Prof.

James on 'Humanism and Truth'

Author(s): H. W. B. Joseph
Source: Mind , Jan., 1905, New Series, Vol. 14, No. 53 (Jan., 1905), pp. 28-41
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2248071

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III.-PROF. JAMES ON 'HUMANISM AND
TRUTH'.

BY H. W. B. JOSEPH.

'PROF. JAMES is not the godfather of Pragmatism, and he

acknowledges that in its grown form it is not of his rearing.
But he was fosteer-father once; and most readers probably
knew of the theory first through him. If they failed to
understand clearly the philosophical position indicated, the
fault may not have been altogether theirs; for the indica-
-tions were slight and fragmentary. But they mugt have
been the more pleased when they saw that he had devoted
an article to explaining what, in his view, Pragmatism
means. The theory has indeed lately changed its name;
but Humanism is a word of ancient and distinguished
history; and one may be pardoned if one does not willingly
take part with those who would unnecessarily wrest it to
-a new and unconnected meaning.
This paper aims at nothing more than to examine the
article of Prof. James. If I tried to state what the doctrine
'of Pragmatism seems to me to be, and were to exalmine
-that, I might be told I had misunderstood it. I am content
to consider what it seems to Prof. James to be; and play
(if I may use his own expression) with the conception he
has put forward.
He begins by referring us to the opinion of Mr. Peirce. "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" (p. 457). Pragmatism meant, as Prof. James
originally used the term, a method of carrying on abstract
discussion which applies the above principle to the deter-
mination of controversies; for where the practical conse-
quences of the truth of two propositions are the same, or nil,
there is nothing to quarrel about.
But this 'pragmatic method' of dealing with controversies
is distinguished from the more thorough-going pragmatism

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PROF. JAMES ON 'HUMANISM AND TRUTH . 29

which has been developed in England. The former holds

that " truths should have practical consequences "; the latter,
that " the truth of any statement consists in the consequences,,
and particularly in their being good consequences " (ib.).
I am not clear about this distinction. What is meant by
saying that "truths should have practical consequences" ?
It cannot be meant that they ought to have them, but
sometimnes don't; nor can it be meant simply to say that
they do have them. It must be implied that they are no.
truths unless they have them. Now if the truth of a state-
ment consist in its practical consequences, it is at least clear
that a statement that has no practical consequences cannot
be true; though the position is on other grounds difficult to
maintain. But if the truth of it be one thing, and the having-
practical consequences another, the first cannot depend for
its possibility on the second.
In order to see this, we must distinguish between a.
statement, and the truth of a statement. It is clearly absurd
to say that the truth of a statement consists in the conse-
quences of its truth; for in the very act of identifying its
truth with its consequences, you are opposing them to one
another. And it is not less absurd to say that the truth of
a statement, though not identical with its consequences,,
depends for being on them. It may be that there is no fact
which could be otherwise than it is without involving conse--
quences that would affect somebody in a way to make us
call them practical; but to say this is not to supply any
criterion, by which to judge whether a given statement is
capable of truth or falsity. It could justify us in saying that
the truth or falsity of any statement must make a practical
difference somewhere; but not in saying that the statement
was unmeaning because we had not found that difference,.
or that two statements meant the same thing because we
could find no practical difference in their consequences.
That truths do have practical consequences may be be--
lieved; but if so, we shall believe in the consequences,
because we believe in the truth, but settle the question of
truth or falsehood independently. That they should have
practical consequences, if it means anything else than that,
they do have them, must mean that a statement is true
because it (and not its truth) has practical consequences;
and that is to make the truth of a statement consist in its.
practical consequences.
Now though this position is not self-contradictory (as it is
to say that the truth of a statement consists in the practical
consequences of its truth) it is very difficult to understand it.

