The logic of sense-impressions and of ideas as copies of
sense-impressions has had its day. It engaged in a conflict with
dogmatism, and scored a decisive victory. It overthrew the dynasty of
prescribed formulæ and innate ideas, of ideas derived ready-made from
custom and social usage, ancient enough to be lost in the remote
obscurity of divine sources; and enthroned in their place ideas derived
from, and representative of, the sense-experiences of a very real and
present world. It marked a reaction from dogma back to the original
meaning of dogma, back to the seeming, the appearance, of things. So
thoroughly did Bacon and Hobbes, Locke and Hume, to mention only these
four, do their work, that many of the problems growing out of the
conflict itself, to say nothing of the scholastic traditions that were
combated, have come to have merely a historical rather than a logical
interest. Logic no longer concerns itself very eagerly with the content
or sensuous qualities of ideas, with their derivation from
sense-impressions, or with questions as to the relation of copy to
original, of representative to that which is presented. It is concerned
rather with the constructive operations of thought, with meaning,
reference to reality, inference--with intellectual processes. Perhaps in
no respect is this shifting of logical standpoint indicated more clearly
than in the unregretful way with which the old logical interest in the
sense-qualities of ideas is now made over to psychology. States of
consciousness as such, we are told, are the proper study of psychology;
whereas logic concerns itself with the relation of thought to its
object. True, these states of consciousness include thought-states, as
well as sense-impressions; ideas and concepts, as well as feelings and
fancies; and the business of psychology is to observe, compare and
classify, describe and chronicle, these states and whatever else is
carried along in the stream of consciousness. But logic is concerned,
not with these states of consciousness _per se_, least of all with the
flotsam and jetsam of the stream, but with its reference to reality; not
with the true, but with truth; not even with what consciousness does,
but with how consciousness is to outdo itself, transcend itself, in a
rational and universal whole. Even an empirical logic has to arrange
somehow the way to get from one sense-impression to another.
In drawing this distinction between logic and psychology--a distinction
which virtually amounts to a separation--two things are overlooked:
first, that the distinction itself is a logical distinction, and may
properly constitute a problem falling under the province of logical
inquiry and theory; and, second, that the rather arbitrary and official
setting apart of psychology to look after the task of studying states of
consciousness does not carry with it the guarantee that psychology will
confine itself exclusively to that task. This last point in particular
must be my excuse for discussing the question of image and idea from the
psychological rather than from the logical standpoint. The logic of
ideas derived from sense-impressions has had its day. But even the very
leavings of the past may have been gathered up and reconstructed by
psychology in such a way as to anticipate some of the newer developments
of logical theory and meet some of its difficulties. One can hardly hope
to justify in advance a discussion based on such a sheer possibility.
Let us begin, rather, by noting down from the standpoint of logic some
of the distinctions between image and idea, and the estimate of the
logical function and value of mental imagery, and see in what direction
they take us and whether they suggest a resort to an analysis from the
standpoint of psychology.
Proceeding from the standpoint of logic to inquire into the logical
function of mental imagery and into the distinction between image and
idea, we shall come upon two opposed but characteristic answers. If the
inquiry be directed to a member of the empirical school of logic, he
would be bound to answer in the affirmative, so far as the question
regarding the function of mental imagery is concerned. He would be
likely to say, if he were loyal to the traditions of his school, that
mental imagery is the counterpart of sense-perception, and is thus the
representative of the data with which empirical logic is concerned.
Mental imagery, he would continue, is a representative in a literal
sense, a copy, a reflection, of what comes to us through the avenues of
sensation. True, it is not the perfect twin of sense-experience; else we
could not tell them apart; indeed, there are times when the copy becomes
so much like the original that we are deceived by it, as in dreams or in
hallucinations. Ordinarily, however, we are able to distinguish one from
the other. Two criteria are usually present; (1) imagery is fainter,
more fleeting, than the corresponding sense-experience; and (2), save in
the case of accurate memory-images, it is subject to a more or less
arbitrary rearrangement of its parts, as when, for example, we make over
the images of scenes we have actually experienced, to furnish forth the
setting of some remote historical event.
