B 0 0 K S.

THE NATURE OF TRUTH.*

Mu. JOACHIM, who is already known to those interested in philosophical speculation as the author of an admirable work on Spinoza, has now published an investigation of the problem which lies at the heart of all thought. This short essay of under two hundred pages seems to us the most important contribution to English philosophy—with the exception of Mr. Haldane's last book—since the appearance of Mr. F. H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality. In his candour, his fresh- ness, and his power of clean-cut definition he has many points of resemblance to the latter writer. It is difficult to know bow to review a work of this kind. A mere epitome of the arguments is useless, for you cannot summarise a summary, and Mr. Joachim is commendably free from verbiage. On the other band, the serious treatment which it deserves would lead us into a discussion far beyond the limits of our space. We can only attempt to indicate the main lines of his thought, in the hope that our sketch may send readers to the original.

He makes his purpose clear at the outset. He does not

• The Nature of Truth : an Essay. By Harold H. Jostehtm,Fellow awl Tutor of Morton College, Oxfotd. Oxford : at the Clarendon Press. [6e. net.]

'seek a criterion of truth,—that is, something other than the • truth itself by which the world is to recognise it. His aim is .to discover what truth in its nature is, and he begins, logically enough, by destructive criticism. He takes certain typical notions of truth, on which many fair philosophical edifices have been budded, and subjects them to a keen critical investigation. The first he calls the "correspondence-notion" theory, under which truth is conceived as an experience of two factors which stand in a determinate relation toeaoh other. There

are two factors in thought, one the judgment, and the other the ".real" factor, and the notion of correspondence implies some, identity of structure or plan of organisation in different ,materials. Mr. Joachim has, little difficulty in showing that in so far as this view has value, it is not on the correspondence of the two experiences that truth depends, but on the nature of the idea expressing, itself as the inner structure of the corresponding wholes,—the notion of. a systematic coherence.

In the next place, be deals with a very different and very modern view, which appears, in the recent work of several well-known Cambridge philosophers, that truth and falsity

are qualities of certain entities entirely independent of mind. In sensation, it is said, we are in direct contact with the Real; but the Real, though present to a sentient con- sciousness, is in no way affected by it. The Real, as given to us, is of course cumbered with much that is the work of the mind, but it is not beyond the power of man to separate what is given from what is superimposed, and this given residuum is independent reality, or truth. The assumption behind this view is that "experiencing makes no difference to the facts." Mr. Joachim • argues that this assumption is false, in the sense in which the view makes use of it; and this being so, that its supporters are logically driven to two alternatives,—either that independent truth will remain entirely in itself, unknown and unknowable ; or that, if known, it will be a personal possession depending upon an individual intuition, and consequently in no sense of the word inde- pendent truth. " A logic of abstract identity has carried you where it carried Antisthenes—beyond the reach of argument, and beyond the reach of knowledge." Like all pluralistic

theories, this one fails to provide for any union of ultimate simple entities without destroying their simplicity. The result

is the old return to "truth in itself," which may be anything or nothing. The supporters of this theory may have a certain standing as against the kindred abstractions of the subjective idealists, but Mr. Joachim in his criticism carefully guards himself from any suggestion of solipsism. We may quote one passage in which he sets out very clearly the fallacy of the cult of " immediacy " as the test of truth :—

"'Blue differs from red,' and 2 + 2 = 4' ; and these immediate experiences are said to be true. But their truth is revealed to us only in so far as they endure the test of mediation.. Their truth ' means for us that a whole system of knowledge stands and falls with them, and that in that system they survive as necessary constituent elements. Again, the believer's intuition that Baal is the only lord' is an immediate experience, which is false. But if it be false, its falsehood does not depend upon its immediacy. It is not because it is an emotional unmediated faith that it is false, any more than. the Christian's emotional faith that God was made man' is true (if it be true) because of its immediacy. That the immediate experience' of the Baal-worshipper is false, means for us in the end that it will not stand mediation. The moral and religious experiences of the past and the present (oven of the Baal-worshippers themselves) reveal themselves, when critically analysed and reconstructed, as a texture into which this immediate intuition can in no sense be woven ; they form a system in which this would-be truth cannot as such survive."

