IMMEDIATISM 231 



If these questions seem unmotived, the reader is not widely 

 acquainted with the recent literature of humanism. 



Our attitude toward the theory of immediatism commonly 

 held by pragmatists has been several times indicated in the course 

 of the preceding discussions. It remains for us to formulate it 

 definitely. 



Immediatism may be broadly defined as holding that reality, 

 or the real, is identical with immediate experience (or pure ex- 

 perience, or experience in its immediacy), and cannot be ade- 

 quately described in conceptual terms. When we try to make 

 this definition more precise, we find that 'immediate experience' 

 (or 'pure experience') is used by pragmatist writers in two senses 

 which seem not to be carefully distinguished. In the first sense, 

 it is used (by Mr. James) to denote the genetically primary stuff 

 from which all experience, and especially reflective experience, 

 develops. None of us ever has pure experience, except in a relative 

 application of the term. It is most closely approximated in the 

 experience of the new-born babe or the semi-coma of a man. 

 Taken relatively, the term is applied to our more passive states, 

 where thinking is at its lowest ebb and we are as far as possible 

 immersed in mere sensation. In this relative application, im- 

 mediate experience is a kind of experience which differs from other 

 kinds only in degree. In the second sense (used consistently by 

 Mr. Dewey), it is an aspect of all experience. Even reflective 

 thought is, as it comes, immediate. We shall here consider only 

 the form of the theory which takes the term in the first sense. 1 

 It may be briefly set forth as follows: 



The relatively pure experience of sensation is the starting- 

 point of all our reflection. It is the given reality to which all 

 the conceptual terms of thought refer. It does not come, how- 

 ever, as a mere contentless 'that'; but, "far back as we go, the 

 flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that of things conjunct 

 and separated." 2 As applied to the content of immediate ex- 

 professor Dewey's immediatism is discussed in the following appendix. 

 2 James, A Pluralistic Universe, p. 349. 



