vi METAPHYSICS OF TIME-PROCESS 101 



draw this inference would be to confuse the thought- 

 symbol, which is, and must be, the instrument of thought, 

 with that which the symbol expresses, often only very 

 imperfectly, viz. the reality which is known only in 

 experience, and can never be evoked by the incantations 

 of any abstract formula. If we avoid this confusion we 

 shall no longer be prone to think that we have disposed 

 of the thing symbolised when we have brought home 

 imperfection and contradiction to the formulas whereby 

 we seek to express it an accusation which, I fear, might 

 frequently be made good against the destructive part of 

 Mr. Bradley s &quot; Appearance and Reality &quot; to suppose, e.g., 

 that Time and Change cannot really be characteristic 

 of the universe, because our thought, in attempting to 

 represent them by abstract symbols often contradicts 

 itself. For evidently the contradiction may result as well 

 from the inadequacy of our symbols to express realities 

 of whose existence we are directly assured by other factors 

 in experience, and which consequently are data rather 

 than problems for thought, as from the merely apparent 

 character of their reality, and the moral to be drawn may 

 only be the old one, that it is the function of thought to 

 mediate and not to create. 1 If so, our proper attitude 

 will be this, that while we shall not hesitate to represent 

 the facts of experience by conceptual symbols, we shall 

 always be on our guard against their misrepresenting 

 them, and ever alive to the necessity of interpreting jour 

 symbols by a reference to reality. In this manner I 

 conceive that it would be possible to utilise the terms 

 of abstract metaphysics, whenever they seemed to yield 

 useful formulas, without erecting them into fetishes and 

 giving them the entire mastery over our reason. From 

 the tyranny of abstractions there would thus always be 

 an appeal to the immediacy of living experience, and by it 

 many a difficulty which appals on paper would be shown 

 to be shadowy in the field. And conversely, it would 

 perhaps be possible for philosophy to grapple somewhat 

 more effectively with the real difficulties of actual life. 



1 Dr. McTaggart has commented on this passage (Studies, pp. 110-113). 



