Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/78

 64 HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL : With this meaning of the term secondary presentations before us, I wish here, in correspondence with what was said in the last paragraph of section 6, to make the point which I shall discuss at greater length in the third division of this article : that it is clearly absurd for us to describe the " noetic pattern " symbolised in figure 2 as a copy, or reproduction, of that symbolised in figure 1. If we may judge from neurological evidence the existence of the primary presenta- tion would seem to involve also the existence of the secondary pre- sentation ; while the existence of the secondary presentation tvould not seem necessarily to involve the existence of the primary presen- tation. In no sense, if this view is correct, can a secondary presentation be said to be a copy of its related primary presentation. Before we consider the main question in detail it will be well to examine more thoroughly the notion above suggested that the existence of a primary presentation always involves the existence also of a secondary presentation. Sec. 8. If I think of my nephew who is now in Italy I have in attention what I call an " image " of him. If he should walk into my study I should have in attention some- thing much more emphatic than this "image," a something which we call a perception of him, due primarily to impressions reaching my body from without. If he, being here, should suddenly leave the room, my presentation would no longer appear as a perception, but as an " image " ; an " image " differing, it is true, in vividness and definition from the " image " I experience now that I think of him as in Italy, but clearly of the same general nature. The presentation which I would have experienced had my nephew been in my study, and had I been watching his movements, is what I call a form of primary presentation. The presentation which I would have experienced had he left the room ; and also the one which, he being in Italy, I now experience, are forms of what I call secondary presentations. It is to one aspect of the difference between primary presentations as a class, and secondary presentations as a class, which commonly escapes observation that I would here direct attention. If I look at the inkstand on my writing-table I have a primary presentation. If I close my eyes I have a secondary presentation (an "image" of the inkstand), which, if I keep my eyes closed, is noted as losing gradually from moment to moment its vividness and clearness and definiteness, until finally it is no longer able to hold its own against other pre- sentations which crowd in upon it.