Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
Truth
-
- NOT everyone knows Josiah Royce's definition of a liar as a man who
willfully misplaces his ontological predicates, but everyone who has ever told a lie
will recognize its accuracy.
-
- To restate the definition less elegantly, lying consists in saying the
contrary of what one thinks or believes. To speak truthfully we must make our speech
conform to our thought, we must say that something is the case if we think it is, or that
it is not, if we think it is not. If we deliberately say "is" when we think is
not, or say "is not" when we think is, we lie.
Of course, the man who speaks truthfully may in fact say what is false,
just as the man whose intent is to falsify may inadvertently speak the truth. The
intention to speak one's mind does not guarantee that one's mind is free from error or in
possession of the truth.
Herein lies the traditional distinction between truth as a social and as
an intellectual matter. What Dr. Johnson calls moral truth consists in the
obligation to say what we mean. In contrast what he calls physical truth depends
not on the veracity of what we say but on the validity of what we mean. The theory of
truth in the tradition of the great books deals largely with the latter kind of truth.
- The great issues concern whether we can know the truth
and how we can ever tell whether something is true or false.
Though the philosophers and scientists, from Plato to Freud, seem to
stand together against the extreme sophistry or skepticism which denies the distinction
between true and false or puts truth utterly beyond the reach of man, they do not all
agree on the extent to which truth is attainable by men, on its immutability or
variability, on the signs by which men tell whether they have the truth or not, or on the
causes of error and the means for avoiding falsity.
Much that Plato thinks is true Freud rejects as false. Freud searches for truth in other
quarters and by other methods. But the ancient controversy in which Socrates engages with
the sophists of his day, who were willing to regard as true whatever anyone wished to
think, seems to differ not at all from Freud's quarrel with those whom he calls
- "intellectual nihilists." They are the persons
who say there is no such thing as truth or that it is only the product of our own needs
and desires. They make it "absolutely immaterial," Freud writes, "what
views we accept. All of them are equally true and false. And no one has a right to accuse
anyone else of error."
Across the centuries the arguments against the skeptic seem to be the
same. If the skeptic does not mind contradicting himself when he tries to defend the truth
of the proposition that all propositions are equally true or false, he can perhaps be
challenged by the fact that he does not act according to his view.
- If all opinions are equally true or false, then why,
Aristotle asks, does not the denier of truth walk "into a well or over a
precipice" instead of avoiding such things.
- "If it were really a matter of indifference what we
believed," Freud similarly argues, "then we might just as well build our bridges
of cardboard as of stone, or inject a tenth of a gramme of morphia into a patient instead
of a hundredth, or take tear-gas as a narcotic instead of ether. But," he adds,
"the intellectual anarchists themselves would strongly repudiate such practical
applications of their theory."
Whether the skeptic can be refuted or merely silenced may depend on a
further step in the argument, in which the skeptic substitutes probability for truth, both
as a basis for action and as the quality of all our opinions about the real world. The
argument takes different forms according to the different ways in which probability is
distinguished from truth or according to the distinction between a complete and limited
skepticism.
Montaigne, for example, seems to think that the complete skeptic cannot
even acknowledge degrees of probability to be objectively ascertainable without admitting
the criterion of truth, whereas Hume, defending a mitigated skepticism, offers criteria
for measuring the probability of judgments about matters of fact.
THE POSITION OF THE skeptic, in its bearing on truth and probability, is discussed in the
chapters on KNOWLEDGE and OPINION. Here we shall proceed to other controversial questions
concerning truth. But we must first observe that there is one major question which does
not seem to cause much dispute.
- Not only do the great authors (with the possible
exception of Montaigne and Hume) seem to be unanimous in their conviction that men can
attain and share the truth--at least some truths--but they also appear to give the same
answer to the question, What is truth?
The apparently unanimous agreement on the nature of truth may seem
remarkable in the context of the manifold disagreements in the great books concerning what
is true. As already indicated, some of these disagreements occur in the theory of truth
itself -- in divergent analyses of the sources of error, or in conflicting formulations of
the signs of truth. But even these differences do not affect the agreement on the nature
of truth.
- Just as everyone knows what a liar is, but not as readily
whether someone is telling a lie, so the great philosophers seem able to agree on what
truth is, but not as readily on what is true.
That the definitions--of lying and of truth--are intimately connected
will be seen from
- Plato's conception of the nature of truth as a
correspondence between thought and reality.
