Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/486

 “perception,” etc., possesses as its own characteristic meaning in contrast to other meanings. Inasmuch as the relative point of view cannot but finally become absolute, I may again regard the relation between the individual and the surroundings (in reference to E-values) in an absolute manner. The result is, generally and normally, that with the process in System C, or in a partial system, there is connected by the continuation and extension of the change-process, a secondary process in an adjacent partial system. By means of this secondary and centrally-conditioned process a sound-complex, which has become firmly associated with the first process, is either uttered by actual movement of the organs of speech or brought into recollection; thus we get, in the first case, the ectosystematic E-value, the verbal denomination, or, in the latter case, the purely endosystematic E-value.

Therefore the signs or R-values, and that which they signify—the E-values—may be regarded as coinciding. They differ only as different modes of viewing the same process; and the two modes are not, as might be supposed, distinguished by their form but by their content; for, from the absolute point of view, we consider only the parts of the environment, or the individual co-ordinated with them; from the relative point of view, we consider, first, the parts of the individual, secondly, the individual, and thirdly, his statement.

According to this view, which may be constructed directly from the theory of Avenarius, we have in the statement “I have the perception blue,” a series of signs, of which I will consider at present only the signs “perception” and “blue”. One of these, the sign “blue,” characterises and describes the object, the counterpart in the essential coordination present, and the external change-process; the sign “perception” on the other hand characterises and describes not only this, but also and as well the relation to the subject, the central term of the present essential co-ordination and its inner change-process, its momentary re-action in distinction from other conceivable reactions, e.g., “ideation,” “recollection,” etc. So long as the individual observes and describes naively, he is content merely to describe the object, as in the statement “that is blue”—he does not characterise himself or his specific activity more accurately because he himself, as the relatively constant term of the essential co-ordination, is forgotten or overlooked. It is only when the individual begins to observe relatively and reflects upon himself as the subject, as well as upon the object, that he characterises his own activity, his own processes in relation and co-ordination to the external