moment, expressed in rich, sensuous imagery, it is
certain that they are ideas not because they are masses or
series of images, but because they embody present
conscious purposes. Every idea is as much a volitional
process as it is an intellectual process. It may well or
ill represent or correspond to something not itself, but it
must, in any case, make more or less clearly articulate
its own present purpose. The constructive character of
all mathematical ideas, the sense of current control which
accompanies all definite thinking processes, the momentary
purposes more or less imperfectly fulfilled whenever
we conceive anything, — these are evidences of what is
essential to processes of ideation. Volition is as manifest
in counting objects as in singing tunes, in conceiving
physical laws as in directing the destinies of nations,
in laboratory experiments as in artistic productions, in
contemplating as in fighting. The embodied purpose,
the internal meaning, of the instant’s act, is thus a
conditio sine qua non for all external meaning and for all
truth. What we are now inquiring is simply how an
internal meaning can be linked to an external meaning,
how a volition can also possess truth, how the purpose of
the instant can express the nature of an object other than
the instant’s purpose.
V
So much, then, for the relation of correspondence between idea and object. But, now, when has an idea an object at all? This question, as I before observed, has been decidedly more neglected in fundamental discussions about truth than has the question as to the
