[1] I am indebted to an unpublished manuscript of Mr. S. Klyce of
Winchester, Massachusetts, for the significance of the fact that our
words divide into _terms_ (of which more in the sequel) and into names
which are not (strictly speaking) terms at all, but which serve to
remind us of the vast and vague continuum, select portions of which
only are designated by words as _terms_. He calls such words "infinity
and zero" words. The word "experience" is a typical instance of an
"infinity word." Mr. Klyce has brought out very clearly that a direct
situation of experience ("situation" as I employ it is another such
word) has no need of any word for itself, the thing to which the word
would point being so egregiously there on its own behalf. But when
communication about it takes place (as it does, not only in converse
with others, but when a man attempts a mutual reference of different
periods of his own life) a word is needed to remind both parties of
this taken-for-granted whole (another infinity term), while confusion
arises if explicit attention is not called to the fact that it is a
very different sort of word from the definite terms of discourse which
denote distinctions and their relations to one another. In the text,
attention is called to the fact that the business man wrestling with a
difficulty or a scientific man engaged in an inquiry finds his checks
and control specifically in the situation in which he is employed,
while the theorizer at large leaves out these checks and limits, and
so loses his clews. Well, the words "experience," "situation," etc.,
are used to _remind_ the thinker of the need of reversion to precisely
something which never can be one of the terms of his reflection but
which nevertheless furnishes the existential meaning and status of
them all. "Intuition," mysticism, philosophized or sophisticated
monism, are all of them aberrant ways of protesting against the
consequences which result from failing to note what is conveyed by
words which are not terms. Were I rewriting these essays _in toto_ I
should try to take advantage of these and other indispensable
considerations advanced by Mr. Klyce; but as the essays must stand
substantially as they were originally written, and as an Introduction
to them must, in order to be intelligible, be stated in not
incongruous phraseology, I wish simply to ask the reader to bear in
mind this radical difference between such words as "experience,"
"reality," "universe," "situation," and such terms as "typewriter,"
"me," "consciousness," "existence," when used (as they must be used if
they are to be terms) in a differential sense. The term "reality" is
particularly treacherous, for the careless tradition of philosophy (a
carelessness fostered, I am sure, by failure to make verbally explicit
the distinction to which Mr. Klyce has called attention) uses
"reality" both as a term of indifferent reference, equivalent to
everything taken together or referred to _en masse_ as over against
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