Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/388

 ASSOCIATION AND THOUGHT. 375 But, we shall be reminded, not only does thought exercise control, but it does so consciously. It has an end and a standard, and this calls for explanation. We may ask first how thought comes at all to be critical or ' normative ' ; next, in what the standard consists ; and in the third place, why it is thus and not otherwise, (a) Since control by the object is found satisfactory, the idea of that control of course interests and moves, whether always as the object of desire I will not ask ; and the character of this control of course comes to be generalised, and so moves in a more and more abstract form, (b) What in the end is this character, can not be discussed here at length. We found it to consist in identity or individuality of content. (c) Why it is thus and not otherwise, is a difficult question. We can see at once that, if the object is either changed for another or taken incompletely, there will be practical failure. And the mind, it will be urged, has simply followed this line of most plea- sure and least pain, and its experience has cohered and is perceived as an axiom. On this I wish to say first that an axiom or a postulate, or a criterion in general, if we regard its validity, falls outside psychology. For that science it is merely a general character which moves, which brings rest when successful and unrest when defeated. We are confined simply to the origin and nature of an axiom as it comes into the course of psychical events. Now, if this standard has been produced merely by what has happened to succeed, it seems strange that its principle should be precisely what operates at the start and in the earliest association. Is that only a coincidence ? Or shall we suppose that the type of our first rudest movement has also somehow resulted from natural selection ? Perhaps so, but I would remark that, unless we will be resolute and make the nature of things result from a struggle and a survival among bare possibilities, then an account of this sort cannot go back for ever ; and psychology, I should have thought, has to make its start from psychical ultimates. We must begin then without anything like mental association, and try to show (I suppose) how its laws have been made by conjunctions of presentations, which gave pleasure and pain (or at any rate succeeded or failed) and somehow led to these laws. I cannot here criticise such a doctrine, and will say only in passing that if it understands itself it will make psychology an appendix to physiology. I am contented with the view that for psychology the law of individuation is an ultimate, and that this law has succeeded, because it answers to external events in a way which to psychology is itself once more an ultimate, and that, thus succeeding, it becomes an end and a standard for thought