3IO The Theory of Genetic Modes 



Invoking the shades of the Old Masters of Greece, we 

 think with them of the antithesis between being and be- 

 coming. We ask of this and of that — of everything, 

 indeed — not only what its value in fact, but what its 

 worth in prospect ; not only for its place in the has-been, 

 but for its claim on the yet-to-be. We cannot explain it, 

 even in its network of shifting observed relations, without 

 projecting out before us and before it an expected career. 

 This is the distinction made above between the retrospec- 

 tive and the prospective point of view. The application of 

 it here is to the theory of objects, as such. We must 

 treat the yet-to-be of the object as being as real as the yet- 

 to-experience of the mind. The object is an object for 

 cognition when it is a substantive, a term, in a network of 

 relationships — as it were, a knot trailing its * fringe ' 

 before and after.^ The explanations of exact science, 

 which analyze it into those elements only which went into 

 its composition, tie up the fringes that trail behind, and so 

 make a series of knots extending far back into the dim 

 distance of time, of history, and of logic. But the fringes 

 which stretcJi out before — these fly free in the wind; and 

 while no continuation of the threads is to be seen, and no 

 knots of further knowledge can yet be tied, still we have 

 the assurance that tJiese do not break where tJiey seem to 

 end, an assurance as indubitable and as well guaranteed 

 in our mental constitution as our assurance of the continuity 

 of the back-leading threads already tied up in knots by the 

 formulas of exact science. 



This we know because, by waiting, we find out always 

 that this is the outcome. Never has this exi)ectation 

 failed. And it cannot fail ; for with it would fail also our 



^ A figure made familiar in another context by Wiiiiain James. 



