Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/184

170 F. C. S. SCHILLER : simply bids us go to the facts and observe the actual opera- tions of our knowing. If we will but do this, we shall ' discover ' that in all actual knowing the question whether an assertion is ' true ' or ' false ' is decided uniformly and very simply. It is decided, that is, by its consequences, by its bearing on the interest which prompted to the assertion, by its relation to the purpose which put the question. To add to this that the consequences must be good is superfluous. For if and so far as an assertion satisfies or forwards the purpose of the inquiry to which it owes its being, it is so far ' true ' ; if and so far as it thwarts or baffles it, it is unwork- able, unserviceable, ' false '. And ' true ' and ' false,' we have seen, are the intellectual forms of ' good ' and ' bad '. Or in other words, a ' truth ' is what is useful in building up a science ; a ' falsehood ' what is useless or noxious for this same purpose. To determine therefore whether any answer to any question is ' true ' or ' false,' we have merely to note its effect upon the inquiry in which we are interested, and in relation to which it has arisen. And if these effects are favourable, the answer is ' true ' and ' good ' for our purpose, and ' useful ' as a means to the end we pursue. 1 Here then we have exposed to view the whole rationale of Pragmatism, the source of the famous paradoxes that ' truth ' depends on its consequences, that the ' true ' must be ' good ' and ' useful ' and ' practical '. I confess that to me they have never seemed more than truisms so simple that I used to fear lest too elaborate an insistence on them should be taken as an insult to the intelligence of my readers. But experience has shown that I was too sanguine, and now I even feel impelled to guard still further against two possible misapprehensions into which an unthinking philosopher might fall. I would venture to point out in the first place that when we said that truth was estimated by its consequences for some purpose, we were speaking subject to the social char- acter of truth, and quite formally. What consequences are relevant to what purposes depends, of course, on the subject- matter of each science, and may sometimes be in doubt, when the question may be interpreted in several contexts. But as a rule the character of the question sufficiently de- 1 Strictly both the ' true ' and the ' false ' answers are, as Mr. Sidgwick says, subdivisions of the ' relevant,' and the irrelevant is really unmean- ing. But the unmeaning seems to be relevant until it is detected ; it baffles our purpose as surely as the ' false,' and the ' false ' answer does not mean what we meant to get, viz., something we can work with, and is so far unmeaning. Hence there is no great harm in treating all that fails us as 'false '.