arrassment, rather than a help to
Intellectualism. It has to maintain both that intuitions are the
foundations of all truth and certitude, and also that not all are true.
But our natural curiosity as to how these sorts are to be known apart is
left unsatisfied. We must not ask which are true, and which not. No one
can say in advance about what matters intuitive certainty is possible;
what is, or is not, an intuition is revealed only to reflection after
the event. Only if an intuition _has_ played us false, we may be sure it
_was_ not infallible; it must either have been one of the fallible sort,
or else no intuition at all.

6. At this point universal scepticism begins to raise its hydra head,
and to grin at the dogmatist's discomfiture. For in point of fact the
history of thought reveals, not a steady accumulation of indubitable
truth, but a continuous strife of opinions, in which the most widely
accepted beliefs daily succumb to fresh criticism and fall into
disrepute as the 'errors of the past.' Nothing, it seems, can guarantee
a 'truth,' however firmly it may be believed for a time, from the
corrosive force of new speculation and changed opinion; to survey the
field of philosophic dispute, strewn with the remains of 'infallible'
systems and 'absolute' certainties, is to be led irresistibly to a
sceptical doubt as to the competence of human thought. If 'absolute
truth' is our ideal and acquaintance with 'absolute reality' our aim,
then, in view of the persistent illusions on both these points to which
the human mind is liable, it seems necessary to recognize the
hopelessness of our search. Thus the last dilemma of dogmatism is
reached. In view of the diversity of human beliefs and the discredit
which has historically fallen on the most axiomatic articles of faith,
we must either admit scepticism to be the issue of the debate, or else,
condemning our absolute view of truth, find some means of utilizing the
relative truths which are all that humanity seems able to grasp. But to
come to terms with relativism is to renounce the dogmatic attitude
entirely, and to approach the problems of philosophy in a totally
different spirit.

CHAPTER V

THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND ERROR

It has been shown in the last chapter how urgent has become the problem
of discriminating between the true and false among relative 'truths.'
For absolute truth has become a chimera, self-evidence an illusion, and
intuition untrustworthy. Al