rior isolation of the
thing. Thus, instead of an existential world that is "a network of
relations whose intersections are called terms" (p. 622), I find more
intelligible a qualitatively heterogeneous reality that can be variously
partitioned into things, and that can he abstractly replaced by systems
of terms and relations that are adequate to symbolize their effective
nature in particular respects. There is a tendency for certain
attributes to maintain their concreteness (qualitativeness) in things,
and for others to suggest the connection of things with other things,
and so to emphasize a more abstract aspect of experience. Thus then
arises a temporary and practical distinction that tends to be taken as
opposition between qualities and relations. As spatial and temporal
characteristics possess their chief practical value in the connection of
things, so they, like Professor Cohen's neighbor-character, are
ordinarily assumed abstractly as mere relations, while shapes, colors,
etc., and Professor Cohen's "modesty, tallness, cheerfulness," may be
thought of more easily without emphasis on other things and so tend to
be accepted in their concreteness as qualities, but how slender is the
dividing-line Professor Cohen's easy translation of these things into
relations makes clear.

Taken purely intellectualistically, there would be first a fiction of
separation in what is really already continuous and then another fiction
to bridge the gap thus made. This would, of course, be the falsification
against which Bergson inveighs. But this interpretation is to
misunderstand the nature of abstraction. Abstraction does not substitute
an unreal for a real, but selects from reality a genuine characteristic
of it which is adequate for a particular purpose. Thus to conceive time
as a succession of moments is not to falsify time, but to select from
processes going on in time a characteristic of them through which
predictions can be made, which may be verified and turned into an
instrument for the control of life or environment. A similar
misunderstanding of abstraction, coupled with a fuller appreciation than
Bergson evinces of the value of its results, has led to the
neo-realistic insistence on turning abstractions into existent entities
of which the real world is taken to be an organized composite aggregate.

The practice of turning qualities into merely conscious entities has
done much to obscure the status of scientific knowing, fo