ation is direct, say, "the
sun is brighter than the moon." We can form visual images of sunshine
and moonshine, and it may happen that our image of the sunshine is
the brighter of the two, but this is by no means either necessary or
sufficient. The act of comparison, implied in our judgment, is something
more than the mere coexistence of two images, one of which is in fact
brighter than the other. It would take us too far from our main topic if
we were to go into the question what actually occurs when we make this
judgment. Enough has been said to show that the correspondence between
the belief and its objective is more complicated in this case than in
that of the window to the left of the door, and this was all that had to
be proved.

In spite of these complications, the general nature of the formal
correspondence which makes truth is clear from our instances. In the
case of the simpler kind of propositions, namely those that I call
"atomic" propositions, where there is only one word expressing a
relation, the objective which would verify our proposition, assuming
that the word "not" is absent, is obtained by replacing each word
by what it means, the word meaning a relation being replaced by this
relation among the meanings of the other words. For example, if the
proposition is "Socrates precedes Plato," the objective which verifies
it results from replacing the word "Socrates" by Socrates, the word
"Plato" by Plato, and the word "precedes" by the relation of preceding
between Socrates and Plato. If the result of this process is a fact,
the proposition is true; if not, it is false. When our proposition is
"Socrates does not precede Plato," the conditions of truth and falsehood
are exactly reversed. More complicated propositions can be dealt with on
the same lines. In fact, the purely formal question, which has occupied
us in this last section, offers no very formidable difficulties.

I do not believe that the above formal theory is untrue, but I do
believe that it is inadequate. It does not, for example, throw any
light upon our preference for true beliefs rather than false ones. This
preference is only explicable by taking account of the causal efficacy
of beliefs, and of the greater appropriateness of the responses
resulting from true beliefs. But appropriateness depends upon purpose,
and purpose thus becomes a vital part of theory of knowledge.

LECTURE XIV. EMOTIONS AND WILL

On the two subjects of the pr