ix EXPERIENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION 155 



tracing error to its root in the mistake of part for the whole, 

 and indicating, accordingly, where truth lay. That 

 notwithstanding all the errors of one-sided thought and 

 partial experience, truth lies in the complete system of 

 inter-connected experience,' and that no further test can 

 have any meaning is thus made clear, and we get in the 

 growth of the mind itself the double conception of a 

 relative truth always in process and always involving error, 

 and an absolute truth already present as the moving force 

 in growth, but becoming known in its fulness only when 

 the process is complete. 



It is possible to retain this conception of truth without 

 that identification whereby the subjective factor is really 

 made to swallow the objective. If thought involves refer- 

 ence to an object, a system of thought is a system of such 

 references. Where such references are mutually inconsis- 

 tent there is demonstrated error. Where they are mutually 

 compatible there is no reason to impute error. But they 

 may be not only compatible but mutually necessary. 

 Thought may in the end stand as a system of references 

 of which all the parts imply one another and which excludes 

 every basis of negation. It is in accordance with the 

 idealist conception that in such a system there could be no 

 rational ground of doubt attaching to the references which 

 it contained, for any such ground must itself be a thought 

 arising within the system of thought which has been held 

 to exclude it. Admit, in fact, that belief or doubt alike 

 arise within the circle of operations of thought in or 

 with experience (phrase it as you will), admit that the 

 appeal is always to further operations of thought, and the 

 conclusion is that a completely articulated system, including 

 all operations of thought with experience, can and need 

 appeal only to itself. I shall dwell on this point further 

 at a later stage and consider its bearing on the actual 

 structure of our partial knowledge. For the present I 

 have to note its value for the conception of our thought- 

 world as a structure in process of growth. If we hold fast 

 to the distinction between thought and the thing thought 

 about, we are led to the conception of any thought as being 

 necessarily a function of two independent things a mind 



