CHAPTER III 

 THE TEST OF TRUTH ^ 



HAVING now indicated the limits of hu- 

 man knowledge, and marked out the 

 province of that most highly organized 

 kind of knowledge called philosophy, it becomes 

 us next to inquire what are the sources of know- 

 ledge, and what is its guaranty ? What is the test 

 of truth which our philosophy shall recognize as 

 valid ? And first, what is Truth? 



Truth may be provisionally defined as the ex- 

 act correspondence between the subjective order 

 of our conceptions and the objective order of the 

 relations among things. Now since by the very 

 constitution of the knowing process we are de- 

 barred from knowing things in themselves, since 

 our highest philosophy must forever concern 

 itself with phenomena and can never hope to 

 deal with objective realities, the question arises, 

 how can we ever ascertain the objective order 

 of the relations among things? How can we 

 compare this objective order with the subjective 

 order of our conceptions ? And without such 

 comparison, how can we ever be certain that 

 * [See Introduction, § 9.] 



