Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/346

Rh the new as familiar as possible, even when this new is inconceivably strange. It takes us some time to realize, as we say, a great change of any sort. Recognition, however, is yet further modified by the interest with which we at any moment attend to things. But when we speak of interest, we are led to the third kind of active modification by which our minds determine for us what we know.

At every moment we are not merely receiving, attending, and recognizing, but we are constructing. Out of what from moment to moment comes to us, we are building up our ideas of past and future, and of the world of reality. Mere dead impressions are given. We turn them by our own act into symbols of a real universe. We thus constantly react upon what is given, and not only modify it, but even give it whatever significance it comes to possess. Now this reaction takes a multitude of forms, and cannot be fully discussed without far more than our present space. But we can name one or two prominent modes of reaction of mind upon sense-data in this province of mental life.

1. Definite memory is possible only through present active construction from the data of feeling. Nothing can come to us certifying for itself that it formed a part of our previous experience. When we know a thing as past, we actively project our idea of it into a conceived past time. Without this active interference of our own minds, everything would be but a present, and there would be no time for us, only fleeting life from moment to moment.

2. Definite belief in external reality is possible