CHAPTER II.
THE DATA OF EXPERIENCE -- Continued.
CONCEPTUAL THOUGHT.

§ 37. Unable to analyse an act of perception directly, psychologists are accustomed to 'analyse' it by the aid of data extrinsic to the act itself. These data are obtained either by experiment or by direct introspection in which attention is concentrated on processes that usually pass unnoticed; and in this way an act of perception is 'analysed into a complex of sensations.' But of the 'sensations' which are said to have functioned in the act of perception thus analysed, we were quite unconscious when we perceived. Strictly speaking, sensations when functioning in a percept are not sensations at all, but merely nervous processes. Nor is the percept itself in any way comparable with the sum of the sensations it is said to involve. When I perceive a picture there hanging on my wall at about six yards distance from where I sit, not only am I unconscious of the focussing of my eyes, of their movement in their sockets, of the variation in convexity of their lenses, and of the revived images of the movements necessary to reach and to handle the picture, but the sum of these sensations immediate and revived, is something different from and quite inadequate to represent what I mean when I say that I perceive the picture six yards away. The sensation-complex involved is not equivalent to the percept; nor yet is the sum of the individual sensations equivalent to the complex in which they are said to be fused. The fusion of the sensations destroys altogether their individuality, while the sensation-complex which results qua a complex of sensations, is altogether obliterated for consciousness by the percept to which it gives rise.

Moreover, a percept has meaning. It is not merely a sensation-complex, nor merely the appearance of a certain arrangement of colour localised in a certain way. What I mean when I say that I perceive a picture hanging on a wall at six yards distance, is something more than what I feel, and something more than what is apparent to my senses. The object of perception is not merely clear, distinct, and apparently external, but it has definite objective meaning and significance. Whence it follows that some other mental function is involved in perception besides that of sensation. That function would seem to belong to universal ideas under which, as we have seen, perceived objects are subsumed. Now universal ideas correspond to names. They function whenever names are used, and it is by this means that we understand what we hear or what we read. Hence, by examining introspectively what takes place in our minds when we listen to or read the words of another, we may be able to arrive at a clearer notion of the nature of an idea as opposed to an image or a sensation.

§ 38. Suppose that I call at the house of a friend, and, on enquiring for him, am told that 'he has already gone to his office.' Such an answer is no mere string of words. Its significance is perfectly definite, and the objects to which the words refer are brought clearly before my mind. I say 'before my mind,' yet the objects signified are not perceived by me, nor do I imagine or picture them. They are 'present' only in idea, which means nothing more than that I am able to think about them; that, knowing my friend and knowing what is meant by 'going to an office,' I am able to understand the answer I received. But it is of real objects and not of ideas that we think. Ideas are the instruments by means of which we think of objects. Our thoughts, impelled by the words which we hear or which we read, are directed to objects about which we think, and which are therefore said to be present to our minds. We call this 'presence-in-idea' to distinguish it from the real presence of the object in sense-perception. Yet ideas as such are not objects, but rather functions of the mind which enable us to think of absent objects.

Moreover, what we think about the object, what the object means to us, is itself something objective and real. When thinking of real objects thought does not, so we believe, create the object, but merely causes it to be ideally present. The content of our ideas is thought as part of the object itself. This is true even when the object is not a concrete thing, but something abstract -- a moral whole, a system of relations, such, for instance, as 'the British Policy in Egypt.' However relations are to be explained, we believe that somehow or other they are real. The apparent reality of objects of thought may be an illusion, but our belief in it is none the less a datum. By this belief thought about reality is distinguished from thought about fictitious or imaginary beings, the products of our own or of another's constructive ingenuity. In the latter case, what we think about is still objective, but not real. The object is present to our thoughts as before, but we no longer believe in its reality. Thought has always an objective reference; it is thought about objects. But there are different kinds of objectivity. The objects about which we think may be real or ideal. If real, they may be present before us in the concrete or present only to our thoughts. If ideal, they may be the creations of our own or of another's fancy. When created by another, they are independent of ourselves, and our knowledge of them may possess the quality of truth, but they are not real. When created by our own imagination, they are neither real nor independent. It is with real objects, however, that we are concerned, and, before proceeding further, we must discuss the meaning of our belief in 'objective reality.'

