EXPERIENCE AND IDEALISM 205 



objectivity to any experience that claims cognitive 

 reference or capacity. 



Summing up the matter, idealism stands forth 

 with its assertion of thought or reason as (1) the 

 sponsor for all significance, ideality, purpose, in 

 experience, the author of the good and the beauti 

 ful as well as the true; (2) the power, located in 

 pure conceptions, required to elevate perceptive or 

 observational material to the plane of science ; and 

 (3) the constitution that gives objectivity, even 

 the semblance of order, system, connection, mutual 

 reference, to sensory data that without its assist 

 ance are mere subjective flux. 



term experience must be subjective, and stating or implying 

 that those who take the term objectively are subverters of 

 established usage! But a casual study of the dictionary 

 will reveal that experience has always meant &quot; what is ex 

 perienced,&quot; observation as a source of knowledge, as well as 

 the act, fact, or mode of experiencing. In the Oxford Dic 

 tionary, the (obsolete) sense of &quot; experimental testing,&quot; of 

 actual &quot; observation of facts and events,&quot; and &quot; the fact of 

 being consciously affected by an act &quot; have almost con 

 temporaneous datings, viz., 1384, 1377, and 1382 respectively. 

 A usage almost more objective than the second, the Baconian 

 use, is &quot;what has been experienced; the events that have 

 taken place within the knowledge of an individual, a com 

 munity, mankind at large, either during a particular period 

 or generally.&quot; This dates back to 1607. Let us have no 

 more captious criticisms and plaints based on ignorance of 

 linguistic usage. [This pious wish has not been met. J. D., 

 1909.J 



