242 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



matist in terms of what they are experienced as, but in terms of 

 the functions they perform. Universals are, it is said, tools of 

 the process of reflection; but surely it cannot be said that they 

 are immediately experienced as such. Indeed, it is only for the 

 speculation of the pragmatist that the universal becomes inter- 

 preted as a tool, that is to say, as a mediator. Even so, the 

 noise heard in the night may be described as a stimulus to the 

 specific organic reaction which follows; but it is not as such a 

 stimulus that it is experienced. Doubtless, universals must, as 

 Professor Dewey says, "somehow enter into experience"; and, 

 doubtless, "all experience is as existence immediate"; but, if this 

 last remark is to have any force, it obviously implies that ex- 

 perience as meaning is not immediate. 



It seems impossible, then, that universals should be immedi- 

 ately experienced. Laying aside the problem which now emerges 

 regarding the status of universals thus banished from the realm 

 of reality, let us turn to the no less urgent problem of the rela- 

 tion of universal to particular. For immediatism, it is evident, is 

 brought face to face with a dualism of particular and universal 

 as radical as that faced by the older empiricism. One finds, in- 

 deed, in the writings of pragmatists suggestions as to how this 

 difficulty may be met. Knowing, it is urged, as compared with 

 other modes of experiencing, is not absolutely sui generis. It 

 is, indeed, nothing other than the mode in which the conflicting 

 values and meanings of immediate experiences become trans- 

 formed and adjusted. It is false to assert that any irreconcilable 

 dualism exists between the tools of the knowing-experience and 

 the things which they serve to readjust. For, on the one hand, 

 the very nature of these tools is determined by the specific mal- 

 adjustments and tensions of the immediate experience which call 

 for the reconstitution ; and, on the other hand, the nature of 

 these tools by which the reconstitution is effected determines the 

 nature of the immediate experience in which the process issues. 

 In other words, the relation of universals, which are always me- 

 diate terms of thought, to the particular things of immediate ex- 



