Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/185

 THE AMBIGUITY OP TRUTH. 171 fines the relevant answer which can be treated as true. It is not necessary therefore seriously to contemplate absurdities such as e.g. the intrusion of ethical or aesthetical motives into the estimation of mathematical truths, or to refute claims that the isosceles triangle is more virtuous than the scalene, or an integer nobler than a vulgar fraction, or that gravitating bodies must move not in ellipses but in circles, because the circle is the most perfect figure. Pragmatism is far less likely to countenance such confusions than the intellectualist theories from which I drew my last illustration. In some cases doubtless, as in many problems of history and religion, there will be found deep-seated and enduring differences of opinion as to what consequences and what tests may be adduced as relevant : but these differences already exist, and are in no wise created by being recognised and explained. Pragmatism, however, by enlarging our notions of what con- stitutes relevant evidence is far more likely to conduce to their amicable settlement than the intellectualisms which condemn all faith as inherently irrational and irrelevant to knowledge And ideally and in principle such disagreements as to the ends which are relevant to the estimation of any evidence are always capable of being composed by an appeal to the supreme purpose which unifies and harmonises all our ends : in practice no doubt we are hardly aware of this, nor agreed as to what it is ; but the blame, surely, attaches to the distracted state of our thoughts and not to the pragmatic analysis of truth. For it would surely be preposterous to expect a mere theory of knowledge to adjudicate upon and settle offhand by sheer dint of logic all the disputed questions in all the sciences. My second caution refers to the fact that I have made the predication of truth dependent on relevance to a proximate rather than an ultimate scientific purpose. This I have done because I believe it represents our actual procedure. The ordinary 'truths ' we predicate have little or no concern with ultimate ends and realities. They are true (at least pro tern.) if they serve their immediate purpose. If any one hereafter chooses to question them, he is at liberty to do so, and if he can make out his case, to reject them for their inadequacy for his ulterior purposes. But even when the venue and the context of the .question have thus been changed, and so its meaning, the truth of the original answer is not thereby abolished. It may have been degraded and reduced to a methodological status, but this is merely to affirm that what is true and serviceable for one purpose is not necessarily so for another. And in any case it is time perhaps to cease