Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/176

162 F. C. S. SCHILLER : meaning of a term which is more often mouthed in a passion of unreasoning loyalty than subjected to calm and logical analysis. I propose, to show (1) that such analysis is neces- sary and possible ; (2) that it results in a problem which the current intellectualist logic can neither dismiss nor solve ; <3) that to discard the abstractions of this formal logic at once renders this problem simple and soluble ; (4) that to solve it is to establish the pragmatist criterion of truth ; (5) that the resulting definition of truth unifies experience and rationalises a well-established classification of the sciences ; and (6) I shall conclude with a twofold challenge to intellec- tualist logicians, failure to meet which will, I think, bring out with all desirable clearness that their system at present is as devoid of intellectual completeness as it is of practical fecundity. My design, it will be seen, deliberately rules out the refer- ences to questions of belief, desire, and will, and their in- eradicable influence upon cognition, with which Voluntarism has made so much effective play, and this although I am keenly conscious both that their presence as psychical facts in all knowing is hardly open to denial, 1 and that their recogni- tion is essential to the full appreciation of our case. But I am desirous of meeting our adversaries as far as possible on their own ground, that of abstract logic, and of giving them every ad- vantage of position. And so, even at the risk of reducing the real interest of my subject, I will discuss it on the ground of &s ' pure,' i.e., as formal, a logic as is compatible with the continuance of actual thinking. In other words, I will at- tempt as ' cut and dried ' an analysis of truth as will retain any real meaning, and though I may possibly succeed better with the ' cutting ' than with the ' drying,' I would deprecate beforehand objections on the score of the dulness which may probably ensue from the unnatural limitations placed upon my topic. I. Let us begin then with the problem of analysing the conception of 'truth,' and, to clear up our ideas, let us first observe the extension of the term. We may safely lay it down that the use of truth is iSiov avdptinrw, a habit peculiar to man. Animals, that is, do not attain to or use the con- ception. They do not effect discriminations within their experience by means of the predicates ' true ' and ' false '. Again, even the philosophers who have been most prodigal 1 In point of fact such denial has never been attempted : the inquiries as to how a ' pure 1 thought, abstracted from the psychological conditions of actual thinking, can validly be considered by logic have merely been ignored.