224, EXPERIENCE AND IDEALISM 



our empirical memories, reflections, inventions, 

 and idealizations the cosmic automobile arrives. 

 Spirituality, ideality, meaning as purpose, would 

 be the last things to present themselves if objective 

 idealism were true. Values cannot be both ideal 

 and given, and their &quot; given &quot; character is em 

 phasized, not transformed, when they are called 

 eternal and absolute. But natural values become 

 ideal the moment their maintenance is dependent 

 upon the intentional activities of an empirical 

 agent. To suppose that values are ideal because 

 they are so eternally given is the contradiction in 

 which objective idealism has intrenched itself. Ob 

 jective ontological teleology spells machinery. Re 

 flective and volitional, experimental teleology alone 

 spells ideality. 1 Objective, rationalistic idealism 

 breaks upon the fact that it can have no intermedi 

 ary between a brutally achieved embodiment of 

 meaning (physical in character or else of that pecu 

 liar quasi-physical character which goes generally 

 by the name of metaphysical) and a total opposition 

 of the given and the ideal, connoting their mutual 

 indifference and incapacity. An empiricism that 

 acknowledges the transitive character of experi 

 ence, and that acknowledges the possible control 



1 One of the not least of the many merits of Santayana s 

 &quot;Life of Reason&quot; is the consistency and vigor with which 

 is upheld the doctrine that significant idealism means ideal 

 ization. 



