Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/314

IS THERE ANY SPECIAL ACTIVITY OF ATTENTION? 313 to strive " (whatever that may mean), and if the reader is committed to such ideas, I cannot hope to persuade him. But I would ask others to reflect that we have been willing to suppose that the idea prevails through pleasure and pain, and (if you must say so) through desire. All that is wanted so far for a common understanding is the presence of the idea and the denial that its influence consists in a discharge upon the muscles, whether actual or potential. " Still," the objection may come, " in an act like retention we fix ideas that waver, and we even recall an idea that has vanished. And we are said to do this by ' the idea of the idea '. But an idea must either be there or not there, and cannot be both, unless somehow ' potential'. So that an idea of an idea is not admissible." I confess that the phrase has a certain obscurity, and I do not know whether any one has worked out the detail of its various meanings. But it is not hard to make a sufficient reply. 1 It is plain that we have the idea of an idea. We may be asked (e.g.) for our idea of a statesman, and may be answered, 'I do not call that an idea'. ' Tell me then/ we might reply, ' what is your idea of an idea of a statesman.' And that means, Give me the general character which such an idea should have. This account will hold good everywhere. The idea of an idea is a psychi- cal state, the character of which is used representatively and contains the feature of being an idea of a certain kind. We may distinguish two varieties. In the first of these the absent idea which I think of is the idea pure and simple, while in the second it will include my psychical state as I have this idea. For example, I possess a general idea of the solution of a problem, and that in the first case contains merely the general character of the answer re- quired, or the principal feature of the necessary process. But if (as in the second case) I think of myself as having the solution or as performing the process, I must represent also the psychical presence of the whole event, of course again only in its general aspect. Thus, if we realised the first idea we should have simply to fill out its logical content, but the reality of the second would give us its actual psychical existence. And with this passing notice I must leave an objection which depends upon a vicious theory that would destroy logic wholly and cripple psychology. 2 1 I think that Prof. Bain has given to a kindred question an answer that is somewhat confused, in a note on James Mill's Analysis, ii. 358. - The unsatisfactory way in which internal volition is dealt with (or ignored by) the mass nf psychologists conies in part from an inability to distinguish clearly between the idea of and the reality of an idea.