may first be viewed apart from the fulfilment. Then it remains, so far, mere purpose. Or it may be viewed as expressed and so far partially accomplished by means of the complex state called the idea, and then it is termed “the present internal meaning of this state.”
V
So now we have defined what we mean by an idea, and what we mean by the internal meaning of an idea. But ideas often seem to have a meaning, yes, as one must add, finite ideas always undertake or appear to have a meaning, that is not exhausted by this conscious internal meaning presented and relatively fulfilled at the moment when the idea is there for our finite view. The melody sung, the artist’s idea, the thought of your absent friend — a thought on which you love to dwell: all these not merely have their obvious internal meaning, as meeting a conscious purpose by their very presence, but also they at least appear to have that other sort of meaning, that reference beyond themselves to objects, that cognitive relation to outer facts, that attempted correspondence with outer facts, which many accounts of our ideas regard as their primary, inexplicable, and ultimate character. I call this second, and, for me, still problematic and derived aspect of the nature of ideas, their apparently External Meaning. In this sense it is that I say, “The melody sung by me not only is an idea internally meaning the embodiment of my purpose at the instant when I sing it, but also is an idea that means, and that in this sense externally means, the object called, say, a certain theme
