of sense-verification is neither applicable nor necessary in every case, and so cannot be the original or prototype of all truth-processes.

§ 399. From what has been said above, it is clear that Professor James holds the satisfaction of theoretical needs to be of very great importance, even if ultimately theoretical are subordinate to practical needs. Truth, especially when it leads into conceptual quarters, must lead to consistency and flowing human intercourse. New truth "must derange common-sense and previous belief as little as possible." Even "that past time itself was, is guaranteed by its coherence with everything that's present."^{17} In short, the demand for consistency, coherence, agreement between subjects and predicates, accord between process and process, object and object, is so imperative for a highly organised intellect that "so long as such an accord is denied us, whatever collateral profits may seem to inure from what we believe in, are but as dust in the balance."^{18}

Dr. Schiller's views on this subject, though less emphatically expressed, are no less clear than those of Professor James. In spite of his vigorous attack on the Absolutist position that consistency or coherence is the sole test of truth, he admits that truths must be compatible with one another, and that a self-contradictory proposition is wholly meaningless.^{19} He points out that the getting rid of contradictions is by no means the easiest or most logical point from which to begin our attempt to harmonise experience; but admits that the getting rid of contradictions is one aspect of the attempt to secure greater harmony therein.^{20} And there can be no doubt, I think, that Dr. Schiller is right here. The principle of Contradiction is both valid and valuable; but its value is chiefly negative. Contradiction proves error, but the absence of contradiction does not necessarily prove truth. Doubtless it is highly improbable that a complex theory should be self-consistent, and yet be false. Still such a contingency is conceivable. Whence it follows that consistency and the 'absence of frustration' is, if taken by itself, inadequate as a criterion of truth.

But the real question is, Whence arises the value of this criterion of consistency? Is it due to the fact that the universe proceeds from a common Cause or Ground which itself is one and consistent, or is it due to human habits which are now so fixed and constant that they will not allow themselves to be thwarted? Is the principle of Contradiction 'necessary' because things are so constituted that they are what they are and not otherwise, and hence force our thinking to conform to the order of nature; or is its necessity psychological, the result of a human need? We have already discussed this question,^{21} and have seen that the pragmatic view leads to a sceptical Subjectivism. If the demand for consistency be due merely to a mental habit, or arise merely from a human need, the value of consistency or non-contradiction as a criterion of objective truth is destroyed. Nor does the fact that reality has played a part in the building up of this habit^{22} affect our conclusion, unless, in the formation of the habit, reality does not merely control, but determines the content of thought. But if our abstract concepts are merely 'man-made products' or 'artificial mental things,'^{23} which, when they are consistent, lead to, or are terminated by, sense-experiences, and so give satisfaction, our real criterion of truth is not 'consistency,' but the satisfaction that ensues from reactions terminated as we wish them to be terminated, reactions which can be most readily brought about by consistent conceptual thinking. Thus the criterion of 'consistency,' as interpreted by the pragmatist, is a subjective criterion, for it is reducible to the satisfaction, and apparently to the felt-satisfaction, of our needs; and this is clearly something subjective.

§ 400. The idea of habit as a sign of truth may, however, be worked out on somewhat different lines. Habit, in fact, may be taken as the sole criterion of truth; and this would seem to be the actual conclusion to which M. Rey's Pragmatism has led him. M. Rey, like other pragmatists, speaks of truths being verified by 'useful consequences,' understood, of course, "in a most noble sense." But realising that it takes a very long time to discover whether a truth is really useful, and also that it is impossible without considerable experience to determine how far consequences which are apparently useless, unworkable, incommode, should be allowed to depreciate the value of an otherwise useful hypothesis, M. Rey is driven to the conclusion that only those forms of perception and thought are true which have become habitual. Truth arises from habits that are practically irreversible and biologically immune from change. Its 'necessity' is not intrinsic, but psychological. It is the necessity of mental habits which are the combined product of thought-activity and objective experience, and which in course of time have become so fixed that nothing short of a radical disruption of the structure of the human mind could change them.^{24}

