We name the same constellation
diversely, as Charles's Wain, the Great Bear, or the Dipper. None of
the names will be false, and one will be as true as another, for all
are applicable.
In all these cases we humanly make an addition to some sensible
reality, and that reality tolerates the addition. All the additions
'agree' with the reality; they fit it, while they build it out. No
one of them is false. Which may be treated as the more true, depends
altogether on the human use of it. If the 27 is a number of dollars
which I find in a drawer where I had left 28, it is 28 minus 1. If
it is the number of inches in a shelf which I wish to insert into a
cupboard 26 inches wide, it is 26 plus 1. If I wish to ennoble the
heavens by the constellations I see there, 'Charles's Wain' would be
more true than 'Dipper.' My friend Frederick Myers was humorously
indignant that that prodigious star-group should remind us Americans
of nothing but a culinary utensil.
What shall we call a THING anyhow? It seems quite arbitrary, for we
carve out everything, just as we carve out constellations, to suit
our human purposes. For me, this whole 'audience' is one thing,
which grows now restless, now attentive. I have no use at present
for its individual units, so I don't consider them.
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