Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/77

PRESENTATION AND REPRESENTATION. 63 In cases like that mentioned in the previous paragraph, the presentations may therefore properly be called secondary resentations. 1 But it is clear, from our observations in section 5 above, that these " images " just considered do not differ fundamen- tally from presentations which arise as coincident with neural activities less closely related to the activities of the sense organs, and I shall hereafter use the phrase secondary pre- sentations to refer to all presentations that are not distinctly and primarily related to sensory impressions. Secondary presentations may be of various grades of relationship to primary presentations ; and the phrase may thus be ex- tended to cover all of our images and ideas. " After- images " are thus secondary presentations which are so closely related to primary presentations that they may per- haps be not improperly spoken of as impressional.' 2 The term idea, nowadays, is more usually, and perhaps more properly, applied to those secondary presentations which are very indirectly related to primary presentations ; and, taking a step farther, to those to which no primary presentation could ever have corresponded. Mr. Bradley, 3 for instance, would appear ready to use the term idea to cover " images," presentations which are recog- nisedly connected with images, and finally those which are not so connected ; and it must not be forgotten that the earlier English psychologists employed the word idea in this same very broad way : e.g., Hobbes and Browne and Locke ; the last of whom uses it " to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks ". These differences of usage are apt to produce confusion in the mind of the reader, and for this reason if for no other it seems best for our purpose to use the term secondary pre- sentation to refer to all presentations which are not distinctly impressional. 1 It is to be noted that James Mill speaks at times of " ideas " as " secondary feelings ". 2 Dr. Stout, in his Analytical Psychology (ii., p. 14), says : " Under the influence of a large dose of haschish I find myself totally unable to dis- tinguish between what I actually did and saw, and what I merely thought about ". . . . " This shows that a revived impression is itself an impression, and not an idea. " A secondary presentation of one type, classed as impressional, is thus placed in contradistinction to a secondary presentation of another type, classed as ideal. 3 Cf. MIND, N.S., No. 40, p. 441. In opposition to the view "that in order to have something ideal which qualifies an object, we must have an image or images existing separate or at least separable from that object " ; Mr. Bradley holds that " this identification of the ideal with images is surely a mistake".