This doctrine, as we have already seen, is the logical consequence of the pragmatic or humanistic theory that knowledge is the product of an evolutionary process in which the mind progressively adapts itself to its environment. Hence it would seem that Pragmatism, if pushed to its logical consequences, brings us back to that old and venerable criterion of truth, 'necessity,' or the 'impossibility of conceiving the contrary.' But in explaining how this 'necessity' arises, there is a fundamental difference between the traditional and the pragmatic theory. That certain ways of perceiving and thinking have only gradually become habitual can hardly be denied. Nor can it be denied that felt-satisfaction arising from consistency and abhorrence of all that is contradictory and inconsistent also grows stronger as the intellectual side of our nature becomes more highly developed. It is stronger, for instance, in a scientist than in a schoolboy, and stronger, again, in a European than in an Oriental mind. So far both traditionalist and pragmatist are agreed. But while the former starts from the principle that knowledge is possible, and hence infers that all forms of thought and perception which are natural, normal, and habitual, must per se be capable of giving truth, and as the condition of this lays down that the content of cognitive acts must be determined by their respective objects; the pragmatist, on the other hand, starts with the assumption that ideas -- at least in part -- are man-made products which in no case present at the outset more than a claim to truth, but may become true, should they in the long run lead to useful results. Hence, as ideas or modes of cognitive reaction which lead to useful results do become habitual, and would not become habitual unless they did prove useful, he is logically bound to accept M. Rey's criterion of the 'psychologically necessary' or 'biologically constant,' as his only sure test of pragmatic truth. Verification in experience, as pragmatically interpreted, is ultimately reducible to this, for verification is complete only when adaptation is complete and habits, perceptual and intellectual, have become so fixed that their reversal is practically impossible, since it would involve a radical change in our mental structure.

§ 401. Putting aside the scepticism involved in the view that cognition is only a peculiar way of reacting upon our environment, when we attempt to apply in practice the above criterion of truth, we are at once confronted with a very serious difficulty. It is easy enough to apply the test of 'psychological necessity' to axioms and first principles, but it is not so easy, indeed it may be questioned whether it is possible at all, to apply it to theories; and it is certainly impossible to apply it to any kind of truth in the making, for then our habits of thought are ex hypothesi not fixed. Yet it is precisely in this latter case that we most need a criterion of truth. Apart from axioms and the general facts of every day life, almost all truths are in process of making; and it is surely for these truths, or rather for these claims to truth, that a criterion is most urgently needed. If, however, as seems to be the case, 'psychological necessity' is the only pragmatic criterion that can give us certainty, it follows that we have no criterion at all for truth in the making, but must always wait until it is made. And if in reply to this argument you tell me that in regard to many objects habits of perception and thought have already been formed, and that new objects are accepted as true, or rejected as false, according to whether they can be apperceived or not by the former -- which is practically the criterion suggested by Avenarius and Simmel^{25} -- I must ask in what this 'apperception' can consist, if you deny that we have any apprehension of the nature of objects. We can hardly apprehend the compatibility or incompatibility of that the nature of which we are ignorant. True, we may invent or postulate a mysterious vis apperceptiva in obedience to whose autonomous dictates relations of compatibility and incompatibility 'flower out' of the stream of experience; but this is not only to declare apperception inexplicable, it also means that the pragmatist has had to fall back upon an intellectualist criterion just precisely in those cases for which his original pragmatic criterion was introduced, viz., in cases where truth is yet in process of making.

§ 402. A further difficulty might be raised against the doctrine that psychological necessity arising from habit is our only criterion of truth, on the ground that habits vary considerably with individuals. And I know not whether it is in order to avoid this difficulty, or whether it is merely in order to supplement and complete the general doctrine that truth is relative to our needs, but certainly pragmatists seem more and more inclined to appeal to common consent or to the consent of experts as one of their chief criteria of truth. This tendency is especially characteristic of French Pragmatism.^{26} M. Poincané insists much on the importance of social agreement, and M. Milhaud bases truth on the harmonious working of a collective mind. The mind, he says, is like an instrument in which harmony is produced by normal vibrations; and when this is so, one mind agrees with another and we have both truth and objectivity. Hence that assertion and that theory is true and valid which is "normal enough to be accepted by every man of sound mind."^{27}

