Fact

“ They drew the attention of mankind to the reality of a certain immutable fact. These truths, these principles, these facts, have all been tested, and they have been found to be everlasting. In other words, we find there are certain truths, certain principles, certain facts, that every living thing must obey, must subscribe to, must live up to or perish. ”

“ Hence we are driven back to correspondence with fact as constituting the nature of truth. It remains to define precisely what we mean by 'fact', and what is the nature of the correspondence which must subsist between belief and fact, in order that belief may be true. ”

“ Now the sort of 'fact of experience' on which in my book I have proposed to compromise, is the so-called 'mental state,' in whose existence not only common men but philosophers have uniformly believed. ”

“ I do not think we are deceived to grow,
But that the crudest fancy, slightest show,
Covers some separate truth that we may know.
In the one Truth, each separate fact is true;
Eternally in one I many view,
And destinies through destiny pursue. ”

“ Those who accept the other horn speak of a 'fact' as though it were a truth, and argue as though the world could be spun out of pure logic, or a tissue be made of relations without any things to be related. ”

“ Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. ”

“ But the only alternative for the defender of our thesis is the assertion of a fact, viz. the Ego, — a fact whose Being is not wholly verified at present, although it is indirectly known as a fact, and as a fact possessed of this verified wealth of reality. ”

“ Everything must be taken into account. If the fact will not fit the theory—let the theory go.” ”

“ But your hypotheses about particular problems must be judged by themselves. Your body of central truth is subject only to the test just mentioned. And you call this truth “absolute” merely because you conceive that it bears this test. Whether it does so is a question of fact, not of authority. And every man must, in such a matter, look for himself before judging about what is offered to him.
As to the principal special features of this discussion, they are: (1) The definition and comparison of what I have called the Four Historical Concepts of Being. ”

“ The fact is that the view which seems to me to be true is the one which, apart from theories, I think every one would naturally take, namely, that there are an immense variety of different things, all of which are intrinsically good ”

“ Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. ”

“ That fruitful thinking—thought that terminates in valid knowledge—goes on in terms of the distinction of facts and judgment, and that valid knowledge is precisely genuine correspondence or agreement, of some sort, of fact and judgment, is the common and undeniable assumption. ”

“ The chief value of the new fact is to enhance the great and constant fact of Life, which can dwarf any and every circumstance, and to which the belt of wampum and the commerce of America are alike. ”

“ This view conceives the mind to be directed toward individual things, rather than toward general ideas, toward distinct situations of fact rather than toward some significance in human affairs that these situations may share. ”

“ Therefore the great truth of moral principle should be regarded above the smaller truths of material facts and mental logic—and many of the inhabitants of your world, if I know mortal nature, will agree with me. ”

“ Our very theory insists that your internal meanings, your ideas viewed as internally significant, your selections and expressions, are typical instances of facts, and of precisely the facts of whose unity the world consists. ”

“ Thus, knowledge of general principles must be applied to particular affairs, and this supposes that one knows how to reason correctly, how to infer the particular from the general, how to put facts together. ”

“ Are not our fancies and our facts, our errors in the search of truth and our truths, our doubts and our faith, our life and activity and being, proofs of a Universal Existence—the revealer of truth, the source of truth, and the Truth? ”

“ The great shifting of universes in this discussion occurs when we carry the word 'truth' from the subjective into the objective realm, applying it sometimes to a property of opinions, sometimes to the facts which the opinions assert. ”

“ Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatever, is nowhere to be found. ”

“ Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.” ”

“ For the clearing of which let the word of truth be rightly divided, and a right distinction of things applied, there will appear nothing contradictory, but clear and satisfactory to each man’s conscience. ”

“ Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better definition, as—"a statement of the facts as they are." ”

“ Whilst common sense looks at things or visible nature as real and final facts, poetry, or the imagination which dictates it, is a second sight, looking through these, and using them as types or words for thoughts which they signify. ”

“ For we seem first to attain 12 genuine truth when we place ourselves in the world of fact, reveal its relations, and take part in its movements; we have to follow the objective and immanent necessities of things ”

“ Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths. ”

