How James fell into this error is shown, I believe, by his overestimation of the common man's regard for truth, and especially for consistency. Thus he remarks: "As we humans are constituted in point of fact, we find that to believe in other men's minds, in independent physical realities, in past events, in eternal logical relations, is satisfactory.... Above all we find _consistency_ satisfactory, consistency between the present idea and the entire rest of our mental equipment...." "After man's interest in breathing freely, the greatest of all his interests (because it never fluctuates or remits, as most of his physical interests do), is his interest in _consistency_, in feeling that what he now thinks goes with what he thinks on other occasions". (Meaning of Truth, pp. 192, 211). The general method of James on this point, then, is to define truth in terms of satisfaction and then to try to show that these satisfactions cannot be secured illegitimately. That is, that we _must_ defer to experimental findings, to consistency, and to other _checks_ on opinion. Consistency must be satisfactory because people are so constituted as to find it so. Agreement with reality, where reality means epistemological reality, is satisfactory for the same reason. And agreement with reality, where reality includes in addition principles and previous truths, must be satisfactory because agreement in this case merely means such taking-account-of as will satisfy the greater proportion of the demands of life. In other words, by defining agreement in this case in terms of satisfactions, he makes it certain that agreement and satisfaction will coincide by the device of arguing in a circle. It turns out that, from over-anxiety to assure the coincidence of agreement and satisfaction, he entirely loses the possibility of using reality and agreement with reality in the usual sense of checks on satisfactions. CHAPTER III. THE PRAGMATIC DOCTRINE AS SET FORTH BY DEWEY. The position of Dewey is best represented in his paper called "The Experimental Theory of Knowledge".[13] In the method of presentation, this article is much like James' account "The Function of Cognition". Both assume some simple type of consciousness and study it by gradually introducing more and more complexity. In aim, also, the two are similar, for the purpose of each is simply to describe. Dewey attempts here to tell of a knowing just as one describes any other object, concern, or event. "What we want", he announces "is just something which takes itself for knowledge, rightly or wrongly". [13] Mind, N. S. 15, July 1906. Reprinted in "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays", p. 77. Page references are to the latter. Let us suppose, then, that we have simply a floating odor. If this odor starts changes that end in picking and enjoying a rose, what sort of changes must these be to involve some where within their course that which we call knowledge?