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Hume or James? They both take a different approach to epistemology. Do you find their approach better than the more traditional approaches we have previously seen? Compare one (Hume or James) to a previous thinker in your post.
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A Treatise of Human Nature
David Hume
SECTION IV.
Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding.
PART I.
ALL the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit,
Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra,
and Arithmetic; and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively
certain. That the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the square of the two sides, is a
proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That three times five is equal to the
half of thirty, expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are
discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent
in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by
Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and evidence.
Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same
manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The
contrary of every matter of fact is still possible; because it can never imply a contradiction, and is
conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to
reality. That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no
more contradiction than the affirmation, that it will rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to
demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, and
could never be distinctly conceived by the mind.
It may, therefore, be a subject worthy of curiosity, to enquire what is the nature of that evidence
which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of our
senses, or the records of our memory. This part of philosophy, it is observable, has been little
cultivated, either by the ancients or moderns; and therefore our doubts and errors, in the
prosecution of so important an enquiry, may be the more excusable; while we march through
such difficult paths without any guide or direction. They may even prove useful, by exciting
curiosity, and destroying that implicit faith and security, which is the bane of all reasoning and
free enquiry. The discovery of defects in the common philosophy, if any such there be, will not, I
presume, be a discouragement, but rather an incitement, as is usual, to attempt something more
full and satisfactory than has yet been proposed to the public.
All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect.
By means of that relation alone we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses. If you
were to ask a man, why he believes any matter of fact, which is absent; for instance, that his
friend is in the country, or in FRANCE; he would give you a reason; and this reason would be
some other fact; as a letter received from him, or the knowledge of his former resolutions and
promises. A man finding a watch or any other machine in a desert island, would conclude that
there had once been men in that island. All our reasonings concerning fact are of the same nature.
And here it is constantly supposed that there is a connexion between the present fact and that
which is inferred from it. Were there nothing to bind them together, the inference would be
entirely precarious. The hearing of an articulate voice and rational discourse in the dark assures
us of the presence of some person: Why? because these are the effects of the human make and
fabric, and closely connected with it. If we anatomize all the other reasonings of this nature, we
shall find that they are founded on the relation of cause and effect, and that this relation is either
near or remote, direct or collateral. Heat and light are collateral effects of fire, and the one effect
may justly be inferred from the other.
If we would satisfy ourselves, therefore, concerning the nature of that evidence, which assures us
of matters of fact, we must enquire how we arrive at the knowledge of cause and effect.
I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, that the
knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises
entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with
each other. Let an object be presented to a man of ever so strong natural reason and abilities; if
that object be entirely new to him, he will not be able, by the most accurate examination of its
sensible qualities, to discover any of its causes or effects. ADAM, though his rational faculties be
supposed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not have inferred from the fluidity and
transparency of water that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire that it
would consume him. No object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the senses, either
the causes which produced it, or the effects which will arise from it; nor can our reason,
unassisted by experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact.
This proposition, that causes and effects are discoverable, not by reason but by experience, will
readily be admitted with regard to such objects, as we remember to have once been altogether
unknown to us; since we must be conscious of the utter inability, which we then lay under, of
foretelling what would arise from them. Present two smooth pieces of marble to a man who has
no tincture of natural philosophy; he will never discover that they will adhere together in such a
manner as to require great force to separate them in a direct line, while they make so small a
resistance to a lateral pressure. Such events, as bear little analogy to the common course of
nature, are also readily confessed to be known only by experience; nor does any man imagine that
the explosion of gunpowder, or the attraction of a loadstone, could ever be discovered by
arguments a priori. In like manner, when an effect is supposed to depend upon an intricate
machinery or secret structure of parts, we make no difficulty in attributing all our knowledge of it
to experience. Who will assert that he can give the ultimate reason, why milk or bread is proper
nourishment for a man, not for a lion or a tyger?
But the same truth may not appear, at first sight, to have the same evidence with regard to events,
which have become familiar to us from our first appearance in the world, which bear a close
analogy to the whole course of nature, and which are supposed to depend on the simple qualities
of objects, without any secret structure of parts. We are apt to imagine that we could discover
these effects by the mere operation of our reason, without experience. We fancy, that were we
brought on a sudden into this world, we could at first have inferred that one Billiard-ball would
communicate motion to another upon impulse; and that we needed not to have waited for the
event, in order to pronounce with certainty concerning it. Such is the influence of custom, that,
where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems
not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree.
But to convince us that all the laws of nature, and all the operations of bodies without exception,
are known only by experience, the following reflections may, perhaps, suffice. Were any object
presented to us, and were we required to pronounce concerning the effect, which will result from
it, without consulting past observation; after what manner, I beseech you, must the mind proceed
in this operation? It must invent or imagine some event, which it ascribes to the object as its
effect; and it is plain that this invention must be entirely arbitrary. The mind can never possibly
find the effect in the supposed cause, by the most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the
effect is totally different from the cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it. Motion
in the second Billiard-ball is a quite distinct event from motion in the first; nor is there any thing
in the one to suggest the smallest hint of the other. A stone or piece of metal raised into the air,
and left without any support, immediately falls: But to consider the matter a priori, is there any
thing we discover in this situation which can beget the idea of a downward, rather than an
upward, or any other motion, in the stone or metal?
And as the first imagination or invention of a particular effect, in all natural operations, is
arbitrary, where we consult not experience; so must we also esteem the supposed tie or
connexion between the cause and effect, which binds them together, and renders it impossible
that any other effect could result from the operation of that cause. When I see, for instance, a
Billiard-ball moving in a straight line towards another; even suppose motion in the second ball
should by accident be suggested to me, as the result of their contact or impulse; may I not
conceive, that a hundred different events might as well follow from that cause? May not both
these balls remain at absolute rest? May not the first ball return in a straight line, or leap off from
the second in any line or direction? All these suppositions are consistent and conceivable. Why
then should we give the preference to one, which is no more consistent or conceivable than the
rest? All our reasonings a priori will never be able to show us any foundation for this preference.
In a word, then, every effect is a distinct event from its cause. It could not, therefore, be
discovered in the cause, and the first invention or conception of it, a priori, must be entirely
arbitrary. And even after it is suggested, the conjunction of it with the cause must appear equally
arbitrary; since there are always many other effects, which, to reason, must seem fully as
consistent and natural. In vain, therefore, should we pretend to determine any single event, or
infer any cause or effect, without the assistance of observation and experience.
Hence we may discover the reason why no philosopher, who is rational and modest, has ever
pretended to assign the ultimate cause of any natural operation, or to show distinctly the action of
that power, which produces any single effect in the universe. It is confessed, that the utmost
effort of human reason is to reduce the principles, productive of natural phenomena, to a greater
simplicity, and to resolve the many particular effects into a few general causes, by means of
reasonings from analogy, experience, and observation. But as to the causes of these general
causes, we should in vain attempt their discovery; nor shall we ever be able to satisfy ourselves,
by any particular explication of them. These ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up
from human curiosity and enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of
motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever
discover in nature; and we may esteem ourselves sufficiently happy, if, by accurate enquiry and
reasoning, we can trace up the particular phenomena to, or near to, these general principles. The
most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: As
perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover
larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all
philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.
Nor is geometry, when taken into the assistance of natural philosophy, ever able to remedy this
defect, or lead us into the knowledge of ultimate causes, by all that accuracy of reasoning for
which it is so justly celebrated. Every part of mixed mathematics proceeds upon the supposition
that certain laws are established by nature in her operations; and abstract reasonings are
employed, either to assist experience in the discovery of these laws, or to determine their
influence in particular instances, where it depends upon any precise degree of distance and
quantity. Thus, it is a law of motion, discovered by experience, that the moment or force of any
body in motion is in the compound ratio or proportion of its solid contents and its velocity; and
consequently, that a small force may remove the greatest obstacle or raise the greatest weight, if,
by any contrivance or machinery, we can increase the velocity of that force, so as to make it an
overmatch for its antagonist. Geometry assists us in the application of this law, by giving us the
just dimensions of all the parts and figures which can enter into any species of machine; but still
the discovery of the law itself is owing merely to experience, and all the abstract reasonings in
the world could never lead us one step towards the knowledge of it. When we reason a priori, and
consider merely any object or cause, as it appears to the mind, independent of all observation, it
never could suggest to us the notion of any distinct object, such as its effect; much less, show us
the inseparable and inviolable connexion between them. A man must be very sagacious who
could discover by reasoning that crystal is the effect of heat, and ice of cold, without being
previously acquainted with the operation of these qualities.
PART II.
