Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/175

II. THE AMBIGUITY OF TRUTH. BY F. C. S. SCHILLER, THE purpose of this paper is to bring to a clear issue, and so possibly to the prospect of a settlement, the conflict of opinion now raging in the philosophic world as to the nature of the conception of ' truth '. This issue is an essential part of the greater conflict between the old intellectualist and the new ' pragmatist ' school of thought which extends over the whole field of philosophy. For, in consequence of the difference between the aims and methods of the two schools, there is probably no intellectualist treatment of any problem which does not need, and will not bear, restatement in voluntarist terms. But the clash of these two great antithetical attitudes towards life is certainly more dramatic at some points than at others. The influence of belief upon thought, its value and function in knowledge, the relation of ' theory ' to ' prac- tice,' the possibility of abstracting from emotional interest, and of ignoring in logic the psychological conditions of all judgment, the connexion between knowing and being, ' truth ' and 'fact,' 'origin' and 'validity,' the question of how and how far the real which is said to be ' discovered ' is really 'made,' the 'plasticity' and determinable indetermination of reality, the contribution of voluntary acceptance to the constitution of ' fact,' the nature of purpose and of ' mechan- ism,' the value of teleology, the all-controlling presence of value-judgments and the inter-relations of their various forms, the proper meaning of 'reason,' 'faith,' 'thought,' 'will,' 'freedom,' 'necessity,' all these are critical points at which burning questions have arisen or may arise, and at all of them the new philosophy seems able to provide a distinctive and consistent treatment. Thus there is throughout the field every promise of interesting discoveries and of a successful campaign for a thoroughgoing voluntarism that unsparingly uproots the intellectualist tradition. But the aim of the present paper must be restricted. It will be confined to one small corner of the battlefield, viz. to the single question of the making of 'truth' and the