If truthfulness, viewed socially, requires a man's words to be
a faithful representation of his mind, truth in the mind itself (or in the statements
which express thought) depends on their conformity to reality.
A false proposition, according to Plato, is "one which asserts the non-existence of
things which are, and the existence of things which are not." Since "false
opinion is that form of opinion which thinks the opposite of the truth," it
necessarily follows, as Aristotle points out, that "to say of what is that it is, and
of what is not that it is not, is true," just as it is false "to say of what is
that it is not, or of what is not that it is."
In one sense, the relation between a true statement and the fact it states is reciprocal.
"If a man is," Aristotle declares, then "the proposition in which we allege
that he is, is true; and conversely, if the proposition wherein we allege that he is, is
true, then he is." But the true proposition "is in no way the cause of the being
of the man," whereas "the fact of the man's being does seem somehow to be the
cause of the truth of the proposition, for the truth or falsity of the proposition depends
on the fact of the man's being or not being."
- THIS SIMPLE STATEMENT about the nature of truth is
repeated again and again in the subsequent tradition of western thought. What variation
there is from writer to writer seems to be in phrasing alone, though the common insight
concerning truth as an agreement or correspondence between the mind and reality may occur
in the context of widely varying conceptions concerning the nature of the mind and of
reality or being.
Plotinus may be an exception, insofar as his theory of knowledge
involves a relation of identity rather than of mere correspondence. "The object
known," he writes, "must be identical with the knowing act . . . If this
identity does not exist, neither does truth . . . Truth cannot apply to something
conflicting with itself; what it affirms it must also be."
But others, like Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Spinoza, adopt the conception of truth
as an agreement between the mind and reality. Falsehood occurs, says Augustine, when
"something is thought to be which is not." According to Aquinas, "any
intellect which understands a thing to be otherwise than it is, is false." Truth in
the human intellect consists "in the conformity of the intellect with the
thing."
The same point is implied, at least, in Descartes' remark that if we do
not relate our ideas "to anything beyond themselves, they cannot properly speaking be
false." Error or, for that matter, truth can only arise in "my judging that the
ideas which are in me are similar or conformable to the things which are outside me."
Spinoza states it as an axiom rather than a definition that "a true idea must agree
with that of which it is the idea."
Making a distinction between verbal and real truth, Locke writes: "Though our words
signify nothing but our ideas, yet being designed by them to signify things, the truth
they contain, when put into propositions, will be only verbal, when they stand for ideas
in the mind that have not an agreement with the reality of things." Precisely because
he considers truth to consist "in the accordance of a cognition with its
object," Kant holds that, so far as the content (as opposed to the form) of a
cognition is concerned, it is impossible to discover a universal criterion of truth.
We shall return to Kant's point in a subsequent discussion of the signs of truth, as also
we shall have occasion to return to Locke's distinction between real and verbal truth.
Neither affects the insight that truth consists in the agreement of our propositions or
judgments with the facts they attempt to state, unless it is the qualification that truth
so defined is real, not verbal.
In his Preface to The Meaning of Truth, James comments on the excitement caused
by his earlier lectures on pragmatism, in which, offering the pragmatist's conception of
truth, he had spoken of an idea's "working successfully" as the sign of its
truth. He warns his critics that this is not a new definition of the nature of truth, but
only a new interpretation of what it means to say that the truth of our ideas consists in
"their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality. Pragmatists and
intellectualists," he adds, "both accept this definition as a matter of course.
"To agree in the widest sense with reality," James then explains, "can only
mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into
such working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better
than if we disagreed. Better either intellectually or practically . . . Any idea that
helps us to deal, whether practically or intellectually, with either the reality or its
belongings . . . that fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality's whole
setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the requirement. It will be true of that
reality."
Without enlarging on its meaning as James does, Freud affirms that the ordinary man's
conception of truth is that of the scientist also. Science, he says, aims "to arrive
at correspondence with reality, that is to say with what exists outside of us and
independently of us... This correspondence with the real external world we call truth. It
is the aim of scientific work, even when the practical value of that work does not
interest us."
THE DEFINITION OF TRUTH as the agreement of the mind with reality leaves many problems to
be solved and further explanations to be given by those who accept it. As James indicates,
the theory of truth, begins rather than ends with its definition. How do we know when our
ideas--our statements or judgments--correspond with reality? By what signs or criteria
shall we discover their truth or falsity? To this question the great books give various
answers which we shall presently consider. There are other problems about the nature of
truth which deserve attention first.
