Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/186

 172 F. H. BRADLEY : simply in its own character. On the other hand it tends naturally to pass beyond itself and to become the experience of agency by a process of construction. And, since this tendency serves to obscure the distinction, I will ask the reader to pause and to consider its nature. The subject of the experience has perceived in fact merely his own expan- sion into the not-self, or on the other hand the inroad of the not-self into his being. The process so far begins from one side of the relation, and in that character is regarded as belonging to that side. And with so much, I would repeat, we have not the perception of agency, since the process is not viewed as coming out of that which in its result it quali- fies. But it is natural for the subject himself, or again for an outside observer, to make the addition wanted to produce the perception of agency. The result is transferred in idea from the end to the beginning, and qualifies that beginning as an element which lay within it and issues from it. And with this we now have agency and will in that character which our definition has ascribed to it. The above construc- tion may be erroneous and may more or less misinterpret the facts, but at least in the subject of the experience it may develop itself into an actual perception. What was first perceived was in fact no more than a self-expandedness, and it is the presence of the idea by which it has now become a perceived self-realisation and agency. It may be instructive to dwell for a time on the above sense of activity and passivity, a sense in which as yet they do not imply agency and will. We must distinguish this again from feelings which, whether in idea or in actual time, are anterior to perception, and which in any case do not pass beyond their own lower level. These feelings of activity and of passivity of course exist at all stages of our develop- ment, and in some sense each, I should say, precedes its respective perception. But neither is in itself an experience of passivity or activity, if this means that, confined to them, we could be said to have any knowledge of either. Our first perception of activity or passivity goes beyond and is distinct from such feelings. It gives us the knowledge of something in the character of being active or passive, though this something is not yet qualified on either side by agency. I perceive myself first as passive when a change in myself is referred to the not-self as its process, when, that is, I become different and the object not-self becomes different, and the alteration is perceived as the increase of the not-self in me. This experience does not imply so far my practical relation to the object in the sense of my striving against its invasion.