In spite of my admiration of Mr. Russell’s analytic powers, I wish, after reading such an article, that pragmatism, even had it no other function, might result in making him and other similarly gifted men ashamed of having used such powers in such abstraction from reality.  Pragmatism saves us at any rate from such diseased abstractionism as those pages show.

P. S. Since the foregoing rejoinder was written an article on Pragmatism which I believe to be by Mr. Russell has appeared in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1909.  As far as his discussion of the truth-problem goes, altho he has evidently taken great pains to be fair, it seems to me that he has in no essential respect improved upon his former arguments.  I will therefore add nothing further, but simply refer readers who may be curious to pp. 272-280 of the said article.

XV

A DIALOGUE

After correcting the proofs of all that precedes I imagine a residual state of mind on the part of my reader which may still keep him unconvinced, and which it may be my duty to try at least to dispel.  I can perhaps be briefer if I put what I have to say in dialogue form.  Let then the anti-pragmatist begin:—­

Anti-Pragmatist:—­You say that the truth of an idea is constituted by its workings.  Now suppose a certain state of facts, facts for example of antediluvian planetary history, concerning which the question may be asked: 

‘Shall the truth about them ever be known?’ And suppose (leaving the hypothesis of an omniscient absolute out of the account) that we assume that the truth is never to be known.  I ask you now, brother pragmatist, whether according to you there can be said to be any truth at all about such a state of facts.  Is there a truth, or is there not a truth, in cases where at any rate it never comes to be known?

Pragmatist:—­Why do you ask me such a question?

Anti-Prag.:—­Because I think it puts you in a bad dilemma.

Prag.:—­How so?

Anti-Prag.:—­Why, because if on the one hand you elect to say that there is a truth, you thereby surrender your whole pragmatist theory.  According to that theory, truth requires ideas and workings to constitute it; but in the present instance there is supposed to be no knower, and consequently neither ideas nor workings can exist.  What then remains for you to make your truth of?

Prag.:—­Do you wish, like so many of my enemies, to force me to make the truth out of the reality itself?  I cannot:  the truth is something known, thought or said about the reality, and consequently numerically additional to it.  But probably your intent is something different; so before I say which horn of your dilemma I choose, I ask you to let me hear what the other horn may be.

Anti-Prag.:—­The other horn is this, that if you elect to say that there is no truth under the conditions assumed, because there are no ideas or workings, then you fly in the face of common sense.  Doesn’t common sense believe that every state of facts must in the nature of things be truly statable in some kind of a proposition, even tho in point of fact the proposition should never be propounded by a living soul?