THE INTELLECTUALIST CRITERION 145 



Oil the side of things, reality is identified with 

 truth; then on the principle that two things 

 that are equal to the same thing are equal to 

 each other, truth as idea and truth as reality are 

 taken to be one and the same thing. Wherever 

 there is an improved or tested idea, an idea which 

 has made good, there is a concrete existence in the 

 way of a completed or harmonized situation. The 

 same activity which proves the idea constructs an 

 inherently satisfied situation out of an inherently 

 dissentient one, for it is precisely the capacity 

 of the idea as an aim and method of action to 

 determine such transformation that is the cri 

 terion of its truth. Now unless all the elements 

 in the situation are held steadily in view, the specific 

 way in which the harmonized reality affords the 

 criterion of truth (namely, through its function 

 of being the last term of a process of active de 

 termination ) is lost from sight ; and the achieved 

 existence in its merely existent character, apart 

 from its practical or fulfilment character, is treated 

 as The Truth. But when the reality is thus sepa 

 rated from, the process by which it is achieved, 

 when it is taken just as given, it is neither truth 

 nor a criterion of truth. It is a state of facts like 

 any other. The achieved telephone is a criterion 

 of the validity of a certain prior idea in so far 

 as it is the fulfilment of activities that embody 

 the nature of that idea, but just as telephone, as * 



