The ideas form related systems,
corresponding point for point to the systems
which the realities form; and by letting an
ideal term call up its associates systematically,
we may be led to a terminus which the corresponding
real term would have led to in case
we had operated on the real world. And this
brings us to the general question of substitution.
62
IV. SUBSTITUTION
In Taine's brilliant book on 'Intelligence,'
substitution was for the first time named as
a cardinal logical function, though of course
the facts had always been familiar enough.
What, exactly, in a system of experiences, does
the 'substitution' of one of them for another
mean?
According to my view, experience as a whole
is a process in time, whereby innumerable
particular terms lapse and are superseded by
others that follow upon them by transitions
which, whether disjunctive or conjunctive in
content, are themselves experiences, and must
in general be accounted at least as real as
the terms which they relate. What the nature
of the event called 'superseding' signifies, depends
altogether on the kind of transition
that obtains. Some experiences simply abolish
their predecessors without continuing them
in any way.
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