ience directly--not merely
knew it when present, but know now what it was, and how it has led
down to the present--this amounts to enough knowledge to make up a
tolerable system of the universe, without invoking pragmatic
verification or "truth" at all. I have never been able to discover
whether, by that perception of fact which is not "truth" but fact
itself, pragmatists meant each human apprehension taken singly, or the
whole series of these apprehensions. In the latter case, as in the
philosophy of M. Bergson, all past reality might constantly lie open
to retentive intuition, a form of knowledge soaring quite over the
head of any pragmatic method or pragmatic "truth." It looks, indeed,
as if the history of at least personal experience were commonly taken
for granted by pragmatists, as a basis on which to rear their method.
Their readiness to make so capital an assumption is a part of their
heritage from romantic idealism. To the romantic idealist science and
theology are tales which ought to be reduced to an empirical
equivalent in his personal experience; but the tale of his personal
experience itself is a sacred figment, the one precious conviction of
the romantic heart, which it would be heartless to question. Yet here
is a kind of assumed truth which cannot be reduced to its pragmatic
meaning, because it must be true literally in order that the pragmatic
meaning of other beliefs may be conceived or tested at all.

Now, if it be admitted that the pragmatic theory of truth does not
touch our knowledge either of matters of fact or of the necessary
implications of ideas, the question arises: What sort of knowledge
remains for pragmatic theory to apply to? Simply, Mr. Russell answers,
those "working hypotheses" to which "prudent people give only a low
degree of belief." For "we hold different beliefs with very different
degrees of conviction. Some--such as the belief that I am sitting in a
chair, or that 2+2=4--can be doubted by few except those who have had
a long training in philosophy. Such beliefs are held so firmly that
non-philosophers who deny them are put into lunatic asylums. Other
beliefs, such as the facts of history, are held rather less firmly....
Beliefs about the future, as that the sun will rise to-morrow and
that the trains will run approximately as in Bradshaw, may be held
with almost as great conviction as beliefs about the past. Scientific
laws are generally believed less firmly.... Philosophical b