THE EXPERIMENTAL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 307 through their own natural operation or incitement. Thus the experimental theory explains directly and simply the ab- solutistic tendency to translate concrete true things into the general relationship, Truth, and then to hypostatise this abstraction into identity with real being, Truth per se and in se, to which all transitory things and events that is, all experienced realities are only shadowy futile approxima- tions. This type of relationship is central for man's will, for man's conscious endeavour. To select, to conserve, to ex- tend, to propagate those meanings which the course of events has confirmed, to note their peculiarities, to be in advance on the alert to note them, anxiously to search for them to sub- stitute them for meanings which eat up our energy in vain, defines the aim of all our rational effort and the goal of all legitimate ambition. The absolutistic theory is the transfer of this moral or voluntary law of selective action into a quasi-physical (that is, metaphysical) law of indiscriminate being. Identify metaphysical being with adequately signifi- cant excellent being that is, with those relationships of things which, in our moments of deepest insight and largest survey, we would continue and reproduce and the experimentalist, rather than the absolutist, is he who has a right to proclaim the supremacy of Truth, and the superiority of the life de- voted to Truth for its own sake. But to read back into the order of things which exists without participation of our re- flexion and aim, the quality which defines the purpose of our thought and endeavour is at one and the same stroke to mythologise reality and deprive the life of thoughtful en- deavour of its reason for being.
