Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/334

320 J. S. MACKENZIE : sometimes seems to do so. The idea of space, he seems to- tell us, must be extended ; the idea of weight must be heavy ; the idea of yellow must be coloured ; the idea of agreeable- ness must be pleasant ; and so on. Now, is all this true ? Well, I agree with our modern realists in believing that this is not true ; and it is here, as I think, that they have been doing valuable service, by which idealists may profit,' The idea of weight, it seems to me, is not heavy ; nor that of space extended ; nor that of yellow, in any full sense, coloured ; and even that of agreeableness is not always directly pleasant. Bather, I should say, it is of the essence of every idea to go beyond itself. But how, you may ask, is it able to do this ? I might simply retort, How is it able to avoid doing this ? I cannot imagine what an idea would be that should not do this. But it may be more satisfactory to put the answer in the following way. An idea is essentially alive : it is not something purely statical. This I believe to be the element of truth in the view of those who emphasise the volitional aspect of our consciousness. All mind is of the nature of process, and is in its essence forward-looking. Our ideas are continually going on : as it has been said, they ' have hands and feet '. Now, when an idea is thoroughly alive, it is what we call an ideal : it is not simply what it is, but what it is aiming at. What we have chiefly to consider in such a case is, in Aristotle's phrase, its TO rl fjv elvat ' what it essentially was,' or ' what it had in it to be '. Even the idea of a pleasure may be of this anticipatory character a scheme, an outline, a suggestion, rather than a fully formed experience ; and this, I think, is the solution of the difficulty that was raised a little time back. Still, it may be urged, surely what we mean cannot at least be entirely foreign to what we experience. However we may press forward, we cannot ' leap off our own shadow '. Now, this also, I think, is true ; and it is here, as I believe, that pure realism must in the end break down, and lead us on to a purified form of idealism. But let me try to make this point a little more definite. It may help us a little here if we consider first some of the illustrations that are suggested by Mr. Bradley. Take the case of weight. It certainly does not seem to me that the idea of weight is heavy. I cannot find that the thought of a pound weight is any heavier than the thought of an ounce. Yet, on the other hand, I freely admit that I could not attach any meaning to weight at all if there were not something in my experience that enabled me to take hold of it. And what this is it is not, in the present instance, very