CHAPTER II.

THE INTERPRETATION GIVEN TO PRAGMATISM BY JAMES.

James first uses the term 'pragmatism', as Peirce had done, to refer to a method for attaining clearness. When, in 1898, he brought again before the public the original article by Peirce, he was simply expounding the Peircian doctrine without making any attempt to pass beyond it. But, as we have just seen, he later gave it a construction, an interpretation as a theory of truth, with which its originator could not agree. In this chapter we may, therefore, look first at his exposition of the doctrine of clearness, and after that, in order to understand James' development of the doctrine into a theory of truth, we may turn back for a moment to some of his previous publications on the question of truth. It will then be possible to trace chronologically his developing attitude toward the truth controversy. From this we may pass finally to an indication of some of the difficulties in which he becomes involved. The most important of these, it may be said again, is that he construes the test of truth of an idea to be, not merely that the idea leads to expected consequences, but that it leads to predominantly desirable consequences. The outcomes which stand as evidence for truth are then not merely outcomes bringing fulfilled expectations but outcomes bringing happiness.

JAMES' EXPOSITION OF PEIRCE.

James in expounding the doctrine of Peirce explains the pragmatic principle as a method of investigating philosophic controversies, reducing them to essentials (clear meanings), and selecting those worthy of discussion.[2] "Suppose", he says, "that there are two different philosophical definitions, or propositions, or maxims, or what not, which seem to contradict each other, and about which men dispute. If, by assuming the truth of the one, you can foresee no practical consequence to anybody, at any time or place, which is different from what you would foresee if you assumed the truth of the other, why then the difference between the two propositions is no real difference--it is only a specious and verbal difference, unworthy of future contention.... There can _be_ no difference which does not _make_ a difference--no difference in the abstract truth which does not express itself in a difference of concrete fact, and of conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed upon somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen.... The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it would make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the one which is true". (p.675).

[2] "The Pragmatic Method", University of California Chronicle 1898. Reprinted in Journal of Philosophy, 1904, v. 1, p. 673. Page references are to the latter.

This doctrine is illustrated by using it to secure the essence of two philosophical questions, materialism vs. theism and the one _vs._ the many. If we suppose for an instant, he suggests, that this moment is the last moment of the universe's existence, there will be no _difference_ between materialism and theism. All the effects that might be ascribed to either have come about.

"These facts are in, are bagged, are captured; and the good that's in them is gained, be the atom or be the God their cause." (p. 677). "The God, if there, has been doing just what the atom could do--appearing in the character of atoms, so to speak, and earning such gratitude as is due to atoms, and no more". Future good or ill is ruled out by postulate. Taken thus retrospectively, there could be no difference between materialism and theism.

But taken prospectively, they point to wholly different consequences. "For, according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the laws of redistribution of matter and motion, though they are certainly to thank for all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded us and all the ideals which our minds now frame, are yet fatally certain to undo their work again, and to redissolve everything that they have evolved.... We make complaint of |materialism| for what it is _not_--not a permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our remotest hopes.... Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; theism means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope. Surely here is an issue genuine enough for anyone who feels it....

"[And] if there be a God, it is not likely that he is confined solely to making differences in the world's latter end; he probably makes differences all along its course. Now the principle of practicalism says that that very meaning of the conception of God lies in the differences which must be made in experience if the conception be true. God's famous inventory of perfections, as elaborated by dogmatic theology, either means nothing, says our principle, or it implies certain definite things that we can feel and do at certain definite moments of our lives, things that we could not feel and should not do were no God present and were the business of the universe carried on by material atoms instead. So far as our conceptions of the Deity involve no such experiences, they are meaningless and verbal,--scholastic entities and abstractions, as the positivists say, and fit objects for their scorn. But so far as they do involve such definite experiences, God means something for us, and may be real". (pp.678-680).

The second illustration of the pragmatic principle--the supposed opposition between the One and the Many--may be treated more briefly. James suggests certain definite and practical sets of results in which to define 'oneness', and tries out the conception to see whether this result or that is what oneness means. He finds this method to clarify the difficulty here as well as in the previous case. In summarizing he says: "I have little doubt myself that this old quarrel might be completely smoothed out to the satisfaction of all claimants, if only the maxim of Peirce were methodically followed here. The current monism on the whole still keeps talking in too abstract a way. It says that the world must either be pure disconnectedness, no universe at all, or absolute unity. It insists that there is no stopping-place half-way. Any connection whatever, says this monism, is only possible if there be still more connection, until at last we are driven to admit the absolutely total connection required. But this absolutely total connection either means nothing, is the mere word 'one' spelt long, or else it means the sum of all the partial connections that can possibly be conceived. I believe that when we thus attack the question, and set ourselves to search for these possible connections, and conceive each in a definite and practical way, the dispute is already in a fair way to be settled beyond the chance of misunderstanding, by a compromise in which the Many and the One both get their lawful rights". (p. 685).

