that, if you take time _enough_, false ideas will some day cease to be expedient. And it is very difficult to be sure that this is not true; since it is very difficult to prophesy as to what may happen in the far future. I am sure I hope that this prophesy will come true. But in the meantime (Professor James seems to admit) ideas, which are not true, may, for an indefinitely long time, again and again be expedient. And is it conceivable that a theory, which admits this, is _all_ that he has meant to assert? Is it conceivable that what interests him, in his theory of truth, is merely the belief that, some day or other, false ideas will cease to be expedient? "In the long run, _of course_," he says, as if this were what he had meant all along. But I think it is quite plain that this is _not_ all that he has meant. This may be one thing which he is anxious to assert, but it certainly does not explain the whole of his interest in his theory of truth. And, in fact, there is quite a different theory which he seems plainly to have in his mind in other places. When Professor James says, "in the long run, _of course_," he implies that ideas which are expedient only for a _short_ run, are very often not true. But in what he says elsewhere he asserts the very opposite of this. He says elsewhere that a belief is true "_so long as_ to believe it is profitable to our lives" (p. 75). That is to say, a belief will be true, _so long as_ it is useful, even if it is _not_ useful in the long run! This is certainly quite a different theory; and, strictly speaking, it implies that an idea, which is useful even _on one occasion,_ will be true. But perhaps this is only a verbal implication. I think very likely that here Professor James was only thinking of ideas, which can be said _to have a run,_ though only a comparatively short one--of ideas, that is, which are expedient, not merely on one occasion, but _for some time._ That is to say, the theory which he now suggests, is that ideas, which occur again and again, perhaps to one man only, perhaps to several different people, over some space of time are, if they are expedient on most occasions within that space of time, true. This is a view which he is, I think, really anxious to assert; and if it were true, it would, I think, be important. And it is difficult to find instances which show, with certainty, that it is false. I believe that it is false; but it is difficult to prove it, because, in the case of some ideas it is so difficult to be certain that they ever were useful, and in the case of others so difficult to be certain that they are not true. A belief such as I spoke of before--the belief in eternal hell--is an instance. I think this belief has been, for a long time, useful, and that yet it is false. But it is, perhaps, arguable that it never has been useful; and many people on the other hand, would still assert that it is true. It cannot, therefore, perhaps, fairly be used as an instance of a belief,