BUT we have not yet attained any tolerable satisfaction with regard to the question first
proposed. Each solution still gives rise to a new question as difficult as the foregoing, and leads
us on to farther enquiries. When it is asked, What is the nature of all our reasonings concerning
matter of fact? the proper answer seems to be, that they are founded on the relation of cause and
effect. When again it is asked, What is the foundation of all our reasonings and conclusions
concerning that relation? it may be replied in one word, EXPERIENCE. But if we still carry on
our sifting humour, and ask, What is the foundation of all conclusions from experience? this
implies a new question, which may be of more difficult solution and explication. Philosophers,
that give themselves airs of superior wisdom and sufficiency, have a hard task when they
encounter persons of inquisitive dispositions, who push them from every corner to which they
retreat, and who are sure at last to bring them to some dangerous dilemma. The best expedient to
prevent this confusion, is to be modest in our pretensions; and even to discover the difficulty
ourselves before it is objected to us. By this means, we may make a kind of merit of our very
ignorance.
I shall content myself, in this section, with an easy task, and shall pretend only to give a negative
answer to the question here proposed. I say then, that, even after we have experience of the
operations of cause and effect, our conclusions from that experience are not founded on
reasoning, or any process of the understanding. This answer we must endeavour both to explain
and to defend.
It must certainly be allowed, that nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets, and
has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects; while she conceals
from us those powers and principles on which the influence of those objects entirely depends.
Our senses inform us of the colour, weight, and consistence of bread; but neither sense nor
reason can ever inform us of those qualities which fit it for the nourishment and support of a
human body. Sight or feeling conveys an idea of the actual motion of bodies; but as to that
wonderful force or power, which would carry on a moving body for ever in a continued change
of place, and which bodies never lose but by communicating it to others; of this we cannot form
the most distant conception. But notwithstanding this ignorance of natural powers11 and
principles, we always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret
powers, and expect that effects, similar to those which we have experienced, will follow from
them. If a body of like colour and consistence with that bread, which we have formerly eat, be
presented to us, we make no scruple of repeating the experiment, and foresee, with certainty, like
nourishment and support. Now this is a process of the mind or thought, of which I would
willingly know the foundation. It is allowed on all hands that there is no known connexion
between the sensible qualities and the secret powers; and consequently, that the mind is not led to
form such a conclusion concerning their constant and regular conjunction, by any thing which it
knows of their nature. As to past Experience, it can be allowed to give direct and certain
information of those precise objects only, and that precise period of time, which fell under its
cognizance: But why this experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects,
which for aught we know, may be only in appearance similar; this is the main question on which
I would insist. The bread, which I formerly eat, nourished me; that is, a body of such sensible
qualities was, at that time, endued with such secret powers: But does it follow, that other bread
must also nourish me at another time, and that like sensible qualities must always be attended
with like secret powers? The consequence seems nowise necessary. At least, it must be
acknowledged that there is here a consequence drawn by the mind; that there is a certain step
taken; a process of thought, and an inference, which wants to be explained. These two
propositions are far from being the same, I have found that such an object has always been
attended with such an effect, and I foresee, that other objects, which are, in appearance, similar,
will be attended with similar effects. I shall allow, if you please, that the one proposition may
justly be inferred from the other: I know, in fact, that it always is inferred. But if you insist that
the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce that reasoning. The
connexion between these propositions is not intuitive. There is required a medium, which may
enable the mind to draw such an inference, if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument.
What that medium is, I must confess, passes my comprehension; and it is incumbent on those to
produce it, who assert that it really exists, and is the origin of all our conclusions concerning
matter of fact.
This negative argument must certainly, in process of time, become altogether convincing, if
many penetrating and able philosophers shall turn their enquiries this way and no one be ever
able to discover any connecting proposition or intermediate step, which supports the
understanding in this conclusion. But as the question is yet new, every reader may not trust so far
to his own penetration, as to conclude, because an argument escapes his enquiry, that therefore it
does not really exist. For this reason it may be requisite to venture upon a more difficult task; and
enumerating all the branches of human knowledge, endeavour to show that none of them can
afford such an argument.
All reasonings may be divided into two kinds, namely, demonstrative reasoning, or that
concerning relations of ideas, and moral reasoning, or that concerning matter of fact and
existence. That there are no demonstrative arguments in the case seems evident; since it implies
no contradiction that the course of nature may change, and that an object, seemingly like those
which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects. May I not clearly
and distinctly conceive that a body, falling from the clouds, and which, in all other respects,
resembles snow, has yet the taste of salt or feeling of fire? Is there any more intelligible
proposition than to affirm, that all the trees will flourish in DECEMBER and JANUARY, and
decay in MAY and JUNE? Now whatever is intelligible, and can be distinctly conceived, implies
no contradiction, and can never be proved false by any demonstrative argument or abstract
reasoning a priori.
If we be, therefore, engaged by arguments to put trust in past experience, and make it the
standard of our future judgment, these arguments must be probable only, or such as regard matter
of fact and real existence according to the division above mentioned. But that there is no
argument of this kind, must appear, if our explication of that species of reasoning be admitted as
solid and satisfactory. We have said that all arguments concerning existence are founded on the
relation of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from
experience; and that all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the
future will be conformable to the past. To endeavour, therefore, the proof of this last supposition
by probable arguments, or arguments regarding existence, must be evidently going in a circle,
and taking that for granted, which is the very point in question.
In reality, all arguments from experience are founded on the similarity which we discover among
natural objects, and by which we are induced to expect effects similar to those which we have
found to follow from such objects. And though none but a fool or madman will ever pretend to
dispute the authority of experience, or to reject that great guide of human life, it may surely be
allowed a philosopher to have so much curiosity at least as to examine the principle of human
nature, which gives this mighty authority to experience, and makes us draw advantage from that
similarity which nature has placed among different objects. From causes which, appear similar,
we expect similar effects. This is the sum of all our experimental conclusions. Now it seems
evident that, if this conclusion were formed by reason, it would be as perfect at first, and upon
one instance, as after ever so long a course of experience. But the case is far otherwise. Nothing
so like as eggs; yet no one, on account of this appearing similarity, expects the same taste and
relish in all of them. It is only after a long course of uniform experiments in any kind, that we
attain a firm reliance and security with regard to a particular event. Now where is that process of
reasoning which, from one instance, draws a conclusion, so different from that which it infers
from a hundred instances that are nowise different from that single one? This question I propose
as much for the sake of information, as with an intention of raising difficulties. I cannot find, I
cannot imagine any such reasoning. But I keep my mind still open to instruction, if any one will
vouchsafe to bestow it on me.
Should it be said that, from a number of uniform experiments, we infer a connexion between the
sensible qualities and the secret powers; this, I must confess, seems the same difficulty, couched
in different terms. The question still recurs, on what process of argument this inference is
founded? Where is the medium, the interposing ideas, which join propositions so very wide of
each other? It is confessed that the colour, consistence, and other sensible qualities of bread
appear not, of themselves, to have any connexion with the secret powers of nourishment and
support. For otherwise we could infer these secret powers from the first appearance of these
sensible qualities, without the aid of experience; contrary to the sentiment of all philosophers,
and contrary to plain matter of fact. Here, then, is our natural state of ignorance with regard to the
powers and influence of all objects. How is this remedied by experience? It only shows us a
number of uniform effects, resulting from certain objects, and teaches us that those particular
objects, at that particular time, were endowed with such powers and forces. When a new object,
endowed with similar sensible qualities, is produced, we expect similar powers and forces, and
look for a like effect. From a body of like colour and consistence with bread we expect like
nourishment and support. But this surely is a step or progress of the mind, which wants to be
explained. When a man says, I have found, in all past instances, such sensible qualities conjoined
with such secret powers: And when he says, similar sensible qualities will always be conjoined
with similar secret powers; he is not guilty of a tautology, nor are these propositions in any
respect the same. You say that the one proposition is an inference from the other. But you must
confess that the inference is not intuitive; neither is it demonstrative: Of what nature is it, then?
To say it is experimental, is begging the question. For all inferences from experience suppose, as
their foundation, that the future will resemble the past, and that similar powers will be conjoined
with similar sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion that the course of nature may change,
and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise
to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can
prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the
supposition of that resemblance. Let the course of things be allowed hitherto ever so regular; that
alone, without some new argument or inference, proves not that, for the future, it will continue
so. In vain do you pretend to have learned the nature of bodies from your past experience. Their
secret nature, and consequently all their effects and influence, may change, without any change in
their sensible qualities. This happens sometimes, and with regard to some objects: Why may it
not happen always, and with regard to all objects? What logic, what process or argument secures
you against this supposition? My practice, you say, refutes my doubts. But you mistake the
purport of my question. As an agent, I am quite satisfied in the point; but as a philosopher, who
has some share of curiosity, I will not say scepticism, I want to learn the foundation of this
inference. No reading, no enquiry has yet been able to remove my difficulty, or give me
satisfaction in a matter of such importance. Can I do better than propose the difficulty to the
public, even though, perhaps, I have small hopes of obtaining a solution? We shall at least, by
this means, be sensible of our ignorance, if we do not augment our knowledge.
