of pretense, of sham,
of seeming, and appearance, in distinction from the reality upon which
reason lays hold.

The philosophers soon reached certain generalizations from this state
of affairs. The senses are connected with the appetites, with wants and
desires. They lay hold not on the reality of things but on the relation
which things have to our pleasures and pains, to the satisfaction of
wants and the welfare of the body. They are important only for the
life of the body, which is but a fixed substratum for a higher life.
Experience thus has a definitely material character; it has to do
with physical things in relation to the body. In contrast, reason, or
science, lays hold of the immaterial, the ideal, the spiritual. There is
something morally dangerous about experience, as such words as sensual,
carnal, material, worldly, interests suggest; while pure reason and
spirit connote something morally praiseworthy. Moreover, ineradicable
connection with the changing, the inexplicably shifting, and with the
manifold, the diverse, clings to experience. Its material is inherently
variable and untrustworthy. It is anarchic, because unstable. The man
who trusts to experience does not know what he depends upon, since it
changes from person to person, from day to day, to say nothing of
from country to country. Its connection with the "many," with various
particulars, has the same effect, and also carries conflict in its
train.

Only the single, the uniform, assures coherence and harmony. Out of
experience come warrings, the conflict of opinions and acts within
the individual and between individuals. From experience no standard
of belief can issue, because it is the very nature of experience to
instigate all kinds of contrary beliefs, as varieties of local custom
proved. Its logical outcome is that anything is good and true to the
particular individual which his experience leads him to believe true and
good at a particular time and place. Finally practice falls of necessity
within experience. Doing proceeds from needs and aims at change. To
produce or to make is to alter something; to consume is to alter. All
the obnoxious characters of change and diversity thus attach themselves
to doing while knowing is as permanent as its object. To know, to grasp
a thing intellectually or theoretically, is to be out of the region of
vicissitude, chance, and diversity. Truth has no lack; it is untouched
by the perturbations of the world of s