It has been shown in the last chapter how urgent has become the problem of discriminating between the true and false among relative 'truths.' For absolute truth has become a chimera, self-evidence an illusion, and intuition untrustworthy. All three are psychologically very real to those who believe in them, but logically they succumb to the assaults of a scepticism which infers from the fact that no 'truths' are absolute that all may reasonably be overthrown.

The only obstacle to its triumph lies in the existence of 'relative' truths which are not absolute, and do not claim to be, and in the unexamined possibility that in a relativist interpretation of all truth a meaning may be found for the distinction between 'true' and 'false.' Now, not even a sceptic could deny that the size of an object is better measured by a yard-measure than by the eye, even though it may be meaningless to ask what its size may be absolutely; or that it is probable that bread will be found more nourishing than stone, even though it may not be a perfect elixir of life. Even if he denied this, the sceptic's acts would convict his words of insincerity, and practically, at any rate, no one has been or can be a sceptic, whatever the extent of his theoretic doubts.

This fact is construed by the pragmatist as a significant indication of the way out of the epistemological impasse. The 'relative' truths, which Intellectualism passed by with contempt, may differ in practical value and lead to the conceptions of practical truth and certainty which may be better adapted to the requirements of human life than the elusive and discredited ideals of absolute truth and certainty, and may enable us to justify the distinctions we make between the 'true' and the 'false. At any rate, this suggestion seems worth following up.

To begin with, we must radically disabuse our minds of the idea that thinking starts from certainty. Even the self-evident and self-confident 'intuitions' that impress the uncritical so much with their claim to infallibility are really the results of antecedent doubts and ponderings, and would never be enunciated unless there were thought to be a dispute about them. In real life thought starts from perplexities, from situations in which, as Professor Dewey says, beliefs have to be 'reconstructed,' and it aims at setting doubts at rest. It is psychologically impossible for a rational mind to assert what it knows to be true, and supposes everyone else to admit the truth of. This is why even a philosopher's conversation does not consist of a rehearsal of all the unchallenged truisms that he can remember.

Being thus conditioned by a doubt, every judgment is a challenge. It claims truth, and backs its claims by the authority of its maker; but it would be folly to imagine that it thereby becomes ipso facto true, or is meant to be universally accepted without testing. Its maker must know this as well as anyone, unless his dogmatism has quite blotted out his common sense. Indeed, he may himself have given preference to the judgment he made over the alternatives that occurred to him only after much debate and hesitation, and may propound it only as a basis for further discussion and testing.

Initially, then, every judgment is a truth-claim, and this claim is merely formal. It does not mean that the claim is absolutely true, and that it is impious to question it. On the contrary, it has still to be validated by others, and may work in such a way that its own maker withdraws it, and corrects it by a better. The intellectualist accounts of truth have all failed to make this vital distinction between 'truth-claim' and validated truth. They rest on a confusion of formal with absolute truth, and it is on this account that they cannot distinguish between 'truth' and error. For false judgments also formally claim 'truth,' No judgment alleges that it is false.^[C]

On the other hand, if the distinction between truth-claims and validated truths is made, there ceases to be any theoretic difficulty about the conception and correction of errors, however difficult it may be to detect them in practice. 'Truths' will be 'claims' which have worked well and maintained themselves; 'errors,' such as have been superseded by better ones. All 'truths' must be tested by something more objective than their own self-assertiveness, and this testing by their working and the consequences to which they lead may go on indefinitely. In other words, however much a 'truth' has been validated, it is always possible to test it further. I.e., it is never theoretically 'absolute,' however well it may practically be assured. For a confirmation of this doctrine Pragmatism appeals to the history of scientific truth, which has shown a continuous correction of 'truths,' which were re-valued as 'errors,' as better statements for them became available.

It may also be confirmed negatively by the breakdown of the current definitions of truth, which all seem in the end to mean nothing.

