194 TRUTH AMONG THE PRAGMATISTS. 



hypotheses), and indicate which claims, the facts being tliere, will work 

 successfulli'- as the latter's substittites, and which will not- I call the 

 former claims true." * 



The kind and value of the work which experience must do 

 may become somewhat clearer, if we take a further statement 



from ■■ Pragmatism'"!: 



" True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate 

 and verify. False ideas are those that we can not. That is the prac- 

 tical 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. It (i-e-, an idea") 

 becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a 

 process." 



It goes without saying that these statements, taken together, 

 contain a great deal that will command the assent of most men 

 with regard to the psychological process of thought. Experience 

 goes for a good deal in the acquisition of true ideas. A man's 

 approximation to the true, according to science, is a progressive 

 movement, ever going on, and his knowledge is being constantly 

 supplemented by new discoveries. There are subjective and 

 particular testimonies to the truth in every mind, which are 

 unique and all-compelling, and cannot be easily communicated. 

 Experience often has a long run before it overtakes the truth, 

 after grasping vainly for it again and again under the form of 

 various errors. 



But all these observations, admirable as they are in them- 

 selves, would seem to be somewhat beside the mark when I am 

 examining the meaning of truth. They tell me a great deal 

 about the instrument or instruments which I am coinpelled to 

 use in finding truth. I am vouchsafed inuch apt information 

 about the working of the instrument. But I am actually anxious 

 to gauge the noblest of its products. If I apply to some encyclo- 

 paedic mind for full information of the characteristics of a daily 

 paper, I must not be put off wath the most eloquent and 

 picturesque disquisition on the linotype machine. To my mind 

 there is a further and more fundamental objection to the prag- 

 matist conception of truth, from the purely philosophical stand- 

 point, z'ic, that whilst it offers to put us in possession of truth, it 

 really palms off upon us a few of truth's consequences. Prof. 

 Leslie J. Walker, S.J., one of the ablest critics of pragmatism, 

 has pointed out J that : 



" the consequences or workings of truth are not truth itself, as is evident 

 from the fact that we speak of truth's workings or truth's consequences; 

 thereby implying that truth is one thing and its workings or consequences 

 something else which is not identical with it, but belongs to it, or follows 

 from it, and is therefore predicable of it." 



The man or system which wishes to persuade us to confound two 

 things which the common sense of mankind has always felt to be 



* " The Meaning of Truth," p- xix. 



t p. 201. 



:;: Theories of Knowledge," p. 564. 



