480 PSYCIIOI.OGY. 



to know new truths about individual things. The restric- 

 tion of one's meiiuiug, moreover, tf) an individual thing, 

 probably requires even more complicated brain-processes 

 than its extension to all the instances of a kind ; and the 

 mere mystery, as such, of the knowledge, is equally great, 

 whether generals or singulars be the things known. In sum, 

 therefore, the traditional universal-worship can only be 

 called a bit of perverse sentimentalism, a philosophic ' idol 

 of the cave.' 



It may . seem hardly necessary to add (Avhat follows 

 as a matter of course from pjj. 229-237, and what has 

 been implied in our assertions all along) that nofhing can 

 he conceived tivice over without being conceived in entirely 

 different states of mind. Thus, my arm-chair is one of the 

 things of which I have a conception ; I knew it yesterday 

 and recognized it when I looked at it. But if I think of it 

 to-day as the same arm-chair which I looked at yesterday, 

 it is obvious that the very conception of it as the same is an 

 additional complication to the thought, whose inward con- 

 stitution must alter in consequence. In short, it is logically 

 impossible that the same thing should be knoiim as the same 

 by two successive copies of the same thought. As a matter of 

 fact, the thoughts by which we know that we mean the same 

 thing are apt to be very different indeed from each other. 

 We think the thing now in one context, now in another ; 

 now in a definite image, now in a symbol. Sometimes our 

 sense of its identity pertains to the mere fringe, sometimes 

 it involves the nucleus, of our thought. We never can 

 break the thought asunder and tell just which one of its bits 

 is the part that lets us know which subject is referred to ; 

 but nevertheless we always do know which of all possible 

 subjects we have in mind. Introspective psychology must 

 here throw uj) the sponge ; the fluctuations of subjective life 

 are too exqiiisite to be arrested by its coarse means. It 

 must confine itself to bearing witness to the fact that all sorts 

 of difi'erent subjective states do form the vehicle by which 

 the same is known ; and it must contradict the oj^posite 

 view. 



The ordinary Psychology of * ideas ' constantly talks as 



