r organisms to man. For a short period, Spencerians might
connect the doctrine of evolution with the old problem, and use the long
temporal accumulation of "experiences" to generate something which, for
human experience, is _a priori_. But the tendency of the biological way
of thinking is neither to confirm or negate the Spencerian doctrine, but
to shift the issue. In the orthodox position _a posteriori_ and _a
priori_ were affairs of knowledge. But it soon becomes obvious that
while there is assuredly something _a priori_--that is to say, native,
unlearned, original--in human experience, that something is _not_
knowledge, but is activities made possible by means of established
connexions of neurones. This empirical fact does not solve the orthodox
problem; it dissolves it. It shows that the problem was misconceived,
and solution sought by both parties in the wrong direction.

Organic instincts and organic retention, or habit-forming, are
undeniable factors in actual experience. They are factors which effect
organization and secure continuity. They are among the specific facts
which a description of experience cognizant of the correlation of
organic action with the action of other natural objects will include.
But while fortunately the contribution of biological science to a truly
empirical description of experiencing has outlawed the discussion of the
_a priori_ and _a posteriori_, the transforming effect of the same
contributions upon other issues has gone unnoticed, save as pragmatism
has made an effort to bring them to recognition.

III

The point seriously at issue in the notion of experience common to both
sides in the older controversy thus turns out to be the place of thought
or intelligence in experience. Does reason have a distinctive office? Is
there a characteristic order of relations contributed by it?

Experience, to return to our positive conception, is primarily what is
undergone in connexion with activities whose import lies in their
objective consequences--their bearing upon future experiences. Organic
functions deal with things as things in course, in operation, in a state
of affairs not yet given or completed. What is done with, what is just
"there," is of concern only in the potentialities which it may indicate.
As ended, as wholly given, it is of no account. But as a sign of what
may come, it becomes an indispensable factor in behavior dealing with
changes, the outcome of which is not yet dete