Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/475

 only too often in life that an increase of work is given which has not the value of a familiar one. This unfamiliar increase of work, then, has the significance of a variation of work.

With this variation of work is introduced a vital-difference of a higher order, the vital-difference. In so far as system C (and with it the individual) maintains itself, we must think of it as passing to definite changes of itself, by means of which the variation in work is annulled; and these changes will continue until a change supervenes, such that by it system C again attains for the moment to its vital maximum of maintenance. That these changes in system C are of a most manifold and complicated kind is a matter of course. That need not prevent us from comprehending them for the present under the name “Compensating-adjustments of system C”. Thus we are enabled briefly to review the terms of a vital-series of the higher order.

It will be composed, e.g., of the following terms: (1) Habitual increase of nourishment; (2) Habitual increase of work, set for a short time; (3) Variation of work; (4) Compensating adjustments until the vital-difference is completely annulled.

Here again we may consider what significance this series has for our action and thought. As an instance which indicates all these terms neatly and clearly I select the well-known one from F. A. Lange’s History of Materialism, vol. ii., p. 370. “A merchant sits comfortably in his arm-chair, and does not himself know whether the greater part of his Ego is occupied with smoking, sleeping, reading the newspaper, or digesting. A servant enters, bringing a telegram in which is written: ‘Antwerp, etc. Jonas & Co. have failed.’ ‘Tell Jacob to harness the horses.’ The servant flies. The man has sprung up, wide awake; he takes a few steps through his room, goes down into the office, informs his representative, dictates letters, sends off telegrams, and gets into his carriage. The horses snort; he rushes to the bank, to the exchange, to his business friends—before an hour is over he is again at home, throwing himself into his arm-chair and sighing: ‘Thank God, I am safe from the worst. Now to consider further.’”

All that the merchant does and says are for empiriocriticism E-values, which are conditioned by certain changes in the system C belonging to the merchant in question. I will analyse this more fully.

“The merchant sits comfortably in his arm-chair”—we think of his system C as provided with a uniform habitual