What, then, in this action already going on is responsible for this
restlessness? First let us note that "indefinite restlessness" and
"dissatisfaction" are terms descriptive of what Mr. James calls "the
first thing in the way of consciousness." This assumes consciousness as
a factor in activity. So that our question now becomes: What is the
significance of this factor of restless, dissatisfied consciousness in
activity? Now, there appears no way of getting at the part which
consciousness plays different from that of discovering the function of
anything else. And this way is simply that of observing, as best we may,
the conditions under which consciousness operates, and what it does.
Here the biologist and psychologist with one voice inform us that this
indefinite restlessness which marks the point of the operation of
consciousness arises where, in a co-ordinated system of activities,
there develop out of the continuation of the activity itself new
conditions calling for a readjustment and reconstruction of the
activity, if it is to go on. Consciousness then appears to be the
function which makes possible the reorganization of the results of a
process back into the process itself, thus constituting and preserving
the continuity of activity. So interpreted, consciousness appears to be
an essential element in the conception of a self-sustaining activity.
This "indefinite restlessness," in which consciousness begins, marks,
then, the operation of the function of reconstruction without which
activity would utterly break down.
Precisely because, then, the idea "as a plan" is projected and
constructed in response to this restlessness must its fulfilment be
relevant to it. It is when the idea as a purpose, a plan, born out of
this matrix of restlessness, begins to aspire to the absolute system,
and attempts to ignore or repudiate its lowly antecedents, that the
difficulties concerning fulfilment begin. They are the difficulties that
beset every ambition which aspires to things foreign to its inherited
powers and equipment.
A detailed account at this point of the construction and fulfilment of
the idea as "a plan of action" would contain a consecutive
reinterpretation of Mr. Royce's principal rubrics. Such an account the
limits of this paper forbid. We shall have to be content with pointing
out in a general way a few instances by way of illustration.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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