144. CRITICISM OF THE THEORY.

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Turning now to the

" evolutionist" theory of the relativity of knowledge, and grant

ing their full force to the observations just made, we must assert,

in opposition to the theory, that (i) truth cannot vary for differ

ent minds, or in other words the same judgment cannot be true

for some men and false for others ; (2) truth cannot vary for

different times or places, or in other words the same judgment

cannot be true at one time or in one place and false at another

time or in another place ; (3; from the very nature of knowledge

and truth it is impossible that the human intellect, as subject

1 Cf. Science of Logic, i., g 80, pp. 161-2.

RELATIVIST THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 239

of knowledge, be essentially, intrinsically, and in its nature so

subject to evolution or change that what it once apprehends as

true can ever become for it really false. Therefore the evolution

theory of the relativity of knowledge is false, and in ultimate

analysis unintelligible and destructive of the possibility of know

ledge. Let us take up these points briefly and in order.

(1) Knowledge is contained in the true judgment. Now the

judgment is a mental synthesis or comparison of concepts which

asserts that something is or is not, is so or is not so. This affirma

tion or denial will be true if it be determined by the objective

reality, and so represent mentally the real state of things ;

otherwise the affirmation or denial will be false. In other

words, it will be true if it conforms the mind with reality ; if

not it will be false. Now, the reality, the real state of things,

can be only one state of things ; it cannot be two or more

mutually contradictory or incompatible states of things : there

fore it cannot be truly represented in different minds by different

and contradictory or incompatible judgments. Hence if it be

known by different minds, i.e. truly represented by different

minds, this can only be because the different minds are con

formed with it by judging, interpreting, representing it similarly,

by the same (affirmative or negative) judgment. Hence if a

judgment be true for one mind it must be true for all minds. 1

This, in fact, is an essential property of truth or true knowledge :

its impersonality, its objectivity to the individual mind. There is

no knowledge unless there is conformity of thought or judg

ment with its object, which is reality : and such conformity

that this identical thought or judgment arises in every mind in

the act of knowing the reality which confronts it, identical in

spite of all individual divergences of personal taste or mentality.

(2) Practically the same consideration shows that the truth

of a judgment cannot vary with time or place.

In concrete, contingent judgments, i.e. judgments of the

" real " order (10), which make or imply assertions about matters

of contingent fact, about the concrete existence or happening

of things or events in time and space, we have seen already that

if any such judgment is true, then by a necessity of fact it is true

for all minds, at all times and in all places. " That Socrates

1 C/. ST. THOMAS : " Considerandum est quod veritas ex diversitate personarum

non variatur, unde cum aliquis veritatem loquitur, vinci non potest, cum quocunque

disputat". In Job xiii., 1. 2, apud JEANNIERE, op. cit., p. 320 n.

240 TIIEOR Y OF KNO IV LEDGE

existed " is true for all minds. "That an eclipse of the sun will

occur at such or such a date in the future" is likewise true for

all minds if it is true for any mind, i.e. it is true for all of them

alike, conditionally on the present order of the physical universe

persisting until the eclipse takes places ; and if this condition be

included in the judgment then the judgment is true for all minds

absolutely, 1 assuming, of course, that astronomers are right in

the calculations whereby they predict such an eclipse.

In regard to abstract, necessary judgments of the "ideal"

order, e.g. the principle of contradiction, the principle of

causality, the judgments of pure mathematics, judgments which,

being necessary, therefore hold good universally, since we have

already proved that what is revealed to the intellect through the

abstract concepts compared in such judgments is tJie nature of

the objectively real, including the nature of the intellect itself and

its cognitive processes, it follows that if reality has the nature

asserted in any such judgment by the individual intellect, in

other words, if such a judgment is true, it must be true for all

minds at all times and in all places. For the individual judg

ment, assumed to be true, asserts that reality is necessarily such

or such, independently of all actual conditions of the time-and-

space mode of existence of reality; but obviously if reality be

necessarily such or such, independently of its actual modes of

existence, it cannot be truly judged or represented to be other

wise by any mind at any time.

