i EXPERIENCE AND REALITY 237 



because it involves a relation between subject and object 

 or knower and known. This is a case of the confused trans- 

 ference of thought by which the cognitive relation between 

 the knower A and the known B is transferred to B, and 

 because to know is to be in a relation, it is argued that a rela- 

 tion is the only thing known. All that the argument legiti- 

 mately proves is that B to be known to A comes into that 

 relation to A which we call being known. From such a 

 tautology no human skill can educe a substantial result, 

 either positive or negative. 1 



3. The more serious line of objection to the theory that 

 we know Reality starts from the alleged contradictions of 

 the empirical order. Reality, it is agreed, must be con- 

 sistent with itself, but experience, it is alleged, contains 

 ineradicable inconsistencies. So far as this is said literally 

 of experience it must be met with a direct denial. Experi- 

 ence can no more contradict itself than can Reality. Con- 

 tradiction is a relation that occurs between two assertions, 

 one of which affirms while another denies the same thing, 

 and such contradictions arise, not in experience, but in the 

 assertions engendered by thought in the endeavour to 

 interpret experience. Now a thought which contains or 

 involves a contradiction cannot, as it stands, be true. It 

 may contain truth or be partially true, but as containing 

 contradiction it contains error and therefore does not give 

 us final truth. Now the existence of contradictoVy think- 

 ing is a fact with which we are all only too familiar, but 

 fortunately we are also familiar with the compensating fact, 

 that by an extended experience, and, in particular, by a 

 more careful and critical method, contradictions may be 

 surmounted and a deeper or wider view may be obtained, 

 from which both sides of the previous antinomy are seen 

 to contain some truth, while they are in conflict only 

 because they were in some way erroneously conceived. 

 If this is true generally our thought-processes provide 

 the remedy for their own deficiencies, and though our view 

 of reality at any time may involve confusions and mis- 



1 If these arguments appear too summary I must plead that I have set 

 them out at length elsewhere (Theory of Knowledge, Part III.). 