For example, one consequence of the definition seems to be that
- truth is a property of ideas rather than of things.
Aristotle says that "it is not as if the good were true and the bad were in itself
false"; hence "falsity and truth are not in things . . . but in thought."
Yet he also applies the word "false" to non-existent things or
to things whose appearance somehow belies their nature. Aquinas goes further. He
distinguishes between the sense in which truth and falsity are primarily in the intellect
and secondarily in things.
The equation between intellect and thing, he points out, can be looked at in two ways,
depending on whether the intellect is the cause of the thing's nature, or the nature of
the thing is the cause of knowledge in the intellect.
- When "things are the measure and rule of the
intellect, truth consists in the equation of the intellect to the thing . . . But when the
intellect is the rule or measure of things, truth consists in the equation of things to
the intellect" -- as the product of human art may be said to be true when it accords
with the artist's plan or intention. Thus "a house is said to be true that fulfills
the likeness of the form in the architect's mind."
But, according to Aquinas, not only artificial things, but natural
things as well, can have truth when they are viewed in relation to the intellect on which
they depend. The divine intellect which is the creative cause of natural things measures
their truth, as the human intellect measures the truth of artificial things. "Natural
things are said to be true," Aquinas writes, "in so far as they express the
likeness of the ideas that are in the divine mind; for a stone is called true, which
possesses the nature proper to a stone, according to the preconception in the divine
intellect."
Aquinas' conclusion--that "truth resides primarily in the intellect and secondarily
in things according as they are related to the intellect as their source"--at once
suggests the profound difference between truth in the divine and in the human intellect.
The difference is more than that between infinite and finite truth. The distinction
between uncreated and created truth affects the definition of truth itself.
The definition of truth as an equation of thought to thing, or thing to thought, does not
seem to hold for the divine intellect. The notion of "conformity with its
source," Aquinas acknowledges, "cannot be said, properly speaking, of divine
truth." Divine truth has no source. It is not truth by correspondence with anything
else. Rather it is, in the language of the theologian, the "primal truth."
"God Himself, Who is the primal truth ... is the rule of all truth," and
"the principle and source of all truth."
IN THE HUMAN SPHERE, the definition of truth seems to be differently interpreted according
as truth is made a property of words or of ideas. "To form a clear notion of
truth," Locke writes, "it is very necessary to consider truth of thought
and truth of words distinctly from one another." The truth of signs, or what
is sometimes called "truth of signification," is "nothing but the joining
or separating of words in propositions as the ideas they stand for agree or disagree in
men's minds." In contrast to such verbal truth, what Locke calls mental
truth consists in the joining or separating of our ideas themselves in a manner to
accord with the realities they represent.
For Locke, verbal truth is "chimerical" or "barely nominal" because it
can exist without any regard to "whether our ideas are such as really have, or are
capable of having, an existence in nature." The signs we use may truly represent our
thought even though what we think or state in words is false in fact. Hobbes takes a
somewhat contrary view. "True and false," he writes, "are
attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor
falsehood."
What is the cause of truth in speech? Hobbes replies that, since it consists "in the
right ordering of names in our affirmations," a man needs only "to remember what
every name he uses stands for." If men begin with definitions or "the settling
of significations," and then, abide by their definitions in subsequent discourse,
their discourse will have truth. From want of definitions or from wrong definitions arise
"all false and senseless tenets."
Agreement with reality would seem to be the measure of truth for Hobbes
only to the extent that definitions can be right or wrong by reference to the objects
defined. If definitions themselves are merely nominal and have rightness so far as they
may be free from contradiction, then truth tends to become, more than a property of
speech, almost purely logistical -- a matter of playing the game of words according to the
rules. Reasoning is reckoning with words. It begins with definitions and if it proceeds
rightly, it produces "general, eternal and immutable truth ... For he that reasoneth
aright in words he understandeth, can never conclude in error."
Hobbes' position seems to have a bearing not only on the issue concerning verbal and real
truth, but also on the question whether the logical validity of reasoning makes the
conclusion it reaches true as a matter of fact. Some writers, like Kant, distinguish
between the truth which a proposition has when it conforms to the rules of thought and the
truth it has when it represents nature.
