turns on an ambiguity in the use of the word “absolute.” Keeping
strictly within the limits of the argument, it means nothing more than
that thinking has a certain principle, a law of its own; that it has
an appropriate mode of procedure which must not be violated. It means,
in short, whatever is finally controlling for the thought-function.
But Mr. Bradley immediately takes the word to mean absolute in the
sense of describing a reality which by its very nature is totally
contradistinguished from appearance--that is to say, from the realm
of thought. Upon the ambiguity of a word, the systematic indictment
of intellectualism becomes the cornerstone of a systematically
intellectualistic method of conceiving reality!
Mr. Bradley has himself recognized the seeming contradiction between
his indictment of thought and his use of the criterion of thought as
the exclusive path to a philosophic notion of the real. In dealing
with it, he (to my mind) comes within an ace of stating a truer
doctrine, and also exhibits even more clearly the weakness of his own
position. He goes so far as to put the following words into the mouth
of an objector, and to accept their general import: “All axioms, as
a matter of fact, are practical ... for none of them in the end can
amount to more than the impulse to behave in a certain way. And they
cannot express more than this impulse, together with the impossibility
of satisfaction unless it is complied with” (p. 151). After accepting
this (p. 152) he goes on to say: “Take for example the law of avoiding
contradiction. When two elements will not remain quietly together,
but collide and struggle, we cannot rest satisfied with that state.
Our impulse is to alter it and, on the theoretical side, to bring
the content to such shape that the variety remains peaceably in one.
And this inability to rest otherwise and this tendency to alter in a
certain way and direction is, _when reflected upon and made explicit_,
our axiom and our intellectual standard” (p. 152; italics mine).
The retort is obvious: if _the_ intellectual criterion, the principle
of non-contradiction on which his whole Absolute Reality rests, is
itself a practical principle, then surely the ultimate criterion for
regulating intellectual undertakings is practical. To this obvious
answer Mr. Bradley makes reply as follows: “You may call the intellect,
if you like, a mere tendency to a movement, but you must remember that
it is a movement of a _very special kind_.... Thinking is the attempt
to satisfy a _special_ impulse, and the attempt implies an assumption
about reality.... But why, it may be objected, is this assumption
better than what holds for practice? Why is the theoretical to be
superior to the practical end? I have never said that this is so, only
_here_, that is, in _metaphysics_, I must be allowed to reply, we are
acting theoretically.... The _theoretical standard within theory must
surely be absolute_” (p. 153. The italics again are mine; compare with
the quotation this, from p. 485: “Our attitude, however, in metaphysics
must be theoretical.” So, also, p. 154, “Since metaphysics is mere
theory and since theory from its nature must be made by the intellect,
it is here the intellect alone which is to be satisfied”).
Grant that intellect is a special movement or mode of practice; grant
that we are not merely acting (are we ever _merely_ acting?) but are
“specially occupied and therefore subject to special conditions,”
and the problem remains _what_ special kind of activity is thinking?
what is its experienced differentia from other kinds? what is its
commerce with them? When the problem is _what_ special kind of an
activity is thinking and of _what_ nature is the consistency which
is its criterion, somehow we do not get forward by being told that
thinking _is_ a special mode of practice and that its criterion _is_
consistency. The unquestioned presupposition of Mr. Bradley is that
thinking is such a wholly separate activity (the “intellect _alone_”
which has to be satisfied), that to give it autonomy is to say that it,
and its criterion, have nothing to do with other activities; that it is
“independent” as to criterion, in a way which excludes interdependence
in function and outcome. Unless the term “special” be interpreted to
mean _isolated_, to say that thinking is a _special_ mode of activity
no more nullifies the proposition that it arises in a practical contest
and operates for practical ends, than to say that blacksmithing is a
_special_ activity, negates its being one connected mode of industrial
activity.
His underlying presupposition of the separate character of thought
comes out in the passage last quoted. “Our impulse,” he says, “is to
alter the conflicting situation and, _on the theoretical side_, to
bring its contents into peaceable unity.” If one substitutes for the
word “on” the word “through,” one gets a conception of theory and of
thinking that does justice to the autonomy of the operation and yet so
connects it with other activities as to give it a serious business,
real purpose, and concrete responsibility and hence testibility.
From this point of view the theoretical activity is simply the form
that certain practical activities take after colliding, as the most
effective and fruitful way of securing their own harmonization.
