232 THE POSTULATE OF EMPIRICISM 



frightened by the noise, I knew I was frightened; 

 otherwise there would have been no experience at 

 all. At this point, it is necessary to make a dis 

 tinction so simple and yet so all-fundamental that 

 I am afraid the reader will be inclined to pooh- 

 pooh it away as a mere verbal distinction. But 

 to see that to the empiricist this distinction is not 

 verbal, but genuine, is the precondition of any un 

 derstanding of him. The immediatist must, by his 

 postulate, ask what is the fright experienced as. 

 Is what is actually experienced, I-know-I-am- 

 frightened, or I-am-f rightened ? I see absolutely 

 no reason for claiming that the experience must 

 be described by the former phrase. In all proba 

 bility (and all the empiricist logically needs is just 

 one case of this sort) the experience is simply and 

 just of fright-at-the-noise. Later one may (or 

 may not) have an experience describable as I- 

 know-I-am- (or-was) and improperly or properly, 

 frightened. But this is a different experience 

 that is, a different thing. And if the critic goes 

 on to urge that the person &quot; really &quot; must have 

 known that he was frightened, I can only point 

 out that the critic is shifting the venue. He may 

 be right, but, if so, it is only because the &quot; really &quot; 



curtain-wind fact would have as much ontological reality as 

 the existence of the Absolute itself: a conclusion at which 

 the non-empiricist perhorresces, for no reason obvious to 

 me save that it would put an end to his transcendentalism. 



