Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/275

No. 3.] Failure to realize the foregoing has been a fruitful source of objections levelled at the concepts of quality and relation. For example, consider Mr. Bradley's criticism of the concept of relation on the ground that it implies an indefinite regress, seeing that a relation between terms requires further relations to relate it to its terms, and so on. There would be some point in this criticism if we asserted that the concept of relation adequately represents experience. But, admittedly, such general conceptions as quality and relation cannot adequately comprehend the essentially particular. All that is claimed is that in representing experience as adequately as possible by general characteristics, the introduction of the conception of objects between which certain relations subsist, is, for the most part, perfectly satisfactory for the purpose of calculated prediction and interference in the course of events. No such complication as the introduction of fresh relations between the relation and its terms is needed to carry on the reasoning based on our premises, and this reasoning is justified, so far as it goes, by empirical verification. Thus Mr. Bradley's objection cannot hold good, for we do not suppose our conceptual system of terms and relations to comprehend experience fully, though on the other hand it is sufficiently adequate to describe it and to render possible sufficiently accurate prophecy and successful interference in the course of events. Therefore the objection has no significance as applied to perceptual experience as such, nor can it be urged against our conceptual apparatus; for we construct the latter ourselves, and find it sufficiently competent to perform its task, which is the only significant test.

We may conclude the investigation of the categories of experience by examining two of a somewhat different type from those already considered. They are the categories of Means and End, or Purpose. These categories are only significant in application to a universe containing individual subjects of experience. The categories we have been analyzing are applied in the first place to the object of experience, though the origin of the concept of the category is in some cases subjective, but the