What is Truth? [pp. 506-535]

What is Truth?
Hence, any supposition contrary to fact may be entertained,
even contradictory to the senses, and may be thought of
apart from all its relations, without involving absurdity merely
by its conception. But the instant we connect it with the
order of thought, such conception falls to the ground.
Truth, then, being the conformity to the will of God, as
made known to us by its expression in creation and the
Divine government, it follows:
I. This Truth is one and indivisible, save in thought, wherever it is found. It would be impossible, without writing a history of speculative philosophy, to discuss all the theories which
have been held respecting the essence and relations of Truth.
For every inquiry after new facts, every investigation of unexplained phenomena, is only a question about Truth in its applications. A search after its essence embodies the substance of
Realism; while the substitution of a name instead of the
essence in each case where truth exists, is Nominalism. Both
these conflicting systems, however, are only species embraced
under a higher genus, and are co6rdinate in our conception of
Truth. Plato, and those who follow him, hold that names,
whether general or particular terms, represent actually existing things, and these are ideas or images which have had a
being from all eternity, and were the patterns after which God
created the world.* Hence, the embodiment of these ideas
in creation are the manifestations of Not3) as Jziuzovpy6;, a
Divine Intelligence.t This is Realism, and so far presents no
objectionable features, because we are compelled to believe
that God created the universe according to his pleasure, and
that each thing made was fashioned in conformity to an act of
his will. Those, again, who follow Aristotle and reject Realism, discern in the name of a thing no actual existence, but
merely a sign by which it is signified. Yet these have in mind
some energy, blind or intelligent, according to their attitude
toward Theism, which, while known to us only by name,
because it cannot be apprehended by the senses, produces a
*Timaeus, 38 C. Kai xCard r6 7rapd,ezl-/ua rT cicoVzd5 q;6ea5, Zv' c35
jioz6raCro5 dvrac3 ara 6VVvaclZy b ro /EV yap,r lrapd,ezy/La Irdavrcr
aicGvya 6rzY LY, 6O 8'ce0 C"zd rLtov5 r6V aTrayra Xp6'ov yeyovyc r xazi
c3V xcri 66,U/evov5.
Parmenides, 132 D. Td jev e8raY cTASi6rep rcdaEiyuara 6rivatrz
dYv riV qnEz, rcL 8' acOtct rovrozq AoL6,aZ xcz EZVAZ ojtaOZ/itarCc.
I 877.]
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