THE PRACTICAL CHARACTER OF REALITY 255 



of [immediate] empiricism, then (or, what is the same thing, from 

 a general consideration of the concept of experience) nothing can 

 be deduced, not a single philosophical proposition. . . . But the 

 real significance of the principle is that of a method of philo- 

 sophical analysis." 1 Now, in the first place, if the method has 

 even any prima facie claim upon our attention, it must pretend 

 to an appropriateness to the subject-matter to which it is to be 

 applied, and must hence imply something as to the character of 

 that subject-matter. The declaration quoted is parallel to the 

 belief of Descartes that he has doubted all that can be doubted, 

 while he yet has firmly in hand a method for the elaboration of 

 all science. Rather is it true, that a whole philosophy is implicit 

 in the assumption of that method, if only because the choice of 

 method means the acceptance of an ideal of truth, a standard of 

 that which shall be admitted into the results. It may be said 

 that the immediatist, for his part, is willing to accept anything 

 that experience is or contains. But, even so, Descartes is willing 

 to accept anything that can be demonstrated from self-evident 

 first principles. The very conception of immediate experience, 

 or of experience as immediate, implies that a body of unequivocal 

 data are given and can be discovered by inspection, are prior, 

 that is, to all interpretation, and thus form an unquestioned basis 

 for all interpretation. It may well be questioned, however, 

 whether this notion of the 'given' is not simply another limiting 

 conception, like the pulley, again, or 'reality' itself, never pre- 

 cisely exemplified in any definable content, though admittedly a 

 most useful instrument for the analysis of all manner of experi- 

 ences. 



GRACE A. DE LACUNA. 



l Journal of Philos., Vol. II, p. 399. 



