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Horatio W. Dresser's

Education and the Philosophical Ideal

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Preface - Introduction - The New Point of View - Educational Ideals - Equanimity - The Subconscious Mind - The Spiritual Ideal in Childhood - An Experiment in Education - The Expression of the Spirit - An Ideal Summer Conference - The Ministry of the Spirit - The Mystery of Pain and Evil - The Philosophical Ideal - The Criteria of Truth - Organic Perfection - Immortality - Index - p. 247

Chapter 12 - The Criteria of Truth

One has little confidence in the truth of his own view who is not reining for a moment to entertain a different one.—W. M. Salter.

The goal of philosophical inquiry having been defined as ultimate, reasoned truth about the total universe, adequate interpretation of life, such that the severest facts, for example, the darkest problems of social evil, shall be intelligibly explained, the next step is the adoption of a criterion which shall show that truth is truth when we find it, despite the possibilities of error.

When, however, we ask, What shall be the criterion? we at once meet a serious difficulty. No test of truth has been agreed upon even by the few profoundest philosophers. The inconceivability of the opposite has been proposed by some. But a philosopher might some time conceive of the opposite. A thorough-going scientific man has been known to reject what was proved fact to thousands, because his particular and limited theory of the universe did not permit him even to conceive of its possibility. We have noted all along in this volume that life is an experiment, subject to the unexpected

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