Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/621

605 have an 'ideal dimension' (Vol. I, p. 78). If the merely given were the real, the actual experience of the wisest man would be a bedlam. On the other hand, no ideal whatever, no matter what its claims to ultimate validity, has significance apart from concrete experience. If nothing is, in the strict sense, merely real, nothing worth considering seriously is, or can be, merely ideal. But this alone would be too easy a solution; and the author is most suggestive in his frequent insistence upon the experimental character of the Life of Reason. Even the higher animal consciousness must be regarded as a good deal more selective than merely receptive, while human consciousness is audacious in its rejection of the merely given, and in its selection of what, for the present purpose, is, or seems to be, relevant. As a result of what might be called 'the instinct of self-preservation of reason itself,' this significant side of experience is accentuated and the relations found to hold within this sphere are taken as defining reality. Hence, as the author holds, "knowledge touches reality when it touches its ideal goal" (Vol. I, p. 80). Later he says: "Logical forms of thought impregnate and constitute practical intellect. The shock of experience can, indeed, correct, disappoint, or inhibit rational expectation, but it cannot take its place" (Vol. I, p. 176). And again: "The man of affairs, adjusting himself at every turn to the opaque brutality of fact, loses his respect for the higher reaches of logic and forgets that his recognition of facts themselves is an application of logical principles" (Vol. I, p. 199).

But while Professor Santayana claims much for the immanent rationality of experience, he is keenly alive to the dangers of a too ambitious idealism. He says, for example: "Prudence itself is a vague science, and science, when it contains real knowledge, is but a clarified prudence, a description of experience and a guide to life. Speculative reason, if it is not also practical, is not reason at all" (Vol. I, p. 176). Passages like this, of which there are not a few in the book, might suggest that the author is after all a pragmatist in disguise; but the general drift of his argument is in the opposite direction, though he gives the problem no detailed examination. For instance, he says: "Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress; but thought is in no way instrumental or servile; it is an experience realized, not a force to be used " (Vol. I, pp. 213, 214). And later he adds: "In so far as thought is instrumental it is not worth having, any more than matter, except for its promise; it must terminate in something truly profitable and ultimate. ... But this ultimate good is itself