THE PRACTICAL CHARACTER OF REALITY 247 



Secondly, from another point of view, the doctrine may, I 

 think, be shown to be not a truism but a paradox. As was 

 pointed out earlier in this article, one would suppose the ques- 

 tion of primary importance to the immediatist in his investigation 

 of the nature of reality to be: What is the difference between 

 the experience 'A B' and the experience 'really A 5'? In 

 other words, one would expect him to seek to determine empiric- 

 ally when and how a thing is experienced as real. Let us, then, 

 taking the part of immediatists, raise this question. In the first 

 place, it would seem that a thing is experienced as real, only 

 when there has been some question regarding its nature. That 

 is to say, we are led to characterize it as really this kind of a 

 thing, only when its nature has been subject to doubt and inquiry. 

 Now to characterize a thing as this or that means to regard it 

 as promising a specific sort of future experience. The charac- 

 terization of the thing as really this or that means that after in- 

 vestigation we regard this promise as confirmed ; not necessarily 

 because we have experienced the actual fulfillment of the promise, 

 but because satisfactory evidence has been adduced that the 

 promise would be fulfilled under certain specified conditions. 



(The question may perhaps be raised, whether a runaway 

 horse is not experienced as 'really' dangerous, when we get out 

 of its way. We are surely acting as if it were good for dan- 

 gerous consequences, even if we do not explicitly frame the 

 judgment, 'That horse is dangerous,' before taking to our heels. 

 True ; but my point is that for a consistent immediatism in such 

 an experience 'reality,' or the 'real,' is not experienced at all. 

 A really dangerous horse is a horse experienced as 'really danger- 

 ous.' The horse may for a subsequent experience be 'really 

 dangerous,' but only in so far as my action in getting out of his 

 way has been made the subject of inquiry and judged right.) 



If this analysis be correct, and it is only the thing subjected to 

 inquiry that is immediately experienced as real, we have reached 

 a conclusion of great significance for immediatism. For the 

 thing that has undergone the process of inquiry is precisely the 



