In an ideal logical language, there will be words of different kinds. First, proper names. Of these, however, there are no examples in actual language. The words which are _called_ proper names describe collections, which are always defined by some characteristic; thus assertions about “Peter” are really about everything that is “Peterish”. To get a true proper name, we should have to get to a single particular or a set of particulars defined by enumeration, not by a common quality. Since we cannot acquire knowledge of actual particulars, the words we use denote, in the best language we can make, either adjectives or relations between two or more terms. In addition to these, there are words indicative of structure: _e.g._ in “A is greater than B”, the words “is” and “than” have no separate meaning, but merely serve to show the “sense” of the relation “greater”, _i.e._ that it goes from A to B, not from B to A. Strictly speaking, we are still simplifying. True adjectives and relations will require particulars for their terms; the sort of adjectives we can know, such as “blue” and “round”, will not be applicable to particulars. They are therefore analogous to the adjective “populous” applied to a town. To say “this town is populous” means “many people live in this town”. A similar transformation would be demanded by logic in all the adjectives and relations we can know empirically. That is to say, no word that we can understand would occur in a grammatically correct account of the universe. Leaving on one side the vagueness and inaccuracy of words, let us ask ourselves; in what circumstances do we feel convinced that we know a statement to be true or false as the case may be? A present statement will be regarded as true if, _e.g._ it agrees with recollection or perception; a past statement, if it raised expectations now confirmed. I do not mean to say that these are the only grounds upon which we regard statements as true; I mean that they are simple and typical, and worth examining. If you say “it was raining this morning”, I may recollect that it was or that it wasn’t. One may perhaps say that the words “this morning” are associated for me with the word “raining” or with the words “not raining”. According to which occurs, I judge your statement true or false. If I have neither association, I do not judge your statement either true or false unless I have material for an inference; and I do not wish to consider inference yet. If you say “the lights have gone out”, when I can see the lights shining, I judge that you speak falsely, because my perception is associated with the words “lights shining”. If you say “the lights will go out in a minute”, you produce a certain familiar kind of tension called “expectation”, and after a time you produce a judgment that you spoke falsely (if the lights do not go out). These are the ordinary _direct_ ways of deciding on the truth or falsehood of statements about past, present, or future.