Thought 

 Time 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



69* 



ted out, eclipsed, for the instant unthink- 

 able. These subject moments are studied 

 to advantage in bursts of intense pleasure 

 or intense pain, in fits of engrossed reflec- 

 tion, especially reflection upon mental facts ; 

 but they are seldom sustained in purity 

 beyond a very short interval; we are con- 

 stantly returning to the object side of things 

 to the world whose basis is extension 

 and place. BAIN Mind and Body, ch. 6, p. 

 34. (Hum., 1880.) 



342 1 . THOUGHT AND MOTION NOT 



COMMENSURABLE Chasm between Con- 

 sciousness and Mechanics. Every one ad- 

 mits the entire incommensurability of feel- 

 ing as such with material motion as such. 

 " A motion became a feeling ! " no phrase 

 that our lips can frame is so devoid of ap- 

 prehensible meaning. Accordingly, even the 

 vaguest of evolutionary enthusiasts, when 

 deliberately comparing material with mental 

 facts, have been as forward as any one else 

 to emphasize the " chasm " between the in- 

 ner and the outer worlds. 



" Can the oscillations of a molecule," says Mr. Spencer 

 ["Psychology," 62], " be represented side by side with a 

 nervous shock [he means a mental shock], and the two be 

 recognized aa one ? No effort enables us to assimilate 

 them. That a unit of feeling has nothing in common 

 with a unit of motion becomes more than ever manifest 

 when we bring the two into juxtaposition." 



And again [" Psychology," 272] : 



" Suppose it to have become quite clear that a shock in 

 consciousness and a molecular motion are the subjective 

 and objective faces of the same thing: we continue utterly 

 incapable of uniting the two, so as to conceive that reality 

 of which they are the opposite faces." 



In other words, incapable of perceiving in 

 them any common character. So Tyndall, 

 in that lucky paragraph [" Fragments of 

 Science," p. 420], which has been quoted so 

 often that every one knows it by heart: 



" The passage from the physics of the brain to the cor- 

 responding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted 

 that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in 

 the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the in- 

 tellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the 

 organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of 

 reasoning, from one to the other." 



JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 6, p. 146. 

 (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



3422. THOUGHT, ENLARGEMENT 

 OF, BY VOLUNTARY STUDY It is 



. . . by the use of the power which every 

 man possesses of enlarging as well as im- 

 proving his fabric of thought, by applying 

 himself to the acquirement of new knowl- 

 edge, that he gains a vastly increased ca- 

 pacity for the reception of a nobler and 

 grander order of beliefs, such as he would 

 have previously thought it impossible that 

 he could ever come to possess. CARPENTER 

 Nature and Man, feet. 7, p. 234. (A., 1889.) 



3423. THOUGHT, HUMAN, GROWS 

 AROUND A FEW GREAT THINKERS 



The thoughts of men seem rather to be com- 

 parable to the leaves, flowers, and fruit 

 upon the innumerable branches of a few 

 great stems, fed by commingled and hidden 

 roots. These stems bear the names of the 

 half a dozen men endowed with intellects 



of heroic force and clearness, to whom we 

 are led, at whatever point of the world of 

 thought the attempt to trace its history 

 commences; just as certainly as the follow- 

 ing up the small twigs of a tree to the 

 branchlets which bear them, and tracing 

 the branchlets to their supporting branches, 

 brings us, sooner or later, to the bole. 

 HUXLEY Lay Sermons, serm. 14, p. 320. 

 (G. P. P., 1899.) 



3424. THOUGHT, ITS POWER IN 



MAN The superiority of man over ani- 

 mals, of the scholar over the barbarian, de- 

 pends upon thinking; sensation, feeling, per- 

 ception, on the contrary, he shares with his 

 lower fellow creatures, and in acuteness of 

 the senses many of these are even superior 

 to him. That man strives to develop his 

 thinking faculty to the utmost is a problem 

 on the solution of which the feeling of his 

 own dignity as well as of his own practical 

 power depends. HELMHOLTZ Popular Lec- 

 tures, lect. 5, p. 206. (L. G. & Co., 1898.) 



3425. THOUGHT, NEW, HOW MADE 



We must not forget that everything new 

 that can possibly be thought is nothing more 

 than either a combination of particulars 

 which had previously been separate, or a 

 separation of particulars which had been 

 combined. As thinking cannot be accom- 

 plished without feeling and perceptions, so 

 it is with willing. SCHWARZ Psychologie 

 des Willens (a Lecture). (Translated for 

 Scientific Side-Lights.) 



3426. THOUGHT, RAPIDITY OF, IN 



GREAT MINDS When two minds of a high 

 order, interested in kindred subjects, come 

 together, their conversation is chiefly re- 

 markable for the summariness of its al- 

 lusions and the rapidity of its transitions. 

 Before one of them is half through a sen- 

 tence the other knows his meaning and re- 

 plies. Such genial play with such massive 

 materials, such an easy flashing of light 

 over far perspectives, such careless indiffer- 

 ence to the dust and apparatus that ordi- 

 narily surround the subject and seem to per- 

 tain to its essence, make these conversa- 

 tions seem true feasts for gods to a listener 

 who is educated enough to follow them at 

 all. JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 22, p. 

 370. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



3427. THOUGHTLESSNESS UN- 

 WARNED BY OTHERS' FATE Bees Per- 

 ishing in Sweets. The following scene [says 

 Sir John Lubbock], one which most of us 

 have witnessed, is incompatible surely with 

 much intelligence. The sad fate of their 

 unfortunate companions does not in the 

 least deter others who approach the tempt- 

 ing lure from madly alighting on the bodies 

 of the dying and dead, to share the same 

 miserable end. No one can understand the 

 extent of their infatuation until he has seen 

 a confectioner's shop assailed by myriads 

 of hungry bees. I have seen thousands 

 strained out from the sirup in which they 



