58 HUMANISM m 



sense our truth must harmonize, not only with its own 

 formal postulates but with our whole experience, and it 

 may well be that the merely formal truth of consistency 

 is never able to attain results sufficient for our wider 

 purpose, and so is not fully true. In point of fact it is 

 useful within limits ; to show that a truth follows 

 formally is not enough to prove it de facto true, but tests 

 our premisses ; to show that it involves a formal flaw is 

 not enough to invalidate it, but requires us to re-word it. 

 For we would rather renounce our conclusion than the use 

 of our formal principles. 



After premising which we may return to our problem 

 of constructing an objective truth out of subjective truth- 

 valuations, of, as we saw, the most varied nature. Every 

 one of these subjective valuations is the product of a 

 psychological interest, and aims at the satisfaction of 

 such an interest. But even in the individual there is 

 much regulation of his subjective valuations, and some 

 consolidation and subordination of interests under the 

 main purposes of his life. Hence many of his initial 

 interests will be suppressed, and the valuations which 

 ministered to them will tend to be withdrawn, to be 

 judged useless and, ultimately, false. In other words, 

 there begins to operate among our subjective truth- 

 valuations the great Pragmatist principle of selection, viz. 

 that the useless is not to be valued as true. The use 

 appealed to and the truth extracted by this criterion 

 are wholly psychological and, at first, only individual. 

 But not even of the individual is it true to say that his 

 feeling a thing true and calling it so makes it so. His 

 intuitions, guesses, and demands have to be verified, and 

 are sifted by the manner of their working. Thus the 

 question of the sustaining of the valuation after it is 

 made is a distinct one ; and is perhaps the one we mostly 

 want to raise when we inquire : What is truth? 



This question becomes more intricate, but also more 

 interesting, when we take into account the social environ 

 ment. For man is a social being, and truth indubitably 

 is to a large extent a social product. For even though 