(3) There is a relation of the mind to reality, a relation which

is sui generis, and which has always been understood to be the

relation designated by the terms "cognition" or "knowledge"

(6). Being sui generis it cannot properly be defined ; but when

we use the term "knowledge" simply and without qualification

we mean true knowledge : and it has been universally understood

to be a sort of mental appropriation or possession of the real, by

a process which mentally reproduces or represents the real, and

which thereby assimilates or conforms the mind with reality, or,

again, which effects a conscious union or identification of the

mind with reality.- Now the individual knowing subject has

many other relations with reality besides this particular relation ;

and this particular kind of relation, or whole collection of such

1 C/. Science of Logic, ii., 250, 257.

2 C/. ST. THOMAS : " Intelligibile in actu et intellectus in actu unum sunt " ;

" Mens cognoscendo quodammodo tit ornnia ".

REL A TIVIST THEORIES OF KNO W LEDGE 24 1

relations, is one of a vast multitude of conditions, processes,

habits, and attitudes, of the individual knowing subject in his

concrete environment : these being the concomitants and con

sequences of the relation known as "knowledge". Now if

certain philosophers have taken the terms " truth " and " know

ledge," and used them in a new meaning, to designate some of

these other concomitant or consequent relations between the

knowing subject and his environment, rather than the relation

of conformity between the intellect judging or interpreting reality

and the reality so interpreted, this procedure of theirs by no

means abolishes or suppresses or explains away the relation

from which they wrested its traditional and recognized title of

"truth" or "true knowledge," while it confuses the issues of

Epistemology by fostering a misconception of its problems.

Moreover, as we shall see, such relations as "suitability" or

"usefulness" to human progress, "harmony" with the emotional,

ethical and religious cravings of human nature, etc., cannot con

stitute truth or true knowledge, for they already suppose the

possession of it. If, then, in the theory under consideration,

truth or true knowledge be understood in the commonly re

ceived sense to signify the conformity of the judgments of the

individual mind with reality, with that which is, a little reflection

will show that the theory is unintelligible and self-destructive.

For (a), the theory itself is presumably put forward by its

advocates as true, as the true explanation of what knowledge, or

the truth of knowledge, consists in. But either knowledge is

what this theory represents it to be, or it is not. If it is not,

then the theory should be rejected without further consideration as

false : and the alternative, scholastic view, that truth is something

absolute and unchangeable, should be accepted. If, on the other

hand, the theory is true, then this means, according to the theory

itself, merely that the view of knowledge embodied in it happens

to be the most acceptable and suitable, the one that " works best,"

for a particular section of human beings at a particular stage or

epoch of their " mental evolution," though it may not be so, and

may therefore be false, for other people or for other times.

But whatever " knowledge " really and truly is, that it is and

that it must be ; and if a certain theory of knowledge represents

" knowledge " as being something other than it really is, and

is therefore false for anyone at any time, the theory must be

false simply and absolutely and without qualification. What is

VOL. ii. 16

24^ THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

true must be true for all, whether it be impervious or unpalatable

to lew or to many ; and what is false must be false for all

whether it be embraced and cherished by few or by many.

Moreover (b\ the real being which is the subject of knowledge,

the human intellect in the present context, the intellect which in

interpreting the world of conscious experience derives therefrom

the concept of "evolution " or " progressive change," and con

siders this concept to be validly applicable to certain domains of

this conscious experience, must see that the concept would not

and could not be validly applicable to these domains if it did not

reveal anything as to their real nature. But manifestly it could

not reveal anything of the kind if the concept of " evolution "

itself (no less than all other concepts) must be regarded as a

mere ephemeral and changing product of an intellect likewise

essentially subject to an unceasing process of "evolving" ever

and always into something totally different from what it is at any

particular stage of this process. On such a theory we could not

possibly say that our concepts validly represent, or our judgments

truly express, or our intellects really know, anything as to the

nature of reality, of that which is or happens. At the very most

there would be going on, in each conscious individual, a process

of mere a\vareness in which the subjective representations and

the subject of the representations would be for ever essentially

changing, and in which it would be pure illusion and error for the

conscious subject to think (if per inipossibile he could think, i.e.

conceive, judge, interpret) his conscious states to be " know

ledge," i.e. to be true or genuine representations of reality. If

there be truth or knowledge at all it must be that relation of

intellect to reality, which expresses mentally that wJiicJi is or

happens; and if there be intellectual or rational cognition at all

it must be the intellectual or rational process which establishes

this relation. But what reality, or any portion of reality is, that

it is simply and absolutely. If reality exists, then it iloes exist.

