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The author has provided a stimulating study of the historical conceptions of truth as developed in philosophical and scientific literature; discussing them from the viewpoints of history and the evidences of the natural sciences, psychology, politico-social formulations, ethics, religious
constructions, etc. It may be read both as a rewarding essay in the history of ideas and as an individual statement of personal philosophy.
It is the latter reading that will be of chief interest to the student of the mental sciences—not so much for the objective conclusions presented as for the lines of psychical autobiography thus offered in terms of historical and classical philosophical material. Writing of this category holds special interest for the psychoanalyst; especially where it deals clearly with relationships between given mental states, the intrapsychic function of various thought processes, and the different subsequent approaches to objects of external and internal knowledge. The study of symbolic incretions in mentality has made possible a greater awareness of the significance of these protean configurations in regard both to cultural development and to the determination of individual integrative states. It has also brought a new light to philosophical literature, in which may be found at highly sublimated levels expression of psychogenic factors governing the relations of the individual to the external world that are generally studied at more tangibly evident behavior levels.
The main chapter headings indicate the trends and nature of the text: Philosophic Study of Truth, Philosophers and the Truth—discussed in point of antiquity, the middle ages, the modern period, and contemporaries; then a series of presentations of conceptions of truth in their reference to the universe, science, psychology; as evidence in history, in ethics, theology, etc. The dominant conclusion is the nature of truth as an absolute, outside the range of human mentality. The human search for