ABSTRACT
Professor James is plainly anxious to assert some connection between truth and 'verification' or 'utility'. And that there is some connection between them everybody will admit. Apparently, therefore, Professor James wishes to assert that all our true ideas are or can be verified - that all are useful. And certainly this is not a truism like the proposition that many of them are so. Relations among purely mental ideas form another sphere where true and false beliefs obtain, and the beliefs are absolute, or unconditional. When they are true they bear the name either of definitions or of principles. The utility is a property which distinguishes true beliefs from those which are not true; that, therefore, all true beliefs are useful, and all beliefs, which are useful, are true - by 'utility' being sometimes meant 'utility on at least one occasion'.
