A man discovers that his wife has been seduced by
his best friend. Is there anything very high or very sacred in that
discovery? Having made it, does he feel any consolation in the knowledge
that it is the entire truth? And will the '_gladness of true heroism_'
visit him if he proclaims it to everyone in his club? A chattering nurse
betrays his danger to a sick man. The sick man takes fright and dies.
Was the discovery of the truth of his danger very glorious for the
patient? or was its publication very sacred in the nurse? Clearly the
truths that it is sacred to find out and to publish are not all truths,
but truths of a certain kind only. They are not particular truths like
these, but the universal and eternal truths that underlie them. They are
in fact what we call the truths of Nature, and the apprehension of them,
or truth as attained by us, means the putting ourselves _en rapport_
with the life of that infinite existence which surrounds and sustains
all of us. Now since it is this kind of truth only that is supposed to
be so sacred, it is clear that its sacredness does not depend on itself,
but on its object. Truth is sacred because Nature is sacred; Nature is
not sacred because truth is; and our supreme duty to truth means neither
more nor less than a supreme faith in Nature. It means that there is a
something in the Infinite outside ourselves that corresponds to a
certain something within ourselves; that this latter something is the
strongest and the highest part of us, and that it can find no rest but
in communion with its larger counterpart. Truth sought for in this way
is evidently a distinct thing from the truth of utilitarianism. It is no
false reflection of human happiness in the clouds. For it is to be
sought for none the less, as our positivists decidedly tell us, even
though all other happiness should be ruined by it. Now what on positive
principles is the groundwork of this teaching? All ethical epithets such
as sacred, heroic, and so forth--all the words, in fact, that are by
implication applied to Nature--have absolutely no meaning save as
applied to conscious beings; and as a subject for positive observation,
there exists no consciousness in the universe outside this earth. By
what conceivable means, then, can the positivists transfer to Nature in
general qualities which, so far as they know, are peculiar to human
nature only? They can only do this in one of two ways--both of which
they would equally