Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/503

 THE CONSTITUTION OF THOUGHT. 489 unitary mediate import. 1 And the aspect, of each of them, on which is based the capacity for this appeal, is to me so far one aspect wherever it appears. Actual abstraction and generalisation and their prototypes are thus alike to be understood as governed by the presence of a controlling ulterior goal, which for the higher intellection is set in the revealing light of consciousness as an ulterior goal of interest a significance, in fact. For the lower forms of mind, the like bearing of certain qualities of many individual objects on vital exigencies may, through the "rough surgery" of natural selection, simply force on and fix the generalised noticings of them while the ulterior ground and cause of the generalisations lies itself entirely outside mental cognizance. In the advanced mind, the unitary suggestiveness for the sake of which certain ob- jects are attended to is itself known. It can even be held up for the sake of a further recognised suggestiveness while that is held up for the sake of yet another in the plexus of thought. And by selective attention to governing images, an object's mode of thus contingently emphasised suggestiveness can be controlled and changed. If, then, we find in mind some general forms of ideation, each having reference to an indefinite group of presentations which resemble each other in some respect, these forms at their lowest appear secretly to owe their constitution and moulding in mind to a controlling possibly biologic rather than psychical import beyond the mere cue of similarity : and the distinguishing characteristic of their higher forms in a reasoning mind is that the controlling significance is at last within the widened range of view, and carries on its govern- ance by an actual mental process. II. SIGNIFICANCE PBOVES CONDITIONAL. Significance, thus secondarily involving abstract views,, and therefore views at least potentially general, with refer- ence to objects 2 stands out as the nerve of the organic con- stitution of thought. And yet it is not the bare fact of a presentation being so far effective by way of sign as to give rise to some image believed 1 From which, by the way, the objects may get one of their general names. 2 " Abstract " and " generalised " presentative views of objects consti- tute the lower ideation : abstracted and general views upon the presenta- tions are characteristic of the higher.