Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/390

Rh the involuntary perception of difference, and then dealing with analysis.

As I have remarked above, discrimination is in one sense inexplicable. We are unable to make the transition from the fused to the relational condition of mind, in such a way as either to see how this particular result did come, or to feel simply that it must be so and that no further explanation is required. But the result is explicable in this sense that we can retrace the collision which goes before it, and see how it contains the warring elements in solution. There are two thoughtless extremes against which we must guard. In the first, sensations are different, and that is distinction. In the second, distinction supervenes, and that somehow makes difference. Each has one side of the truth that (explicit) difference implies distinction, and distinction rests on (undiscriminated) differences. The first error forgets that my sensations may be different and I not know it: while the second does not reflect that the very best faculty wants some machinery; and that, if without due cause it wildly throws out relations, then it explodes at haphazard and its missiles stick by pure chance.

If we had discrete presentations in series or together, that would not give even the faintest beginning of distinction. If there is to be a change, it, I hope, begins to be a truism that something must change, and, if so, therefore must endure. If we are to feel change, then in feeling some element must be continuous. It is of no use to bring in the Ego, for the mind in general can do nothing in particular or at all. If the identity is to work it must be determinate and special; but this offers no difficulty. Our presented whole from X(abc) becomes X(abd), and gives identity with diversity. How will this go on to work? For mere shock and collision, we must remember, may shatter wildly the contents of our mind and cause pain and unrest; but to have collision in one's mind, and to feel it as such, are hardly the same. Mere invaders that seized on us and dropped us in turn, that fought furiously in our precincts and well-nigh pulled us asunder, would be nothing to the purpose. We feel the struggle that we make, and by we I mean simply our presentations. The collision is made when, with X(abc)–X(abd), the persisting X(ab) has two differences, c and d, either of which it can restore by Contiguity against the