236 THE POSTULATE OF EMPIRICISM 



If any experience, then a determinate experi 

 ence; and this determinateness is the only, and is 

 the adequate, principle of control, or &quot; objectiv 

 ity.&quot; The experience may be of the vaguest sort. 

 I may not see anything which I can identify as a 

 familiar object a table, a chair, etc. It may be 

 dark ; I may have only the vaguest impression that 

 there is something which looks like a table. Or I 

 may be completely befogged and confused, as when 

 one rises quickly from sleep in a pitch-dark room. 

 But this vagueness, this doubtfulness, this confu 

 sion is the thing experienced, and, qua real, is as 

 &quot; good &quot; a reality as the self-luminous vision of 

 an Absolute. It is not just vagueness, doubtful 

 ness, confusion, at large or in general. It is this 

 vagueness, and no other ; absolutely unique, abso 

 lutely what it is. 1 Whatever gain in clearness, in 

 fullness, in triteness of content is experienced must 

 grow out of some element in the experience of this 

 experienced as what it is. To return to the illu 

 sion: If the experience of the lines as convergent 

 is illusory, it is because of some elements in the 



tion that makes the term Reality equivalent to true or 

 genuine being has great pragmatic significance, but its con 

 fusion with reality as existence is the point aimed at in the 

 above paragraph. 



1 One does not so easily escape medieval Realism as one 

 thinks. Either every experienced thing has its own deter 

 minateness, its own unsubstitutable, unredeemable reality, or 

 else &quot;generals&quot; are separate existences after all. 