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30 H. W. B. JOSEPH:

What are the consequences of a statement, as distinguished

from t,hose of its truth ? I can only think of two senses in
which the expression might be used. They may be the
consequences of the belief of the statement. But to believe
a statement is to believe that it is true; so that its truth
again becomes soinething which we are bound to conceive as
different from its consequences, even in professing to identify
it with them. Secondly, they may be the reaction to which
the statement psychologically prompts a man. When I say
' rats' to a dog, it begins sniffing and prying; yet the dog
can hardly be credited with believing it true that there are
rats in the room. It is possible-I do not say that it is
profitable-to attempt to apply to the human mind a psycho-
logical treatmient which ignores the distinctive character of
logical operations; to treat the belief- in a judgment as the
force of an ' idea,' and to regard the idea as a mere psychic
fact or presentation. From this point of view, a statement
might be called true, when the reaction to its 'apprehension'
was beneficial. It may be noted that the truth of a statement
would consist not " particularly " but exclusively in its con-
sequences being good: for consequences, without reference to
their being beneficial or the reverse, would not distinguish
its truth from its falsehood, since contradictory statements
might both prompt to some reaction.
Of course, a ' statement ' so regarded is not really, for the
person reacting to it, a judgment at a11. And it is impossible
to apply this conception of truth to the judgment which
enunciates it. Just as scepticism exempts from its suspicion
the reasoning by which it is supported, so when I say that
the truth of a statement consists in the goodness of its
consequences, I exempt this statement itself from the scope
of my definition. Otherwise, the truth of this statement
itself would consist in the goodness of its consequences; and
thus we have a further and prior statement about it, which
must be true; and unless we somewhere admit a statement
whose truth is something different from the goodness of its
consequences, we are involved in an infinite regress, and can
never get a real judgment at all.
Now Prof. James is " almost sure " that the authors of the
"wider pragmatism " are right in their main contention-
viz. (for the words are his, and not miine), " the notion that
the truth of any statement consists in the consequences, and
particularly in their being good consequences ". He cannot
mean that the truth of a statement consists in the conse-
quences of its truth, or in the consequences of believing it
true. Will he admit that he- means that it consists in the

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PROF. JAMES ON 'HUMANISM AND TRUTH . 31

beneficial nature of the reaction to an idea considered as

mere presentation, and not as being true or false? I own
that I have sometimes suspected pragmatist writers of hold-
ing such a view; they show a tendency to reduce logic to
psychology, and to apply the theories of evolution which
thought has elaborated to the explanation of thought itself.
Yet I cannot believe that Prof. James will admit such a
definition of truth when nakedly presented; and if not, what
does he understand by the main contention of the wider
pragmatism ?
Prof. James holds that pragmatism " owes its being to the
breakdown which the last fifty years have brought about in
the older notions of scientific truth ".' He seems to think
that in altering our judgment of the truth of what the
sciences teach we have altered our notion of what truth
means. But that need not be so. H e suggests that the
new definition of truth is based on an induction ; but such
an induction would beg the question. Are we to suppose
that, having discovered the truth of this or that statement to
consist in the goodness of its consequences, we may then
conclude the same of the truth of any statement ? The
inference presupposes logical truths whose nature is not to
be submitted to the induction. But how are we to ascertain
the particulars upon which the generalisation rests ? Can
experience show us that the truth of a particular statement
consists in the goodness of its consequences ? it can at most
show us that the consequences are good. In experience we
may rise to the use of a new conception; but experience can
never show us what we mean by it.
Prof. James indeed speaks as if every conception was an
hypothesis. He makes no distinction between such a con-
ception as the ether, and categories without which thought
would be altogether impossible. " The main forms of our
thinking . . . are purely human habits." Is this true, or
has he only a habit of thinking so ? The position is familiar
to readers of the last chapter of his Principles of Psychology;
but in an article headed 'Humanism and Truth' we should
expect the standpoint of Logic.
It is very difficult to make out how the forms of thought
which have become habitual have been fixed. Two incon-
sistent conceptions appear to pervade the description given of
the process. We sometimes hear of a " congruence between
the world and the mind " (p. 459), of a " material " which
experience gives us to digest (p. 460), and which, because
conceptions are a Denkmittel enabling us " the better to foresee
the course of our experiences," 'must be presumed to have

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32 H. W. B. JOSEPH:

an order and existence of its own, which we have to guess at.

