All men know something of truth. Happily it is the first impulse of
childhood, and nature teaches us its pleasure before reason instructs us
in its truth. In infancy we own its beauty, in manhood its power. There
is nothing, says Cicero, sweeter to man than the light of truth. Truth,
observes Godwin, is the native element of an intellectual nature. It
has been wisely remarked, said Lord Kames, that truth is to the
understanding what beauty is to the eye, or music to the ear.
Philosophy sanctions what unsophisticated feelings suggested. He that
has made but a little progress beyond ignorance and privilege, cannot be
edified by anything but truth.** Truth, like a mathematical point, has
had various descriptions; and it may be useful to select those which
graduate to its logical definition. Bulwer tells us, that 'the agitation
of thought is the beginning of truth.' Locke, Lord Kames, Mill, and
others, agree that truth, or falsehood, is an affair of language. An
assertion which represents things as they really are, is a truth--an
assertion that represents things what in reality they are _not_, is a
falsehood.
** Mr. Hobhouse: Note 15. to 4th Canto of Childe Harold.
Truth, in sculpture, means an exact similitude of some living form,
chiselled in stone or marble. Truth, in painting, is a natural
representation on canvass of some person, or object. In the same
manner, moral 'truth is an exact image of things set forth in speech,
or writing.' The logical definition of truth is given in these
words:--'Truth is that which admits of proof,'* that is, an assertion or
denial which can be substantiated by facts.
* Chambers' Information.
A fact is commonly called a truth, but this practice leads to great
confusion in reasoning. A fact is only an element in truth, A logical
truth is a proposition supported by facts. Facts compose the premises
of an argument--a truth is the inference from the facts. Unless this
distinction is observed, recourse must be had to the expedient of
calling a fact a particular truth, and an induction from facts a general
truth. Or we must adopt this distinction, that a moral truth, that is,
the truth of parlance, is the coincidence of language with reality; and
a logical truth, a proposition which admits of demonstration.
A lady, who has given intellectual laws to many whom I address, has
said--'A truth I consider to be an ascertained fact, which truth would
be changed into an error the moment the fact on which it rested was
disproved.' But that which can be disproved cannot be an '_ascertained_
fact.' Allowing, however, the relevancy of this definition of a truth,
it would, in a treatise on logic, be considered as a definition only
of a particular truth. Many such truths are required to make a logical
truth.