322 LOGIC 



of knowledge in every case of ascertainably complete adaptation. In 

 other words, adaptation is itself metaphysical in character. Adjust- 

 ment is always adjustment between things, and yields only what it 

 does yield. The things or elements get into the state which is their 

 adjustment, and this adjustment purports to be their actual and 

 unequivocal ordering in relation to one another. Different conditions 

 might have produced a different ordering, but, again, this ordering 

 would be equally actual and unequivocal, equally the one ordering to 

 issue from them. To suppose or admit that the course of events might 

 have been and might be different is not at all to suppose or admit 

 that it was or is different; it is, rather, to suppose and admit that we 

 have real knowledge of what that course really was and is. This seems 

 to be very obvious. 



Yet the evolutionist often thinks that he is not a metaphysician, 

 even when he brings all his conceptions systematically under the 

 conception of evolution. This must be due to some temporary lack of 

 clearness. If evolution is not a metaphysical doctrine when extended 

 to apply to all science, all morality, all logic, in short, all things, then 

 it is quite meaningless for evolutionists to pronounce a metaphysical 

 sentence on logical processes. But if evolution is a metaphysics, then 

 its sentence is metaphysical, and in every case of adjustment or 

 adaptation we have a revelation of the nature of reality in a definite 

 and unequivocal form. This conclusion applies to logical processes as 

 well as to others. The recognition that they are vital processes can, 

 therefore, have little significance for these processes in their distinct- 

 ive character as logical. They are like all other vital processes in 

 that they are vital and subject to evolution. They are unlike all 

 others in that thought is unlike digestion or breathing. To regard 

 logical processes as vital processes does not in any way, therefore, 

 invalidate them as logical processes or make it superfluous to consider 

 their claim to give us real knowledge of a real world. Indeed, it makes 

 such a consideration more necessary and important. 



A second consideration overlooked by the Protagorean tendencies 

 of the day is that judgment, even if it is instrumental, purports to 

 give us knowledge, that is, it claims to reveal what is independent of 

 the judging process. Perhaps I ought not to say that this considera- 

 tion is overlooked, but rather that it is denied significance. It is even 

 denied to be essential to judgment. It is claimed that, instead of 

 revealing anything independent of the judging process, judgment is 

 just the adjustment and no more. It is a reorganization of experience, 

 an attempt at control. All this looks to me like a misstatement of the 

 facts. Judgment claims to be no such thing. It does not function as 

 such a thing. When I make any judgment, even the simplest, I may 

 make it as the result of tension, because of a demand for reorganiza- 

 tion, in order to secure control of experience; but the judgment 