In concluding, James relates Peirce to the English Empiricists, asserting that it was they "who first introduced the custom of interpreting the meaning of conceptions by asking what differences they make for life.... The great English way of investigating a conception is to ask yourself right off, 'What is it known as? In what facts does it result? What is its _cash-value_ in terms of particular experience? And what special difference would come into the world according as it were true or false?' Thus does Locke treat the conception of personal identity. What you mean by it is just your chain of memories, says he.... So Berkeley with his 'matter'. The cash-value of matter is just our physical sensations.... Hume does the same thing with causation. It is known as habitual antecedence.... Stewart and Brown, James Mill, John Mill, and Bain, have followed more or less consistently the same method; and Shadworth Hodgson has used it almost as explicitly as Mr. Peirce.... The short-comings and negations and the baldnesses of the English philosophers in question come, not from their eye to merely practical results, but solely from their failure to track the practical results completely enough to see how far they extend". (pp. 685-6).

* * * * *

It will be at once observed that James, as well as Peirce, is at this point saying nothing about a new doctrine of truth, but is concerning himself only with a new doctrine of clearness. Meaning and clearness of meanings are his only topics in this paper. Thus he states, "The only _meaning_ of the conception of God lies in the differences which must be made in experience _if_ the conception be true. God's famous inventory of perfection ... either _means_ nothing, says our principle, or it implies certain definite things that we can feel and do at certain definite moments in our lives". And again in speaking of the pluralism-monism controversy, "Any connection whatever, says this monism, is only possible if there be still more connection, until at last we are driven to admit the absolutely total connection required. But this absolutely total connection either _means_ nothing, is the mere word 'one' spelt long, or else it means the sum of all the partial connections...."

But as we all know, James did afterward embrace the new pragmatic theory of truth. While he did not in 1898 use the word pragmatism to designate anything except a new method for securing clearness, yet it can be shown that he had been developing another line of thought, since a much earlier date, which did lead quite directly toward the pragmatic theory of truth. It may be well at this point then to go back and trace the growth of this idea of truth through such writing as he had done before this time. It will be found, I think, that James' whole philosophic tendency to move away from the transcendental and unitary toward the particular was influencing him towards this new conception.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE THROUGH THE EARLIER WRITINGS OF JAMES.

The first article which James wrote on truth, as he later states,[3] was entitled "The Function of Cognition", and was published in _Mind_ in 1885. Commenting on this article in 1909 he asserts that many of the essential theses of the book "Pragmatism", published twenty-two years later, were already to be found here, and that the difference is mainly one of emphasis.[4]

[3] "The Meaning of Truth", Preface, p. viii.

[4] Same, p. 137.

This article attempts to give a description of knowing as it actually occurs,--not how it originated nor how it is antecedently possible. The thesis is that an idea knows an external reality when it points to it, resembles it, and is able to affect it. The plan of exposition is to start with the simplest imaginable material and then gradually introduce additional matter as it is needed until we have cognition as it actually occurs. James postulates a single, momentarily-existing, floating feeling as the entire content, at the instant, of the universe. What, then, can this momentary feeling know? Calling it a 'feeling of _q_', it can be made any particular feeling (fragrance, pain, hardness) that the reader likes. We see, first, that the feeling cannot properly be said to know itself. There is no inner duality of the knower on the one hand and content or known on the other. "If the content of the feeling occurs nowhere else in the universe outside of the feeling itself, and perish with the feeling, common usage refuses to call it a reality, and brands it as a subjective feature of the feeling's constitution, or at most as the feeling's dream. For the feeling to be cognitive in the specific sense, then, it must be self-transcendent". And we must therefore "create a reality outside of it to correspond to the intrinsic quality _q_". This can stand as the first complication of that universe. Agreeing that the feeling cannot be said to know itself, under what conditions does it know the external reality? James replies, "If the newly-created reality _resemble_ the feeling's quality _q_, I say that the feeling may be held by us to be _cognizant of that reality_". It may be objected that a momentary feeling cannot properly know a thing because it has no _time_ to become aware of any of the _relations_ of the thing. But this rules out only one of the kinds of knowledge, namely "knowledge about" the thing; knowledge as direct acquaintance remains. We may then assert that "if there be in the universe a _q_ other than the _q_ in the feeling the latter may have acquaintance with an entity ejective to itself; an acquaintance moreover, which, as mere acquaintance it would be hard to imagine susceptible either of improvement or increase, being in its way complete; and which would oblige us (so long as we refuse not to call acquaintance knowledge) to say not only that the feeling is cognitive, but that all qualities _of feeling, so long as there is anything outside of them which they resemble_, are feelings of qualities of existence, and perceptions of outward fact". But this would be true, as unexceptional rule, only in our artificially simplified universe. If there were a number of different _q's_ for the feeling to resemble, while it meant only one of them, there would obviously be something more than resemblance in the case of the one which it did know. This fact, that resemblance is not enough in itself to constitute knowledge, can be seen also from remembering that many feelings which do resemble each other closely,--e. g., toothaches--do not on that account know each other. Really to know a thing, a feeling must not only resemble the thing, but must also be able to act on it. In brief, "the feeling of _q_ knows whatever reality it resembles, and either directly or indirectly operates on. If it resemble without operating, it is a dream; if it operates without resembling, it is an error". Such is the formula for perceptual knowledge. Concepts must be reduced to percepts, after which the same rule holds. We may say, to make the formula complete, "A percept knows whatever reality it directly or indirectly operates on and resembles; a conceptual feeling, or thought, knows a reality, whenever it actually or potentially terminates in a percept that operates on, or resembles that reality, or is otherwise connected with it or with its context".

