Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/463

 ON FLOATING IDEAS AND THE IMAGINARY. 449 that apart from judgment we have ideas. And if the issue is raised thus, and if not to be so predicated means to float, then inevitably we shall be forced to believe in floating ideas. For in doubt and in denial, to take obvious instances, we should find the evidence that they exist. But the issue if so raised, I must go on to urge, is raised wrongly. We have not to choose everywhere between an idea which is predi- cated and an idea which simply floats. On the contrary, an ideal content can qualify and be attached to a subject apart from any predication in the proper sense or any explicit judgment. And by virtue of such an attachment the ideas which relatively float are everywhere from another point held captive. The idea comes before my mind as suspended and as loose from a certain subject, and so far it floats. But none the less as an adjective it qualifies another subject. It is not predicated of this other subject, but it comes as at- tached to it or as inhering there. This other subject may be more or less specialised or more or less vague and general, and the union again between this subject and the idea may be more or less implicit. It may amount to little more than the immediate inherence of one aspect in a felt whole. But in every case of a floating idea this other subject and its attachment can be found. The idea in short, held free from one subject, coalesces more or less immediately with another subject from which in varying degrees it is distinct. Thus in negation the idea denied is not in the proper sense predicated of another subject. But this idea in every case qualifies an alternative more or less distinct, and hence no- where floats absolutely. The idea repelled is, in other words, felt to fall somewhere else. It may qualify another alter- native more or less specified before the mind, or it may coalesce with that vague whole which comes to us as the residue of the Universe. But to existence unsupported within a void it never attains. This qualification apart from explicit judgment can by reflexion everywhere be turned into formal predication. Whether before that we should speak of judgment I need not discuss. The point is that apart from predication ideas can qualify a subject. Hence you cannot conclude that, where predication fails, ideas, if present, must float, since the possibility of informal union between ideas and reality destroys this conclusion. The reader may now have realised the bearing and the importance of the above distinction, and I will go on to explain aud justify it in detail by considering various instances of floating ideas. We find obvious ex- amples in negation and supposition, in the use of imperatives