278 PSYCHOLOGY. 



ciationists think that a * manifokl ' can form a single knowl- 

 edgs, the egoists deny this, and say that the knowledge 

 comes only when the manifold is subjected to the syntlie- 

 tizing activity of an ego. Both make an identical initial 

 hypothesis; but the egoist, finding it won't express the 

 facts, adds another hypothesis to correct it. Now I do not 

 wish just yet to ' commit myself ' about the existence or non- 

 existence of the ego, but I do contend that we need not 

 invoke it for this particular reason — namely, because the 

 manifold of ideas has to be reduced to unity. There is no 

 manifold of coexisting ideas ; the notion of such a thing is 

 a chimera. Whateve7' things are thought in relation are 

 thought from the outset in a unity, in a single pulse of subjec- 

 tivity, a single psychosis, feeling, or state of mind. 



The reason why this fact is so strangely garbled in the 

 books seems to be what on an earlier j)age (see p. 196 ff.) I 

 called the psychologist's fallacy. We have the inveterate 

 habit, whenever we try introspectively to describe one of 

 our thoughts, of dropping the thought as it is in itself and 

 talking of something else. We describe the things that 

 appear to the thought, and we describe other thoughts 

 about those things — as if these and the original thought 

 were the same. If, for example, the thought be ' the pack 

 of cards is on the table,' we say, " Well, isn't it a thought of 

 the pack of cards ? Isn't it of the cards as included in the 

 pack ? Isn't it of the table ? And of the legs of the table 

 as well ? The table has legs — how can you think the table 

 without virtually thinking its legs? Hasn't our thought 

 then, all these parts — one part for the pack and another for 

 the table ? And within the pack-part a part for each card, 

 as within the table-part a part for each leg ? And isn't 

 each of these parts an idea ? And can our thought, then, 

 be anything but an assemblage or pack of ideas, each 

 answering to some element of what it knows?" 



Now not one of these assumptions is true. The thought 

 taken as an example is, in the first place, not of ' a pack of 

 cards.' It is of ' the-pack-of-cards-is-on-the-table,' an en- 

 tirely different subjective phenomenon, whose Object implies 

 the pack, and every one of the cards in it, but whose conscious 

 constitution bears very little resemblance to that of the 



