To her offspring
a tigress is tender, but cruel to every
other living thing -- both cruel and tender,
therefore, at once. A mass in movement resists
every force that operates contrariwise to its
own direction, but to forces that pursue the
same direction, or come in at right angles, it is
absolutely inert. It is thus both energetic and
inert; and the same is true (if you vary the
associates properly) of every other piece of
experience. It is only towards certain specific
groups of associates that the physical energies
as we call them, of a content are put forth. In
another group it may be quite inert.
It is possible to imagine a universe of experiences
in which the only alternative between
neighbors would be either physical interaction
or complete inertness. In such a world the
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mental or the physical _status) of any piece of
experience would be unequivocal. When active,
it would figure in the physical, and when
inactive, in the mental group.
But the universe we live in is more chaotic
than this, and there is room in it for the hybrid
or ambiguous group of our affectional experiences,
of our emotions and appreciative perceptions.
In the paragraphs that follow I shall
try to show:
(1) That the popular notion that these experiences
are intuitively given as purely inner
facts is hasty and erroneous; and
(2) That their ambiguity illustrates beautifully
my central thesis that subjectivity and
objectivity are affairs not of what an experience
is aboriginally made of, but of its classification.
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