Our true ideas of sensible things do indeed copy them.
Shut your eyes and think of yonder clock on the wall, and you get
just such a true picture or copy of its dial. But your idea of its
'works' (unless you are a clock-maker) is much less of a copy, yet
it passes muster, for it in no way clashes with the reality. Even
tho it should shrink to the mere word 'works,' that word still
serves you truly; and when you speak of the 'time-keeping function'
of the clock, or of its spring's 'elasticity,' it is hard to see
exactly what your ideas can copy.
You perceive that there is a problem here. Where our ideas cannot
copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that object
mean? Some idealists seem to say that they are true whenever they
are what God means that we ought to think about that object. Others
hold the copy-view all through, and speak as if our ideas possessed
truth just in proportion as they approach to being copies of the
Absolute's eternal way of thinking.
These views, you see, invite pragmatistic discussion. But the great
assumption of the intellectualists is that truth means essentially
an inert static relation. When you've got your true idea of
anything, there's an end of the matter.
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