§ 39. Belief in the reality of the objects about which we think is not confined to those ideas which Professor James describes as 'truncated experiences, leading to sense-termini.' For the functioning of an idea in our minds to be accompanied by belief in the reality of that which it signifies, it is not necessary that the idea should 'terminate' in a sense-percept. 'The British Policy of Egypt' and 'The American Constitution' are both ideas of real objects, yet in neither case is that object perceived by the senses. Again, no working-man has ever seen, or heard, or felt a Trades Union, yet he knows very well what the term means, and firmly believes in its reality. If you attempt to define a Trades Union you must introduce the notion of purpose, and say, (v.g.) with Professor Nicholson, that a Trades Union is 'a voluntary association of labour for mutual assistance, protection and benefit.' Now, it is possible that Professor James, who is able to feel 'buts' and 'ifs' and 'ands' and 'ors,' may be able also to feel causes and purposes, even when they are not his own. Hence it may be possible for Professor James to build up some complex feeling which corresponds, or which he imagines must correspond, with a Trades Union or a British Policy. But the plain man will tell you that he gets no such feelings, and with him I quite agree. I feel eagerness, anxiety, longing, hope, fear, when I think of something which I hope to do or which I hope will be done; but I experience no such emotion when it is a question of the purpose of somebody else, except in so far as I make it my own. Nor do I identify such feelings with the objects towards which they are directed. I know what these feelings are, and therefore I understand what is meant when somebody tells me he desires happiness or is anxious about his health; but my knowledge is not a feeling nor is it necessarily accompanied by any feeling that I can detect. Purposes, in fact, are not feelings at all, but ideas which, when present to the mind, arouse feelings or emotions. Nor is the idea or knowledge of a feeling itself a feeling, but rather something intellectual. I am also quite at a loss when I attempt to distinguish the feelings which are supposed to accompany conjunctive and disjunctive relations. I cannot realise the feeling which accompanies a 'but ' or an 'if.' When I perceive a difference between two things, I certainly 'feel' the contrast. But my perception of difference is not the mere feeling. I know what 'difference' means, and it does not mean the feeling which I get when I perceive a contrast which pleases or annoys me.

It seems to me, then, that it is quite impossible to reduce the definition of a 'Trades Union' or of any other notion of the kind to feelings, images or sense-termini. No feeling and no percept is adequate to represent or express the notion of a common purpose, such as that of 'labouring for mutual assistance, protection and benefit.' 'Labour, itself can hardly be pictured or perceived. I can perceive hop-pickers at work in a field, but that is not what I mean by 'labour.' It is only a concrete example which expresses at once too much and too little, when I compare it with my idea of 'labour.' Universal ideas are contained within the individual cases to which they apply, and to this they may be said to 'lead.' But that common 'something,' though it is realised there in each individual example, cannot be perceived by the senses. We perceive men, trees, books, colours, concrete and particular motions and changes, but we do not perceive humanity, tree-ness, book-nature, colouredness, or change and motion in general. We cannot lay hold of these things, so to speak, by sight or by touch or by hearing. Yet somehow or other we do lay hold of the universal characters which are realised in particular cases, and when such and such a case (S) presents itself, we recognise in it the universal character (P) at once, and affirm in consequence that S is P. Apart altogether from theory, therefore, the mental function by means of which universal ideas are formed and by means of which they are recognised in concrete cases, is, even for introspection, something quite different from feeling and sensation; though it is from sense-experience that such ideas are obtained, and the function by which they are formed is included in what we call an act of perception. There seem to be no sense-termini to which the causes, purposes, and logical conventions signified by the conjunctions 'since,' 'because,' 'in order to,' 'so that,' 'in as much as,' correspond, or for which they can be substituted. Causes, purposes, and abstract universal ideas are as objective and real as the concrete things in which they are revealed; but they seem to belong to the rational structure or plan of the universe rather than to anything which can be felt by the senses. Belief in objective reality does not mean, therefore, that objects have been or are capable of being experienced as sensations, but merely that their nature and their existence has been determined independently of our thoughts about them. They exist somehow in the concrete; though, if relational or abstract, they do not exist in isolation or as individual things. And when we know such objects, we believe that our knowledge somehow or other comes from the object and is determined by the object; otherwise it would not be knowledge. How it comes, or how it is determined, neither introspection nor common-sense belief can say that is a matter which the plain man leaves to the philosopher.

