256 PSTCHOLOG Y 



of what thoughts are next to arise, before they have arisen. 

 This field of view of consciousness varies very much in 

 extent, depending largely on the degree of mental freshness 

 or fatigue. When ver}- fresh, our minds carry an immense 

 horizon with them. The present image shoots its perspec- 

 tive far before it, irradiating in advance the regions in which 

 lie the thoughts as yet unborn. Under ordinary conditions 

 the halo of felt relations is much more circumscribed. And 

 in states of extreme brain-fag the horizon is narrowed 

 almost to the passing word, — the associative machinery, 

 however, providing for the next word turning up in orderly 

 sequence, until at last the tired thinker- is led to some kind 

 of a conclusion. At certain moments he may find himself 

 doubting whether his thoughts have not come to a full stoj) ; 

 but the vague sense of a plus ultra maizes him ever struggle 

 on toAvards a more definite expression of what it may be ; 

 whilst the slowness of his utterance shows how difficult, 

 under such conditions, the labor of thinking must be. 



The awareness that our definite thought has come to a. 

 stop is an entirely different thing from the awareness that 

 our thought is definitively completed. The expression of 

 the latter state of mind is the falling inflection which be- 

 tokens that the sentence is ended, and silence. The ex- 

 pression of the former state is 'hemming and hawing,' or 

 else such phrases as ^et cetera,' or 'and so forth.' But 

 notice that every part of the sentence to be left incomplete 

 feels differently as it passes, by reason of the premonition 

 we have that we shall be unable to end it. The ' and so 

 forth ' casts its shadow back, and is as integral a jDart of 

 the object of the thought as the distinctest of images 

 would be. 



Again, when we use a common noun, such as man, in a 

 universal sense, as signifying all possible men, we are fully 

 aware of this intention on our part, and distinguish it care- 

 fully from our intention when we mean a certain group of 

 men, or a solitary individual before us. In the chapter on 

 Conception we shall see how important this diff'erence of 

 intention is. It casts its influence over the whole of the 

 sentence, both before and after the spot in which the word 

 man is used. 



