498 PSYCHOLOOT. 



ground for inferring that A and B difter must be that, 

 whilst A is an m, B is an n, and that m and n are seen to 

 differ. Let us then neglect the complex cases, the A's and 

 the B's, and go back to the study of the unanalyzable j)er- 

 ception of difference between their signs, the m's and the 

 w's, when these are seemingly simple terms. 



I said that in their immediate succession the shock of 

 their difference was felt. It is felt repeatedly when we go 

 back and forth from m to n ; and we make a point of get- 

 ting it thus repeatedly (by alternating our attention at least) 

 whenever the shock is so slight as to be with difficulty per- 

 ceived. But in ad(Jjtion to being felt at the brief instant 

 of transition, the difference also feels as if incorporated 

 and taken up into the second term, which feels ' different- 

 from-the-first ' even while it lasts. It is obvious that the 

 * second term ' of the mind in this case is not bald ??, but 

 a ver}' complex object ; and that the sequence is not sim- 

 ply first ';>?,' then ^difference,'' then '«'; but first * m,' 

 then ^difference,' then ' n-different-fro7n-m.' The several 

 thoughts, however, to which these three several objects are 

 revealed, are three ordinary ' segments ' of the mental 

 ' stream,' 



As our brains and minds are actually made, it is impos- 

 sible to get certain w?'s and n's in immediate sequence and 

 to keep them pure. If kept jiure, it would mean that they 

 remained uncompared. With us, inevitably, by a mechan- 

 ism which we as yet fail to understand, the shock of differ- 

 ence is felt between them, and the second object is not n 

 pure, but n-as-different-/rom-m.* It is no more a paradox 

 that under these conditions this cognition of m and n in 

 mutual relation should occur, than that under other condi- 

 tions the cognition of w?'s or ?i's simple quality should 

 occur. But as it has been treated as a paradox, and as a 

 sj^iritual agent, not itself a portion of the stream, has been 



* lu cases where the difference is slight, we may need, as previously 

 remarked, to get the dying phase of 7i as well as of m before 7i-different- 

 from-m is distinctly felt. In that case the inevitably successive feelings 

 (as far as we can sever what is so continuous) would be four, m, difference, 

 n, n-different-from-m. This slight additional complication alters not a whit 

 the essential features of the case. 



