Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our
thoughts and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them,
just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them. But this all
points to direct face-to-face verifications somewhere, without which
the fabric of truth collapses like a financial system with no cash-
basis whatever. You accept my verification of one thing, I yours of
another. We trade on each other's truth. But beliefs verified
concretely by SOMEBODY are the posts of the whole superstructure.
Another great reason--beside economy of time--for waiving complete
verification in the usual business of life is that all things exist
in kinds and not singly. Our world is found once for all to have
that peculiarity. So that when we have once directly verified our
ideas about one specimen of a kind, we consider ourselves free to
apply them to other specimens without verification. A mind that
habitually discerns the kind of thing before it, and acts by the law
of the kind immediately, without pausing to verify, will be a 'true'
mind in ninety-nine out of a hundred emergencies, proved so by its
conduct fitting everything it meets, and getting no refutation.
INDIRECTLY OR ONLY POTENTIALLY VERIFYING PROCESSES MAY THUS BE TRUE
AS WELL AS FULL VERIFICATION-PROCESSES.
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