244 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



tree, else why the need of trained introspection? Again, Pro 

 fessor Dewey Avrites: &quot;It is a situation which is organized or 

 constituted as a whole, and which yet is falling to pieces in its 

 parts, a situation which is in conflict with itself, that arouses 

 the search to find what really goes together and a correspondent 

 effort to shut out what only seemingly belongs together&quot; (p. 37). 

 But within the immediate experience there can be no question as 

 to what really, and what only seemingly, goes together. Either 

 things go together or they do not; and in either case it is really, 

 and not seemingly. 



Now it is just this failure of immediatism to distinguish the 

 what from the that, this attempted reduction of meaning to exist 

 ence, which marks the fatal separation of universal and particular. 

 This will perhaps be evident if we again consider one of Professor 

 Dewey s illustrations, that of the Zollner lines. 1 One would 

 naturally say of these lines that they are seen as convergent, but 

 are really not convergent but parallel. To such a statement of 

 the case, however, Professor Dewey takes exception. The lines 

 of the experience in which the illusion occurs, he maintains, are 

 really convergent, not merely seen as such. But how, we must 

 ask, are lines experienced as convergent? What do we mean 

 by describing lines as convergent? Convergent lines are com 

 monly defined as those which, when extended, meet in a point. 

 But the lines-of-that-experience cannot possibly be conceived to 

 be extended, without thereby becoming the lines of some other 

 experience. Evidently, then, the lines which are seen to be con 

 vergent are not the lines-of-that-experience, in the immediate 

 particularity of the experience; they are not the lines of any 

 particular experience at all; they are the real lines. That is to 

 say, if the paradox be allowed, the lines-of-that-experience are 

 not real lines at all. For what is a real line? Surely something 

 that can be extended and measured and divided; something 

 which (to adapt a phrase of Professor Dewey s) is good for 

 something else in the way of experience. And this, I venture 



1 Journal of Philos.. Vol. II, p. 397. 



