than I perceived a flaw in that part of it; but I have left the passage unaltered ever since, because the flaw did not spoil its illustrative value.  The flaw was evident when, as a case analogous to that of a godless universe, I thought of what I called an ‘automatic sweetheart,’ meaning a soulless body which should be absolutely indistinguishable from a spiritually animated maiden, laughing, talking, blushing, nursing us, and performing all feminine offices as tactfully and sweetly as if a soul were in her.  Would any one regard her as a full equivalent?  Certainly not, and why?  Because, framed as we are, our egoism craves above all things inward sympathy and recognition, love and admiration.  The outward treatment is valued mainly as an expression, as a manifestation of the accompanying consciousness believed in.  Pragmatically, then, belief in the automatic sweetheart would not work, and is point of fact no one treats it as a serious hypothesis.  The godless universe would be exactly similar.  Even if matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the chief call for a God on modern men’s part is for a being who will inwardly recognize them and judge them sympathetically.  Matter disappoints this craving of our ego, so God remains for most men the truer hypothesis, and indeed remains so for definite pragmatic reasons.]

So much for the third misunderstanding, which is but one specification of the following still wider one.

Fourth misunderstanding:  No pragmatist can be A realist in his epistemology.

This is supposed to follow from his statement that the truth of our beliefs consists in general in their giving satisfaction.  Of course satisfaction per se is a subjective condition; so the conclusion is drawn that truth falls wholly inside of the subject, who then may manufacture it at his pleasure.  True beliefs become thus wayward affections, severed from all responsibility to other parts of experience.

It is difficult to excuse such a parody of the pragmatist’s opinion, ignoring as it does every element but one of his universe of discourse.  The terms of which that universe consists positively forbid any non-realistic interpretation of the function of knowledge defined there.  The pragmatizing epistemologist posits there a reality and a mind with ideas.  What, now, he asks, can make those ideas true of that reality?  Ordinary epistemology contents itself with the vague statement that the ideas must ‘correspond’ or ‘agree’; the pragmatist insists on being more concrete, and asks what such ‘agreement’ may mean in detail.  He finds first that the ideas must point to or lead towards that reality and no other, and then that the pointings and leadings must yield satisfaction as their result.  So far the pragmatist is hardly less abstract than the ordinary slouchy epistemologist; but as he defines himself