Chapter IX: What is Truth?

The sceptics assert that truth does not and cannot exist, and the assertion has eaten so deep into the modern mind, that the only philosophy which has spread in our day is that of Kant, which takes scepticism for its point of departure. But read the preface to the first edition of _The Critique of Pure Reason_ attentively, and you will be convinced that he had absolutely no concern with the question: 'What is truth?' He only set himself to solve the problem, what should a man do who had been convinced of the impossibility of finding the objective truth. The old metaphysic with its arbitrary and unproven assertions, which could not bear criticism, irritated Kant, and he decided to get rid, even though by accepting the relative legitimacy of scepticism, of the unscientific discipline which he, as a teacher of philosophy, had to represent. But the confidence of the sceptics and Kant's deference are not in the least binding upon us. And after all Kant himself did not fulfil the obligations which he undertook. For if we do not know what is truth, what value have the postulates of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul? How can we justify or explain any one of the existing religions, Christianity included? Although the Gospel does not at all agree with our scientific notions of the laws of nature, yet it does not in itself contain anything contrary to reason. We do not disbelieve in miracles because they are impossible. On the contrary, it is as clear as day to the most ordinary common sense that life itself, the foundation of the world, is the miracle of miracles. And if the task of philosophy had reduced to the mere demonstration of the possibility of a miracle, her business would have been splendidly accomplished long ago. The whole trouble is that visible miracles are not enough for people, and that it is impossible to deduce from the fact that many miracles have already taken place that other miracles, without which mere existence is often impossible, will also happen in due course. Men are being born--without doubt a great miracle; there exists a beautiful world--also a miracle of miracles. But does it follow that men will rise from the grave, and that paradise is made ready for them? The raising of Lazarus is not much believed nowadays even by those who revere the Gospel, not because they will not admit the possibility of miracles in general, but because they cannot decide _a priori_ which miracles are possible and which are not, and therefore they are obliged to judge _a posteriori._ They readily accept a miracle that has happened, but they doubt the miracle that has not happened, and _the more they doubt,_ the more passionately do they desire it. It costs nothing to believe in the final triumph of good upon the earth (though it would be an absolute miracle), in progress or the infallibility of the Pope (these too are miracles and by no means inconsiderable), for after all men are quite sufficiently indifferent to good, to progress, and to the virtues of the Pope. It is much harder, nay quite impossible, standing before the dead body of one who is near and dear, to believe that an angel will fly down from heaven and bring the dead to life again, although the world is full of happenings no less miraculous than the raising of the dead.

Therefore the sceptics are wrong when they assert that there is no truth. Truth exists, but we do not know it in all its volume, nor can we formulate that which we do know: we cannot imagine why it happened thus and not otherwise, or whether that which happened had to happen thus, or whether something else quite different might have happened. Once it was held that reality obeys the laws of necessity, but Hume explained that the notion of necessity is subjective, and therefore must be discarded as illusory. His idea was caught up (without the deduction) by Kant. All those of our judgments which have the character of universality and necessity, acquire it only by virtue of our psychological organisation. In those cases where we are particularly convinced of the objective value of our judgment, we have merely to do with a purely subjective certainty, though it is immutable and secure in the visible world. It is well known that Kant did not accept Hume's deduction: not only did he make no attempt to banish the false premisses from our intellectual economy, as Hume did with the conception of necessity, but, on the contrary, he declared that such an attempt was quite impracticable. The practical reason suggested to Kant that though the foundations of our judgments are vitiated by their source, yet their invariability may be of great assistance in the world of phenomena, that is in the space between the birth and death of man. If a man has lived before birth (as Plato held), and will live after death, then his 'truths' were not, and will not be necessary there, in the other world. What truths are _there,_ and whether there are any truths at all, Kant only guesses, and he succeeds in his guesses only because of his readiness to ignore logic in his conclusions. He suddenly gives faith an immense right to judge of the real world, a right of which faith would never dream had it not been taken under his special patronage by the philosopher himself. But why can faith do that which reason cannot? And a yet more insidious question: Are not all postulates invented by the same mind which was deprived of its rights in the first Critique, but which subsequently obtained a verdict of _restitutio in integrum,_ by changing the name of the firm? The last hypothesis is the most probable. And if so, then does it not follow that in the real world so carefully divided by Kant from the world of phenomena we will find much that is new, but not a little that is old.

In general it is clear that the assumption that our world is a world of an instant, a brief dream, utterly unlike real life, is mistaken. This assumption, first enunciated by Plato, and afterwards elaborated and maintained by many representatives of religious and philosophical thought, is based upon no data at all. There's no denying, it is very pleasant. But as often happens, as soon as the wish was invested with language, by the mere fact it received too sharp and angular an expression, so that it lost all resemblance to itself. The essence of the true, primordial life beyond the grave appears to Plato as absolute good refined from all alloy, as the essence of virtue. But after all Plato himself cannot suffer the absolute emptiness of the ideal existence, and constantly flavours it with elements which are by no means ideal, but which give interest and intensity to his dialogues. If you have never had the occasion to read Plato himself, acquaint yourself with his philosophy through the teaching of any of his admirers and appreciators, and you will be struck by its emptiness. Read the thick volume of Natorp's well-known work, and you will see what value there is in Plato's 'purified' doctrine. And in passing I would recommend as a general rule, this method of examining the ideas of famous philosophers, by acquainting oneself with them not only in the original works, but in the expositions of their disciples, particularly of faithful and conscientious disciples. When the fascination of the personality and the genius disappears and the naked, unadorned 'truth' remains--disciples always believe that the master had the truth, and they reveal it without any embellishment or fig leaf--only then does it become quite clear of how little value are the fundamental thoughts of even the most exalted philosophers. Still more obvious does it become when the faithful disciple begins to draw conclusions from his master's proportions. The book of the aforesaid Natorp, a great Plato expert, is a _reductio ad absurdum_ of all his master's ideas. Plato is revealed as a logical Neo-Kantian, a narrow-minded savant, who had been put thoroughly through the mill at Freiburg or Heidelberg. It is also revealed that Plato's ideas, in the pure state, do not in the least express his real attitude to life and to the world. One must take the whole Plato with his contradictions and inconsequence, with his vices and virtues, and value his defects at least as much as his qualities, or even add one or two defects, and be blind to one or two virtues. For it is probable that he, as a man to whom nothing human was alien, tried to assume a few virtues which he did not possess, and to conceal a few failings. This course should be followed with other masters of wisdom and their doctrines. Then 'the other world' will not appear to be separated by such an abyss from our earthly vale. And perhaps, in spite of Kant, some empirical truths will be found common to both worlds. Then Pilate's question will lose much of its all-conquering certainty. He wished to wash his hands of the business, and he asked, 'What is truth?' After him and before him, many who had no desire to struggle have devised ingenious questions and taken their stand upon scepticism. But every one knows that truth does exist, and sometimes can even formulate its own conception with the clarity and precision demanded by Descartes. Is the miraculous bounded by the miracles that have already been seen on earth, or are its limits set much wider? And if wider, then how much?