Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/76

 PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, (ill.) 63 fortiori that the like holds of simpler cases ; we have to ask what are the characteristics of an idea that " predominates in consciousness" or " engrosses the mind". A glance at Mr. Bradley 's article, or at the pages of J. S. Mill which he cites, will show that the dominating idea, to use Mill's terms, is (1) " highly pleasurable or painful," and (2) " tends, more or less strongly, to exclude from consciousness all other sensations less pleasurable or painful than itself and to prevent the rising up of any ideas but those which itself recalls by its associations ". Perhaps for brevity and dis- tinctness' sake we may call the first its apolaustic and the second its dynamic character. The two are doubtless most intimately connected ; the question is Can they be resolved into one ? or, rather, Can the first be reduced to the second ? Referring again to our authors, we shall find that, though these two characteristics are frequently confounded, there is always in the first a more or less explicit recognition of the distinction of subject and object. The dominating presen- tation affects other presentations by its intensity, its alliances, and so forth ; it affects the subject by the pleasure or pain it affords. When, e.g., Mr. Bradley speaks of attention as predominance in consciousness, he has the first effect in view ; when he speaks of attention as consisting in interest, he has the second ; for " what interests," he tells us, " does so by means of pleasure and pain ". There is no meaning in saying that one presentation pleases or pains another presentation, or that the idea of winning the prize interests the idea of running the race. It is however perfectly intelligible to say, as J. S.- Mill does, that " becoming a nearly exclusive object of consciousness, it (viz., a pleasurable or painful idea)is both felt with greater intensity and acquires greater power of calling up by asso- ciation other ideas. There is an increase both in the mul- titude, the intensity and the distinctness of the ideas it suggests, as is always the case where the suggesting sensation or idea is increased in intensity." But now how does the pleasurable or painful idea come by this intensity, if we, as for simplicity's sake we may, take its intensity as its dynamic index ? This, it must be frankly owned, looks a difficult question. It is matter of common observation that the apolaustic quality of a presentation is largely determined by its intensity ; to say, then, that its intensity is due to its apolaustic quality seems like arguing in a circle, or, if not that, is tantamount to identifying the two, as in fact our authors come very near to doing. Before look- ing for a way out of this difficulty it may be well to remark that there is one obvious consideration that forbids their