Conduct of life; English essays -- 20th century; Ethics; Philosophy
We have not only to realise how our own prepossessions and the
metaphysical figments of our own creation have obscured the simple
realities of religion and science alike; we have also to see that our
timid dread lest religion should kill our science, or science kill our
religion, is equally fatal here. He who would gain his life must be
willing to lose it, and it is by being honest to one’s self and to the
facts by applying courageously the measuring rod of Truth, that in the
end salvation is found. Here, it is true, there are those who smilingly
assure us that by adopting such a method we shall merely put ourselves
in the wrong and endure much unnecessary suffering. There is no such
thing as “Truth,” they declare, regarded as an objective impersonal
reality; we do not “discover” truth, we invent it. Therefore your
business is to invent a truth which shall harmoniously satisfy the needs
of your nature and aid your efficiency in practical life. That we are
justified in being dishonest towards truth has even been argued from the
doctrine of relativity by some who failed to realise that that doctrine
is here hardly relative. Certainly the philosophers of recent times,
from Nietzsche to Croce, have loved to analyse the idea of “truth” and
to show that it by no means signifies what we used to suppose it
signified. But to show that truth is fluid, or even the creation of the
individual mind, is by no means to show that we can at will play fast
and loose with it to suit our own momentary convenience. If we do we
merely find ourselves, at the end, in a pool where we must tramp round
and round in intellectual slush out of which there is no issue. One may
well doubt whether any Pragmatist has ever really invented his truth
that way. Practically, just as the best result is attained by the man
who acts as though free-will were a reality and who exerts it, so in
this matter, also, practically, in the end the best result is attained
by assuming that truth is an objective reality which we must patiently
seek, and in accordance with which we must discipline our own wayward
impulses. There is no transcendent objective truth, each one of us is an
artist creating his own truth from the phenomena presented to him, but
if in that creation he allows any alien emotional or practical
considerations to influence him he is a bad artist and his work is
wrought for destruction. From the pragmatic point of view, it may thus
be said that if the use of the measuring-rod of truth as an objective
standard produces the best practical results, that use is pragmatically
justified. But if so, we are exactly in the same position as we were
before the pragmatist arrived; we can get on as well without him, if not
better, for we run the risk that he may confuse the issues for us. It is
really on the theoretic rather than the practical side that he is
helpful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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