Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/289

270 Truth, or Validity. But now we need to make out what constitutes the very essence of Truth itself. It is this which at the last time we left still in obscurity. It is this which lies so near us, and which still, because of manifold misunderstandings, we must long seek as if it were far away.

Our course in approaching our final definition of Truth will divide itself into two stages. Truth is very frequently defined, in terms of external meaning, as that about which we judge. Now, so far, we have had much to say about Ideas, but we have avoided dwelling upon the nature and forms of Judgment. We must here, despite the technical dreariness of all topics of Formal Logic, say something concerning this so far neglected aspect of Truth, and of our relation to Truth. In the second place, Truth has been defined as the Correspondence between our Ideas and their Objects. We shall have, also, to dwell upon this second definition of Truth. Only at the close of both stages of the journey shall we be able to see, and then, I hope, at one glance, whither through the wilderness of this world our steps have been guided. The result will reward the toil.

When we undertake to express the objective validity of any truth, we use Judgments. These judgments, if subjectively regarded, — that is, if viewed merely as processes of our own present thinking, whose objects are external to themselves, — involve, in all their more complex forms, combinations of ideas, — devices whereby we weave already present ideas into more manifold struc-