A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 344, note 8.
ED.] The body is the storm centre, the origin of co-ordinates, the
constant place of stress in all that experience-train. Everything
circles round it, and is felt from its point of view. The word 'I,'
then, is primarily a noun of position, just like 'this' and 'here.'
Activities attached to 'this' position have prerogative emphasis, and,
if activities have feelings, must be felt in a peculiar way. The word
'my' designates the kind of emphasis. I see no inconsistency whatever
in defending, on the one hand, 'my' activities as unique and opposed
to those of outer nature, and, on the other hand, in affirming, after
introspection, that they consist in movements in the head. The 'my' of
them is the emphasis, the feeling of perspective-interest in which
they are dyed.

[99] [_Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_, sect. VII, part I,
Selby-Bigge's edition, pp. 65 ff.]

[100] Page 172.

[101] Let me not be told that this contradicts [the first essay], 'Does
Consciousness Exist?' (see especially page 32), in which it was said
that while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures
work 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water
wets, etc.) but not in the thoughts. Mental activity-trains are composed
of thoughts, yet their members do work on each other, they check,
sustain, and introduce. They do so when the activity is merely
associational as well as when effort is there. But, and this is my
reply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that
energize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is a
desire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a
feeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this. The
interplay of these secondary tones (among which 'interest,'
'difficulty,' and 'effort' figure) runs the drama in the mental series.
In what we term the physical drama these qualities play absolutely no
part. The subject needs careful working out; but I can see no
inconsistency.

[102] I have found myself more than once accused in print of being the
assertor of a metaphysical principle of activity. Since literary
misunderstandings retard the settlement of problems, I should like to
say that such an interpretation of the pages I have published on Effort
and on Will is absolutely foreign to what I meant to express.
[_Principles of Psychology_, vol. II, ch. XXVI.] I owe all my doctrines
on this