Barring, or controlling and rectifying, its tendencies toward both
arbitrary and constructive variations from the original, mental imagery
is on the same level as sense-experience, and serves the same logical
purpose. That is to say, it contributes to the data which constitute the
foundations of empirical logic. It furnishes materials for the
operations of observing, comparing, abstracting and generalizing.
Mental imagery helps to piece out the fragments that may be presented to
sense-experience. It supplies the entire anatomy when only a single
bone, say, is actually given. Yet, however useful as a servant of truth,
it has to be carefully watched, lest its spontaneous tendency to vary
the actual order and coexistence of data lead the investigator astray.
The copy it presents is, after all, a temporary makeshift, until it can
be shown to correspond point for point to the now absent reality. Mental
imagery furnishes one with an illustrated edition of the book of nature,
but the illustrations await the confirmation of comparison with the
originals.
Mental imagery functions logically when it extends the area of data
beyond the range of the immediate sense-perceptions of any given time,
and thus makes possible a more comprehensive application of the
empirical methods of observation, comparison, abstraction, and
generalization. It functions logically when it acts as a feeder of
logical machinery, though it is not indispensable to this machinery and
does not modify its principles. The logical mill could grind up in the
same way the pure grain of sense-perceptions, unmixed with mental
images, but it would have to grind more slowly for lack of material. In
other words, empirical logic could carry on its operations of observing,
comparing, abstracting, and generalizing, solely on the basis of objects
or data present to the senses, and with no extension of this basis in
terms of imagery, or copies of objects not immediately present; but it
would take more time for it to apply and carry through its operations.
The logical machinery is the same in each case. The materials fed and
the product issuing are the same in each case. Imagery simply fulfils
the function of providing a more copious grist.
The empiricist's answer to our question regarding the logical function
of mental imagery leaves that function in an uncertain and parlous
state. Imagery lacks the security of sense-perception on the one hand,
and it has no part in the operation of thought on the other. It is a
sort of hod-carrier, whose function it is to convey the raw materials of
sense-perception to a more exalted position where someone else does all
the work. I suppose this could be called a functional interpretation of
a logical element. The question, then, would be whether an element so
functioning is in any sense logical. As an element lying outside of the
thought-process it owes no responsibility to logic; it is not amenable
to its regulations. Thought simply finds it expedient to operate with an
agent over which it has no intrinsic control. The case might be allowed
to rest here. Yet were this extra-logical element of imagery to abandon
thought, all conscious thinking as opposed to sense-perception would
cease. A false alarm, perhaps. Imagery may be so constituted that it is
inseparably subordinated to thought and can never abandon it. Thought
may simply exude imagery. But imagery somehow has to represent
sense-perception, also. It can hardly be a secretion of thought and a
copy of sense-perceptions at one and the same time, unless the
empiricist is willing to turn absolute idealist! Before taking such a
desperate plunge as this, it might be desirable to see whether there is
any other recourse.
There is another and a very different answer to the question regarding
the logical function of mental imagery. To distinguish this answer from
that of the associationist or empiricist, I will call it the answer of
the conceptualist. I am not at all positive that this label would stick
even to those to whom it might be applied with considerable
justification. The terms "rationalistic" and "transcendental" might be
preferred in opposition to the term "empirical." And we have the term
"apperceptionist" in opposition to the term "associationist." If the
term "conceptualist" is admissible, it should be brought down to date,
perhaps, by making it "neo-conceptualist." The present difficulties
regarding terminology would be eased considerably if we only had a
convenient set of derivatives made from the word "meaning." Since we
have not, I will use derivatives made from the word "concept" to denote
views opposite to those held by the empirical school.
The conceptualist could be depended upon to answer our question in the
negative. Logical functions begin where the image leaves off. They begin
with the _idea_, with meaning. The conceptualist distinguishes sharply
between the image as a psychical existence and the idea, or concept, as
logical meaning. On the one hand, you have the "image," not only as a
mere psychical existence, but a mocking existence at that, fleeting,
inconstant, shifting, never perhaps twice alike; yet, mind you, an
_existence_, a _fact_--that must be admitted. On the other hand, you
have the "idea," with "a fixed content or logical meaning,"[80] which is
referred by an act of judgment to a reality beyond the act.[81]
The "idea," the logical meaning, begins where the "image" leaves off.
