044 PSYCHOLOGr. 



just how we felt when we said 'how' or 'notwithstandiiig.' 

 Our cousciousuess of these transitive states is shut up to 

 their own moment — hence one difficulty in introspective 

 psychologizing. 



Any state of mind which is shut up to its own moment 

 and fails to become an object for succeeding states of 

 mind, is as if it belonged to another stream of thought. Or 

 rather, it belongs only physically, not intellectually, to ila 

 own stream, forming a bridge from one segment of it to 

 another, but not being appropriated inwardly by former seg- 

 ments or appearing as part of the empirical self, in the 

 manner explained in Chapter X. All the intellectual value 

 for us of a state of mind depends on our after-memory of it. 

 Only then is it combined in a system and knowingly made 

 to contribute to a result. Only then does it cou7it for us. 

 So that the effective consciousness loe have of our states is the 

 ofter-consciousness ; and the more of this there is, the more 

 influence does the original state have, and the more perma- 

 nent a factor is it of our world. An indelibly-imprinted 

 pain may color a life ; but, as Professor Richet says : 



" To suffer for only a hundredth of a second is not to suffer at all ; 

 and for my part I would readily agree to undergo a pain, however acute 

 and intense it might be. provided it should last only a hundredth of a 

 second, and leave after it neither reverberation nor recall." * 



Not that a momentary state of consciousness need be 

 practically resultless. Far from it : such a state, though 

 absolutely unremembered, might at its own moment deter- 

 mine the transition of our thinking in a \dtal way, and de- 

 cide our action irrevocably, f But the idea of it could not 



* L'Homme et rintelligence, p. 32. 



t Professor Richet has therefore no right to say, as he does in another 

 place (Revue Philosophique, xxi. 570): " Without memory no conscious 

 sensation, irithout memory no consciousness. " All he is entitled to say is. 

 "Without memory no consciousness known outside of it.self." Of the 

 sort of consciousness tliat is an object for later states, and becomes as it 

 were permanent, he gives a good example: " Who of us. alas ! has not ex- 

 perienced a bitter and profound grief, the immense laceration cause by the 

 death of some cherished fellow-being? Well, in these great griefs the 

 present endures neither for a minute, for an hour, nor for a day, but for 

 weeks and months. The memory of the cruel moment will not efface 

 itself from consciousness. It disappears not, but remains living, present. 