"The latter percept [the one to which the concept has been reduced] may be either sensation or sensorial idea; and when I say the thought must _terminate_ in such a percept, I mean that it must ultimately be capable of leading up thereto,--by way of practical experience if the terminal feeling be a sensation; by way of logical or habitual suggestion, if it be only an image in the mind". "These percepts, these _termini_, these sensible things, these mere matters of acquaintance, are the only realities we ever directly know, and the whole history of our thought is the history of our substitution of one of them for the other, and the reduction of the substitute to the status of a conceptual sign. Condemned though they be by some thinkers, these sensations are the mother-earth, the anchorage, the stable rock, the first and last limits, the _terminus a quo_ and the _terminus ad quem_ of the mind. To find such sensational termini should be our aim with all our higher thought. They end discussion; they destroy the false conceit of knowledge; and without them we are all at sea with each other's meanings.... We can never be sure we understand each other till we are able to bring the matter to this test. This is why metaphysical discussions are so much like fighting with the air; they have no practical issue of a sensational kind. Scientific theories, on the other hand, always terminate in definite percepts. You can deduce a possible sensation from your theory and, taking me into your laboratory prove that your theory is true of my world by giving me the sensation then and there".

At this point James quotes, in substantiation, the following passage from Peirce's article of 1878: "There is no distinction in meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference in practice.... It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the highest grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

In this early paper of James' are to be found foreshadowings of pragmatism both as a method and as a theory of truth. Pragmatism as a method is shown in the whole discussion of the primacy of sensations and of the necessity for reducing conceptions to perceptions. This is exactly in line with the pragmatism proposed by Peirce in 1878 and here quoted from by James. Pragmatism as a theory of truth is anticipated by the proposal that the idea knows, and knows truly, the reality which it is able to make changes in. The idea _proves_ its reference to a given reality by making these specified changes. It is antecedently true only if it can bring about these changes. The next step is to say that its truth _consists_ in its ability to forecast and bring to pass these changes. Then we have pragmatism as a theory of truth. James did not take this step, as we shall see, until after 1904.

There is also a suggestion of the 'subjectivity' of James' later theory of truth, which would differentiate him even at this time from Peirce on the question of truth. He has said that a true idea must indeed resemble reality, but who, he asks, is to determine what is real? He answers that an idea is true when it resembles something which I, as critic, _think_ to be reality. "When [the enquirer] finds that the feeling that he is studying contemplates what he himself regards as a reality he must of course admit the feeling itself to be truly cognitive". Peirce would say that the idea is not true unless it points to a reality that would be found by _all_ investigators, quite irrespective of what the _one_ person acting as critic may think. James and Pierce would therefore, begin to diverge even at this early date on the truth question. As to what constitutes clearness, they are in agreement.

