148. CRITERIA OF TRUTH AND MOTIVES OF CERTITUDE.

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We have seen that reality is presented to intellect through per

ception and conception ; that perception presents a consciously ap

prehended series of concrete, individual, complex and unanalysed

realities ; that the ultimate conceptual factors or thought-objects

1 Op. cit., p. 314.

2 56 THE OR Y OF KNO WLED GE

which intellect apprehends in these data, which it builds up into

more and more complex generic and specific concepts, and which

it thus employs as predicates to interpret these data, are them

selves abstract aspects of reality. Now when we form any judg

ment and assent to it as true, we are concomitantly (or " in actu

exerdto ") aware of its truth, of its conformity with the reality

which it interprets or represents, of what we may call its faithful

compliance with the real exigencies of the presented datum. 1

And of course when we formulate any judgment and assent to it

as true, our reason for doing so is because we see, or think we

see, that the reality presented to us as subject of the judgment

demands that the thought-object which is predicate be affirmed

or denied of it as the case may be. If the relation which the

judgment asserts be clear or evident to us, we are convinced that

the judgment is true, we give it the firm assent known as convic

tion or certitude (7). If it is not quite clear or evident to us, but

yet appears to be there objectively, we regard the judgment as

probable, and give it the provisional assent known as opinion. If

we cannot see, in the terms of the relation suggested by the

judgment, any grounds for affirming or denying the relation,

then we abstain, or should abstain, from formulating the judg

ment, suspend our assent, and thus adopt the attitude known as

doubt. But among the judgments to which we assent as certainly

true, or as probably true, there may be some that are really false.

Hence arises the question : Have we any reliable test or tests for

distinguishing truth from error ? Have we any reliable grounds

or motives of certitude ?

A test or criterion of truth is anything that enables us to

decide whether a judgment is true or false. Our cognitive

faculties themselves the higher cognitive faculty of intellect or

reason ; the faculties of consciousness and memory ; the senses,

external and internal are the means, and the only means, at our

disposal for discovering truth, if truth can be discovered : and

intellect or reason, subserved by the other faculties, is of course

the faculty which finally decides or judges in every case. In a

Hence UEBERWEQ S definition of judgment as "the consciousness of the

objective validity of a subjective union of conceptions whose forms are different but

belong to each other ". Similarly JOSEPH (Introd. to Logic, p. 147) writes : " All

judgments, besides affirming or denying a predicate of a subject, affirm themselves

as true. But a judgment which affirms itself as true claims to express, so far as it

goes, the nature of things, the facts, or the reality of the universe." Cf. Science of

Logic, i., 80.

TRUTH AND EVIDENCE 257

certain wide sense, therefore, our cognitive faculties may be

called tests or criteria of truth. But only in a wide sense ; for

what we mean properly by a test or criterion of truth is some

thing which guides or directs the function of the judging faculty

so that it will assert, and adhere or assent to, only true judgments :

something in the judgment itself or the terms of the judgment, or

connected and presented with these, which will show forth the

judgment to be true, and thus elicit for it the firm or fixed

assent of the intellect.

By a motive of certitude we mean whatever moves > determines,

inclines the intellect to assent firmly to a judgment as true. Our

judgments are intellectual acts which are caused, both as to their

actual happening (quoad exercitium actus} and as to their affirma

tive or negative quality (quoad specificationem actus) by a variety

of influences (10). These may be all described as causes of assent

or belief. Some of them, however, are subjective or psychological,

i.e. they are exerted on the intellect by the will, the tempera

ment or mentality, the inclinations, likes and dislikes, passions,

feelings, emotions, etc., of the individual judging or knowing

subject (r I, 12). They are non-intellectual in character. That is

to say, they have no direct bearing on the truth of any judgment

to which we assent, and do not help us to discern or decide its

truth except in so far as we may consider them, on reflection, to

have perhaps a certain legitimate weight as tests or guides to the

truth of the judgments to which they incline us to assent. From

these subjective influences we can distinguish other causes or

motives of our assent to any judgment as true, causes which we

describe as grounds or reasons of our assent, motives which are

directly intellectual inasmuch as they present themselves to the

intellect in or with the terms of the judgment, and at least appear

to be objective, to characterize the reality itself which is presented

as object for interpretation. These appear at once as reasons of

the truth of the judgment and as grounds or motives of our assent

to it ; and they may be collectively catalogued under the com

prehensive title of evidence.

From this it will appear that whatever is a " test or criterion

of truth," whatever appears in or with the reality presented for

interpretation, enabling us to form a true judgment about this

reality, is also eo ipso a ground of our assent to the judgment

as true, or is in other words a "motive of certitude". But can

we say, conversely, that whatever is a motive of certitude is also

VOL. ii. 17

258 THEOR Y OF KNO W LEDGE

a test or criterion of truth ? Well, since intellect is the judicial

faculty, the faculty which elicits the only act that can put us

formally in possession of truth, the faculty which in all cases

must ultimately decide (as far as it can) whether a proposed

judgment is true or not, the faculty which must ultimately give

firm (certain) or provisional (probable) assent, or abstain from

assenting, to the judgment as true, we can say at least that

the intellectual grounds or motives of certitude are also tests or

criteria of truth ; and of the non-intellectual motives or causes

which may influence our assents we may say that they too are

criteria or tests of truth in so far, but only in so far, as intellect,

reflecting on them, can recognize in them indications, indexes,

evidences, of the truth of the judgments to which they prompt

our assent.

We have to inquire, then, whether by reflection we can dis

cover in our spontaneous convictions (10), in the judgments to

which we spontaneously assent as true, anything in the nature

of grounds or motives which will justify us in accepting those

judgments as true.

