Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/56

Rh organism of the being whose consciousness is in question; and that the conscious states which constitute cognition accompany these responses of the organism to the environment. But our own theory of the categories of experience cannot thus base itself upon the assumption that the objective world, first existing, produces a series of corresponding responses in an organism, and consequently in the cognitive life which accompanies the processes of this organism. On the contrary, our purpose, in such a theory of the categories of experience, is to point out the principles that lead us, from within, i.e. from our own conscious point of view, to make any particular assertions whatever about the objective world. For us, therefore, in this theory, the objective world is not first known as prior to the cognitive responses, but is viewed as it is because the conscious process regards itself as meaning a response to a situation. The world of “accredited facts” is known to us to exist, because we know it to be acknowledged as existing. And it is thus acknowledged because the purpose of any instant of rational consciousness is fulfilled better by recognizing it as thus and thus existent than by viewing it otherwise. This assertion is the application of our general Theory of Being to the case of our concrete knowledge of any special fact or range of facts.

I acknowledge a particular fact, then, in connection with a particular attempt at action. My particular action is willed by me under certain limitations. These limitations are given to me, at the moment, in the form of my sense of incompleteness, of dissatisfaction, of imperfect expression of my present will. But they are not merely thus