BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 



BELIEFS look both ways, towards persons and 

 toward things. They are the original Mr. 

 Facing-both-ways. They form or judge justify 

 or condemn the agents who entertain them and 

 who insist upon them. They are of things whose 

 immediate meanings form their content. To be 

 lieve is to ascribe value, impute meaning, assign 

 import. The collection and interaction of these 

 appraisals and assessments is the world of the 

 common man, that is, of man as an individual 

 and not as a professional being or class specimen. 

 Thus things are characters, not mere entities ; they 



1 Read as the Presidential Address at the fifth annual 

 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, at Cam 

 bridge, December 28, 1905, and reprinted with verbal re 

 visions from the Philosophical Review, Vol. XV., March, 

 1906. The substitution of the word &quot;Existences&quot; for the 

 word &quot; Realities &quot; (in the original title) is due to a sub 

 sequent recognition on my part that the eulogistic historic 

 associations with the word &quot; Reality &quot; (against which the 

 paper was a protest) infected the interpretation of the 

 paper itself, so that the use of some more colorless word 

 was desirable. 



169 