Does this mean that the "idea" is wholly independent of the "image"? Yes
and no. The "idea" is independent of that which is ordinarily regarded
as the special characteristic of an "image," namely, its quality, its
sense-content. That is to say, the "idea" is independent of any
particular "image," any special embodiment of sense-content. Any image
will do. As Mr. Bosanquet remarks in comparing the psychical images that
pass through our minds to a store of signal flags:
Not only is it indifferent whether your signal flag of today is
the same bit of cloth that you hoisted yesterday, but also, no one
knows or cares whether it is clean or dirty, thick or thin, frayed
or smooth, as long as it is distinctly legible as an element of
the signal code. Part of its content, of its attributes and
relations, is a fixed index which carries a distinct reference;
all the rest is nothing to us, and, except in a moment of idle
curiosity, we are unaware that it exists.[82]
On the other hand, the "idea" could not operate as an idea, could not be
in consciousness, save as it involves some imagery, however old, dirty,
thin, and frayed. Take the statement, "The angles of a triangle are
equal to two right angles." If the statement means anything to a given
individual, if it conveys an idea, it must necessarily involve some form
of imagery, some qualitative or conscious content. But so far as the
_meaning_ is concerned, it is a matter of complete indifference as to
_what_ qualities are involved. These qualities may be in terms of
visual, auditory, tactual, kinæsthetic, or verbal imagery. The
individual may visualize a blackboard drawing of a triangle with its
sides produced, or he may imagine himself to be generating a triangle
while revolving through an angle of 180°. Any imagery anyone pleases may
be employed, so long as there goes with it somehow the _idea_ of the
relation of equality between the angles of a triangle and two right
angles. But the conceptualist does not stop here. The act of judgment
comes in to affirm that the "idea" is no mere idea, but is a quality of
the real. "The act [of judgment] attaches the floating adjective [the
idea, the logical meaning] to the nature of the world, and, at the same
time, tells one it was there already."[83] The "idea," the logical
meaning, begins where the "image" leaves off. Yet, somehow, the "idea"
could not begin, unless there were an "image" to leave off.
An "image" is not an "idea," says the conceptualist. An "idea" is not an
"image." (1) An "image" is not an "idea," because an "image" is a
particular, individual fragment of consciousness. It is so bound up
with its own existence that it cannot reach out to the existence of an
"idea," or to anything beyond itself. Chemically speaking, it is an
_avalent_ atom of consciousness, if such a thing is thinkable. Mr.
Bosanquet raises the question:
Are there at all ideas which are not symbolic?... The answer is
that _(a)_ in judgment itself the idea can be distinguished _qua_
particular in time or psychical fact, and _so far_ is not
symbolic; and _(b)_ in all those human experiences from which we
draw our conjectures as to the animal intelligence, when in
languor or in ignorance image succeeds image without conscious
judgment, we feel what it is to have ideas as facts and not as
symbols.[84]
(2) An "idea" is not an "image," because an idea _is_ meaning, which
consists in a part of the content of the image, cut off, and considered
apart from the _existence_ of the content or sign itself.[85] This
meaning, this fragment of psychical existence, lays down all claim to
existence on its own account, that it may refer through an act of
judgment to a reality beyond itself and beyond the act also. An "image"
is not an "idea" and an "idea" is not an "image," because an "image"
exists only as a quality, a sense-content, whereas an "idea" exists only
as a relation, a reference to reality beyond. "On the one hand," to
recall Bradley's antinomy, "no possible idea [as a psychical image] can
be that which it means.... On the other hand, no idea [as logical
signification] is anything but just what it means."
