It is to be observed, too, that it is entirely in behalf of the more showy kind of knowledge, that the mistake is made. The respected name of reason is given exclusively to logic and demonstrating. Good sense, good feeling, just instinct, if they stand alone, have no claim to it; they are put on an inferior footing; true, they are intuition; but what then? they are not reason.
Now, the century introduced by Locke is accused by the present, and it is generally admitted, with some degree of justice, of having “materialistic” tendencies. We may see, then, how Locke’s doctrine, as just described, founded though it is only on nomenclature, hinging merely on definition, incurring whatever wrongness it implicates from no other lapse than that of confounding a word with its derivative, doing nothing, in short, but annul the difference of meaning between the two words, reason and reasoning; we may see how this apparently harmless experiment might tend to supplying these materialistic tendencies with a ground, a rationale, a principle, and thus to exalt their authority, and how, indeed! it just smacks of their spirit.
It may be seen, too, how, from a few slips, such as this on the part of the champion of the “new philosophy,” competing schools of the present age might be able to make up a case, specious enough to gain the acquiescence of a portion of the public against both—with how great futility, I believe, would appear, if the accusations were weighed by a competent tribunal.
And, finally, it might be expected, that the undue exaltation of the demonstrative department of reason, should issue in a reaction into a contrary extreme, and that some Mr. Carlyle might be found to inveigh against “logic,” to sneer at “analysis,” to denounce “cause and effect philosophy” and to praise “mysticism.”
I have already assumed that the third test that I promised, goes against Locke, and requires no examination, simply because he has not advanced it in his behalf. He has assigned no ground for changing the meaning of the word reason, and it is presumable that none is assignable.
The question, What is the Criterion of Truth?—that is, What are the proper means of distinguishing whether anything that is asserted to be true is so or not? claims immediate notice, because such a criterion exists, and the new philosophy necessarily appeals to it when it comes before the public, while it has shown with what effect it can do so, in the case of those of its branches—namely, the purely material and the mathematical, that flourish in society.
Premising that it is a way of certifying truth that has been immemorially used by mankind in their daily affairs, and which they have always, to some extent, instinctively transferred to their judgments in philosophy, and that it is the only possible general and summary criterion of truth, I may describe it as consisting in the unanimous assent to some idea or assertion of all who are thought competent to pronounce concerning it.
Viewed in connection with the thing it verifies, and the parties who use it, the criterion may be thus represented: Any idea, assertion, or opinion, must, by any inquirer, be found true, when he perceives it to be such as would be unanimously assented to by all presumably competent judges of the kind of truth to which it refers.