- Valid reasoning alone cannot guarantee that a conclusion
is true in fact. That depends on the truth of the premises--upon their being true of the
nature of things.
Aristotle criticizes those who, accepting certain principles as true,
"are ready to accept any consequence of their application. As though some
principles," he continues, "did not require to be judged from their results, and
particularly from their final issue. And that issue . . . in the knowledge of nature is
the unimpeachable evidence of the senses as to each fact."
BUT NOT ALL TRUTH may require or admit of such certification. The truths of mathematics
may be different from those of physics or metaphysics, and those of philosophy or religion
from those of the empirical natural sciences. It is sometimes supposed, for example, that
the truths of mathematics are purely formal or without reference to real existence.
That seems be the position of Hobbes and Hume, both of whom take
geometry as the model of truth. For them statements of fact about real existence are at
best probable opinions.
For others, like James, there can be truth in the natural sciences, but
such empirical truth is distinct in type from what he calls the "necessary" or
"a priori" truths of mathematics and logic.
Does the definition of truth as agreement with reality apply to all kinds of truth, or
only truths about the realm of nature? The question has in mind more than the distinction
between mathematics and physics. It is concerned with the difference between the study of
nature and the moral sciences, or between the theoretic and the practical disciplines.
"As regards nature," writes Kant, "experience presents us with rules and is
the source of truth," but not so in ethical matters or morality.
A theoretic proposition asserts that something exists or has a certain
property, and so its truth depends on the existence of the thing or its real possession of
an attribute;
- but a practical or moral judgment states, not what is,
but what should occur or ought to be. Such a judgment cannot be true by
correspondence with the way things are. Its truth, according Aristotle, must consist
rather "in agreement with right desire."
On this theory, all that remains common to speculative and practical
truth is the conformity of the intellect to something outside itself -- to an existing
thing or to desire, will, or appetite.
Stressing the difference, Aquinas declares that "truth is not the
same for the practical as for the speculative intellect." The "conformity with
right appetite" upon which practical truth depends, he goes on to say, "has no
place in necessary matters, which are not effected by the human will, but only in
contingent matters which can be effected by us, whether they be matters of interior action
or the products of external work."
In consequence, "in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude
is not the same for all as to what is particular, but only as to the common
principles"; whereas in speculative matters, concerned chiefly with necessary things,
"truth is the same for all men, both as to principles and as to conclusions."
THE PROBLEM OF THE criteria or signs of truth does not seem to be of equal concern to all
who discuss the nature of truth. For the ancients, at one extreme, it seems to be hardly a
problem at all. For William James, at the other extreme, it seems to be the central
problem.
In the controversy over the pragmatic theory of truth, in which James
engages with Bradley and Russell, some confusion tends to result from the fact that James
seldom discusses what truth is except in terms of how we know what is true, while his
opponents often ignore the signs of truth in discussing its nature.
- The important point for James is not that truth consists
in agreement with reality, but that "true ideas are those we can assimilate,
validate, corroborate, and verify." Whether we can assimilate or validate or verify
an idea in turn depends upon its consequences, either for thought or action, or what James
calls "truth's cash-value in experiential terms."
In his Psychology, James suggests another aspect of his theory
of the expediency of a true idea, which he later developed in Pragmatism. Not
only must our conceptions or theories be "able to account satisfactorily for our
sensible experience," but they are also to be weighed for their appeal "to our
aesthetic, emotional, and active needs." Apart from this added criterion, which
became the subject of much dispute, the pragmatic theory of truth represents one of the
traditional solutions of the problem of how to tell whether something is true or false. It
looks mainly to extrinsic signs -- not to some feature of the idea or thought itself, but
to its consequences.
"The test of real and vigorous thinking," writes J. S. Mill, "the thinking
which ascertains truths instead of dreaming, is successful application to practice."
In similar vein, Bacon says that "of all the signs there is none more certain or
worthy than that of the fruits produced, for the fruits and effects are the sureties and
vouchers, as it were, for the truth of philosophy."
The man who supposes that the end of learning lies in contemplation of
the truth will "propose to himself as the test of truth, the satisfaction of his mind
and understanding, as to the causes of things long since known." Only those who
recognize that "the real and legitimate goal of the sciences is the endowment of
human life with new inventions and riches," will submit truth to the test of its
leading "to some new earnest of effects." To take effects as "pledges of
truth" is, for Bacon, equivalent to declaring that truth and utility are
"perfectly identical."
