Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/489

 that change-processes are in the organism, more specifically in the nervous system, in the central organ, in system C, etc.

On the other hand, Avenarius does not identify change-processes with “perception,” “thought,” as the materialist does, when he follows the well-known saying of Vogt that thoughts are a secretion of the brain, just as urine is of the kidneys. When Avenarius analyses from the absolute point of view that which is designated he is dealing only with the external and internal change-processes, with their conditions; when he analyses the designation from a relative point of view he treats of the significance, the meaning, the content, which we connect with a word in its dependence upon certain characteristics of the change-process. Thus in the second volume of the Kritik he arrives at the result that by the sign “perception” we mean at bottom only the same as by the sign “thing,” and that by “idea” we mean the same as by the sign “thought”; the distinction in each case is only that by “thing” and “thought” we characterise the way in which just an R-value exists for us, while on the other hand by “perception,” “idea,” we characterise the way in which an R-value exists just for us. In the first case the E-value is a “sign” for the object, in the second a “sign” for the relation of that object to the subject of the same essential-co-ordination.

Just as the sound-complex “London” is not what is designated, but is used for what is designated, so also the E-value “perception” or “red,” etc., is not a change-process of system C and not a change-process in the surrounding. Indeed we can never say more than “Every E-value is characterised as that which, at the time of its existence for the individual, attains to being named”.

It is conceivable that organisms of the lowest kind have originally only the primary change-processes, which disappear quickly and completely, without leaving any residual effect. For such beings without any residual effects of change, the environment would be always strange, however often it might be presented to them as stimulus. Each stimulus and each complex of stimuli would be new every time; they would have no sign by which they might be distinguished and remembered. Only when the residual effects of change have been developed and elaborated, and the secondary processes have arisen through extension to adjacent cells and subordinate organs of the central organ, do we get the important circular process, from any point within which the whole complex of changes may be set in motion. The possibility of changes which are centrally