The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human ProgressSantayana, George
Philosophy
The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress
Santayana, George
Philosophy
projected against the background of consciousness.
The immediate continuum may be traversed and mapped by two different
methods. The prior one, because it is so very primitive and rudimentary,
and so much a condition of all mental discourse, is usually ignored in
psychology. The secondary method, by which external things are
discovered, has received more attention. The latter consists in the fact
that when several disparate sensations, having become recognisable in
their repetitions, are observed to come and go together, or in fixed
relation to some voluntary operation on the observer’s part, they may be
associated by contiguity and merged in one portion of perceived space.
Those having, like sensations of touch and sight, an essentially spatial
character, may easily be superposed; the surface I see and that I touch
may be identified by being presented together and being found to undergo
simultaneous variations and to maintain common relations to other
perceptions. Thus I may come to attribute to a single object, the term
of an intellectual synthesis and ideal intention, my experiences through
all the senses within a certain field of association, defined by its
practical relations. That ideal object is thereby endowed with as many
qualities and powers as I had associable sensations of which to make it
up. This object is a concretion of my perceptions in space, so that the
redness, hardness, sweetness, and roundness of the apple are all fused
together in my practical regard and given one local habitation and one
name.
[Sidenote: Universals are concretions in discourse.]
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