Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/504

 490 HUBERT FOSTON : in as representative of the perceptual sequent of the pre- sentation that can constitute it an object in what we ought to call thought. Given that a certain phenomenon were a regular sign of another ; given that in every case of finding the one I invariably found the other, I might indeed usefully, and as it were automatically, generalise. But had I lived in a world constructed throughout on such simple principles, I do not see how I should ever have found occasion for thought. An existing richer process requires that name. Functioning in the way of thinking comes into play so I hold on the ground that a connexion which I have learned to look for holds sometimes, and fails sometimes : so that a particular phenomenon is now found to have a certain significance, and now has it not, and this is the completion of the present statement of the ground I can find a regular distinction between the circumstances in which the phenomen- on is a sign, and the circumstances in which it is not a sign, of that particular significance. And whenever any creature not merely has its attitude of self-adjustment altered accord- ing as the usual suggester of the adjustment has or has not a certain accompaniment in perception, but rather singles out definitely a particular complication of some phenomenon as the condition of its having a particular given objective sig- nificance, then it thinks. The thinking may be very wide of the mark : but if the mind can raise the correlative questions, "why?" and "why not?" and fix on some conjunction of events or qualities as affording the (however mistaken) answer if, in short, it undertakes the business of assigning conditions for some particular significance for an object then, according to the view of the essentials of thought here propounded, it thinks. 1 1 It would be impossible, so far as I see, to sift out from observations of animals evidence that however much they suffer their conduct to t>e modified by modifications of signs they are ever able to raise that question of " why ? " or to assign the conditions of a particular signifi- cance for a phenomenon. If they do so sporadically, they surely do not do so very consecutively. Rather than extravagantly supposing genuinely consecutive systematic explanation to be dominant in their mental life, we should believe that the relative dominance of consecutively explana- tory modes of intellection went far into the accounting for the peculiar acceleration of man's advance beyond what appears in animal com- munities. And in view of the characteristic active persistency of that principle of " why ? " a quasi self -determinant persistency of which we have tokens to some degree in the perplexingly regressive inquiries of children, and more powerful evidences in the staunch pursuances of science we can hardly take thought to be sufficiently established to give the right to the title of '' thinking being," where we cannot suppose this principle to be sufficiently established to assert its characteristic function in the way of consecution.