Verification by appeal to observation or sensible evidences may be regarded as one way of
testing the truth of thought in terms of its consequences, but it also involves the
principle of contradiction as a criterion of truth. When Aristotle recommends, for
example, that we should accept theories as true "only if what they affirm agrees with
the observed facts," he is saying that when the truth of a particular perception is
indisputable, because the observed fact is evident, the general or theoretical statement
which it contradicts must be false.
But the principle of contradiction as a criterion of truth goes further than testing
theories by their consistency with observation. One of two contradictory statements must
be false and the other must be true "if that which it is true to affirm is nothing
other than that which it is false to deny." Even a single statement may show itself
false by being self-contradictory, and in consequence its opposite can be seen to be true.
What Aristotle calls axioms, or self-evident and indisputable truths,
are those propositions immediately known to be true, and necessarily true, because their
contradictories, being self-contradicatory, are impossible statements, or necessarily
false. The truth of any proposition which is neither a self-evident axiom nor the
statement of an evident, perceived fact, is tested, according to the principle of
contradiction, by its consistency with axioms or perceptions.
As opposed to consequences or effects, contradiction or consistency as a
sign of truth seems to be an intrinsic criterion. But this criterion is not universally
accepted. "Contradiction," writes Pascal, "is not a sign of falsity, nor
the want of contradiction a sign of truth." Nor, even when accepted, is it always
judged adequate to solve the problem. It is, for Kant, a "merely logical criterion of
truth . . . the conditio sine qua non, or negative condition of all truth.
Farther than this logic cannot go, and the error which depends not on the form, but on the
content of the cognition, it has no test to discover."
Some thinkers seem to rely upon an intrinsic mark by which each idea
reveals its own truth or falsity. Augustine, for example, considers by what criterion he
would know whether what Moses said was true. "And if I did know it," he asks,
"would it be from him that I knew it? No," he replies, "but within me, in
the inner retreat of my mind, the Truth, which is neither Hebrew nor Greek, nor Latin nor
Barbarian, would tell me, without lips or tongue or sounded syllables: 'He speaks truth.'
"
For Augustine, God is the warranty of the inner voice which plainly
signifies the truth. For Spinoza, the truth of an idea depends upon its relation to God.
Because "a true idea in us is that which in God is adequate, in so far as He is
manifested by the nature of the human mind," it follows, according to Spinoza, that
"he who has a true idea knows at the same time that he has a true idea, nor can he
doubt the truth of the thing"; for "he who knows a thing truly must at the same
time have an adequate idea or a true knowledge of his knowledge, that is to say (as is
self-evident) he must be certain."
- It is impossible, Spinoza maintains, to have a true idea
without at the same time knowing that it is true.
To the question, "How can a man know that he has an idea which
agrees with that of which it is the idea?" he replies that "he knows it simply
because he has an idea which agrees with that of which it is the idea, that is to say,
because truth is its own standard." For what can be clearer, Spinoza asks, "or
more certain than a true idea as the standard of truth? Just as light reveals both itself
and the darkness, so truth is the standard of itself and of the false."
Spinoza defines an adequate idea as one which, "in so far as it is considered in
itself, without reference to the object, has all the properties or internal signs of a
true idea." He explains, moreover, that by "internal" he means to exclude
even "the agreement of the idea with its object." This, he thinks, meets the
objection that "if a true idea is distinguished from a false idea only in so far as
it is said to agree with that of which it is the idea, the true idea [would have] no
reality or perfection above the false idea (since they are distinguished by an external
sign alone), and consequently the man who has true ideas will have no greater reality or
perfection than he who has false ideas only."
Although Descartes and Locke also employ an intrinsic criterion of truth--not the
adequacy, but the clarity and distinctness, of ideas--they do not seem to mean, as Spinoza
does, that a single idea, in and of itself, can be true or false. Like Aristotle before
them or Kant later, they regard a simple idea or concept as, strictly speaking, incapable
of being either true or false.
"Truth and falsity," writes Locke, "belong ... only to propositions"
-- to affirmations or denials which involve at least two ideas; or, as Kant says,
"truth and error . . .are only to be found in a judgement," which explains why
"the senses do not err, not because they always judge correctly, but because they
do not judge at all."