I must confess that a man is guilty of unpardonable arrogance who concludes, because an
argument has escaped his own investigation, that therefore it does not really exist. I must also
confess that, though all the learned, for several ages, should have employed themselves in
fruitless search upon any subject, it may still, perhaps, be rash to conclude positively that the
subject must, therefore, pass all human comprehension. Even though we examine all the sources
of our knowledge, and conclude them unfit for such a subject, there may still remain a suspicion,
that the enumeration is not complete, or the examination not accurate. But with regard to the
present subject, there are some considerations which seem to remove all this accusation of
arrogance or suspicion of mistake.
It is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants — nay infants, nay even brute beasts —
improve by experience, and learn the qualities of natural objects, by observing the effects which
result from them. When a child has felt the sensation of pain from touching the flame of a candle,
he will be careful not to put his hand near any candle; but will expect a similar effect from a
cause which is similar in its sensible qualities and appearance. If you assert, therefore, that the
understanding of the child is led into this conclusion by any process of argument or ratiocination,
I may justly require you to produce that argument; nor have you any pretence to refuse so
equitable a demand. You cannot say that the argument is abstruse, and may possibly escape your
enquiry; since you confess that it is obvious to the capacity of a mere infant. If you hesitate,
therefore, a moment, or if, after reflection, you produce any intricate or profound argument, you,
in a manner, give up the question, and confess that it is not reasoning which engages us to
suppose the past resembling the future, and to expect similar effects from causes which are, to
appearance, similar. This is the proposition which I intended to enforce in the present section. If I
be right, I pretend not to have made any mighty discovery. And if I be wrong, I must
acknowledge myself to be indeed a very backward scholar; since I cannot now discover an
argument which, it seems, was perfectly familiar to me long before I was out of my cradle.
SECTION V.
Sceptical Solution of these Doubts.
PART I.
THE passion for philosophy, like that for religion, seems liable to this inconvenience, that,
though it aims at the correction of our manners, and extirpation of our vices, it may only serve,
by imprudent management, to foster a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with more
determined resolution, towards that side which already draws too much, by the bias and
propensity of the natural temper. It is certain that, while we aspire to the magnanimous firmness
of the philosophic sage, and endeavour to confine our pleasures altogether within our own minds,
we may, at last, render our philosophy like that of EPICTETUS, and other Stoics, only a more
refined system of selfishness, and reason ourselves out of all virtue as well as social enjoyment.
While we study with attention the vanity of human life, and turn all our thoughts towards the
empty and transitory nature of riches and honours, we are, perhaps, all the while flattering our
natural indolence, which, hating the bustle of the world, and drudgery of business, seeks a
pretence of reason to give itself a full and uncontrolled indulgence. There is, however, one
species of philosophy which seems little liable to this inconvenience, and that because it strikes
in with no disorderly passion of the human mind, nor can mingle itself with any natural affection
or propensity; and that is the ACADEMIC or SCEPTICAL philosophy. The academics always
talk of doubt and suspense of judgment, of danger in hasty determinations, of confining to very
narrow bounds the enquiries of the understanding, and of renouncing all speculations which lie
not within the limits of common life and practice. Nothing, therefore, can be more contrary than
such a philosophy to the supine indolence of the mind, its rash arrogance, its lofty pretensions,
and its superstitious credulity. Every passion is mortified by it, except the love of truth; and that
passion never is, nor can be, carried to too high a degree. It is surprising, therefore, that this
philosophy, which, in almost every instance, must be harmless and innocent, should be the
subject of so much groundless reproach and obloquy. But, perhaps, the very circumstance which
renders it so innocent is what chiefly exposes it to the public hatred and resentment. By flattering
no irregular passion, it gains few partizans: By opposing so many vices and follies, it raises to
itself abundance of enemies, who stigmatize it as libertine, profane, and irreligious.
Nor need we fear that this philosophy, while it endeavours to limit our enquiries to common life,
should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry its doubts so far as to destroy all
action, as well as speculation. Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over
any abstract reasoning whatsoever. Though we should conclude, for instance, as in the foregoing
section, that, in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind which is not
supported by any argument or process of the understanding; there is no danger that these
reasonings, on which almost all knowledge depends, will ever be affected by such a discovery. If
the mind be not engaged by argument to make this step, it must be induced by some other
principle of equal weight and authority; and that principle will preserve its influence as long as
human nature remains the same. What that principle is may well be worth the pains of enquiry.
Suppose a person, though endowed with the strongest faculties of reason and reflection, to be
brought on a sudden into this world; he would, indeed, immediately observe a continual
succession of objects, and one event following another; but he would not be able to discover any
thing farther. He would not, at first, by any reasoning, be able to reach the idea of cause and
effect; since the particular powers, by which all natural operations are performed, never appear to
the senses; nor is it reasonable to conclude, merely because one event, in one instance, precedes
another, that therefore the one is the cause, the other the effect. Their conjunction may be
arbitrary and casual. There may be no reason to infer the existence of one from the appearance of
the other. And in a word, such a person, without more experience, could never employ his
conjecture or reasoning concerning any matter of fact, or be assured of any thing beyond what
was immediately present to his memory and senses.
Suppose, again, that he has acquired more experience, and has lived so long in the world as to
have observed familiar objects or events to be constantly conjoined together; what is the
consequence of this experience? He immediately infers the existence of one object from the
appearance of the other. Yet he has not, by all his experience, acquired any idea or knowledge of
the secret power by which the one object produces the other; nor is it by any process of
reasoning, he is engaged to draw this inference. But still he finds himself determined to draw it:
And though he should be convinced that his understanding has no part in the operation, he would
nevertheless continue in the same course of thinking. There is some other principle which
determines him to form such a conclusion.
This principle is CUSTOM or HABIT. For wherever the repetition of any particular act or
operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, without being impelled by
any reasoning or process of the understanding, we always say, that this propensity is the effect of
Custom. By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a
propensity. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged,
and which is well known by its effects. Perhaps we can push our enquiries no farther, or pretend
to give the cause of this cause; but must rest contented with it as the ultimate principle, which we
can assign, of all our conclusions from experience. It is sufficient satisfaction, that we can go so
far, without repining at the narrowness of our faculties because they will carry us no farther. And
it is certain we here advance a very intelligible proposition at least, if not a true one, when we
assert that, after the constant conjunction of two objects – – heat and flame, for instance, weight
and solidity — we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the
other. This hypothesis seems even the only one which explains the difficulty, why we draw, from
a thousand instances, an inference which we are not able to draw from one instance, that is, in no
respect, different from them. Reason is incapable of any such variation. The conclusions which it
draws from considering one circle are the same which it would form upon surveying all the
circles in the universe. But no man, having seen only one body move after being impelled by
another, could infer that every other body will move after a like impulse. All inferences from
experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our
experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those
which have appeared in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant
of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should
never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of
any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation.
But here it may be proper to remark, that though our conclusions from experience carry us
beyond our memory and senses, and assure us of matters of fact which happened in the most
distant places and most remote ages, yet some fact must always be present to the senses or
memory, from which we may first proceed in drawing these conclusions. A man, who should
find in a desert country the remains of pompous buildings, would conclude that the country had,
in ancient times, been cultivated by civilized inhabitants; but did nothing of this nature occur to
him, he could never form such an inference. We learn the events of former ages from history; but
then we must peruse the volumes in which this instruction is contained, and thence carry up our
inferences from one testimony to another, till we arrive at the eyewitnesses and spectators of
these distant events. In a word, if we proceed not upon some fact, present to the memory or
senses, our reasonings would be merely hypothetical; and however the particular links might be
connected with each other, the whole chain of inferences would have nothing to support it, nor
could we ever, by its means, arrive at the knowledge of any real existence. If I ask why you
believe any particular matter of fact, which you relate, you must tell me some reason; and this
reason will be some other fact, connected with it. But as you cannot proceed after this manner, in
infinitum, you must at last terminate in some fact, which is present to your memory or senses; or
must allow that your belief is entirely without foundation.
What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? A simple one; though, it must be confessed,
pretty remote from the common theories of philosophy. All belief of matter of fact or real
existence is derived merely from some object, present to the memory or senses, and a customary
conjunction between that and some other object. Or in other words; having found, in many
instances, that any two kinds of objects — flame and heat, snow and cold — have always been
conjoined together; if flame or snow be presented anew to the senses, the mind is carried by
custom to expect heat or cold, and to believe that such a quality does exist, and will discover
itself upon a nearer approach. This belief is the necessary result of placing the mind in such
circumstances. It is an operation of the soul, when we are so situated, as unavoidable as to feel
the passion of love, when we receive benefits; or hatred, when we meet with injuries. All these
operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and
understanding is able either to produce or to prevent.
