EXPERIENCE AND IDEALISM 



precisely for the purpose of re-forming established 

 and set formations. 



In short, (a) a priori character is no exclusive 

 function of thought. Every biological function, 

 every motor attitude, every vital impulse as the 

 carrying vehicle of experience is thus apriority 

 regulative in prospective reference; what we call 

 apperception, expectation, anticipation, desire, de 

 mand, choice, are pregnant with this constitu 

 tive and organizing power. (6) In so far as 

 &quot; thought &quot; does exercise such reorganizing power, 

 it is because thought is itself still a vital function. 

 (c) Objective idealism depends not only upon ig 

 noring the existence and capacity of vital func 

 tions, but upon a profound confusion of the con 

 stitutional a priori, the unconsciously dominant, 

 with empirically reflective thought. In the sense 

 in which the a priori is worth while as an attribute 

 of thought, thought cannot be what the objective 

 idealist defines it as being. Plain, ordinary, every 

 day empirical reflections, operating as centers of 

 inquiry, of suggestion, of experimentation, exer 

 cise the valuable function of regulation, in an 

 auspicious direction, of subsequent experiences. 



The categories of accomplished systematization 

 cover alike the just and the unjust, the false and 

 the true, while (unlike God s rain) they exercise 

 no specific or differential activity of stimulation 

 and control. Error and inefficiency, as well as 



