in THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 293 



to its relation to these conditions, so as to learn something 

 of the origin and meaning of the development which we 

 have seen in process ? This is to ask whether we can get 

 at the causes of the process. There are two ways of 

 approaching this question. One is to investigate the pro- 

 cess itself. This we have done as far as we could. The 

 other is to investigate the nature of Reality as a whole. 

 This we might attempt through a synthesis of experience, 

 but here our difficulty is that it is just the incompleteness 

 of experience that has forced the present question upon us. 

 Our only resource is to consider whether we have any 

 general principles which, notwithstanding the limitations 

 of our experience, we can affirm with confidence of Reality 

 in general, and which will help us in the present problem. 

 Now this, it may be said, is nothing but an invitation to 

 enter upon the bog of speculation. The nature of Reality 

 is not to be determined by an analysis of conceptions, but 

 by a synthesis of experience, and when that synthesis 

 fails we can go no further. As against an analysis 

 divorced from experience this criticism has force. But 

 it may be that an analysis of fundamental concep- 

 tions, for example, of the causal process, is just the 

 link that is required to complete a synthesis of experi- 

 ence. It may be possible to co-ordinate analytic enquiry 

 and empirical results. In the special sciences abstract 

 principles, when tested by concrete experience, make 

 good hypotheses, and the same method may be applic- 

 able to the science which deals with Reality as a whole. 

 If, that is to say, analysis of first principles leads to a 

 certain conception of Reality, and if this conception 

 coincides with that which the widest obtainable synthesis of 

 experience suggests, we have something more solid than 

 a metaphysical speculation, and of wider applicability than 

 an empirical generalisation. I shall endeavour in the end 

 to show that such a correspondence of analysis with experi- 

 ence can, in fact, be found, and that the resulting con- 

 ception of Reality has more than a merely speculative 

 value. 



We have then two questions to face. The first is 

 whether mind, as we know it in the living being, is a true 



