1^2 PRESIDENTIAL ADbRESS^SECTION F. 



Now philosophy has Hkewise no just claim to any full or 

 final expression of the nature of things. It is as worthless apart 

 from the detailed inquiries of science as science is apart from 

 the efifort of philosophy to unify — or (in Plato's phrase) to " see 

 things together " as one whole. But what it insists upon is that, 

 since immediate experience is our point of contact with reality, 

 the suggestions that arise from it are, equally with the construc- 

 tions of science, indispensable clues to the nature of things. 

 That interpretative concepts originate, and must he logically 

 derived, 'from immediate experience implies that any actuality 

 so reached must still be of the same general nature as this. But 

 this is just what philosophy says when it contends that reality 

 must be continuous with our experience. Whatever its ultimate 

 character or content, i.e., whatever it would be to experience 

 ultimate reality, it cannot be of a nature wholly different from 

 conscious experience— ^of which consciousness is only the aware- 

 ness. It is actualized for us only in our experience, and any 

 further actualization of it can only consist in further modes of 

 experience. Matter is a limiting conception. It represents the 

 material or stuff or substance or, better still, the nature of reality, 

 and therefore the unknown as conditioning our experience. But 

 the reality, though unknown in its character and content, must 

 be thought of as realizable in further or fuller experience. Thus 

 conceptual constructions as symbols of reality have a meaning 

 only as instruments — somewhat analogous in this respect to such 

 instruments as the telescope and microscope — which make pos- 

 sible the realization or the development of further modes of 

 immediate experience.^" In other words, reality is actually 

 realised for us only in experience, and can therefore be finally 

 interpreted only in terms of experience and as being continuous 

 with experience. Philosophy expresses this by saying that all 

 reality must be somehow akin to what we know as consciousness. 



Philosophy, then, is not being false to the experiential 

 method, l)ut only Ijeing radical or thorough-going in the concep- 

 tion and use of this method, when it suggests that not only can 

 reality be known only by way of experience, but it can ultimately 

 consist in nothing but ex])erience. This ]>rinciple signifies that 

 reality or existence is meaningless apart from some kind or 

 degree of consciousness as its correlate, just as consciousness is 

 meaningless apart from something or another of which it is the 

 awareness. It implies, further, that the real meaning of the 

 economy of knowledge is that the function of knowledge, as the 

 guide of action, is to lead through action to further experience, 

 or that knowledge and action upon it — knowledge as enlightening 



" Compare on this point Clifford's allegorically-expressed speculation 

 to the effect that " as the ph3sical senses have heen gradually developed 

 out of confused and uncertain impressions, so a set of intellectual senses 

 or iiisi^i^ltts are still in course of development, the operation of which may 

 ultimately be expected to be as certain and immediate as our ordinary 

 sense-perceptions.'' — Quoted from Sir F. Pollock's liiographical sketch 

 prefixed to the Lectures and Essays, where the allegory is instanced. 



