THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION 137 



this standpoint a criterion of truth means the test 

 of the worth of the intellectual intent, import, or 

 claim of any intellectual statement as intellectual. 

 This is an intelligible sense of the term truth. In 

 the second place, it seems to be assumed that a 

 certain kind of reality is already, apart from ideas 

 or meanings, Truth, and that this Truth is the 

 criterion of that lower and more unworthy kind 

 of truth that may be possessed or aimed at by 

 ideas. But we do not stop here. The conception 

 ^that all truth must have a criterion haunts the 

 intellectualist, so that the reality, which, as con 

 trasted with ideas, is taken to be The Truth (and 

 the criterion of their truth) is treated as if it itself 

 had to have support and warrant from some other 

 Reality, lying back of it, which is its criterion. 

 This, then, gives the third type of truth, The 

 Absolute Truth. (Just why this process should 

 not go on indefinitely is not clear, but the neces 

 sity of infinite regress may be emotionally pre 

 vented by always referring to this last type of 

 truth as Absolute). Now this scheme may be 

 &quot; true,&quot; but it is not self-explanatory or even 

 easily apprehensible. In just what sense, truth is 

 ( 1 ) that to which ideas as ideas lay claim and yet 

 is (2) Reality which as reality is the criterion of 

 truth of ideas, and yet again is (3) a Reality 

 which completely annuls and transcends all refer 

 ence to ideas, is not in the least clear to me: nor, 