So far Mr. Joachim covers not unfamiliar ground. It is when be proceeds to the examination of a theory at a different and higher level of thought—the " coherence- notion "—that the real difficulties begin. It may be roughly stated as " Anything is true which can be conceived,"—con. (solvability not meaning the mere power of forming a mental picture, but systematic coherence in a significant whole. The Antipodes, for example, may not be conceivable in the ordinary sense of the word, but they are conceivable, and their conceivability is the test of their truth, inasmuch as they are forced upon any thinker for whom the earth and the solar systems are to possess significance. The ideal of knowledge on this conception is " a system, not of truths, but of

truth." Coherence is no formal consistency, such as we find in formal logic, which may be defined as the "analysis of low-grade thinking" ; it is concrete coherence, for which thinking is not a dead product, but a living process. But clearly this ideal can never as such be actual in human experience, for our conceptions which are derived from partial wholes cannot adequately express the whole. .We • are thus faced with the old crux of the relation of the ideal truth to the truth of human.. judgment. Mr. Joachim takes two typical instances of what is commonly, called a: ".true" judgment,—the universal judgment of science, e.g., 2 + 2 =-.: 4, and the judgment of fact, e.g., Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. His aim is to show " this, truth expanding in each case into a system of knowledge, and that again as borrowing what truth it possesses from. the Ideal Experience which is struggling for self-fulfilment in it." He has no difficulty in showing that such judgments are really the attenuated statement of a meaning which would require a whole system of knowledge for its adequate expression, and that this system is what gives the judgments determinate significance. In this conclusion the ordinary idealist analysis is content to rest. But Mr. Joachim is not satisfied, for this system is only. a body of knowledge about reality, a " qualifica- tion referred to the reality, and not the substantial reality in its self-fulfilment." We have only returned to the old " correspondence-notion " in a sublimated form. We have

still the unbridged gulf between the judging mind and that about which it judges, and it is essential to the coherence- notion that there should be no such severance. Logic is content with this dualistic assumption, and throws upon metaphysics the task of bridging it; and Mr. Joachim in his last chapter devotes himself' to a semi-metaphysical inquiry as to the negative element in ideal experience, " the relative independence of subject and object as essential to the very nature of the ideal."

This last chapter on the "Negative Element and Error" is the most brilliant in the book, but its closely woven argument cannot be fairly reproduced in any summary. It is impossible to explain error as imperfect truth, because ' one of its characteristics is that the thinking subject believes confi- dently in the truth of his knowledge, and thereby converts a partial apprehension of truth into falsity. We may trace the origin of it to the claim of the finite to self-dependence, but it is a stubborn fact, which no monistic system, like Spinoza's, can render intelligible. The "'coherence-notion," which so far is the richest of the conceptions examined, breaks down as a theory of truth, because it is unable to relate fully human knowledge to ideal experience. It cannot reconcile the self-assertive independence of ideal truth with the modal dependence of the self-asserting minds. What,

then, is the conclusion P— "We have acknowledged that no theory of truth as coherence can be completely true ; for as a systeni of judgments, as a piece of discursive knowledge, it must be ' other' than the truth about' which it is, and thus it must fail of that complete coherence which is complete truth. And again, as the knowledge of mind at a determinate level of appercipient character, it must fall short of the complete self-revelation' which is absolute truth manifest to itself. But the former imperfection it shares with all possible theories of truth or of anything else; and the latter im- perfection need not prevent it being as true. as a theory can be, and more true (more near to complete coherence) than, say, theories of truth as correspondence or 'as a quality of independent entities."

The conclusion is a form of scepticism, reasonable and undogmatic. Truth still remains as a working term in every-

day life, but it must be defined as "the more or less true." The truth also remains as an intuition, an immediate certainty,—but also a problem, since the attempt to raise it to the level of reflective knowledge has failed.. Such a

scepticism, which gets rid of useless baggage and exhibits a rigorous critical power, is " the first requisite for one who hopes to learn." We are conscious of having given a very perfunctory account of a remarkable book. The numerous tempting inquiries which Mr. Joachim's . argument suggests are forbidden by the limits of our space; but we can pay our tribute of admiration to the subtlety, candour, and weight of his dialectic and the unvarying lucidity of his style.