Full Idea
When you speak of the 'time-keeping function' of a clock, it is hard to see exactly what your ideas can copy. ...Where our ideas cannot copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean?
Gist of Idea
In many cases there is no obvious way in which ideas can agree with their object
Source
William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6)
Book Reference
James,William: 'Pragmatism - eight lectures' [Dover 1995], p.77
A Reaction
This is a very good criticism of the correspondence theory of truth. It looks a lovely theory when you can map components of a sentence (like 'the pen is in the drawer') onto components of reality - but it has to cover the hard cases.