Reason has its limits. Reason would seem to be indispensable in the ordering and judging of experience, but it cannot precede it or substitute for it. It is thus only in the limited realm of experience that certainty can be had. We accept this as his right to limit his topic. I have seemed so bent on rehabilitating the element of feeling in religion and subordinating its intellectual part.
All experience occurs within the limit of the experiencing self.
Yet James goes on to distinguish the objective and subjectlve elements of that experience. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner 'state' in which the thinking occurs. It is on this ground that James can criticize the impersonal approach of Science which can only touch the outer edges of human experience as objects of thought and which views personal experience as less valuable because it is personal. The imperfection may be that reason, as the second-hand manipulator of the objects of our thought, cannot penetrate the absolutely firsthand experience of our inner state. This we may call certainty.