The paradox
of self-transcendency in knowledge comes back
upon us here, but I think that our notions of
pure experience and of substitution, and our
radically empirical view of conjunctive transitions,
are _Denkmittel_ that will carry us safely
through the pass.
67
V. WHAT OBJECTIVE REFERENCE IS.
Whosoever feels his experience to be something
substitutional even while he has it, may
be said to have an experience that reaches
beyond itself. From inside of its own entity it
says 'more,' and postulates reality existing elsewhere.
For the transcendentalist, who holds
knowing to consist in a _salto_mortale_ across an
'epistemological chasm,' such an idea presents
no difficulty; but it seems at first sight as if it
might be inconsistent with an empiricism like
our own. Have we not explained that conceptual
knowledge is made such wholly by the
existence of things that fall outside of the
knowing experience itself -- by intermediary
experience and by a terminus that fulfils?
Can the knowledge be there before these elements
that constitute its being have come?
And, if knowledge be not there, how can objective
reference occur?
The key to this difficulty lies in the distinction
between knowing as verified and completed,
and the same knowing as in transit
68
and on its way.
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