[14] The association of science and philosophy with leisure, with a certain economic surplus, is not accidental. It is practically worth while to postpone practice; to substitute theorizing, to develop a new and fascinating mode of practice. But it is the excess achievement of practice which makes this postponement and substitution possible. [15] It is the failure to grasp the coupling of truth of meaning with a _specific_ promise, undertaking, or intention expressed by a thing which underlies, so far as I can see, the criticisms passed upon the experimental or pragmatic view of the truth. It is the same failure which is responsible for the wholly _at large_ view of truth which characterizes the absolutists. [16] The belief in the _metaphysical_ transcendence of the object of knowledge seems to have its real origin in an _empirical_ transcendence of a very specific and describable sort. The thing meaning is one thing; the thing meant is another thing, and is (as already pointed out) a thing presented as not given in the same way as is the thing which means. It is something _to be_ so given. No amount of careful and thorough inspection of the indicating and signifying things can remove or annihilate this gap. The _probability_ of correct meaning may be increased in varying degrees--and this is what we mean by control. But final certitude can never be reached except experimentally--except by performing the operations indicated and discovering whether or no the intended meaning is fulfilled _in propria persona_. In this experimental sense, truth or the object of any given meaning is always beyond or outside of the cognitional thing that means it. Error as well as truth is a necessary function of knowing. But the non-empirical account of this transcendent (or beyond) relationship puts _all_ the error in one place (_our_ knowledge), and _all_ the truth in another (absolute consciousness or else a thing-in-itself). [17] Compare his essay, “Does Consciousness Exist?” in the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, Vol. I., p. 480. [18] Compare the essay on the “Problem of Consciousness,” by Professor Woodbridge, in the Garman Memorial Volume, entitled “Studies in Philosophy and Psychology.” [19] Reprinted, with many changes, from an article in _Mind_, Vol. XVI., N.S., July 1907. Although the changes have been made to render the article less technical, it still remains, I fear, too technical to be intelligible to those not familiar with recent discussions of logical theory. [20] I follow chiefly Chapter XV. of “Appearance and Reality”--the chapter on “Thought and Reality.” [21] The crux of the argument is contained in Chapters XIII. and XIV., on the “General Nature of Reality.”