the genesis of the idea is a process of repetition or cumulation (allowing these terms to stand for the whole associative mechanism), and that for the other method the genesis is a process of adjustment (p. 365). The association of ideas, as empiricism explains it, is most assuredly an adjustment of the psychophysical organism to its environment, an adjustment whose survival value is not hard to surmise.
Nor does empiricism lack for a complete account of historical change. It is not true, that "by its logic change of quality in passage from generating elements to final product must be explained away" (p. 366). The unlimited combination even of a finite number of distinguishable elements is a sufficient ground of qualitative change. It is the fundamental assumption of empiricism that each new arrangement has qualitative novelty as an arrangement, even though the elements be old. Moreover, the empiricist need not deny the possibility of the development of new elements, by gradual differentiation from the old. He may believe, for example, that auditory sensation is of more recent origin than visual sensation. But even without such differentiation, continuous change is sufficiently provided for in the premise, that the intensity of each element may vary from the liminal to the maximal value.
A further criticism of the adequacy of the empirical method to genetic problems may appear to be more truly deserved,—that empiricism fails to recognize the function of the negative elements in experience as stimuli to the building up of a new and more comprehensive experience (pp. 367 f.). A persistent biological habit is conceived as issuing in a conscious custom, and the latter (by merely cumulative effect) in a moral practice. But by no such mere repetition can consciousness or moral valuation have arisen; the original act would simply have been hardened as it was. It is only through failure of the instinct or habit to effect an adequate adjustment, that a different mode of adaptation could become necessary.
Let us admit the general historical truth of this criticism. Empiricism is a far older method than that with which the theory of evolution has provided us; and even the latter-day masters of the empirical school may well have shown a fondness for the tools of thought traditional among them, and a misappreciation of instruments more recently devised. But the defect, if indeed it exist, does not seem to be fun- damental. In Professor Dewey's criticism, one point appears to me ambiguous,—whether by 'failure' he means necessarily felt failure, or perhaps simply actual failure, of adjustment. But, in the latter case, it is surely open to the empiricist to assume with Professor
