plausibility. As long as the results
are attained which the psychologist sets out to reach, we need not be
hypersensitive on the score of methods. In the field of natural science,
at all events, this Jesuitical principle is not incompatible with
respectability. If it be true, however, that sensation is but a tool or
artifact, a means to an end, what is the end that is to be attained by
this device? It is at this point that we come to the parting of the
ways. According to the view previously elaborated, the anticipations of
the future have to do with the results of our possible acts, and
sensations are simply symbols for the various elements in our complex
motor responses. In the case of Bergson and James, however, the clue
that is furnished by response is discarded. The reference to the future,
being dissociated from behavior, is taken as evidence of an abstract or
metaphysical duration, so that experience is somehow other than it
seems; and sensation is regarded as the translation of duration into
the language of space. Associationism is justified in its belief that
reality is different from its appearance in our experience, but is
criticized for attempting to interpret the real in terms of space rather
than time. In both cases the lead of the subject-matter is abandoned in
favor of an explanation that is derived from a fourth-dimensional plane
of existence.

The suspicion that these two positions have a deep-seated affinity is
strengthened if we call to mind that the concept of sensation was
originated, not in the interests of methodology, but as the expression
of a historic preconception that mistook fiction for fact. The
fundamental error back of it was the preposterous notion that
consciousness consists of subconscious or unconscious constituents,
which by their mechanical or chemical combinations make our experience
what it is. The question which it raises and which has afflicted us even
to the present day is not primarily the question of fact, but the
question of intelligibility, as the controversy over mindstuff
abundantly attests. Whether we regard experience as made up of sensory
material, however, or as constituted in a Bergsonian fashion, is a
matter of detail; the primary question is whether a distinction between
consciousness as it appears and as it "really" is has any meaning. In so
far as this distinction is maintained, we are beating the thin air of
mythology, despite our reinterpretations and justific