This is all I wish to say about Professor James' first two propositions, namely:--
(1) That no ideas of ours are true, except those which we can verify.
(2) That all those ideas, which we can verify, are true.
The first seems to me extremely doubtful--in fact, almost certainly untrue; the second on the other hand, certainly true, in its most obvious meaning. And I shall say no more about them. The fact is, I doubt whether either of them expresses anything which Professor James is really anxious to assert. I have mentioned them, only because his words do, in fact, imply them and because he gives those words a very prominent place. But I have already had occasion to notice that he seems to speak as if to say that we can verify an idea came to the same thing as saying it is useful to us. And it is the connection of truth with usefulness, not its connection with "verification," that he is, I think, really anxious to assert. He talks about "verification" only, I believe, because he thinks that what he says about it will support his main view that truth is what "works," is "useful," is "expedient," "pays." It is this main view we have now to consider. We have to consider the two propositions:--
(4) That all ideas, which are useful, are true.
First, then: is it the case that all our true ideas are useful? Is it the case that none of our ideas are true, except those which are useful?
I wish to introduce my discussion of this question by quoting a passage in which Professor James seems to me to say something which is indisputably true. Towards the end of Lecture VI, he attacks the view that truths "have an unconditional claim to be recognised." And in the course of his attack the following passage occurs:--
"Must I," he says, "constantly be repeating the truth 'twice two are four' because of its eternal claim on recognition? or is it sometimes irrelevant? Must my thoughts dwell night and day on my personal sins and blemishes, because I truly have them?--or may I sink and ignore them in order to be a decent social unit, and not a mass of morbid melancholy and apology?"
"It is quite evident," he goes on, "that our obligation to acknowledge truth, so far from being unconditional, is tremendously conditional. Truth with a big T, and in the singular, claims abstractly to be recognised, of course; but concrete truths in the plural need be recognised only when their recognition is expedient." (pp. 231-232).