Absolute reality here bears the same relation to sensation as sensation
bears to conception or imagination. Both are provisional or final
termini, sensation being only the terminus at which the practical man
habitually stops, while the philosopher projects a 'beyond' in the
shape of more absolute reality. These termini, for the practical and the
philosophical stages of thought respectively, are self-supporting. They
are not 'true' of anything else, they simply _are_, are _real_. They
'lean on nothing,' as my italicized formula said. Rather does the whole
fabric of experience lean on them, just as the whole fabric of the solar
system, including many relative positions, leans, for its absolute
position in space, on any one of its constituent stars. Here, again, one
gets a new _Identitätsphilosophie_ in pluralistic form.[114]
IV
If I have succeeded in making this at all clear (though I fear that
brevity and abstractness between them may have made me fail), the reader
will see that the 'truth' of our mental operations must always be an
intra-experiential affair. A conception is reckoned true by common sense
when it can be made to lead to a sensation. The sensation, which for
common sense is not so much 'true' as 'real,' is held to be
_provisionally_ true by the philosopher just in so far as it _covers_
(abuts at, or occupies the place of) a still more absolutely real
experience, in the possibility of which to some remoter experient the
philosopher finds reason to believe.
Meanwhile what actually _does_ count for true to any individual trower,
whether he be philosopher or common man, is always a result of his
_apperceptions_. If a novel experience, conceptual or sensible,
contradict too emphatically our pre-existent system of beliefs, in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is treated as false. Only when the
older and the newer experiences are congruous enough to mutually
apperceive and modify each other, does what we treat as an advance in
truth result. [Having written of this point in an article in reply to
Mr. Joseph's criticism of my humanism, I will say no more about truth
here, but refer the reader to that review.[115]] In no case, however,
need truth consist in a relation between our experiences and something
archetypal or trans-experiential. Should we ever reach absolutely
terminal experiences, experiences in which we all agreed, which were
superseded by no revised continuations, these would not be _true_, they
would be _real_, they would simply _be_, and be indeed the angles,
corners, and linchpins of all reality, on which the truth of everything
else would be stayed. Only such _other_ things as led to these by
satisfactory conjunctions would be 'true.' Satisfactory connection of
some sort with such termini is all that the word 'truth' means. On the
common-sense stage of thought sense-presentations serve as such termini.
Our ideas and concepts and scientific theories pass for true only so far
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