Something of the same idea is stated again four years later in an article which appeared in Mind[5] and which was republished the following year as a chapter of the Principles of Psychology.[6] One passage will show the general trend; "A conception to prevail, must _terminate_ in a world of orderly experience. A rare phenomenon, to displace frequent ones, must belong with others more frequent still. The history of science is strewn with wrecks and ruins of theory--essences and principles, fluids and forces--once fondly clung to, but found to hang together with no facts of sense. The exceptional phenomena solicit our belief in vain until such time as we chance to conceive of them as of kinds already admitted to exist. What science means by 'verification' is no more than this, that _no object of conception shall be believed which sooner or later has not some permanent object of sensation for its term_.... Sensible vividness or pungency is then the vital factor in reality when once the conflict between objects, and the connecting of them together in the mind, has begun." (Italics mine).

[5] "The Psychology of Belief", Mind 1889, v. 14, p. 31.

[6] Vol. II, chapter XXI.

And in another connection he expresses the idea as follows: "Conceptual systems which neither began nor left off in sensations would be like bridges without piers. Systems about fact must plunge themselves into sensations as bridges plunge themselves into the rock. Sensations are the stable rock, the _terminus a quo_ and the _terminus ad quem_ of thought. To find such termini is our aim with all our theories---to conceive first when and where a certain sensation may be had and then to have it. Finding it stops discussion. Failure to find it kills the false conceit of knowledge. Only when you deduce a possible sensation for me from your theory, and give it to me when and where the theory requires, do I begin to be sure that your thought has anything to do with truth." (11:7).

In 1902 James contributed to the "Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology" published by J. Mark Baldwin the following definition for Pragmatism.

"The doctrine that the whole 'meaning' of a conception expresses itself in practical consequences, consequences either in the shape of conduct to be recommended, or in that of experience to be expected, if the conception be true; which consequences would be different if it were untrue, and must be different from the consequences by which the meaning of other conceptions is in turn expressed. If a second conception should not appear to have either consequences, then it must really be only the first conception under a different name. In methodology it is certain that to trace and compare their respective consequences is an admirable way of establishing the different meanings of different conceptions".

It will be seem that James has not in 1902 differentiated between pragmatism as a method and as a theory of truth. Leaving out the one reference to truth, the definition is an excellent statement of the Peircian doctrine of clearness. This is especially to be noticed in the last two sentences, which are perfectly 'orthodox' statements of method alone.

In 1904 and 1905 James published two papers in Mind on the truth question. The first, "Humanism and Truth", may be called his 'border-line' article. In this he is attempting to give a sympathetic interpretation of the humanistic theory of truth--which he later said is exactly like his own--but is still making the interpretation as an outsider. In the second article he has definitely embraced the humanistic theory and is defending it.

The first article begins as follows:[7] "Receiving from the editor of Mind an advance proof of Mr. Bradley's article for July on 'Truth and Practice', I understand this as a hint to me to join in the controversy over 'Pragmatism' which seems to have seriously begun. As my name has been coupled with the movement, I deem it wise to take the hint, the more so as in some quarters greater credit has been given me than I deserve, and probably undeserved discredit in other quarters falls also to my lot.

[7] Mind, N. S. 13, p. 457.

"First, as to the word 'pragmatism'. I myself have only used the term to indicate a method of carrying on abstract discussion. The serious meaning of a concept, says Mr. Peirce, lies in the concrete difference to someone which its being true will make. Strive to bring all debated questions to that 'pragmatic' test, and you will escape vain wrangling: if it can make no practical difference which of two statements be true, then they are really one statement in two verbal forms; if it can make no practical difference whether a given statement be true or false, then the statement has no real meaning. In neither case is there anything fit to quarrel about; we may save our breath, and pass to more important things.

"All that the pragmatic method implies, then, is that truths should _have_ practical consequences. In England the word has been used more broadly, to cover the notion that the truth of any statement consists in the consequences, and particularly in their being good consequences. Here we get beyond affairs of method altogether; and since this pragmatism and the wider pragmatism are so different, and both are important enough to have different names, I think that Mr. Schiller's proposal to call the wider pragmatism by the name of 'Humanism' is excellent and ought to be adopted. The narrower pragmatism may still be spoken of as the 'pragmatic method'.

"If further egotism be in order. I may say that the account of truth given by Messrs. Sturt and Schiller and by Professor Dewey and his school ... goes beyond any theorizing which I personally had ever indulged in until I read their writings. After reading these, _I feel almost sure that these authors are right in their main contentions_, but the originality is wholly theirs, and I can hardly recognize in my own humble doctrine that concepts are teleological instruments anything considerable enough to warrant my being called, as I have been, the 'father' of so important a movement forward in philosophy".[8] (Italic mine).

[8] This paragraph appears as a footnote.

"I think that a decided effort at a sympathetic mental play with humanism is the provisional attitude to be recommended to the reader.

"_When I find myself playing sympathetically with humanism_, something like what follows is what I end by conceiving it to mean". (Italics mine).

