HEGELIAN CONCEPTIONS OF TRUTH AS CONSISTENCY.

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Since,

after all, evidence itself needs to be tested (153); or, at all

events, since real evidence is nothing else than the reality itself

clearly apprehended as intellectually representable by a certain

judgment or synthesis of concepts, while on the other hand it is

admitted that we may be mistaken in thinking that the presented

reality does really demand such a judgment, and it is undeni

able that judgments which some men regard as really evident

others regard as inevident and doubtful, would it not seem

desirable, if it be possible, to call in the aid of some criterion

which would be easier of application than evidence, and which

would be at once a test both of truth and of evidence? Now

such a criterion would be the consistency, coherence, harmony of all

1 Cf. MERCIER, op. cit. t 97-8. *Cf. supra, 97, too, 101, in.

INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES OF CERTITUDE 285

our judgments with one another. To determine when an isolated

judgment is really evident and therefore true, when it is as far

as it goes in conformity with reality, is often a difficult matter :

the difficulty lying precisely in discovering what the " reality " is,

or whether the judgment in question will faithfully represent it.

Indeed, as we have seen, it might be and has been seriously

questioned whether the mind can attain to reality in this absolute

sense at all. But there is no such difficulty in determining

whether a given judgment coheres or conflic ts with any portion

or unit of the whole collection or system of judgments already

accepted by men generally as true. In this way, the term with

which each judgment would have to conform would be the whole

system of universally accepted judgments : this system would in

fact be reality in the only sense in which we can know reality.

No doubt, the consistency of one judgment with another is not

truth. Such fractional or partial consistency is consistency in

the narrower sense of mere consistency ; and it must be admitted

that a whole series of judgments could be logically consistent

with one another in that way and yet not true. The conformity

of one judgment with another, or a limited group of others, is

consistency in this narrower sense. But what can truth be, after

all, but a wider consistency? The truth of each judgment

would be its consistency with the whole system of accepted judg

ments ; and the truth of the whole system would be the evident

organic coherence and harmony of all its parts with one another.

On this view, moreover, truth would still be the conformity of the

mind judging or interpreting reality with the reality interpreted :

for "reality," in the only sense in which we can intelligibly speak

of reality as known or as object of knowledge, is reality as

revealed in and through the whole system of judgments which

are universally regarded as embodying knowledge. Nay, reality,

in so far as it is known, is just this ever-growing system of

mutually consistent and coherent interpretations of the data of

human experience. If the truth of a judgment is the conformity

it establishes between the mind and reality, this can only mean

conformity with reality in so far as reality is already known (for

it cannot mean conformity with an unknown reality) ; and

reality is already known only in so far as it has manifested itself

in the whole system of universally accepted judgments. Thus

the consistency or coherence of our judgments in one harmonious

system is at once the criterium " constitutivum " veritatis and

286 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

the criterium " manifestativum " veritatis, that which constitutes

their truth and that which reveals their truth.

Such, in brief, is the claim put forward for " consistency "

from different standpoints by advocates of the relativity of

knowledge, such as Spencer and Mansel, and by supporters of

the Hegelian philosophy, such as Wallace in his Logic of Hegel}

It contains a grain of truth amid much that is wholly erroneous

and inadmissible.

The truth it contains is this : Consistency is obviously a

negative test or essential condition of truth, in the sense that

truth cannot contradict truth : if, therefore, it be absent, if two

or more judgments are mutually contradictory or incompatible,

we know that all of them cannot be true, and that possibly not

even one of them is true. But it is not a positive test of truth

inasmuch as it may be present, two or more judgments may be

mutually compatible or consistent, and yet none of them may be

true.

Now, the absence of consistency, as a negative test, is not a

test distinct from evidence. For its dictate simply amounts to

this : that if a judgment is clearly seen to be in itself or in its

necessary implications incompatible with some other judgment

already known for certain to be true, this is an evident sign that

the former judgment cannot be really evident or true. But such

inconsistency cannot be properly described as a test or criterion

of evidence, for though it guides and helps us in determining

that the judgment in question is lacking in real evidence, the

inconsistency itself is not independent of evidence but is appre

hended (if rightly apprehended) only because it ? s itself evident.

