176 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
psychological processes, on the other, requires, however, that we shall 
already have taken a step away from the empirical standpoint in the first 
sense of the term ; for here we are trying to equate a sensory experience 
with a thought-object, physical or physiological. My sensory impression 
of the weight of a loaded can as greater or less than that of a previously 
lifted can is measured against the ‘ real ’ weights of ‘ real ’ cans as indicated 
by a balance. But what do I know of ‘ real’ weights and ‘ real ’ cans ? 
I have kinesthetic experiences and can discriminate between them ; 
I refer these to cans, and call them weights. I have likewise visual 
experiences of coloured shapes (the balance and cans) altering their 
spatial relations ; again I refer these to the cans, indeed to the same cans, 
and say they are due to weight. So far as sensory experience alone goes, 
I am equating amounts of felt effort with amounts of seen movement, 
and arguing analogically from one to the other. But how is this possible, 
since the two sets of experiences are not only different, but absolutely 
irreducible ? Only, I suggest, because I have conceived something 
which is contained neither in the experience of effort nor in that of visual 
movement—namely, a physical can with physical properties affecting me 
in these ways, a ‘ same thing ’ appearing under two (or more) irreducible 
forms.1 But the kinzsthetic experience of weight does not always 
correspond absolutely with the visual indication ; for the balance can 
detect differences in weight better than I can, or so I believe. And 
I believe this, not in virtue of the sensorial experiences alone, but because 
of even more conceptual construction than has already been indicated. 
In a similar manner, my experience of conation or emotion is equated 
with the visual indications of the instruments I am using. I report more 
or less of ‘ alertness’; I find the galvanometer deflections of greater or 
less excursion ; and I take these to register more or less physiological 
disturbance which is correlated with my experience. Again, there is a 
vast amount of conceptual construction involved in my conclusions. 
These conceptual and inferential procedures, however, are thoroughly 
justified if we admit, as I think we must, that not only sensory experience 
but all experience must be taken into account ; and then we must concede 
a like right of citizenship to whatever we are able to discover within it. 
As we have seen, we find thought-objects as well as sensed-objects and 
relations both ideal and real. Above all, we find an active self busy with 
all these mental objects and relations in the various ways of sensing, 
thinking, feeling, willing, striving, and the like. It is in this complete, 
unselected experience that we discover the experiential grounds for all 
our inferences. 
EXPLANATORY CONCEPTS. 
The last step is to find the least number of suitable explanatory con- 
cepts to cover all the data. Like the conditions and laws of occurrence— 
for indeed they are reached by the same process of functional analysis— 
these may be physical, physiological or psychological. In point of fact, 
for the most part those that have been advanced have been physiological— 
1 Incidentally, this difference between sensed-weight and thought-weight is, 
I believe, an explanation of the size-weight illusion. 
