160 A CATECHISM CONCERNING TRUTH 



discovery of America by Columbus are not truths ; 

 they are events. Some conviction, some belief, 

 some judgment with reference to them is necessary 

 to introduce the category of truth and falsity. 

 And since the conviction, the judgment, is as mat 

 ter of fact subsequent to the event, how can its 

 truth consist in the kind of blank, wholesale rela 

 tionship the intellectualist contends for? How 

 can the present belief jump out of its present 

 skin, dive into the past, and land upon just the 

 one event (that as past is gone forever) which, by 

 definition, constitutes its truth? I do not wonder 

 the intellectualist has much to say about &quot; trans 

 cendence &quot; when he comes to dealing with the truth 

 of judgments about the past; but why does he 

 not tell us how we manage to know when one 

 thought lands straight on the devoted head of 

 something past and gone, while another thought 

 comes down on the wrong thing in the past? 



Pupil. Well, of course, knowledge of the past 

 is very mysterious, but how is the pragmatist 

 any better off? 



Teacher. The reply to that may be inferred 

 from what has already been said. The past event 

 has left effects, consequences, that are present 

 and that will continue in the future. Our belief 

 about it, if genuine, must also modify action in 

 some way and so have objective effects. If these 

 two sets of effects interlock harmoniously, then the 



