If truth is not trouble-saving in the long run it is not truth:
truth is only that which is most largely and permanently trouble-
saving. The ultimate triumph, therefore, of truth rests on a very
tangible basis--much more so than when it is made to depend upon the
will of an unseen and unknowable agency. If my views about the
Odyssey, for example, will, in the long run, save students from
perplexity, the students will be sure to adopt them, and I have no
wish that they should adopt them otherwise.
It does not matter much what the truth is, but our knowing the truth-
-that is to say our hitting on the most permanently convenient
arrangement of our ideas upon a subject whatever it may be--matters
very much; at least it matters, or may matter, very much in some
relations. And however little it matters, yet it matters, and
however much it matters yet it does not matter. In the utmost
importance there is unimportance, and in the utmost unimportance
there is importance. So also it is with certainty, life, matter,
necessity, consciousness and, indeed, with everything which can form
an object of human sensation at all, or of those after-reasonings
which spring ultimately from sensations. This is a round-about way
of saying that every question has two sides.
vi
Our concern is with the views we shall choose to take and to let
other people take concerning things, and as to the way of expressing
those views which shall give least trouble.
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