23 2 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



perience, the terms false and true have no meaning, for in this 

 experience facts simply come and are, with their qualities and 

 their relations. However, in their given connections, the things 

 of immediate experience are not altogether adequate to the 

 needs of human life. Their very concreteness and manifoldness 

 make them too cumbersome for complicated uses. Consequently 

 we schematize them in abstract conceptual terms, with which 

 we may perform all sorts of calculations. But the purpose of 

 these calculations, however complex they may be, is to take 

 advantage of the real things of immediate experience. The func 

 tion of our concepts is not to inform us of the nature of reality 

 (what it is), but how to use it. Thus it is only in the light of 

 this service that we can evaluate them as true or false. Thoughts 

 or theories are true, not because they literally correspond to 

 reality, but because they represent it in ways suitable for our 

 specific purposes. The great conflicts of philosophy have arisen 

 almost wholly because the function of ideas has been misunder 

 stood. Treated as if they really did reveal to us the concrete 

 nature of reality, they inevitably lead to contradiction and para 

 dox. Just because they have arisen in response to specific needs, 

 they are abstract, that is to say, one-sided, and so mutually 

 incompatiable. They yield theoretic knowledge, knowledge 

 about things, but are valueless for purposes of speculative in 

 sight into the real nature of things. The philosopher, then, if 

 he would really know reality, must turn his back upon truth and 

 plunge unquestioning into the stream of fact. 



We have already expressed the opinion, that the weakness 

 of the modern empiricist lies not in too much radicalism but in 

 too little. Why is conceptual knowledge unsatisfactory to him? 

 Just because he still clings to a conception of absolute reality 

 that demands the very species of truth against which the whole 

 pragmatist movement is in revolt. Of course our thoughts and 

 theories do not give a speculative insight that is not a knowledge 

 about things, for what possible use or meaning could such insight 

 have? The demand for an insight which is other than knowledge- 



