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James, William, 1842-1910

"Pragmatism"

This is a vague enough statement, but I beg you to retain it,
for it is essential.
Our experience meanwhile is all shot through with regularities. One
bit of it can warn us to get ready for another bit, can 'intend' or
be 'significant of' that remoter object. The object's advent is the
significance's verification. Truth, in these cases, meaning nothing
but eventual verification, is manifestly incompatible with
waywardness on our part. Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and
loose with the order which realities follow in his experience: they
will lead him nowhere or else make false connexions.
By 'realities' or 'objects' here, we mean either things of common
sense, sensibly present, or else common-sense relations, such as
dates, places, distances, kinds, activities. Following our mental
image of a house along the cow-path, we actually come to see the
house; we get the image's full verification. SUCH SIMPLY AND FULLY
VERIFIED LEADINGS ARE CERTAINLY THE ORIGINALS AND PROTOTYPES OF THE
TRUTH-PROCESS. Experience offers indeed other forms of truth-
process, but they are all conceivable as being primary verifications
arrested, multiplied or substituted one for another.
Take, for instance, yonder object on the wall.


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