A THINKING MACHINE. 603 



not, of course, all distinctly, or all together ; otherwise, our mental 

 picture of an orange would be as vivid and all-embracing as the sight 

 of the actual orange itself. 



Now, the name orange calls up more or less definitely the picture 

 of several among these separate qualities. But it doesn't call them 

 all up ; indeed, the word in itself may not perhaps call up any of 

 them. For instance, in the phrase, the Prince of Orange, where identi- 

 cal symbols meet the eye, I don't think of the fruit at all ; I think, 

 according to circumstances and context, either of "William III of 

 blessed memory, or of the eldest son of the present King of the Neth- 

 erlands, whose memory (in Paris especially) is somewhat more doubt- 

 ful. An Orangeman and an orange-woman are not, as one might 

 innocently imagine, correlative terms. Even without this accidental 

 ambiguity, derived from the name of the town of Orange on the 

 Rhone, the word orange need not necessarily connote anything more 

 than the color by itself ; as when we say that Miss Terry's dress was 

 a deep yellow or almost orange. Nay, when we actually mean the 

 fruit in person, not the tree, flower, or color, the picture called up will 

 be different according to the nature of the phrase in which the word 

 occurs. For, if I am talking about ordering dessert, the picture in my 

 mind is that of five yellow fruits, piled up pyramid - wise on a tall 

 center-dish ; whereas, if I am talking to a botanical friend, my impres- 

 sion is rather that of a cross-section through a succulent fruit (known 

 technically as a hesperidiicm), and displaying a certain familiar arrange- 

 ment of cells, dissepiments, placentas, and seeds. In short, the word 

 orange, instead of being a single unity, localizable in a single ganglion, 

 represents a vast complex, of which now these elements are upper- 

 most in consciousness and now those, but which seems to demand for 

 its full realization an immense co-operation of very diverse and numer- 

 ous brain-organs. 



Every thought, even the simplest, involves for its production the 

 united or associated action of a vast mass of separate brain-cells and 

 separate brain-fibers. One thought differs from another dynamically 

 rather than statically. It differs as running diffei's from dancing — 

 not because different muscles are employed, but because the same mus- 

 cles are employed in a different manner. 



Trains of thought are therefore like a quadrille. One set of 

 exercises is followed by another, which it at once suggests or sets in 

 motion. 



Of course, I do not mean to deny that every cell and fiber in the 

 brain has its own particular use and function, any more than I would 

 deny that each particular muscle in the body is intended to pull a 

 particular bone or to move a particular definite organ. But what I 

 do mean is that each such separate function is really elementary or 

 analytical : its object is to assist in forming a conception or idea, not 

 to contain, as it were, a whole conception ready made. Chinese sym- 



