Whal is Potentiality? 293 



equally applicable. When we ask how a thuig originated, 

 we transport ourselves back to a point in its career at which 

 the ' prospective ' categories got a filling not at that stage 

 already expressed in the content of history. The overplus 

 of behaviour is said to have its origin then, even though 

 afterward the outcome be statable in the categories of ret- 

 rospect which have thai been widened by this event. For 

 example, volition originates in the child at the point of its 

 life at which certain conscious experiences issue out of old 

 content — experiences which were not previously present, 

 to the child, whatever other complications of content were. 

 But once arisen, the experience can be construed as a con- 

 tinuation of the series of events which make up mental 

 history. To the positivist and to the intuitionist a sen- 

 sational account of the genesis of volition, and to the intel- 

 lectual idealist an ideological account of it, rule volition out 

 of reality just by the fallacy of thinking exclusively in retro- 

 spect. But in truth we should say : granted either account 

 of its origin, it leaves philosophy still to construe it ; for if 

 we estimate volition from facts true before volition arose, 

 the sources do not fully describe it ; and if we wait to view 

 it after it arises, then the full statement of career must in- 

 clude the widened aspects of behaviour which the facts of 

 volition afford. 1 



§ II. What is Potentiality'^ 



It is interesting also to note, as another case of applica- 

 tion of this general distinction between the mental habits 

 represented respectively by the terms 'prospective' and 



1 In the Psychological Reviezv for September, 1895 (reprinted in Fragments 

 in Philosophy and Science, IV.), I have criticised the idealists' view that the 

 Absolute can be exhausted by our thought, i.e., can be adequately expressed m 

 terms of the organizations of content already effected. 



