Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/399

 PRAGMATISM AND PSEUDO-PRAGMATISM. 385 suppose the figure to be 9 or something else. I.e. the truth to, say, the 99th decimal, is ' true enough ' for our purposes, and the 100th is a matter of indifference. But let that indifference cease, and the question become important, and the ' truth ' will at once become ' useful '. Prof. Taylor's illustration therefore conclu- sively proves that in an actual context and as an actual question there is no true answer to be got until the truth has become useful. This point is illustrated also by the context Prof. Taylor has him- self suggested. For he has made the question about the 100th decimal important by making the refutation of the whole prag- matist theory of knowledge depend on it. And what nobler use could the 100th decimal have in his eyes? If in consequence of this interest he will set himself to work it out, he will discover this once useless, but now most useful, truth, and triumph- antly refute his own contention ! I pause before passing to the other illustrations, in order to correct a serious mistake as to the nature of the pragmatic test into which Prof. Taylor has fallen. He repeatedly (pp. 82, 83) assumes lat when two practically equivalent assertions are found, I must say that both are 'meaningless'. But this is not at all what I am bound to do. It was the earliest and simplest formulation of the pragmatic test to declare that when there is no practical difference between two assertions, they mean the same. They may both be true, or both be false, but neither of them need be meaningless, and clearly if the one is not, the other cannot be (except of course in so far as claimed to be an addition to the knowledge conveyed by the sther, in which case it may be called meaningless qtM such an Idition). All that is meaningless is the difference between them, ind so the question about them. For this obviously disappears if le alternatives have coincided and the question is reduced to one stween two verbally various forms of the same meaning. It is lis, the original ' principle of Peirce,' which I have always up- leld and which any one familiar with the principle must have sen to be implied in what I said. Prof. Taylor, however, has )nfused the meaninglessness of the difference between two as- srtions with the meaninglessness of the assertions themselves, d so it is no wonder he finds the whole pragmatic theory hard take in. I am a little ashamed to labour so simple a point at such length, but I fear this error may be more widespread than I had suspected. Before going on I must also come to an understanding with J rof. Taylor as to the meaning of the term ' practice '. It is my duty to warn him that he is not entitled to take for granted my assent to his conception thereof. When Mr. Bradley proposed to define it as the alteration of existence, I at once protested l and gave some reasons for objecting. Prof. Taylor's present defini- tion, 2 though very similar, is yet less explicit than Mr. Bradley 's 1 N .S., 52, p. 534. 2 Like that in Ele. of Met., p. 121.