instance of the fallacy of ‘misplaced concreteness.’ Thus the way is now open to enquire empirically whether in fact our apprehension of causal efficacy does depend either on the vividness of sense-data or on the activity of thought.
According to both schools, the importance of causal efficacy, and of action exemplifying its presupposition, should be mainly characteristic of high-grade organisms in their best moments. Now if we confine attention to long-range identification of cause and effect, depending on complex reasoning, undoubtedly such high-grade mentality and such precise determination of sense-data are required. But each step in such reasoning depends on the primary presupposition of the immediate present moment conforming itself to the settled environment of the immediate past. We must not direct attention to the inferences from yesterday to today, or even from five minutes ago to the immediate present. We must consider the immediate present in its relationship to the immediate past. The overwhelming conformation of fact, in present action, to antecedent settled fact is to be found here.
My point is that this conformation of present fact to immediate past is more prominent both in
