Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/39

20 word “idea” itself, there is a well-known tendency in a good deal of philosophy, both ancient and modern, either to define an idea, as an Image, destined to picture facts external to the idea, or else, in some other way, to lay stress upon the externally cognitive or “representative” value of an idea as its immediately obvious and its most essential aspect. From this point of view, men have conceived that the power of ideas to know a Reality external to themselves, was indeed either something too obvious to excite inquiry, or else an ultimate and inexplicable power. “Ideas exist,” says this view, “and they exist as knowing facts external to themselves. And this is their fundamental character.” Now I myself shall, in these lectures, regard this power of ideas to cognize facts external to themselves not as a primal fact of existence but as an aspect of ideas which decidedly needs reflective consideration, and a very critical restatement. Hence I cannot here begin by saying: “Ideas are states of mind that image facts external to themselves.” That would be useful enough as a definition of ideas in a Psychology of Cognition. For such a Psychology would presuppose what we are here critically to consider, namely, the very possibility of a cognition of Being. But, for the purpose of our present theory, the definition of the term “idea” must be made in such wise as not formally to presuppose the power of ideas to have cognitive relations to outer objects.

Moreover, in attempting a definition of the general term “idea,” while I shall not be attempting a psychology of cognition, I shall myself be guided by certain psy-