150 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
or physiological aspect. This is the keynote of mental evolution 
throughout its whole range. 
I regret here to depart from the conclusion to which Mr. Alexander 
has been led. ‘Take such episodes in our mental life as seeing a rain- 
bow, hearing a musical chord, partaking of woodcock, dipping one’s 
hands into cool water. In Mr. Alexander’s interpretation (as 1 under- 
stand it) percipient consciousness, in each case, differs only in what he 
speaks of as ‘ direction.’ That alone is enjoyed. All further difference 
in one’s cognitive experience on these several occasions is due to the 
difference in that non-mental set of events with which one is then and 
there compresent. Even feeling, as affective, is not itself enjoyed. 
Feelings are objective experiences of the order of organic ‘ sensa.’ They 
are not in mind by way of attribute. We are conscious of pleasure and 
pain but are not differentially conscious in receiving them. Conscious- 
ness is here just compresent with certain phases of life-process. Thus, 
for Mr. Alexander, consciousness, alike in sensory acquaintance, in 
perceptive cognition, and even in feeling pleasure or the reverse, is itself 
undifferentiated (save in ‘ direction’); all the differentiation is in the 
non-mental world (beyond us or within our bodies) which is experienced 
and which transmits its characters to a recipient in which the rather 
featureless quality of consciousness has emerged. No doubt for Mr. 
Alexander the recipient is not merely passive; for there is mental pro- 
cess—not Agency, though he so often uses the word ‘act.’ But this 
mental process just actively takes what is given; and all the difference 
still lies in that which is given and not in the enjoyment of how it is 
taken. 
But it is only when Mr. Alexander is interpreting consciousness at 
the perceptive level that he advocates this doctrine. When he deals 
with values or ‘tertiary qualities,’ such as beauty, his treatment is 
quite different. | Consciousness hitherto featureless gives to certain 
objects of judgment their characteristic features. How, then, does the 
interpretation here run? ‘In our ordinary experience of colour,’ he 
says, ‘ the colour is separate from the mind, and completely independent 
of it. In our experience of the colour’s beauty there is indissoluble 
union with the mind.’ The contention comes to this. Colour resides 
in the thing seen, with which the organism having the quality of con- 
sciousness May or may not be compresent. Whether it is so com- 
present or not makes no difference to the non-mental existence of the 
colour as such. On the other hand, beauty resides, not in the thing 
only and independently, but in ‘ the whole situation,’ which we may 
bracket thus [coloured thing in relation to compresent organism with 
quality of consciousness]. ‘ In that relation the object has a character 
which it would not have except for that relation.’ The doctrine of 
‘internal relations ’ is accepted where beauty is concerned, and rejected 
in respect of colour. In other words, if the beautiful thing be one 
term and the conscious organism the other term, each gets its character 
(qua beautiful but not qua coloured) from its relation to the other. 
[ should say that this holds good for the colour of the object, no less 
than for its beauty. My chief concern, however, is not with what 
Mr. Alexander rejects but with that which he accepts. 
