148 THE DATA OF PHILOSOPHY. 



in the second place, though a faint manifestation of this 

 kind may occur before the vivid one answering to it, yet its 

 component parts may not. Without the foregoing vivid 

 manifestations of wheels and bars and cranks, the inventor 

 could have no faint manifestation of his new machine. 

 Thus, the occurrence of the faint manifestations is made pos- 

 sible by the previous occurrence of the vivid. They are 

 distinguished from one another as independent and de- 

 pendent. 



These two orders of manifestations form concurrent 

 series; or rather let us call them, not series, which implies 

 linear arrangements, but heterogeneous streams or pro- 

 cessions. These run side by side; each now broadening 

 and now narrowing, each now threatening to obliterate its 

 neighbour, and now in turn threatened with obliteration, 

 but neither ever quite excluding the other from their 

 common channel. Let us watch the mutual actions of the 

 two currents. During what we call our states of 



activity, the vivid manifestations predominate. We simul- 

 taneously receive many and varied presentations — a crowd 

 of visual impressions, sounds more or less numerous, resist- 

 ances, tastes, odours, &c. ; some groups of them changing, 

 and others temporarily fixed, but altering as we move; and 

 when we compare in its breadth and massiveness this hetero- 

 geneous combination of vivid manifestations with the con- 

 current combination of faint manifestations, these last sink 

 into relative insignificance. They never wholly disappear 

 however. Always along with the vivid manifestations, 

 even in their greatest obtrusiveness, analysis discloses a 

 thread of thoughts and interpretations constituted of the 

 faint manifestations. Or if it be contended that the occur- 

 rence of a deafening explosion or an intense pain may for a 

 moment exclude every idea, it must yet be admitted that 

 such breach of continuity can never be immediately known 

 as occurring ; since the act of knowing is impossible in the 

 absence of ideas. On the other hand, after cer- 



