xi ON PRESERVING APPEARANCES 201 



fresh horrors at every step, until by the time absolute 

 truth had been reached the cumulative cruelty of what 

 we were forced to recognize as ultimate reality surpassed 

 our most hideous imaginings as far as our knowledge 

 surpassed that of a Bushman. Now I do not for a 

 moment suppose that common sense can be terrified with 

 such suggestions into regarding them as more than the 

 nightmares of a mind distraught, and I venture to think 

 that a pragmatist philosophy can show that common sense 

 is right. For there is a serious fallacy in the notion that 

 the pursuit of Truth could reveal a chamber of horrors 

 in the innermost shrine, and that we could all be forced 

 to acknowledge and adore an ultimate reality in this 

 monstrous guise. If this were truth, we should decline 

 to believe it, and to accept it as true. We should insist 

 that there must be some escape from the Minotaur, some 

 way out of the Labyrinth in which our knowledge had 

 involved our life. And even if we could be forced to 

 the admission that the pursuit of truth necessarily and 

 inevitably brought us face to face with some unbearable 

 atrocity an undertaking which seems so far to have over 

 taxed even Mr. Bradley s ingenuity a simple expedient 

 would remain. As soon as the pursuit of truth was 

 generally recognized to be practically noxious, we should 

 simply give it up. If its misguided votaries morbidly 

 persisted in their diabolical pursuit of truth regardless of 

 the consequences, they would be stamped out, as the 

 Indian Government has stamped out the Thugs. Nor is 

 this mere imagining. The thing has happened over and 

 over again. All through the Middle Ages most branches 

 of knowledge were under black suspicion as hostile to 

 human welfare. They languished accordingly, and some 

 of them, such as, e.g., Psychical Research, are still under 

 a cloud. It is hardly necessary to allude to Comte s 

 drastic proposals for the State regulation of science, and 

 every teacher knows that the Civil Service Commissioners 

 in the last resort prescribe what shall be taught (and how) 

 throughout the land. In short the fact is patent to all 

 who will open their eyes that in a thousand ways society 



