can be realized, than to
him who tells them that their desires are selfish or that their
schemes are impracticable. It has always been the few who have sought
the truth, resolute to find it and declare it, whether pleasant or
unpleasant, in accord with the wishes of mankind or otherwise. Such
men have sometimes suffered martyrdom in the past, and often incur
hostility in the present, even when seeking that truth on which alone
justice can securely rest.

Nevertheless, so closely linked are truth and justice in the speech,
if not the minds, of men, there should be some consideration of
Pilate's question. Whether truth is absolute or only relative has been
perhaps the most actively discussed topic in the field of philosophy
for the last decade. Into this discussion, however, we need not enter,
for such discussion is really over the problem of determining the
proper criterion of truth. Wherever be this criterion, whether in some
quality of inherent rationality or in some utilitarian test of
practicability, the truth itself has some attributes so far
unquestioned and of which we may feel certain as being inherent,
necessary, and self-evident.

Truth is uncompromising. It is unadaptable; all else must be adapted
to it. It is not a matter of convention among men, is not established
even by their unanimous assent, and it does not change with changes of
opinion. It is identical throughout time and space. If it be true now
that since creation the earth has swung in an orbit round the sun, it
was true before the birth of Copernicus and Galileo. If it be true now
that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of
two right angles, it was always true and always will be true, true at
the poles and at the equator, true among all peoples and in all
countries, true alike in monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies.

Truth is also single. There are no different kinds of truth, though
there may be innumerable kinds of propositions of which truth may or
may not be predicated. Whichever criterion the philosophers may
finally agree upon, it will hold in all propositions alike. The truth
of a proposition in mathematics is the same as the truth of a
proposition in any other science, physical, social, political, or
theological. It can be no more nor less true in each and all. Again,
in every science, social and political as well as others, and as to
every proposition in any science, the truth is to be discovered, not
as