MEANING (from mean, AS. ?mown, 011G. mcinan. (wer. mcinen, to think; connected with OChureh Slay. miniti, Skt. man, to think). The mental processes that constitute the unanalyzed eonsciousnesses of ordinary, everyday experience are always surcharged with meaning or signifi cance. :Mind, as it is given, is mind in function; mental stuff that stands for, represents, sym bolizes, refers to, objects and events in the out side world. The value and validity of such objective reference form a question for epistemol ogy. (See KNOWLEDGE, TIIEORY OF.) But the psychologist, after he has analyzed consciousness into its simplest structural elements (see ELE MENTS, C'oNscious), and has traced the forma tion of the more complex processes from connec tions of the elements (see ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS; FUSION ) —after, that is to say. he has analyzed and reconstructed mind without regard to mind's significance and meaning—is met by the ques tion: What is. in psychological terms. the vehicle of meaning? How did meaning get into mental processes? What are the processes, or what the aspects of process, that 'carry' the meaning of a given psychical complex? As regards what we may term the 'origin' of meaning, only two views seem to be possible. Alind may, at its first appearance in the world, have been meaningless; and meaning may have been 'worked into' it, in the course of natural evolution. This view, however, presents extreme difficulties. It is not hard to conceive that the meaningful or significant aspect of mental proe ess should have been refined and differentiated under the operation of natural selection; but it is impossible to form any definite idea of the way in which an organism should lay hold of meaningless material, and press it into service as meaningful. We have, in other words, a recur rence of the difficulty which characterizes hetero genetic will theories (see WILL) : we can no more derive meaning from the unmeaning than we can derive voluntary action from the physiological reflex. The alternative view is thus forced upon us, that meaning did not 'get into' mind, for the simple reason that it was always there. Mind is 'struck out' in the interaction between organism and natural environment: and, arising as it did, could do nothing else than mean. A mind that should not mean is a contradiction in terms: we may abstract from meaning, in our laboratory dissections of consciousness, as we abstract front life in the anatomical laboratory; hut a mean ingless mind is not a mind. as a dead organism is not an organism. See NOETIC CONSCIOUSNESS.
When, therefore, we come to our other ques tion, regarding the processes or aspects of proc ess that form the vehicle of meaning, we find an answer ready to our hand. Mental process is intrinsically meaningful; any process can carry nieaning. And it may be remarked, by the way, that this fact largely accounts fur the short cuts in mental function, the substitutions of proc ess for process within a functional formation (like that of space perception, e.g.), that make mental analysis so difficult, and render a lapse into the 'psychologist's fallacy' a matter cif such fatal ease. (See INTROSPECTION.) I 41 the other hand, as mind advances in complexity, it be comes necessary that arrangements be made (if we may use that expression) for de 1 vo.v.ng the
carriage of meaning upon determinate constitu ents of consciousness. In the absence of such arrangements the grossest confusion would result. To take a simple instance: there are many words which, as the spelling-books say, are pronounced alike but spelled differently. "The rain (reign) is over at last!" What is it that makes one hearer think of the weather, and another of the Queen of England? Why does the auditory stimulus mean rain to the one and reign to the other? In replying to this question, we must remem ber that consciousness is a complex affair, and that its range is wider than the range of atten tion (q.v.). Hence there will always be. in a given consciousness, a certain 'focal' process or group of processes, corresponding to the range of attention, and a group or groups of obscurer 'marginal' processes which lie beyond that range. Nov, as Bagley puts it, the "same symbol [0.g. word] arouses at different times focal references which may be uniform or disparate, eonsistent or inconsistent : and yet the meaning of the symbol. in combination with other symhols, is perfectly uneydvocal." The required uniformity is fur nished. and the inconsisteneies compensated, by the marginal context: "the meaning is a hi net ion of the more transitive parts of consciousness. the fringe or relations which we feel surrounding the image" (James), The 'arrangement' spoken of above consists. then. in the relegation of the meaning-function to the background of conscious ness: that constancy of adaptation to the outside world, which beeomes impossible to the focal processes as mental development advances and experience widens, but which is nevertheless nec essary if mind is to remain meaningful, is se cured by constancy of the marginal elements. (inc man hears 'rain; because the fringe of felt relations clustering round the auditory symbol puts Lim in a weather mood; another hears 'reign,' because his margin puts him in the mood of politics. The chief constituents of the mood are, undoubtedly, organic sensations, whereby the organism is literally 'adapting itself to the reception of the stimulus. The meaning-reac tion may become so ant man tie that the margin thins out to a mere thread of organic process; or it may demand so distinct a wrench from the present topic of thought that the shift of mood is clearly noticeable. In either ease the fringe is essential to meaning. We have all noticed how empty and meaningless a word becomes when we have repeated it over and over again: we listen blankly to the sound of it, wondering if we are ever to reeover the idea that we have used so long and found so useful. 'But all that repetition does to the word is to strip it of its fringes. There could hardly he a more striking proof of the fact that mental economy has shifted the burden of meaning from the centre of con seiousness to its periphery. Consult; James, Principles of Psychology (New York, 1S90); Bagley. in ,Inicricon Journal of Psychology, vol. xii. (Worcester, 900 ) ; Tit chener. Primer of Psychology (New York, 1900).