These two illustrations of scientific method--namely, the discovery of Neptune and the negative discovery { 63} that the æther is non-existent--make it evident that verification is the intellectual process not of making true, but of finding true. We can, indeed, distinguish quite clearly the two processes. The first process, that of making true, is the constructing of the fiction by which we complete an incomplete system, and the second is the testing of that fiction to see if it corresponds to anything actually existing. No kind of intellectual activity will make an idea true, and conversely we may say that were truth only a utility, then knowledge instead of being systematic would be chaotic. Existence has its roots in reality, not in knowledge. Reality does not depend on truth. Truth is the intellectual apprehension of reality.
If the pragmatist objects that in this argument I have throughout supposed him to be urging the narrow meaning of utility, namely, that it is usefulness in the strictly practical sense, whereas he intends it in the widest possible meaning--a meaning that includes theoretical usefulness--then the trouble is a different one; it is to know how and where the pragmatist stops short of the coherence theory of truth, and wherein his method differs from that of the idealist.
This brings me to the consideration of another theory in which the concept of utility plays a large, indeed a predominant part. This is the theory of the relation of knowledge to life that is given to us in the philosophy of Bergson. I have in one of the volumes of this series given an account of this philosophy; I am here only dealing with its relation to this special problem of the nature of truth. It has been claimed that this philosophy is only a form of pragmatism, but it is not a theory of truth, and it has this essential difference from pragmatism that it is the intellect and not truth that is a utility. Before we consider the question that it gives { 64} rise to in regard to truth, let us first examine the theory of the intellect, and the nature of its utility. The intellect is a mode of activity, an endowment acquired in the course of evolution, and which has been retained and perfected because of its utility. This does not mean that the intellect directs us to what is useful and inhibits us from courses fatal to life, neither does it mean that it gives us any power to make true what is not already true, it means that the power to acquire knowledge is useful. There is a contrast in our own existence between our life and our intellect.