THE COGNITIVE RELATION
The first great pitfall from which such a radical
standing by experience will save us is an
artificial conception of the _relations_between_
_knower_and_known_. Throughout the history of
philosophy the subject and its object have been
treated as absolutely discontinuous entities;
and thereupon the presence of the latter to the
former, or the 'apprehension' by the former of
the latter, has assumed a paradoxical character
which all sorts of theories had to be invented
to overcome. Representative theories
put a mental 'representation,' 'image,' or
'content' into the gap, as a sort of intermediary.
Common-sense theories left the gap
untouched, declaring our mind able to clear
it by a self-transcending leap. Transcendentalist
theories left it impossible to traverse by
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finite knowers, and brought an Absolute in to
perform the saltatory act. All the while, in
the very bosom of the finite experience, every
conjunction required to make the relation intelligible
is given in full. Either the knower
and the known are:
(1) The self-same piece of experience taken
twice over in different contexts; or they are
(2) two pieces of _actual_ experience belonging
to the same subject, with definite tracts of
conjunctive transitional experience between
them; or
(3) the known is a _possible_ experience either
of that subject or another, to which the said
conjunctive transitions _would_lead, if sufficiently
prolonged.
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