230 THE POSTULATE OF EMPIRICISM 



I of account what the knowledge standpoint is itself 



1 experienced as. 



/ \- 1 start and am flustered by a noise heard. Em 

 pirically, that noise is fearsome; it really is, not 

 merely phenomenally or subjectively so. That is 

 what it is experienced as being. But, when I ex- 



- perience the noise as a known thing, I find it to 

 be innocent of harm. It is the tapping of a shade 

 against the window, owing to movements of the 

 wind. The experience has changed ; that is, the 

 thing experienced has changed not that an un 

 reality has given place to a reality, nor that 

 some transcendental (unexperienced) Reality has 

 changed, 1 not that truth has changed, but just 

 and only the concrete reality experienced has 

 changed. I now feel ashamed of my fright ; and 

 the noise as fearsome is changed to noise as a wind- 

 curtain fact, and hence practically indifferent to 

 my welfare. This is a change of experienced ex 

 istence effected through the medium of cognition. 



1 Since the non-empiricist believes in things-in-themselves 

 (which he may term &quot; atoms,&quot; &quot; sensations,&quot; transcendental 

 unities, a priori concepts, an absolute experience, or what 

 ever), and since he finds that the empiricist makes much of 

 change (as he must, since change is continuously experi 

 enced) he assumes that the empiricist means his own non- 

 empirical Realities are in continual flux, and he naturally 

 shudders at having his divinities so violently treated. But, 

 once recognize that the empiricist doesn t have any such 

 Realities at all, and the entire problem of the relation of 

 change to reality takes a very different aspect. 



