IV

This conception does not, however, commit us to the view that there is

any conscious situation which is totally non-reflective. It may be

true that any experience which can properly be termed such comprises

something which is _meant_ over and against what is given or there.

But there are many situations into which the rational factor--the

mutual distinction and mutual reference of fact and meaning--enters

only incidentally and is slurred, not accentuated. Many disturbances

are relatively trivial and induce only a slight and superficial

redefinition of contents. This passing tension of facts against

meaning may suffice to call up and carry a wide range of meaningful

facts which are quite irrelevant to the intellectual problem. Such is

the case where the individual is finding his way through any field

which is upon the whole familiar, and which, accordingly, requires

only an occasional resurvey and revaluation at moments of slight

perplexity. We may call these situations, if we will, knowledge

situations (for the reflective function characteristic of knowledge is

present), but so denominating them does not do away with their sharp

difference from those situations in which the critical qualification

of facts and definition of meanings constitute the main business. To

speak of the passing attention which a traveler has occasionally to

give to the indications of his proper path in a fairly familiar and

beaten highway as knowledge, in just the same sense in which the

deliberate inquiry of a mathematician or a chemist or a logician is

knowledge, is as confusing to the real issue involved as would be the

denial to it of _any_ reflective factor. If, then, one bears in mind

these two considerations--(1) the unique problem and purpose of every

reflective situation, and (2) the difference as to range and

thoroughness of logical function in different types of reflective

situations--one need have no difficulty with the doctrine that the

great obstacle in the development of scientific knowing is that facts

and meanings enter such situations with stubborn and alien

characteristics imported from other situations.

This affords an opportunity to speak again of the logical problem to

which reference and promise of return were made earlier in this paper.

Facts may be regarded as existing qualitatively and in certain spatial

and temporal relations; when there is knowledge another relation is

added, that of one thing meaning or signifying another. Water exists,

for example, as water, in a certain place, in a certain temporal

sequence. But it may signify the quenching of thirst; and this

signification-relation constitutes knowledge.[57] This statement may

be taken in a way congruous with the account developed in this paper.

But it may also be taken in another sense, consideration of which will

serve to enforce the point regarding the tentative nature of the

characterization of the given, as distinct from the intended and

absent. Water means quenching thirst; it is drunk, and death follows.

It was not water, but a poison which "looked like" water. Or it is

drunk, and is water, but does not quench thirst, for the drinker is in

an abnormal condition and drinking water only intensifies the thirst.

Or it is drunk and quenches thirst; but it also brings on typhoid

fever, being not merely water, but water plus germs. Now all these

events demonstrate that error may appertain quite as much to the

characterization of existing things, suggesting or suggested, as to

the suggestion _qua_ suggestion. There is no ground for giving the

"things" any superior reality. In these cases, indeed, it may fairly

be said that the mistake is made because qualitative thing and

suggested or meaning-relation were _not_ discriminated. The

"signifying" force was regarded as a part of the direct quality of the

given fact, quite as much as its color, liquidity, etc.; it is only in

another situation that it is discriminated as a relation instead of

being regarded as an element.

It is quite as true to say that a thing is called water because it

suggests thirst-quenching as to say that it suggests thirst-quenching

because it is characterized as water. _The knowledge function becomes

prominent or dominant in the degree in which there is a conscious

discrimination between the fact-relations and the meaning-relations._

And this inevitably means that the "water" ceases to be _surely_

water, just as it becomes doubtful or hypothetical whether this thing,

whatever it is, really means thirst-quenching. If it really means

thirst-quenching, it is water; so far as it may not mean it, it

perhaps is not water. It is now just as much a question _what_ this

_is_ as what it means. Whatever will resolve one question will resolve

the other. In just the degree, then, in which an existence or thing

gets intellectualized force or function, it becomes a fragmentary and

dubious thing, to be circumscribed and described for the sake of

operating as _sign_, or clue of a _future_ reality to be realized

through action. Only as "reality" is reduced to a sign, and questions

of its nature as sign are considered, does it get intellectual or

cognitional status. The bearing of this upon the question of practical

character of the distinctions of fact and idea is obvious. No one, I

take it, would deny that action of some sort _does_ follow upon

judgment; no one would deny that this action _does_ somehow serve to

test the value of the intellectual operations upon which it follows.

But if this subsequent action is _merely_ subsequent, if the

intellectual categories, operations, and distinctions are complete in

themselves, without inherent reference to it, what guaranty is there

that they pass into relevant action, and by what miracle does the

action manage to test the worth of the idea? But if the intellectual

identification and description of the thing are as tentative and

instrumental as is the ascription of significance, then the

exigencies of the active situation are operative in all the categories

of the knowledge situation. Action is not a more or less accidental

appendage or afterthought, but is undergoing development and giving

direction in the entire knowledge function.

In conclusion, I remark that the ease with which the practical

character of these fundamental logical categories, fact, meaning, and

agreement, may be overlooked or denied is due to the organic way in

which practical import is incarnate in them. It can be overlooked

because it is so involved in the terms themselves that it is assumed

at every turn. The pragmatist is in the position of one who is charged

with denying the existence of something because, in pointing out a

certain fundamental feature of it, he puts it in a strange light. Such

confusion always occurs when the familiar is brought to definition.

The difficulties are more psychological--difficulties of orientation

and mental adjustment--than logical, and in the long run will be done

away with by our getting used to the different viewpoint, rather than

by argument.