130 THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION 



mane and the more urgent is the question: What 

 then in the concrete is theory? and of what nature 

 iff. the material consistency which is the test of its 

 formal consistency? * 



Take the instance of a man who wishes to deny 

 the criterion of self-consistency in thinking. Is 

 he refuted by pointing to the &quot; fact &quot; that eternal 

 reality is eternally self-consistent? Would not his 

 obvious answer to such a mode of refutation be: 

 &quot;What of it? What is the relevancy of that 

 proposition to my procedure in thinking here and 

 now? Doubtless absolute reality may be a great 

 number of things, possibly very sublime and pre 

 cious things ; but what I am concerned with is a 

 particular job of thinking, and until you show me 

 the intermediate terms which link that job to the 

 asserted self-consistent character of absolute real 

 ity, I fail to see what difference this doubtless 



1 This suggests that many of the stock arguments against 

 pragmatism fail to take its contention seriously enough. 

 They proceed from the assumption that it is an account 

 of truth which leaves untouched current notions of the 

 nature of intelligence. But the essential point of prag 

 matism is that it bases its changed account of truth on a 

 changed conception of the nature of intelligence, both as 

 to its objective and its method. Now this different account 

 of intelligence may be wrong, but controversy which leaves 

 standing the conventionally current theories about thought 

 and merely discusses &quot; truth &quot; will not go far. Since truth 

 is the adequate fulfilment of the function of intelligence, the 

 question turns on the nature of the latter. 



