Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/326

Rh resemble its object. The desired identity may, as in a case of a photograph, involve visible similarities. So the visual image of your absent friend may, indeed, resemble him in seeming, and the desired identity may, as in the ideas that accompany the actions of people who sing or who play in concert, involve musically interesting agreements and harmonies. Or, again, your idea may be one that, like the sympathetic ideas with which two friends accompany each other’s sentiments, intends to involve an identity in emotional attitudes. But however the intention varies, always the test of truth is the same. Is the correspondence reached between idea and object the precise correspondence that the idea itself intended? If it is, the idea is true. If it is not, the idea is in so far false. Thus it is not mere agreement, but intended agreement, that constitutes truth.

Do you want the image to look like its object? If so, your mental image is a true idea when, like the photograph, it looks like its object; and it is a false representative of its object if, like a poor visual image, it is dim, blurred, and, for its representative purpose, consequently deceitful. But do you want your idea, like a series of numbers, or like a statistical diagram, or like a certain mathematical transformation of given curves and surfaces, not to look like its object, but to have a wholly different sort of correspondence, member for member, part for part, point for point, relation for relation, to its object? Then, not similarity of sensible seeming, but precisely the fulfilment of whatever intent was in mind, is the test of the truth of the idea. And, then, the idea would be false in case it did look too much like its object. Do you intend