Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/176

162 F. H. BRADLEY : of my fighting has not always been contained in the idea. An idea is present because the perception has for me quali- fied existence incompatibly with itself, and because this incompatible feature, opposed in me to the existing not- self, has then carried itself out. On the other hand the idea is not the idea of the fighting of another, for this aspect of otherness drops out before the idea acts in me. And the question is whether the idea, in thus coming to me straight from the perception and in dropping out, as is necessary, some portion of that perception's content, must in part replace that omission by the insertion of my self. I know of no principle from which such a result must in all cases follow, and, as I observe the facts, the result in many cases is absent. The idea of fighting is felt in volition to be mine, but it need not contain me as an element in the ideal content. Neither the other nor myself need actually appear in that content, though the idea of fighting, freed from otherness, must be in relation with my not-self and must be felt as mine. Then, as the idea realises itself, my felt self becomes in part also perceived, and in the actual process I acquire the experience of my fighting. And, if this is so, then in volition the idea is not always the idea of myself making a change. 1 It is difficult to ascertain exactly what in any case is con- tained in the idea at the commencement of the process. For the process itself necessarily is perceived when begun, and in that experience the idea goes on to qualify itself further. When the idea of the change begins to realise both itself and me, I perceive myself as moving in one with the idea. I am aware of myself altering the existence so as to correspond to the idea, and in this union with the idea I become an object to myself. The idea thus develops and qualifies itself in a continuous process, and on reflexion we may natur- ally take its acquired character as there from the first. And it is easy in this way to assume that my self as acting is present always in the idea at its start. But though my self is thus present often, and I am ready to admit even usually, my self, we have seen, is not thus present always or 1 We must be careful not to assume that at an early stage the percep- tion of another's fighting comes to my mind as something belonging to another. The perception will contain something like ' fighting there,' and this, in becoming a suggestion, sheds the ' there,' and in the action is perceived as 'fighting here' or 'me fighting'. At a still lower stage the ' here ' and ' there ' become even less specified, but, as long as we can speak of will at all, there is an incompatible adjective which is opposed to existence and which in this sense is an idea.