Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/586

ME. F. H. BEADLEY'S ANALYSIS OF MIND. 573 whose first fiat was, " Atomism must go wholly," and who feels at liberty to denounce Herbart's " audacious assumptions and com- plicated fictions". But to proceed. Since I + F and O - F are all the presentations there are, we naturally expect the con- stituents of activity to be found among them ; and so, we are told, they will be if we assume that I + F "is perpetually growing larger or smaller as against other elements [0 - F], and . . . that the expansion gives in general a feeling of pleasure, while contrac- tion brings pain". Having " assumed all this and passed over the difficulties which of course beset it," we learn next and last that " this expansion of our area beginning from within gives a certain feeling, and it is interpreted as a putting forth of a something from out the self into the not-self the something being [named] energy or force or will ... in fact, of course, being nothing at all" (No. 43, p. 320). In his first article Mr. Bradley was of opinion that there must be an idea of the expansion and that " this idea, or end, must lead to the change ". But he now thinks this was perhaps going too far : all that seems really necessary is " a concrete and limited self-group, and a following alteration of this as against its limit" (No. 47, p. 372). Mr. Bradley is fond of metaphors, and sometimes warns us that his terms are not to be strictly taken. Unhappily he has not elucidated what he intends by the expansion of a group of presentations against its limit, or by the seemingly superfluous qualification that the expansion begins from within. The group I + F might increase in intensity ; but such an expansion could not be said in general to give or "to be connected with " pleasure, especially if bodily sensations are a main constituent. This group might also increase by means of fusion and redintegration, form- ing " a whole possessed throughout of such a content that it suggests nothing out of harmony with anything else " (p. 360); and when this does happen, Mr. Bradley has already told us pain and unrest cease. But let the reader think of any such case of simplification, identification, recognition or the like, and say what there is in it I ought not say to "give" or to " suggest" but to be a certain feeling possibly interpretable as a putting forth of something from out of the redintegrating group into another. Nay, I would ask him to consider what possible meaning can be given to such " a putting forth " so long as we exclude everything but presentations and their interactions. For my own part I not only fail to understand Mr. Bradley's natural history of the idea of activity except by admitting elements which he most emphati- cally excludes, but, giving up the attempt to understand it, I can- not even imagine the state of mind to which his description applies viz., that it is an " expansion " which in general " gives" pleasure, and at the same time "gives " a feeling interpretable as energy, force or will. Pleasurable " expansions " are frequently passive, and "expansions," interpretable as exertions of force or energy against a limit, as frequently painful. Moreover we often