by the methods of induction that what was true was always thought in a
certain way. Modern Epistemology dispenses with this long and difficult
investigation at the cost of the self-contradictory assumption that
‘truth’ and the criterion of truth are one and the same thing.
=81.= It is, then, a very natural, though an utterly false supposition
that for a thing to _be_ true is the same thing as for it to be
perceived or thought of in a certain way. And since, for the reasons
given above, the fact of preference seems roughly to stand in the same
relation to thinking things good, in which the fact of perception
stands to thinking that they are true or exist, it is very natural that
for a thing to _be_ good should be supposed identical with its being
preferred in a certain way. But once this coordination of Volition and
Cognition has been accepted, it is again very natural that every fact
which seems to support the conclusion that being true is identical with
being cognised should confirm the corresponding conclusion that being
good is identical with being willed. It will, therefore, be in place to
point out another confusion, which seems to have had great influence
in causing acceptance of the view that to be true is the same thing as
to be cognised.
This confusion is due to a failure to observe that when we say we have
a _sensation_ or _perception_ or that we _know_ a thing, we mean to
assert not only that our mind is cognitive, but _also_ that that which
it cognises is true. It is not observed that the usage of these words
is such that, if a thing be untrue, that fact alone is sufficient to
justify us in saying that the person who says he perceives or knows it,
does not _perceive_ or _know_ it, without our either enquiring whether,
or assuming that, his state of mind differs in any respect from what
it would have been had he perceived or known. By this denial we do not
accuse him of an error in introspection, even if there was such an
error: we do not deny that he was aware of a certain object, nor even
that his state of mind was exactly such as he took it to be: we merely
deny that the object, of which he was aware, had a certain property.
It is, however, commonly supposed that when we assert a thing to be
perceived or known, we are asserting one fact only; and since of the
two facts which we really assert, the existence of a psychical state is
by far the easier to distinguish, it is supposed that this is the only
one which we do assert. Thus perception and sensation have come to be
regarded as if they denoted certain states of mind and nothing more; a
mistake which was the easier to make since the commonest state of mind,
to which we give a name which does not imply that its object is true,
namely imagination, may, with some plausibility, be supposed to differ
from sensation and perception not only in the property possessed by
its object, but also in its character as a state of mind. It has thus
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