CHAPTER IX 



EXPERIENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION 



i. VIEWED as a phase in the development of Mind, the 

 elaboration of the conceptual order appears not as an end 

 in itself, but as preparatory to a higher effort. It yields 

 an ideal of truth, an instrument of reasoning, a self-con- 

 scious awareness of the mind's own operations in cognition. 

 Over against the flux, the tangled ends, the disjointed 

 fragments of experience, it has set up the conception of 

 a reasoned coherent order. The next step is to find this 

 order in experience itself, to trace within the flowing, 

 shifting mass the broad and permanent lines of move- 

 ment which render it an intelligible whole. This synthesis 

 of experience is the goal of the movement which we have 

 traced from its beginnings. To effect it there are required, 

 on the one hand, the systematic and critical examination 

 of experience itself, which, though begun in Greek anti- 

 quity, is the peculiar work of modern science ; on the other 

 hand partly as a condition of success, partly as conse- 

 quence new methods of organising experience, and close 

 criticism of the functions of the Mind itself a work in 

 which both science and philosophy have had their share 

 in the modern period. We must endeavour to seize the 

 leading points in the complex movement. 



With the death of Aristotle, the great period of con- 

 structive philosophy in Greece came to an end, not, we 

 may take it, for lack of fertile, original and constructive 

 minds, but because the work of the conceptual reconstruc- 

 tion of reality had been carried as far as it could go with 

 the materials of experience then available. But Science 



