What is Truth? [pp. 506-535]

V/VIaat is Truth z?
under the belief that it could not be answered; and this
rendered the questioner both averse to the labor necessary to
find a solution, and unwilling to accept it if offered. Besides,
a fruitless search in the wrong way begets doubt, since the
mind is prone to conclude that what it does not find after
laborious effort, cannot be discovered. For men readily adopt
the doctrine of Protagoras,* and make themselves the measure
of all things; and hence believe that what does not submit to
this standard does not exist, or is not worth the discovery.
Truth, in its essential nature, is one of those primary notions which are so simple that they cannot be explained; since
any of the terms employed in the definition are more obscure
than the thing to be defined. For a necessary condition of a
definition is that it makes something clear, which before was
dark. The labored efforts to explain this notion in words have,
therefore, been misspent; and the results, assuming the protean
shape of the terms employed to elucidate, have diverted attention from the real object of pursuit. This has led Pyrrho,
Democritus, and their many followers, to doubt the existence
of Truth; and, as a necessary consequence, to believe nothing.
For if there be not this foundation to build upon, of course
there cannot be knowledge, and this unbelief is a mnagician's
serpent, which does not merely swallow up all others, but, if
consistent, swallows itself. The trouble, however, in such
definitions, arises because that has been attempted which
is impossible from the nature of the case to be done, save by
a superior intelligence. It cannot be doubted that he who gave
understanding to men, can, if he choses, make primary notions
more clear than they now are to us, either by strengthening
the intellectual powers, or by presenting the idea in a different
view. This might be done by resolving that which is to us,
with our present powers, a primary notion, into something more
elementary; or by elucidating the idea through its relations.
The latter was done by our Lord, when on trial before the
Roman governor, through the explanation of an abstract
primary conception by means of a concrete example. This is,
indeed, the most satisfactory sort of elucidation; for nothing
* Plato Theaet., I52 A. 1Ipcoray6pa5 a r/i ydp top ti'rcov Xpr7?,crcov
uidrpo, ovMpctOov ezvaz, rapv /uv o'rco, cS e6rt, zicoV d 8,i u v:cov,
u OVI t
:i877.]
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