EXPERIENCE AND IDEALISM 201 



coming; special and isolated instances in which it 

 htippens, temporally, to appear, rather than mean 

 ing pure, undefiled, independent. Experience pre 

 sents purpose, the good, struggling against obsta 

 cles, &quot;involved in matter.&quot; 



Just how much the vogue of modern neo-Kan- 

 tian idealism, professedly built upon a strictly epis- 

 temological instead of upon a cosmological basis, 

 is due, in days of a declining theology, to a vague 

 sense that affirming the function of reason in the 

 constitution of a knowable world (which in its own 

 constitution as logically knowable may be, morally 

 and spiritually, anything you please), carries with 

 it an assurance of the superior reality of the good 

 and the beautiful as well as of the &quot; true,&quot; it would 

 be hard to say. Certainly unction seems to have 

 descended upon epistemology, in apostolic succes 

 sion, from classic idealism ; so that neo-Kantianism 

 is rarely without a tone of edification, as if feeling 

 itself the patron of man s spiritual interests in/ 

 contrast to the supposed crudeness and insensitive- 

 ness of naturalism and empiricism. At all events, 

 we find here one element in our problem: Ex 

 perience considered as the summary of past epi 

 sodic adventures and happenings in relation to ful 

 filled and adequately expressed meaning. 



The second historic event centers about the con 

 troversy of innate ideas, or pure concepts. The 

 issue is between empiricism and rationalism as the- 