The collision is not theoretical; the issue in “peaceable unity”
is not theoretical. But theory names the type of activity by which
the transformation from war to peace is most amply and securely
effected.[22]
Admit, however, the force of Mr. Bradley’s contention on its own terms
and see how futile is the result. It is quite true, as Mr. Bradley
says (p. 153), that if a man sits down to play the metaphysical game,
he must abide by the rules of thinking; but if thinking be already,
with respect to reality, an idle and futile game, simply abiding by
the rules does not give additional value to its stakes. Grant the
premises as to the character of thought, and the assertion of the
final character of the theoretical standard within metaphysics--since
metaphysics is a form of theory--is a warning against metaphysics. If
the intellect involves self-contradiction, it is either impossible that
it should be satisfied, or else self-contradiction is its satisfaction.
II
Let us, however, turn from Mr. Bradley’s formal proof that the
criterion of philosophic truth must be exclusively a canon of formal
thought. Let us ignore the contradiction involved in first making the
work of thought to be the producing of appearance and then making
the law of this thought the law of an Absolute Reality. What about
the intellectualist criterion? The intellectualism of Mr. Bradley’s
philosophy is represented in the statement that it is “the theoretical
standard which guarantees that reality is a self-consistent system”
(p. 148). But how can the fact that the criterion of thinking is
consistency be employed to determine the nature of the consistency of
its object? Consistency in one sense, consistency of reasoning with
itself, we know; but what is the nature of the consistency of reality
which this consistency necessitates? Thinking without doubt must be
logical; but does it follow from this that the reality about which
one thinks, and about which one must think consistently if one is to
think to any purpose, must itself be already logical? The pivot of
the argument is, of course, the old ontological argument, stripped of
all theological irrelevancies and reduced to its fighting weight as
a metaphysical proposition. Those who question this basic principle
of intellectualism will, of course, question it here. They will urge
that, instead of the consistency of “reality” resting on the basis of
consistency in the reasoning process the latter derives its meaning
from the material consistency at which it aims. They will say that
the definition of the nature of the consistency which is the end of
thinking and which prescribes its technique is to be reached from
inquiry into such questions as these: What sort of an activity in the
concrete is thinking? what are the specific conditions which it has
to fulfil? what is its use; its relevancy; its purport in present
concrete experiences? The more it is insisted that the theoretical
standard--consistency--is final within theory, the more germane and
the more urgent is the question: What then in the concrete is theory?
and of what nature _is_ the material consistency which is the test of
its formal consistency?[23]
Take the instance of a man who wishes to deny the criterion of
self-consistency in thinking. Is he refuted by pointing to the “fact”
that eternal reality is eternally self-consistent? Would not his
obvious answer to such a mode of refutation be: “What of it? What is
the relevancy of that proposition to my procedure in thinking here
and now? Doubtless absolute reality may be a great number of things,
possibly very sublime and precious things; but what I am concerned with
is a particular job of thinking, and until you show me the intermediate
terms which link that job to the asserted self-consistent character
of absolute reality, I fail to see what difference this doubtless
wholly amiable trait of reality has to make in what I am here and now
concerned with. You might as well quote any other irrelevant fact, such
as the height of the Empress of China.” We take another tack in dealing
with the man in question. We call his attention to his specific aim in
the situation with reference to which he is thinking, and point out the
conditions that have to be observed if that aim is to fulfil itself. We
show that if he does not observe the conditions imposed by his aim his
thinking will go on so wildly as to defeat itself. It is to consistency
of means with the end of the concrete activity that we appeal. “Try
thinking,” we tell such a man, “experiment with it, taking pains
sometimes to have your reasonings consistent with one another, and at
other times deliberately introducing inconsistencies; then see what
you get in the two cases and how the result reached is related to your
purpose in thinking.” We point out that since that purpose is to reach
a settled conclusion, that purpose will be defeated unless the steps of
reasoning are kept consistent with one another. We do not appeal from
the mere consistency of the reasoning process--the intellectual aspect
of the matter--to an absolute self-consistent reality; but we appeal
from the material character of the end to be reached to the type of the
formal procedure necessary to accomplish it.
With all our heart, then, the standard of thinking is absolute
(that is final) within thinking. But what is thinking? The standard
of blacksmithing must be absolute within blacksmithing, but what is
blacksmithing? No prejudice prevents acknowledging that blacksmithing
is one practical activity existing as a distinct and relevant member
of a like system of activities: that it is because men use horses to
transport persons and goods that horses need to be shod. The ultimate
criterion of blacksmithing is producing a good shoe, but the nature
of a good shoe is fixed, not by blacksmithing, but by the activities
in which horses are used. The end is ultimate (absolute) for the
operation, but this very finality is evidence that the operation is not
absolute and self-inclosed, but is related and responsible. Why must
the fact that the end of thinking is ultimate for thought stand on any
different footing?
