in TRUTH 59 



every truth may start in a minority of one, its hold upon 

 existence is exceedingly precarious, unless it can con 

 trive to get itself more extensively appreciated. Truth 

 is one of the few things of which no one desires a 

 monopoly. Those unfortunate enough to have acquired 

 and retained an exclusive view of truth are usually secluded 

 in prisons or asylums, unless their truth is so harmlessly 

 abstruse as not to lead to action, when they are sometimes 

 styled philosophers ! Truth, then, to be really safe, has to 

 be more than an individual valuation ; it has to win social 

 recognition, to transform itself into a common property. 



But how ? It is by answering this question that 

 Pragmatism claims to have made a real advance in our 

 comprehension of truth. It contends that once more, &quot;&quot;&quot;^ 

 only more signally and clearly than in the individual s 

 case, it is the usefulness and efficiency of the propositions 

 for which truth is claimed that determines their social 

 recognition. The use-criterion selects the individual 

 truth-valuations, and constitutes thereby the objective 

 truth which obtains social recognition. Hence in the 

 fullest sense of Truth its definition must be pragmatic. 

 Truth is the useful, efficient, workable, to which our 

 practical experience tends to restrict our truth-valuations ; 

 if anything the reverse of this professes to be true, it is 

 (sooner or later) detected and rejected. 



As an account of Truth this is not so much a 

 speculative theory as a description of plain fact. When 

 ever we observe a struggle between two rival theories of 

 events we find that it is ultimately the greater con- 

 duciveness of the victor to our use and convenience that 

 determines our preference and its consequent acceptance 

 as true. Illustrations of this fact might be multiplied 

 without limit, because in every advance of knowledge 

 there is always something of a struggle between the old 

 values which seemed true, and the new, which are better. 

 The shocking cases occur when the convenience of a 

 science is sacrificed to that of its practitioners, and 

 doctrines continue to be taught, like formal logic, though 

 they are known to be false. These exemplify an 