Thus, the fact that a judgment appears to be incompatible with

already known truths, simply causes us to rejlect, to see if the in

consistency is really there, and if the judgment must be rejected

as false. Similarly, if a judgment which appears to us to be

evident is at the same time seen to conflict with some view that

is widely or commonly accepted as true, this should cause us to

reflect both on the evidence for the judgment and on the reasons

and motives on account of which the view in question is accepted

as true, in order to ascertain, if we can, which is really evident. -

1 Cf. RICKABY, First Principles, pp. 196-200. The Hegelian influence is evi

dent in many comparatively recent works on Logic both in England and on the

Continent.

<2 C/. JKANNI&KE, op. cit., p. 252.

INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES OF CERTITUDE 287

As to the positive consistency or coherence of a judgment

with what we otherwise know to be true of its subject-matter, this,

no doubt, has more or less weight as evidence of the truth of the

judgment. The fact that a certain judgment or interpretation of

the data of some domain of our experience harmonizes or fits

in with what we already know about these data, and seems to

amplify and extend our knowledge of them, or to give us a

deeper insight into them, this fact alone, so far as it goes,

points to the truth of the judgment. But it can never establish

the truth of the judgment unless and until this judgment be

seen to be the only possible interpretation consistent with the

data in question, i.e. unless and until it is seen to be necessarily

involved in them and therefore logically inferrible from them : in

which case we have simply a conclusion based on mediate evi

dence. This is the ordinary procedure in verifying inductive

hypotheses. Now, physical science abounds in hypotheses of

such a character that the only kind of evidence available, as

pointing to their truth, lies in their harmony with, and their

capacity to explain or account for, wide domains of physical facts.

But this sort of cumulative evidence can never, strictly speaking,

establish the truth of such hypotheses. It may give them that

high degree of probability which warrants an assent of practical

certitude : i.e. we are perfectly justified in giving a provisional

assent to them, in accepting them as if their truth were es

tablished, in utilizing them and working on them as if we knew

them to be true. 1 The test of "consistency" will carry us no

farther than this ; and, so far, it is clear that its function in no

way supplants that of objective evidence. But, as put forward

above, it bears quite a different complexion, and involves claims

which will not stand impartial scrutiny.

In the first place, the truth of a judgment is not its conformity

with other judgments but its conformity with reality. Nor can

reality be identified with the whole system of judgments uni

versally accepted as forming a self-consistent or coherent whole

or system. Furthermore, the reality which is the objective term

of the conformity-relation of any individual judgment need not

be reality as already known through other judgments : on the

contrary, it is the reality as nozv known through the individual

judgment itself. No doubt, when the judgment is mediately

1 Cf. Science of Logic, ii., 226-37, for illustrations of such hypotheses, and for

account of the process of verifying inductive hypotheses generally.

288 THE OR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

evident this evidence will consist in the knowledge we already

possess about the reality through other judgments, and the

reality to which it conforms our minds will be the reality as already

known. But clearly this cannot be the case with all judgments,

nor is it the case with immediately evident or self-evident judg

ments. Unless there are some judgments through which we

begin to know reality as it is, apart from what other judgments

reveal about it, then either (a) we could never begin to have

knowledge at all, or else (b} knowledge would have for its ob

ject not reality but only mental representations. And this latter

alternative is what the theory involves : that the individual mind,

in judging, does not really transcend its own mental states :

that these, of course, include other minds with similar states,

but that all are phases of One Reality, and that this Reality can

be said to be known precisely in so far as it is seen to be simi

larly represented in all individual minds (m). To hold that

(a) the truth of the individual judgment is its consistency with

the whole system of accepted judgments, that (<) the truth of

the whole system is precisely the coherence and harmony of its

parts, and (c) that this whole system of mental relations is reality,

is to identify judgment with reality, the ideal with the real,

thought with thing, logical with ontological, representations

with things represented. It is the theory of the immanence or

relativity of knowledge, worked out into the only logical alter

native to Solipsism, namely, Idealistic Monism. But we have

already justified the theory which contradicts this, namely, the

realist view that the mind in its cognitive processes does transcend

itself and attain to truth in the sense of conformity with reality.

