218 EXPERIENCE AND IDEALISM 



labor to the work of hypotheses or inference ; and 

 that he tended to identify it with a natural his 

 tory or psychology. The latter tendency exposed 

 Locke to the Humian interpretation, and perma 

 nently sidetracked the positive contribution of his 

 theory to logic, while it led to that confusion of 

 an untrue psychology with a logic valid within 

 limits, of which Mill is the standard example. 



In analytic observation, it is a positive object 

 to strip off all inferential meaning so far as may 

 be to reduce the facts as nearly as may be to 

 derationalized data, in order to make possible a 

 new and better rationalization. In and because of 

 this process, the perceptual data approach the 

 limit of a disconnected manifold, of the brutely 

 given, of the merely sensibly present; while mean 

 ing stands out as a searched for principle of uni 

 fication and explanation, that is, as a thought, a 

 concept, an hypothesis. The extent to which this 

 is carried depends wholly upon the character of 

 the specific situation and problem; but, speaking 

 generally, or of limiting tendencies, one may say 

 it is carried to mere observation, pure brute de 

 scription, on the one side, and to mere thought, 

 that is hypothetical inference, on the other. 



So far as Lock ignored this instrumental char 

 acter of observation, he naturally evoked and 

 strengthened rationalistic idealism ; he called forth 

 its assertion of the need of reason, of concepts, of 



