Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/227

208 and that has been influenced both by theology and by mathematical science. The scholastic theory of Being gave expression to all of these influences together, when, developing a discussion of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, it expounded the well-known thesis: Omne Ens est Verum, or in another form: “Ens and Verum are convertible terms.”

It is, however, still the case that one who asserts this thesis, or its various popular equivalents, so far does not commit himself to any particular one of our four technical conceptions of what real Being itself fundamentally means. For the scholastics the epithet verum was only one of the so-called transcendental predicates of Being, which mentioned an universal character, rather than a defining mark, of Reality. We are now, however, to sketch a theory for which the truth belonging to any real object is to be viewed as the one essential mark in terms of which Reality may be defined. And this truth itself is defined in the main as something, external to a mere idea, to which that idea ought to correspond.

We are to begin, before following this theory into its technical philosophical forms, by naming some examples of objects which we ordinarily seem to call real mainly because we first call them true. As a fact, you cannot converse for a quarter of an hour upon topics of common human interest, without speaking of many things that all the company present will tacitly view as in some objective sense real objects, as not “mere ideas” of anybody, as in other words facts, while at the same time, if you look closer, you will find that these ob-