Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/565

HABOLD H. JOACHIM, The Nature of Truth. 551 ' about ' an object, every theory of truth as ' coherence ' lapses back into a theory of truth as ' correspondence ' : " every theory of the nature of truth must itself be ' about ' truth as its Other ; i.e. , the coherence-notion of truth on its own admission can never rise above the level of knowledge which at best attains to the ' truth ' of correspondence " (pp. 174, 175). The book thus ends with the conclusion that we must look to Metaphysics for a satisfactory theory of truth. Whatever the merits of that conclusion may be, I do not feel satisfied with the way in which Mr. Joachim reaches it. Let us follow his argu- ment. Chapter i. criticises the correspondence-theory of truth by showing that correspondence is valuable only as a symptom of systematic coherence. Chapter iii. defines systematic coherence as the characteristic of a ' significant whole,' such as e.g. a science or branch of philosophy. It is then shown that such a whole cannot be a chain of judgments depending on a single immediate intuition (Descartes) ; and that its coherence must be more than formal consistency. And next, with a surprising turn, we hear that a significant whole is ' an organised individual experience, self- fulfilling and self -fulfilled ' (p. 76). The leap from ' a science ' to- a ' self-fulfilling and self -fulfilled experience ' is hardly quite clear. Still, the reader might be willing to agree on reflecting that a- science is not a collection of dead information, but a living and growing body of knowledge, in which facts and theories mutually support each other, and in which each judgment depends for its- full meaning, and hence for its truth, on the whole ' background' out of which it emphasises a particular feature, or on the whole system of knowledge embodied in the science. And this interpre- tation would agree well enough with Mr. Joachim's insistence on the dynamic character of his ideal of truth : ' it is this process of self-fulfilment which is truth ' (p. 77). However, the hopeful reader is doomed to disappointment. For it appears that the ideal does not refer primarily to the truth of human knowledge, but to an ' ideally complete experience ' (p. 78) ; that there can be ' one and only one such experience ' ; and that it is ' from the point of view of the human intelligence ... an ideal which can never as such, or in its completeness, be actual as human experience ' (p. 79). In short, we find ourselves presented with a purely metaphysical theory of truth. Mr. Joachim does not emphasise that point at. the time, but it is clearly admitted later on (p. 169) ; and indeed it must have been obvious to every philosophically trained reader. The next problem, clearly, is to show that this ideal, metaphysical as it is, has a positive bearing on human knowledge. And by an examination of different kinds of judgment, Mr. Joachim attempts to argue that the truth of no single judgment is contained within its four corners, so to speak, but requires to be expanded into a system of knowledge which in turn borrows what truth it possesses- from the ideal experience. However, this attempt fails, on Mr. Joachim's own admission. And the reason is twofold : (1) the