another by the opposition of Mars and eclipses of Jupiter's satellites; a third by the method of Fizian.... They may at first obtain different results, but as each perfects his method and his processes, the results will move steadily together toward a destined center. So with all scientific research. Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the process of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion". This conclusion, to be sure, may be long postponed, and might indeed be preceded by a false belief which should be accepted universally. But "the opinion which would finally result from investigation does not depend on how anybody may actually think.... The reality of that which is real does depend on the real fact that the investigation is destined to lead, at last, if continued long enough, to a belief in it". It will be seen that this article does not intend to put forward any new theory of truth. It is simply an attempt at expounding a new theory of clearness. Peirce desires to describe a new way of clearing up metaphysical disputes, the method, namely, of finding the meaning of each question by reducing it to its experimental consequences. For Peirce a doctrine could be perfectly clear and yet false. This would be the case where one had a vivid idea of all the outcomes in experience involved by the idea, but yet was unable to prophesy any outcome that should be verified by future fact. Our idea of the object would not in that case 'correspond to the reality' in the sense of giving us a belief which could be 'verified by all investigators'. Peirce, then, instead of having a radical and startling theory of truth to propose, would consider himself an ultra-conservative on the question of what shall be called truth. Approaching the matter from the standpoint of a scientist, (for he says in another connection that he had at this time spent most of his life in a laboratory), he is concerned only with an attempt to apply "the fruitful methods of science" to "the barren field of metaphysics". For metaphysics seems to him very much in need of outside help. His different conception of the two disciplines may be seen from the following passage. In contrast to philosophy, he is eulogizing the natural sciences, "where investigators, instead of condemning each the work of the others as misdirected from beginning to end, co-operate, stand upon one another's shoulders, and multiply incontestable results; where every observation is repeated, and isolated observations count for little; where every hypothesis that merits attention is subjected to severe but fair examination, and only after the predictions to which it leads have been remarkably borne out by experience is trusted at all, and then only provisionally; where a radically false step is rarely taken, even the most faulty of those theories which gain credence being true in their main experiential predictions".