720 . or.JECT OF NATITRAL SCIENCE. 



There is at present in vogue in philosopliic and scientitic 

 circles a doctrine known as pragmatism, which is in efifect the 

 theory that all intelhgible knowledge and assertions are scientific 

 in their nature. Pragmatism states itself as a theory of truth, 

 namely, that all truth consists in a sort of working. Now this 

 seems to me to imply that the meaning or intention of all asser- 

 tions must be a promise of such zvorking, which is exactly the 

 same sort of thing as the meaning (^r intention of a scientific 

 assertion. 1 propose, therefore, to incjuire whether there are 

 or are not intelligible assertions and regions of knowledge which 

 are not scientific, and to which the ])ragmatic theory of truth 

 does not apply. * 



In the case of a scientific assertion, its truth and the working 

 of a belief in it are identical. If, for example, the jDredictions of 

 celestial events based on the theory of universal gravitation radi- 

 cally failed to come ofif, then the doctrine would ipso facto cease 

 to be true. The reason is that the whole meaning and intention 

 of the theory, once its technical language is vmderstood, is seen 

 to be that predictions of this sort should come off, that the doc- 

 trine should work in this way. 



Similarly, any belief whatever works to some extent in some 

 sense or senses, and probably fails to work to some extent in 

 other senses, and just in so far as it can be tested by observation 

 and experiment, the working of a belief is one of the most im- 

 portant things about it. People do, as a matter of fact, accept 

 or reject beliefs almost entirely on the score of their working 

 or not working. 



Now the pragmatist asserts that the working or not working 

 of a belief is not merely one particular aspect of it. but is its 

 very essence and meaning, that the working of a belief and its 

 truth are indistinguishable. He asserts that the truth of an as- 

 sertion consists in its pragmatic working, and that it is mean- 

 ingless to think of truth in any other way. I am convinced that 

 as a general statement this doctrine is false. 



The primar}- reason wh\' we are concerned in some cases to 

 mean by truth something radically dififerent from anv sort of 

 working is that the world of our interests transcends immeasur- 

 ably that world of our mere acquaintance, actual or potential, 

 which is open to our inspection. We are interested, and vitally 

 interested, in things which lie together outside the universe of 

 things that work. Further, it is in general true that our higher 

 interests, our passionate interests, are almost, entirely simple 

 direct interest in things which do. by their nattire, transcend (Uir 

 acquaintance and inspection. 



Let us fix our impressions by considering certain passions, 

 properly so called, such as jealous}-, indignation, pity. The more 

 we reflect on these passions, especially if we refer to some vivid 

 instance in our own experience or in imaginative literature, the 

 more we shall see. I think, that the objects which these passions 



