CHAPTER I 



EXPERIENCE AND REALITY 



i . WE have traced the development of mind from the first 

 efforts of adjustment to sense-stimuli in the individual to 

 the point at which the entire collective life is grasped in 

 conception as a unity. We have seen in this conception a 

 focal point upon which the teachings of experience con- 

 verge, and from which the future life of the race may be 

 controlled. We have traced the advance of the idea of 

 such control from broken, fitful and uncertain beginnings 

 to the same central point of clearness and comprehension. 

 We have shown, finally, that the development is not con- 

 fined to the world of ideas, but is reflected step by step in 

 the advancing control actually exerted over the physical 

 and social order. But we have not yet enquired into the 

 meaning and the conditions of this development. Our 

 enquiry has been purely historical. We have been content 

 to analyse successive phases and indicate the changes 

 involved in passing from one to the other. We have not 

 sought to determine the future of the development or its 

 ultimate goal, except in so far as this may be implied in , 

 some of the terms of our analysis. 



We have not even adequately determined the very direc- 

 tion in which development proceeds. For while, for 

 example, we have summarily described the movement of 

 thought, we have not examined the value of the result. 

 We have not, that is, enquired whether we are any nearer 

 to truth at the last than at the first. We have spoken of a 

 critical reconstruction as though it somehow brought us 

 nearer to Reality. We have not asked whether the Mind 



