106 THE EXPERIMENTAL THEORY 



and procedure of knowing it. But if we go back to 

 the knowing as a natural occurrence, capable of 

 description, we find that just as a smell does not 

 mean Rose in general (or anything else at large), 

 , but means a specific group of qualities whose ex- 

 k perience is intended and anticipated, so the func 

 tion of knowing is always expressed in connections 

 between a given experience and a specific possible 

 wanted experience. The &quot; rose &quot; that is meant in a 

 particular situation is the rose of that situation. 

 When this experience is consummated, it is achieved 

 as the fulfilment of the conditions in which just 

 that intention was entertained not as the fulfil 

 ment of a faculty of knowledge or a meaning in 

 general. Subsequent meanings and subsequent ful 

 filments may increase, may enrich the consummat 

 ing experience; the object or content of the rose 

 as known may be other and fuller next time and 

 so on. But we have no right to set up &quot; a rose &quot; 

 at large or in general as the object of the knowing 

 odor; the object of a knowledge is always strictly 

 correlative to that particular thing which means it. 

 It is not something which can be put in a wholesale 

 way over against that which cognitively refers to 

 it, as when the epistemologist puts the &quot; real &quot; rose 

 (object) over against a merely phenomenal or em 

 pirical rose which this smell happens to mean. As 

 the meaning gets more complex, fuller, more finely 

 discriminated, the object which realizes or fulfils 



