To avoid this reductio ad absurdum, it has been suggested that it is not the coherence of the idea in human, finite, minds which constitutes ‘truth,’ but the perfect consistency of the experience of an Absolute Mind.  The test, then, of our limited coherency will lie in its relation to this Absolute System.  But here we have the correspondence doctrine once again in a fresh disguise; our human systems are now ‘true’ if they correspond with the Absolute’s, But as there is no way for us of sharing the Absolute Experience, our test is again illusory, and productive of a depressing scepticism; and, again, we have only asserted that truth is what claims to be part of the Absolute System.

A word may be devoted to the simple refusal of intuitionists to give an account of Truth on the ground that it is ‘indefinable.’  Truth is taken to be an ultimate unanalyzable quality of certain propositions, intuitively felt, and incapable of description.  Error, by the same token, should be equally indefinable and as immediately apprehended.  How, then, can there be differences of opinion, and mistakes as to what is true and what false?  How is it that a proposition which is felt to be ‘true’ so often turns out to be erroneous?  If all errors are felt to be true by those they deceive, is it not clear that immediate feeling is not a good enough test of a validated truth?  Thus, once again, we find that an account of truth-claim is being foisted on us in place of a description of truth-testing.

The intellectualist, then, being in every case unable to justify the vital distinction commonly made between the true and the false, we return to the pragmatist.  He starts with no preconceptions as to what truth must mean, whether it exists or not; he is content to watch how de facto claims to truth get themselves validated in experience.  He observes that every question is intimately related to some scheme of human purposes.  For it has to be put, in order to come into being.  Hence every inquiry arises, and every question is asked, because of obstacles and problems which arise in the carrying out of human purposes.  So soon as uncertainty arises in the course of fulfilling a purpose, an idea or belief is formulated and acted on, to fill the gap where immediate certitude has broken down.  This engenders the truth-claim, which is necessarily a ‘good’ in its maker’s eyes, because it has been selected by him and judged preferable to any alternative that occurred to him.

How, then, is it tested?  Simply by the consequences which follow from adopting it and using it as an assumption upon which to work.  If these consequences are satisfactory, if they promote the purpose in hand, instead of thwarting it, and thus have a valuable effect upon life, then the truth-claim maintains its ‘truth,’ and is so far validated.  This is the universal method of testing assertions alike in the formation of mathematical laws, physical hypotheses, religious