In the second place, the contention that only those judgments

are true, or expressive of reality (or, as the theory would have it,

"constitutive" of reality), which are so necessarily inter-related

and mutually coherent as to form a logically elaborated whole

or system, is not only unproven, but is also palpably at variance

with some of the very convictions which men universally accept

as true. In no other way could it be established than by show

ing that it is the only possible theory of truth and knowledge

which renders intelligible the data of human experience. But

while there is another theory of knowledge and of reality which

does render these data intelligible, namely, that which is

embodied in the philosophy of Theism, 1 the present (Hegelian)

1 Cf. Science of Logic, ii., 215, 224, 231-2, 256-7.

INTELLECTUALIST THEORIES OF CERTITUDE 289

conception is in conflict with even the most elementary verdicts

of reason reflecting on the data of experience. 1 For although

man can certainly effect partial systematizations of his knowledge,

or of some of his knowledge, into what are called sciences, it

cannot be maintained that knowledge is knowledge only in so

far as it is elaborated into one single system of logically inter

related and metaphysically necessary judgments. If this were

so, our ordinary existential judgments which interpret the con

crete, actual, contingent facts and happenings that form the data

of experience, would not be knowledge at all. Nay, more, they

would be erroneous : for according to the theory under consid

eration reality manifests itself in our individual human minds

only as a Process which is at once Thought and Being evolving

itself into a system of absolutely or metaphysically necessary mental

representations. But de facto multitudes of judgments which

men universally accept as true, as faithful interpretations of the

data of experience, are also universally accepted as contingent

judgments, and as representing their objects as contingent. The

distinction between the facts of our experience as contingent facts,

and the mutual relations of certain abstract objects of our

thought as necessary relations, is a distinction which experience

simply forces upon us by its evident reality, but for which,

nevertheless, there is no room in the Hegelian theory. Finally,

the human mind undeniably seeks to unify all its experience, to

find an ultimate explanation of the whole universe of things, to

account for its existence and nature by referring it to some

adequate Explanatory Principle. But if it follows faithfully the

evidence of the facts, the mind will be led certainly not to the

monistic conception which contradicts its experience, but to the

conception of a Transcendent Divine Being as Omnipotent

Creator and All-Wise Ruler of the universe.

In the third place it may be pointed out that the " consist

ency " theory of truth seems to labour under a defect which, even

were the theory otherwise faultless, would render it practically

useless. For apparently, before we could be certain that any

suggested judgment is true, we should need to have discovered its

consistency, coherency, harmony, not merely with some of the

judgments already included in the universally accepted system of

mutually coherent (and therefore " true ") judgments, but with

1 C/. Science of Logic, ii,, 215, 224, 231-2, 256-7.

VOL. II. ig

290 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

the whole system itself. But to know this system would be, for

any individual, an utter impossibility. Supporters of the theory

would, of course, admit this, and merely reply that consequently

all human truth is imperfect and relative : it is truth only " in the

making " : it is subject to revision and readjustment: it is aiming

at, and approximating to, an ideal that is indefinitely remote as

to its complete attainment and realization. This erroneous con

ception of knowledge will be recognized as a deformation of the

truth that no human knowledge gives an adequate insight into

reality, that the human mind is finite and capable of progress in

knowledge (143).

Finally, the theory we have been examining suggests and

partly includes another and distinct criterion of truth, a test

which has been advocated mainly by Traditionalists from their

special standpoint : the theory that the ultimate test of the truth

of (some, or all) human convictions is the universal acceptance of

such convictions by mankind generally. This view we shall now

examine in connexion with Traditionalism.