Nevertheless, for Locke the clarity and distinctness of the ideas which enter into the
formation of propositions enable the mind to judge intuitively and certainly of their
truth. When ideas are clear and distinct, "the mind perceives the agreement or
disagreement of two ideas immediately by themselves . . . Such kind of truths the mind
perceives at the first sight of the ideas together by bare intuition . . . and this kind
of knowledge is the clearest and most certain that human frailty is capable of."
THE PROBLEM of the criterion of truth is sometimes closely connected with the problem of
the causes of error. Descartes seems to pass by natural steps from one to the other.
Having decided that "the things which we conceive very clearly and distinctly are all
true," he reminds himself that there may be "some difficulty in ascertaining
which are those that we distinctly conceive." The mystery of error looms large for
Descartes because it seems to him that the human intellect, being created by God, must
have a kind of natural infallibility, the infallibility of an instrument designed by God
for knowing the truth, not for ignorance or error.
"If we did not know," Descartes reflects, "that all that is in us of
reality and truth proceeds from a perfect and infinite being, however clear and distinct
were our ideas, we should not have any reason to assure ourselves that they had the
perfection of being true." But once we have "recognized that there is a God . .
. and also recognized that all things depend upon Him, and that He is not a
deceiver," we can infer that whatever we "perceive clearly and distinctly cannot
fail to be true."
What, then, is the source of our errors? "I answer," writes Descartes,
"that they depend on a combination of two causes, to wit, on the faculty of knowledge
that rests in me, and on the power of choice or free will." Each perfect in its own
sphere, neither the will nor the understanding by itself causes us to fall into error.
"Since I understand nothing but by the power which God has given me for
understanding, there is no doubt," Descartes declares, "that all that I
understand, I understand as I ought, and it is not possible that I err in this."
The trouble lies in the relation of the will to the intellect. "Since the will is
much wider in its range and compass than the understanding, I do not restrain it within
the same bounds, but extend it also to things which I do not understand." It is not
God's fault, says Descartes, if, in the exercise of my freedom, I do not "withold my
assent from certain things as to which He has not placed a clear and distinct knowledge in
my understanding." But as long as "I so restrain my will within the limits of
knowledge that it forms no judgment except on matters which are clearly and distinctly
represented to it by the understanding, I can never be deceived."
There are other accounts of error, less elaborate than Descartes', which are similar to
the extent that they place the cause in some combination of human faculties rather than in
their simple and separate operation. Socrates explains to Theaetetus that false opinions
arise when the senses and the mind do not cooperate properly. Aristotle suggests that it
is the imagination which frequently misleads the mind.
Looking at the problem from the point of view of the theologian, Aquinas
holds that Adam, in his state of innocence before the fall, could not be deceived.
"While the soul remained subject to God," he writes, "the lower powers in
man were subject to the higher, and were no impediment to their action." But man born
in sin can be deceived, not because the intellect itself ever fails, but as a result of
the wayward influence "of some lower power, such as the imagination or the
like."
Lucretius, for whom sense, not mind, is infallible, attributes error to the fault of
reason, which misinterprets the veridical impressions of the senses. "What surer test
can we have than the senses," he asks, "whereby to note truth and
falsehood?" He explains that the mind, not the senses, is responsible for illusions
and hallucinations. "Do not then fasten upon the eyes this frailty of the mind."
Other writers, like Descartes, take the opposite view, that the senses are much less
trustworthy than the intellect. Still others, like Montaigne, seem to find that error and
fallacy, rather than any sort of infallibility, are quite natural to all human faculties,
and beset sense and reason alike. "Man," says Pascal, is "full of error,
natural and ineffaceable, without grace. Nothing shows him the truth. Everything deceives
him. Those two sources of truth, reason and the senses, besides being both wanting in
sincerity, deceive each other in turn."
Considering the extremes to which men have gone in their appraisal of human prowess or
frailty, Locke's moderate statement of the matter is worth pondering.
"Notwithstanding the great noise made in the world about errors and opinions,"
he writes, "I must do mankind that right, as to say, there are not so many men in
errors and wrong opinions as is commonly supposed. Not that I think they embrace the
truth; but, indeed, because concerning these doctrines they keep such a stir about, they
have no thought, no opinion at all . ... And though one cannot say that there are fewer
improbable or erroneous opinions in the world than there are, yet this is certain, there
are fewer that actually assent to them, and mistake them for truths, than is
imagined."
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