Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/75

56 even to be puzzled by its meaningless presence. Now, in so far, we have what is called merely immediate experience, that is, experience just present, apart from definition, articulation, and in general from any insight into its relationships. But that is not all. In addition, we all, when awake and thoughtful, find present what one might call more or less richly idealized experience, experience that, in addition to its mere presence, possesses Meaning. On this side of our lives we are aware of the series of mental processes called Ideas. These ideas have the character of presenting, in a more or less incomplete but never perfect way, what, at the last time, we called the fulfilment of purpose, the embodied inner meaning present to us at any instant. In so far as these ideas fill our moments, the life within is thus lighted up with meaning. But now, in any one of these our flying present moments, such meaning is never fully possessed. Whatever our business or our doctrine, we all endlessly war against the essential narrowness of our conscious field. We live looking for the whole of our meaning. And this looking constitutes the process called thinking.

In general, this process is involved in a curious conflict with these brute facts which constitute the mere immediacy aforesaid. These facts themselves, in so far as they remain merely immediate, are an obstacle to the idealizing process. We say that they confuse or puzzle us. On the other hand, these very facts, on occasion, may arise in consciousness only to fuse at once or very quickly with our ideas. This is, for instance, the case whenever we accomplish a voluntary act, and at the same time approvingly perceive, through our senses, the outer