THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 243 



It all goes back to what we said in another connection 

 only a few pages ago (p. 233). As the total neurosis changes, 

 so does the total psychosis change. But as the changes of 

 neurosis are never absolutely discontinuous, so must the 

 successive psychoses shade gradually into each other, 

 although their rate of change may be much faster at one 

 moment than at the next. 



This difference in the rate of change lies at the basis of 

 a difference of subjective states of which we ought immedi- 

 ately to speak. When the rate is slow we are aware of the 

 object of our thought in a comparatively restful and stable 

 way. When rapid, we are aware of a passage, a relation, 

 a transition from it, or hetiveen it and something else. As 

 we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of 

 our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different 

 pace of its parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of 

 an alternation of flights and perchings. The rhythm of 

 language expresses this, where every thought is expressed 

 in a sentence, and every sentence closed by a period. The 

 resting-places are usually occupied by sensorial imagina- 

 tions of some sort, whose peculiarity is that they can be 

 held before the mind for an indefinite time, and contem- 

 plated without changing ; the places of flight are filled with 

 thoughts of relations, static or dynamic, that for the most 

 part obtain between the matters contemplated in the 

 periods of comparative rest. 



Let us call the resting-places the ' substantive parts,' and 

 the places of fight the ' transitive parts' of the stream of 

 thought. It then appears that the main end of our 

 thinking is at all times the attainment of some other sub- 

 stantive part than the one from which we have just been 

 dislodged. And we may say that the main use of the 

 transitive parts is to lead us from one substantive conclu- 

 sion to another. 



Now it is very difficult, introspectively, to see the tran- 

 sitive parts for what they really are. If they are but flights 

 to a conclusion, stopping them to look at them before the 

 conclusion is reached is really annihilating them. Whilst 

 if we wait till the conclusion he reached, it so exceeds them 



