process of thought? Assuredly not. Yet we are not thereby committed to say with the immediatist that reality is just our unanalyzed immediate experience, and that the real nature of noises and lines and events in no other than what they have been actually experienced as. For the assumption that a given thing really possesses the character we ascribe to it, implies not only that (as we have already pointed out) it has stood the test of inquiry, but also that it may be counted upon similarly to bear the light of any future inquiry,-that it to say, no matter what further investigation might reveal about the thing, what we know now will stand as an integral part of the enlarged knowledge of it. This assumption, as we are ever, upon reflection, ready to admit, is erroneous; for we are aware that the enlargement of knowledge does not take place by mere addition to the existing stock, but continually involves the modification and even transformation of that which has hitherto been accepted as most assured and most fundamental. In other words, the untruth of the assumption is simply the untruth which attaches to any abstraction whatsoever, -the mistake of supposing that a partial account of anything may be absolutely true so far as it goes. The fact remains, that all our actual knowledge is of this sort,-an everlasting synecdoche in which the abstract poses for the concrete. The very terms in which our most certain judgments are expressed are themselves only relatively determinate. But let us note that even as we demand only that degree of flexibility in the cord of our pulley which will satisfy the requirements of our purpose, so it is only a certain degree of determinateness which is relevant to the ends of either action or thought. A certain degree of indeterminateness is negligible; and, as in the case of the pulley, just how much is negligible depends upon the specific purpose of the application.

And so we may, as instrumentalists, find a new interpretation for the absolute idealist's definition of reality. It may be legitimately taken as a description of a 'pure case,' or ideal limit, analogous to the fundamental formulæ of the mathematical sci

ences. It has the same advantage as such formulæ, namely, that of an efficient instrument for the analysis of experience; and it has likewise the same defects. When it is exalted, however, into a metaphysical first principle, a result follows which is analogous to that which we find proceeding from the similar exaltation of the primary definitions of mechanics,—that is to say, a dogmatic absolutism quite as sterile when applied to the concrete issues of human life as any materialism could well be. Our actual investigations into the real nature of anything never aim at the description of this nature in its infinite entirety. On the contrary, they are always undertaken from some definite point of view, and are carried on with reference to some specific practical or theoretical interest; and it is this interest which furnishes a criterion for the success of the investigation. But within these limits the investigation may be said to have achieved success, when the description it furnishes of the real nature of the thing may be regarded as if completely determinate; when, that is, its indeterminateness is negligible with reference to the purpose for which the investigation has been undertaken.

Thus, from the standpoint of instrumentalism, both absolute idealism and immediatism have erred in failing to recognize that a general definition of reality can be given only in functional terms. The claim of immediatism that reality changes, and changes by virtue of the process of knowing, is indeed valid, if by it be meant that the specific content to which the characteristic 'real' attaches changes from situation to situation, or from stage to stage of scientific progress. But it is nevetheless untrue, that, from the standpoint of any completed inquiry, the concrete reality of that standpoint can be regarded as having been transformed in the process of inquiry just finished; for, as has been pointed out, reality means just that content which is regarded as unchanged by the process.

Let me add a last word in comment upon the claim of immediatism to be regarded simply as a method, using as my text the following declaration of Professor Dewey: "From the postulate

of [immediate] empiricism, then (or, what is the same thing, from a general consideration of the concept of experience) nothing can be deduced, not a single philosophical proposition. . . . But the real significance of the principle is that of a method of philosophical analysis." Now, in the first place, if the method has even any prima facie claim upon our attention, it must pretend to an appropriateness to the subject-matter to which it is to be applied, and must hence imply something as to the character of that subject-matter. The declaration quoted is parallel to the belief of Descartes that he has doubted all that can be doubted, while he yet has firmly in hand a method for the elaboration of all science. Rather is it true, that a whole philosophy is implicit in the assumption of that method, if only because the choice of method means the acceptance of an ideal of truth, a standard of that which shall be admitted into the results. It may be said. that the immediatist, for his part, is willing to accept anything that experience is or contains. But, even so, Descartes is willing to accept anything that can be demonstrated from self-evident first principles. The very conception of immediate experience, or of experience as immediate, implies that a body of unequivocal data are given and can be discovered by inspection,—are prior, that is, to all interpretation, and thus form an unquestioned basis for all interpretation. It may well be questioned, however, whether this notion of the 'given' is not simply another limiting conception, like the pulley, again, or 'reality' itself,-never precisely exemplified in any definable content, though admittedly a most useful instrument for the analysis of all manner of experi

ences.

GRACE A. DE LAGUNA.

1Journal of Philos., Vol. II, p. 399.

INDEX