TEE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 259 



states of mind, we may feel assured that the difference be- 

 tween those that are mere ' acquaintance,' and those that 

 are ' knowledge s-a&ow^ ' (see p. 221) is reducible almost 

 entirely to the absence or presence of psychic fringes or 

 overtones. Knowledge about a thing is knowledge of its 

 relations. Acquaintance with it is limitation to the bare 

 impression which it makes. Of most of its relations we are 

 only aware in the penumbral nascent way of a ' fringe ' of 

 unarticulated affinities about it. And, before passing to the 

 next topic in order, I must say a little of this sense of 

 affinity, as itself one of the most interesting features of the 

 Bubjective stream. 



In all our voluntary thinking there is some topic or 

 subject about which all the members of the thought revolve. 

 Half the time this topic is a problem, a gap we cannot 

 yet fill with a definite picture, word, or phrase, but which, in 

 the manner described some time back, influences us in an 

 intensely active and determinate psychic way. Whatever 

 may be the images and ph.rases that pass before us, we feel 

 their relation to this aching gap. To fill it up is our 

 thoughts' destiny. Some bring us nearer to that consum- 

 mation. Some the gap negates as quite irrelevant. Each 

 swims in a felt fringe of relations of which the aforesaid 

 gap is the term. Or instead of a definite gap we may 

 merely carry a mood of interest about with us. Then, 

 however vagiie the mood, it Avill still act in the same way, 

 throwing a mantle of felt affinity over such representa- 

 tions, entering the mind, as suit it, and tingeing with the 

 feeling of tediousness or discord all those with which it 

 has no concern. 



Relation, then, to our topic or interest is constantly felt 

 in the fringe, and particularly the relation of harmony and 

 discord, of furtherance or hindrance of the topic. When 

 the sense of furtherance is there, we are ' all right ; ' with 

 the sense of hindrance we are dissatisfied and perplexed, 

 and cast about us for other thoughts. Now any thought 

 the quality of whose fringe lets us feel ourselves 'all right,' 

 is an acceptable member of our thinking, whatever kind of 

 thought it may otherwise be. Provided we only feel it 

 to have a place in the scheme of relations in which the in- 



