THE FIELD OF LOGIC 329 



a wholly useless addition, but I see no inherent necessity in such a 

 conclusion. Nor do I see any inherent necessity of supposing that 

 knowledge must be a useful addition. Yet I would not be so foolish 

 as to deny the usefulness of knowledge. We have, of course, the 

 most palpable evidences of its use. As we examine them, I think we 

 find, without exception, that knowledge is useful just in proportion 

 as we find that reality is not transformed by being known. If it really 

 were transformed in that process, could anything else than confusion 

 result from the multitude of knowing individuals? 



To me, therefore, the metaphysics of the situation resolves itself 

 into the realistic position that a developing reality develops, under 

 ascertainable conditions, into a known reality without undergoing 

 any other transformation, and that this new stage marks an advance 

 in the efficiency of reality in its adaptations. My confidence steadily 

 grows that this whole process can be scientifically worked out. It is 

 impossible here to justify my confidence in detail, and I must leave 

 the matter with the following suggestion. The point from which 

 knowledge starts and to which it ultimately returns is always some 

 portion of reality where there is consciousness, the things, namely, 

 which, we are wont to say, are in consciousness. These things are not 

 ideas representing other things outside of consciousness, but real 

 things, which, by being in consciousness, have the capacity of repre- 

 senting each other, of standing for or implying each other. Know- 

 ledge is not the creation of these implications, but their successful 

 systematization. It will be found, I think, that this general state- 

 ment is true of every concrete case of knowledge which we possess. 

 Its detailed working out would be a metaphysics of knowledge, an 

 epistemology. 



Since knowledge is the successful systematization of the implica- 

 tions which are disclosed in things by virtue of consciousness, a 

 second logical problem of fundamental importance is the determina- 

 tion of the most general types of implication with the categories 

 which underlie them. The execution of this problem would naturally 

 involve, as subsidiary, the greater part of formal and symbolic logic. 

 Indeed, vital doctrines of the syllogism, of definition, of formal 

 inference, of the calculus of classes and propositions, of the logic of 

 relations, appear to be bound up ultimately with a doctrine of cate- 

 gories; for it is only a recognition of basal types of existence with 

 their implications that can save these doctrines from mere formal- 

 ism. These types of existence or categories are not to be regarded 

 as free creations or as the contributions of the mind to experience. 

 There is no deduction of them possible. They must be discovered 

 in the actual progress of knowledge itself, and I see no reason to 

 suppose that their number is necessarily fixed, or that we should 

 necessarily be in possession of all of them. It is requisite, however, 