Let us then, by way of experiment, follow this suggestion. Let us
assume that among real objects in their values and significances, real
oppositions and incompatibilities exist; that these conflicts are both
troublesome in themselves, and the source of all manner of further
difficulties--so much so that they may be suspected of being the source
of all man’s woe, of all encroachment upon and destruction of value,
of good. Suppose that thinking is, not accidentally but essentially,
a way, and the only way that proves adequate, of dealing with these
predicaments--that being “in a hole,” in difficulty, is the fundamental
“predicament” of intelligence. Suppose when effort is made in a brute
way to remove these oppositions and to secure an arrangement of things
which means satisfaction, fulfilment, happiness, that the method of
brute attack, of trying directly to force warrings into peace fails;
suppose then an effort to effect the transformation by an indirect
method--by inquiry into the disordered state of affairs and by framing
views, conceptions, of what the situation would be like were it reduced
to harmonious order. Finally, suppose that upon this basis a plan of
action is worked out, and that this plan, when carried into overt
effect, succeeds infinitely better than the brute method of attack in
bringing about the desired consummation. Suppose again this indirection
of activity is precisely what we mean by thinking. Would it not hold
that harmony is the end and the test of thinking? that observations are
pertinent and ideas correct just in so far as, overtly acted upon, they
succeed in removing the undesirable, the inconsistent.
But, it is said, the very process of thinking makes a certain
assumption regarding the nature of reality, viz., that reality is
self-consistent. This statement puts the end for the beginning. The
assumption is not that “reality” _is_ self-consistent, but that by
thinking it may, for some special purpose, or as respects some
concrete problem, attain greater consistency. Why should the assumption
regarding “reality” be other than that specific realities with which
thought is concerned are _capable of receiving_ harmonization? To say
that thought must assume, in order to go on, that reality already
possesses harmony is to say that thought must begin by contradicting
its own direct data, and by assuming that its concrete aim is vain and
illusory. Why put upon thought the onus of introducing discrepancies
into reality in order just to give itself exercise in the gymnastic
of removing them? The assumption that concrete thinking makes about
“reality” is that things just as they exist may acquire _through
activity, guided by thinking_, a certain character which it is
excellent for them to possess; and may acquire it more liberally and
effectively than by other methods. One might as well say that the
blacksmith could not think to any effect concerning iron, without a
Platonic archetypal horseshoe, laid up in the heavens. His thinking
also makes an assumption about present, given reality, viz., that
this piece of iron, through the exercise of intelligently directed
activity, may be shaped into a satisfactory horseshoe. The assumption
is practical: the assumption that a specific thing may take on in a
specific way a specific needed value. The test, moreover, of this
assumption is practical; it consists in acting upon it to see if it
will do what it pretends it can do, namely, guide activities to the
required result. The assumption about reality is not something in
addition to the idea, which an idea already in existence makes; some
assumption about the possibility of a change in the state of things as
experienced _is_ the idea--and its test or criterion is whether this
possible change can be effected when the idea is acted upon in good
faith.
In any case, how much simpler the case becomes when we stick by the
empirical facts. According to them there is no wholesale discrepancy
of existence and meaning; there is simply a “loosening” of the two
when objects do not fulfil our plans and meet our desires; or when we
project inventions and cannot find immediately the means for their
realization. The “collisions” are neither physical, metaphysical, nor
logical; they are moral and practical. They exist between an aim and
the means of its execution. Consequently the object of thinking is
not to effect some wholesale and “Absolute” reconciliation of meaning
and existence, but to make a specific adjustment of things to our
purposes and of our purposes to things at just the crucial point of
the crisis. Making the utmost concessions to Mr. Bradley’s account
of the discrepancy of meaning and existence in our experience, to
his statement of the relation of this to the function of judgment
(as involving namely an explicit _statement_ at once of the actual
sundering and the ideal union) and to his account of consistency as
the goal and standard, there is still not a detail of the account
that is not met amply and with infinitely more empirical warrant by
the conception that the “collision” in which thinking starts and the
“consistency” in which it terminates are practical and human.
III
This brings us explicitly to the question of truth, “truth” being
confessedly the end and standard of thinking. I confess to being much
at a loss to realize just what the intellectualists conceive to be the
relation of truth to ideas on one side and to “reality” on the other.
