THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 235 



sounds alters our feeling of another ; so, in thought, we 

 must admit that those portions of the brain that have just 

 been maximally excited retain a kind of soreness which is 

 a condition of our present consciousness, a codeterminant 

 of how and what we now shall feel.* 



Ever some tracts are waning in tension, some waxing, 

 whilst others actively discharge. The states of tension 

 have as positive an influence as any in determining the 

 total condition, and in deciding what the psychosis shall be. 

 All we know of submaximal nerve-irritations, and of the 

 summation of apparently ineffective stimuli, tends to show 

 that no changes in the brain are physiologically ineffective, 

 and that presumably none are bare of psychological result. 

 But as the brain-tension shifts from one relative state of 

 equilibrium to another, like tlie gyrations of a kaleido- 

 scope, now rapid and now slow, is it likely that its faithful 

 psychic concomitant is heavier-footed than itself, and that 

 it cannot match each one of the organ's irradiations bA' a 

 shifting inward iridescence of its own ? But if it can do 

 this, its inward iridescences must be infinite, for the brain- 

 redistributions are in infinite variety. If so coarse a thing 

 as a telejjhone-plate can be made to thrill for years and 

 never reduj)licate its inward condition, how much more 

 must this be the case with the infinitely delicate brain ? 



I am sure that this concrete and total manner of regard- 

 ing the mind's changes is the only true manner, difficult as 

 it may be to carry it out in detail. If anything seems ob- 

 scure about it, it will grow clearer as we advance. Mean- 

 while, if it be true, it is certainly also true that no two 

 * ideas ' are ever exactly the same, Avhich is the proposition 

 we started to prove. The proposition is more important 

 theoretically than it at first sight seems. For it makes it 



*It need of course not follow, because a total brain-state does not re- 

 cur, that no point of the brain can ever be twice in the same condition. 

 That would be as improbable a consequence as that in the sea a wave-crest 

 should never come twice at the same point of space. What can hardly 

 come twice is an identical combination of wave-forms all with their crests 

 and hollows reoccupying identical places. For such a total combina- 

 tion as this is the analogue of the brain-state to which our actual conscious* 

 aess at any moment is due. 