The oldest and commonest definition of a 'truth' which is given is that it is 'the correspondence of a thought to reality.' But Intellectualism never perceived the difficulties lurking in it. At first sight this seems a brave attempt to get outside the circle of thought in order to test its value and to control its vagaries. Unluckily, this theory can only assert, and neither explains nor proves, the connection between the thought and the reality it desiderates. For, granting that it is the intent of every thought to correspond with reality, we must yet inquire how the alleged correspondence is to be made out. Made out it must be; for as the criterion is quite formal and holds of all assertions, the claim to 'correspond' may be false. To prove the correspondence, then, the 'reality' would have somehow to be known apart from the truth-claim of the thought, in order that the two might be compared and found to agree. But if the reality were already known directly, what would be the need of asserting an idea of it and claiming 'truth' for this? How, moreover, could the claim be tested, if, as is admitted, the reality is not directly known? To assert the 'correspondence' must become a groundless postulate about something which is defined to transcend all knowledge. The correspondence theory, then, does not test the truth-claim of the assertion; it only gives a fresh definition of it. A 'true' thought, it says, is one which claims to correspond with a 'reality.' But so does a false, and hence the theory leaves us as we were, puzzled to distinguish them.^[D]

Yet the theory is not wholly wrong. Many of our thoughts do claim to correspond with reality in ways that can be verified. If the judgment 'There is a green carpet in my hall' is taken to mean 'If I enter my hall, I shall see a green carpet,' perception tests whether the judgment 'corresponds' with the reality perceived, and so goes to validate or disprove the claim. But the limits within which this correspondence works are very strait. It applies only to such judgments as are anticipations of perception,^[E] and will test a truth-claim only where there is willingness to act on it. It implies an experiment, and is not a wholly intellectual process.

The superiority of the 'correspondence' theory over the belief in 'intuitions' lies in its insistence that thought is not to audit its own accounts. Its success or failure depends upon factors external to it, which establish the truth or falsehood of its claims. No such guarantee is offered by the next theory, which is known as the 'consistence' or 'coherence' theory. In order to avoid the difficulty which wrecked the 'correspondence' theory, that of making the truth of an assertion reside in an inexperienceable relation to an unattainable reality, this view maintains that an idea is true if it is consistent with the rest of our thoughts, and so can be fitted with them into a coherent system. No doubt a coherence among our ideas is a convenience and a part of their 'working,' but it is hardly a test of their objective truth. For a harmonious system of thoughts is conceivable which would either not apply to reality at all, or, if applied, would completely fail. On this theory systematic delusions, fictions, and dreams, might properly lay claim to truth. True, they might not be quite consistent: but neither are the systems of our sciences. If, then, this absolute coherence be insisted on, this test condemns our whole knowledge; if not, it remains formal, and fails to recognize any distinctions of value in the claims which can be systematized.

To avoid this reductio ad absurdum, it has been suggested that it is not the coherence of the idea in human, finite, minds which constitutes 'truth,' but the perfect consistency of the experience of an Absolute Mind. The test, then, of our limited coherency will lie in its relation to this Absolute System. But here we have the correspondence doctrine once again in a fresh disguise; our human systems are now 'true' if they correspond with the Absolute's, But as there is no way for us of sharing the Absolute Experience, our test is again illusory, and productive of a depressing scepticism; and, again, we have only asserted that truth is what claims to be part of the Absolute System.

A word may be devoted to the simple refusal of intuitionists to give an account of Truth on the ground that it is 'indefinable.' Truth is taken to be an ultimate unanalyzable quality of certain propositions, intuitively felt, and incapable of description. Error, by the same token, should be equally indefinable and as immediately apprehended. How, then, can there be differences of opinion, and mistakes as to what is true and what false? How is it that a proposition which is felt to be 'true' so often turns out to be erroneous? If all errors are felt to be true by those they deceive, is it not clear that immediate feeling is not a good enough test of a validated truth? Thus, once again, we find that an account of truth-claim is being foisted on us in place of a description of truth-testing.

The intellectualist, then, being in every case unable to justify the vital distinction commonly made between the true and the false, we return to the pragmatist. He starts with no preconceptions as to what truth must mean, whether it exists or not; he is content to watch how de facto claims to truth get themselves validated in experience. He observes that every question is intimately related to some scheme of human purposes. For it has to be put, in order to come into being. Hence every inquiry arises, and every question is asked, because of obstacles and problems which arise in the carrying out of human purposes. So soon as uncertainty arises in the course of fulfilling a purpose, an idea or belief is formulated and acted on, to fill the gap where immediate certitude has broken down. This engenders the truth-claim, which is necessarily a 'good' in its maker's eyes, because it has been selected by him and judged preferable to any alternative that occurred to him.

