134 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
on its own account in lateral relation to a yet more central; 
thought—as in “My friends expect me to desire the hook on 
the newel post.” 
Thus construed as independent—as a by-product of mental, 
activity—the incidental centrality of the lateral thought ex¬ 
hibits the present case as merely an unimportant variant of 
(2) - 
Eesuming the results obtained from the examination of the 
several possible cases, I find that any effort to increase the mem¬ 
bership of central thought is unsuccessful—and that accord¬ 
ingly the central thought as such consists of three terms only. 
LATERAL THOUGHT. 
While it was argued in the preceding section that central 
thought consists of three terms only, it is obvious that central 
thought, by so to speak omitting one of its members, can make 
room in itself for that which otherwise would be an added 
member. 
The present section aims to show that lateral thought, al¬ 
though a place be waiting for it, cannot become a member of 
central thought . 22 
To illustrate, given “I saw a passenger train strike a freight 
train,” I note that what is expressed by the infinitive phrase 
is itself a thought, the recognition and organization of whose 
details are distinctly lateral to the judgment that I see whatever 
I see. In other words, the detailed indication of what I saw 
is an excursus, as compared with seeing it. While accord¬ 
ingly, I have doubtless made the lateral thought a member of a 
larger total consisting of itself and a central thought, the la¬ 
teral thought is not yet central and therefore I cannot have made 
it a part of what is central. How the central thought begun 
by “I saw” is completed, will be examined later. 
In a sense, however, lateral thought can easily be central¬ 
ized and made a part of central thought. For instance, given 
22 The antagonism between this opinion and that which possibly is 
held by those whose syntax—or, say, their collective parsing—poses 
phrases, clauses and even sentences as subjects, objects, etc., will later 
be shown to be superficial. 