Such is the conservative tone in which the article is begun. Yet before it is ended we find these passages: "It seems obvious that the pragmatic account of all this routine of phenomenal knowledge is accurate". (p.468). "The humanism, for instance, which I see and try so hard to defend, is the completest truth attained from my point of view up to date". (p.472).

In a supplementary article, "Humanism and Truth Once More", published a few months later in answer to questions prompted by this one, the acceptance of humanism is entirely definite. And here James finds that he has been advocating the doctrine for several years. He says, "I myself put forth on several occasions a radically pragmatist account of knowledge". (Mind, v. 14, p. 196). And again he remarks, "When following Schiller and Dewey, I define the true as that which gives the maximal combination of satisfaction ...". (p.196).

THE THEORY OF TRUTH IN 'PRAGMATISM' AND 'THE MEANING OF TRUTH'.

In 1907 when he published his book "Pragmatism", James, as we all know, was willing to accept the new theory of truth unreservedly. The hesitating on the margin, the mere interpreting of other's views, are things of the past. From 1907 James' position toward pragmatism as a truth-theory is unequivocal.

Throughout the book, as I should like to point out, James is using 'pragmatism' in two senses, and 'truth' in two senses. The two meanings of pragmatism he recognizes himself, and points out clearly the difference between pragmatism as a method for attaining clearness in our ideas and pragmatism as a theory of the truth or falsity of those ideas. But the two meanings of 'truth' he does not distinguish. And it is here that he differs from Dewey, as we shall presently see. He differed from Peirce on the question of the meaning of pragmatism--as to whether it could be developed to include a doctrine of truth as well as of clearness. He differs from Dewey on the question of 'truth'--as to whether truth shall be used in both of the two specified senses or only in one of them.

_The Ambiguity of 'Satisfaction'_--The double meaning of truth in James' writing at this date may be indicated in this way: While truth is to be defined in terms of satisfaction, what is satisfaction? Does it mean that I am to be satisfied _of_ a certain quality in the idea, or that I am to be satisfied _by_ it? In other words, is the criterion of truth the fact that the idea leads as it promised or is it the fact that its leading, whether just as it promised or not, is desirable? Which, in short, are we to take as truth,--fulfilled expectations or value of results?

It is in failing to distinguish between these two that James involves himself, I believe, in most of his difficulties, and it is in the recognition and explicit indication of this difference that Dewey differentiates himself from James. We may pass on to cite specific instances in which James uses each of these criteria. We will find, of course, that there are passages which can be interpreted as meaning either value or fulfillment, but there are many in which the use of value as a criterion seems unmistakable.

The following quotations may be instanced: "If theological views prove to have value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. For how much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relation to the other truths that have also to be acknowledged". For example, in so far as the Absolute affords comfort, it is not sterile; "it has that amount of value; it performs a concrete function. I myself ought to call the Absolute true 'in so far forth', then; and I unhesitatingly now do so". (p.72).

"On pragmatic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. Now whatever its residual difficulties may be, experience shows that it certainly does work, and that the problem is to build out and determine it so that it will combine satisfactorily with all the other working truths". (p. 299).

"The true is the name for whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons". (p. 76).

"Empirical psychologists ... have denied the soul, save as the name for verifiable cohesions in our inner life. They redescend into the stream of experience with it, and cash it into so much small-change value in the way of 'ideas' and their connections with each other. The soul is good or '_true_' for just so much, but no more". (p. 92, italics mine).

"Since almost any object may some day become temporarily important, the advantage of having a stock of extra truths, of ideas that shall be true of merely possible situations, is obvious.... Whenever such extra truths become practically relevant to one of our emergencies, it passes from cold storage to do work in the world and our belief in it grows active. You can say of it then either that _'it is useful because it is true' or that it is 'true because it is useful'_. _Both these phrases mean exactly the same thing_.... From this simple cue pragmatism gets her general notion of truth as something essentially bound up with the way in which one moment in our experience may lead us towards other moments _which it will be worth while to have been led to_. Primarily, and on the common-sense level, the truth of a state of mind means this function of _a leading that is worth while_". (pp. 204-205, italics mine).

"To 'agree' in the widest sense with reality can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed. _Better either intellectually or practically!..._ An idea that helps us to deal, whether _practically or intellectually_, with either reality or its belongings, that doesn't entangle our progress in frustrations, that fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality's whole setting, will----hold true of that reality". (pp. 212-213).

"'The true', to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. _Expedient in almost any fashion_; and expedient in the long run and on the whole of course". (p. 222).

