ix EXPERIENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION 165 



It thus indicates that the limits of mind at any given 

 moment are no adamantine barriers, but rather that the 

 boundaries of its operation at any given moment are 

 functions of its development at that moment, and are 

 perfectly capable of extension. It prepares us for the view 

 that by recognising our limits we transcend them and that 

 by knowing a truth to be true only for us, we know it 

 absolutely. The final secret of Reconstruction lies in the 

 consciousness of development itself. 



6. We see then that the world of advanced thought 

 the world of philosophy in the older and more legitimate 

 sense in which that term included the sciences is one in 

 which common thought has undergone a fundamental 

 reconstruction, both in its methods and its data. We have 

 to picture common sense advancing on uncritical lines and 

 building up an order of ideas which has its value but is 

 by no means a perfect mirror of reality. We picture 

 criticism beginning with a sense of this deficiency, with 

 the notion of a real world set over against this mental con- 

 struction. Such an opposition we saw is implicit in the 

 higher religions and is posed as a definite problem for 

 logical solution from the first hypotheses of the Pre- 

 Socratics onwards. Ancient philosophy defined the pro- 

 blem in general terms, and modern thought, with its 

 emphasis on 4 the subjective factor, has traced the difficulty 

 to its root, and with its new methods of reasoning and 

 observation has made some notable advances in the work 

 of reconstruction. The essence of this reconstruction is 

 the entry into the sphere of consciousness, previously con- 

 cerned only with results, of the data and the processes by 

 which results are obtained. This critical movement begins 

 in the ancient world in the demand for a logical treatment 

 of the conceptual order, with the ideals of unity, system, 

 accuracy and interrelation, with the exposition of the 

 formal conditions of a perfected science. We have here 

 the general conditions of metaphysics and of mathematics, 

 at least in the form which they assumed in antiquity. 

 Indeed, the Elements of Euclid remain the nearest approach 

 to the realisation of this ideal of conceptual reconstruction. 