According to this view, it should be the business of thought'
to correspond with fact; but Prof. James explicitly rejects
the notion of truth as copying or corresponding, and puts
forward in places the notion of a purely indeterminate ex-
perience, in which our 'hypotheses' had been developed.
This seems to imply a fusion of two psychological concep-
tions, both of them unfit to be taken as true in attacking
the problem of knowledge. The one treats the " fundamental
categories" of the mind as spontaneous variations, in the
way of thinking, which have been perpetuated in the race
because their use gave some advantage to their users, just as
strength or speed might have done. This notion is perhaps
helped out by the misplaced analogy of trying hypotheses, a&
it goes on every day among us all. But surely, if the " fun-
damental categories" are to be explained thus, we have no
right to accept as true that conception of a world in which
there are individuals who have to master their environment
in order to live, which the explanation presupposes. It is
itself a product of the use of these categories; and yet it is
taken as true anteriorly to them. The " category of trans-
perceptual reality is now one of the foundations of our life";
but apparently it might have been otherwise; and then what
would have become of this account of the origin of our fun-
damental categories ?
Prof. James will probably answer that the system with
which our thoughts has to get into advantageous relations
is no system of trans-perceptual reality but, as he calls it on
page 470, " the ensemble of perceptions thought of as actual
or possible ". But the words " thought of " must be deleted,
if we are speaking of a mere given material, to whose ways
thought has yet to accommodate itself, or on which it has to
react favourably; and then it becomes important to know
whether a 'possible perception' is not, if anything, trans-
perceptual. And it must be allowed, that if we try to
regard our experience as a process in which perception and
conception modify one another, going on all the time within
the mind, if the hypothesis of a 'trans-perceptual' order in
which we are placed is to be rejected, we must reject at the
same time the conceptions of biological evolution. For dif-
ferent purposes it may be right and proper to suppose that
we are in the world we know, and to suppose that the world
we know is an ensemble of perceptions and conceptions in us;
but in the investigation of an ultimate problem like the
nature of truth it cannot be proper to combine those two
standpoints.

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PROF. JAMES ON 'HUMANISM AND TRUTH'. 33

The other psychological conception which seems implied

in some of Prof. James's remarks is that which does attempt
to dispense with the notion of a " trans-perceptual reality,"
accessible to us in perception, to which our interests require
that we should adjust our behaviour, and in congruence with
which lies the success, and therefore the truth, of the ways
of thinking which we strike out. Instead of this, he con-
ceives experience as the gradual elaboration of the chaotic.
First comes " a most chaotic pure experience which sets us
questions" (p. 461). I doubt if this chaotic state of con-
sciousness ought to be called experience. But my more
pressing difficulty is this. This most chaotic pure experience
is supposed to be ours before we possess " the fundamental
categories, long ago wrought into the structure of our con-
sciousness and practically irreversible, which define the
general frame within which answers mnust fall"; for their
emergence is the second stage. Their secondary place is of
the essence of the Professor's contention, since his whole
point is, that the genius of the human race might have lit
upon others, and that ours have no other claim to truth
than the success which has attended their application to our
chaotic pure experience. Now I do not understand how the
latter can even put questions to a mind that is devoid of any
'fundamental categories'. Where there are no conditions
of intelligibility, nothing presents a problem; every hypo-
thesis which we make in order to render an experience more
intelligible to us must fall within 'the general conditions of
the thinkable; a mind which had no fundamental categories,
and whose 'experience' was purely chaotic, would not be a
mind at all. The stage at which fundamental categories,
subsequently to become irreversible, first appeared would be
the emergence of mind: and the suggestion that other
categories might have emerged is a suggestion that something
else than a mind might have emerged. For the nature of
mind is expressed in the fundamental modes of its thinking;
they define it, and for them to disappear is for mind to dis-
appear. Unless indeed we are to be told there can be species
of mind, as of brambles and starfish; but the very expression
assumes that the conception of species and genus, which our
species of mind employs, has a validity beyond the use which
minds of our species make of it, and is applicable to minds
universally. It seems as if Prof. James had been betrayed
into the attempt to write a natural history of the mind by
way of establishing the principles of thinking: yet he surely
does not believe that you can swallow your head.
We are told (p. 468) that " those thoughts are true which
3

