pt the constitution of the fact as given; with all
this given him, I say, in pure experience, he asks for some ineffable
union in the abstract instead, which, if he gained it, would only be a
duplicate of what he has already in his full possession. Surely he
abuses the privilege which society grants to all us philosophers, of
being puzzle-headed.

Polemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in possession
in so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against
its best known champion would count as either superficiality or
inability. I have to conclude that its dialectic has not invalidated in
the least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as
experienced, hangs so variously together. In particular it leaves an
empirical theory of knowledge[67] intact, and lets us continue to
believe with common sense that one object _may_ be known, if we have any
ground for thinking that it _is_ known, to many knowers.

In [the next essay] I shall return to this last supposition, which
seems to me to offer other difficulties much harder for a philosophy of
pure experience to deal with than any of absolutism's dialectic
objections.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and
Scientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 2, January 19, 1905. Reprinted also as
Appendix A in _A Pluralistic Universe_, pp. 347-369. The author's
corrections have been adopted in the present text. ED.]

[44] [F. H. Bradley: _Appearance and Reality_, second edition, pp.
152-153, 23, 118, 104, 108-109, 570.]

[45] Compare Professor MacLennan's admirable _Auseinandersetzung_ with
Mr. Bradley, in _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific
Methods_, vol. I, [1904], pp. 403 ff., especially pp. 405-407.

[46] [Hume: _Treatise of Human Nature_, Appendix, Selby-Bigge's edition,
p. 636.]

[47] Technically, it seems classable as a 'fallacy of composition.' A
duality, predicable of the two wholes, _L--M_ and _M--N_, is forthwith
predicated of one of their parts, _M_.

[48] See above, pp. 42 ff.

[49] I may perhaps refer here to my _Principles of Psychology_, vol. I,
pp. 459 ff. It really seems 'weird' to have to argue (as I am forced now
to do) for the notion that it is one sheet of paper (with its two
surfaces and all that lies between) which is both under my pen and on
the table while I write--the 'claim' that it is two sheets seems so
brazen. Yet I sometimes suspect the absolutists of sin