— this he conceives as a truth either actually or possibly verifiable by his fellow or by some still more organised sort of experience. And it becomes for him a concrete truth, and not a merely conceived possibility, precisely so far as he believes that his fellow or some other concrete mind does verify it.
My fellow’s experience, however, thus supplements my own in two senses; namely, as actual and as possible experience. First, in so far as I am a social being, I take my fellow’s experience to be as live and real an experience as is mine. In appealing to the consensus of other men’s experiences, I am so far appealing to what I regard as a real experience other than my own momentary experience, and not as a merely possible experience. But in this sense, to be sure, human experience is not precisely an organised whole. Other men experience in passing moments, just as I do. Their consensus, in so far as it is reached, is no one whole of organised experience at all. But, on the other hand, the fact of the consensus of the various experiences of men, so far as such consensus appears to have been reached, suggests to our conception an ideal — the ideal of an experience which should be not only manifold but united, not only possessed of chance agreements but reduced to an all-embracing connectedness. As a fact, this ideal is the one constantly used by anyone who talks of the “verdict of science.” This significant, whole, and connected experience remains, to us mortals, a conceived ideal, — always sought, never present. The ultimate question is: Is this conception a mere ideal? — or does it stand for a genuine
