Dewey says: "By our postulate, things are what they are experienced to be; and, unless knowing is the sole and only genuine mode of experiencing, it is fallacious to say that Reality is just and exclusively what it is or would be to an all-competent all-knower; or even that it _is_, relatively and piece-meal, what it is to a finite and partial knower."[283] Reality is not simply what it is known as, for it is experienced in other ways than by being known. "But I venture to repeat that ... the inferential factor must _exist_, or must occur, and that all existence is direct and vital, so that philosophy can pass upon its nature--as upon the nature of all of the rest of its subject-matter--only by first ascertaining what it exists or occurs _as_."[284] Reflection, then, is not designed to furnish an insight into the nature of things. Acquaintance with reality must be obtained, not by reflecting upon it, but by describing it as it occurs. Whatever else this may mean, it certainly aims at demonstrating the superiority of description to the supposedly less effective modes of thought. It cannot be conceded, however, that 'description,' as employed by Dewey, is non-reflective, or super-reflective. If things are not what they are known as, then they are not what they are known as to a describer. The point of this objection will be obvious if it is remembered that it is the method of 'direct description' which enables Dewey to distinguish between the 'cognitional' and the 'non-cognitional' activities of life, and make thought the servant of action. If Dewey's descriptive method is not reflective, then there is no such thing as reflection. Passing for the moment from this criticism, which is not apt to be convincing in such abstract form, it may be well to consider for a time the psychology upon which Dewey's logical theory is grounded: the psychology which is established by the 'direct descriptive method.' From the standpoint of the nervous correlates of experience, Dewey's theory involves two postulates: first, that customary conduct is carried on by an habitual set of nervous adjustments, and, second, that reflection is a process whereby new reactions are established when habitual modes of response fail to meet a critical situation. It must be clearly recognized that, so far as the nervous system is concerned, the scheme is highly speculative. The advance made by physiology towards an analysis and understanding of the minute and specialized parts of the nervous organism has necessarily been slow and uncertain. Whatever plausibility Dewey's theory possesses must depend, not upon the technical results of neurology, but upon the external evidence which seems to justify some such scheme of nervous organization. An examination of this evidence shows that it falls under two main heads: (1) facts drawn from the observation of the outward behavior of the organism, and (2) facts derived from an introspective analysis of the thought-process.