Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/83

PRESENTATION AND REPRESENTATION. 69 presentations, I have, for the sake of simplicity in exposition, spoken somewhat loosely. These so-called accompanying secondary presentations must be in fact part and parcel of the presentations into the complex mass of which both primary and secondary presentations are fused. All that I mean to indicate is that certain parts of the primary pre- sentation are eliminated where the presentation changes from a primary to a secondary presentation, or image ; so that the secondary presentation, or image, appears as consisting only of the parts not thus eliminated ; but that, when we come to consider the primary presentation in the analysis of re- flexion, these parts of the primary presentation, which as developed go to make up the body of the secondary pre- sentation, are overwhelmed by the effects of the more em- phatic elements directly related to impressions I upon us from without. III. OF EEPRESENTATION. Sec. 11. Let us now turn to the fuller consideration of the view, referred to at the close of section 7, that secondary pre- sentations are in no sense copies of primary presentations, as was definitely held, as we have seen, by the early associa- tionists, and which is involved with the more modern doctrine of the existence of re-presentations. " Every moment of consciousness," says Bosanquet, 1 " is full of a given complex of presentation which passes away and can never be repeated without some difference. For this purpose representation is just the same as a presentation, is in fact a presentation." The notion thus expressed is evidently utterly opposed to the view that images ideas, representations are in any way copies of what I call primary presentations ; but it is quite in accord with the above-mentioned view that each complex presentation as experienced is a new and unique presentation. Such statements as that of Bosanquet's pass without serious objection, and modern psychologists since James would hesi- tate to deny their truth ; nevertheless, it seems clear that the implications of this and similar statements are not realised by those who still persist in speaking of what I call secondary presentations as though they involved a reduplication of a previously experienced presentation. As a matter of fact, in ordinary life, when we are not con- cerned to expound any psychological doctrine, we practically 1 Essentials of Logic, p. 74.