142 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
as composed of any single element and a remainder; and that 
the remainder may be sensed as merely a means to the end of 
amplifying or even identifying that single element. 
The facility of such a sensing appears in the following 
illustration: Catherine eats meat. This the doctor requires. 
So Catherine's meat-eating is the leading theme of conversa¬ 
tion at our table/’ in which expression the italicized words ex¬ 
hibit what was expressed by the initial sentence, in the modi¬ 
fied aspect of a specific eating—distinguished (from others) 
as eating of meat versus fish, etc.—as Catherine’s eating versus 
yours or mine. 
The inevitableness of sensing lateral thought somewhat as 
indicated, so soon as a term of lateral thought is also a term of 
central thought, is obvious, the very centralness of such a term 
investing it with a prestige or primacy unshared by its lateral 
fellows. For in my illustration the lateral idea-company con¬ 
sists at first (in “Catherine eats meat”) of a subject, a (rela¬ 
tion-forming) action and an object; but so soon as this action 
is centralized (as in “Catherine’s meat-eating is” etc.), the 
lateral trio is rather sensed as an action distinguished by its 
terms or personnel. That is, the uncentralized elements cf 
lateral thought become the satellites of what is centralized. 
(2) Its attendance by its lateral fellows. 
This, in the very nature of thought, is indispensable. For 
if, as indicated on pp. 125-126, one of a thought’s three ele¬ 
ments be omitted, what is left is not a thought. In particular, 
if the centro-lateral factor, in becoming a member of a central 
thought, should be deserted by the other members of lateral 
thought, there would no longer be a lateral thought, but only 
fragments linguistically unavailable. Thus, given the uncom¬ 
pleted central thought expressed by “The doctor wishes” and 
the completed lateral thought expressed by “Catherine to eat 
meat,” let any element of the latter—say “to eat”—become an 
element of the former, at the same time losing fellowship with 
other members of the latter—ceasing, that is, to be itself a mem¬ 
ber of the latter. Taking inventory of mental stock, as now 
