110 THE EXPERIMENTAL THEORY 



operation or incitement. Thus the experimental 

 theory explains directly and simply the absolutistic 

 tendency to translate concrete true things into the 

 general relationship, Truth, and then to hyposta- 

 tize this abstraction into identity with real being, 

 Truth per se and in se, of which all transitory 

 things and events that is, all experienced realities 

 are only shadowy futile approximations. This 

 type of relationship is central for man s will, for 

 man s conscious endeavor. To select, to conserve, 

 to extend, to propagate those meanings which the 

 course of events has generated, to note their pecu 

 liarities, to be in advance on the alert for them, to 

 search for them anxiously, to substitute them for 

 meanings that eat up our energy in vain, defines 

 the aim of rational effort and the goal of legitimate 

 ambition. The absolutistic theory is the transfer 

 of this moral or voluntary law of selective action 

 into a quasi-physical (that is, metaphysical) law 

 of indiscriminate being. Identify metaphysical be 

 ing with significant excellent being that is, with 

 those relationships of things which, in our moments 

 of deepest insight and largest survey, we would 

 continue and reproduce and the experimentalist, 

 rather than the absolutist, is he who has a right 

 to proclaim the supremacy of Truth, and the su 

 periority of the life devoted to Truth for its own 

 sake over that of &quot; mere &quot; activity. But to read 

 back into an order of things which exists without 



