428 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts , and Letters. 
fluence of the latter you experience, I suppose, a mental reaction, 
which I wish to examine with some care, as it seems to me to give 
the key to the solution of the interrogative problem. 
To appreciate this reaction, let it first, of all be remembered 
(see p. 367) that every thought may be seen by the mental eye 
as a combination of any single constituent and a remainder. In 
the thought expressed by “x killed Lincoln/’ the very indefinite¬ 
ness of the “x” antagonizing the definiteness of “killed Lin¬ 
coln/’ tends to pose the. thought before your mind as consisting 
of an indefinite idea and a. definite remainder. This tendency 
is strengthened by the fact, that the indefinite idea, having al¬ 
ready served in a former thought, appears in the present thought 
as old material, while what is offered bv “killed Lincoln” is new. 
In short, regarding thought as a mental unit, you specially re¬ 
gard the unlit of the moment as made up of two sub-units, respec¬ 
tively expressed by “x” and “killed Lincoln.” Of these, you 
probably accept the latter without disfavor. With the one ex¬ 
pressed by “x” you are, I suppose, dissatisfied as much as I. 
Moreover each of us would like to pass to the more agreeable 
mood of satisfaction, as the sequel to a successful restoration of 
our defective mental statuary. The question is: Can you effect 
the restoration % 1 think you can ; indeed, I think you must. 
I continue, of course, to assume that what is needed for the 
restoration, is part of your mental stock—that you very well 
know that Booth killed Lincoln. In all your knowledge there is, 
moreover, no other item which can be confused with this—none 
such, for instance, as Smith or Brown or Robinson killed Lin¬ 
coln. If then the present factor of thought, expressed by 
“killed Lincoln,” can by any means suggest the absent factor, 
there is no* danger of mistake; for there is nothing but, Booth to 
be suggested. 
That, in a rightly working mind, the absent factor Booth 
will be suggested, is, I believe, the consensus of theory and ex¬ 
perience. Whether we say that the explosion of the brain cells 
which register “killed Lincoln,” is followed by an overflow of 
energy along a well-worn channel to* the cells which register 
Booth, exploding them, and projecting into consciousness the 
idea named by Booth—or content ourselves with saying that 
the entrance into* mind of one thought-factor entails, by associa¬ 
tion of ideas, the entrance of the other factor—to you, who have 
already formed the thought expressed by “Booth killed Lin- 
