ause our feelings of
activity as well as the movements which these seem to prompt), a
philosophy of pure experience can consider the real causation as no
other _nature_ of thing than that which even in our most erroneous
experiences appears to be at work. Exactly what appears there is what
we _mean_ by working, tho we may later come to learn that working was
not exactly _there_. Sustaining, persevering, striving, paying with
effort as we go, hanging on, and finally achieving our intention--this
_is_ action, this _is_ effectuation in the only shape in which, by
a pure experience-philosophy, the whereabouts of it anywhere can be
discussed. Here is creation in its first intention, here is causality
at work.[1] To treat this offhand as the bare illusory

[Footnote 1: Let me not be told that this contradicts a former article
of mine, 'Does consciousness exist?' in the _Journal of Philosophy_
for September 1, 1904 (see especially page 489), in which it was said
that while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures
work 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water
wets, etc.), but not in the thoughts. Mental activity-trains are
composed of thoughts, yet their members do work on each other: they
check, sustain, and introduce. They do so when the activity is merely
associational as well as when effort is there. But, and this is my
reply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that
energize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is
a desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a
feeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this.
The interplay of these secondary tones (among which 'interest,'
'difficulty,' and 'effort' figure) runs the drama in the mental
series. In what we term the physical drama these qualities play
absolutely no part. The subject needs careful working out; but I can
see no inconsistency.]

surface of a world whose real causality is an unimaginable ontological
principle hidden in the cubic deeps, is, for the more empirical way of
thinking, only animism in another shape. You explain your given fact
by your 'principle,' but the principle itself, when you look clearly
at it, turns out to be nothing but a previous little spiritual copy
of the fact. Away from that one and only kind of fact your mind,
considering causality, can never get.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have found myself more than once accused in print of
b