the visual sensations and the inward feelings
of the hand, its mind-stuff, so to speak, are even
now as confluent as any two things can be.

     There is, thus, no breach in humanistic
epistemology.  Whether knowledge be taken
as ideally perfected, or only as true enough to
pass muster for practice, it is hung on one continuous
scheme.  Reality, howsoever remote, is
always defined as a terminus within the general
possibilities of experience; and what knows it is
defined as an experience _that_'represents'_it,_in_
_the_sense_of_being_substitutable_for_it_in_our_thinking_
because it leads to the same associates, _or_
_in_the_sense_of_'point_to_it'_ through a chain
of other experiences that either intervene or
may intervene.

     Absolute reality here bears the same relation
to sensation as sensation bears to conception
or imagination.  Both are provisional or final
termini, sensation being only the terminus
at which the practical man habitually stops,

202
while the philosopher projects a 'beyond' in
the shape of more absolute reality.  These
termini, for the practical and the philosophical
stages of thought respectively, are self-
supporting.  They are not 'true' of anything
lese, they simply _are_, are _real_.  They 'lean
on nothing,' as my italicized formula said.
Rather does the whole fabric of experience
lean on them, just as the whole fabric of the
solar system, including many relative positions,
leans, for its absolute position in space,
on any one of its constituent stars.  Here,
again, one gets a new _Identitatsphilosophie_ in
pluralistic form.(1)

                         IV

     If I have succeeded in making this at all
clear (though I fear that brevity and abstractness
between them may have made me fail),
the reader will see that the 'truth' of our mental
operations must always ben an intra-experiential
affair.  A conception is reckoned true by
common sense when it can be made to lead to a
---

   1 [Cf. above, pp. 134, 197.]

203
sensation.  The sensation, which for common
sense is not so much 'true' as 'real,' is held to
be _provisionally_ true by the philosopher just
in so far as it _covers_ (abuts at, or occupies the
place of) a still more absolutely real experience,
in the possibility of which to come remoter
experient the philosopher finds reason
to believe.

     Meanwhile what actually _does_ count for true
to any individual trower, whether he be philosopher
or common man, is always a result of his
_apperceptions_.  If a novel experience, conceptual
or sensible, contradict too emphatically our
pre-existent system of beliefs, in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred it is treated as false.
Only when the older and the newer experiences
are congruous enough to mutually apperceive
and modify each other, does what we treat as
an advance in truth result.  [Having written of
this point in an article in reply to Mr. Joseph's
criticism of my humanism, I will say no more
about truth here, but refer the reader to that
review.(1)]  In no case, however, need truth
---

   1 [Omitted from reprint in _Meaning_of_Truth_.  The review referred
to is reprinted below, pp. 244-265, under the title "Humanism and Truth
Once More."  ED.]

consist in a relation between our experiences
and something archetypal or trans-experiential.
Should we ever reach absolutely terminal
experiences, experiences in which we all agreed,
which were superseded by no revised continuations,
these would not be _true_, they would be
_real_, they would simply _be_, and be indeed the
angles, corners, and linchpins of all reality, on
which the truth of everything else would be
stayed.  Only such _other_ thins as led to these
by satisfactory conjunctions would be 'true.'
Satisfactory connection of some sort with such
termini is all that the word 'truth' means.
On the common-sense stage of thought sense-
presentations serve as such termini.  our ideas
and concepts and scientific theories pass for