“ And, furthermore, what I have asserted about the insight which the reason gives us is so far from being opposed to the pragmatist's facts, that every rational consideration of the type of truth which they define leads us back to the consideration of absolute truth and to the assertion of an all-inclusive insight. ”

“ For distinction's sake, every fact which is solely composed of feelings or states of consciousness considered as such, is often called a Psychological or Subjective fact; while every fact which is composed, either wholly or in part, of something different from these, that is, of substances and attributes, is called an Objective fact. ”

“ Knowledge of facts, knowledge of nature, knowledge of the true aspects of the world we live in,—these seem to us of first importance. After that, we prize next reasonable and reasoning goodness; for mere rule-of-thumb goodness, which comes by rote, and might so easily degenerate into formalism or superstition, has no honour among us, but rather the contrary. ”

“ The justification of them is that when we wake to consciousness of life we find them facts which already hold us in the bonds of tradition, custom, and habit. The mores contain embodied in them notions, doctrines, and maxims, but they are facts. ”

“ Facts, which are the subjects of personal observation, every time they are experienced, the effect upon the soul grows less; while, on the contrary, those facts which are received by faith, produce, every time they are realized, a greater effect upon the soul. ”

“ These form, naturally and necessarily, the objective expression of moral ideas, and it is in some civic or social whole that the moral ideal must finally take concrete shape.
To ask “What is man?” is to ask “What is experience?” for experience means that of which I am conscious. The facts of consciousness are the only facts which, to begin with, we are justified in asserting to exist. ”

“ Our understanding, confounded and amazed at so many statements, some of them learned, others absurd and all incomprehensible, remains in uncertainty and doubt. One only reflection has struck us: on reviewing so many prodigious facts, so many contradictory assertions, we ask ourselves: What are all these discussions to us? ”

“ How comes it, then, to interpret its world of facts as such that another Self could find these same facts, or some aspect of them, to be also its own facts? The power to make this abstraction, however much social intercourse is needed to give it definition, must have its logical roots in the consciousness of the Individual. ”

“ My facts shall all be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic, facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought, with these I deal. ”

“ They arrived,—though failing, as has been said, to give adequate practical satisfaction to the claims of man's moral side,—at the idea of a comprehensive adjustment of the claims of both the sides in man, the moral as well as the intellectual, of a full estimate of both, and of a reconciliation of both; an idea which is philosophically of the greatest value, and the best of lessons for us moderns. ”

“ With this reservation, we may say that the control of moral truths is made by experience like that of physical truths. In all departments of knowledge, a thought may be held as true when it accounts for facts. ”

“ But in order to bring out facts and figures they must be thrown against the background on which they have risen and developed, and in the deep perspectives of which there are elements which are the causes of their existence. ”

“ All such conceptions can be viewed either as relatively valid, or as metaphysically final, only upon the basis to be established by a general theory of what constitutes our own type of knowledge. And for such a theory, — our whole present concern, — experience and reality alike contain only fulfilment of purpose, complete or incomplete, conditions of interest and attention, expressed or partially expressed in present consciousness, — acknowledgments of facts, and ignorance of facts, — beliefs, and truths related to beliefs. ”

“ The words in their original acceptation connoted, and the propositions expressed, a complication of outward facts and inward feelings, to different portions of which the general mind is more particularly alive in different generations of mankind. ”

“ It is on its subjective and practical side that truth is referred to here, viz., as denoting such a knowledge, and acknowledgement of the true facts in the complicated affairs of men, as will promote both equity and kindness. ”

“ The world, we are told, was made especially for man—a presumption not supported by all the facts. ”

“ “On what else is the whole world run but immediate impressions? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres. ”

“ Facts, you know, are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premisses, but in the nature and parts of premisses. ”

“ Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing? ”

“ Wherefore the better to make myself understood that I mean nothing less than words, and directly to demonstrate the point which we are now upon, that is, what is the true end, scope, or office of knowledge, which I have set down to consist not in any plausible, delectable, reverend, or admired discourse, or any satisfactory arguments, but in effecting and working, and in discovery of particulars not revealed before for the better endowment and help of man's life; ”

“ Meantime, some prominent facts appear to stand out from their history and condition, which it may be useful to recognise, while refusing to pronounce upon their positive or comparative virtue and happiness. ”