Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/336

that the pen in my hand, or the sun in the heavens, or the sail on the horizon, may be genuine objects of ideas; and why do these instances seem so typical of the whole relation of idea and object? I answer, because, in case of these objects, a very typical feature of the relation of idea and object is indeed manifest enough. That an idea has an object depends at least in part upon this, that the idea selects its object. And selection is manifested in consciousness by what is usually called attention, while attention to objects of sense is something very obvious and easy to estimate. Into the intricacies of the psychological theory of attention, we have not here to go. Enough, one who attends, whatever the causal explanation of his process, is, as to the nature and trend of his meaning, selective. And the ideas of an attentive consciousness are the embodiments of such selection. Whatever type or correspondence is involved in the purpose of a given idea, it is then not enough, in case you wish to confirm or to refute the idea, that you should point out how the desired correspondence is to be found, or fails to be found, anywhere that you please or anywhere at random in the world. For the idea must be confirmed or refuted by comparison with the object that the idea itself means, selects, views with attentive expectation, determines as its own object. And while this selection is not merely a subjective matter, left to the mere caprice of the idea itself, certain it is, that in order to find out what the truth of a man’s ideas is, you must take account not merely of the sort of correspondence that he intends to attain in the presence of his object, but of the selection that he himself has made of the object by which he wishes his idea to be