EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLES 



possibilities lurking in such an assumption, he appears to take 

 very little account. 



The issue is formulated by Mr, James with great distinctness. 

 "The opponent here will ask: 'Has not the knowing of truth 

 any substantive value on its own account, apart from the col- 

 lateral advantages it may bring? And if you allow the theoretic 

 satisfactions to exist at all, do they not crowd the collateral 

 satisfactions out of house and home, and must not pragmatism 

 go into bankruptcy, if she admits theni at all?' ' The essential 

 portion of his answer (to which far too little attention appears 

 to have been given) is as follows: "At life's origin any present 

 perception may have been 'true' if such a word could then be 

 applicable. Later, when reactions became organized, the re- 

 actions became 'true' whenever expectation was fulfilled by them. 

 Otherwise they were 'false' or 'mistaken' reactions. But the 

 same class of objects needs the same kind of reaction, so the 

 impulse to react consistently must gradually have been estab- 

 lished, and a disappointment felt whenever the results frustrated 

 expectation. Here is a perfectly plausible germ for all our higher 

 consistencies. Nowadays, if an object claims from us a reaction 

 of the kind habitually accorded only to the opposite class of 

 objects, our mental machinery refuses to run smoothly. The 

 situation is intellectually unsatisfactory. ... In some men 

 theory is a passion, just as music is in others. The form of inner 

 consistency is pursued far beyond the line at which collateral 

 profits stop. . . . Too often the results, glowing with 'truth' for 

 the inventors, seem pathetically personal and artificial to by- 

 standers. Which is as much as to say that the purely theoretic 

 criterion of truth can leave us in the lurch as easily as any other 

 criterion." 1 



Are we not justified in the remark, that this explanation is 

 typically utilitarian? All of the old machinery is at work. Cer- 

 tain experiences are viewed with an immediate pleasure, that is 



l The Meaning of Truth, pp. 96 ff. The whole passage is too long for quotation, 

 but the omitted portions are almost equally interesting and significant. 