§ 40. Logicians tell us that our ideas have content, and that they may be analysed into simpler ideas or notes. If you were to ask me, however, what was the content of the ideas which came to my mind when I was told that my friend had gone to his office, I should find it very difficult to answer you. I could tell you, perhaps, a good deal about the person in question, what he looks like, and what he has done. Yet even of this I was not conscious when his name was mentioned. My knowledge of persons or things, however comprehensive, is certainly not called to mind at the sound of their names. But although the idea of my friend was vague in that I did not think of any one of his characteristics in particular, it was perfectly definite in that I knew at the time what object the name signified, and should have hesitated to believe even if I did not immediately reject, any answer incompatible with his habits or character. In the same way, the other objects of which I thought were similarly vague, and yet in like manner sufficiently definite for me to understand clearly the import of the answer I received. I did not picture to myself an office, nor did I imagine my friend perambulating the streets. Yet I knew what an 'office' meant, and I knew what was intended when I was told that my friend had gone there. And this I knew in spite of the fact that I had never been to his office and did not know what it was like, and was ignorant also as to how he went, whether on foot, by motor, or by train.

Definite significance is perfectly compatible with unanalysed content, and both are characteristic of all continuous discourse. Through frequently thinking of the same thing, we build up a concept of it, and thus seem to grasp in idea its nature as a whole. Hence, whenever a name is mentioned, we think of the object signified by means of a preformed idea, which then and there begins to function in our minds. Yet such an idea is seldom realised in the fulness of its content. In continuous conversation or reading, though each phrase has definite significance, the idea which it awakens in the mind is supplanted by another and yet another before it has time to develop. If, therefore, we wish to analyse an idea, we must stop talking or reading and allow the idea to unfold itself in consciousness.

§ 41. Let us experiment in this way with the idea expressed in the phrase 'going to an office,' and see what happens. Immediately I fix my attention upon what these words signify, and allow the idea to 'work,' other ideas and images awaken in my mind in rapid succession. I picture people leaving their dwellings after an early breakfast in haste to catch a train; I imagine others who, having partaken of their morning meal at a later hour, stroll leisurely to the station or are whisked off in an automobile. I see an office peopled with clerks who sit upon high stools, and, with pens behind their ears, stare vigorously at day-books and ledgers which lie open before them. I think of the purposes for which offices exist, of commerce, of the Stock Exchange, and of Government Departments. All these things about which I think, are to me, things objective, real, and independent of myself, whether I can picture them or not. Commerce, for instance, and a Government Department, is to me just as objectively real as more concrete things, such as a ledger, a clerk or a desk.

Reflecting, however, on these ideas which have been brought to consciousness by the phrase 'going to the office,' I find that they are not essential to the meaning of that phrase. They are all connected with the original idea, and must have been somehow mentally associated with it, otherwise they would not have become conscious. But they are not what a logician would call the essential 'notes' of the idea 'going to an office.' Rather they are particular, and in some instances alternative cases, to which that notion, as a whole, or the office part of it, would apply. There is, moreover, an indefinite number of other cases in which the ideas in question are realised. One may go to an office in other ways besides those which occurred to my mind. The office might contain clerks, or it might contain only my friend, their employer, or again, it might be empty. While, to the clerks, if there, one might assign a great variety of attitudes and occupations. The office, again, might neither be that of a merchant, nor of a stockbroker, nor yet of a Government official; it might belong to a newspaper editor, or it might be in a rail way depôt. I have not analysed logically the idea 'going to an office,' but have allowed it to develop by means of its associations; and the products of that association-process are equivalent to the original idea neither individually nor as a sum, nor yet as a system. They signify at once too much and too little, just as we found to be the case when we tried to represent the notion of 'labour' by an image of hop-pickers working in a field. Nevertheless, the associated ideas illustrate or exemplify the original notion; and from them one might, by abstraction, form a definition more or less adequate. One might say, for instance, that 'to go to an office' is 'to proceed from any place whatever and by any means whatever to a building adapted for business purposes.' Doubtless Socrates would be able to pick holes in this definition. That does not matter. Suffice it that I have a more or less accurate notion of what 'going to an office' means.