There is a significant point of agreement between the conceptualist and
the empiricist. Both regard imagery as on the level with
sense-perception. For the empiricist, as we have seen, the fact that
imagery may be compelled to serve as a yoke-fellow of sense-experience
constitutes its logical value. For the conceptualist, however, the
association of imagery with sense-experience is of no logical
consequence whatsoever, save as it may help to intensify the distinction
between imagery and meaning. To quote again from Bradley:
For logical purposes the psychological distinction of idea and
sensation may be said to be irrelevant, while the distinction of
idea and fact is vital. The image, or psychological idea, is for
logic nothing but a sensible reality. It is on a level with the
mere sensations of the senses. For both are facts and neither are
meanings. Neither are cut from a mutilated presentation and fixed
as a connection. Neither are indifferent to their place in the
stream of psychical events, their time and their relations to the
presented congeries. Neither are adjectives to be referred from
their existence, to live on strange soils, under other skies, and
through changing seasons. The lives of both are so entangled with
their environment, so one with their setting of sensuous
particulars, that their character is destroyed if but one thread
is broken.[86]
This point of agreement between conceptualism and empiricism, this
placing of imagery and sense-experience on a common level, serves to
bring into relief fundamental differences between the two schools of
thought; fundamental, because they have to do with the nature of reality
itself. The conceptualist in his zealous endeavor to distinguish between
imagery and logical meaning has come perilously near driving imagery
into the arms of reality. It is the opportunity of empiricism to make
them one. How can conceptualism prevent the union? Has it not disarmed
itself? The act of judgment, which includes within itself logical
meaning as predicate, refers to a reality beyond the act. Both imagery
and reality, then, lie outside of the act of judgment! What alliance, or
_mésalliance_, may they not form, one with the other?
The difficulties we have noted thus far in the discussion are due to a
large extent, I believe, to incomplete psychological analysis of
logical machinery. The empiricist has not carried the psychology of
logic as far as the conceptualist, although the latter might be the
loudest to disclaim the honor. I will not try to prove this statement,
but simply give it as a reason why, in the interest of brevity, I shall
pass with little comment over the psychological shortcomings and
contributions of empirical logic, and devote what space remains to the
psychology implicitly worked out by conceptual logic, and to its
possible development, with special reference, of course, to the problem
of the logical function of imagery.
The logical distinction, which practically amounts to a separation
between imagery and meaning, is the counterpart of the psychological
distinction between stimulus and response, between the two poles of
sensori-motor activity, where the stimulus is defined in consciousness
in the form of imagery, in the form of sense-qualities centrally
excited, and where the response is directed and controlled _via_ this
imagery, so as to function in bringing some end, project, purpose, or
ideal, nearer to realization, some problem nearer to solution.
Psychologically, there is no break between image and response, between
thought and action. The stimulus is a condition of action, in both
senses of the ambiguity of the word "condition." (1) It _is_ action; it
is a state or condition of action. (2) It is also an initiation of
action. _If_ the appropriate stimulus, then the desired action. The
response to an image is the meaning of the image. Or, the response to
any stimulus _via_ an image--mediated, controlled or directed by an
image--is the meaning of that image. The less imagery involved in any
response, the greater the presumption in favor of the belief that the
response is either an instinctive impulse or else has become a habit of
mind, an adequate idea. The reduction and loss of sense-content which an
image may undergo--the wearing away of an image, it is sometimes
called--is not a sign that this sense-content has no logical function;
but rather that it has fulfilled a logical function so well that it has
made part of itself useless. The husk, to recall one of Mr. Bradley's
comparisons, that useless husk, tends to fall away, to lapse from
consciousness, after it has served the purpose of helping to bring the
kernel of truth to fruition.
This raises again the original question as to whether the sense-content,
the quality, the existential quality, of an image has a logical
function. I will ask first whether it has a function from the standpoint
of psychology. We will agree with the empiricist that the content of an
image is representative, that it is a return, a revival, of a
sense-content previously experienced through the activity of
sense-organs stimulated from the periphery. What is the function, then,
of the representative image? Sensation, quality, as we have implied
above, is the stimulus come to consciousness. To explain how a stimulus
can "come" to consciousness is a problem I will not attempt to go into
here. I assume as a fact that there are times when we know what we are
about; when we are conscious of the stimuli, or conditions of action,
which are tending in this direction or in that, and when through this
consciousness we exercise a controlling influence over action by
selecting and reinforcing certain stimuli and suppressing or inhibiting
others. It is true that we do not always realize to how great an extent
our actions are controlled by stimuli which do not come to
consciousness, by reflexes, instincts, and habits which do not rise
above the threshold of imagery. And when this vast complex of hidden
machinery is partly revealed to us, it may either cause the beholder to
take a materialistic, mechanical, or fatalistic view of existence, to
say that we are the victims of our own machinery, or else it may induce
the other extreme of more or less mystic pronouncements regarding the
province of the subconscious, of the subliminal self; thus out of
partial views, out of half-truths, metaphysical problems arise and arm
for mutual conflict. Nevertheless, there is a presumption, amounting in
most minds to a conviction, that we do at times consciously control some
of our actions. And it is only making this conviction a little more
explicit to say that we consciously control our actions through becoming
aware of the stimuli, or conditions of action, and through selecting and
reinforcing them.
