Chapter I: The Purposive Character of Ideas

With his unerring sense for fundamentals, Mr. Royce begins by telling us that the first thing called for by the problem of the relation of ideas to reality is a discussion of the nature of ideas. Here Mr. Royce says he shall "be guided by certain psychological analyses of the mere contents of our consciousness, which have become prominent in recent discussion."[167]

Your intelligent ideas of things never consist of mere imagery of
the thing, but always involve a consciousness of how you propose
to act toward the thing of which you have ideas.... Complex
scientific ideas viewed as to their conscious significance are, as
Professor Stout has well said, plans of action, ways of
constructing the object of your scientific consciousness.... By
the word idea, then, as we shall use it, when, after having
criticised opposing theory, we come to state in these lectures our
own thesis, I shall mean in the end any state of consciousness,
whether simple or complex, which when present is then and there
viewed as at least a partial expression, or embodiment of a single
conscious purpose.... In brief, an idea in my present definition
may, and in fact always does, if you please, appear to be
representative of a fact existent beyond itself. But the _primary_
character which makes it an idea is _not its representative
character_, is not its vicarious assumption of the responsibility
of standing for a being beyond itself, but is its inner character
as _relatively fulfilling the purpose_, that is as presenting the
partial fulfilment of the purpose which is in the consciousness of
the moment wherein the idea takes place.[168]... Now this purpose,
just in so far as it gets a present conscious embodiment in the
contents, and in the form of the complex state called the idea,
constitutes what I shall hereafter call the internal meaning of
the idea.[169]... But ideas often seem to have a meaning; yes, as
one must add, finite ideas always undertake or appear to have a
meaning that is not exhausted by this conscious internal meaning
presented and relatively fulfilled at the moment when the idea is
there for our finite view. The melody sung, the artists' idea, the
thought of your absent friend, a thought on which you love to
dwell, all these not merely have their obvious internal meaning
as meeting a conscious purpose by their very presence, but also
they at least appear to have that other sort of meaning, that
reference beyond themselves to objects, that cognitive relation to
outer facts, that attempted correspondence with outer facts, which
many accounts of our ideas regard as their primary inexplicable
and ultimate character. I call this second, and for me still
problematic, and derived aspect of the nature of ideas, their
apparently external meaning.[170]

From all this it is quite evident that Mr. Royce accepts and welcomes the results of the work of modern psychology on the nature of the idea. The difficulty will come in making the connection between these accepted results and the Platonic conception of ultimate reality as stated in the following:

To be means simply to express, to embody the complete internal
meaning of _a certain absolute system of ideas_. A system,
moreover, which is genuinely implied in the true internal meaning
or purpose of every finite idea, however fragmentary.[171]

It may be well to note here in passing that, notwithstanding the avowed subordination here of the representative to the reconstructive character of the ideas, the former becomes very important in the chapter on the relation of internal to external meaning, where the problem of truth and error is considered.

In this account of the two meanings of the idea, which I have tried to state as nearly as possible in the author's own words, there appear some conceptions of idea, of purpose, and of their relation to each other, that play an important part in the further treatment and in determining the final outcome. In the description of the internal meaning there appear to be two quite different conceptions of the relation of idea to purpose. One regards the idea as itself constituting the purpose or plan of action; the other describes the idea as "the partial fulfilment" of the purpose. (1) "Complex scientific ideas, viewed as to their conscious significance, are, as Professor Stout has well said, _plans of action_." (2) "You sing to yourself a melody; you are then and there conscious that the melody, as you hear yourself singing it, _partially fulfils_ and embodies a purpose."[172] When we come to the problem of the relation between the internal and external meaning, we shall find that the idea as internal meaning comes into a third relation to purpose, viz., that of _having_ the further purpose to agree or correspond to the external meaning. "Is the correspondence reached between idea and object the precise correspondence that the idea itself intended? If it is, the idea is true.... Thus it is not mere agreement, but intended agreement, that constitutes truth."[173] Thus the idea is (1) the purpose, (2) the partial fulfilment of the purpose, and (3) has a further purpose--to correspond to an object in the "absolute system of ideas."

The first statement of the internal meaning as constituting the plan or purpose is, I take it, the conception of the internal meaning as an ideal construction which gives a working form, a definition to the "indefinite sort of restlessness" and blind feeling of dissatisfaction out of which the need of and demand for thought arises.[174] This accords with the scientific conception of the idea as a working hypothesis. If this interpretation of idea were steadily followed throughout, it is difficult to see how it could fail to lead to a conception of reality quite different from that described as "a certain absolute system of ideas."

