RECORDS OF MEETINGS 431 



run as follows : obligation — approval, the comic — amusement, the beauti- 

 ful — esthetic pleasure, value — desire, the strange — surprise, the sub- 

 lime — awe, probability — expectation, "up and down" — certain feelings of 

 effort and relaxation, etc. In each of these cases the one term has an ob- 

 jective and absolute character which is missed in the other, the other 

 making a psychological and personal reference which is absent from the 

 first; the meaning of the first can not be translated, without change, into 

 the second. This iact is, however, fully explicable, and must needs be so 

 because the person subject to the feelings does not in his primary experi- 

 ence psychologize upon himself or class what he feels as his own feeling. 



Why in all these cases does the objective come by reflective people to be 

 subjectified ? And in what does subjectifying consist ? The objective in 

 such cases is subjectified simply because it is found to vary of necessity 

 with the life and organism of the person experiencing it ; and in this very 

 fact and in nothing else consists its subjectivity. 



Dr. Woodbridge said in abstract : The usual question suggested by 

 the mention of secondary qualities is that of their existential status, 

 namely, in what context may they be said to possess reality or to exist? 

 The discussion of this question does not appear to have been profitable in 

 the histor}' of thought. It has moreover tended to divert attention from 

 more important considerations. 



Since secondary qualities do exist in the context of experience, one may 

 ask what function they there serve. In answer to this question it may be 

 pointed out that they serve as the means of identifying different efficien- 

 cies. Their importance, for instance, in chemical analysis and in the use 

 of the spectrum is evident. It is to be noted that while they are the in- 

 dices of efficiency, so to speak, no efficiency is assigned to them directly. 

 Their methodological value appears to be thus their value as signs. Fur- 

 thermore, the existence of secondary qualities appears to be bound up with 

 the specific differentiation of the nervous system in the direction of sense 

 organs. Indeed, it appears impossible to assign any other function to the 

 development of sense organs and a coordinating nervous system than that 

 of securing reaction of the organisms to its environment by means of a 

 specialization in view of the operation of secondary qualities. Bringing 

 together, then, the considerations based upon the methodological value of 

 secondary qualities and those based upon the significance of secondary 

 qualities in the development of the sense organs and the nervous system, 

 it would appear that reaction to secondary qualities as stimuli would 

 afford both a criterion for the existence of consciousness and a definition 

 of consciousness itself. In the life of an organism such reactions would 

 serve as indications of the general connectedness of its surroundings. 



