Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/387

 374 F. H. BRADLEY : pendent of my movement, the changes take place, and are no change for me. Hence these movements do not alter the fact but ourselves. It is the same with the invisible object of thought. That develops on my action, but I do not con- trol it, as baffled expectation at once makes manifest. And so here, as before, there are actions about the thing which change only me. As the light shows us colours or darkness conceals them, while the colours in themselves remain what they are, so thought gives us, like true light, the nature of reality, or like twilight and mist presents us with appearance, or like darkness with ignorance. But the object is what it is, and, so far only as in action we suffer its control, does our thought remain true. As to the nature of the control our early reflection has nothing to say. We have seen how thought is objective, but we have not yet reached the goal which, at the beginning, we set up. The object was not that which excluded my self, for we saw that my self is also an object, and we have to find how it becomes one. It is easy to see the way in which my body, first in some aspects and at some times and then altogether, can be distinguished from my self. And it is an object which obviously we are interested in knowing. So, too, my in- ternal states, and my self, as the thing which possesses these qualities, come naturally to be thought of. The one pro- cess, that combines and sunders through individuation amid discrepancies, goes on working to the end. The feeling- core with its early and its acquired constituents is a hard thing to reach, but the interest is unceasing. If this and that cannot really be the thing itself which feels, what in the end can it be ? Thought has an object and subject, but these are not fixed compartments or parts in the self. Any process, as we saw, which preserves identity of ideal content is thought and is objective. But why an object, we may insist, since this means not subjective ? It is an object, we reply, because it is distinct from and regulates other psychical movements, and these by contrast are subjective. Even in the highest self-consciousness where my self is the object, the distinction persists. It is not possible to have a state where, beyond the content of the object, there are not psychical elements which exist and interfere and need constant control. Pure self-consciousness as a state where perceived and perceiver are psychologically at one, and where existence no longer jars and struggles with content, is no actual condition. There is always something to control, and in this sense thought remains for ever objective.