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34 HH. W. B. JOSEPH:

guide us to beneficial interaction with particulars as they

occur ". The conception of interaction here is obscure. My
body may interact beneficially with a bath or a bun. But
what is going to interact with a chaos of perceptions ? Prof.
James does not however believe that his chaos is a chaos;
for its nature determines what conceptions we can beneficially
entertain. There is " something in every experience which
escapes our arbitrary control " (p. 463): "some questions, if
we ever ask them, can only be answered in one way" (p.
464): "the circumpressure of experience itself . . gets us
sick of concrete errors" (p. 465). The first chaotic experi-
ence must after all therefore have a fixed and deterimiinate
.character. I still do not understand what is meant by
,saying that our thoughts interact with it; it seems to me
an unfortunate metaphor from physical science. But any-
-thing is better than interaction with a chaos. Only how is
-the circumpressure of experience, its determinate character
-which we cannot alter at will, to be reconciled with its
,chaotic nature? It will not do to say that it has becomne
determinate through the " addition of our thought to it ";
for it will not " suffer" every " addition " (p. 463), and so must
have had some determinate character froin the outset. Are
we to distinguish between the facts, and our first impression
of them? is the chaos a mere appearance which, when
supplemented by the help of imagination, is found to admit
of being interpreted as the appearance of an orderly world ?
Such a view accords with the noti'on of a " congruence
between the world and the mind"; but elsewhere, as has
been said, it is denied that truth resides in correspondence;
and Prof. James does seem to think that the original chaos
of experience is the original reality, which is altered by the
' reaction' of our thought, as any other reality is altered by
what reacts with it. And yet it is suggested that experience
is an " other" or a " that " which may have a " definite inner
structure " not " resembling any of our predicated whats ".
It is a question, we are told (p. 462), which 'Humanism'
leaves untouched, and therefore does not decide in< the
negative; though to entertain the possibility of an affirma-
tive answer seems to throw Prof. James's theory back into
a chaos like that of primitive experience.
I have assumed in the last paragraph that congruence
between the world and the mind means what others have
called correspondence; what Mr. Bradley, for example, calls
correspondence when he says, in a passage quoted by Prof.
James, that the thought " must correspond to a determinate
being that it cannot be said to make". The conception of

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PROF. JAMES ON 'HUMANISM AND TRUTH'. 35

truth as correspondence may be open to criticism; though it

is hard to see how the " looseness " which the Professor finds
in Mr. Bradley's phrase is improved upon by saying that we
correspond with anything with which we enter into relations,
and that a thought is true when a thing " suffers the addition
of it " (p. 463). But it may be (and the passage just referred
to suggests it) that Prof. James wishes to substitute for the
specific and peculiar and no doubt the difficult notion of
agreement between thought and reality another notion of
congruence derived from different fields. One bone is con-
gruent with another in a ball and socket joint, when it
works easily in it; the shape of a flower is congruent with
the insects that fertilise it, when such as to secure cross-
fertilisation; in general, we mnay call the parts of a system
congruent, when they are so adapted to each other as to
produce a 'beneficial' result. That a pragmatist should
attempt to find truth in a congruence of this kind seems sad,
but not incredible. There is a curious hypothesis oil page 467
which at any rate lends colour to the suspicion. " Let my
reader suppose himself to constitute for a time all the reality
there is in the universe, and then to receive the announce-
ment that another being is to be created who shall know
him truly. How will he represent the knowing in advance?
What will he hope, it to be? I doubt extremely whether it
could even occur to him to fancy it as a mere copying. Of
what use to him would an imperfect second edition of himself
in the newcomer's interior be? It would seem pure waste
of a propitious opportunity. The demand would more
probably be for something absolutely new. The reader
would conceive the knowing humanistically, ' the new comer,'
he would say, 'm utst take account of my presence by reacting on
it sttch a way that good would accrue to us both. If copying be
requisite to that end, let there be copying; otherwise not.'
The essence in any case would not be the copying, but the
enrichment of the previous world."
I have ventured to quote this passage at length, because
it is perhaps the most surprising in the article. We are not
told what good is; and in the absence of that information it
is a little hard to be sure what the clause in italics (not mine)
means: especially when we consider how few modes of
" reaction " are conceivable between a being who " constitut
for a time all the reality there is in the universe" and
another supervening. But the hypothesis is too extravagant,
to be interpreted very rigidly; and we may suppose that if
the second comer by his presence were to heighten the
pleasure that I had previously taken in my own existence, and

