158 A CATECHISM CONCERNING TRUTH 



Teacher: Reply. Your words have indeed a 

 familiar sound. Apparently, the average intel- 

 lectualist has got so accustomed to taking truth 

 as a Relation at Large, without specification or 

 analysis, that any attempt at a concrete statement 

 of just what the relationship is appears to be a 

 denial of the relation itself; in which case, he in 

 terprets an occasional reminder from the prag- 

 matist that the latter is, after all, attempting to 

 specify the nature of the relation, to be a sur 

 render of the pragmatist s own case, since it ad 

 mits after all that there is some relation ! 



However that may be, the pragmatist holds that 

 the relation in question is one of correspondence 

 between existence and thought; but he holds that 

 correspondence instead of being an ultimate and 

 unanalyzable mystery, to be defined by iteration, 

 is precisely a matter of cor-respondence in its 

 plain, familiar sense. A condition of dubious and 

 conflicting tendencies calls out thinking as a method 

 of handling it. This condition produces its own 

 appropriate consequences, bearing its own fruits 

 of weal and woe. The thoughts, the estimates, 

 intents, and projects it calls out, just because 

 they are attitudes of response and of attempted 

 adjustment (not mere &quot; states of consciousness &quot;), 

 produce their effects also. The kind of interlock 

 ing, of inter adjustment that then occurs between 

 these two sorts of consequences constitutes the 