We may add a passage with the same bearing, from "The Meaning of Truth". In this quotation James is retracting the statement made in the University of California Address that without the future there is no difference between theism and materialism. He says: "Even if matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the chief call for a God on modern men's part is for a being who will inwardly recognize them and judge them sympathetically. Matter disappoints this craving of our ego, and so God remains for most men the truer hypothesis, and indeed remain so for definite pragmatic reasons". (p. 189, notes).

The contrast between 'intellectual' and 'practical' seems to make his position certain. If truth is tested by practical workings, _as contrasted with_ intellectual workings, it cannot be said to be limited to fulfilled expectation.

The statement that the soul is good _or_ true shows the same thing. The relation of truth to extraneous values is here beyond question. The other passages all bear, more or less obviously, in the same direction.

As James keeps restating his position, there are many of the definitions that could be interpreted to mean either values or fulfillments, and even a few which seem to refer to fulfillment alone. The two following examples can be taken to mean either:

"'Truth' in our ideas and beliefs means ... that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience, to summarize them and get about among them by conceptual short-cuts instead of following the interminable succession of particular phenomena. Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor, is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally". (p.58).

"A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock. It must both lean on old truth and grasp new fact; and its success ... in doing this, is a matter for individual appreciation. When old truth grows, then, by new truth's addition, it is for subjective reasons. We are in the process and obey the reasons. The new idea is truest which performs most felicitously its function of satisfying this double urgency. It makes itself true, gets itself classed as true, by the way it works." (p.64).

But we can turn from these to a paragraph in which truth seems to be limited to fulfilled expectations alone.

"True ideas are those which we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those which we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as....

"But what do validation and verification themselves pragmatically mean? They again signify certain practical consequences of the verified and validated idea.... They head us ... through the acts and other ideas which they instigate, into or up to, or towards, other parts of experience with which we feel all the while ... that the original ideas remain in agreement. The connections and transitions come to us from point to point as being progressive, harmonious, satisfactory. This function of agreeable leading is what we mean by an idea's verification". (pp.201-202).

_The Relation of Truth to Utility_--It seems certain from the foregoing that James means, at least at certain times, to define the true in terms of the valuable. Satisfaction he is using as satisfaction _by_ rather than satisfaction _of_. As we have pointed out, one may be satisfied of the correctness of one's idea without being at all satisfied by it. This distinction has been most clearly set forth by Boodin, in his discussion of 'What pragmatism is not', in the following words: "The truth satisfaction may run counter to any moral or esthetic satisfaction in the particular case. It may consist in the discovery that the friend we had backed had involved us in financial failure, that the picture we had bought from the catalogue description is anything but beautiful. But we are no longer uncertain as regards the truth. Our restlessness, so far as that particular curiosity is concerned, has come to an end".[9]

[9] Boodin: Truth and Reality, pp. 193-4.

It is clear then, that the discovery of truth is not to be identified with a predominantly satisfactory state of mind at the moment. Our state of mind at the moment may have only a grain of satisfaction, yet this is of so unique a kind and so entirely distinguishable from the other contents of the mind that it is perfectly practicable as a criterion. It is simply "the cessation of the irritation of a doubt", as Peirce puts it, or the feeling that my idea has led as it promised. The feeling of fulfilled expectation is thus a very distinct and recognizable _part_ of the whole general feeling commonly described as 'satisfaction'. When 'utility' in our ideas, therefore, means a momentary feeling of dominant satisfaction, truth cannot be identified with it.

And neither, as I wish now to point out, can truth be identified with utility when utility means a long-run satisfactoriness, or satisfactoriness of the idea for a considerable number of people through a considerable period of time. The same objection arises here which we noted a moment ago--that the satisfaction may be quite indifferent to the special satisfaction arising from tests. As has been often shown, many ideas are satisfactory for a long period of time simply because they are _not_ subjected to tests. "A hope is not a hope, a fear is not a fear, once either is recognized as unfounded.... A delusion is delusion only so long as it is not known to be one. A mistake can be built upon only so long as it is not suspected".

Some actual delusions which were not readily subjected to tests have been long useful in this way. "For instance, basing ourselves on Lafcadio Hearn, we might quite admit that the opinions summed up under the title 'Ancestor-Worship' had been ... 'exactly what was required' by the former inhabitants of Japan". "It was good for primitive man to believe that dead ancestors required to be fed and honored ... because it induced savages to bring up their offspring instead of letting it perish. But although it was useful to hold that opinion, the opinion was false". "Mankind has always wanted, perhaps always required, and certainly made itself, a stock of delusions and sophisms".[10]

[10] Lee: Vital Lies, vol. 1, pp. 11, 31, 33, 72.

