THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 225 



stating tliG fact most simply and with the minimum of as- 

 sumption. As we cannot, we must simply say that thought 

 goes on. 



FIVE CHABACTEBS IN THOUGHT. 



How does it go on ? We notice immediately five impor- 

 tant characters in the process, of which it shall be the duty 

 of the present chajDter to treat in a general way : 



1) Every thought tends to be part of a personal con- 

 sciousness. 



2) Witliin each personal consciousness thought is always 

 changing. 



3) Within each personal consciousness thought is sen- 

 sibly continuous. 



4) It always appears to deal with objects independent 

 of itself. 



5) It is interested in some parts of these objects to the 

 exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects — chooses from 

 among them, in a word — all the while. 



In considering these five points successively, we shall 

 have to plunge in medias res as regards our vocabular3', and 

 use psychological terms which can only be adequately de- 

 fined in later chapters of the book. But every one knows 

 what the terms mean in a rough way ; and it is only in a 

 rough way that we are now to take them. This chapter is 

 like a painter's first charcoal sketch upon his canvas, in 

 which no niceties appear. 



1) Thought tends to Personal Form. 



When I say every thought is part of a personal con- 

 sciousness, ' personal consciousness ' is one of the terms in 

 question. Its meaning we know so long as no one asks us 

 to define it, but to give an accurate account of it is the most 

 difficult of philosophic tasks. This task we must confront 

 in the next chapter ; here a preliminary word will sufiice. 



In this room — this lecture-room, say — there are a mul- 

 titude of thoughts, yours and mine, some of which cohere 

 mutually, and some not. They are as little each-for-itself 

 and reciprocally independent as they are all-belonging- 

 together. They are neither : no one of them is separate, 



