154: THE DATA OF PHILOSOPHY. 



there may be a persistence in the previous train of thought 

 a difference obviously determined by conditions among 

 the thoughts. Again, such power as a vivid manifesta- 

 tion has of causing certain faint manifestations to arise, 

 depends on the pre-existence of certain appropriate faint 

 manifestations. If I have never heard a curlew, the cry 

 which an unseen one makes, fails to produce an idea of the 

 bird. And we have but to remember what various trains of 

 reflection are aroused by the same sight, to see how essen- 

 tially the occurrence of each faint manifestation depends on 

 its relations to other faint manifestations that have gone 

 before or that co-exist. 



Here we are introduced, lastly, to one of the most strik- 

 ing, and perhaps the most important, of the differences be- 

 tween those two orders of manifestations a difference con- 

 tinuous with that just pointed out, but one which may with 

 advantage be separately insisted upon. The conditions of 

 occurrence are not distinguished solely by the fact that each 

 set, when identifiable, belongs to its own order of manifesta- 

 tions; but they are further distinguished in a very signifi- 

 cant way. Manifestations of the faint order have traceable 

 antecedents; can be made to occur by establishing their 

 conditions of occurrence; and can be suppressed by estab- 

 lishing other conditions. But manifestations of the vivid 

 order continually occur without previous presentation of 

 their antecedents; and in many cases they persist or cease, 

 under either known or unknown conditions, in such way as 

 to show that their conditions are wholly beyond control. 

 The impression distinguished as a flash of lightning, breaks 

 across the current of our thoughts, absolutely without 

 notice. The sounds from a band that strikes up in the 

 street or from a crash of china in the next room, are not 

 connected with any of the previously-present manifesta- 

 tions, either of the faint or of the vivid order. Often 

 these vivid manifestations, arising unexpectedly, persist in 

 thrusting themselves across the current of the faint ones; 



