i'KIiSIDliNTlAl. ADDKIuSS SECTION V. l^l 



The significance of this conception is that "point" funda- 

 mentally means " here " ; " line " means '* from here " ; " instant '' 

 means " now " ; " unit/' " particle," or " thing " means " this " — 

 all of which imply the standpoint of the individual percipient 

 with his actual j^resent experience. Science is all derivative 

 from this, instead of this heing in any ultimate view an accident 

 or incident in the real world. Absolute or conceptual space and 

 time are constructions from the relative spaces and times oif 

 individual perceptual experience, i.e., fundamentally from visual, 

 tactual, and muscular sensations. Similarly, the i)rinciple of 

 continuity is formed from the experiential fact of differences 

 in the degree of dixersit}' Avith increase or decrease in the num- 

 ber of terms in a series of perceptible things or phenomenal 

 changes, the idea of absolute continuity being reached by regard- 

 ing the number of terms as inhnite. The principle of relativity 

 — that all phenomena are relative to the percipient or observer — 

 is a general and far-reaching expression of this same i)oint. In 

 general, science treats of ideal cases which are constructed by 

 abstraction from actual experience. To the laws of such ideal 

 cases experience approximates in proportion as it is less complex 

 and varied. But it is immediate concrete experience that gives 

 us direct apprehension of reality, our particular and individual 

 apprehensions of which it is the function of the indirect or 

 scientific conception to unify or correlate. Philosophy expresses 

 this fundamental truth in such principles as : " A thing is an ex- 

 perience that has been repeated." " A unit is an act of discrimi- 

 nation." " The root-idea of distance is fatigue." " The first 

 psychological meaning of object is oibstacle." All of these have 

 the same general import, namely, that things are fundamentally 

 inter])retable only in terms of actual individual experience. 



The position, then, is this. The entities of scientific thought 

 are not reality. They are constructions devised to give a con- 

 ceptual representation of reality. Their purpose is to tran- 

 scribe perceptual experience in such a way as to enable us to 

 know as fully, exactly, and rajjidly as possible what to expect 

 under determinate conditions, "J'he criterion of this jjrocedurc 

 ■ — the test of scientific constructions — is. on the one hand, their 

 own self-consistency, and, on the other hand, their applicability. 

 It is only by keeping to experiential terms or logical and veri- 

 fiable derivatives from these that science is able confidently and 

 successfully to anticipate or predict experiences. Scientific con- 

 cepts, therefore, are valid or have objective truth, not through 

 being direct statements of the nature of reality, but through 

 systematizing the facts of actual experience and j^redicting 

 resvdts that are afterwards verified by experience. It is in this 

 sense that science is able to " exi)lain " experience, namely, by 

 relating sense-im])ressions or other experiences to their conditions 

 in the common or objective world. That it accomplishes this 

 shows that its symbols or counters are trustworthy indices of 

 reality, that they " correspond " to realit\-. though they cannot 

 claim definitively to express reality. 



