to exhaust the full deliverance of our “this,” and the residue, left there by our mere failure, is then assumed blindly to stand out as an irreducible aspect. For, if we have confined our “this” to but one portion of the felt totality, we have omitted from our analysis, perhaps, the positive aspect of its special unity. But our analysis, if so, is evidently incomplete and misleading. And then, perhaps again, qualifying our limited “this” by exclusive relations, we do not see that in these we have added a factor to its original content. And what we have added, and have also overlooked, is then charged to the native repellence of the “this.” But if again, on the other hand, our “this” is not taken as limited, if it is to be the entire complex of one present, viewed without relation even to its own future and past—other errors await us. For the detail here is so great that complete exhaustion is hardly possible. And so, setting down as performed that which is in fact impracticable, we once more stumble against a residue which is due wholly to our weakness. And we are helped, perhaps, further into mistake by another source of fallacy. We may confuse the feeling which we study with the feeling which we are. Attempting, so far as we can, to make an object of some (past) psychical whole, we may unawares seek there every feature which we now are and feel. And we may attribute our ill success to the positive obstinacy of the resisting object.[1]
The total subject of all predicates, which we feel in the background, can be exhausted, we may say in general, by no predicate or predicates. For the
- ↑ Success here is impossible because, apart from the difficulty of analysis and exhaustion, our present observing attitude forms a new and incompatible feature. It is an element in our state now, which (ex hyp.) was absent from our state then. In this connection I may remark that to observe a feeling is, to some extent, always to alter it. For the purpose in hand that alteration may not be material, but it will in all cases be there. I have touched on this subject in Principles of Logic, p. 65, note.
