216 EXPERIENCE AND IDEALISM 



Then we have perception as scientific observa 

 tion. This involves the deliberate, artful exclu 

 sion of affectional and purposive factors as exer 

 cising mayhap a vitiating influence upon the cog 

 nitive or objective content; or, more strictly speak 

 ing, a transformation of the more ordinary or 

 &quot; natural &quot; emotional and purposive concomitants, 

 into what Bain calls &quot; neutral &quot; emotion, and a 

 purpose of finding out what the present conditions 

 of the problem are. (The practical feature is not 

 thus denied or eliminated, but the overweening in 

 fluence of a present dominating end is avoided, so 

 that change of the character of the end may be 

 effected, if found desirable.) Here observation 

 may be opposed to thought, in the sense that exact 

 and minute description may be set over against 

 interpretation, explanation, theorizing, and infer 

 ence. In the wider sense of thought as equaling 

 reflective process, the work of observation and de 

 scription forms a constituent division of labor 

 within thought. The impersonal demarcation and 

 accurate registration of what is objectively there 

 or present occurs for the sake (a) of eliminating 

 meaning which is habitually but uncritically re 

 ferred, and (b) of getting a basis for a meaning 

 (at first purely inferential or hypothetical) that 

 may be consistently referred; and that (c), rest 

 ing upon examination and not upon mere a priori 

 custom, may weather the strain of subsequent ex- 