How, then, is it tested? Simply by the consequences which follow from adopting it and using it as an assumption upon which to work. If these consequences are satisfactory, if they promote the purpose in hand, instead of thwarting it, and thus have a valuable effect upon life, then the truth-claim maintains its 'truth,' and is so far validated. This is the universal method of testing assertions alike in the formation of mathematical laws, physical hypotheses, religious beliefs, and ethical postulates. Hence such pragmatic aphorisms as 'truth is useful' or 'truth is a matter of practical consequences' mean essentially that all assertions must be tested by being applied to a real problem of knowing. What is signified by such statements is that no 'truth' must be accepted merely on account of the insistence of its claim, but that every idea must be tested by the consequences of its working. Its truth will then depend upon those consequences being fruitful for life in general, and in particular for the purpose behind the particular inquiry in which it arose. Truth is a value and a satisfaction; but 'intellectual satisfaction' is not a morbid delight in dialectical and verbal juggling: it is the satisfaction which rewards the hard labour of rationalizing experience and rendering it more conformable with human desires.

It should be clear, though it is often misunderstood, that there is nothing arbitrary or 'subjective' in this method of testing beliefs. It does not mean that we are free to assert the truth of every idea which seems to us pretty or pleasant. The very term 'useful' was chosen by pragmatists as a protest against the common philosophic licence of alleging 'truths' which could never be applied or tested, and were supposed to be none the worse for being 'useless.' It is clear both that such 'truths' must be a monopoly of Intellectualism, and also that they do allow every man to believe whatever he wishes, provided only that he boldly claims 'self-evidence' for his idiosyncrasy. In this purely subjective sense, into which Intellectualism is driven, it is, however, clear that there can be no useless ideas. For any idea anyone decided to adopt, because it pleased or amused him, would be ipso facto true. Pragmatism, therefore, by refuting 'useless' knowledge, shows that it does not admit such merely subjective 'uses.' It insists that ideas must be more objectively useful—viz., by showing ability to cope with the situation they were devised to meet. If they fail to harmonize with the situation they are untrue, however attractive they may be. For ideas do not function in a void; they have to work in a world of fact, and to adapt themselves to all facts, though they may succeed in transforming them in the end.

Nor has an idea to reckon only with facts: it has also to cohere with other ideas. It must be congruous with the mass of other beliefs held for good reasons by the thinker who accepts it. For no one can afford to have a stock of beliefs which conflict too violently with those of his fellows. If his 'intuitions' contrast too seriously with those of others, and he acts on them, he will be shut up as a lunatic. If, then, the 'useful' idea has to approve itself both to its maker and his fellows without developing limitations in its use, it is clear that a pragmatic truth is really far less arbitrary and subjective than the 'truths' accepted as absolute, on the bare ground that they seem 'self-evident' to a few intellectualists.

If, however, it be urged that pragmatic truths never grow absolutely true at all, and that the most prolonged pragmatic tests do not exclude the possibility of an ultimate error in the idea, there is no difficulty about admitting this. The pragmatic test yields practical, and not 'absolute,' certainty. The existence of absolute certainty is denied, and the demand for it, in a world which contains only the practical sort, merely plays into the hands of scepticism. The uncertainty of all our verificatory processes, however, is not the creation of the pragmatist, nor is he a god to abolish it. Abstractly, there is always a doubt about what transcends our immediate experience, and this is why it is so healthy to have to repudiate so many theoretic doubts in every act we do. For beliefs have to be acted on, and the results of the action rightly react on the beliefs. The pragmatic test is practically adequate, and is the only one available. That it brings out the risk of action only brings out its superiority to a theory which cannot get started at all until it is supplied with absolute certainty, and meantime can only idly rail at all existing human truths.

We have in all this consistently referred the truth of ideas to individual experiences for verification. This evidently makes all truths in some sense dependent upon the personality of those who assert and accept them. Intellectualist logic, on the other hand, has always proclaimed that mental processes, if true, are 'independent' of the idiosyncrasies of particular minds. Ideas have a fixed meaning, and cohere in bodies of 'universal' truth, quite irrespective of whether any particular mind harbours them or not. This is not only a contention fatal to the pragmatic claims, but also bound up with other assumptions of Formal Logic. So it becomes necessary to inquire whether this Logic is a success, and so can coherently abstract from the personality of the knower and the particular situations that incite him to know.

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