Having discussed in Part I. the scope and limits and method

of our whole inquiry, and having rejected scepticism (36-39) as

a prejudiced and unjustifiable issue thereof, we proceeded at

some length in Part II., by an analysis of our cognitive processes,

to vindicate for knowledge its claim to real objectivity. We there

justified the contention that knowledge is objectively real, that

it has for its objects realities ; and in doing so we were guided

throughout by the available evidence. It will not be difficult,

now, to take the further step of showing by reflection that we

have the means of convincing ourselves that some true knowledge

of reality is attainable, that there are at our disposal adequate tests

of truth and adequate grounds or motives of reflex or reasoned

certitude.

In our opening chapter on the Terms and Data of the Inquiry

we classified the judgments in which human knowledge is sup

posed to be contained (10) into (a) interpretations of immediate

facts of our cognitive experience, (fr) self-evident axioms, (c) deduc

tions from the axioms, (</) inductions from the facts, and (e~)

judgments based on authority or testimony. In the same chapter

(16) we noted among man s spontaneous certitudes certain

universally entertained convictions which appear to have an

intimate and even essential bearing on (a) \\\s physical existence,

TRUTH AND EVIDENCE 259

(3) his intellectual life, (V) his nature and conduct as a moral being,

and (d) as a religious being. Our inquiry into the criteria of

truth and motives of certitude must take note of these classifica

tions.

We also distinguished (u) between judgments to which our

assent seems to be compelled and judgments to which we assent

freely, i.e. not because we cannot help assenting to them but

because we see, or think we see, intellectually that the grounds,

reasons, motives, for assenting to them as true exclude all prudent

fear of error. The grounds of our assent to judgments of the

former class are all purely intellectual ; and the judgments them

selves are of the ideal order arising from analysis and comparison

of abstract concepts. Such, for instance, are the judgments of

pure mathematics, and the first principles of logic and meta

physics, e.g. the principles of contradiction and causality. They

are all in materia necessaria, and the certitude we can have about

them is called metaphysical certitude. 1 No philosophers have

seriously questioned the rectitude of such judgments, or the

propriety of forming them and giving them the full assent of

certitude. But about this whole class of judgments a serious

question can be and has been raised, whether, namely, they have

any real knowledge-value, whether they give the mind a genuine

insight into reality, whether, therefore, they embody truth in the

traditionally accepted sense of this term (29, 30, 33). We have

contended that they do, that the thesis of Moderate Realism gives

the right interpretation of their significance (chap. ix.). But it is

clear that while the intellectual grounds of our assent to those

judgments themselves are cogent, and produce in us irresistible

convictions, the intellectual grounds for the thesis of Moderate

Realism are not of that cogent character. If they were the

thesis in question could not have been rejected as it has been by

many philosophers. Our conviction that Moderate Realism is

true is a freely formed conviction (I i) ; and our contention is that

the grounds for its truth are such as to exclude all prudent fear

of error. Thus we see that the intellectual grounds for the real

truth or real knowledge-value of even " self-evident " judgments of

the ideal order are not cogent, but are nevertheless reasonably

sufficient for certitude.

In other words, the " objective evidence," which scholastics

1 Cf. Science of Logic, ii., 249.

260 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

maintain to be the " supreme criterion of truth " and the " ulti

mate motive of certitude," is as regards our reasoned or reflex

or philosophical certitude concerning the real truth and real

knowledge-value of judgments of the ideal order not indeed

cogent, but sufficient to exclude all prudent fear of error. This

is worthy of note for two reasons. Firstly, because it is mainly

in regard to men s ultimate philosophical convictions, their judg

ments about the origin, nature, and destiny of man and the

universe, about the " ultimate causes " of things, and about the

ultimate real worth and significance of our ordinary and scientific

knowledge, rather than in regard to our inevitable acceptance

of those judgments and convictions themselves as a necessary

means of meeting the practical needs of life (7, 15, 17, 37, 38),

that philosophers have assigned very different tests or criteria

of truth, and grounds or motives of certitude, as supreme and

ultimate. And secondly, because the scholastic thesis, that

"objective evidence is the supreme criterion of truth and the

ultimate motive of certitude," seems to have been misunderstood

by many as implying that only intellectually cogent evidence is

a sufficient test of truth, and that the firm assent of certitude is

or ought to be confined to judgments for the truth of which such

intellectually cogent evidence is forthcoming.

On the contrary, however, scholastics recognize, besides

irresistible convictions, a much wider and in many respects

philosophically more important class of judgments for whose

truth the human mind can have grounds which, though not co

gent, are so sufficient as to render the truth of these judgments

wholly credible (7, ir, 12, 35): motives which make such an

appeal to reason reflecting on them that it would be plainly un

reasonable and at variance with the dictates of our rational nature

to refuse to such judgments the full and firm assent of certitude

(38). The scholastic attitude is therefore intellectualist, as

opposed to all systems which base human certitude regarding

the solutions of the great, fundamental (philosophical, ethical,

religious) problems on volitional, emotional, instinctive impulses,

etc., in the sense that it recognizes in the distinctive cognitive

faculty of our nature as rational, viz. intellect or reason, the ulti

mate court of appeal for deciding between truth and error. But

it is not narrowly intellectualist in the sense of refusing to re

cognize any evidential value either in intellectual grounds that

fall short of logical cogency or in motives that do not appeal

TR UTH AND E VIDRNCE 2 6 1

directly to intellect but rather to our whole complex nature as

human beings (14).