THE DEVELOPING CONCEPT AND ITS FUNCTIONS 165 



as to characterize it as prey or enemy. The essential point to 

 be noted is that, as new ideas arise by differentiation from old 

 ones, they preserve this species of relation to each other; and 

 further that the maintenance of this relation may often be es- 

 sential to their serviceableness in their natural function of the 

 guidance of conduct. 



It is these quasi-logical relations to which we have attached 

 the term content. Too much should not be read into it. The 

 type of learning-process with which we are dealing is antecedent 

 to the rise of thought proper. Such ideation as is present is 

 non-conceptual, there being as yet no appearance of the distinc- 

 tion between individual and universal, or even the perception of 

 things as permanent objects to say nothing of abstract qualities 

 and relations. And yet it must not be forgotten that the type 

 of experience which does exist is the matrix from which universal 

 and individual develop, and that w r e should expect to find in it 

 the mingled characteristics of both. 



It is clear that in their origin import and content are insepara- 

 bly connected. It is the necessity for a differentiation of the 

 response that gives rise to the differentiation of the stimulus. 

 The former cannot occur without the latter, and the latter would 

 not occur without the former. Thus the peculiar import which 

 the consciousness of a stimulus possesses whether analyzable 

 into k'naesthetic and organic sensations or into memory-images 

 is intimately connected with the attentive discrimination of 

 the stimulus in situations where its identity is doubtful. 



One of the chief weaknesses of pragmatism has undoubtedly 

 been the loose fashion in which it has treated, under the general 

 name of 'idea/ all forms of cognitive experience from the pre- 

 logical sense-images of animals and early childhood to the ab- 

 stract conceptions of science. What pragmatist writers have 

 mostly been concerned to point out, is the reference of all ideas 

 to conduct. Since this was their distinctively new doctrine, the 

 emphasis upon it has undoubtedly been proper enough in the 



