annot be approached, by
our human sort of consciousness, through any other way. Perhaps
analysis is not the whole process which determines demonstrations.
Perhaps synthesis--the viewing of many facts or principles or
relations in some sort of unity and wholeness--perhaps a synoptic
survey of various articulate truths, can lead us to novel insights. In
that case inarticulate intuitions and barren abstractions are not the
only instruments between which we must choose. For in that case there
will be another sort of aid, a more explicit sort of intuition, a more
considerate view of our life and its meaning, which we may adopt, and
which may lead us to novel results. And these results may be not only
articulate but saving.

Or, to state the issue more generally: In seeking for any sort of
novel truth, have we only the choice between the experience of the
data of sense or of feeling on the one hand and the analysis of
abstract ideas and assertions upon the other? May there not be another
source of knowledge? May not this source consist in the synthetic view
of many facts in their unity--in the grasping of a complex of
relations in their total significance? And may not just this be a
source of insight which is employed in many of the processes
ordinarily known as reasoning processes? May not the formation of
abstract ideas, when wisely used, be merely a means of helping us
toward an easier view of larger unities of fact than {91} our present
sort of human consciousness could grasp except for this auxiliary
device? May not analysis be merely an aspect, a part of our live
thinking? May not all genuine demonstration involve synthesis as well
as analysis, the making of new constructions as well as the dissection
of old assertions? If so, then the issue as presented by James and his
allies is not rightly stated, because an essential part of its context
is neglected. Abstract conceptions are, in fact, in the live and
serious work of thought, a mere preparation for intuitions and
experiences that lie on higher levels than those which, apart from
abstract conceptions, we men can reach. Reasoning processes are
fruitful because they involve sorts of experience, forms of intuition,
that you cannot reach without them. In brief, reason and experience
are not opposed. There is an opposition between inarticulate intuition
and articulate insight. There is also an opposition between relatively
blind experience of any sort and relatively ratio