Is it begging the question to speak of consciousness as exercising a
selective function with reference to stimuli? From the standpoint of
psychology, I cannot see that it is. No characteristic of consciousness
has been more clearly made out, both reflectively and experimentally,
than its selective function, than its ability to pick out and intensify
within certain limits the stimuli or conditions of action.
The representational image is a stimulus come to consciousness in the
same way that a sensation is a stimulus come to consciousness. It is
both a direct and an indirect stimulus. The terms "direct" and
"indirect" are used as relative solely to the demands of the particular
situation out of which they arise. By direct stimulus I mean a stimulus
which initiates with almost no appreciable delay the response or
attitude appropriate to the demands of a given situation, bridging the
difficulties, removing the obstacles, or solving the problem with the
minimum of conscious reflection. As an image becomes more and more of a
working symbol, an idea, it tends to become simply a direct stimulus.
By an "indirect stimulus" is meant a stimulus initiating a response
which, if not inhibited, would be irrelevant to the situation, yet which
may represent stimuli which are not found in the immediate field of
sense-perception, and which are essential to the carrying on of the
activity. The situation is a problematic one. Acquired habits or mental
adjustments break down at some point or fail to operate smoothly, either
owing to the absence of customary stimuli or to the presence of new and
untried conditions of action. Part of the stress of meeting such a
situation as this falls on the side of discovering appropriate stimuli
and part on the side of developing out of habits already acquired new
methods of response.
In such a situation as this, imagery may function on the side of
_stimulus_ when, taking its cue from the stimuli which are actually
present, and which grow out of the strain and friction, it represents
the missing conditions of action sufficiently to direct a search for
them. It projects a map, so to speak, in which the fragmentary
conditions immediately present to sense-perception may find their
bearings, or in which in some way the missing members may be discovered.
A familiar instance of this would be the experience one sometimes has in
trying to recall the forgotten name of an acquaintance. The images of
scenes associated with the acquaintance, of various letters and sounds
of words associated with his name, which may be called to mind, do not
function so much as direct stimuli as they do as intermediate or
indirect stimuli. It is a case of casting about for the image that will
function as a direct stimulus in bringing an acquired but temporarily
lost adjustment into play.
Image functions on the side of _response_, on the side of developing new
habits, new forms of adjustment, in so far as the conditions of action
which it represents, or projects, are not the actual conditions of
action, either because they are so inaccessible as to demand development
of new habits for purposes of attaining them, or else because, though
actually present, they stimulate relatively uncontrolled æsthetic or
emotional responses, whose very expression, however, may be translated
into a demand for more adequate, intelligent, controlled habits or
adjustments. The conscious projection of the unattained, even of the
unattainable, not only marks a certain degree of attainment, but is the
initiation of further development. Here we see again that a stimulus is
a condition of action in both senses of the ambiguity of the word
"condition." It is both a state or condition of activity, and an
initiation or condition of further activity.
As an indirect stimulus growing out of a problematic situation imagery
necessarily brings in more or less irrelevant material. If I may be
permitted the paradox, imagery would not be relevant if it did not bring
in the irrelevant. The novelty of the situation makes it impossible to
say in advance what will be relevant. Hence the demand for range and
play of imagery. It is only the successful adjustment finally hit upon
and worked out that is the test of the relevancy of the imagery which
anticipated it. Even this test may be unfair, since it is likely to
discount the value of imagery which is now ruled out, but which may have
been indispensable in turning up the proper cues in the course of the
process of reflection and experiment.
