THE POSTULATE OF EMPIRICISM 239 



may hence conclude that all this just comes to the 

 truism that experience is experience, or is what it is. 

 /If one attempts to draw conclusions from the bare 

 concept of experience, the reader is quite right. 

 But the real significance of the principle is that of 

 a method of philosophical analysis a method iden 

 tical in kind (but differing in problem and hence 

 in operation) with that of the scientist. If you 

 wish to find out what subjective, objective, phys 

 ical, mental, cosmic, psychic, cause, substance, pur 

 pose, activity, evil, being, quality any philo 

 sophic term, in short means, go to experience and 

 see what the thing is experienced as. 



Such a method is not spectacular ; it permits of 

 no offhand demonstrations of God, freedom, im 

 mortality, nor of the exclusive reality of matter, 

 or ideas, or consciousness, etc. But it supplies a 

 way of telling what all these terms mean. It may 

 seem insignificant, or chillingly disappointing, but 

 only upon condition that it be not worked. Philo 

 sophic conceptions have, I believe, outlived their 

 usefulness considered as stimulants to emotion, or 

 as a species of sanctions ; and a larger, more fruit 

 ful and more valuable career awaits them consid 

 ered as specifically experienced meanings. 



[NOTE: The reception of this essay proved that I was un 

 reasonably sanguine in thinking that the foot-note of warn 

 ing, appended to the title, would for fend radical mis 

 apprehension. I see now that it was unreasonable to expect \ 

 that the word &quot; immediate &quot; in a philosophic writing could j 



