234 THE POSTULATE OF EMPIRICISM 



he is equally false to his principle if he permits 

 himself to be confused as to the concrete differences 

 in the two things experienced. 



There are two little words through explication 

 of which the empiricist s position may be brought 

 out &quot; as &quot; and &quot; that.&quot; We may express his 

 presupposition by saying that things are what they 

 are experienced as being; or that to give a just 

 account of anything is to tell what that thing is 

 experienced to be. By these words I want to in 

 dicate the absolute, final, irreducible, and inex 

 pugnable concrete quale which everything experi 

 enced not so much has as is. To grasp this aspect 

 of empiricism is to see what the empiricist means 

 by objectivity, by the element of control. Sup 

 pose we take, as a crucial case for the empiricist, 

 an out and out illusion, say of Zollner s lines. 

 These are experienced as convergent; they are 

 &quot; truly &quot; parallel. If things are what they are 

 experienced as being, how can the distinction be 

 drawn between illusion and the true state of the 

 case? There is no answer to this question except 

 by sticking to the fact that the experience of the 

 lines as divergent is a concrete qualitative thing or 

 that. It is that experience which it is, and no 



the word) and now as &quot;pragmatism&quot; is, in its truth, just 

 the fact that the empiricist does take account of the ex 

 perienced &quot; drift, occasion, and contexture &quot; of things experi 

 enced to use Hobbes s phrase. 



