If I have succeeded in making this at all clear (tho I fear that brevity
and abstractness between them may have made me fail), the reader
will see that the 'truth' of our mental operations must always be an
intra-experiential affair. A conception is reckoned true by common sense
when it can be made to lead to a sensation. The sensation, which
for common sense is not so much 'true' as 'real,' is held to be
PROVISIONALLY true by the philosopher just in so far as it COVERS (abuts
at, or occupies the place of) a still more absolutely real experience,
in the possibility of which, to some remoter experient, the philosopher
finds reason to believe.
Meanwhile what actually DOES count for true to any individual trower,
whether he be philosopher or common man, is always a result of his
APPERCEPTIONS. If a novel experience, conceptual or sensible, contradict
too emphatically our pre-existent system of beliefs, in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred it is treated as false. Only when the older and
the newer experiences are congruous enough to mutually apperceive and
modify each other, does what we treat as an advance in truth result.
In no case, however, need truth consist in a relation between our
experiences and something archetypal or trans-experiential. Should we
ever reach absolutely terminal experiences, experiences in which we all
agreed, which were superseded by no revised continuations, these would
not be TRUE, they would be REAL, they would simply BE, and be indeed
the angles, corners, and linchpins of all reality, on which the truth of
everything else would be stayed. Only such OTHER things as led to these
by satisfactory conjunctions would be 'true.' Satisfactory connection of
some sort with such termini is all that the word 'truth' means. On the
common-stage of thought sense-presentations serve as such termini. Our
ideas and concepts and scientific theories pass for true only so far as
they harmoniously lead back to the world of sense.
I hope that many humanists will endorse this attempt of mine to trace
the more essential features of that way of viewing things. I feel almost
certain that Messrs. Dewey and Schiller will do so. If the attackers
will also take some slight account of it, it may be that discussion will
be a little less wide of the mark than it has hitherto been.