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
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