At this point, it would be very allowable for us to stop our philosophical researches. In most
questions we can never make a single step farther; and in all questions we must terminate here at
last, after our most restless and curious enquiries. But still our curiosity will be pardonable,
perhaps commendable, if it carry us on to still farther researches, and make us examine more
accurately the nature of this belief, and of the customary conjunction, whence it is derived. By
this means we may meet with some explications and analogies that will give satisfaction; at least
to such as love the abstract sciences, and can be entertained with speculations, which, however
accurate, may still retain a degree of doubt and uncertainty. As to readers of a different taste; the
remaining part of this section is not calculated for them, and the following enquiries may well be
understood, though it be neglected.
PART II.
NOTHING is more free than the imagination of man; and though it cannot exceed that original
stock of ideas furnished by the internal and external senses, it has unlimited power of mixing,
compounding, separating, and dividing these ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and vision. It can
feign a train of events, with all the appearance of reality, ascribe to them a particular time and
place, conceive them as existent, and paint them out to itself with every circumstance, that
belongs to any historical fact, which it believes with the greatest certainty. Wherein, therefore,
consists the difference between such a fiction and belief? It lies not merely in any peculiar idea,
which is annexed to such a conception as commands our assent, and which is wanting to every
known fiction. For as the mind has authority over all its ideas, it could voluntarily annex this
particular idea to any fiction, and consequently be able to believe whatever it pleases; contrary to
what we find by daily experience. We can, in our conception, join the head of a man to the body
of a horse; but it is not in our power to believe that such an animal has ever really existed.
It follows, therefore, that the difference between fiction and belief lies in some sentiment or
feeling, which is annexed to the latter, not to the former, and which depends not on the will, nor
can be commanded at pleasure. It must be excited by nature, like all other sentiments; and must
arise from the particular situation, in which the mind is placed at any particular juncture.
Whenever any object is presented to the memory or senses, it immediately, by the force of
custom, carries the imagination to conceive that object, which is usually conjoined to it; and this
conception is attended with a feeling or sentiment, different from the loose reveries of the fancy.
In this consists the whole nature of belief. For as there is no matter of fact which we believe so
firmly that we cannot conceive the contrary, there would be no difference between the conception
assented to and that which is rejected, were it not for some sentiment which distinguishes the one
from the other. If I see a billiard-ball moving toward another, on a smooth table, I can easily
conceive it to stop upon contact. This conception implies no contradiction; but still it feels very
differently from that conception by which I represent to myself the impulse and the
communication of motion from one ball to another.
Were we to attempt a definition of this sentiment, we should, perhaps, find it a very difficult, if
not an impossible task; in the same manner as if we should endeavour to define the feeling of
cold or passion of anger, to a creature who never had any experience of these sentiments.
BELIEF is the true and proper name of this feeling; and no one is ever at a loss to know the
meaning of that term; because every man is every moment conscious of the sentiment
represented by it. It may not, however, be improper to attempt a description of this sentiment; in
hopes we may, by that means, arrive at some analogies, which may afford a more perfect
explication of it. I say, then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady
conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. This variety of
terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act of the mind,
which renders realities, or what is taken for such, more present to us than fictions, causes them to
weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination.
Provided we agree about the thing, it is needless to dispute about the terms. The imagination has
the command over all its ideas, and can join and mix and vary them, in all the ways possible. It
may conceive fictitious objects with all the circumstances of place and time. It may set them, in a
manner, before our eyes, in their true colours, just as they might have existed. But as it is
impossible that this faculty of imagination can ever, of itself, reach belief, it is evident that belief
consists not in the peculiar nature or order of ideas, but in the manner of their conception, and in
their feeling to the mind. I confess, that it is impossible perfectly to explain this feeling or
manner of conception. We may make use of words which express something near it. But its true
and proper name, as we observed before, is belief; which is a term that every one sufficiently
understands in common life. And in philosophy, we can go no farther than assert, that belief is
something felt by the mind, which distinguishes the ideas of the judgement from the fictions of
the imagination. It gives them more weight and influence; makes them appear of greater
importance; enforces them in the mind; and renders them the governing principle of our actions. I
hear at present, for instance, a person’s voice, with whom I am acquainted; and the sound comes
as from the next room. This impression of my senses immediately conveys my thought to the
person, together with all the surrounding objects. I paint them out to myself as existing at present,
with the same qualities and relations, of which I formerly knew them possessed. These ideas take
faster hold of my mind than ideas of an enchanted castle. They are very different to the feeling,
and have a much greater influence of every kind, either to give pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow.
Let us, then, take in the whole compass of this doctrine, and allow, that the sentiment of belief is
nothing but a conception more intense and steady than what attends the mere fictions of the
imagination, and that this manner of conception arises from a customary conjunction of the
object with something present to the memory or senses: I believe that it will not be difficult, upon
these suppositions, to find other operations of the mind analogous to it, and to trace up these
phenomena to principles still more general.
We have already observed that nature has established connexions among particular ideas, and
that no sooner one idea occurs to our thoughts than it introduces its correlative, and carries our
attention towards it, by a gentle and insensible movement. These principles of connexion or
association we have reduced to three, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity and Causation; which are
the only bonds that unite our thoughts together, and beget that regular train of reflection or
discourse, which, in a greater or less degree, takes place among all mankind. Now here arises a
question, on which the solution of the present difficulty will depend. Does it happen, in all these
relations, that, when one of the objects is presented to the senses or memory, the mind is not only
carried to the conception of the correlative, but reaches a steadier and stronger conception of it
than what otherwise it would have been able to attain? This seems to be the case with that belief
which arises from the relation of cause and effect. And if the case be the same with the other
relations or principles of associations, this may be established as a general law, which takes place
in all the operations of the mind.
We may, therefore, observe, as the first experiment to our present purpose, that, upon the
appearance of the picture of an absent friend, our idea of him is evidently enlivened by the
resemblance, and that every passion, which that idea occasions, whether of joy or sorrow,
acquires new force and vigour. In producing this effect, there concur both a relation and a present
impression. Where the picture bears him no resemblance, at least was not intended for him, it
never so much as conveys our thought to him: And where it is absent, as well as the person,
though the mind may pass from the thought of the one to that of the other, it feels its idea to be
rather weakened than enlivened by that transition. We take a pleasure in viewing the picture of a
friend, when it is set before us; but when it is removed, rather choose to consider him directly
than by reflection in an image, which is equally distant and obscure.
The ceremonies of the ROMAN CATHOLIC religion may be considered as instances of the
same nature. The devotees of that superstition usually plead in excuse for the mummeries, with
which they are upbraided, that they feel the good effect of those external motions, and postures,
and actions, in enlivening their devotion and quickening their fervour, which otherwise would
decay, if directed entirely to distant and immaterial objects. We shadow out the objects of our
faith, say they, in sensible types and images, and render them more present to us by the
immediate presence of these types, than it is possible for us to do merely by an intellectual view
and contemplation. Sensible objects have always a greater influence on the fancy than any other;
and this influence they readily convey to those ideas to which they are related, and which they
resemble. I shall only infer from these practices, and this reasoning, that the effect of
resemblance in enlivening the ideas is very common; and as in every case a resemblance and a
present impression must concur, we are abundantly supplied with experiments to prove the
reality of the foregoing principle.
We may add force to these experiments by others of a different kind, in considering the effects of
contiguity as well as of resemblance. It is certain that distance diminishes the force of every idea,
and that, upon our approach to any object; though it does not discover itself to our senses; it
operates upon the mind with an influence, which imitates an immediate impression. The thinking
on any object readily transports the mind to what is contiguous; but it is only the actual presence
of an object, that transports it with a superior vivacity. When I am a few miles from home,
whatever relates to it touches me more nearly than when I am two hundred leagues distant;
though even at that distance the reflecting on any thing in the neighbourhood of my friends or
family naturally produces an idea of them. But as in this latter case, both the objects of the mind
are ideas; notwithstanding there is an easy transition between them; that transition alone is not
able to give a superior vivacity to any of the ideas, for want of some immediate impression.13
No one can doubt but causation has the same influence as the other two relations of resemblance
and contiguity. Superstitious people are fond of the reliques of saints and holy men, for the same
reason, that they seek after types or images, in order to enliven their devotion, and give them a
more intimate and strong conception of those exemplary lives, which they desire to imitate. Now
it is evident, that one of the best reliques, which a devotee could procure, would be the
handywork of a saint; and if his cloaths and furniture are ever to be considered in this light, it is
because they were once at his disposal, and were moved and affected by him; in which respect
they are to be considered as imperfect effects, and as connected with him by a shorter chain of
consequences than any of those, by which we learn the reality of his existence.
