The Meaning of Truth

inally printed under the title of 'Truth versu

. I contend that you cannot tell what the WORD 'true' MEANS, as applied

clay, and me, saying 'Caesar really existed.' Most persons would naively deem truth to be thereby utt

y mean, my thought ought to bear a fully determinate and unambiguous 'one-to-one-relation' to its own particular object. In the ultrasimple universe imagined the reference is

gnly correlate them. If it intends that my statement SHALL refer to that identical Caesar, and that the

y statement HAS, effects; and if these effects in any way run together, a concrete medium and bottom is provided for

ore fully. It now defines itself as neither irrelevant to the real Caesar, nor false in what it suggests of him. The absolute mind, seeing me thus working towards Caesar through the cosmic intermediaries, might well say: 'Such

uth and fact as synonyms, has laid my account open to misapprehension. 'How,' it is confusedly asked, 'can Caesar's existence, a truth already 2000 years old, depend for its truth on anything about to happen

rue. Remember also that Caesar's having existed in fact may make a present statement false or irrelevant as well as it may make it true, and that in neither case does it itself have to alter. It being given, whether truth, untruth, or irrelevancy shall be also given depends on something coming from the statement i

word 'true' so, and since you despise so the concrete working of our ideas, I said, keep the word 'truth' for the saltatory and incomprehe

e word 'trueness' in the sense of 'truth' as proposed by me. Mr. Hawtrey (see below, page 281) uses 'correctness' in the same sense. Apart from the general evil of ambiguous vocabularies