276 The Origin of a 'Thing' and its Nature 



takes on the form of accomplished fact — after, i.e., it be- 

 comes a matter of * retrospect.' All constructions in terms 

 of content mean the substitution of the retrospective 

 categories for those of prospect ; that is, the construction 

 of an organization after it is dead, or — what amounts to 

 the same thing — by analogy with other organizations 

 which have run down, or died, in our experience. Sup- 

 pose, for example, we take the construction of the category 

 of accommodation, in each particular instance of it, in 

 terms of the ordinary biological law of natural selection — 

 an attempt made by the present writer under the state- 

 ment of ' functional selection ' ^ — and so get a state- 

 ment of how an organism actually got any one of the 

 special adjustments of its mature personal life. What, 

 then, have we done.? I think it is evident that we have 

 simply resorted to the * retrospective ' reference ; we have 

 changed our category in the attempt to get a concrete fill- 

 ing for a particular case after it has happened. To adopt 

 the view that the category of organization can be in every 

 case filled up with matter, in this way, does not in any sense 

 destroy the prospective element in the category of organiza- 

 tion ; for the psychological subtlety still remains in mind in 

 the doing of it, either that the event must be awaited to 

 determine the outcome, and that I am agreeing with my- 

 self and my scientific friends to wait for it, or that we arc 

 solving this case by others for which we did wait. A 

 good instance of our mental subtleties in such cases is seen 

 in the category of ' potentiality ' considered lower down. 

 The extreme case of the reduction of the categories of 



^ In accordance with which the organism's new accommodations are 

 selected out of movements excessively produced under pleasure-pain stimu- 

 lation. Ibid., pp. 174 f. (cf. pp. 45, 94 f. above). 



