280 PSYCHOLOGY. 



Now let the vertical dimensions of the figure stand for 

 the objects or contents of the thoughts. A line vertical to 

 any point of the horizontal, as 1-1', will then symbolize the 

 object in the mind at the instant 1 ; a space above the hori- 

 zontal, as l-l'-2'-2, will symbolize all that passes through 

 the mind during the time 1-2 whose line it covers. The 

 entire diagram from to 0' represents a finite length of 

 thought's stream. 



Can Ave now define the jJsychic constitution of each ver- 

 tical section of this segment ? We can, though in a very 

 rough way. Immediately after 0, even before we have 

 opened our mouths to speak, the entire thought is present to 

 our mind in the form of an intention to utter that sentence. 

 This intention, though it has no simple name, and though 

 it is a transitive state immediately displaced by the first 

 word, is 3"et a perfectly determinate phase of thought, 

 unlike an^^thing else (see p. 253). Again, immediately 

 before 0', after the last Avord of the sentence is spoken, all 

 will admit that Ave again think its entire content as we 

 inwardly realize its completed deliA^erauce. All vertical 

 sections made through any other parts of the diagram Avill 

 be respectively filled Avith other Avays of feeling the sen- 

 tence's meaning. Through 2, for example, the cards will 

 be the part of the object most emphatically present to the 

 mind ; through 4, the table. The stream is made higher in 

 the draAving at its end than at its beginning, because the 

 final way of feeling the content is fuller and richer than the 

 initial Avay. As Joubert says, " we only knoAv just what Ave 

 meant to say, after A\^e ha\'e said it." And as M. Y. Egger 

 remarks, " before speaking, one barely knoAvs Avhat one in- 

 tends to say, but after Avards one is filled Avith admiration 

 and surprise at liaAing said and thought it so Avell." 



This latter author seems to me to liaA'e kept at much 

 closer quarters Avith the facts than any otheY analyst of con- 

 sciousness.* But even he does not quite hit the mark, for, 

 as I understand him, he thinks that each Avord as it occu- 

 pies the mind displaces the rest of the thought's content. 

 He distinguishes the 'idea' (Avhat I haA-e called the total 



* In his work, La Parole luterieure (Paris, 1881), especially chapters 

 VI and A^^. 



