all men know something of truth. happily it is the first impulse of childhood, and nature teaches us its pleasure before reason instructs us in its truth. in infancy we own its beauty, in manhood its power. there is nothing, says cicero, sweeter to man than the light of truth. truth, observes godwin, is the native element of an intellectual nature. it has been wisely remarked, said lord kames, that truth is to the understanding what beauty is to the eye, or music to the ear.
philosophy sanctions what unsophisticated feelings suggested. he that has made but a little progress beyond ignorance and privilege, cannot be edified by anything but truth.** truth, like a mathematical point, has had various descriptions; and it may be useful to select those which graduate to its logical definition. bulwer tells us, that 'the agitation of thought is the beginning of truth.' locke, lord kames, mill, and others, agree that truth, or falsehood, is an affair of language. an assertion which represents things as they really are, is a truth—an assertion that represents things what in reality they are not, is a falsehood.
** mr. hobhouse: note 15. to 4th canto of childe harold.
truth, in sculpture, means an exact similitude of some living form, chiselled in stone or marble. truth, in painting, is a natural representation on canvass of some person, or object. in the same manner, moral 'truth is an exact image of things set forth in speech, or writing.' the logical definition of truth is given in these words:—'truth is that which admits of proof,'* that is, an assertion or denial which can be substantiated by facts.
* chambers' information.
a fact is commonly called a truth, but this practice leads to great confusion in reasoning. a fact is only an element in truth, a logical truth is a proposition supported by facts. facts compose the premises of an argument—a truth is the inference from the facts. unless this distinction is observed, recourse must be had to the expedient of calling a fact a particular truth, and an induction from facts a general truth. or we must adopt this distinction, that a moral truth, that is, the truth of parlance, is the coincidence of language with reality; and a logical truth, a proposition which admits of demonstration.
a lady, who has given intellectual laws to many whom i address, has said—'a truth i consider to be an ascertained fact, which truth would be changed into an error the moment the fact on which it rested was disproved.' but that which can be disproved cannot be an 'ascertained fact.' allowing, however, the relevancy of this definition of a truth, it would, in a treatise on logic, be considered as a definition only of a particular truth. many such truths are required to make a logical truth.
