The philosopher here stands for the stage of thought that goes beyond
the stage of common sense; and the difference is simply that he
'interpolates' and 'extrapolates,' where common sense does not. For
common sense, two men see the same identical real dog. Philosophy,
noting actual differences in their perceptions points out the duality
of these latter, and interpolates something between them as a more real
terminus--first, organs, viscera, etc.; next, cells; then, ultimate
atoms; lastly, mind-stuff perhaps. The original sense-termini of the two
men, instead of coalescing with each other and with the real dog-object,
as at first supposed, are thus held by philosophers to be separated by
invisible realities with which, at most, they are conterminous.
Abolish, now, one of the percipients, and the interpolation changes
into 'extrapolation.' The sense-terminus of the remaining percipient is
regarded by the philosopher as not quite reaching reality. He has only
carried the procession of experiences, the philosopher thinks, to a
definite, because practical, halting-place somewhere on the way towards
an absolute truth that lies beyond.
The humanist sees all the time, however, that there is no absolute
transcendency even about the more absolute realities thus conjectured or
believed in. The viscera and cells are only possible percepts following
upon that of the outer body. The atoms again, tho we may never attain
to human means of perceiving them, are still defined perceptually.
The mind-stuff itself is conceived as a kind of experience; and it is
possible to frame the hypothesis (such hypotheses can by no logic be
excluded from philosophy) of two knowers of a piece of mind-stuff and
the mind-stuff itself becoming 'confluent' at the moment at which our
imperfect knowing might pass into knowing of a completed type. Even so
do you and I habitually conceive our two perceptions and the real dog
as confluent, tho only provisionally, and for the common-sense stage
of thought. If my pen be inwardly made of mind-stuff, there is no
confluence NOW between that mind-stuff and my visual perception of the
pen. But conceivably there might come to be such confluence; for, in
the case of my HAND, the visual sensations and the inward feelings of
the hand, its mind-stuff, so to speak, are even now as confluent as any
two things can be.
There is, thus, no breach in humanistic epistemology. Whether knowledge
be taken as ideally perfected, or only as true enough to pass muster
for practice, it is hung on one continuous scheme. Reality, howsoever
remote, is always defined as a terminus within the general possibilities
of experience; and what knows it is defined as an experience THAT
'REPRESENTS' IT, IN THE SENSE OF BEING SUBSTITUTABLE FOR IT IN OUR
THINKING because it leads to the same associates, OR IN THE SENSE
OF 'POINTING TO IT THROUGH A CHAIN OF OTHER EXPERIENCES THAT EITHER
INTERVENE OR MAY INTERVENE.
Absolute reality here bears the same relation to sensation as sensation
bears to conception or imagination. Both are provisional or final
termini, sensation being only the terminus at which the practical man
habitually stops, while the philosopher projects a 'beyond,' in the
shape of more absolute reality. These termini, for the practical and the
philosophical stages of thought respectively, are self-supporting. They
are not 'true' of anything else, they simply ARE, are REAL. They 'lean
on nothing,' as my italicized formula said. Rather does the whole
fabric of experience lean on them, just as the whole fabric of the
solar system, including many relative positions, leans, for its absolute
position in space, on any one of its constituent stars. Here, again, one
gets a new IDENTITATSPHILOSOPHIE in pluralistic form.