in TRUTH 51 



If the defence of logical conventions is imprudent 

 enough to take this ground, it can meet with nothing but 

 disaster. For we shall at once have to defy the logician 

 (i) to produce his pure thought ; (2) to account for the 

 movement of thought by anything but an appeal to 

 psychological motives, desire, feeling, interest, attention, 

 will, etc. ; (3) even to describe what he conceives to 

 happen in strictly logical terms and without constant 

 recourse to psychology. 



The first two of these points will probably be conceded 

 by all except belated Hegelians, but the third may need 

 some illustration, the more so as we may draw from it 

 also an independent (fifth) reason for denying the adequacy 

 of the conception of truth as a system. I may point 

 out therefore (5) that the ultimate terms of this (as of 

 every other) definition of Truth are primarily psychological. 

 If we take it that a system means a body of coherent 

 judgments, it needs but a little reflection to see that the 

 logical evaluation of the system presupposes its psychical 

 existence, and the previous discussion of a number of 

 psychological questions, (i) How, e.g. is the system 

 recognized ? (2) What is the nature, and what (3) the 

 cause of its coherence ? 



As to (i) it must surely be admitted that the logical 

 system, to be a system for us, must be apprehended as 

 such by us. Before, that is, an alleged truth can be 

 subjected to logical reflection, it has to be actually judged 

 true ; its truth has to be felt before it is understood. 

 Even, therefore, if logic could find and reserve for itself 

 among our conscious processes such a thing as a process 

 of pure thought, a distinct mental act would yet be 

 necessary for its apprehension, and this act would be 

 psychological. In other words, no truth actually occurs 

 without, in the first place, a psychic process ; hence every 

 truth as such is conditioned by a variety of psychological 

 influences of the kind just mentioned. 



The attempt, therefore, to represent thought and 

 a fortiori truth, as wholly an affair of mediation between 

 self-subsistent relations fails ; at every step in its progress 



