all back on a
preconception about an unnatural subject in order to characterize the
occurrence of error.

Although the discussion may be already labored, let us take another
example--the occurrence of disease. By definition it is pathological,
abnormal. At one time in human history this abnormality was taken to be
something dwelling in the intrinsic nature of the event--in its
existence irrespective of future consequences. Disease was literally
extra-natural and to be referred to demons, or to magic. No one to-day
questions its naturalness--its place in the order of natural events. Yet
it is abnormal--for it operates to effect results different from those
which follow from health. The difference is a genuine empirical
difference, not a mere mental distinction. From the standpoint of
bearing on a subsequent course of events disease is unnatural, in spite
of the naturalness of its occurrence and origin.

The habit of ignoring reference to the future is responsible for the
assumption that to admit human participation in any form is to admit the
"subjective" in a sense which alters the objective into the phenomenal.
There have been those who, like Spinoza, regarded health and disease,
good and ill, as equally real and equally unreal. However, only a few
consistent materialists have included truth along with error as merely
phenomenal and subjective. But if one does not regard movement toward
possible consequences as genuine, wholesale denial of existential
validity to all these distinctions is the only logical course. To select
truth as objective and error as "subjective" is, on this basis, an
unjustifiably partial procedure. Take everything as fixedly given, and
both truth and error are arbitrary insertions into fact. Admit the
genuineness of changes going on, and capacity for its direction through
organic action based on foresight, and both truth and falsity are alike
existential. It is human to regard the course of events which is in line
with our own efforts as the _regular_ course of events, and
interruptions as abnormal, but this partiality of human desire is itself
a part of what actually takes place.

It is now proposed to take a particular case of the alleged
epistemological predicament for discussion, since the entire ground
cannot be covered. I think, however, the instance chosen is typical, so
that the conclusion reached may be generalized.

The instance is that of so-called relativity in perception. There a