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36 H. W. B. JOSEPH:

to have the pleasure which he took in his existence height-

ened in return, the reaction would be such that good accrued
to both. Would it therefore be knowledge on his part of me ?
does the west wind know me, when I am refreshed by it?
did the Lady of Tripoli know Rudel because the thought of
her inspired him ? It may be said that the profit must be
mutual: but there is nothing in the passage to show why
this should be requisite. If we are really to adopt the truly
extraordinary proposal of supposing that another's knowledge
of me is what I should like instead of it-for nothing else is
implied, when we try to determine what knowledge is, by
asking what a man would hope it to be-then it need not
involve good to the knower, for I need only hope his know-
ledge of me to be something from which good would accrue
to me. And let us grant that good must accrue to both.
Does the bee know the flower which is fertilised while it
yields him honey ? It may be better for the bee to get honey
than knowledge; but is it therefore knowledge to get honey ?
Let it be said that the flower is unconscious of the benefit
that it obtains; and that the good must be a good for the
consciousness of both parties to the "reaction ". Suppose
then that the flower thrilled with pleasure in being fertilised,
as the bee perhaps does in sucking honey: would that con-
stitute knowledge of the bee in the flower, and of the flower
in the bee? Pleasure may be better than knowledge; but it
is as absurd to say that it is knowledge as to say with Mill
that the simultaneous suggestion of an indefinite number of
series of tactual and muscular sensations is the apprehension
of space. Prof. James has indeed relieved the paradox of
his illustration by supposing the reader to know himself and
the new-comer, apart from any beneficial interaction, al-
though it is still in question what knowledge is. But let us
try to apply the results of the investigation on behalf of
which his hypothesis is made to the terms of the hypothesis
itself. Knowledge of A by B turns out to mean a reaction
of B on A from which good accrues to both. What then is
the knowledge of B by A, while A is still hoping that B's
knowledge of himii will be something that will do him good?
The question whether knowledge is good is one thing: the
question what it is is another. Pragmatism seems to have
passed from saying that there are better relations than
knowledge to saying that relations which bring good are
knowledge. The change bears testimony to an obstinate
conviction that knowledge must be good; and we may grant
that a philosophy which fails to show this leaves us with a
speculative problem unsolved. Let us return for a moment

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PROF. JAMES ON 'HUMANISM AND TRUTH . 37

to the reader solitary in his existence; if another person

supervened, it is hard to see what 'reaction' would bring
them greater good than an intercourse of consciousness,
knowing and being known. But this mutual knowledge is
good, because it is mutual knowledge; if we attempt to ex-
plain what is meant in calling it knowledge by saying that
it enures to mutual good, our language collapses into insig-
nificance.
Prof. James is indignant that it should be supposed im-
possible for the pragmatist to recognise a duty to think truly.
But in rejoinder he falls back upon feeling. There is a
" felt grain inside of our experience " (p. 465), and that seems
to him sufficient. He does not see that his opponent wishes
to distinguish between a psychological compulsion that drives
you to think in a certain way, and a logical recognition that
you ought to think in that way, and that others ought to,
whether psychologically they are compelled to or not. Or if
he sees it, he holds the distinction wrong, and would say
that what you are compelled to think, that you ought to
think, and therein lies truth for you. Such a doctrine is like
the hydra, whose heads spring up again as fast as you destroy
them. For when I urge that by truth I mean something
which all ought to think, and not what any one is psycho
logically compelled to think, he will reply that I am psycho-
logically compelled to mean that by truth, and that is all
that the truth of my view amounts to. Shall it be retorted
that his view is only what he finds himself thinking under a
psychological compulsion, the view which makes life seem
best to him ? The retort will not penetrate the armour of a
philosopher who acknowledges that that is what he means
by truth.
But when it is doubted, 'How can any one be enthusiastic
over such a view ?' we get a strange answer. We are first
bidden to " follow the pragmatic method and ask, What is
truth known as ? "-a question which would seem futile in
the mouth of any one who is still trying to find out what
truth is. But we are immediately told that it is the opposite
of the instable, the practically disappointing, the useless, the
lying and unreliable, the unverifiable and unsupported, the
inconsistent and contradictory, the artificial and eccentric,
the unreal in the sense of being of no practical account
(p. 466). Part of this answer is useless (and therefore on
pragmatist principles untrue) ; for to define truth as the
opposite of the lying and unreliable is to define in a circle,
That it is the opposite of the unverifiable is inconsistent
with the admission that the Other may have a definite inner

