Every man, probably, is by instinct a dogmatist. He feels perfectly sure that he knows some things, and is right about them against the world. Whatever he believes in he does not doubt, but holds to be self-evidently or indisputably true. His naive dogmatism, moreover, spontaneously assumes that his truth is universal and shared by all others.

If now he could live like a fakir, wholly wrapped in a cloud of his own imaginings, and nothing ever happened to disappoint his expectations, to jar upon his prejudices, and to convict him of error; if he never held converse with anyone who took a different view and controverted him, his dogmatism would be lifelong and incurable. But as he lives socially, he has in practice to outgrow it, and this lands him in a serious theoretical dilemma. He has to learn to live with others who differ from him in their dogmatizing. Social life plainly would become impossible if all rigidly insisted on the absolute rightness of their own beliefs and the absolute wrongness of all others.

So compromises have to be made to get at a common 'truth.' It must be recognized that not everything which is believed to be 'knowledge' is knowledge. In fact, it is safer to assume that none have knowledge, though all think they have; to say fact, men only have 'opinions,' which may be nearer to or farther from 'the truth,' but are not of necessity as unquestionable as they seem to be. Out of this concession to the social life arise three problems. How are 'opinions' to be compared with each other, and how is the extent of their 'truth' or 'error' to be determined? How is the belief in absolute truth to be interpreted and discounted? How is the penitent dogmatist, once he has allowed doubt to corrupt his self-confidence, to be stopped from doubting all things and turning sceptic?

As regards the first problem, the first question is whether we shall try to test opinions and to arrive at a standard of value by which to measure them by comparing the opinions themselves with one another, or shall presume that there must be some absolute standard which alone is truly true, whether we are aware of it or not. The former view is relativism, the latter is absolutism, in the matter of truth.

Now, there can be no doubt that absolutism is more congenial to our natural prejudices. Accordingly it is the method tried first; but it soon conducts dogmatism to an awkward series of dilemmas.

1. If there is absolute truth, who has it? and who can use the absolute criterion of opinions it is supposed to form? Not, surely, everyone who thinks he has. It will never do to let every dogmatist vote for himself and condemn all others. That way war and madness lie. Until there is absolute agreement, there cannot be absolute truth.

2. But absolute truth may still be reverenced as an ideal, to save us from the scepticism to which a complete relativity of truth would lead. But would it save us? If it is admitted that no one can arrogate to himself its possession, what use is it to believe that it is an ideal? For if no one can assume that he has it, all human truth is, in fact, such as the relativist asserted, and scepticism is just as inevitable as before. It makes no difference to the sceptical inference whether there is no absolute truth, or whether it is unattained by man, and human unattainable.

3. It was a mistake, therefore, to admit that opinions cannot be compared together. Some are much more certain than others, and, indeed, 'self-evident' and 'intuitive.' Let us therefore take these to be 'truer.' If so, the thinker who feels most certain he is right is most likely to be right.

4. This suggestion will be welcomed by all dogmatists—until they discover that it does not help them to agree together, because they are all as certain as can be. But a critically-minded man will urge against it that 'certainty' is a subjective and psychological criterion, and that no one has been able to devise a method for distinguishing the alleged logical from the undeniable psychological certainty. He will hesitate to say, therefore, that because a belief seems certain it is true, and to trust the formal claim to infallibility which is made in every judgment. And when 'intuitions' are appealed to, he will ask how 'true' intuitions are to be discriminated from 'false,' sound from insane, and inquire to what he is committing himself in admitting the truth of intuitions. He will demand, therefore, the publication of a list of the intuitions which are absolutely true. But he will not get it, and if he did, it may be predicted that he would not find a single one which has not been disputed by some eminent philosopher.

5. Intuitions, therefore, are an embarrassment, rather than a help to Intellectualism. It has to maintain both that intuitions are the foundations of all truth and certitude, and also that not all are true. But our natural curiosity as to how these sorts are to be known apart is left unsatisfied. We must not ask which are true, and which not. No one can say in advance about what matters intuitive certainty is possible; what is, or is not, an intuition is revealed only to reflection after the event. Only if an intuition has played us false, we may be sure it was not infallible; it must either have been one of the fallible sort, or else no intuition at all

6. At this point universal scepticism begins to raise its hydra head, and to grin at the dogmatist's discomfiture. For in point of fact the history of thought reveals, not a steady accumulation of indubitable truth, but a continuous strife of opinions, in which the most widely accepted beliefs daily succumb to fresh criticism and fall into disrepute as the 'errors of the past.' Nothing, it seems, can guarantee a 'truth,' however firmly it may be believed for a time, from the corrosive force of new speculation and changed opinion; to survey the field of philosophic dispute, strewn with the remains of 'infallible' systems and 'absolute' certainties, is to be led irresistibly to a sceptical doubt as to the competence of human thought. If 'absolute truth' is our ideal and acquaintance with 'absolute reality' our aim, then, in view of the persistent illusions on both these points to which the human mind is liable, it seems necessary to recognize the hopelessness of our search. Thus the last dilemma of dogmatism is reached. In view of the diversity of human beliefs and the discredit which has historically fallen on the most axiomatic articles of faith, we must either admit scepticism to be the issue of the debate, or else, condemning our absolute view of truth, find some means of utilizing the relative truths which are all that humanity seems able to grasp. But to come to terms with relativism is to renounce the dogmatic attitude entirely, and to approach the problems of philosophy in a totally different spirit.