Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/367

ON PRESERVING APPEARANCES. 353 " better " world. The absolutely satisfactory alone would rise superior to such doubts. It would be psychologically impossible to suspect it of bearing hidden horrors in its breast. The thought is no doubt abstractly conceivable, but a human mind could hardly be found seriously to entertain it. Similarly we might play with the idea of a progress in knowledge which should not only fail to be a progress in harmony, but should reveal fresh horrors at every step, until by the time absolute truth had been reached the cumulative cruelty of what we were forced to recognise as ultimate reality surpassed our most hideous imaginings as far as our knowledge surpassed that of a Bushman. Now I do not for a moment suppose that common sense can be terrified with such suggestions into- regarding them as more than the nightmares of a mind dis- traught, and I venture to think that a pragmatist philosophy can show that common sense is right. For there is a serious fallacy in the notion that the pursuit of Truth could reveal a chamber of horrors in the innermost shrine, and that we could all be forced to acknowledge and adore an ultimate reality in this monstrous guise. If this were truth, we should decline to believe it, and to accept it as true. We should insist that there must be some escape from the Minotaur, some way out of the Labyrinth in which our knowledge had involved our life. And even if we could be forced to the admission that the pursuit of truth necessarily and inevitably brought us face to face with some unbearable atrocity an undertaking which seems so far to have over- taxed even Mr. Bradley's ingenuity a simple expedient would remain. As soon as the pursuit of truth was generally recognised to be practically noxious, we should simply give it up. If its misguided votaries morbidly persisted in their diabolical pursuit of ' truth regardless of the consequences/ they would be stamped out, as the Indian Government has stamped out the Thugs. Nor is this mere imagining. The thing has happened over and over again. All through the Middle Ages most branches of knowledge were under black suspicion as hostile to human welfare. They languished accordingly, and some of them, such as, e.g., Psychical Ee- search, are still under a cloud. It is hardly necessary to allude to Comte's drastic proposals for the State regulation of science, and every teacher knows that the Civil Service Commissioners in the last resort prescribe what shall be taught (and how) throughout the land. In short the fact is patent to all who will open their eyes that in a thousand ways society is ever controlling, repressing, or encouraging, the cognitive activities of its members. And not only would this be done, but it would be an 23