Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/395

 III.—KNOWLEDGE AS IDEALISATION. By Professor JOHN DEWEY.

THAT the word 'idea,' as commonly used, is about as ambiguous a term as could well be invented, is an old story. I need here to call attention only to two connotations. It implies existence, and it implies meaning or the content of the psychical existence. When we speak of the idea of virtue, we may mean either the ' idea conveyed ' by the term, its significance, or we may mean the particular psychical existence, which occurs now and here in experience, and stands for the meaning. But this double connotation is not confined to abstract terms. It holds equally of the most definite perception, — say, mine of my pen as I write. There is the idea 'in my mind,' an existence coming after many ideas, and before many others ; a psychical existence which is a unique, unshareable, irrecoverable experience. What constitutes it we need not here inquire, though our psychological research goes to show that it is a clustering of sensations, visual, muscular and tactile, due to the immediate stimulation of my nervous system. Similar stimuli may occur again doubtless, but the present existence endures only while the given stimulus is actually there. How stands it with the other connotation of the term? It is evident that here we are dealing with meaning or significance — all that would be included in the definition, say, of pen, plus the fact that it is now present, which is, after all, part of the meaning, and not of the existence. To state the whole matter simply, every psychical state or 'idea,' in Locke's sense, is at once sensation and interpretation of that sensation or meaning conveyed. It is sign and signification. We do not go here into the theoretical justification of the latter element. We do not ask whether there is any pen really there, or whether, if there is, our idea of it corresponds to reality. We merely state the fact that in every psychical experience there is the psychical existence, and there is what this existence stands for to the mind. It is an undoubted fact that the meaning seems to be objective, permanent and universal; that the idea of existence, in other words, seems to us to report a reality which is there, aside from our particular mental state, one which is equally there for my intelligence at all times under the same conditions