new necessity
and the source of a new type of satisfaction.

From the point of view of "logic," as William James might have said,
such a version of psychological fact may seem essentially
self-contradictory. Unless, it may be argued, a novelty when presented
excites some manner of desire for itself in the beholder, the beholder
will make no effort towards it and thus take no step away from his
existing system of life to a new system in which a new desire and a new
commodity shall have a place. So much would seem clear enough but the
question immediately follows: How can a thing that is new arouse desire?
In so far as it is new it must _ex vi termini_ be unknown and wanting
definition in terms of remembered past experiences; and how can a thing
unknown make that connection with the present character of the
individual which must be deemed necessary to the arousal of desire in
him? A new thing would seem, then, from this point of view, to be able
to arouse desire only in so far as it is able to conceal or subordinate
its aspects of novelty and appear as known and well-accredited--either
this or there must be in the individual some definite instinctive
mechanism ready to be set in action by the thing's presentment. And on
neither of these suppositions can having to do with the new thing
effect any fundamental or radical difference in the individual--it can
serve at most only to "bring out" what was already "there" in him in a
"latent" or "implicit" status. Whatever new developments of power or
desire may be attained and organized into the individual's character
through his commerce with the novelty must be new in only a superficial
sense--they will be new only as occurrences, only as the striking of the
hour by the clock and the resulting abrasion of the bell and hammer are
new events. But the clock was made to strike; it is the nature of metal
to wear away and likewise these changes in the individual are in deeper
truth not new at all but only a disclosure of the agent's character, a
further fulfilment along preestablished and unalterable lines which all
along was making headway in the agent's earlier quests and efforts and
attainments.

There is a sense, no doubt, in which some such version of the facts as
this is unanswerable, but controversial advantage is paid for, here as
elsewhere in the logic of absolute idealism, at the cost of tangible
meaning and practical importance. Just what does the contention come to?
Let