That,
however, is enough to save them from being
classed as absolutely non-objective.
The attempt, if any one should make it, to
sort experience into two absolutely discrete
groups, with nothing but inertness in one of
them and nothing but activities in the other,
would thus receive one check. It would receive
another as soon as we examined the more
distinctively mental group; for though in that
group it be true that things do not act on one
another by their physical properties do not
dent each other or set fire to each other, they
yet act on each other in the most energetic
way by those very characters which are so
inert extracorporeally. It is by the interest
and importance that experiences have for us,
by the emotions they excite, and the purposes
they subserve, by their affective values, in
short, that their consecution in our several
conscious streams, as 'thoughts' of ours, is
mainly ruled. Desire introduces them; interest
152
holds them; fitness fixes their order and connection.
I need only refer for this aspect of
our mental life, to Wundt's article 'Ueber
psychische Causalitat,' which begins Volume
X. of his _Philosophische_Studien_.(1)
It thus appears that the ambiguous or amphibious
_status_ which we find our epithets of
value occupying is the most natural thing in
the world.
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