The outcome is that kind of check and
balance of segregated factors and values which has been
described. (See Chapter XVIII.) The present discussion is simply
a formulation, in the terminology of philosophy, of various
antithetical conceptions involved in the theory of knowing.
In the first place, there is the opposition of empirical and
higher rational knowing. The first is connected with everyday
affairs, serves the purposes of the ordinary individual who has
no specialized intellectual
pursuit, and brings his wants into some kind of working
connection with the immediate environment. Such knowing is
depreciated, if not despised, as purely utilitarian, lacking in
cultural significance. Rational knowledge is supposed to be
something which touches reality in ultimate, intellectual
fashion; to be pursued for its own sake and properly to terminate
in purely theoretical insight, not debased by application in
behavior. Socially, the distinction corresponds to that of the
intelligence used by the working classes and that used by a
learned class remote from concern with the means of living.
Philosophically, the difference turns about the distinction of
the particular and universal. Experience is an aggregate of more
or less isolated particulars, acquaintance with each of which
must be separately made. Reason deals with universals, with
general principles, with laws, which lie above the welter of
concrete details.
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