THE TEST OF TRUTH 



this which Mr. Mill must have had in mind, 

 when he let fall the much criticised suggestion 

 that in some distant planet the sum of two and 

 two might be five. But such a statement is 

 inadequate ; for when we speak of planets and 

 numbers, we are tarrying within the region of 

 things accessible to intelligence, and within this 

 region we cannot admit the possibility of two 

 and two making five. It is nevertheless imagi- 

 nable that somewhere there may be a mode of 

 existence, different from intelligence, and incon- 

 ceivable by us because wholly alien from our 

 experience, upon which numerical limitations 

 like ours would not be binding. The utter 

 blankness of uncertainty in which such a sug- 

 gestion leaves us may serve as an illustration 

 of the theorem that we can have no criterion of 

 Absolute Truth, or of truth that is not corre- 

 lated with the conditions of our intelligence. 



But the lack of any such criterion in no way 

 concerns us as intelligent beings. The only 

 truth with which we have any concern is Rela- 

 tive Truth, — the truth that is implicated with 

 whatever can in any way come within our cog- 

 nizance. For relative truth our inquiry has 

 established this criterion. When any given order 

 among our conceptions is so coherent that it 

 cannot be sundered except by the temporary 

 annihilation of some one of its terms, there 

 must be a corresponding order among pheno- 

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