Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/46

Rh conditions, these experiences that we think of when we question could be presented to us. In other words, to question means to have ideas of what is not now present, and to ask whether these ideas do express, or could express, what some experience would verify. I question, on the country road: “Is it four miles to the railway station, or more, or less?” In this case I have ideas or thoughts about possible experiences not now present to me. I question in so far as I wonder whether these possible experiences, if I got them, — that is, if I walked or rode to yonder railway station and measured my way, — would fulfil or verify one or another of these my various thoughts or ideas about the distance. To be limited to mere questions, then, — and here is the essential point about questioning, — involves a certain divorce between your ideas and their objects, between facts conceived and facts directly experienced, between what you think about and what you regard as possibly to be presented to your direct experience. In this divorce of idea or thought and experience or fact, lies the essence of the state of mind of a being who merely questions.

On the other hand, to answer to the full, and with direct insight, any question, means to get your ideas, just in so far as they turn out to be true ideas, fulfilled, confirmed, verified by your experiences. When with full and complete insight you answer a question, then you get into the direct presence of facts, of experiences, which you behold as the confirmation or fulfilment of certain ideas, as the verification of certain thoughts. Take your mere ideas, as such, alone