Riding now on the front of this wave of scientific logic Messrs.
Schiller and Dewey appear with their pragmatistic account of what
truth everywhere signifies. Everywhere, these teachers say, 'truth'
in our ideas and beliefs means the same thing that it means in
science. It means, they say, nothing but this, THAT IDEAS (WHICH
THEMSELVES ARE BUT PARTS OF OUR EXPERIENCE) BECOME TRUE JUST IN SO
FAR AS THEY HELP US TO GET INTO SATISFACTORY RELATION WITH OTHER
PARTS OF OUR EXPERIENCE, to summarize them and get about among them
by conceptual short-cuts instead of following the interminable
succession of particular phenomena. Any idea upon which we can ride,
so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one
part of our experience to any other part, linking things
satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor; is true
for just so much, true in so far forth, true INSTRUMENTALLY. This is
the 'instrumental' view of truth taught so successfully at Chicago,
the view that truth in our ideas means their power to 'work,'
promulgated so brilliantly at Oxford.
Messrs. Dewey, Schiller and their allies, in reaching this general
conception of all truth, have only followed the example of
geologists, biologists and philologists.
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