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38 H. W. B. JOSEPH:

structure not resembling any of our predicated Whats, but

that we cannot tell whether this is the case or not. That it is
the opposite of the practically disappointing many know to
their cost is not the case. That it is the opposite of the
unstable can hardly be reconciled with the view expressed
on page 471, that " at each a,nd every concrete moment, truth
for each man is what that man 'troweth' with the maximum
of satisfaction to himself " ; for the " long-run satisfa,c-
toriness" which is the criterion of "truth verified by the
long-run" cannot give the trower's last trowing any pre-
rogative over trowings that have gone before. That it is the
opposite of the inconsistent and contradictory, the artificial
and eccentric, I have no wish to dispute. When I am told
that it is the opposite of what is of no practical account, I
am moved to ask for a definition of the practical.
A true idea is said to have been originally one that prepares
us for an actual perception (p. 470); and I suppose it was
then practical, because it was to our practical 'interest' to
be prepared for the perception. But " it is obvious that,
although interests strictly practical have been the original
starting point of our search for true phenomenal descriptions,
yet an intrinsic interest in the bare describing function has
grown up. We wish accounts that shall be true, whether
they bring, collateral profit or not." By collateral profit
must be meant profit beyond their truth; but if truth consists
in promoting some other interest, how can an account be
true that brings no collateral profit ? and if it cannot be so,
what is the use of wishing it ? or it is again suggested that
truth may be what we hope or wish it to be, and that since
we have a practical interest in supposing that accounts may
be true which bring no collateral profit, because we " wish
accounts that shall be" so, therefore the opinion that they
can be so is a true opinion ? However this may be, Prof.
James recognises the emergence of a " theoretic curiosity,"
which at its first appearance it is plain he distinguishes from
"practical" interests. If this theoretic curiosity is not a
practical interest, then so long as the true is what satisfies
a practical interest, nothing can be true merely by satisfying
a theoretic curiosity. Yet he clearly thinks that it can be.
" Trilobites were once alive, or all our thought about the
strata is at sea. Radium, discovered only yesterday, must
always have existed, or its analogy with other natural
elements, which are permanent, fails. In all this, it is but
one portion of our beliefs reacting on another so as to yield
the most satisfactory total state of mind. That state of
mind, we say, sees truth" (p. 471). In other words, a judg-

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PROF. JAMES ON 'HUMANISM AND TRUTH'. 39

