142 THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION 



Was there any necessity save a need of characteriz 

 ing it for some purpose of our own? And why 

 should we be mealy-mouthed about calling this 

 need practical? If the necessity which led to the 

 formation and development of an intellectual judg 

 ment was purely objective (whether physical or 

 metaphysical) why should not the thing have also to 

 be characterized in countless millions of other ways ; 

 for example, as to its distance from some crater in 

 the moon, or its effect upon the circulation of my 

 blood, or upon my irascible neighbor s temper, or 

 bearing upon the Monroe Doctrine? In short, do 

 not intellectual positions and statements mean new 

 and significant events in the treatment of things? 

 It is perhaps dangerous to attempt to follow 

 the inner workings of the processes by which truth 

 is first identified with some superior type of Real 

 ity, and then this Truth is taken as the criterion 

 of the truth of ideas ; while all the time it is held 

 that truth is something already possessed by ideas 

 as purely intellectual. But there seems to be some 

 ground for believing that this identification is due 

 to a twofold confusion, one having to do with ideas, 

 and the other with things. As to the first point: 

 After an idea is made true, we naturally say, in 

 retrospect, &quot; it was true all the time.&quot; Now this 

 truism is quite innocuous as a truism, being just a 

 restatement of the fact that the idea has, as matter 

 of fact, worked successfully. But it may be re- 



