THE POSTULATE OF EMPIRICISM 227 



Immediate empiricism postulates that things 

 anything, everything, in the ordinary or non 

 technical use of the term &quot; thing &quot; are what they 

 are experienced as. Hence, if one wishes to de 

 scribe anything truly, his task is to tell what it is 

 experienced as being. If it is a horse that is to 

 be described, or the equus that is to be defined, 

 then must the horse-trader, or the jockey, or the 

 timid family man who wants a &quot; safe driver,&quot; or 

 the zoologist or the paleontologist tell us what the 

 horse is which is experienced. If these accounts 

 turn out different in some respects, as well as con 

 gruous in others, this is no reason for assuming 

 the content of one to be exclusively &quot; real,&quot; and 

 that of others to be &quot; phenomenal &quot; ; for each ac 

 count of what is experienced will manifest that it is 

 the account of the horse-dealer, or of the zoologist, 

 and hence will give the conditions requisite 

 for understanding the differences as well as the 

 agreements of the various accounts. And the 

 principle varies not a whit if we bring in the psy 

 chologist s horse, the logician s horse, or the meta 

 physician s horse. 



directly-experienced terms in order to justify that which is 

 directly experienced. Hence I have criticised such empiri 

 cism (Philosophical Review, Vol. XI., No. 4, p. 364) as es 

 sentially absolutistic in character; and also (&quot;Studies in 

 Logical Theory,&quot; pp. 30, 58) as an attempt to build up ex 

 perience in terms of certain methodological checks and cues 

 of attaining certainty. 