To restate the point in regard to the psychological function of imagery.
Imagery functions in representing control as ideal, not as fact. It
represents a possible process of reconstructing adjustments and habits;
it is not an actual and complete readjustment. It arises normally in a
stress, in the presence of fresh demands and new problems. It looks
forward in every possible direction, because it is important and
difficult to foresee consequences. But suppose the new adjustment to be
made with reasonable success--reasonable, note. Suppose the ideal to be
realized. With practice the adjustment becomes less problematic, more
under control--that is, it comes to require less conscious attention to
bring it about. The image loses some of its sensuous content. It becomes
worn away, more remote, until at last it becomes respectably vague and
abstract enough to be classed as a concept. Imagery is the stimulus of
the reconstructive process between habit and habit, concept and concept,
idea and idea.
We now return to the original question regarding the logical function of
imagery. There is only one condition, I believe, on which we can accept
the assumption of both empiricist and conceptualist that imagery is on
the same level with sense-perception, and that is the assumption that
meaning, logical meaning, is on the same level with habit, habit naming
the more obvious, overt forms of response to stimuli, logical meaning
naming the more internal forms of response or reference. Psychical
response and logical reference thus become equivalent terms.
We have seen that imagery may exercise two functions with reference to
habit, as direct and as indirect stimulus; so also with reference to
logical meaning, imagery may be the stimulus to a direct reference of
the idea to reality, or it may present, or mirror, conditions with
regard to which some new meaning is to be worked out. The quality, the
sense-content, of imagery may _per se_ suffice directly to arouse a
habitual attitude, to call forth an immediate reference to reality. It
may cause one to "tumble" to what is taking place, to "catch on," to
apprehend (pardon these expressions for the sake of their description of
the motor aspect of meaning), as when we say, for example: "It came over
me like a flash what I was to do, and I did it." Our more abstract and
complicated forms of judgment and reasoning, in which the imagery
involved is reduced to the minimum of conscious, qualitative content,
are of the same order, though at the other extreme, so far as immediate
overt expression is concerned. We are working along lines of habitual
activity so familiar that we can work almost in the dark. We need no
elaborate imagery. Guided only by the waving of a signal flag or by the
shifting gleam of a semaphore, we thread our way swiftly through the
maze of tracks worn smooth by use and habit. But suppose a new line of
habit is to be constructed. No signal flags or semaphores will suffice.
A detailed survey of the proposed route must be had, and here is where
imagery with a rich and varied yet flexible sensuous content, growing
out of previous surveys, may function in projecting and anticipating the
new set of conditions, and thus become the stimulus of a new line of
habit, of a new and more far-reaching meaning. As this new line of
habit, of meaning, gets into working order with the rest of the system,
imagery tends normally to decline again to the rôle of signal flags and
semaphores.
The distinction in logical theory between "image" and "idea" which we
have been considering is only a half-truth from the point of view of
psychology. It virtually limits the "idea" to a fixed, unalterable
reference of a fragment of a desiccated image to a reality beyond. It
indifferently loses the play and richness of imagery to the floating
remnants of sense-content, or to an external reality. It limits itself
to an examination of a final stage in thinking, a stage in which the
image acts as a direct stimulus, a stage in which the sense-content of
the image has little or no function _per se_, because this content now
initiates directly a habitual adjustment, a worked-out and established
adaptation of means to end. It overlooks the process of conscious
reflection which logically precedes every such adjustment not purely
instinctive or accidental, a process in which imagery as
representational functions indirectly in bringing the resources of past
experience, the fund of acquired habits, to bear upon the fragmentary
and problematic elements of sense-experience actually present, thus
maintaining the flow and continuity of experience. It fails to recognize
that in the inseparable association of meaning with quality, of "idea"
with "image," there goes the possibility of working out and applying
new meanings from old, of developing deeper meanings, of testing and
affirming more inclusive and universal meaning.
