i EXPERIENCE AND REALITY 243 



know Reality then, at least to know that part of Reality 

 which most intimately concerns ourselves, would not be to 

 stand mentally at the centre of an articulate system, but 

 to feel in ourselves the impulse or impulses which eddy 

 hither and thither in the vortex. The defects that we have 

 noted in articulate thought would not be defects to be 

 overcome but to be recognised as insuperable. The busi- 

 ness of philosophy is to put science under its feet and erect 

 impulse- feeling to the throne. The development of mind 

 is not an extension of rationality, but involves the discovery 

 that rationality plays a humble and subservient part, as an 

 instrument in the hands of the vital impulse. 



This theory, however, like most others which decry 

 reason, always uses reason when it can, and in fact seeks to 

 justify itself by evidence drawn from the failures or defici- 

 encies of articulate thought and in particular of analysis. 

 Some of these deficiencies have already been examined. 

 Let us take up one of these cases again and consider how 

 it stands. Life itself, it is said, is a fact with which analysis 

 fails to deal. It cannot be resolved into mechanical forces 

 and therefore cannot be the subject of scientific treatment. 

 There are here two confusions which I believe to be the 

 main ground of the case against rationalism. 



That the vital processes must be ultimately of a mechani- 

 cal character and that they are capable of scientific treatment 

 are in fact two quite different propositions, and the first 

 confusion consists in identifying them. The second pro- 

 position, which alone is essential to Rationalism, assumes, 

 no doubt, that they can be clearly and adequately con- 

 ceived, and it implies that so far as they are complex 

 they can be resolved, by methods familiar to science, 

 into simpler constituent factors. It does not, however, 

 imply and this is the second confusion that they contain 

 no element which is unanalysable. On the contrary, it 

 may always be one of the results of analysis to exhibit 

 certain lowest terms as the final products of its work. All 

 that is necessary for accurate knowledge is that these lowest 

 terms should be definite elements clearly presented to the 

 mind. As long as we can justly apprehend their nature, 

 trace the combinations into which they enter and their 



