ations. True
conversion does not consist in a renaming of old gods, but demands a
humble and a contrite heart. To call sensation an artifact, a
methodological device, without a surrender of the metaphysical
assumption that lies back of Associationism is not to correct the evil,
but is more likely to be treated as an indulgence for sins that are yet
to be committed.

This fundamental identity is presumably the reason for certain other
similarities, which would perhaps not be readily anticipated. Both
doctrines undertake to tell us what is going on behind the scenes, what
consciousness or experience "really" is. The descriptions present an
astonishing difference of vocabulary, but if we take care not to be
misled by superficial differences, we find an equally astonishing
agreement as to content. From the one side consciousness is explained as
a juxtaposition of elements; from the other as an interpenetration of
elements so complete that the parts can be neither isolated nor
distinguished from the whole. On the one hand we find a multiplicity
without unity, on the other a unity without multiplicity. In the one
account the temporal unit is a sensation devoid of internal temporal
diversity; in the other duration as such is a unity in which past,
present, and future blend into an undifferentiated whole. The one
position gathers its facts by a mystifying process called introspection;
the other obtains its results from a mystical faculty of intuition. The
difference in language remains, but both accounts lead us away into a
twilight region where words substitute themselves for facts.

As was suggested a moment ago, the contrast between ordinary experience
and something else of which it is the appearance is the result of the
failure to give proper recognition to the facts of behavior. If we
connect the forward reference of experience with the operations of our
nascent activities, we have no need of a pure duration or of bridging
the gulf between reality and its appearances. In the same way, if we
construe sensations as just symbols of our responses, we rid ourselves
of problems that are insoluble because they are unintelligible. Such
problems constitute metaphysics in the bad sense of the word, whether
they show themselves in the domain of science or of philosophy. To
describe experience by reference to such a real is to explain what we
know in terms of what we do not know. The question what is real is
absolutely sterile. Our