Perhaps we would all agree that the belief that 'God is on our side' has been useful to the tribe holding it. If has increased zeal and fighting efficiency tremendously. But since God can't be on both sides, the belief of one party to the conflict is untrue, no matter how useful. To believe that (beneficial) tribal customs are enforced by the tribal gods is useful, but if the tribal gods are non-existent the belief is false. The beautiful imaginings of poets are sometimes useful in minimizing and disguising the hard and ugly reality, but when they will not test out they cannot be said because of their beauty or desirability to be true.

We must conclude then, that some delusions are useful. And we may go on and question James' identification of truth and utility from another point of view. Instead of agreeing that true ideas and useful ideas are the same, we have shown that some useful ideas are false: but the converse is also demonstrable, that some true ideas are useless.

There are formulas in pure science which are of no use to anyone outside the science because their practical bearings, if such there be, have not yet been discovered, and are of no use to the scientist himself because, themselves the products of deduction, they as yet suggest nothing that can be developed farther from them. While these formulas may later be found useful in either of these senses--for 'practical demands' outside the science, or as a means to something else within the science--they are now already true quite apart from utility, because they will test out by fulfilling expectations.

Knowledge that is not useful is most striking in relation to 'vice'. One may have a true idea as to how to lie and cheat, may know what cheating is and how it is done, and yet involve both himself and others in most _un_satisfactory consequences. The person who is attempting to stop the use of liquor, and who to this end has located in a 'dry' district, may receive correct information as to the location of a 'blind-tiger'--information which while true may bring about his downfall. Knowledge about any form of vice, true knowledge that can be tested out, may upon occasion be harmful to any extent we like.

We may conclude this section by citing a paragraph which will show the fallacious reasoning by which James came to identify the truth and the utility of ideas. At one point in replying to a criticism he says: "I can conceive no other objective _content_ to the notion of an ideally perfect truth than that of penetration into [a completely satisfactory] terminus, nor can I conceive that the notion would ever have grown up, or that true ideas would ever have been sorted out from false or idle ones, save for the greater sum of satisfactions, intellectual or practical, which the truer ones brought with them. Can we imagine a man absolutely satisfied with an idea and with all his relations to his other ideas and to his sensible experiences, who should yet _not_ take its content as a true account of reality? The _matter_ of the true is thus absolutely identical with the matter of the satisfactory. You may put either word first in your way of talking; but leave out that whole notion of satisfactory working or leading (which is the essence of my pragmatic account) and call truth a static, logical relation, independent even of possible leadings or satisfactions, and it seems to me that you cut all ground from under you". (Meaning of Truth, p. 160).[11]

[11] It is interesting to see that Peirce had the following comment to make in 1878 upon the utility of truth. "Logicality in regard to practical matters is the most useful quality an animal can possess, and might, therefore, result from the action of natural selection; but outside of these it is probably of more advantage to the animal to have his mind filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently of their truth; and thus upon impractical subjects, natural selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought". (From the first article in the series "Illustrations of the Logic of Science", Popular Science Monthly, vol. 12, p. 3).

Now it is to be observed that this paragraph contains at least three logical fallacies. In the first sentence there is a false assumption, namely that 'all that survives is valuable'. 'Then', we are given to understand, 'since true ideas survive, they must be valuable'. No biologist would agree to this major premise. 'Correlation' preserves many things that are not valuable, as also do other factors.

In the second sentence there is an implied false conversion. The second sentence says, in substance, that all true ideas are satisfactory (valuable). This is supposed to prove the assertion of the first sentence, namely, that all satisfactory (valuable) ideas are true.

In the last sentence there is a false disjunction. Truth, it is stated, must either be satisfactory (valuable) working, or a static logical relation. We have tried to show that it may simply mean reliable working or working that leads as it promised. This may be neither predominantly valuable working nor a static logical relation.

_The Relation of Satisfaction to Agreement and Consistency._--James continually reasserts that he has 'remained an epistemological realist', that he has 'always postulated an independent reality', that ideas to be true must 'agree with reality', etc.[12]

[12] For example, in the Meaning of Truth, pages 195 and 233.

Reality he defines most clearly as follows:

"'Reality' is in general what truths have to take account of....

"The first part of reality from this point of view is the flux of our sensations. Sensations are forced upon us.... Over their nature, order and quantity we have as good as no control....

