Page:Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect.pdf/70

58 Our relationships to these bodies are precisely our reactions to them. The projection of our sensations is nothing else than the illustration of the world in partial accordance with the systematic scheme, in space and in time, to which these reactions conform.

The bonds of causal efficacy arise from without us. They disclose the character of the world from which we issue, an inescapable condition round which we shape ourselves. The bonds of presentational immediacy arise from within us, and are subject to intensifications and inhibitions and diversions according as we accept their challenge or reject it. The sense-data are not properly to be termed ‘mere impressions’—except so far as any technical term will do. They also represent the conditions arising out of the active perceptive functioning as conditioned by our own natures. But our natures must conform to the causal efficacy. Thus the causal efficacy from the past is at least one factor giving our presentational immediacy in the present. The how of our present experience must conform to the what of the past in us.

Our experience arises out of the past: it enriches with emotion and purpose its presentation of the contemporary world: and it bequeaths its