Dr. Schiller, on the other hand, has been accused of making the individual criterion ultimate. Truth is that which is good for me, that which satisfies my needs and enables me to live in harmony with my environment. Consequently Mr. Hoernlé, in criticising Dr. Schiller's view, has pointed out that though none of us submit tamely to the opinions of our age, but claim each of us for his own hypotheses universal validity, a truth-finder is of necessity a truth-teacher, and hence our individual world must somehow be bound up with the common world. He suggests, therefore, as a 'universal' criterion of truth, the Arbeitswelt of Professor Euchen, which is "to comprise the whole of human life in its theoretical and practical aspects."^{28}

Dr. Schiller, however, though he certainly emphasises the personal character of truth, by no means ignores the importance of collective criteria. In fact, it is to social recognition that he, like Herr Simmel and the French pragmatists, attributes the 'objectivity' of Truth. In Studies in Humanism^{29} for instance, he tells us that "whatever individuals may recognise and value as 'true,' the 'truths' which de facto prevail and are recognised as objective will only be a selection from those which we are subjectively tempted to recognise." And in his earlier work, Humanism,^{30} he had already warned us that "truth, to be really safe, must be more than an individual valuation; it has to win social recognition, to transform itself into common property" -- a doctrine which is completely in harmony with his general position that truth and reality (as we know it) are the product of the combined activity of the human race in reaction upon its environment.

But, however useful a collective criterion of truth may be as a check upon individual vagaries, it cannot be ultimate; and Dr. Schiller is undoubtedly right in regarding truth as in this sense a personal matter. If truth is valued by our needs, it must be in the last resort by our own needs. My needs may in general be the same as those of the rest of mankind, and what satisfies these common needs will he pro tanto more true. But, after all, truths are truths for me, and it is I who have to judge in the last instance whether other people's needs are satisfied, as they seem to be. Everyone recognises that expert opinion is credible provided it agree, for experts are supposed to know all the facts of the case, and to understand how far their theories apply and what relation they bear to other theories and accepted truths. The opinion of the expert, therefore, under such circumstances, has clearly a special value such as that of an amateur can never possess. Still, at best, the agreement of experts is only a subordinate criterion, for it presupposes belief in the capacity and trustworthiness of witnesses, to test which another criterion is needed.

§ 403. Thus we are driven back upon individual criteria. Neither a consensus of opinion among experts nor the common consent of mankind at large can be our ultimate criterion of truth, and for that matter at most they give us only moral certitude. Habit or psychological necessity is also inadequate, since, like the social criterion, it will apply to but few cases. It is seldom, if ever, that a mental act is due solely to habit. Objective experience, or the nature of the objects about which we think, is almost always a conditioning factor in any judgment we may make. Nor will the other criteria suggested by the pragmatist be found to work any better. 'Difference to action,' 'difference to experience,' and 'utility,' all take into account objective conditions; but 'difference to action' and 'utility' are too narrow, while 'difference to experience' is too wide to be of any practical use. Where, then, are we to look for a suitable working criterion whereby to test the validity of claims to truth made by our minds both at the common-sense and at the higher scientific or philosophic level of intelligence? Either, it would seem, we must fall back upon that time-honoured criterion, 'evidence,' or we must adopt what seems to be very like its emotional counterpart, 'satisfaction.'

Both Professor James and Dr. Schiller have chosen the latter alternative. Having pointed out that "emotion accompanies actual cognition as a shadow does light," but with effects not always salutary, Dr. Schiller, nevertheless, affirms that "if a feeling of satisfaction did not occur in cognitive processes the attainment of truth would not be felt to have value."^{31} Without it, logical 'necessity,' 'cogency,' 'insight,' and 'certainty' are meaningless words. We judge reasoning to be pro tanto good, results right, operations valid, conceptions and predications true, when the results or consequences of our experiments are satistactory.^{32} Consistency tends to the same end. It is but the reacting of one portion of our beliefs on another "so as to yield the most satisfactory total state of mind."^{33} Similarly "truth in science is what gives us the maximum possible sum of satisfactions," in which taste is included, but of which consistency is "the most imperious claimant."^{34} In fine, though to be 'satisfactory' is a term that admits of no definition, so many are the ways in which it can be practically worked out,^{35}

