THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 275 



and the thought another ; and they forthwith foist their 

 own knowledge into that of the thought of which they pre- 

 tend to give a true account. To conclude, then, thought may, 

 but need not, in knoiving, discriminate hetiveen its object and 

 itself. 



We have been using the word Object. Something must 

 noiv be said about the proper use of the term Object in Psy- 

 chology. 



In popular parlance the word object is commonly taken 

 without reference to the act of knowledge, and treated as 

 synonymous with individual subject of existence. Thus 

 if anyone ask what is the mind's object when you say 



* Columbus discovered America in 1492,' most people will 

 reply ' Columbus,' or ' America,' or, at most, ' the discovery 

 of America.' They will name a substantive kernel or nu- 

 cleus of the consciousness, and say the thought is ' about ' 

 that, — as indeed it is, — and they will call that your thought's 



* object.' Really that is usually only the grammatical 

 object, or more likely the grammatical subject, of your sen- 

 tence. It is at most your ' fractional object ; ' or you may call 

 it the ' topic ' of your thought, or the * subject of your dis- 

 course.' But the Object of your thought is really its entire 

 content or deliverance, neither more nor less. It is a vicious 

 use of speech to take out a substantive kernel from its con- 

 tent and call that its object ; and it is an equally vicious use 

 of speech to add a substantive kernel not articulately in- 

 cluded in its content, and to call that its object. Yet either 

 one of these two sins we commit, whenever we content our- 

 selves with saying that a given thought is simply ' about ' a 

 certain topic, or that that topic is its 'object.' The object of 

 my thought in the previous sentence, for example, is strictly 

 speaking neither Columbus, nor America, nor its discovery. 

 It is nothing short of the entire sentence, ' Columbus-dis- 

 co vered-America-in-1492.' And if we wish to speak of it 

 substantively, we must make a substantive of it by waiting 

 it out thus with hyphens between all its words. Nothing 

 but this can possibly name its delicate idiosyncrasy. And 

 if we wish io fed that idiosyncrasy we must reproduce the 

 thought as it was uttered, with every word fringed and the 