"The second part of reality, as something that our beliefs must also take account of, is the _relations_ that obtain between their copies in our minds. This part falls into two sub-parts: (1) the relations that are mutable and accidental, as those of date and place; and (2) those that are fixed and essential because they are grounded on the inner nature of their terms. Both sorts of relation are matters of immediate perception. Both are 'facts'....

"The third part of reality, additional to these perceptions (tho largely based upon them), is the _previous truths_ of which every new inquiry takes account". (Pragmatism, p. 244).

An idea's agreement with reality, or better with all those parts of reality, means a satisfactory relation of the idea to them. Relation to the sensational part of reality is found satisfactory when the idea leads to it without jar or discord. "... What do the words verification and validation themselves pragmatically mean? They again signify certain practical consequences of the verified and validated idea. It is hard to find any one phrase that characterizes these consequences better than the ordinary agreement-formula--just such consequences being what we have in mind when we say that our ideas 'agree' with reality. They lead us, namely, through the acts and other ideas which they instigate, into and up to, or towards, other parts of experience with which we feel all the while ... that the original ideas remain in agreement. The connections and transitions come to us from point to point as being progressive, harmonious, satisfactory. This function of agreeable leading is what we mean by an idea's verification". (Pragmatism, pp. 201-2).

An idea's relation to the other parts of reality is conceived more broadly. Thus pragmatism's "only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of life's demands, nothing being omitted. If theological ideas should do this, if the notion of God, in particular, should prove to do it, how could pragmatism possibly deny God's existence? She could see no meaning in treating as 'not true' a notion that was pragmatically so successful. What other kind of truth could there be, for her, than all this _agreement with concrete reality_"? (Pragmatism, p. 80, italics mine). Agreement with reality here means ability to satisfy the sum of life's demands.

James considers that this leaves little room for license in the choice of our beliefs. "Between the coercions of the sensible order and those of the ideal order, our mind is thus wedged tightly". "Our (any) theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences. It must derange common sense and previous belief as little as possible, and it must lead to some sensible terminus or other that can be verified exactly. To 'work' means both these things; and the squeeze is so tight that there is little loose play for any hypothesis. Our theories are thus wedged and controlled as nothing else is". "Pent in, as the pragmatist more than anyone else sees himself to be, between the whole body of funded truths squeezed from the past and the coercions of the world of sense about him, who so well as he feels the immense pressure of objective control under which our minds perform their operations". (Pragmatism, pp. 211, 217, 233).

Now on the contrary it immediately occurs to a reader that if reality be simply "what truths have to take account of", and if taking-account-of merely means agreeing in such a way as to satisfy "the collectivity of life's demands", then the proportion in which these parts of reality will count will vary enormously. One person may find the 'previous-truths' part of reality to make such a strong 'demand' that he will disregard 'principles' or reasoning almost entirely.

Another may disregard the 'sensational' part of reality, and give no consideration whatever to 'scientific' results. These things, in fact, are exactly the things that do take place. The opinionated person, the crank, the fanatic, as well as the merely prejudiced, all refuse to open their minds and give any particular consideration to such kinds of evidence. There is therefore a great deal of room for license, and a great deal of license practiced, when the agreement of our ideas with reality means nothing more than their satisfactoriness to our lives' demands.

How James fell into this error is shown, I believe, by his overestimation of the common man's regard for truth, and especially for consistency. Thus he remarks: "As we humans are constituted in point of fact, we find that to believe in other men's minds, in independent physical realities, in past events, in eternal logical relations, is satisfactory.... Above all we find _consistency_ satisfactory, consistency between the present idea and the entire rest of our mental equipment...." "After man's interest in breathing freely, the greatest of all his interests (because it never fluctuates or remits, as most of his physical interests do), is his interest in _consistency_, in feeling that what he now thinks goes with what he thinks on other occasions". (Meaning of Truth, pp. 192, 211).

The general method of James on this point, then, is to define truth in terms of satisfaction and then to try to show that these satisfactions cannot be secured illegitimately. That is, that we _must_ defer to experimental findings, to consistency, and to other _checks_ on opinion. Consistency must be satisfactory because people are so constituted as to find it so. Agreement with reality, where reality means epistemological reality, is satisfactory for the same reason. And agreement with reality, where reality includes in addition principles and previous truths, must be satisfactory because agreement in this case merely means such taking-account-of as will satisfy the greater proportion of the demands of life. In other words, by defining agreement in this case in terms of satisfactions, he makes it certain that agreement and satisfaction will coincide by the device of arguing in a circle. It turns out that, from over-anxiety to assure the coincidence of agreement and satisfaction, he entirely loses the possibility of using reality and agreement with reality in the usual sense of checks on satisfactions.