ment is true, not because the assumption of its truth produces

any ' practical ' benefit, but because it satisfies " a theoretic
need ".
It will not do to say that, if it gives satisfaction, it does
make a practical difference, and is true because it does us
good. For, first, it is admitted that " we wish accounts that
shall be true, whether they bring collateral profit or not ";
the satisfaction is only a collateral profit; if the judgment
were only true because it gave satisfaction, it would not be
what we wish for, and therefore would not give the satisfac-
tion. Just as the pleasure of a good conscience cannot be
obtained by doing right for the sake of the pleasure, so the
satisfaction of discovering the truth cannot be obtained by
taking anything to be true that gives you satisfaction:
unless indeed you say that it must satisfy you intellectually;
but that only means that it must appear true. Again, a
man who desires to know the truth, and feels satisfaction
to-day in the belief that he has found it, may discover
to-morrow that he was mistaken; he therefore cannot
identify the true with what gives him satisfaction, or
accept Prof. James's theory. Yet a theory of truth has little
to commend it, if it cannot be accepted by those who " wish
accounts that shall be true, whether they bring collateral
profit or not ". If Prof. James replies that it was never true
because it did not bring satisfaction on the morrow, he ought
to tell us how we are ever to know that any account is true
which brings us satisfaction in the present. If he says that
it was true so long as it gave satisfaction, I could only
wonder that he had called truth the opposite of the unstable,
and go on to ask whom it must satisfy. And once more,
there are speculative questions, to which, whether the true
answer were found to be negative or affirmative, it would
make no 'practical' difference. According to Mr. Peirce
(whose opinion Prof. James endorses) such questions must
be unmeaning. Yet we may have a theoretic need to find
the answer. Can we need an answer to an unmeaning
question? And either answer will give equal satisfaction,
just because it is the true answer. How then can its truth
consist in its power to satisfy? For each answer has an
equal power to satisfy, if it be found to be truth; and that
means that the satisfaction presupposes the discovery of the
truth, and does not constitute it.
The sudden introduction of a reference to our theoretic
needs only serves therefore to reveal the bankruptcy of the
theory which can neither be made consistent with it nor get
on without it. And this appears very clearly in the para-

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40 H. W. B. JOSEPH:

graphs in which Prof. James recapitulates, on page 474, what

he conceives the main points of 'Humanism,' to be. The
first is, " An experience, perceptual or conceptual, must con-
form to reality in order to be true". The next two explain
'.reality ' and ' conforming'. Substituting for these terms in
the first paragraph the definitions given of them in the second
and third, we get this dictum: " An experience, perceptual
or conceptual, must, in order to be true, take account of the
other conceptual or perceptual experiences, with which it
may find itself in point of fact mixed up, in such a way as
to gain an intellectually and practically satisfactory result ".
I should like to know what is meant here by 'taking account
of '; but Prof. James forestalls any intrusive curiosity on
that point by giving it as the next " main point of human-
ism," that the term cannot be defined-" so many are the
ways in which " this requirement " can practically be worked
out ". I will therefore only ask what is meant by the words
"intellectually and practically satisfactory ". Are there two
different standards of truth? and if so, what is to happen
whein they conflict ? or is it meant that nothing can be true
which is not both intellectually and practically satisfactory ?
If so, how can it be that " interests strictly practical have been
the original starting point of our search for true phenomenal
descriptions"? While the need for intellectual satisfaction
was yet unborn, nothing could be or be conceived to be intel-
lectually satisfactory. Nothing therefore could be or be con-
ceived to be true; and the original starting point of our search
for the true was furnished by a state of things in which truth
was neither born nor thought of. Thus the assertion that
truth must be both intellectually and practically satisfactory
contradicts the previous assertion that it is originally the prac-
tically satisfactory only. It also leads to the paradox of saying
that what is intellectually satisfactory is untrue if it does not
help us practically. Yet the doctor, puzzled by his own
symptoms, would obtain intellectual satisfaction in the dis-
covery that he was suffering from a swift and fatal disease,
although the discovery might render him. weak and miserable,
and even accelerate the action of the disease. Was his
discovery therefore not 'true? and if Prof. James has the
courage to say that, will he have the further courage to say
that in such a case therefore the doctor would not die of the
disease ? Or lastly, will he say that such a discovery is not
intellectually satisfactory ? I should welcome that answer
also; for it would show that by 'intellectually satisfactory'
he mneans pleasant; and it would give me some intellectual
satisfaction to discover his meaning, though I am afraid he

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PROF. JAMES ON 'HUMANISM AND TRUTH . 41

might say that my discovery was not true unless it also did
me some practical good.
Prof. James says that he condemns " all noble, clean-cut,
-fixed, eternal, rational, temple-like, systems of philosophy ".
"They seem," he adds, " oddly personal and artificial" (p.
-466); though that they are personal might be expected to be
taken by a pragmatist as showing, that they respond to the
needs of their authors in the way that is constitutive of
truth. I hope I shall not seem guilty of disrespect in con-
fessing that, though I recognise the tem-per of his article to
be quite admirable, I cannot agree that a system of philosophy
-ought not to be rational.

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