Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/301

 CAN A MAX SIX AGAINST KNOWLEDGE? 289 through attention the idea becomes clearer, and the images and feelings involved in that idea become also stronger ; so that to resist such an isolated and heightened prompting is now impossible. Hence, if our observer were to say, ' When I realise with vividness the immorahty of my act, I cannot, while I do so, go on to commit it,' I think that his statement would be quite correct. It would be in accordance both with sound psychology and with the evidence of fact. But such a modified statement would fail to carry the required conclusion. It would not show that, when my conscience is aroused, I am unable then to oppose it and defeat it. For, in the first place, when we have before us the idea of a bad act, our attention need not be concentrated upon this one element of our whole state of mind. On the contrary, we may try to observe indifferently all the discordant factors of our complex condition ; and, if we do this, our idea of the immorality of the act will not gain any relative increase of strength. And again, and in the second place, there is a very great difference between ideas. Some are highly st/mMic, and in this case their effect on the imagination and feelings is comparatively weak. I will try to explain this second point. Suppose, for example, I have thought of something pleasant, and then am asked to think of something twice as pleasant. I am able to perform this in more ways than one. I may retain the pleasant image which I already have, and which has furnished me with my idea of the represented pleasure ; I may increase the pleasantness of that pleasant image, and may use this increase as a sign of something that is twice as pleasant. In this case we might roughly and inaccurately say that what represents twice the pleasure is itself actually felt to be doubly pleasant. But I may take another course : I need not try to double my pleasant image, but may qualify it from outside by another and a foreign image of quantity. That is, I may call up an image of something not pleasant, which is increased twofold, and I may use this as a sign to stand for pleasant, I may so indirectly acquire the idea of what is doubly pleasant. In this case I do not say that the effect on the feelings and on the imagination will vanish wholly, but I am sure we shall agree that it will be much diminished. The point is so important that I perhaps may be allowed another illustration. I have the image of a horse before my mind, and I want to think of a hundred horses. Now, to do this, I need not try to have before me a hundred horse-images, but may apply the idea of a hundred from elsewhere. No doubt, this idea of a hundred times must rest upon some present image, but there is no sort of reason why it should rest on the obscure image of a hundred horses. In the same way, if I desire to think of a horse one hundred tunes as large as the fii*st, I need not struggle to magnify my present horse-image. I may employ some
 * and adding this from the outside to my idea of something