which is certainly not true, and yet has for some time been useful. But whether this view that all beliefs, which are expedient for some time, are true, be true or false; can it be all that Professor James means to assert? Can it constitute the whole of what interests him in his theory of truth? I do not think it can. I think it is plain that he has in his mind something more than _any_ of these alternatives, or than all of them taken together. And I think so partly for the following reason. He speaks from the outset as if he intended to tell us what _distinguishes_ true ideas from those which are not true; to tell us, that is to say, not merely of some property which belongs to all our true ideas; nor yet merely of some property, which belongs to none but true ideas; but of some property which satisfies _both_ these requirements at once--which both belongs to all our true ideas, and _also_ belongs to none but true ones. Truth, he says to begin with, means the agreement of our ideas with reality; and he adds "as falsity their disagreement." And he explains that he is going to tell us what property it is that is meant by these words "agreement with reality." So again in the next passage which I quoted: "True ideas," he says "are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify." But, he also adds, "False ideas are those that we cannot." And no one, I think, could possibly speak in this way, who had not in his head the intention of telling us what property it is which _distinguishes_ true ideas from those which are not true, and which, therefore, not only belongs to all ideas which are true, but also to none that are not. And that he has this idea in his head and thinks that the property of being "useful" or "paying" is such a property, is again clearly shown by a later passage. "Our account of truth," he says (p. 218) "is an account of truths in the plural, of processes of leading, realised _in rebus_, and having only this quality in common, that they _pay." Only_ this quality in common! If this be so, the quality must obviously be one, which is _not_ shared by any ideas which are _not_ true; for, if true ideas have any quality in common at all, they must have at least one such quality, which is _not_ shared by those which are _not_ true. Plainly, therefore, Professor James is intending to tell us of a property which belongs both to _all_ true ideas and _only_ to true ideas. And this property, he says, is that of "paying." But now let us suppose that he means by "paying," not "paying _once_ at least," but, according to the alternative he suggests, "paying in the long run" or "paying for some time." Can he possibly have supposed that these were properties which belonged _both_ to all true ideas _and also_ to none but true ones? They may, perhaps, be properties which belong to _none but_ true ones. I doubt, as I have said, whether the latter does; but still it is difficult to prove the opposite. But even if we granted