Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/405

 392 j. DEWEY : needing interpretation, there has been added more multiple chaotic material, equally in need of interpretation. Multi- plication of sensations is not interpretation of sensations previously existent. The identification is of the meaning of the present sensa- tion with some meaning previously experienced, but which, although previously experienced, still exists because it is meaning, and not occurrence. This identification gives the present sensation all the meaning possessed by those ex- periences with which it is identified. It renders it symbolic of whatever these other experiences signified. If I attribute any meaning to the idea gold, all that meaning is transferred into the present sensation as soon as this sensation is seen to have the same symbolism. And it is seen to have the same symbolism just because the mind brings this meaning to bear upon the given sensation. There is undoubtedly a mechanism, conveniently termed the association of ideas, which insures that the mind brings a certain set, as it were, of its interpreting activities to bear rather than another, but the final result of meaning is wholly dependent upon the group of ideal significances which is brought to bear. The interpreting activity may bring itself to bear in such a way that it shall regard the sensations as iron pyrites or as the talisman of life ; but upon this way depends the meaning of the experience. In short, the sole way of accounting for the fact that we have significant experience, or that sensa- tions, in addition to being psychical occurrences, are also psychical meanings, is that the mind conserves permanently out of every experience the meaning of that experience, and, when it sees fit, reads this conserved meaning into a given sensation, thereby completing the transfer of significance. The experience, as an existence at a given time, has for ever vanished. Its meaning, as an ideal quality, remains as long as the mind does. Indeed, its remaining is the remaining of the mind; the conservation of the ideal quality of experience is what makes the mind a permanence. If it be asked, then, how psychical experience can begin, the answer is, indifferently, either that it does not begin, or that it begins as the beginning of the development the manifestation of internal content of intelligence. It does not begin in the sense that meaning arises out of that which has no meaning. It does not begin in the sense that sen- sations as mere occurrences ever group themselves so that they have in addition meaning. For meaning is mediate, being through relation ; it is ideal, being what is symbolised to intelligence. If intelligence were not present with a