§ 42. Hence, although our ideas in continuous discourse have explicitly for consciousness very little content indeed, yet the fact that they are capable of giving rise to associations intimately connected with the original idea and containing implicitly its definition, shows that they are no mere words. Latent or implicit within the original idea are all those subordinate ideas which exemplify and define its meaning, and which psychologically form its content. Only on this hypothesis can the facts be explained. For clearly when an idea is analysed psychologically by means of its associations, that idea functions throughout, controlling the whole process and preventing irrelevant ideas from arising, or causing them to be dismissed at once if they do arise. And, again, in discourse ideas exercise a similar function or controlling power. Ideas are aroused by their corresponding terms, and by them we understand what we hear or what we read, though they may seem to have no content except that which the speaker or writer chooses to develop for us.

This process goes on smoothly enough so long as the statements made harmonise with the ideas that are awakened in our minds. But should some assertion fail so to harmonise, should some new attribute be predicated which seems to us incompatible with the object to which it is assigned, at once thought hesitates, and if it fails to assimilate the new predicate, will, in the end, reject it as false. Unless, then, we hold that an idea contains potentially, implicitly, schematically, the particular cases which have already been subsumed and systematised under it on previous occasions and which virtually include its definition, I fail to see how we are to explain the controlling power which is exercised by the idea, both in discourse and in an associative process. Unquestionably, cerebral conditions account, in part at least, for the associations which arise in the latter case, and the suggestions of the speaker or writer for those which arise in the former; but no brain-processes and no mere words can account for the objective significance of our thoughts, or for the accepting or rejecting of associated ideas, or for the assent or dissent which accompanies cognition when we listen or read. An idea, therefore, is a function of the mind by means of which, somehow or other, we apprehend the nature of objects; and its content, even though unconscious, functions in the mind whenever that idea is recalled, and so controls both association and assent.

§ 43. Ideas have also another function -- they influence action. Their objective reference is, as we have seen, not always to something real or existing. They may refer to something which we should like to exist, to some change which we desire to bring about. Regarded from this point of view, ideas are called purposes. A purpose is nothing more than an idea signifying an object not yet real, but which we seek to realise by action. Suppose that we enter a room which is in darkness with the intention of consulting some book. The idea of consulting this book is a purpose, and till that purpose is realised this idea controls all our operations, mental and physical. We remember having seen the book in a particular room; hence we go there. The darkness of the room suggests the need of lighting the gas; hence we grope about for matches. The idea of matches suggests the mantelshelf, and thither we make our way. Finally, having secured the matches and lit the gas, we take down the book that we need from the library shelves. It was the idea of consulting this book which controlled the various operations performed in order to realise it. And here, again, as in the former case of cognition, the idea which guided the process need not have been explicit or fully developed as to its content. We may have had, to begin with, a picture of the book, of its size the colour of its binding and the plates with which it may have been illustrated, or we may have thought merely of its title or of the name of its author, or of the subject in general of which it treated. Again, the more immediate purpose of obtaining a light may have obliterated for consciousness the original purpose, just as when cognition is directed to theoretical purposes, the general idea of the subject in hand may be obscured by more immediate points of interest which occupy us. Nevertheless, in practice as in theory, the original idea or purpose is operative throughout, and to it other ideas and purposes are subordinate, though it is always possible that one purpose may be displaced by another more attractive, and that one idea may be superseded by another to which it has led by association in the course of its own development.

