ii SCIENTIFIC RECONSTRUCTION 271 



said of the thought which conceives or the judgment which 

 affirms the truth of the system as a whole. It is a reasoned 

 judgment reasoned not because it depends on some out- 

 side truth, but because it is inferable from any of its parts. 

 Thus, in our miniature system of two judgments, if we 

 assert A it gives us B, if we assert B it gives us A. In 

 either case the second judgment substantiates the first, and 

 in both we have the whole AB, the result of two indepen- 

 dent corroborative judgments. A rational system of 

 thought appears to be generically a whole of this kind. 



Such a system can only be negated or modified by a 

 judgment drawn from an independent source. Hence, if 

 it included all experience, it would be finally established. 

 If it included all human experience it would be established 

 as fully as human experience at any given time could estab- 

 lish it. In point of fact, any system at which we can arrive 

 is never so complete as this. Our contact with the real 

 world is partial and sporadic. From a heterogeneous ex- 

 perience we get a multitude of glimpses and partial views, 

 and it is but gradually and slowly that we bind them 

 together. It is, however, this work of binding them 

 together that constitutes the distinctively rational in the 

 human mind. It is irrational to divide up thought in such 

 a way as to take any part in complete isolation from the 

 remainder. It is irrational to take any partial view as final 

 truth without considering the bearings of other views 

 derived from other sources. We may even say that it is 

 irrational to be contented with the results of our partial 

 experience, however perfect its internal coherence, instead 

 of actively seeking fresh data from fresh experience. Con- 

 versely, it is the positive work of reason to be for ever 

 organising our experiences into a systematic whole of 

 thought. This is as much as to admit that the work of 

 reason is never done, that it is permanently operative in 

 the way of bringing all manner of experiences into relation 

 with one another, but that the total view of the world which 

 it forms or even that which it could form if its synthesis 

 were far more nearly perfect than it is is not, and, for a 

 limited mind cannot be, final. What is definitely estab- 

 lished is not the totality of thought achieved at any given 