Suppose, that the son of a friend, who had been long dead or absent, were presented to us; it is
evident, that this object would instantly revive its correlative idea, and recall to our thoughts all
past intimacies and familiarities, in more lively colours than they would otherwise have appeared
to us. This is another phaenomenon, which seems to prove the principle above mentioned.
We may observe, that, in these phaenomena, the belief of the correlative object is always
presupposed; without which the relation could have no effect. The influence of the picture
supposes, that we believe our friend to have once existed. Contiguity to home can never excite
our ideas of home, unless we believe that it really exists. Now I assert, that this belief, where it
reaches beyond the memory or senses, is of a similar nature, and arises from similar causes, with
the transition of thought and vivacity of conception here explained. When I throw a piece of dry
wood into a fire, my mind is immediately carried to conceive, that it augments, not extinguishes
the flame. This transition of thought from the cause to the effect proceeds not from reason. It
derives its origin altogether from custom and experience. And as it first begins from an object,
present to the senses, it renders the idea or conception of flame more strong and lively than any
loose, floating reverie of the imagination. That idea arises immediately. The thought moves
instantly towards it, and conveys to it all that force of conception, which is derived from the
impression present to the senses. When a sword is levelled at my breast, does not the idea of
wound and pain strike me more strongly, than when a glass of wine is presented to me, even
though by accident this idea should occur after the appearance of the latter object? But what is
there in this whole matter to cause such a strong conception, except only a present object and a
customary transition of the idea of another object, which we have been accustomed to conjoin
with the former? This is the whole operation of the mind, in all our conclusions concerning
matter of fact and existence; and it is a satisfaction to find some analogies, by which it may be
explained. The transition from a present object does in all cases give strength and solidity to the
related idea.
Here, then, is a kind of pre-established harmony between the course of nature and the succession
of our ideas; and though the powers and forces, by which the former is governed, be wholly
unknown to us; yet our thoughts and conceptions have still, we find, gone on in the same train
with the other works of nature. Custom is that principle, by which this correspondence has been
effected; so necessary to the subsistence of our species, and the regulation of our conduct, in
every circumstance and occurrence of human life. Had not the presence of an object, instantly
excited the idea of those objects, commonly conjoined with it, all our knowledge must have been
limited to the narrow sphere of our memory and senses; and we should never have been able to
adjust means to ends, or employ our natural powers, either to the producing of good, or avoiding
of evil. Those, who delight in the discovery and contemplation of final causes, have here ample
subject to employ their wonder and admiration.
I shall add, for a further confirmation of the foregoing theory, that, as this operation of the
mind, by which we infer like effects from like causes, and vice versa, is so essential to the
subsistence of all human creatures, it is not probable, that it could be trusted to the fallacious
deductions of our reason, which is slow in its operations; appears not, in any degree, during the
first years of infancy; and at best is, in every age and period of human life, extremely liable to
error and mistake. It is more conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so necessary
an act of the mind, by some instinct or mechanical tendency, which may be infallible in its
operations, may discover itself at the first appearance of life and thought, and may be
independent of all the laboured deductions of the understanding. As nature has taught us the use
of our limbs, without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves, by which they are
actuated; so has she implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a
correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects; though we are
ignorant of those powers and forces, on which this regular course and succession of objects
totally depends.
Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth
When Clerk Maxwell was a child it is written that he had a mania for having everything
explained to him, and that when people put him off with vague verbal accounts of any
phenomenon he would interrupt them impatiently by saying, “Yes; but I want you to tell
me the particular go of it!” Had his question been about truth, only a pragmatist could
have told him the particular go of it. I believe that our contemporary pragmatists,
especially Messrs. Schiller and Dewey, have given the only tenable account of this
subject. It is a very ticklish subject, sending subtle rootlets into all kinds of crannies, and
hard to treat in the sketchy way that alone befits a public lecture. But the Schiller-Dewey
view of truth has been so ferociously attacked by rationalistic philosophers, and so
abominably misunderstood, that here, if anywhere, is the point where a clear and simple
statement should be made.
I fully expect to see the pragmatist view of truth run through the classic stages of a
theory’s career. First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to
be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its
adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it. Our doctrine of truth is at present in
the first of these three stages, with symptoms of the second stage having begun in certain
quarters. I wish that this lecture might help it beyond the first stage in the eyes of many of
you.
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their
‘agreement,’ as falsity means their disagreement, with ‘reality.’ Pragmatists and
intellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course. They begin to quarrel
only after the question is raised as to what may precisely be meant by the term
‘agreement,’ and
(77) what by the term ‘reality,’ when reality is taken as something for our ideas to agree
with.
In answering these questions the pragmatists are more analytic and painstaking, the
intellectualists more offhand and irreflective. The popular notion is that a true idea must
copy its reality. Like other popular views, this one follows the analogy of the most usual
experience. Our true ideas of sensible things do indeed copy them. Shut your eyes and
think of yonder clock on the wall, and you get just such a true picture or copy of its dial.
But your idea of its ‘works’ (unless you are a clock-maker) is much less of a copy, yet it
passes muster, for it in no way clashes with the reality. Even tho it should shrink to the
mere word ‘works,’ that word still serves you truly; and when you speak of the ‘time-
keeping function’ of the clock, or of its spring’s ‘elasticity,’ it is hard to see exactly what
your ideas can copy.
You perceive that there is a problem here. Where our ideas cannot copy definitely their
object, what does agreement with that object mean? Some idealists seem to say that they
are true whenever they are what God means that we ought to think about that object.
Others hold the copy-view all through, and speak as if our ideas possessed truth just in
proportion as they approach to being copies of the Absolute’s eternal way of thinking.
These views, you see, invite pragmatistic discussion. But the great assumption of the
intellectualists is that truth means essentially an inert static relation. When you’ve got
your true idea of anything, there’s an end of the matter. You’re in possession; you know;
you have fulfilled your thinking destiny. You are where you ought to be mentally; you
have obeyed your categorical imperative; and nothing more need follow on that climax of
your rational destiny. Epistemologically you are in stable equilibrium.
Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. “Grant an idea or belief to be
true,” it says, “what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone’s actual life?
How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which
would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth’s cash-value in
experiential terms?”
The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer: True ideas are those that
we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot.
That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the
meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known-as.
This thesis is what I have to defend. The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property
inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes
(78) true, is made true by events. Its verity is *in fact an event, a process: the process
namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.
But what do the words verification and validation themselves pragmatically mean? They
again signify certain practical consequences of the verified and validated idea. It is hard
to find any one phrase that characterizes these consequences better than the ordinary
agreementformula – just such consequences being what we have in mind whenever we
say that our ideas ‘agree’ with reality. They lead us, namely, through the acts and other
ideas which they instigate, into or up to, or towards, other parts of experience with which
we feel all the while such feeling being among our potentialities -that the original ideas
remain in agreement. The connexions and transitions come to us from point to point as
being progressive, harmonious, satisfactory. This function of agreeable leading is what
we mean by an idea’s verification. Such an account is vague and it sounds at first quite
trivial, but it has results which it will take the rest of my hour to explain.
Let me begin by reminding you of the fact that the possession of true thoughts means
everywhere the possession of invaluable instruments of action; and that our duty to gain
truth, so far from being a blank command from out of the blue, or a ‘stunt’ self-imposed
by our intellect, can account for itself by excellent practical reasons.
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The importance to human life of having true beliefs about matters of fact is a thing too
notorious. We live in a world of realities that can be infinitely useful or infinitely
harmful. Ideas that tell us which of them to expect count as the true ideas in all this
primary sphere of verification, and the pursuit of such ideas is a primary human duty. The
possession of truth, so far from being here an end in itself, is only a preliminary means
towards other vital satisfactions. If I am lost in the woods and starved, and find what
looks like a cow-path, it is of the utmost importance that I should think of a human
habitation at the end of it, for if I do so and follow it, I save myself. The true thought is
useful here because the house which is its object is useful. The practical value of true
ideas is thus primarily derived from the practical importance of their objects to us. Their
objects are, indeed, not important at all times. I may oil another occasion have no use for
the house; and then my idea of it, however verifiable, will be practically irrelevant, and
had better remain latent. Yet since almost any object may some day become temporarily
important, the advantage of having a general stock of extra truths, of ideas that shall be
true of merely possible situations, is obvious. We store such extra truths away in our
memories, and with the overflow we fill
(79) our books of reference. Whenever such an extra truth becomes practically relevant to
one of our emergencies, it passes from cold-storage to do work in the world, and our
belief in it grows active. You can say of it then either that ‘it is useful because it is true’ or
that ‘it is true because it is useful! Both these phrases mean exactly the same thing,
namely that here is an idea that gets fulfilled and can be verified. True is the name for
whatever idea starts the verification-process, useful is the name for its completed function
in experience. True ideas would never have been singled out as such, would never have
acquired a class-name, least of all a name suggesting value, unless they had been useful
from the outset in this way.
