CHAPTER XVIII 



The Origin of a * Thing ' and its Nature ^ 



The present growing interest in genetic problems, as 

 well as the current expectation that their discussion may 

 render it necessary that certain great beliefs of our time 

 be overhauled — these things make it important that a 

 clear view should be reached of the sphere of inquiry in 

 which questions of origin may legitimately be asked, and 

 also just what bearing their answer is to have upon the 

 results of the analytic study of philosophy. 



We already have, in several recent publications, the 

 inquiry opened under the terms * origin vs. reality ' — or, 

 in an expression a little more sharp in its epistemological 

 meaning, * origin vs. validity.' I should prefer, in the 

 kind of inquiry taken up in this paper, to give a wider 

 form to the antithesis marked out, and to say ' origin vs. 

 nature,' meaning to ask a series of questions all of which 

 may be brought under the general distinction between the 

 * how ' of the question : how a thing arose or came to be 

 what it is; and the 'what' of the question: what a 

 thing is. 



§ I. What is a Thing? 



Well, first, as to 'what.' Let us see if any answer to 

 the question ' What is it } * can be reached, adequate to our 

 needs, in any case of genetic inquiry. It seems that the 



1 Paper presented to the Princeton Psychological Seminar in May, 1895, 

 slightly revised (from The Psychological Review^ November, 1895). 



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