falsehood. The resultant situation, being profoundly unsatisfactory,
would also be instable.
Theoretic truth is thus no relation between our mind and archetypal
reality. It falls _within_ the mind, being the accord of some of its
processes and objects with other processes and objects--'accord'
consisting here in well-definable relations. So long as the satisfaction
of feeling such an accord is denied us, whatever collateral profits may
seem to inure from what we believe in are but as dust in the
balance--provided always that we are highly organized intellectually,
which the majority of us are not. The amount of accord which satisfies
most men and women is merely the absence of violent clash between their
usual thoughts and statements and the limited sphere of
sense-perceptions in which their lives are cast. The theoretic truth
that most of us think we 'ought' to attain to is thus the possession of
a set of predicates that do not contradict their subjects. We preserve
it as often as not by leaving other predicates and subjects out.
In some men theory is a passion, just as music is in others. The form of
inner consistency is pursued far beyond the line at which collateral
profits stop. Such men systematize and classify and schematize and make
synoptical tables and invent ideal objects for the pure love of
unifying. Too often the results, glowing with 'truth' for the inventors,
seem pathetically personal and artificial to bystanders. Which is as
much as to say that the purely theoretic criterion of truth can leave us
in the lurch as easily as any other criterion.
I think that if Mr. Joseph will but consider all these things a little
more concretely, he may find that the humanistic scheme and the notion
of theoretic truth fall into line consistently enough to yield him also
intellectual satisfaction.
FOOTNOTES:
[129] [Reprinted without change from _Mind_, N. S., vol. XIV, No. 54,
April, 1905, pp. 190-198. Pages 245-247, and pp. 261-265, have also been
reprinted in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 54-57, and pp. 97-100. The
present essay is referred to above, p. 203. ED.]
[130] ['Humanism and Truth' first appeared in _Mind_, N. S., vol. XIII,
No. 52, October, 1904. It is reprinted in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp.
51-101. Cf. this article _passim_. Mr. H. W. B. Joseph's criticism,
entitled "Professor James on 'Humanism and Truth,'" appeared in _Mind_,
N. S., vol. XIV, No. 53, January, 1905. ED.]
[131] _Op. cit._, p. 37.
[132] [Cf. above, pp. 241-243.]
[133] _Op. cit._, p. 32.
[134] [This] Mr. Joseph deals with (though in much too pettifogging and
logic-chopping a way) on pp. 33-34 of his article.
[135] Compare some elaborate articles by M. Le Roy and M. Wilbois in the
_Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, vols. VIII, IX, and X, [1900,
1901, and 1902.]
[136] [Cf. _The Meaning of Truth_, p. 64.]
[137] [Joseph: _op. cit._, p. 36.]
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