we must yet inquire how the alleged correspondence is to be made out.  Made out it must be; for as the criterion is quite formal and holds of all assertions, the claim to ‘correspond’ may be false.  To prove the correspondence, then, the ‘reality’ would have somehow to be known apart from the truth-claim of the thought, in order that the two might be compared and found to agree.  But if the reality were already known directly, what would be the need of asserting an idea of it and claiming ‘truth’ for this?  How, moreover, could the claim be tested, if, as is admitted, the reality is not directly known?  To assert the ‘correspondence’ must become a groundless postulate about something which is defined to transcend all knowledge.  The correspondence theory, then, does not test the truth-claim of the assertion; it only gives a fresh definition of it.  A ‘true’ thought, it says, is one which claims to correspond with a ‘reality.’ But so does a false, and hence the theory leaves us as we were, puzzled to distinguish them.[D]

Yet the theory is not wholly wrong.  Many of our thoughts do claim to correspond with reality in ways that can be verified.  If the judgment ‘There is a green carpet in my hall’ is taken to mean ’If I enter my hall, I shall see a green carpet,’ perception tests whether the judgment ‘corresponds’ with the reality perceived, and so goes to validate or disprove the claim.  But the limits within which this correspondence works are very strait.  It applies only to such judgments as are anticipations of perception,[E] and will test a truth-claim only where there is willingness to act on it.  It implies an experiment, and is not a wholly intellectual process.

The superiority of the ‘correspondence’ theory over the belief in ‘intuitions’ lies in its insistence that thought is not to audit its own accounts.  Its success or failure depends upon factors external to it, which establish the truth or falsehood of its claims.  No such guarantee is offered by the next theory, which is known as the ‘consistence’ or ‘coherence’ theory.  In order to avoid the difficulty which wrecked the ‘correspondence’ theory, that of making the truth of an assertion reside in an inexperienceable relation to an unattainable reality, this view maintains that an idea is true if it is consistent with the rest of our thoughts, and so can be fitted with them into a coherent system.  No doubt a coherence among our ideas is a convenience and a part of their ‘working,’ but it is hardly a test of their objective truth.  For a harmonious system of thoughts is conceivable which would either not apply to reality at all, or, if applied, would completely fail.  On this theory systematic delusions, fictions, and dreams, might properly lay claim to truth.  True, they might not be quite consistent:  but neither are the systems of our sciences.  If, then, this absolute coherence be insisted on, this test condemns our whole knowledge; if not, it remains formal, and fails to recognize any distinctions of value in the claims which can be systematized.