Realities mean, then, either concrete facts, or abstract kinds of things and relations perceived intuitively between them.  They furthermore and thirdly mean, as things that new ideas of ours must no less take account of, the whole body of other truths already in our possession.  But what now does ‘agreement’ with such three-fold realities mean?—­to use again the definition that is current.

Here it is that pragmatism and intellectualism begin to part company.  Primarily, no doubt, to agree means to copy, but we saw that the mere word ‘clock’ would do instead of a mental picture of its works, and that of many realities our ideas can only be symbols and not copies.  ‘Past time,’ ‘power,’ ’spontaneity’—­how can our mind copy such realities?

To ‘agree’ in the widest sense with a reality, can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed. Better either intellectually or practically!  And often agreement will only mean the negative fact that nothing contradictory from the quarter of that reality comes to interfere with the way in which our ideas guide us elsewhere.  To copy a reality is, indeed, one very important way of agreeing with it, but it is far from being essential.  The essential thing is the process of being guided.  Any idea that helps us to deal, whether practically or intellectually, with either the reality or its belongings, that doesn’t entangle our progress in frustrations, that fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality’s whole setting, will agree sufficiently to meet the requirement.  It will hold true of that reality.

Thus, names are just as ‘true’ or ‘false’ as definite mental pictures are.  They set up similar verification-processes, and lead to fully equivalent practical results.

All human thinking gets discursified; we exchange ideas; we lend and borrow verifications, get them from one another by means of social intercourse.  All truth thus gets verbally built out, stored up, and made available for everyone.  Hence, we must talk consistently just as we must think consistently:  for both in talk and thought we deal with kinds.  Names are arbitrary, but once understood they must be kept to.  We mustn’t now call Abel ‘Cain’ or Cain ‘Abel.’  If we do, we ungear ourselves from the whole book of Genesis, and from all its connexions with the universe of speech and fact down to the present time.  We throw ourselves out of whatever truth that entire system of speech and fact may embody.