From this simple cue pragmatism gets her general notion of truth as something essentially
bound up with the way in which one moment in our experience may lead us towards
other moments which it will be worth while to have been led to. Primarily, and on the
common-sense level, the truth of a state of mind means this function of a leading that is
worth while. When a moment in our experience, of any kind whatever, inspires us with a
thought that is true, that means that sooner or later we dip by that thought’s guidance into
the particulars of experience again and make advantageous connexion with them. This is
a vague enough statement, but I beg you to retain it, for it is essential.
Our experience meanwhile is all shot through with regularities. One bit of it can warn us
to get ready for another bit, can ‘Intend’ or be significant of that remoter object. The
object’s advent is the significance’s verification. Truth, in these cases, meaning nothing
but eventual verification, is manifestly incompatible with waywardness on our part. Woe
to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his
experience: they will lead him nowhere or else make false connexions.
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By ‘realities’ or ‘objects’ here, we mean either things of common sense, sensibly present,
or else common-sense relations, such as dates, places, distances, kinds, activities.
Following our mental image of a house along the cow-path, we actually come to see the
house; we get the image’s full verification. Such simply and fully verified leadings are
certainly the originals and prototypes of the truth-process. Experience offers indeed other
forms of truth-process, but they are all conceivable as being primary verifications
arrested, multiplied or substituted one for another.
Take, for instance, yonder object on the wall. You and I consider it to be a ‘clock,’ altho
no one of us has seen the hidden works that make it one. We let our notion pass for true
without attempting to verify. If truths mean verification-process essentially, ought we
then to call such un-
(80) -verified truths as this abortive? No, for they form the overwhelmingly large number
of the truths we live by. Indirect as well as direct verifications pass muster. Where
circumstantial evidence is sufficient, we can go without eye-witnessing. Just as we here
assume Japan to exist without ever having been there, because it works to do so,
everything we know conspiring with the belief, and nothing interfering, so we assume
that thing to be a clock. We use it as a clock, regulating the length of our lecture by it.
The verification of the assumption here means its leading to no frustration or
contradiction. Verifiability of wheels and weights and pendulum is as good as
verification. For one truth-process completed there are a million in our lives that function
in this state of nascency. They turn us towards direct verification; lead us into the
surroundings of the objects they envisage; and then, if everything runs on harmoniously,
we are so sure that verification is possible that we omit it, and are usually justified by all
that happens.
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs ‘pass,’
so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses
them. But this all points to direct face-to-face verifications somewhere, without which the
fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash-basis whatever. You accept
my verification of one thing, I yours of another. We trade on each other’s truth. But
beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts of the whole superstructure.
Another great reason – beside economy of time – for waiving complete verification in the
usual business of life is that all things exist in kinds and not singly. Our world is found
once for all to have that peculiarity. So that when we have once directly verified our ideas
about one specimen of a kind, we consider ourselves free to apply them to other
specimens without verification. A mind that habitually discerns the kind of thing before
it, and acts by the law of the kind immediately, without pausing to verify, will be a ‘true’
mind in ninety-nine out of a hundred emergencies, proved so by its conduct fitting
everything it meets, and getting no refutation.
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Indirectly or only potentially verifying processes may thus be true as well as full
verification-processes. They work as true processes would work, give us the same
advantages, and claim our recognition for the same reasons. All this on the common-
sense level of matters of fact, which we are alone considering.
But matters of fact are not our only stock in trade. Relations among purely mental ideas
form another sphere where true and false beliefs obtain, and here the beliefs are absolute,
or unconditional. When they
(81) are true they bear the name either of definitions or of principles. It is either a
principle or a definition that 1 and 1 make 2, that 2 and 1 make 3, and so on; that white
differs less from gray than it does from black; that when the cause begins to act the effect
also commences. Such propositions hold of all possible ‘ones,’ of all conceivable ‘whites’
and ‘grays’ and ’causes.’ The objects here are mental objects. Their relations are
perceptually obvious at a glance, and no sense-verification is necessary. Moreover, once
true, always true, of those same mental objects. Truth here has an ‘eternal’ character. If
you can find a concrete thing anywhere that is ‘one’ or ‘white’ or ‘gray,’ or an ‘effect,’ then
your principles will everlastingly apply to it. It is but a case of ascertaining the kind, and
then applying the law of its kind to the particular object. You are sure to get truth if you
can but name the kind rightly, for your mental relations hold good of everything of that
kind without exception. If you then, nevertheless, failed to get truth concretely, you
would say that you had classed your real objects wrongly.
In this realm of mental relations, truth again is an affair of leading. We relate one abstract
idea with another, framing in the end great systems of logical and mathematical truth,
under the respective terms of which the sensible facts of experience eventually arrange
themselves, so that our eternal truths hold good of realities also. This marriage of fact and
theory is endlessly fertile. What we say is here already true in advance of special
verification, if we have subsumed our objects rightly. Our ready-made ideal framework
for all sorts of possible objects follows from the very structure of our thinking. We can no
more play fast and loose with these abstract relations than we can do so with our sense-
experiences. They coerce us; we must treat them consistently, whether or not we like the
results. The rules of addition apply to our debts as rigorously as to our assets. The
hundredth decimal of pi the ratio of the circumference to its diameter, is predetermined
ideally now, tho no one may have computed it. If we should ever need the figure in our
dealings with an actual circle we should need to have it given rightly, calculated by the
usual rules; for it is the same kind of truth that those rules elsewhere calculate.
Between the coercions of the sensible order and those of the ideal order, our mind is thus
wedged tightly. Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract,
be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
So far, intellectualists can raise no protest. They can only say that we have barely touched
the skin of the matter.
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Realities mean, then, either concrete facts, or abstract kinds of things and relations
perceived intuitively between them. They furthermore
(82) and thirdly mean, as things that new ideas of ours must no less take account of, the
whole body of other truths already in our possession. But what now does ‘agreement’ with
such threefold realities mean? – to use again the definition that is current.
Here it is that pragmatism and intellectualism begin to part company. Primarily, no doubt,
to agree means to copy, but we saw that the mere word ‘clock’ would do instead of a
mental picture of its works, and that of many realities our ideas can only be symbols and
not copies. ‘Past time,’ ‘power,’ ‘spontaneity’- how can our mind copy such realities?
To ‘agree’ in the widest sense with a reality, can only mean to be guided either straight up
to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle
either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed. Better either
intellectually or practically! And often agreement will only mean the negative fact that
nothing contradictory from the quarter of that reality comes to interfere with the way in
which our ideas guide us elsewhere. To copy a reality is, indeed, one very important way
of agreeing with it, but it is far from being essential. The essential thing is the process of
being guided. Any idea that helps us to deal, whether practically or intellectually, with
either the reality or its belongings, that doesn’t entangle our progress in frustrations, that
fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality’s whole setting, will agree sufficiently to
meet the requirement. It will hold true of that reality.
Thus, names are just as ‘true’ or ‘false’ as definite mental pictures are. They set up similar
verification-processes, and lead to fully equivalent practical results.
All human thinking gets discursified; we exchange ideas; we lend and borrow
verifications, get them from one another by means of social intercourse. All truth thus
gets verbally built out, stored up, and made available for everyone. Hence, we must talk
consistently just as we must think consistently: for both in talk and thought we deal with
kinds. Names are arbitrary, but once understood they must be kept to. We mustn’t now
call Abel ‘Cain’ or Cain ‘Abel.’ If we do, we ungear ourselves from the whole book of
Genesis, and from all its connexions with the universe of speech and fact down to the
present time. We throw ourselves out of whatever truth that entire system of speech and
fact may embody.
The overwhelming majority of our true ideas admit of no direct or face-to-face
verification -those of past history, for example, as of Cain and Abel. The stream of time
can be remounted only verbally, or verified indirectly by the present prolongations or
effects of what the past harbored. Yet if they agree with these verbalities and effects, we
can
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(83) know that our ideas of the past are true. As true as past time itself was, so true was
Julius Caesar, so true were antediluvian monsters, all in their proper dates and settings.
That past time itself was, is guaranteed by its coherence with everything that’s present.
True as the present is, the past was also.
Agreement thus turns out to be essentially an affair of leadingleading that is useful
because it is into quarters that contain objects that are important. True ideas lead us into
useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini.
They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse. They lead away. from
excentricity and isolation, from foiled and barren thinking. The untrammeled flowing of
the leading-process, its general freedom from clash and contradiction, passes for its
indirect verification; but all roads lead to Rome, and in the end and eventually, all true
processes must lead to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences somewhere,
which somebody’s ideas have copied.
