The Meaning of Truth | Page 2

understand, under its apparent simplicity;
and evident also, I think, that the definitive settlement of it will mark a
turning-point in the history of epistemology, and consequently in that
of general philosophy. In order to make my own thought more
accessible to those who hereafter may have to study the question, I
have collected in the volume that follows all the work of my pen that
bears directly on the truth-question. My first statement was in 1884, in
the article that begins the present volume. The other papers follow in
the order of their publication. Two or three appear now for the first
time.
One of the accusations which I oftenest have had to meet is that of
making the truth of our religious beliefs consist in their 'feeling good' to
us, and in nothing else. I regret to have given some excuse for this
charge, by the unguarded language in which, in the book Pragmatism, I
spoke of the truth of the belief of certain philosophers in the absolute.
Explaining why I do not believe in the absolute myself (p. 78), yet
finding that it may secure 'moral holidays' to those who need them, and
is true in so far forth (if to gain moral holidays be a good), [Footnote:
Op. cit., p. 75.] I offered this as a conciliatory olive-branch to my
enemies. But they, as is only too common with such offerings, trampled
the gift under foot and turned and rent the giver. I had counted too
much on their good will--oh for the rarity of Christian charity under the
sun! Oh for the rarity of ordinary secular intelligence also! I had
supposed it to be matter of common observation that, of two competing
views of the universe which in all other respects are equal, but of which
the first denies some vital human need while the second satisfies it, the
second will be favored by sane men for the simple reason that it makes
the world seem more rational. To choose the first view under such

circumstances would be an ascetic act, an act of philosophic self-denial
of which no normal human being would be guilty. Using the pragmatic
test of the meaning of concepts, I had shown the concept of the
absolute to MEAN nothing but the holiday giver, the banisher of
cosmic fear. One's objective deliverance, when one says 'the absolute
exists,' amounted, on my showing, just to this, that 'some justification
of a feeling of security in presence of the universe,' exists, and that
systematically to refuse to cultivate a feeling of security would be to do
violence to a tendency in one's emotional life which might well be
respected as prophetic.
Apparently my absolutist critics fail to see the workings of their own
minds in any such picture, so all that I can do is to apologize, and take
my offering back. The absolute is true in NO way then, and least of all,
by the verdict of the critics, in the way which I assigned!
My treatment of 'God,' 'freedom,' and 'design' was similar. Reducing,
by the pragmatic test, the meaning of each of these concepts to its
positive experienceable operation, I showed them all to mean the same
thing, viz., the presence of 'promise' in the world. 'God or no God?'
means 'promise or no promise?' It seems to me that the alternative is
objective enough, being a question as to whether the cosmos has one
character or another, even though our own provisional answer be made
on subjective grounds. Nevertheless christian and non-christian critics
alike accuse me of summoning people to say 'God exists,' EVEN
WHEN HE DOESN'T EXIST, because forsooth in my philosophy the
'truth' of the saying doesn't really mean that he exists in any shape
whatever, but only that to say so feels good.
Most of the pragmatist and anti-pragmatist warfare is over what the
word 'truth' shall be held to signify, and not over any of the facts
embodied in truth-situations; for both pragmatists and anti- pragmatists
believe in existent objects, just as they believe in our ideas of them.
The difference is that when the pragmatists speak of truth, they mean
exclusively some thing about the ideas, namely their workableness;
whereas when anti-pragmatists speak of truth they seem most often to
mean something about the objects. Since the pragmatist, if he agrees

that an idea is 'really' true, also agrees to whatever it says about its
object; and since most anti- pragmatists have already come round to
agreeing that, if the object exists, the idea that it does so is workable;
there would seem so little left to fight about that I might well be asked
why instead of reprinting my share in so much verbal wrangling, I do
not show my sense of 'values' by