 To appreciate the full force of the pragmatist theory of knowledge, it must be positioned in opposition not only to Realist views rooted in the correspondence theory of truth, but also to Idealist views that are based in the coherence theory of truth. Idealists, from the pre-pragmatic generation of Bradley and Royce to the later writings of Brand Blanshard, had identified truth with consistency or coherence. Pragmatists could accept that the truth of logical or mathematical systems could be defined in terms of their consistency since such systems could be understood as abstract formal structures of language without requiring confirmation or applicability to empirical experience. A coherence theory, however, could not provide a criterion for truth. In a contingent universe, where empirical events were not derived from a set of consistent axioms but were parts of the flux of experience of nature, no criterion of consistency or coherence could provide the basis for an account of truth. From the pragmatic perspective, the coherence theory presupposed and required a metaphysical conception of the world as forming parts of the absolute mind so that inconsistent and incoherent events were excluded. The rejection of an Idealist theory of absolute mind in metaphysics by Peirce, James and Dewey brought with it their rejection of a coherence theory of truth in epistemology. Thus for pragmatism, truths about the world were not arrived at by the criterion of coherence but by a method through which verifiable empirical hypotheses were confirmed in experimental practice.