Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/467

448 error, in finite consciousness, we have already found to be the indetermination of our purposes at any stage in their realization. Now the presupposition of our whole view is that the final expression of purpose is not merely complete as to its contents, but absolutely determinate as to what meaning these contents fulfil. Now the finite process, whereby our own consciousness passes from an indeterminate to a relatively determinate state of purpose, of intention, of seeking for contents, is known to us in its psychological manifestations as a process of Selective Attention, growing more and more definite as it proceeds. Precisely in so far as we are conscious of a definite meaning at any instant, we are conscious of contents selected, as it were, from the background of our own finite consciousness, selected as the contents which are such that no other contents would definitely tend to express our will. Now it is the law of conscious growth in ourselves, that greater determination of purpose, and greater wealth of presented contents, are the correlative aspects of any gradual fulfilment of meaning. The more we know and the more richly we find our will fulfilled, the more exclusive and determinate becomes our purpose. The vague purpose is so far not at the instant clear as to whether this or that would better fulfil its meaning. The precise purpose selects this instead of that. Precise decision is exclusive as well as inclusive. And when I speak of this fact, I refer once more directly to our consciousness as my warrant. I presuppose nothing as to the causal basis, or as to the psychological or physical origin, of attention. I say that one who rationally finds a mean-