128 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



that particular passages to this effect are to be found in the 

 works of the others. The more important fact is that the two- 

 fold conception of meaning as content and import is plainly 

 implied in the pragmatist theory of truth ; to which we now turn. 



Truth is a property which we attribute to our beliefs so far 

 as we do, indeed, believe in them. Whether the particular 

 beliefs actually possess this property or not, 1 the meaning of the 

 property itself, which is thus attributed to them, is of course 

 unchanged. A method is accordingly suggested for analyzing 

 our conception of truth; namely, the genetic method that con- 

 sists in observing the conditions under which belief changes and 

 the general features of the process of change how doubt arises, 

 how speculation proceeds, and how belief becomes reestablished. 



As a result of such observation, it is found that truth contains 

 two essential factors, which (we would note in passing) are analo- 

 gous to the two aspects of meaning already noted. One is con- 

 sistency 2 with other beliefs (including, by indirection, the beliefs 



in terms of consequences in life of some formula which has its content, its logical 

 meaning, already fixed; or does he employ it to criticise and revise, and ultimately, 

 to constitute the proper intellectual meaning of that formula?" And below (with 

 reference to the pragmatic determination of the meaning of design in nature, as a 

 'vague confidence in the future') : "Is this meaning intended to replace the meaning 

 of a 'seeing force which runs things'? Or is it intended to superadd a pragmatic 

 value and validation to that concept of a seeing force? Or does it mean that, 

 irrespective of the existence of any such object, a belief in it has that value? Strict 

 pragmatism would seem to require the first interpretation, but I do not think 

 that is what Mr. James intends." Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific 

 Methods, V, pp. 90, 91. 



!Cf. James, The Meaning of Truth, p. 183. 



2 On account of the one-sidedness of the usual pragmatist account of meaning, 

 the writers of the school are unable to give a very definite account of this -consis- 

 tency, harmony, or agreement. We are told simply that we "feel" that certain 

 ideas are in agreement with other parts of experience, "such feeling being among 

 our potentialities" (Pragmatism, p. 201, cf. Meaning of Truth, p. 101, 11. 1-7). This 

 is the old empiricist faculty of 'comparison' over again, with the important dif- 

 ference, to be sure, that the consciousness of agreement is (or may be) simultaneous 

 with, rather than posterior to, the consciousness of the terms compared. But 

 though the existence of such a faculty, or potentiality, be admitted, the problem 

 certainly remains of determining under what conditions the feeling is felt. Even so, 

 in the case of an externally excited sensation, such as sweet or bitter, we are not 



