82 THE EXPERIMENTAL THEORY 



genuine immediacy; the second is (in the instance 

 discussed) a pseudo-immediacy, which in the same 

 breath that it proclaims its immediacy smuggles in 

 another term ( and one which is unexperienced both 

 in itself and in its relation) the subject or &quot; con 

 sciousness,&quot; to which the immediate is related. 1 



But we need not remain with dogmatic asser 

 tions. To be acquainted with a thing or with a 

 person has a definite empirical meaning; we have 

 only to call to mind what it is to be genuinely and 

 empirically acquainted, to have done forever with 

 this uncanny presence which, though bare and sim 

 ple presence, is yet known, and thus is clothed 

 upon and complicated. To be acquainted with a 

 thing is to be assured (from the standpoint of the 

 experience itself) that it is of such and such a 

 character; that it will behave, if given an oppor 

 tunity, in such and such a way ; that the obviously 

 and flagrantly present trait is associated with fel 

 low traits that will show themselves, if the lead 

 ings of the present trait are followed out. To be 



1 If Hume had had a tithe of the interest in the flux of 

 perceptions and in habit principles of continuity and of 

 organization which he had in distinct and isolated exist 

 ences, he might have saved us both from German Erkennt- 

 nisstheorie, and from that modern miracle play, the psychol 

 ogy of elements of consciousness, that under the aegis of 

 science, does not hesitate to have psychical elements com 

 pound and breed, and in their agile intangibility put to 

 shame the performances of their less acrobatic cousins, 

 physical atoms, 



