Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/394

ASSOCIATION AND THOUGHT. 381 in its character diverges from these. It cannot make pre- sentation, and, where thought is volitional, where its idea, that is, produces its content particularised in psychical ex- istence, still thought and will are different. To the thought, realised as thought, its mere psychical existence is something necessary, but still per accidens while the essential end of will is reality within the series of psychical events. And, as thought cannot make phenomena, it contents itself without them, and is therefore symbolic and not existential. And, aiming at a totality which events never give, it converts their degradation to ideal uses, while it builds its own world out of them, and lives both in them and apart. And building piecemeal, as it must, it becomes relational, and is free to choose its own relations. Its individuality could not bo perfect until all its distinctions were harmonised in one system; and it is therefore driven to an infinity of analysis and synthesis, striving to include all variety within one identity. Thought, we may say, is the process which aims at and is controlled by individuality, an end, however, to be realised not in existence but solely in content. And, as against will and feeling and the perpetual flood of incoming sensations, it is the process controlled by the identity of the object. But, if we ask whether thought is wholly self-satisfied, if it feels not only its internal defects but its estrangement from exist- ence and from feeling and will, if it does not long for a fuller, a more concrete, completion, in which as thought it would no longer survive we must go elsewhere for an answer. 1 1 I feel it right not to omit the " Law of Duality". I made its ac- quaintance some years back when engaged on Logic, and was quite content to ignore it. Now that Mr. Ward has endorsed it, I think I ought to say briefly why I have never accepted it. (1) In the first place I cannot see how the Law comes from Apperception or Attention. The derivation may have been accomplished, but 1 am quite unable to follow it. (2) The arrangement of thought's content into pairs, and into wholes whose ma- terials throughout are subordinated by couples, is, I think, not always fact. I have elsewhere (Logic, bk. iii., pt. i., cc. 1 and 2) pointed out cases which I at least could not reconcile with this Law ; and, until I see that done, I must be allowed to doubt if it is possible. (3) So far as the Law expresses fact, it seems to me obviously secondary, plainly derivative. Thought is compelled to be relational, to "move by the aid of relations and piecemeal ; and, as with relations the minimum is one with two terms, we may say, if we please, that thought's process, so far as it is confined in its movement and its result to relations, is in this sense dual. (4) I think that, if we must have a faculty, one of Discrimination would be far more useful than Attention is. The attempt to explain, not Duality by Attention, but Attention by Duality (as Distinction or Comparison), has, I should say, been the more successful of the two. I can, of course, accept neither. (5) Duality might mean that in the end thought is ruled by the category of subject and attribute. If so, that statement would require a thorough explanation.