MENTAL OPERATIONS IN RELATION TO TIME. 95 



method of enquiry. Yet if we may admit that the in- 

 dividual being (das Ich of the Germans) cannot exist 

 in two separate states of perception, thought, feeling, 

 or volition at the same absolute instant of time, we do 

 in fact denote a special mode of analysis, capable of 

 explaining many phenomena anomalies as well as 

 morbid conditions of mind which resist all other inter- 

 pretations. 



However difficult or impossible it may be to dis- 

 sever and distinguish the momentary states, which in 

 their aggregate form our existence, still they are sequent 

 moments a measurement of mental time, we might 

 say were it not that consciousness, even when thus 

 directed, can hardly take account of the rapid and in- 

 cessant changes imposed upon it. There is a certain 

 chronometry, often very exact, in the functions of organic 

 life. We cannot thus describe the fleeting operations of 

 mind the infinitesimal fluxions, we may call them, of 

 thought and feeling. But neither can we reason at all 

 on these acts or states without regarding them as se- 

 quent, and ever displacing one another in that series 

 which gives personal identity to our being. What has 

 been so much written upon under the term of Associa- 

 tion of Ideas might better perhaps have been described 

 as Succession. We cannot well part with the phrase of 

 personal identity, yet that of personal continuity might 

 perhaps better describe the series of states forming in 

 their aggregate the individual life of man. 



In the chapters just alluded to I have given various 

 examples of this mode of viewing the mental functions. 

 One or two such I cite here, as illustrative of the argu- 



