THE EXPERIMENTAL THEORY 105 



futed? Or, if he believes that viewing it as 

 merely mental expresses only the form it takes 

 for psychological analysis, will he not explain 

 why he so persistently attributes the inherently 

 &quot; mental &quot; characterization of it to the empiricist 

 whom he criticises? An object becomes meaning 

 when used empirically in a certain way ; and, under 

 certain circumstances, the exact character and 

 worth of this meaning becomes an object of solici 

 tude. But the transcendental epistemologist with 

 his purely psychical &quot; meanings &quot; and his purely 

 extra-empirical &quot; truths &quot; assumes a Deus ex Ma- 

 china whose mechanism is preserved a secret. And 

 as if to add to the arbitrary character of his as 

 sumption, he has to admit that the transcendental 

 a priori faculty by which mental states get ob 

 jective reference does not in the least help us to 

 discriminate, in the concrete, between an objective 

 reference that is false and one that is valid. 



(2) The counterpart assumption to that of pure 

 aboriginal &quot; mental states &quot; is, of course, that of 

 an Absolute Reality, fixed and complete in itself, 

 of which our &quot; mental states &quot; are bare transitory 

 hints, their true meaning and their transcendent 

 goal being the Truth in rerum natura. If the 

 organ and medium of knowing is a self-inclosed 

 order of existence different in kind from the Object 

 to be known, then that Object must stand out there 

 in complete aloofness from the concrete purpose 



