The Meaning of Truth | Page 5

and first published in Mind,
vol. x (1885).--This, and the following articles have received a very
slight verbal revision, consisting mostly in the omission of
redundancy.]
The following inquiry is (to use a distinction familiar to readers of Mr.
Shadworth Hodgson) not an inquiry into the 'how it comes,' but into the
'what it is' of cognition. What we call acts of cognition are evidently
realized through what we call brains and their events, whether there be
'souls' dynamically connected with the brains or not. But with neither
brains nor souls has this essay any business to transact. In it we shall
simply assume that cognition IS produced, somehow, and limit
ourselves to asking what elements it contains, what factors it implies.
Cognition is a function of consciousness. The first factor it implies is
therefore a state of consciousness wherein the cognition shall take place.
Having elsewhere used the word 'feeling' to designate generically all
states of consciousness considered subjectively, or without respect to
their possible function, I shall then say that, whatever elements an act
of cognition may imply besides, it at least implies the existence of a
FEELING. [If the reader share the current antipathy to the word
'feeling,' he may substitute for it, wherever I use it, the word 'idea,'
taken in the old broad Lockian sense, or he may use the clumsy phrase
'state of consciousness,' or finally he may say 'thought' instead.]
Now it is to be observed that the common consent of mankind has
agreed that some feelings are cognitive and some are simple facts
having a subjective, or, what one might almost call a physical,
existence, but no such self-transcendent function as would be implied
in their being pieces of knowledge. Our task is again limited here. We

are not to ask, 'How is self-transcendence possible?' We are only to ask,
'How comes it that common sense has assigned a number of cases in
which it is assumed not only to be possible but actual? And what are
the marks used by common sense to distinguish those cases from the
rest?' In short, our inquiry is a chapter in descriptive
psychology,--hardly anything more.
Condillac embarked on a quest similar to this by his famous hypothesis
of a statue to which various feelings were successively imparted. Its
first feeling was supposed to be one of fragrance. But to avoid all
possible complication with the question of genesis, let us not attribute
even to a statue the possession of our imaginary feeling. Let us rather
suppose it attached to no matter, nor localized at any point in space, but
left swinging IN VACUO, as it were, by the direct creative FIAT of a
god. And let us also, to escape entanglement with difficulties about the
physical or psychical nature of its 'object' not call it a feeling of
fragrance or of any other determinate sort, but limit ourselves to
assuming that it is a feeling of Q. What is true of it under this abstract
name will be no less true of it in any more particular shape (such as
fragrance, pain, hardness) which the reader may suppose.
Now, if this feeling of Q be the only creation of the god, it will of
course form the entire universe. And if, to escape the cavils of that
large class of persons who believe that SEMPER IDEM SENTIRE AC
NON SENTIRE are the same, [Footnote:1 'The Relativity of
Knowledge,' held in this sense, is, it may be observed in passing, one of
the oddest of philosophic superstitions. Whatever facts may be cited in
its favor are due to the properties of nerve-tissue, which may be
exhausted by too prolonged an excitement. Patients with neuralgias that
last unremittingly for days can, however, assure us that the limits of
this nerve-law are pretty widely drawn. But if we physically could get a
feeling that should last eternally unchanged, what atom of logical or
psychological argument is there to prove that it would not be felt as
long as it lasted, and felt for just what it is, all that time? The reason for
the opposite prejudice seems to be our reluctance to think that so stupid
a thing as such a feeling would necessarily be, should be allowed to fill
eternity with its presence. An interminable acquaintance, leading to no

knowledge-about,--such would be its condition.] we allow the feeling
to be of as short a duration as they like, that universe will only need to
last an infinitesimal part of a second. The feeling in question will thus
be reduced to its fighting weight, and all that befalls it in the way of a
cognitive function must be held to befall in the brief instant of its
quickly snuffed-out life,--a life, it will also be noticed, that has no other