power of those ideas a reliable sanction for their obligations to each other. With this thesis, ably presented and fortified though it be, we are not here concerned. The point I wish to make is that this conception of “Sittlichkeit” which Lord Haldane in his remarkable address, destined I believe to become historic, so ably develops and applies to the solution of a world-problem is in psychological terms identical with that of complexes of ideas and affects organized in the unconscious. Footnote 154: Professor G. S. Fullerton, in the course of an essay, “Is the Mind in the Body?” interestingly refers to this fact and points out that common sense directs the common man in repudiating ancient doctrines, and that it is “part of his share in the heritage of the race.” “The common sense which guides men is the resultant attitude due to many influences, some of them dating very far back indeed.” _The Popular Science Monthly_, May, 1907. LECTURE X THE MEANING OF IDEAS AS DETERMINED BY SETTINGS In the preceding lecture when describing the organization of emotional complexes, I mentioned, somewhat incidentally, that their fuller meaning was to be found in antecedent experiences of life; and that these experiences conserved in the unconscious formed a setting that gave the point of view and attitude of mind. It was pointed out also that if we wish to know the reason why a given experience, like that of Voltaire with Frederick, awakens a strong emotional reaction, and why the memory of this experience continues persistently organized with the emotion or gives rise to the emotional reaction whenever stimulated, we must look to this setting of antecedent experiences which gives the ideas of the complexes meaning. We need now to inquire to what extent the unconscious complex in which the setting has roots may take part in the process which gives meaning to an idea. It is a problem in _psychogenesis_ and psychological mechanisms. As an imperatively recurring emotional complex is an obsession the full meaning of any given obsession is involved in the psychological problem of “Idea and Meaning.” Let us, then, take up for discussion this latter problem as preliminary to the study of that important psychosis—obsessing ideas and emotions. A perception, or, what is in principle the same thing, an idea of an object, although apparently a simple thing, is really, as a rule, a complex affair. Without attempting to enter deeply into the psychology of perception (and ideas), and particularly into the conventional conception of perception as usually expounded in the text-books—a conception which to my mind is inadequate and incomplete[155]—it is sufficient for our immediate purposes to point out in a general rough way the following facts concerning perception.