THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 265 



Each word, in sucli a sentence, is felt, not only as a 

 word, but as having a meaning. Tlie ' meaning ' of a word 

 taken thus dynamically in a sentence may be quite differ- 

 ent from its meaning when taken statically or without con- 

 text. The dynamic meaning is usually reduced to the bare 

 fringe we have described, of felt suitability or unfitness to 

 the context and conclusion. The static meaning, when the 

 word is concrete, as 'table,' 'Boston,' consists of sensory 

 images awakened ; when it is abstract, as ' criminal legisla- 

 tion,' ' fallacy,' the meaning consists of other words aroused, 

 forming the so-called ' definition.' 



Hegel's celebrated dictum that pure being is identical 

 with pure nothing results from his taking the words stati- 

 cally, or without the fringe they wear in a context. Taken 

 in isolation, they agree in the single point of awakening no 

 sensorial images. But taken dynamically, or as significant, 

 — as thought, — their fringes of relation, their affinities and 

 repugnances, their function and meaning, are felt and 

 understood to be absolutely opposed. 



Such considerations as these remove all appearance of 

 paradox from those cases of extremely deficient visual im- 

 agery of whose existence Mr. Galton has made us aware (see 

 below). An exceptionally intelligent friend informs me that 

 he can frame no image whatever of the apj)earance of his 

 breakfast-table. When asked how he then remembers it at 

 all, he says he simple 'knoivs' that it seated four peojile, and 

 was covered with a white cloth on which were a butter- 

 dish, a coffee-pot, radishes, and so forth. The mind-stuff 

 of which this ' knowing' is made seems to be verbal images 

 exclusively. But if the words ' coffee,' ' bacon,' ' mufiins,' 

 and ' eggs ' lead a man to speak to his cook, to pay his 

 bills, and to take measures for the morrow's meal exactly as 

 ■visual and gustatory memories would, why are they not, 



attention only to substantive starting points, turning points, and conclu- 

 sions here and there. All the re.st, ' substantive ' and separately intelligible 

 as it may potentially be, actually serves only as so much transitive material. 

 It is internodal consciousnes.s, giving us the sense of continuity, but having 

 no significance apart from its mere gap-tilling function. The children 

 probably feel no gap when through a lot of unintelligible vpords they ara 

 swiftly carried to a familiar and intelligible terminus. 



