Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/49

30 that ideas must imitate, whatever their internal purpose, unless they want to be false. But for this very reason, no study of the inner structure of ideas, of their conscious conformity to their internal purpose, can so far promise to throw any direct light upon their success in fulfilling their external purpose. Or, as people usually say, you cannot make out the truth about facts by studying your “mere ideas.” And so, as people constantly insist, no devotion to the elaboration of the internal meaning of your own ideas can get you in presence of the truth about Being. The world of Being is whatever it happens to be, as the collection of ships is what it is, before you count. Internal purposes cannot predetermine external conformity to truth. You cannot evolve facts out of your inner consciousness. Ideas about Being are not to be justified like melodies, by their internal conformity to the purpose of the moment when they consciously live. They must submit to standards that they themselves in no sense create. Such is the burden of common sense, and of special science, when they tell us about this aspect of the meaning of our ideas.

I state thus explicitly a very familiar view as to the whole externally cognitive function and value of ideas. I mean thus to emphasize the primary appearance of hopeless contrast between the internal purpose and the external validity of ideas. In fact, nothing could seem sharper than the contrast thus indicated between the melody on the one hand, the musical idea, as it comes to mind and is enjoyed for its beauty while it passes before consciousness, and the counting of the ships, on the other hand, — a process whose whole success depends upon its