Even as the Deity in creating did not have to consider anything but his glory and pleasure, likewise man in believing does not have to consider anything but his needs and desires. Ask, "What is Truth?" and the theologian answers: "Whatever God wants it to be." Ask now the scientist allies of the supernatural, "What is Truth," and they answer: "Whatever man desires or craves it to be." Of course, it may be objected that it is only concerning the unknown that man is permitted to dispense with evidence and consult his will. But there is no merit, for instance, in a man not telling any falsehoods where he is sure of being found out; his character is tested by his refusal to lie where he is sure he never will be found out. It is concerning the unknown about which we can say anything and everything we please without the fear of ever being caught, that we should restrain ourselves and show our loyalty to the everlasting law of honor, never to depart from veracity. To make any assertions about the unknown is to take an undue advantage of one's neighbors. "Truth is not mine to do with it as I please," said Giordano Bruno, "I must obey the truth, not command it." But the theologico-scientific position is the very reverse of this. If a god were to ask the question, "What is Truth?" His priests would answer, "Lord, suit thyself." If men asked, "What is Truth?" the Harvard professor and his colleagues would reply, "It depends upon your will to believe." The name given to this "free and easy philosophy," if I may use such an expression--is pragmatism, which is a word from the Greek root _pragmatikos_, whence our word "practice" and "practical." The idea at the basis of this philosophy is that whatever is practical and business-like--whatever is necessary to a given program, is authoritative. The philosopher, Kant, was one of the first to urge that we have a right to believe as we please concerning the things which we can neither prove nor disprove by evidence, if such beliefs are necessary to morality. His modern disciples following his leadership, take the position that it is the usefulness of a hypothesis or a belief, and not its truth, that should concern us. "Does it work," is the test, they say, of the value of a scheme or statement, and not, "Is it true?" If it works, what do we care whether or not it be true. If it does not work, it is of no help to us even if it were true. This is identically the same argument which is advanced by the Roman Catholics, to justify for instance, the belief in the existence, somewhere in the universe, of a place called purgatory. "The doctrine of purgatory works," argues the priest, and therefore, it makes no difference whether or not such a place really exists. It is a useful, consoling and profitable doctrine. Therefore it is as good as true. In the phraseology of pragmatism, millions of people want a purgatory, therefore, there is one. And once again, to the question, "What is Truth," the answer of both the