We are confronted with this alternative. Either the image has a logical
function in virtue of its sense-content, or else the image functions
logically merely as a symbol, the sense-content of which is a matter of
complete logical indifference. According to the empiricist, the former
is the case, according to the conceptualist, the latter. The empiricist
would say that he needs the image to piece out the data upon which
logical processes operate. Having met this need, the image is retired
from active service. For the empiricist the processes of thought,
observing, comparing, generalizing, etc., are as independent of the data
they use as, for the conceptualist, logical meaning, reference, and
"idea" are independent of the sense-content of the "image." In reality
he agrees with the conceptualist in excluding the sense-content of the
image from the processes of thought, and hence from the domain of logic.
From the standpoint of psychological theory the conceptualist is an
improvement over the empiricist. He has gone a step farther in the
analysis of thought-processes by showing that they are bound up with
some kind of imagery, however irrelevant, inconsequential, and worn down
the sense-quality of that imagery may be. His statement of ideas as
references to reality lends itself readily, as we have seen, to the
unitary conception in psychology of ideo-motor, or sensori-motor,
activity. But is this where logical theory is to stop, while psychology
as a study of "states of consciousness" takes up the unfinished tale and
carries it forward? It seems hardly possible, unless logic is willing to
give over its task of thinking about thinking.
Reduce the image to a mere symbol. Let its sense-quality be a matter of
complete indifference. What have you, then, but an elementary and
primitive type of reflex action? It is of no particular consequence even
from what sense-organ it appears to proceed, or whether it appears to be
peripherally or centrally excited. It is simply a case of feel and act;
touch and go. Is this thinking? It may be regarded as either the germ or
the finality of thinking, but what most of us are inclined to believe is
the true subject-matter of logic is not to be limited to a simple
reflex, or even to a chain of reflexes. It is something more complex,
even if nothing more than an intricate tangle of chains of reflexes.
The complexity of the process called thinking does not reside alone in
the instinctive or habitual reflexes involved. The more instinctive and
habitual any adjustment may be, the less is it a matter of thought, as
everyone knows, although its biological complexity is none the less
patent to one who looks at it from the outside. The complexity of the
thinking process resides in consciousness also; it resides in the
imagery, the stimuli, the mere symbols, if you like, that have "come" to
consciousness. As soon as the complexity begins to be _felt_, as soon as
any discrimination whatsoever begins to be introduced or appreciated, at
that instant the sense-content, the quale, of imagery begins to have a
logical function. Conscious discrimination, however vague and
evanescent, and the logical function of the quale of imagery are born
together, unless one chooses to regard the more obvious and deliberate
forms of conscious discrimination as more characteristic of a logical
process. It is only as the sense-contents of various images are
discriminated and compared that anything like thinking can be conceived
to go on. The particular sense-content of an image, instead of being a
matter of logical indifference, is the condition, the possibility, of
thinking.
The conceptualist has contributed to the data of descriptive psychology
by calling attention, by implication at least, to the remote and
reduced character of the imagery which may characterize thinking. But it
by no means follows that the more remote and reduced the sense-content
of an image becomes, the less important is that sense-content for
thinking, the less demand for discrimination. On the contrary, the
sense-content that remains may be of supreme logical importance. It may
be the quintessence of meaning. It may be the conscious factor which,
when discriminated from another almost equally sublimated conscious
factor, may determine a whole course of action. The delicacy and
rapidity with which these reduced forms of imagery as they hover about
the margin of consciousness or flit across its focus are discriminated
and caught, are points in the technique of that long art of
thinking, begun in early childhood. The fact that questionnaire
investigations--like that of Galton's, for example--have in many
instances failed to discover in the minds of scientists and advanced
thinkers a rich and varied furniture of imagery does not argue the
poverty of imagery in such minds; it argues, rather, a highly developed
technique, a species of virtuosity, with reference to the sense-content
of the types of imagery actually in use.
To push a step farther the alternative we have already stated in a
preliminary way: Either the "idea," or "logical meaning," lies outside
of the process of thinking, as a mere impulse or reflex; or else, in
virtue of the sense-content of its "image," it enters into that
conscious process of discrimination, comparison, and selection, of light
and shade, of doubt and inquiry, which constitutes the evolution of a
judgment, which makes the life-history of a movement of thought.