48 HUMANISM m 



shall we find such truth ? The bodies of truth which 

 de facto we acknowledge in our sciences are all partial 

 systems, incomplete in themselves and discrepant with 

 each other. If nothing short of absolute truth is perfectly 

 systematic, and if all our systems are imperfect, is not all 

 our truth tainted with falsehood, and must it not be 

 admitted that no (actual) systems are true ? To talk 

 of the mimicry of true by false systems is misleading ; 

 we should remember that, in addition to the protective 

 mimicry of Bates, there exists another form ( Miillerian ) 

 in which the mimics co-operate to advertise the undesirable 

 character they have in common. And so our systems 

 may all be mimicking each other and may all be false. 



Again, I think, the contention must in substance be 

 admitted. The actual systems of our sciences are con 

 tinually being convicted of error, and cannot seriously 

 sustain their claim to the deference due only to the perfect 

 system. Still, in extenuation one might urge (a] that 

 ignorance is not necessarily error, nor incompleteness 

 falsehood ; ($) that experience would seem to show that 

 even when coherent systems of interpretation have to be 

 recast, what occurs is a transformation rather than a 

 revolution, reinterpreting rather than destroying the 

 truths of the older order. Though, therefore, our 

 systems may not be wholly true, we may conceive 

 them as progressively approximating to the truth. And 

 so (c} we must conceive them as in the end converging in 

 one absolute and all-embracing system which alone would 

 be indubitably and strictly true. 



(3) This last defence, however, still contains a hazardous 

 assumption. Is the ideal of a complete system absolutely 

 true really the straightforward, unambiguous notion which 

 it seems ? Are we entitled to argue from the unity of a 

 concept to a similar unity of the concrete ways of exempli 

 fying that concept, and so to assume that there is one 

 system and no more, into which all truth must finally be 

 fitted ? The assumption is a seductive one, and underlies 

 all monistic argument. But still it is an assumption, and 

 begs some very puzzling questions. It assumes the 



