54 HUMANISM m 



conceive it. The cause of logical coherence may be 

 summed up in the one word interest, and thought 

 which is not set in motion by interest does not issue in 

 thinking at all. If, therefore, interest is to be tabooed, the 

 whole theory of thought becomes a mere mass of useless 

 machinery. For it is interest which starts, propels, 

 sustains, and guides the movement of our thought. It 

 effects the necessary selection among the objects of our 

 attention, accepting what is consonant, and rejecting what 

 is discrepant, with our aim in thinking. If, then, the 

 purposiveness of our thought is its central feature, psycho 

 logically, how can a logic set it aside without the grossest 

 travesty ? How fundamental is the fact of purposive 

 interest in mental life is apparent from the cases where 

 the normal control of consciousness is weakened or 

 suspended. In sleepiness, reverie, dream, delirium, mad 

 ness, etc., the purposive guidance of our thought grows 

 lax with the result that anarchy speedily overtakes the 

 soul. Thoughts cross the mind in the most illogical 

 way, and though our mental images may still continue to 

 mimic meaning, they have ceased to mean anything 

 coherent, and pro tanto logical thinking ceases to exist. 



Thus in trying to understand the doctrine that truth is 

 system we have been driven to the conclusion that in 

 psychology, if anywhere, the clue to the mystery of truth 

 must lie. For not only the definitions we have examined, 

 but all others of the sort, must presuppose a psychological 

 treatment of the psychical facts. 1 



ii 



Let us turn therefore to psychology. And to begin 

 with let us formulate our psychological questions more 

 precisely, as (i) what is the psycJiical nature of the 

 recognition of truth ? and (2) to what part of our 

 experience is this recognition attached ? 



1 The definition, e.g. that truth is what -we are forced to believe, obviously 

 implies psychological presuppositions as to the nature of belief and necessity.&quot; 

 Other inadequate formulas are discussed in Riddles of the Sphinx (new &&.}, pp. 83-9. 



