THE CURRENT OF IDEAS. 43 



selves more strongly, and render themselves more per- 

 manent impressions of the senses, is due not so much 

 to the want of power in the faculties so to record them, 

 otherwise they never would exist at all, as to the activity 

 of the mind, the rapidity of the current of thought, and 

 its continual change as well as the continuity of external 

 motion around us, by which the Consciousness is being 

 continually attracted, influenced, and supplied with new 

 elements and impulses of thought ; for it is a singular fact 

 that sudden and absolute silence has been known to stop the 

 whole train of ideas, and produce an almost total suspension 

 for the moment of the power to think a fact due 

 doubtless to the circumstance that we are less accustomed 

 to absolute want of sound than to absolute darkness or 

 want of light, and that the continual operation of noises 

 on the ear has a suggestive and stimulating influence on 

 the current of ideas, the total absence of which we are 

 not accustomed to, and cannot all at once dispense with. 

 Our mental activity, therefore, may be said to have the 

 continual custom established, in connection with its 

 normal action, of being influenced and impelled to day- 

 dreaming and picture-making by the most trivial and 

 indirect as well as by the faintest suggestions ; so that 

 it is not at all surprising superstitious minds under 

 cloud of night, and under all the disadvantages of im- 

 perfect vision, should create spectral appearances out of 

 the most unlikely objects, and indulge in mental exaggera- 

 tions of the most improbable appearances ; for superstition 

 disarms the judgment just as much as darkness disarms 

 the eye ; but neither prevents the current of ideas, nor 

 stops, but rather stimulates the suggestive powers to create 

 not more unreal, but only more alarming images with reference 

 to ourselves under the consciousness that we are not so fully 

 protected as in ordinary light. 



But the uncertainty of the senses is further very much 