yet at each and every concrete moment, truth for each man is what that man 'troweth' at the moment with the maximum of satisfaction to himself; and similarly abstract truth, truth verified by the long-run, and abstract satisfactoriness, long-run satisfactoriness coincide. If, in short, we compare concrete with concrete and abstract with abstract, the true and the satisfactory do mean the same thing.^{36}

The vagueness and ambiguity of 'satisfaction,' or a sum of satisfactions,' as a criterion of truth needs little comment. Satisfaction not only varies in quality, tone, and intensity with the individual, but also with the particular truth-claim in question. Satisfactions, like pleasures, can neither be defined nor measured, except by a multitude of standards which do not admit of comparison and cannot be tabulated or scaled. One man prefers one kind of satisfaction, another another, according to his temperament, education, general mode of life. With Professor James the satisfactions arising from consistency seem to prevail; with Dr. Schiller those which are due to the fulfilment of purpose and the furtherance of interest with others those which arise from utility or expediency in a less noble sense.

So long, then, as the pragmatist is unable to tell us what satisfactoriness is, we can hardly discuss further its value as a criterion of truth. It has occurred to me more than once, however, that satisfactoriness may be nothing more than the emotional accompaniment of what Newman would call a judgment of the Illative Sense, what I should call 'evidence.'^{37} And if this is so, the only fault I have to find with the pragmatist in this respect is that he has selected the more variable, and therefore the less valuable, aspect of what we all acknowledge must be the final test of truth. He admits that truth is 'a property of an idea,' yet he has chosen as his criterion its emotional accompaniment. He allows that 'the making of truth' must be controlled by reality and that consequences are in part determined by reality; but instead of simply stating that truth 'happens' or is recognised, when it is 'evident' that reality has controlled and determined thought, he bases his valuation of truth on the affective tone of this evidence, which is distinctly subjective. Did this emotional accompaniment of the apprehension of truth run parallel with, or were it exactly proportionate to, the evidence upon which judgment is based, it would not perhaps matter much whether we took satisfactoriness or evidence itself as our criterion. But since satisfaction depends largely upon volition, and upon purpose, interest, and general tone of body and mind, it matters a great deal; for it makes our criterion, so far as we can tell, in any concrete case, subjective to an almost indefinite extent, and so destroys almost entirely its value as a criterion. Truth must satisfy us, and it will do so in the long run if it is evident but a feeling of satisfaction may arise from other causes besides objective evidence, and when this is the case, it cannot but lead us astray if we use it as a criterion of truth.

