elation.[1] We shall show that, while the two points of view are contrasted, they arise in our minds in close connection with each other. The only justification for the more abstractly theoretical conception of the World of Description is its value as a means of organizing our conduct, and our conception of what the will seeks. On the other hand, without such a definite conception as the World of Description furnishes, the finite will is left only to vague longings. The two points of view will first be considered (in the next lecture) as they appear in the individual consciousness of any one of us. Then they will be discussed in their social aspects in the lecture on our conceptions of Man and of Nature.
For the moment, however, we begin not with the sundering of the two points of view, but with their unity. When I know, I am acting. My theoretical life is also practical. But, from my own conscious point of view, my acting is also a reacting. I am acting in what I often call “the given situation.” And the word given here means, not only what is strictly the given, that is, not only the situation as now presently verified by myself, but also the whole situation which I acknowledge as real. I am conscious that I can mean something only by presupposing something; that I can seek an end only by acknowledging a starting-point and a goal; that I can create only on the basis of a recognition of what I am
- ↑ I made use of this terminology for expressing the contrast between the two aspects of Reality in 1892, in my Spirit of Modern Philosophy, Lecture XII. The choice of the term Description in that work was determined by the known usage of Kirchhoff, Mach, and others, in defining the purpose of natural science as the exact “description” (as opposed to “explanation”) of facts.