§ 44. The question now arises how far purpose governs even 'our most remotely cognitive activities.' "All thought is purposive," we are told; and this would seem to be true in general, for we always intend either to gain knowledge by the development of our ideas and by sense-experience, or else to bring about some practical result. But how far and in what sense is thought purposive? How far, for instance, is what I have written in this chapter due to the purpose with which I began it, viz., that of ascertaining the data of experience in order to distinguish them from the theories by which absolutists, pragmatists, and realists seek to explain them? Just as when I attempted to describe the processes of sense-perception and of rational discourse, so now, when I attempt to describe the development of my own thoughts, I find that idea after idea emerges above the threshold of consciousness, only to be rejected, until at last some one is evolved which suits my purpose. Similarly, the verbal forms in which, first mentally, and apparently by means of auditory images, and then in writing, I seek to express these ideas, are rejected or modified again and again until they seem to give more or less adequate expression to that which I wish to say. Why do I reject some ideas and accept others? Why do I continually change the verbal forms which come spontaneously to mind? One does not think of it at the time; the process is automatic, as it were. Yet, now that I reflect, I recognise that at the outset I had a general notion of different forms of cognition on the one hand, and of the various theories by which cognition is explained on the other. Under each of these ideas innumerable others have been systematically subsumed in the past; and though of the full content of no one of them was I more than implicitly or schematically conscious at any given moment, yet they seem to have controlled throughout the development of my thoughts, and to have caused me to select and to set down in writing only those data of experience which seemed to bear upon the problems -- again only schematically apprehended -- which are to be discussed in future chapters. My thought has all along been purposive in that all irrelevant ideas have been rejected and only those which concern the fundamental problems of the psychology of cognition have been allowed to develop in consciousness.

§ 45. But how are we to account for the succession of our thoughts? Clearly they are not due wholly to the general purpose or problem we have in hand, for though this may contain them schematically, it does not determine their order. Nor can they be due merely to verbal association: for though verbal expressions accompany our ideas in the form of images, they have nothing to do with the evolution of the general purpose. On the contrary, they are subordinate to each individual idea which they attempt to express. The verbal form which thought takes is quite a secondary matter. We modify a verbal expression at will. We cross out or correct the written sentence without scruple, if it fails to express the thought which lies, as it were, at the back of the words. Thought seems to anticipate the words in which it is expressed, and to control them in such a way that while the sentence is yet inchoate, and long before it has completed itself, it is often rejected as inadequate. Moreover, at times one seems to have thoughts without words, an intuition of wide extent, not clear in detail and yet not vague, a general grasp of the problem in hand, a thought which in a flash seems to make clear the solution and to reveal the problem and solution as a whole. Clearly the succession of our thoughts cannot be accounted for by verbal expressions. Nor can it be accounted for wholly by physiological habit. For physlological habit conditions only images, and but few images are involved in abstract thought as a rule, while in regard to verbal images we have already seen that they are, for the most part, if not wholly, subordinate and subsequent to thought. It would seem, then, that in order to account for the succession of ideas in conceptual and constructive thought, we must call in another factor, viz., intellectual habit. Cerebral processes undoubtedly underlie, and in some sense condition all thought and all ideas, however abstract. But between abstract ideas there is a logical as well as a physiological connection; and it seems to me that this logical connection -- which is a datum of experience, whereas the physiological connection is not -- has more to do with the association of ideas in many cases than purely physiological habits in which the passage of the nervous impulse is governed solely by the law of least resistance.

§ 46. Habit, however, is not the ultimate explanation of the order and sequence of our ideas; for we may still ask how has habit itself been formed? And to answer this we are forced back once more upon objective experience. All ideas are conditioned by sense-experience. However abstract and complex they may be, if real as well as objective, there must be some object or system of objects in which they are realised. It is in objective experience that ideas are formed, and to some extent the order and sequence of those ideas is determined by our environment itself. Yet indirectly purposes and needs also play a part in determining this order. We perceive first those attributes of objects which have practical value as satisfying our needs. Others again are perceived because curiosity or the desire to know prompts us to observe and examine. Our needs also, in a higher stage of development, prompt us to seek to solve social, moral and religious problems on the one hand, and historical, scientific and philosophical problems on the other. Thus what we enquire about and what we neglect, and hence the order in which knowledge is acquired, is determined in part by our environment, but in part also by our purposes and needs. Guided partly by subjective interests and partly by the accidental circumstances in which we find ourselves, we form ideas of objective realities, ideas which from the beginning are connected with one another, but are gradually grouped together in systems and subsumed under more general notions. As we think these ideas again and again and pass from one to another, habits of thought are formed, logical connections between ideas are discovered, and other and larger groupings of them are made. When, therefore, we wish to solve some problem, to develop and examine the bearings of some complex and general notion, some principle, hypothesis or law, these preformed habits of thought begin to function. Ideas already conceived and connections already discovered, force one another in rapid succession above the threshold of consciousness. And all this takes place under the guidance of a purpose, which, itself an idea, assumes for the time control of our habits of thought. The purpose which dominates all our mental energies is, in this case, a theoretical one; it is prompted not by practical needs, but by the need which we feel of somehow solving the problems that the universe presents to us.

