But the metaphor serves to symbolize the fact
that Experience itself, taken at large, can grow
by its edges. That one moment of it proliferates
into the next by transitions which,
whether conjunctive or disjunctive, continue
the experiential tissue, can no, I contend, be
denied. Life is in the transitions as much as in
the terms connected; often, indeed, it seems to
be there more emphatically, as if our spurts
and sallies forward were the real firing-line of
the battle, were like the thin line of flame advancing
across the dry autumnal field which
the farmer proceeds to burn. In this line we
live prospectively as well as retrospectively.
It is 'of' the past, inasmuch as it comes expressly
as the past's continuation; it is 'of' the
future in so far as the future, when it comes,
will have continued _it_.
These relations of continuous transition experienced
are what make our experiences cognitive.
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In the simplest and completest cases
the experiences are cognitive of one another.
When one of them terminates a previous series
of them with a sense of fulfilment, it, we say,
is what those other experiences 'had in view.'
The knowledge, in such a case, is verified; the
truth is 'salted down.
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