THE DEVELOPING CONCEPT AND ITS FUNCTIONS 173 



remain inhibited, while others rise to clear consciousness; the 

 selections being determined on the one hand by habit, and on the 

 other hand by the total situation and the nature of the existing 

 interest. 



But whatever the psychological character of the representative 

 idea may be, the essential point upon which we must insist is the 

 distinction between the idea, i. e., the particular conscious process, 

 and the concept, or the system of possible processes which the 

 idea represents. The former may vary widely from situation to 

 situation, while the concept of the object is unchanged. And 

 the variation of the idea may affect not simply the association 

 nucleus, but, more importantly, the particular associations that 

 spring up. 



EXCURSUS UPON J. S. MILL'S THEORY OF OBJECTIVITY 



The kinship which certain leaders of the pragmatist movement 

 have claimed with the school of English empiricism has nowhere 

 been so expressly avowed as in their relation to the last great 

 name of the school John Stuart Mill. It is not difficult to 

 understand why this should be the case. It was Mill who carried 

 to the farthest extent the psychological analysis of fundamental 

 philosophical concepts begun so brilliantly by Berkeley. And in 

 Mill's hands the subjective idealism of his predecessors under- 

 went a remarkable transformation, which is very generally sup- 

 posed to have issued in something more nearly approaching 

 realism than a consistent idealism. These supposed realistic 

 tendencies of Mill might the more readily be regarded as akin to 

 pragmatism, in that it is precisely the idealistic side of English 

 empiricism that pragmatists are so concerned to disclaim, be- 

 lieving, as they unanimously do, that a new realism is the logical 

 outcome of their pragmatism. And yet the remarkable fact is 

 that Mill's transformation of subjective idealism has received as 

 scant attention from them as it has from thinkers generally and, 

 as we believe, as great misappreciation. As we shall try to show, 

 it is precisely Mill's transformation of the idealism of Berkeley 



