THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 245 



so far as to deny the reality of most relations out of the 

 mind as well as in it. Substantive psychoses, sensations 

 and their copies and derivatives, juxtaposed like dominoes, 

 in a game, but really separate, everything else verbal illu- 

 sion, — such is the upshot of this view.* The Intellect iial- 

 ists, on the other hand, unable to give up the reality of 

 relations extra mentem, but equally unable to j^oint to any 

 distinct substantive feelings in which they Avere known, have 

 made the same admission that the feelings do not exist. 

 But they have drawn an opposite conclusion. The rela- 

 tions must be known, they say, in something that is no 

 feeling, no mental modification continuous and consub- 

 stantial with the subjective tissue out of which sensations 

 and other substantive states are made. They are known, 

 these relations, by something that lies on an entirelv 

 different plane, by an actus purus of Thought, Intellect, or 

 Reason, ail written with cajjitals and considered to mean 

 something unutterably superior to any fact of sensibility 

 Avhatever. 



But from our point of view both Intelleetualists and Sen- 

 sationalists are wrong. If there be such things as feelings 

 at all, then so surely as relations hetiveen objects exist in reruiiv 

 naturd, so surely, and more surely, do feelings exist to irhich 

 these relations are knoivn. There is not a conjunction or a 

 preposition, and hardly an adverbial j)hrase, syntactic form, 

 or inflection of voice, in human speech, that does not express 

 some shading or other of relation which we at some mo- 

 ment actually feel to exist between the larger objects of our 

 thought. If we speak objectively, it is the real relations 

 that appear revealed ; if we sjDeak subjectively, it is the 

 stream of consciousness that matches each of them by an 

 inward coloring of its own. In either case the relations 

 are numberless, and no existing language is capable of do- 

 ing justice to all their shades. 



We ought to say a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling 

 of but, and a feeling of t)y, quite as readily as we say a feel- 



*E.g. : "The stream of tliought is not a coiiliiiuous current, but a series 

 of distinct ideas, more or less rapid in their succession ; ihe rajjidity being 

 measurable by the number that pass through the mind in u e:iveu time." 

 (Bain: E. and W., p. 29.) 



