THE STREAM OF THOUOHT. 253 



ing but signs of direction in thought, of which direction we 

 nevertheless have an acutelj discriminative sense, though 

 no definite sensorial image plays any part in it whatsoever. 

 Sensorial images are stable psychic facts ; we can hold 

 them still and look at them as long as we like. These bare 

 images of logical movement, on the contrary, are psychic 

 transitions, always on the wing, so to speak, and not to be 

 glimpsed except in flight. Their function is to lead from 

 one set of images to another. As they pass, we feel both 

 the waxing and the waning images in a way altogether 

 peculiar and a way quite dift'erent from the way of their 

 full presence. If we trj^ to hold fast the feeling of direc- 

 tion, the full presence comes and the feeling of direction is 

 lost. The blank verbal scheme of the logical movement 

 gives us the fleeting sense of the movement as we read it, 

 quite as well as does a rational sentence awakening defi- 

 nite imaginations by its words. 



AVhat is that first instantaneous glimpse of some one's 

 meaning which we have, when in vulgar phrase we say we 

 ' twig ' it ? Surely an altogether specific affection of our 

 mind. And has the reader never asked himself what kind 

 of a mental fact is his intention of saying a thing before he 

 has said it? It is an entirely definite intention, distinct 

 from all other intentions, an absolutely distinct state of 

 consciousness, therefore ; and yet how much of it consists of 

 definite sensorial images, either of words or of things? 

 Hardly anything ! Linger, and the words and things come 

 into the mind ; the anticipatory intention, the divination is 

 there no more. But as the words that replace it arrive, it 

 welcomes them successively and calls them right if they 

 agree with it, it rejects them and calls them wrong if they 

 do not. It has therefore a nature of its own of the most 

 positive sort, and yet what can we say about it without 

 using words that belong to the later mental facts that 

 replace it ? The intention fo-say-so-and-so is the only name 

 it can receive. One may admit that a good third of our 

 psychic life consists in these rapid premonitory perspective 

 vieAvs of schemes of thought not yet articulate. How 

 comes it about that a man reading something aloud for the 

 first time is able immediately to emphasize all his words 



