1 66 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



In modern thought the critical movement is carried a stage 

 farther by the resolution of the processes involved in 

 knowledge into their elementary factors. If the concept 

 is treated as a function, having its meaning and value in 

 the order and correlation which it establishes among the 

 data of experience, the deliverances of experience have in 

 turn to come up for criticism and submit themselves to 

 the criteria of consistency and coherence imposed by 

 thought. Fixed starting points and absolute principles 

 are replaced by partial views, experimental assumptions, 

 working postulates, which are to be tested by being brought 

 together, and are ultimately confirmed, modified or rejected 

 according as they can or cannot conform to the require- 

 ments of a coherent whole. Thought thus becomes a 

 plastic structure subject to constant modification, at any 

 time conditioned by the existing stage in the development 

 of method and by the acquired mass of experience, but 

 constantly through growth overstepping its conditions 

 and expanding as well as tightening its grip. In this 

 conception, while results are resolved back into conditions, 

 the data, the processes, the principles which underlie them, 

 these conditions are also viewed in relation to the results 

 on which their coherence or incoherence, their breadth or 

 narrowness of scope becomes manifest. The foundation 

 of the movement, then, may be described as a correlation 

 of the conditions, the data, processes and principles of 

 thought and experience with their results. This correla- 

 tion is not altogether the cause nor merely the effect of 

 modern science, but is involved in it through mutual inter- 

 action, expressing its tendency, and consciously, half-con- 

 sciously, or unconsciously shaping its efforts. 



We have then a double movement of Reconstruction 

 or of the conscious and reasoned effort to obtain knowledge 

 of Reality. The first is essentially a Conceptual Recon- 

 struction, and though it involves criticism of mental 

 process and of logical validity its principles are mainly 

 those which arise from analysis of a conceptual order as 

 such. The second is essentially an Experiential Recon- 

 struction, and its criticism involves what we may call briefly 

 a correlation of Mind products with their conditions. 