My difficulty occurs, I think, because they describe so little in
analytical detail; in writing of truth they seem rather to be under a
strong emotional influence--as if they were victims of an uncritical
pragmatism--which leaves much of their thought to be guessed at. The
implication of their discussions assigns three distinct values to the
term “truth.” On the one hand, truth is something which characterizes
ideas, theories, hypotheses, beliefs, judgments, propositions,
assertions, etc.,--anything whatsoever involving _intellectual_
statement. From this standpoint a criterion of truth means the test
of the worth of the intellectual intent, import, or claim of any
intellectual statement as intellectual. This is an intelligible sense
of the term truth. In the second place, it seems to be assumed that
a certain kind of reality is already, apart from ideas or meanings,
Truth, and that _this_ Truth is the criterion of that lower and more
unworthy kind of truth that may be possessed or aimed at by ideas.
But we do not stop here. The conception that _all_ truth must have a
criterion haunts the intellectualist, so that the reality, which, as
contrasted with ideas, is taken to be The Truth (and the criterion
of _their_ truth) is treated as if it itself had to have support and
warrant from some other Reality, lying back of it, which is _its_
criterion. This, then, gives the third type of truth, _The Absolute
Truth_. (Just why this process should not go on indefinitely is not
clear, but the necessity of infinite regress may be emotionally
prevented by always referring to this last type of truth as Absolute).
Now this scheme may be “true,” but it is not self-explanatory or even
easily apprehensible. In just what sense, truth is (1) that to which
ideas as ideas lay claim and yet is (2) Reality which as reality is
the criterion of truth of ideas, and yet again is (3) a Reality which
completely annuls and transcends all reference to ideas, is not in the
least clear to me: nor, till better informed, shall I believe it to be
clear to any one.
In his more strictly logical discussions, Mr. Bradley sets out from
the notion that truth refers to intellectual statements and positions
as such. But the Truth soon becomes a sort of transcendent essence
on its own account. The identification of reality and truth on page
146 may be a mere casual phrase, but the distinction drawn between
validity and absolute truth (p. 362), and the discussion of Degrees
of Truth and Reality, involve assumptions of an identity of truth and
reality. Truth in this sense turns out to be the criterion for the
truth, the truth, that is, of ideas. But, again (p. 545), a distinction
is made between “Finite Truth,” that is, a view of reality which would
completely satisfy intelligence as such, and “Absolute Truth,” which is
obtained only by _passing beyond intelligence_--only when intelligence
as such is absorbed in some Absolute in which it loses its distinctive
character.
It would advance the state of discussion, I am sure, if there were
more explicit statements regarding the relations of “true idea,”
“truth,” “the criterion of truth” and “reality,” to one another. A
more explicit exposition also of the view that is held concerning the
relation of verification and truth could hardly fail to be of value.
Not infrequently the intellectualist admits that the process of
verification is experimental, consisting in setting on foot various
activities that express the intent of the idea and confirm or refute
it according to the changes effected. This seems to mean that truth
is simply the tested or verified belief as such. But then a curious
reservation is introduced; the experimental process _finds_, it is
said, that an idea is true, while the error of the pragmatist is to
take the process by which truth is _found_ as one by which it is made.
The claim of “making truth” is treated as blasphemy against the very
notion of truth: such are the consequences of venturing to translate
the Latin “verification” into the English “making true.”
If we face the bogie thus called up, it will be found that the horror
is largely sentimental. Suppose we stick to the notion that truth is a
character which belongs to a meaning so far as tested through action
that carries it to successful completion. In this case, to make an idea
true is to modify and transform it until it reaches this successful
outcome: until it initiates a mode of response which in its issue
realizes its claim to be the method of harmonizing the discrepancies of
a given situation. The meaning is remade by constantly acting upon it,
and by introducing into its content such characters as are indicated
by any resulting failures to secure harmony. From this point of view,
verification and truth are two names for the same thing. We call it
“verification” when we regard it as process; when the development of
the idea is strung out and exposed to view in all that makes it true.
We call it “truth” when we take it as product, as process telescoped
and condensed.
Suppose the idea to be an invention, say of the telephone. In this
case, is not the verification of the idea and the construction of
the device which carries out its intent one and the same? In this
case, does the truth of the idea mean anything else than that the
issue proves the idea can be carried into effect? There are certain
intellectualists who are not of the absolutist type; who do not believe
that all of men’s aims, designs, projects, that have to do with action,
whether industrial, social, or moral in scope, have been from all
eternity registered as already accomplished in reality. How do such
persons dispose of this problem of the truth of practical ideas?
Is not the truth of _such_ ideas an affair of _making_ them true by
constructing, through appropriate behavior, a condition that satisfies
the requirements of the case? If, in this case, truth means the
effective capacity of the idea “to make good,” what is there in the
logic of the case to forbid the application of analogous considerations
to any idea?