86 THE EXPERIMENTAL THEORY 



dates, knowledge, or supplies tests of truth. The 

 prior knowledge of the dog, was, if you wish, 

 hypothetical, lacking in assurance or categorical 

 certainty. The hunting, the fulfilling, realizing 

 experience alone gives knowledge, because it alone 

 completely assures ; makes faith good in works. 



Now there is and can be no objection to this 

 definition of knowledge, provided it is consistently 

 adhered to. One has as much right to identify 

 knowledge with complete assurance, as I have to 

 identify it with anything else. Considerable justi 

 fication in the common use of language, in common 

 sense, may be found for defining knowledge as com 

 plete assurance. But even upon this definition, the 

 fulfilling experience is not, as such, complete assur 

 ance, and hence not a knowledge. Assurance, cog 

 nitive validation, and guaranteeship, follow from 

 it, but are not coincident with its occurrence. It 

 * gives, but is not, assurance. The concrete con 

 struction of a story, the manipulation of a machine, 

 the hunting with the dogs, is not, so far as it is 

 fulfilment, a confirmation of meanings previously 

 entertained as cognitional; that is, is not contem 

 poraneously experienced as such. To think of 

 prior schemes, symbols, meanings, as fulfilled in a 

 subsequent experience, is reflectively to present 

 in their relations to one another both the mean 

 ings and the experiences in which they are, as 

 a matter of fact, embodied. This reflective at- 



