282 



PSYCHOLOGY. 



and that of the words are thus consubstantial. They 

 are made of the same ' mind-stuff,' and form an un- 

 broken stream. Annihihxte a mind at any instant, cut 

 its thought through whilst yet uncompleted, and examine 

 the object present to the cross-section thus suddenly 

 made ; you will find, not the bald word in process of ut- 

 terance, but that word suffused with the whole idea. The 

 word may be so loud, as M. Egger would say, that we 

 cannot teU just how its suffusion, as such, feels, or how it 

 differs from the suffusion of the next word. But it does 

 differ ; and we maybe sure that, could we see into the brain, 

 we should find the same processes active through the entire 

 sentence in different degrees, each one in turn becoming 

 maximally excited and then yielding the momentary verbal 

 ' kernel,' to the thought's content, at other times being only 

 sub-excited, and then combining with the other sub-excited 

 processes to give the overtone or fringe.* 



We may illustrate this by a farther 

 development of tlie diagram on p. 279. 

 Let the objective content of any ver- 

 tical section through the stream be 

 represented no longer by a line, but by 

 a plane figure, highest opposite whatever part of the object 

 is most prominent in consciousness 

 at the moment when the section is 

 made. This part, in verbal thought, 

 will usually be some word. A series 

 of sections 1-1', taken at the moments 

 1, 2, 3, would then look like this: 

 The horizontal breadth stands for the entire object 

 in each of the figures ; the height 

 of the curve above each jDart of 

 that object marks the relative 

 prominence of that part in the 

 thought. At the moment symbol- 

 ized by the first figure pack is the 

 prominent j)art ; in the third figure it is table, etc. 



* The nearest approach (with which I am acquainted) to the doctrine 

 set forth here is in 0. Liebmann's Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, pp. 

 427-438. 



The pack of cards is on the table. 

 Fig. 80. 



The pack of cards is on the table. 

 Fig. 31. 



The pack of cards is on the table. 

 Fig. 32. 



