f course
such a metaphor is misleading, for in actual experience the more
substantive and the more transitive parts run into each other
continuously, there is in general no separateness needing to be
overcome by an external cement; and whatever separateness is actually
experienced is not overcome, it stays and counts as separateness to the
end. But the metaphor serves to symbolize the fact that Experience
itself, taken at large, can grow by its edges. That one moment of it
proliferates into the next by transitions which, whether conjunctive or
disjunctive, continue the experiential tissue, can not, I contend, be
denied. Life is in the transitions as much as in the terms connected;
often, indeed, it seems to be there more emphatically, as if our spurts
and sallies forward were the real firing-line of the battle, were like
the thin line of flame advancing across the dry autumnal field which the
farmer proceeds to burn. In this line we live prospectively as well as
retrospectively. It is 'of' the past, inasmuch as it comes expressly as
the past's continuation; it is 'of' the future in so far as the future,
when it comes, will have continued _it_.

These relations of continuous transition experienced are what make our
experiences cognitive. In the simplest and completest cases the
experiences are cognitive of one another. When one of them terminates a
previous series of them with a sense of fulfilment, it, we say, is what
those other experiences 'had in view.' The knowledge, in such a case, is
verified; the truth is 'salted down.' Mainly, however, we live on
speculative investments, or on our prospects only. But living on things
_in posse_ is as good as living in the actual, so long as our credit
remains good. It is evident that for the most part it is good, and that
the universe seldom protests our drafts.

In this sense we at every moment can continue to believe in an existing
_beyond_. It is only in special cases that our confident rush forward
gets rebuked. The beyond must, of course, always in our philosophy be
itself of an experiential nature. If not a future experience of our own
or a present one of our neighbor, it must be a thing in itself in Dr.
Prince's and Professor Strong's sense of the term--that is, it must be
an experience _for_ itself whose relation to other things we translate
into the action of molecules, ether-waves, or whatever else the
physical symbols may be.[40] This opens the chapter of the relatio