Such is the large loose way in which the pragmatist interprets the word agreement. He
treats it altogether practically. He lets it cover any process of conduction from a present
idea to a future terminus, provided only it run prosperously. It is only thus that ‘scientific’
ideas, flying as they do beyond common sense, can be said to agree with their realities. It
is, as I have already said, as if reality were made of ether, atoms or electrons, but we
mustn’t think so literally. The term ‘energy’ doesn’t even pretend to stand for anything
‘objective! It is only a way of measuring the surface of phenomena so as to string their
changes on a simple formula.
Yet in the choice of these man-made formulas we cannot be capricious with impunity any
more than we can be capricious on the common-sense practical level. We must find a
theory that will work; and that means something extremely difficult; for our theory must
mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences. It must derange
common sense and previous belief as little as possible, and it must lead to some sensible
terminus or other that can be verified exactly. To I work’ means both these things; and the
squeeze is so tight that there is little loose play for any hypothesis. Our theories are
wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas
are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for
subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial; we
follow ‘elegance’ or ‘economy.’ Clerk Maxwell somewhere says it would be “poor
scientific taste” to choose the more complicated of two equally well-evidenced
conceptions; and you will all agree with him. Truth in science is what gives us the
(84) maximum possible sum of satisfactions, taste included, but consistency both with
previous truth and with novel fact is always the most imperious claimant.
I have led you through a very sandy desert. But now, if I may be allowed so vulgar an
expression, we begin to taste the milk in the cocoanut. Our rationalist critics here
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discharge their batteries upon us, and to reply to them will take us out from all this
dryness into full sight of a momentous philosophical alternative.
Our account of truth is an account of truths in the plural, of processes of leading, realized
in rebus,2 and having only this quality in common, that they pay. They pay by guiding us
into or towards some part of a system that dips at numerous points into sense-percepts,
which we may copy mentally or not, but with which at any rate we are now in the kind of
commerce vaguely designated as verification. Truth for us is simply a collective name for
verification-processes, just as health, wealth, strength, etc., are names for other processes
connected with life, and also pursued because it pays to pursue them. Truth is made, just
as health, wealth and strength are made, in the course of experience.
Here rationalism is instantaneously up in arms against us. I can imagine a rationalist to
talk as follows:
“Truth is not made,” he will say; “it absolutely obtains, being a unique relation that does
not wait upon any process, but shoots straight over the head of experience, and hits its
reality every time. Our belief that yon thing on the wall is a clock is true already, altho no
one in the whole history of the world should verify it. The bare quality of standing in that
transcendent relation is what makes any thought true that possesses it, whether or not
there be verification. You pragmatists put the cart before the horse in making truth’s
being reside in verification-processes. These are merely signs of its being, merely our
lame ways of ascertaining after the fact, which of our ideas already has possessed the
wondrous quality. The quality itself is timeless, like all essences and natures. Thoughts
partake of it directly, as they partake of falsity or of irrelevancy. It can’t be analyzed away
into pragmatic consequences.”
The whole plausibility of this rationalist tirade is due to the fact to which we have already
paid so much attention. In our world, namely abounding as it does in things of similar
kinds and similarly associated, one verification serves for others of its kind, and one great
use of knowing things is to be led not so much to them as to their associates, especially to
human talk about them. The quality of truth, obtaining
(85) ante rem, pragmatically means, then, the fact that in such a world innumerable ideas
work better by their indirect or possible than by their direct and actual verification. Truth
ante rem means only verifiability, then; or else it is a case of the stock rationalist trick of
treating the name of a concrete phenomenal reality as an independent prior entity, and
placing it behind the reality as its explanation. Professor Mach quotes somewhere an
epigram of Lessing’s:
Sagt Hänschen Schlau zu Vetter Fritz,
“Wie kommt es, Vetter Fritzen,
Dass grad’ die Reichsten in der Welt,
Das meiste Geld besitzen?”
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Hänschen Schlau here treats the principle ‘wealth’ as something distinct from the facts
denoted by the man’s being rich. It antedates them; the facts become only a sort of
secondary coincidence with the rich man’s essential nature.
In the case of ‘wealth’ we all see the fallacy. We know that wealth is but a name for
concrete processes that certain men’s lives play a part in, and not a natural excellence
found in Messrs. Rockefeller and Carnegie, but not in the rest of us.
Like wealth, health also lives in rebus. It is a name for processes, as digestion,
circulation, sleep, etc., that go on happily, tho in this instance we are more inclined to
think of it as a principle and to say the man digests and sleeps so well because he is so
healthy.
With ‘strength’ we are, I think, more rationalistic still, and decidedly inclined to treat it as
an excellence pre-existing in the man and explanatory of the herculean performances of
his muscles.
With ‘truth’ most people go over the border entirely, and treat the rationalistic account as
self-evident. But really all these words in th are exactly similar. Truth exists ante rem just
as much and as little as the other things do.
The scholastics, following Aristotle, made much of the distinction between habit and act.
Health in actu means, among other things, good sleeping and digesting. But a healthy
man need not always be sleeping, or always digesting, any more than a wealthy man need
be always handling money or a strong man always lifting weights. All such qualities sink
to the status of ‘habits’ between their times of exercise; and
(86) similarly truth becomes a habit of certain of our ideas and beliefs in their intervals of
rest from their verifying activities. But those activities are the root of the whole matter,
and the condition of there being any habit to exist in the intervals.
‘ The true,’ to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as
‘the right’ is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient in almost any
fashion; and expedient in the long run and on the whole of course; for what meets
expediently all the experience in sight won’t necessarily meet all farther experiences
equally satisfactorily. Experience, as we know, has ways of boiling over, and making us
correct our present formulas.
The ‘absolutely’ true, meaning what no farther experience will ever alter, is that ideal
vanishing-point towards which we imagine that all our temporary truths will some day
converge. It runs on all fours with the perfectly wise man, and with the absolutely
complete experience; and, if these ideals are ever realized, they will all be realized
together. Meanwhile we have to live to-day by what truth we can get to-day, and be ready
to-morrow to call it falsehood. Ptolemaic astronomy, euclidean space, aristotelian logic,
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scholastic metaphysics, were expedient for centuries, but human experience has boiled
over those limits, and we now call these things only relatively true, or true within those
borders of experience. ‘Absolutely’ they are false; for we know that those limits were
casual, and might have been transcended by past theorists just as they are by present
thinkers.
When new experiences lead to retrospective judgments, using the past tense, what these
judgments utter was true, even tho no past thinker had been led there. We live forwards, a
Danish thinker has said, but we understand backwards. The present sheds a backward
light on the world’s previous processes. They may have been truth-processes for the
actors in them. They are not so for one who knows the later revelations of the story.
This regulative notion of a potential better truth to be established later, possibly to be
established some day absolutely, and having powers of retroactive legislation, turns its
face, like all pragmatist notions, towards concreteness of fact, and towards the future.
Like the half-truths, the absolute truth will have to be made, made is a relation incidental
to the growth of a mass of verification-experience, to which the half-true ideas are all
along contributing their quota.
I have already insisted on the fact that truth is made largely out of previous truths. Men’s
beliefs at any time are so much experience
(86) funded. But the beliefs are themselves parts of the sum total of the world’s
experience, and become matter, therefore, for the next day’s funding operations. So far as
reality means experienceable reality, both it and the truths men gain about it are
everlastingly in process of mutation – mutation towards a definite goal, it may be – but
still mutation.
Mathematicians can solve problems with two variables. On the Newtonian theory, for
instance, acceleration varies with distance, but distance also varies with acceleration. In
the realm of truth-processes facts come independently and determine our beliefs
provisionally. But these beliefs make us act, and as fast as they do so, they bring into
sight or into existence new facts which re-determine the beliefs accordingly. So the whole
coil and ball of truth, as it rolls up, is the product of a double influence. Truths emerge
from facts; but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create
or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The ‘facts’ themselves
meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and
terminate among them.
The case is like a snowball’s growth, due as it is to the distribution of the snow on the one
hand, and to the successive pushes of the boys on the other, with these factors co-
determining each other incessantly.
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The most fateful point of difference between being a rationalist and being a pragmatist is
now fully in sight. Experience is in mutation, and our psychological ascertainments of
truth are in mutation -so much rationalism will allow; but never that either reality itself or
truth itself is mutable. Reality stands complete and ready-made from all eternity,
rationalism insists, and the agreement of our ideas with it is that unique unanalyzable
virtue in them of which she has already told us. As that intrinsic excellence, their truth
has nothing to do with our experiences. It adds nothing to the content of experience. It
makes no difference to reality itself; it is supervenient, inert, static, a reflexion merely. It
doesn’t exist, it holds or obtains, it belongs to another dimension from that of either facts
or fact-relations, belongs, in short, to the epistemological dimension -and with that big
word rationalism closes the discussion.
