264 SPECULATIVE SCIENCE 



A FRAGMENT ON TRUTH. 1 



I. 



IT is admitted on all hands that in all matters, whether of faith, 

 knowledge or perception, we should endeavour to attain truth ; 

 to believe truly, know truly, teel truly. But, inasmuch as in all 

 these respects all men differ one from another, a strong desire 

 has ever been felt for some criterion or touchstone by which a 

 man might, even in the simplest case, discern truth from false- 

 hood. No such touchstone has or ever will be found, and in- 

 deed the desire is rather akin to the vague longing for magic 

 powers than to any healthy appetite. 



The word truth is in this matter strangely abused. The 

 word, truly used, signifies a concordance either between some 

 verbal expression and an external fact or between some mental 

 impression and an external fact. These two meanings shall be 

 separately considered. In regard to the first, let us first re- 

 member that no word has any definite or absolutely circum- 

 scribed meaning, much less, any congeries of words such as form 

 a sentence. No one word absolutely corresponds to any one 

 thing, fitting it so as absolutely to express all its qualities and 

 no others. To suppose that a sentence built of these imperfect 

 bricks, and apprehended in the shadowy impression which words 

 convey, shall correspond absolutely with even the simplest 

 natural fact in all its relations is manifestly absurd. 



Agreement between many minds as to any statement be- 

 comes more and more probable as the statement is more and 

 more restricted to the simplest class of facts. In this and in this 

 alone lies the supposed superiority of mathematics, and science 

 generally, in regard to truths. The truths of exact science mean 

 very little ; hence we agree fairly well as to the truth of the 



1 From an unfinished MS., dated May, 1885. 



