Page:Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience.djvu/73

Rh says that phenomena are as if reality were thus and so, as if the world of matter had a molecular structure, as if space were filled with a vibrating ether, and, with the attention directed upon experience of another sort, she might say, as if each finite human life were a moment in an absolute life which comprised all of reality.

If such a concept as the Absolute were a useful concept in getting a synthetic sense of experience of a certain type, or in helping to describe it, or in making one a more sensitive and appreciative observer of this experience, then the concept of the Absolute would have precisely the same validity as the concept of the atom. Both could dwell side by side in science very well.

Yet anxious ones cry out, "But the Veritas! The reality back of phenomena! The something which completes my fragmentary experience and answers my questions! No mere acquaintance with phenomena, however wide, can be to me a substitute for this deeper insight."

What, precisely, are the motives because of which we search for something back of phenomena and demand a deeper insight? But before taking up this question let us recall what actual truth and error appear to be, that experience, namely, which is called the possession of truth, and that experience which is called the possession of error.

There is no test of truth other than the removal of the problematic character from the content about which a true judgment is desired,— and the possession of truth, as a case of experience, can be in no wise distinguished from the possession of a deproblematized content. If this content happen to break out into a problem again, then the temporary peace and satisfaction of the will must be pronounced an error. And then another truth may be found, or the same truth may turn out to be true after all. Is a given conclusion a valid one? The question is an inquiry whether the conclusion has got rid of the problem-character and continues deproblematized. 'Yes, the conclusion is valid,' means that the conclusion has not yet shown itself to be unsatisfactory. Or, 'No, that conclusion was an error,' means that the conclusion in question has lost the character of sameness which made it appear as a true account of certain facts, the same as the facts, in some respects, and has taken on a quality of otherness, so that one now has to observe, 'No, the facts are certainly not like that, it was an erroneous account of them. ' The possibility of error thus means the possibility of experience which shall include in it the contradiction of a previous cognitive experience. To say that error is or is not possible in any given case is to predict something about the future.

If one simply observes the situation one is obliged, I think, to