THE EXPERIMENTAL THEORY 87 



titude cannot be identical with the fulfilment ex 

 perience itself; it occurs only in retrospect when 

 the worth of the meanings, or cognitive ideas, is 

 critically inspected in the light of their fulfilment ; 

 or it occurs as an interruption of the fulfilling 

 experience. The hunter stops his hunting as 

 a fulfilment to reflect that he made a mistake 

 in his idea of his dog, or again, that his dog 

 is everything he thought he was that his notion 

 of him is confirmed. Or, the man stops the actual 

 construction of his machine and turns back upon 

 his plan in correction or in admiring estimate of its 

 value. The fulfilling experience is not of itself 

 knowledge, then, even if we identify knowledge 

 with fulness of assurance or guarantee. More 

 over it gives, affords, assurance only in reference 

 to a situation which we have not yet considered. 1 

 Before the category of confirmation or refuta 

 tion can be introduced, there must be something 

 which means to mean something and which there 

 fore can be guaranteed or nullified by the issue 

 and this is precisely what we have not as yet found. 

 We must return to our instance and introduce a 

 further complication. Let us suppose that the 

 smell quale recurs at a later date, and that it 

 recurs neither as the original S nor yet as the 



1 In other words, the situation as described is not to be 

 confused with the case of hunting on purpose to test an idea 

 regarding the dog. 