If reality changes, then it does change. If the principle of

identity is not absolute, there is an end of reason and intelligi

bility. If, therefore, the mind conceives or judges reality, or

any portion thereof, to exist or to happen or to be such and such,

and if this mental state, so far as it goes, is true, i.e. if it rightly

represents or expresses the real, if the reality or portion thereof

does exist or happen or is such and such, then manifestly the

judgment is true absolutely, just as absolutely as it is true that

RELA TIVIST THEORIES OF KNO WLEDGE 243

" whatever is is," "whatever is not is not" " whatever happens

or changes does happen or change" etc. Now the existence of

such mental states and mental relations to reality, as those just

referred to, is an undeniable fact, and it is to them the titles

"truth" and "knowledge" properly belong, whatever other

conditions of the individual mind or of its environment, or re

lations of the individual mind to its environment, certain phil

osophers may have described under the guise of those titles. 1

Moreover, the relation called truth or true knowledge must, as

we have just seen, be absolute and unchangeable if it is to be at

all intelligible. But this clearly involves that the concepts and

judgments of the human intellect, its representations or interpre

tations of reality, must, in so far as they are true, be absolutely

and immutably what they are. And it is only by possessing

such concepts and judgments that the human intellect can have

truth or true knowledge at all. Now, what is the necessary in

ference from all this as to the nature of the human intellect ?

Obviously, that inasmuch as it can think, conceive, judge, reason,

reflect, etc., and thereby attain to some true knowledge of the real,

it must be in its own nature, as subject of knowledge, as a real

being capable of knowing and actually possessed of knowledge,

it must be itself essentially and in its substantial nature exempt

from all such processes of substantial change or essential evolution

as it may apprehend in the domain of sense experience. In other

words, it must have itself a suprasensible , essentially simple, im

material or spiritual mode of being.

Truth or true knowledge is indeed an endowment of the individual human

intellect, but it has the undeniable and deeply significant peculiarity of being

impersonal, objective, of transcending the time and space limitations of the

human individuality. And thus it proves the human intellect, as the subject

1 The distinction of truth or knowledge into two broadly different departments,

speculative and practical, must not be misunderstood in the sense in which it would

render certain of those theories plausible, as, for instance, Kant s theory of the

knowledge of the Practical Reason. The distinction does not lie in the truth or

knowledge itself, but is based merely on its effects, i.e. on something extrinsic to it.

There are not two essentially distinct mental processes or states included under those

titles. Considered as truth or true knowledge, the knowledge called " speculative "

and that called " practical" are one and the same : mental insight into reality, the

conformity of the mind judging with the reality interpreted. But because the truth

or knowledge embodied in some of our true judgments has a direct and immediate

bearing on human conduct, practice, activity, while that of other judgments has no

such immediate import for the ordering of our lives, knowledge of the former kind

has been called " practical " and that of the latter kind speculative " . Cf. infra,

chap. xxv.

16*

244 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

possessing it, to belong to a higher domain or order of reality than things

which are merely objects but not subjects of knowledge, things which are

"known" but are not themselves "knowers": the domain which we call

"spiritual". Being objective and impersonal, knowledge would be wholly

unintelligible and impossible if human intellects differed essentially, as sub

jects or possessors of knowledge, from one another, or if they were subject

to an evolution process whereby they would evolve successively in the course

of ages into essentially different forms or modes of being.

CHAPTER XXIII.

TRUTH AND EVIDENCE.