ef we seek either to preserve
the reaction by re-interpreting the object, or, leaving the object as it
is, we react in a way contrary to the way claimed of us. Neither
solution is easy. Such a situation might be that of Mr. Joseph, with me
claiming assent to humanism from him. He can not apperceive it so as to
permit him to gratify my claim; but there is enough appeal in the claim
to induce him to write a whole article in justification of his refusal.
If he should assent to humanism, on the other hand, that would drag
after it an unwelcome, yea incredible, alteration of his previous mental
beliefs. Whichever alternative he might adopt, however, a new
equilibrium of intellectual consistency would in the end be reached. He
would feel, whichever way he decided, that he was now thinking truly.
But if, with his old habits unaltered, he should simply add to them the
new one of advocating humanism quietly or noisily, his mind would be
rent into two systems, each of which would accuse the other of
falsehood. The resultant situation, being profoundly unsatisfactory,
would also be instable.

Theoretic truth is thus no relation between our mind and archetypal
reality. It falls _within_ the mind, being the accord of some of its
processes and objects with other processes and objects--'accord'
consisting here in well-definable relations. So long as the satisfaction
of feeling such an accord is denied us, whatever collateral profits may
seem to inure from what we believe in are but as dust in the
balance--provided always that we are highly organized intellectually,
which the majority of us are not. The amount of accord which satisfies
most men and women is merely the absence of violent clash between their
usual thoughts and statements and the limited sphere of
sense-perceptions in which their lives are cast. The theoretic truth
that most of us think we 'ought' to attain to is thus the possession of
a set of predicates that do not contradict their subjects. We preserve
it as often as not by leaving other predicates and subjects out.

In some men theory is a passion, just as music is in others. The form of
inner consistency is pursued far beyond the line at which collateral
profits stop. Such men systematize and classify and schematize and make
synoptical tables and invent ideal objects for the pure love of
unifying. Too often the results, glowing with 'truth' for the inventors,
seem pathetically personal and artificial to bystanders.