§ 404. The pragmatist's view of truth's criteria therefore, is, like his doctrine of the nature of truth, more than tinged with Subjectivism -- a consequence which is due partly to Humanism and Protagorean principles, which exaggerate the subjective element in cognition and ascribe to purposes, interests and needs an all-pervading and all-permeating influence; partly to disgust with Intuitionism, which has led to the opposite extreme, to the belief that no value can be intuitively recognised and that the experienced consequences of truth must therefore be evaluated by their subjective emotional effects but chiefly, I think, to the substitution of 'utility' for 'correspondence' in the definition of the relation of truth to reality. If truth can in no intelligible sense be said to 'copy,' 'correspond with,' or 'represent' reality, what other relation can it have to reality except that of leading to useful results? And if these results are never experienced as they are objectively, but only as modified by purpose, why should they not be judged by the total state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction to which they give rise? The whole question turns upon one point: Is the true subordinate to the useful and the good? Does the seeker after truth merely aim at satisfying a purpose and gratifying a need? Does science exist merely that it may be used to harmonise our experience? Is the whole function and motive of all theoretical constructions from the highest to the most elementary and simple, directed in the end to the furtherance of human control over reality, and the transformation of it to suit our human needs? If it is, the criteria of truth that Pragmatism has offered us are probably the best we can get. But if it is not, utility and satisfactoriness are certainly inadequate and of very little value for either practical or theoretical purposes wherever the question of truth comes in. As a last example of this, and at the same time as an illustration of our main contention that 'utility' presupposes truth already established, we may instance the variety of opinions that exist in regard to practical matters where knowledge is wanting. What precisely is the effect of exercise on the body and particularly on the brain? We do not know, and hence eminent doctors will give contradictory advice and will even go to the length of writing articles, some recommending more, some less exercise, on the sole ground of utility. Again, in regard to food (than which no question could be more practical) the advice of experts is contradictory. Some recommend ample food, others a minimum. Some forbid animal food, others advise it. Some say alcohol is injurious, others that it is beneficial. Most advise regular food; but some say eat when you like and more or less what you like, while one authority on the subject of 'vitality' has recently published a large volume in which he advises a perpetual fast.^{38} Then, too, in educational matters, the utility ot compulsory Greek has for a long time been a burning question. Nay more, in respect of elementary education, if we may judge by the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, the experience of half a century seems likely to be reversed, since they tell us that the studies and the methods at present in vogue are not of a kind likely to be useful to the children in after life. And why all this contradiction in practical matters? It is due to the fact that, lacking knowledge, we are forced to base our judgments upon the utility of consequences, and about the utility of consequences it is impossible to secure agreement even among experts. Unless, then, truth be utility and nothing more, it is irrational to use utility as our criterion of truth for judgments about value or utility are almost as variable as judgments in regard to beauty or taste, especially when they are not based on recognised truth, but have to rely solely on experience.

{1} The Meaning of Truth, p. 200.

{2} cf. James, "The Pragmatic Method," Journ. of Phil., Psy. and Sc. Methods, 1904, p. 673; and Studies in Humanism, p. 6.

{3} Le Roy, Revue Métaph. et Morale, 1901, p. 327.

{4} loc. cit., p. 674; and cf. The Meaning of Truth. p. 210.

{5} Ibid., p. 676. PRAGMATIC CRITERIA OF TRUTH 593

{6} Pragmatism, pp. 202, 205, 213 cf. The Meaning of Truth, pp. 80, 82 Humanism, Essay I and Studies in Humanism, pp. 6, 152, 153; 187, 188.

{7} cf. an article of mine, entitled "Truth and Toleration," in the Irish Theological Quarterly for Jan., 1910.

{8} Grammar of Assent, p. 185.

{9} Appearance and Reality, p. 150.

{10} Mind, N.S. 51, p. 321.

{11} Appearance and Reality, p. 155.

{12} Pragmatism, pp. 212, 213.

{13} The Meaning of Truth, pp. 132-136.

{14} Pragmatism, p. 206.

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

{16} Ibid., p. 215

{17} Pragmatism, pp. 216, 215.

{18} The Meaning of Truth, pp. 98, 99.

{19} Studies in Humanism, p. 111.

{20} Ibid., p. 239, and cf. The Meaning of Truth, pp. 99, 100.

{21} cf. supra §§ 97, 376, 387.

{22} cf. The Meaning of Truth, pp. 97 et seq.

{23} Ibid., p. 85.

{24} cf. Humanism, pp. 52 et seq.; and 'Axioms as Postulates,' § 10.

{25} cf. Studies in Humanism, pp. 157, 158.

{26} cf. supra, §§ 319, 320.

{27} Etudes sur la pensée scientifique, p. 10 and cf. (Poincaré) La Valeur de la Science, pp. 264-271.

{28} Mind, N.S. 56, p. 476.

{29} p. 133.

{30} p. 58.

{31} Studies in Humanism, pp. 82-84.

{32} Ibid., p. 185.

{33} The Meaning of Truth, p. 88.

{34} Pragmatism, p. 217.

{35} The Meaning of Truth, p. 101.

{36} Ibid., p. 89.

{37} cf. infra, §§ 418 et seq.

{38} "Vitality, Fasting and Nutrition," by Hereward Carrington, cf. Review in Nature, for Nov. 1908, p. 68.