The statement that the soul is good or true shows the same thing. The relation of truth to extraneous values is here beyond question. The other passages all bear, more or less obviously, in the same direction.
As James keeps restating his position, there are many of the definitions that could be interpreted to mean either values or fulfillments, and even a few which seem to refer to fulfillment alone. The two following examples can be taken to mean either:
“‘Truth’ in our ideas and beliefs means … that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience, to summarize them and get about among them by conceptual short-cuts instead of following the interminable succession of particular phenomena. Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor, is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally”. (p.58).
“A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual’s desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock. It must both lean on old truth and grasp new fact; and its success … in doing this, is a matter for individual appreciation. When old truth grows, then, by new truth’s addition, it is for subjective reasons. We are in the process and obey the reasons. The new idea is truest which performs most felicitously its function of satisfying this double urgency. It makes itself true, gets itself classed as true, by the way it works.” (p.64).
But we can turn from these to a paragraph in which truth seems to be limited to fulfilled expectations alone.
“True ideas are those which we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those which we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as….
“But what do validation and verification themselves pragmatically mean? They again signify certain practical consequences of the verified and validated idea…. They head us … through the acts and other ideas which they instigate, into or up to, or towards, other parts of experience with which we feel all the while … that the original ideas remain in agreement. The connections and transitions come to us from point to point as being progressive, harmonious, satisfactory. This function of agreeable leading is what we mean by an idea’s verification”. (pp.201-202).
The Relation of Truth to Utility—It seems certain from the foregoing that James means, at least at certain times, to define the true in terms of the valuable. Satisfaction he is using as satisfaction by rather than satisfaction of. As we have pointed out, one may be satisfied of the correctness of one’s idea without being at all satisfied by it. This distinction has been most clearly set forth by Boodin, in his discussion of ‘What pragmatism is not’, in the following words: “The truth satisfaction may run counter to any moral or esthetic satisfaction in the particular case. It may consist in the discovery that the friend we had backed had involved us in financial failure, that the picture we had bought from the catalogue description is anything but beautiful. But we are no longer uncertain as regards the truth. Our restlessness, so far as that particular curiosity is concerned, has come to an end”.[9]
It is clear then, that the discovery of truth is not to be identified with a predominantly satisfactory state of mind at the moment. Our state of mind at the moment may have only a grain of satisfaction, yet this is of so unique a kind and so entirely distinguishable from the other contents of the mind that it is perfectly practicable as a criterion. It is simply “the cessation of the irritation of a doubt”, as Peirce puts it, or the feeling that my idea has led as it promised. The feeling of fulfilled expectation is thus a very distinct and recognizable part of the whole general feeling commonly described as ‘satisfaction’. When ‘utility’ in our ideas, therefore, means a momentary feeling of dominant satisfaction, truth cannot be identified with it.
And neither, as I wish now to point out, can truth be identified with utility when utility means a long-run satisfactoriness, or satisfactoriness of the idea for a considerable number of people through a considerable period of time. The same objection arises here which we noted a moment ago—that the satisfaction may be quite indifferent to the special satisfaction arising from tests. As has been often shown, many ideas are satisfactory for a long period of time simply because they are not subjected to tests. “A hope is not a hope, a fear is not a fear, once either is recognized as unfounded…. A delusion is delusion only so long as it is not known to be one. A mistake can be built upon only so long as it is not suspected”.