'Past time,' 'power,' 'spontaneity'--how can our
mind copy such realities?
To 'agree' in the widest sense with a reality, CAN ONLY MEAN TO BE
GUIDED EITHER STRAIGHT UP TO IT OR INTO ITS SURROUNDINGS, OR TO BE
PUT INTO SUCH WORKING TOUCH WITH IT AS TO HANDLE EITHER IT OR
SOMETHING CONNECTED WITH IT BETTER THAN IF WE DISAGREED. Better
either intellectually or practically! And often agreement will only
mean the negative fact that nothing contradictory from the quarter
of that reality comes to interfere with the way in which our ideas
guide us elsewhere. To copy a reality is, indeed, one very important
way of agreeing with it, but it is far from being essential. The
essential thing is the process of being guided. Any idea that helps
us to DEAL, whether practically or intellectually, with either the
reality or its belongings, that doesn't entangle our progress in
frustrations, that FITS, in fact, and adapts our life to the
reality's whole setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the
requirement. It will hold true of that reality.
Thus, NAMES are just as 'true' or 'false' as definite mental
pictures are. They set up similar verification-processes, and lead
to fully equivalent practical results.
All human thinking gets discursified; we exchange ideas; we lend and
borrow verifications, get them from one another by means of social
intercourse.
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