276 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



prove to contain error, at what point can we be sure of 

 attaining final truth? Even if the whole of our present 

 experience had been reduced to order, which is far from 

 being the fact, might it not be exposed to the chance of 

 subsequent correction ? And if this be admitted, where is 

 our ground of confidence ? The answer is that the validity 

 of thought is not that of finality or achievement but of 

 growth. The most general expression of the rational 

 impulse, which sums up all reasoning processes and depends 

 for its validity on the fact that it does so, is the impulse 

 to establish intellectual harmony. This impulse is not 

 defeated by error, because under its control error is always 

 partial truth, leading by its very imperfection to further 

 investigation and correction. An error may, in fact, 

 involve more insight and a larger grasp of experience than 

 a truth that is maintained without insight into reasons, and 

 in the pursuit of the consequences and implications of error 

 we get back to a wider and deeper truth. Thus the ulti- 

 mate basis of our thought is not one of certainty in assign- 

 able net results, but the conviction of the justification of 

 the impulse towards harmony, which conviction is not 

 contradicted but corroborated by the actual course of intel- 

 lectual history. The organisation of our experience in this 

 view would remain a valid and a rational process even if 

 none of its results were final in the form which they assume 

 at this moment. Rational thought is no longer limited to 

 the apprehension of a fully and finally established system. 

 It becomes rather an impulse working towards an ideal, 

 organising the acquired results of experience into a coherent 

 whole, and extending them by persistent investigation. 



Thus Reason in general may be briefly defined as the 

 impulse towards interconnection. 



Thus the idea of development lies at the very basis of 

 validity itself. When critically examined the certainty 

 which one ratiocination claims is found to hold good only 

 with this saving clause, that it is understood to yield truth 

 not final and complete but partial and in growth. By 

 consistently using our reason we attain not necessarily the 

 truth, but a truer view. The wider the basis and the more 

 complete the articulation of thought, the more just is its 