Hence my final answer to the question 'what is it determines the succession of our thoughts when we reflect?' is that the succession is due partly to physiological and partly to intellectual habits, both of which presuppose and have been built up by objective experience, the strength of these habits depending, other conditions being the same, upon the intensity and the frequency of repetition of those experiences or of our reflections upon them. Purposes which in constructive thought consist in a general grasp of the problem in hand have little to do with the succession of ideas as such, though they control it throughout. By them the relevancy of associated ideas is determined, but not the particular order in which they arise. On the other hand, the building up of the habits by which the sequence of ideas in association is determined is again largely due to purposive selection.

§ 47. Need-prompted purposes, then, are clearly of the greatest importance as determining factors in the acquisition of knowledge. Thought is selective, and selection implies purpose. Purposes, however, are themselves ideas which we seek to realise, and are themselves derived ultimately from experience; nor does purposive selection destroy our belief in the objective validity of knowledge. In ideal thought of absent objects, as in perception itself, the result of our purposive strivings after knowledge is that objects become known to us as they really are in themselves. Our knowledge is not adequate, but none the less it may be true so far as it goes. Purposive selection is compatible with objective validity, because while purposes determine what objects we observe, they do not, as a rule, determine the result of our observations. On the contrary, the content as opposed to the intent of perception and thought seems to be determined by the object itself. Similarly, in the knowledge which we gain from others, interest determines what questions we ask, what lectures we attend, and what books we read; but the information gained comes in all cases from without. Whether we admit as true or reject it as false, assent or dissent depends upon whether or not we believe that we have acquired knowledge of real objects which have manifested themselves to us through the words of another. If our purpose is, as I suppose, to acquire knowledge, and if we approach the subject with a mind open to conviction, assent or conviction will arise either from the known credibility of our informant in regard to matters of fact, or, if it is a question of theory, from the intrinsic reasonableness or self-evidence of its presentment, and from its consistency with knowledge already acquired. If, on the other hand, one approaches a particular subject upon which one's own mind is already made up, one's purpose can only be to ascertain the opinions of others; and here, again, when we assent, to the proposition that 'X.Y.'s opinion is so and so,' our assent is determined, not by purpose, but by what we have heard him say.

§ 48. I do not wish to deny, of course, that purpose may affect assent. All I assert here is that wherever assent is given it does not appear at the time to be determined by purposes, needs, emotions or will, or by anything other than the object about which we think. Subsequently we may discover that subjective conditions and interests have influenced us; but, at the time, that influence is unconscious, otherwise we could not give our assent. I regard it as a psychological fact that assent is possible only in so far as we are unaware of the influence of subjective conditions, emotional and voluntary. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that it is also a psychological fact that purposes and other subjective influences are sometimes found to have influenced assent and to have caused it to be given where it should not have been given. In the case above cited, that one does not give one's assent to XY's opinion as opposed to the fact that such an opinion is his, may be due to a preformed will-not-to-believe, or, in other words, to the conviction that we are right and that, therefore, he must be wrong. Undoubtedly assent is often withheld on account of prejudice; and, similarly, prejudices may cause assent to be given where it ought to be withheld, as we sometimes discover afterwards to our cost. Ordinarily, however, we are not influenced by these subjective conditions -- at least such is our belief -- and when their influence is discovered, at once we withdraw our assent and begin to doubt. The honest seeker after truth knowing the possibility of his being unduly influenced by subjective interests and the will to believe or not to believe, is particularly careful to eliminate such a possibility as far as he can, and will only give his full assent when it is clear to him that all subjective conditions have been excluded, and that his knowledge is determined solely hy objective evidence. The assertion that the content of thought is modified directly by human purposes and needs and that truth depends upon the satisfaction of these needs is, therefore, not a datum of experience, but a theory, and a theory which it is not easy to reconcile with what is an introspective datum, viz., that we believe our ideas and our judgments to be determined by their objects, and that, on this account, we give our assent to their objective validity.