The second definition of internal meaning is the one in which it is stated as the "partial expression," "embodiment," and "fulfilment" of a single conscious purpose, and in which subsequently and consequently the idea is identified with "any conscious act," for example, singing. The first part of the statement appears to say that the idea of a melody is in "partial fulfilment" of the idea regarded as the purpose to sing the melody. But, as the first statement of internal meaning implies, how can one have a purpose to sing the melody except in and through the idea? It is precisely the construction of an idea that transforms the vague "indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction into a purpose. The idea is the defining, the sharpening of the blind activity of mere sensation, mere want, into a plan of action.

However, Mr. Royce meets this difficulty at once by the statement that the term "idea" here not only covers the activity involved in forming the idea, _e. g._, the idea of singing, but includes the action of singing, which fulfils this purpose. "In the same sense _any conscious act_ at the moment when you perform it not merely expresses, but is, in my present sense, an idea."[175]

But this sort of an adjustment between the idea as the purpose and as the fulfilment of the purpose raises a new question. What here becomes of the distinction between immediate and mediating experience? Surely there is a pretty discernible difference between experience as a purposive idea and the experience which fulfils this purpose. To call them both "ideas" is at least confusing, and indeed it appears that it is just this confusion that obscures the fundamental difficulty in dealing, later on, with the problem of truth and error. To be sure, the very formation of the idea as the purpose, the "plan of action," is the beginning of the relief from the "indefinite restlessness." On the other hand, it defines and sharpens the dissatisfaction. When this vague unrest takes the form of a purpose to attain food or shelter, or to sing in tune, it is of course the first step toward solution. But this very definition of the dissatisfaction intensifies it. The idea as purpose, then, instead of being the fulfilment, appears to be the plan, the method of fulfilment. The fulfilling experience is the further experience to which the idea points and leads.

To follow a little farther this relation between the purposive and fulfilling aspects of experience, it is of course apparent that the idea as the purpose, the "plan of action," must as a function go over into the fulfilling experience. My purpose to sing the melody must remain, in so far as the action is a conscious one, until the melody is sung. I say "as a function," for the specific content of this purpose is continuously changing. The purpose is certainly not the same in content after half the melody has been sung as it is at the beginning. This means that the purpose is being progressively fulfilled; and as part of the purpose is fulfilled each moment, so a part of the original content of the idea drops out; and when the fulfilling process of this particular purpose is complete, or is suspended--for, in Mr. Royce's view, it never is complete in human experience--that purpose then gives way to some other, perhaps one growing out of it, but still one regarded as another. A purpose realized, fulfilled, cannot persist as a purpose. We may desire to repeat the experience in memory; _i. e._, instead of singing aloud, simply, as Mr. Royce says, "silently recall and listen to its imagined presence." But here we must remember that the memory experience, as such, is not an idea in the logical sense at all. It is an immediate experience that is fulfilling the idea of the song which constitutes the purpose to recall it, just as truly as the singing aloud fulfils the idea of singing aloud. Shouting, whistling, or "listening in memory to the silent notes" may all be equally immediate, fulfilling experiences. Doubtless the idea as purpose involves memory, as Mr. Royce says.[176] But it is a memory used as a purpose, and it is just this use of the memory material as a purpose that makes it a logical idea. In its content the purposive idea is just as immediate and as mechanical as any other part of experience. "Psychology explains the presence and the partial present efficacy of this purpose by the laws of motor processes, of habit, or of what is often called association."[177] Here "idea," however, simply means, as Mr. Royce takes it in his second statement, conscious content of any sort. But this is not the meaning of "idea" in the logical sense. The logical idea is a conscious content used as an organizer, as "a plan of action," to get other contents. If, for example, in the course of writing a paper one wishes to recall an abstract distinction, as the distinction dawns in consciousness, it is not an idea in the logical sense. It is just as truly an immediate fulfilling experience as is a good golf stroke. So in the mathematician's most abstruse processes, which Mr. Royce so admirably portrays, the results for which he watches "as empirically as the astronomer alone with his star" are not ideas in the logical sense; they are immediate, fulfilling experiences.[178] The distinction between the idea as the mediating experience--that is, the logical idea--and the immediate fulfilling experience is therefore not one of content, but of use.

There is a sense, however, in which the idea as a purpose can be taken as the partial fulfilment of another purpose; in the sense that any purpose is the outgrowth of activity involving previous purposes. This becomes evident when we inquire into the "indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction out of which the idea as purpose springs. Dissatisfaction presupposes some activity already going on in attempted fulfilment of some previous purpose. If one is dissatisfied with his singing, or with not singing, it is because one has already purposed to participate in the performance of a company of people which now he finds singing a certain melody, or one has rashly contracted to entertain a strenuous infant who is vociferously demanding his favorite ditty. This is only saying that any given dissatisfaction and the purpose to which it gives rise grow out of activity involving previous purposing. But this does not do away with the distinction between the idea as a purpose and the immediate fulfilling experience.

If the discussion appears at this point to be growing somewhat captious, let us pass to a consideration of the relation between internal and external meanings, where the problem of truth and error appears, and where the vital import of these distinctions becomes more obvious.