THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 251 



three quite diflferent attitudes of expectancy, althougli no 

 definite object is before it in any one of tlie three cases. 

 Leaving out different actual bodily attitudes, and leav- 

 ing out the reverberating images of the three words, which 

 are of course diverse, probably no one will deny the exist- 

 ence of a residual conscious affection, a sense of the direc- 

 tion from which an impression is about to come, although 

 no positive impression is yet there. Meanwhile we have 

 no names for the psychoses in question but the names 

 hark, look, and wait. 



Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state 

 of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein ; 

 but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A 

 sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given 

 direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of 

 our closeness, and then letting us sink back without the 

 longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this 

 singularly definite gap acts immediately so as to negate 

 them. They do not fit into its mould. And the gap of one 

 word does not feel like the gap of another, all emj)ty of 

 content as both might seem necessarily to be when described 

 as gaps. When I vainly try to recall the name of Spalding, 

 my consciousness is far removed from what it is when I 

 vainly try to recall the name of Bowles. Here some ingen- 

 ious persons will say : " How can the two consciousnesses 

 be different when the terms which might make them differ- 

 ent are not there ? All that is there, so long as the effort 

 to recall is vain, is the bare effort itself. How should that 

 differ in the two cases ? You are making it seem to differ 

 by prematurely filling it out with the different names, 

 although these, by the hypothesis, have not yet come. 

 Stick to the two efforts as they are, without naming them 

 after facts not yet existent, and you'll be quite unable to 

 designate any point in which they differ." Designate, truly 

 enough. We can only designate the difference by borrow- 

 ing the names of objects not yet in the mind. Which is to 

 say that our psychological vocabulary is wholly inadequate 

 to name the differences that exist, even such strong differ- 

 ences as these. But namelessness is compatible with 

 existence. There are innumerable consciousnesses of 



