It
consists in intermediary experiences (possible,
if not actual) of continuously developing progress,
and, finally, of fulfilment, when the sensible
percept, which is the object, is reached.
The percept here not only _verifies_ the concept,
proves its function of knowing that percept to
---
1 Mr. Bradley, not professing to know his absolute _aliunde_,
nevertheless derealizes Experience by alleging it to be everywhere
infected with self-contradiction. His arguments seem almost purely
verbal, but this is no place for arguing that point out.
---
61
be true, but the percept's existence as the
terminus of the chain of intermediaries _creates_
the function. Whatever terminates that chain
was, because it now proves itself to be, what
the concept 'had in mind.'
The towering importance for human life of
this kind of knowing lies in the fact that an
experience that knows another can figure as
its _representative_, not in any quasi-miraculous
'epistemological' sense, but in the definite
practical sense of being its _substitute_ in various
operations, sometimes physical and sometimes
mental, which lead us to its associates and results.
By experimenting on our ideas of reality,
we may save ourselves the trouble of experimenting
on the real experiences which they
severally mean.
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