EXPERIENCE AND IDEALISM 203 



minds &quot; * as furnishing in short all the valid data 

 and tests of thinking and knowledge. This meaning, 

 thinks Peirce, should be accepted &quot; as a landmark 

 which it would be a crime to disturb or displace.&quot; 

 The contention of idealism, here bound up with 

 rationalism, is that perception and observation 

 cannot guarantee knowledge in its honorific sense &amp;lt; 

 (science) ; that the peculiar differentia of scientific 

 knowledge is a constancy, a universality, and neces 

 sity that contrast at every point with perceptual 

 data, and that indispensably require the function 

 of conception. 2 In short, qualitative transforma 

 tion of facts (data of perception), not their me- , 

 chanical subtraction and recombination, is the dif 

 ference between scientific and perceptual knowl 

 edge. Here the problem which emerges is, of 

 course, the significance of perception and of con 

 ception in respect to experience. 3 



1 &quot; Essay concerning Human Understanding,&quot; Book II., 

 Chapter II., 2. Locke doubtless derived this notion from 

 Bacon. 



3 It is hardly necessary to refer to the stress placed upon 

 mathematics, as well as upon fundamental propositions in 

 logic, ethics, and cosmology. 



1 Of course there are internal historic connections between 

 experience as effective &quot;memory,&quot; and experience as &quot;ob-*- 

 servation.&quot; But the motivation and stress, the problem, has 

 quite shifted. It may be remarked that Hobbes still writes 

 under the influence of the Aristotelian conception. &quot; Ex 

 perience is nothing but Memory &quot; (&quot;Elements of Philosophy,&quot; 

 Part I., Chapter I., 2), and hence is opposed to science. 