Thus, just as pragmatism faces forward to the future, so does rationalism here again face
backward to a past eternity. True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to ‘principles,’
and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
The tremendous pregnancy in the way of consequences for life of this radical difference
of outlook will only become apparent in my later
(88) lectures. I wish meanwhile to close this lecture by showing that rationalism’s
sublimity does not save it from inanity.
When, namely, you ask rationalists, instead of accusing pragmatism of desecrating the
notion of truth, to define it themselves by saying exactly what they understand by it, the
only positive attempts I can think of are these two:
1. “Truth is just the system of propositions which have an unconditional claim to be
recognized as valid.[1]
2. Truth is a name for all those judgments which we find ourselves under obligation to
make by a kind of imperative duty.[2]
The first thing that strikes one in such definitions is their unutterable triviality. They are
absolutely true, of course, but absolutely insignificant until you handle them
pragmatically. What do you mean by ‘claim’ here, and what do you mean by ‘duty’? As
summary names for the concrete reasons why thinking in true ways is overwhelmingly
expedient and good for mortal men, it is all right to talk of claims on reality’s part to be
agreed with, and of obligations on our part to agree. We feel both the claims and the
obligations, and we feel them for just those reasons.
But the rationalists who talk of claim and obligation expressly say that they have nothing
to do with our practical interests or personal reasons. Our reasons for agreeing are
psychological facts, they say, relative to each thinker, and to the accidents of his life.
They are his evidence merely, they are no part of the life of truth itself That life transacts
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itself in a purely logical or epistemological, as distinguished from a psychological,
dimension, and its claims antedate and exceed all personal motivations whatsoever. Tho
neither man nor God should ever ascertain truth, the word would still have to be defined
as that which ought to be ascertained and recognized.
There never was a more exquisite example of an idea abstracted from the concretes of
experience and then used to oppose and negate what it was abstracted from.
Philosophy and common life abound in similar instances. The ‘sentimentalist fallacy’ is to
shed tears over abstract justice and generosity, beauty, etc., and never to know these
qualities when you meet them in the street, because there the circumstances make them
vulgar. Thus I
(89) read in the privately printed biography of an eminently rationalistic mind: “It was
strange that with such admiration for beauty in the abstract, my brother had no
enthusiasm for fine architecture, for beautiful painting, or for flowers.” And in almost the
last philosophic work I have read, I find such passages as the following: “Justice is ideal,
solely ideal. Reason conceives that it ought to exist, but experience shows that it
cannot…. Truth, which ought to be, cannot be…. Reason is deformed by experience. As
soon as reason enters experience, it becomes contrary to reason.”
The rationalist’s fallacy here is exactly like the sentimentalist’s. Both extract a quality
from the muddy particulars of experience, and find it so pure when extracted that they
contrast it with each and all its muddy instances as an opposite and higher nature. All the
while it is their nature. It is the nature of truths to be validated, verified. It pays for our
ideas to be validated. Our obligation to seek truth is part of our general obligation to do
what pays. The payments true ideas bring are the sole why of our duty to follow them.
Identical whys exist in the case of wealth and health. Truth makes no other kind of claim
and imposes no other kind of ought than health and wealth do. All these claims are
conditional; the concrete benefits we gain are what we mean by calling the pursuit a duty.
In the case of truth, untrue beliefs work as perniciously in the long run as true beliefs
work beneficially. Talking abstractly, the quality ‘true’ may thus be said to grow
absolutely precious, and the quality ‘untrue’ absolutely damnable: the one may be called
good, the other bad, unconditionally. We ought to think the true, we ought to shun the
false, imperatively.
But if we treat all this abstraction literally and oppose it to its mother soil in experience,
see what a preposterous position we work ourselves into.
We cannot then take a step forward in our actual thinking. When shall I acknowledge this
truth and when that? Shall the acknowledgment be loud? -or silent? If sometimes loud,
sometimes silent, which now? When may a truth go into cold-storage in the
encyclopedia? and when shall it come out for baffle? Must I constantly be repeating the
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truth ‘twice two are four’ because of its eternal claim on recognition? or is it sometimes
irrelevant? Must my thoughts dwell night and day on my personal sins and blemishes,
because I truly have them? – or may I sink and ignore them in order to be a decent social
unit, and not a mass of morbid melancholy and apology?
It is quite evident that our obligation to acknowledge truth, so far from being
unconditional, is tremendously conditioned. Truth with a big T, and in the singular,
claims abstractly to be recognized, of course; but
(90) concrete truths in the plural need be recognized only when their recognition is
expedient. A truth must always be preferred to a falsehood when both relate to the
situation; but when neither does, truth is as little of a duty as falsehood. If you ask me
what o’clock it is and I tell you that I live at 95 Irving Street, my answer may indeed be
true, but you don’t see why it is my duty to give it. A false address would be as much to
the purpose.
With this admission that there are conditions that limit the application of the abstract
imperative, the pragmatistic treatment of truth sweeps back upon us in its fulness. Our
duty to agree with reality is seen to be grounded in a perfect jungle of concrete
expediencies.
When Berkeley had explained what people meant by matter, people thought that he
denied matter’s existence. When Messrs. Schiller and Dewey now explain what people
mean by truth, they are accused of denying its existence. These pragmatists destroy all
objective standards, critics say, and put foolishness and wisdom on one level. A favorite
formula for describing Mr. Schiller’s doctrines and mine is that we are persons who think
that by saying whatever you find it pleasant to say and calling it truth you fulfil every
pragmatistic requirement.
I leave it to you to judge whether this be not an impudent slander. Pent in, as the
pragmatist more than anyone else sees himself to be, between the whole body of funded
truths squeezed from the past and the coercions of the world of sense about him, who so
well as he feels the immense pressure of objective control under which our minds
perform their operations? If anyone imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its
commandment one day, says Emerson. We have heard much of late of the uses of the
imagination in science. It is high time to urge the use of a little imagination in
philosophy. The unwillingness of some of our critics to read any but the silliest of
possible meanings into our statements is as discreditable to their imaginations as anything
I know in recent philosophic history. Schiller says the true is that which ‘works.’
Thereupon he is treated as one who limits verification to the lowest material utilities.
Dewey says truth is what gives ‘satisfaction! He is treated as one who believes in calling
everything true which, if it were true, would be pleasant.
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Our critics certainly need more imagination of realities. I have honestly tried to stretch
my own imagination and to read the best possible meaning into the rationalist conception,
but I have to confess that it still completely baffles me. The notion of a reality calling on
us to ‘agree’ with it, and that for no reasons, but simply because its claim is ‘unconditional’
or ‘transcendent,’ is one that I can make neither head nor tail of I try to imagine myself as
the sole reality in the world, and then to imagine
(91) what more I would ‘claim’ if I were allowed to. If you suggest the possibility of my
claiming that a mind should come into being from out of the void inane and stand and
copy me, I can indeed imagine what the copying might mean, but I can conjure up no
motive. What good it would do me to be copied, or what good it would do that mind to
copy me, if farther consequences are expressly and in principle ruled out as motives for
the claim (as they are by our rationalist authorities) I cannot fathom. When the Irishman’s
admirers ran him along to the place of banquet in a sedan chair with no bottom, he said,
“Faith, if it wasn’t for the honor of the thing, I might as well have come on foot.” So here:
but for the honor of the thing, I might as well have remained uncopied. Copying is one
genuine mode of knowing (which for some strange reason our contemporary
transcendentalists seem to be tumbling over each other to repudiate); but when we get
beyond copying, and fall back on unnamed forms of agreeing that are expressly denied to
be either copyings or leadings or fittings, or any other processes pragmatically definable,
the what of the ‘agreement’ claimed becomes as unintelligible as the why of it. Neither
content nor motive can be imagined for it. It is an absolutely meaningless abstraction.[3]
Surely in this field of truth it is the pragmatists and not the rationalists who are the more
genuine defenders of the universe’s rationality.
Endnotes
1. A. E. Taylor [Alfred Edward Taylor (1869-1945), English philosopher],
Philosophical Review, vol. xiv, p. 288.
2. H. Rickert [Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936), German philosopher], Der Gegenstand
der Erkenntniss, [J.B.C. Mohr, Tubengen and Leipzig, 1904] chapter on ‘Die
Urtheilsnothwendigkeit.’
3. I am not forgetting that Professor Rickert long ago gave up the whole notion of
truth being founded on agreement with reality. Reality, according to him, is
whatever agrees with truth, and truth is founded solely on our primal duty. This
fantastic flight, together with Mir. Joachim’s [Harold Henry Joachim (1868-1938),
English philosopher] candid confession of failure in his book The Nature of
Truth, seems to me to mark the bankruptcy of rationalism when dealing with this
subject. Rickert deals with part of the pragmatistic position under the head of
what he calls ‘Relativismus.’ I cannot discuss his text here. Suffice it to say that
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his argumentation in that chapter is so feeble as to seem almost incredible in so
generally able a writer.
