196 TRUTH AMONG THE PRAGMATISTS. 



Secondly, it is conceded by the acutest of the pragmatists that 

 reality must somehow be behind the truth. Says Prof; James* : 



" There can be no truth, if there is nothing to be true about- Ideas 

 are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives 

 them cognitive lustre." 



If you ask what the connection may be between the satisfac- 

 tory or useful or expedient ideas (which, according to the prag- 

 matists, constitute the truth) and reality, they will tell you that 

 the former lead to the latter, but cannot be said to correspond 

 with it or copy it in any way. But we still await the pragmatist 

 teacher who will show us how these leadings take place, and 

 why their issue should be reality. To the iminitiated it seems 

 incredible that any man should expect truth to issue from mere 

 ideas if there is no connexion between them and reality. If 

 pragmatist truth have no better foundation, it is not worthy of 

 the name of trtith at all, and pragmatist knowledge is indistin- 

 guishable from common empiricism. 



A glance at the realities of physical science will, perhaps, 

 make this clearer. Experiment is in the physical sciences what 

 the pragmatist calls experience in the wader doinain of all know- 

 ledge. By experiment on objects that come within the reach of 

 our senses we are able to acquire ideas eminently useful. The 

 impressions made upon the mind by a bit of polished amber woke 

 useftil ideas, which have their application in the agency which 

 carries our news around the world. But this action and reaction 

 of ideas and facts, even after they have been removed from our 

 actual experience, go to show with no little force that ideas are 

 chiefl}^ useful because they are true in the sense that they depend 

 tipon facts. If useful ideas lead to the truth, it is first and fore- 

 most because they are founded on reality, and leave in the mind 

 some impress of the objects with which they deal, and of the 

 relations of those objects. Science imposes certain conclusions 

 upon us because the facts print them upon our minds. Should 

 these conclusions happen to be useful, in the sphere of new facts, 

 it will be a confirmation of their truth. But they are useful 

 because true, not true because useful. Prof. L. J. Walker f sums 

 up this aspect in a few words : 



" Our thoughts must be determined by reality itself in and through 

 sense-perception ; and thus may we gain real knowledge, which, because 

 it is real knowledge, is capable of leading to useful results-" 



The truth of the pragmatists is suspended in mid-air : it does 

 not touch the earth, and its discoA'^erers do not claim to have 

 drawn it from Heaven. 



Thirdly, pragmatism is a one-sided view of knowledge. It 

 has acquired this defect, because it is an energetic reaction against 

 certain other one-sided views. Against those who would have 

 the intellect as the sole judge of all triith, pragmatism asserted 



* " The Meaning of Truth," p. 195. 

 t " Theories of Knowledge," p. 555. 



