EXPERIENCE AND IDEALISM 221 



a positively necessary part of re-membering. But 

 the resulting disjecta membra are in no sense 

 experience as it was or is ; they are simply elements 

 held apart, and yet tentatively implicated together, 

 in present experience for the sake of its most favor 

 able evolution ; evolution in the direction of the 

 most excellent meaning or value conceived. If the 

 remembering is efficacious and pertinent, it reveals 

 the possibilities of the present ; that is to say, it 

 clarifies the transitive, transforming character 

 that belongs inherently to the present. The dis 

 membering of the vital present into the discon 

 nected past is correlative to an anticipation, an 

 idealization of the future. 



Moreover, the contingent character of the prin 

 ciple or rule that emerges from a survey of cases, 

 instances, as distinct from a fixed or necessary 

 character, secures just what is wanted in the ex 

 igency of a prospective idealization, or refinement 

 of excellence. It is just this character that 

 secures flexibility and variety of outlook, that 

 makes possible a consideration of alternatives and 

 an attempt to select and to execute the more 

 worthy among them. The fixed or necessary law 

 would mean a future like the past a dead, an 

 unidealized future. It is exasperating to imagine 

 how completely different would have been Aris 

 totle s valuation of &quot; experience &quot; with respect to 

 its contingency, if he had but once employed the 



