THE POSTULATE OF EMPIRICISM 229 



meal, what it is to a finite and partial knower. Or, 

 put more positively, knowing is one mode of ex 

 periencing, and the primary philosophic demand 

 (from the standpoint of immediatism) is to find out: 

 what sort of an experience knowing is or, con 

 cretely how things are experienced when they are 

 experienced as known things^ By concretely is 

 meant, obviously enough (among other things), 

 such an account of the experience of things as 

 known that will bring out the characteristic traits 

 and distinctions they possess as things of a know 

 ing experience, as compared with things/experi- 

 enced esthetically, or morally, or economically, or 

 technologically. To assume that, because from 

 the standpoint of the knowledge experience things 

 are what they are known to be, therefore, meta 

 physically, absolutely, without qualification, every 

 thing in its reality ( as distinct from its &quot; appear 

 ance,&quot; or phenomenal occurrence) is what a knower 

 would find it to be, is, from the immediatist s stand- ( 

 point, if not the root of all philosophic evil, at 

 least one of its main roots. For this leaves out 



1 1 hope the reader will not therefore assume that from 

 the empiricist s standpoint knowledge is of small worth 

 or import. On the contrary, from the empiricist s stand 

 point it has all the worth which it is concretely experienced 

 as possessing which is simply tremendous. But the exact 

 nature of this worth is a thing to be found out in describing 

 what we mean by experiencing objects as known the actual 

 differences made or found in experience. 



