THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 277 



poverty of our language obliges us to use might of themselves very 

 liuturally lead you ; the mistake of supposing that the most complex 

 states of mind are not truly, in their very essence, as much one and 

 indivisible as those which we term simple — the complexity and seem- 

 ing coexistence which they involve being relative to our feeling * only, 

 not to their own absolute nature. I trust I need not repeat to you 

 that, in itself, every notion, however seemingly complex, is, and must 

 be, truly simple — being one state or affection, of one simple substance, 

 mind. Our conception of a whole army, for example, is as truly this 

 one mind existing in this one state, as our conception of any of the 

 individuals that compose an army. Our notion of the abstract num- 

 bers, eight, four, two, is as truly one feeling of the mind as our notion 

 of simple unity." 



The ordinar}^ associatiouist-psyeliology supposes, in 

 contrast with this, that whenever an object of thought con- 

 tains many elements, the thought itself must be made up 

 of just as many ideas, one idea for each element, and all 

 fused togeLlier in appearance, but really separate. f The 

 enemies of this psychology find (as we have already seen) 

 little trouble in showing that such a bundle of separate 

 ideas would never form one thought at all, and they con- 

 tend that an Ego must be added to the bundle to give it 

 unity, and bring the various ideas into relation with each 

 other.:]: We will not discuss the ego just yet, but it is ob- 

 vious that if things are to be thought in relation, they must 

 be thought together, and in one something, be that something 

 ego, psychosis, state of consciousness, or whatever you 

 please. If not thought with each other, things are not 

 thought in relation at all. Now most believers in the ego 

 make the same mistake as the associationists and sensa- 

 tionists whom they oppose. Both agree that the elements 

 of the subjective stream are discrete and separate and con- 

 stitute what Kant calls a 'manifold.' But while the asso- 



* Instead of saying to our feeling only, he should have said, to the object 

 only. 



f "There can be no difficulty la admitting that association does form 

 the ideas of an indefinite number of individuals into one complex idea; 

 because it is an acknowledged fact. Have we not the idea of an army? 

 And is not that precisely the ideas of an indefinite number of men formed 

 into one idea?" (Jas. Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind (J. S. Mill's 

 Edition), vol. i. p. 264.) 



X For their arguments, see above, pp. 



