Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/86

of “mental states,” correlated to physical processes called brain states, and capable of being studied as to the laws of association which determine their sequence. All such conceptions can be viewed either as relatively valid, or as metaphysically final, only upon the basis to be established by a general theory of what constitutes our own type of knowledge. And for such a theory, — our whole present concern, — experience and reality alike contain only fulfilment of purpose, complete or incomplete, conditions of interest and attention, expressed or partially expressed in present consciousness, — acknowledgments of facts, and ignorance of facts, — beliefs, and truths related to beliefs. And of these only does the world of our considerations in this lecture consist. Hence we say, While the world in its entirety is the embodiment of our whole will, the fragment of that will, which this passing moment of human consciousness embodies, is a fragment that so far gets expressed in an attention to a few only of the world's real facts, and in such an inattention to the countless others as lets them all lapse into the vague background of acknowledged reality as “the rest of the world.” Expressing the matter wholly in teleological, not at all in causal terms, we can therefore answer the question, “Why do we not now consciously and explicitly know all things, since the Being of all things is involved in our present meaning?” by saying simply, Because, as we are, we do not attend to all things, but only to a few. Or, again, Because we are not duly and sufficiently interested in the “rest of things,” so that they fade into the background of knowledge, as the forests upon distant hills are lost in the