The Principles of Psychology, Vols. 1-2

" The proximate components of Mind are of two broadly-contrasted kinds— Feelings and the relations between feelings. Among the members of each group there exist multitudinous unlikeuesses, many of which are extremely strong; but such unliken esses are small compared with those which distinguish members of the one group from members of the other. Let us, in the first place, consider what are the characters which all Feel ings have in common, and what are the characters which all Relations between feelings have in common.

"Each feeling, as we here define it, is any portion of consciousness which occupies a place sufficiently large to give it a perceivable individ uality; which has its individuality marked off from adjacent portions of consciousness by qualitative contrasts; and which, when introspectively contemplated, appears to be homogeneous. These are the essentials. Obviously if, under introspection, a state of consciousness is decomposable into unlike parts that exist either simultaneously or successively, it is not one feeling but two or more. Obviously if it is indistinguishable from an adjacent portion of consciousness, it forms one with that portion — is not an individual feeling, but part of one. And obviously if it does not occupy in consciousness an appreciable area, or an appreciable duration, it cannot be known as a feeling.

"A Relation between feelings is, on the contrary, characterized by occupying no appreciable part of consciousness. Take away the terms it unites, and it disappears along with them; having no independent place, no individuality of its own. It is true that, under an ultimate analysis, what we call a relation proves to be itself a kind of feeling— the momen tary feeling accompanying the transition from one conspicuous feeling to an adjacent conspicuous feeling. And it is true that, notwithstanding its extreme brevity, its qualitative character is appreciable; for relations are (as we shall hereafter see) distinguishable from one another only by the unlikenesses of the feelings which accompany the momentary transitions. Each relational feeling may, in fact, be regarded as one of those nervous shocks which we suspect to be the units of composition of feelings; and, though instantaneous, it is known as of greater or less strength, and as taking place with greater or less facility. But the contrast between these relational feelings and what we ordinarily call feelings is so strong that we must class them apart. Their extreme brevity, their small variety, and their dependence on the terms they unite, differentiate them in an unmis takable way.

" Perhaps it will be well to recognize more fully the truth that this dis portant and just as cognitive as they, and just as much unrecognized by the traditional sensationalist and intellectualist philosophies of mind. The first fails to find them at all, the second finds their cognitive function, but denies that anything in the way of feeling has a share in bringing it about. Examples will make clear what these inarticu late psychoses, due to waxing and waning excitements of the brain, are like.*

Suppose three successive persons say to us: 'Wait!' ' Hark ! ' ' Look ! ' Our consciousness is thrown into tiuction cannot be absolute. Besides admitting that, as an element of consciousness, a relation is a momentary feeling, we must also admit that just as a relation can have no existence apart from the feelings which form its terms, so a feeling can exist only by relations to other feelings which limit it in space or time or both. Strictly speaking, neither a feeling nor a relation is an independent element of consciousness : there is throughout a dependence such that the appreciable areas of consciousness occupied by feelings can no more possess individualities apart from the relations which link them, than these relations can possess individualities apart from the feelings they link. The essential distinction between the two, then, appears to be that whereas a relational feeling is a portion of consciousness inseparable into parts, a feeling, ordinarily so called, is a portion of con sciousness that admits imaginary division into like parts which are related to one another in sequence or coexistence. A feeling proper is either made up of like parts that occupy time, or it is made up of like parts that occupy space, or both. In any case, a feeling proper is an aggregate of related like parts, while a relational feeling is undecomposable. And this is exactly the contrast between the two which must result if, as we have inferred, feelings are composed of units of feelings, or shocks'."

* M. Paulhan (Revue Philosophique, xx. 455-6), after speaking of the faint mental images of objects and emotions, says: " We find other vaguer states still, upon which attention seldom rests, except in persons who by nature or profession are addicted to internal observation. It is even diffi cult to name them precisely, for they are little known and not classed ; but we may cite as an example of them that peculiar impression which we feel when, strongly preoccupied by a certain subject, we nevertheless are engaged with, and have our attention almost completely absorbed by, mat ters quite disconnected therewithal. We do not then exactly think of the object of our preoccupation; we do not represent it in a clear manner; and yet our mind is not as it would be without this preoccupation. Its object, absent from consciousness, is nevertheless represented there by a peculiar unmistakable impression, which often persists long and is a strong feeling, although so obscure for our intelligence." " A mental sign of the kind is the unfavorable disposition left in our mind towards an individual by painul incidents erewhile experienced and now perhaps forgotten. The sign emains, but is not understood; its definite meaning is lost." (P. 458.)

three quite different attitudes of expectancy, although no definite object is before it in any one of the three cases. Leaving out different actual bodily attitudes, and leav ing out the reverberating images of the three words, which are of course diverse, probably no one will deny the exist ence of a residual conscious affection, a sense of the direc tion from which an impression is about to come, although no positive impression is yet there. Meanwhile we have no names for the psychoses in question but the names hark, look, and wait.

Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein ; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this singularly definite gap acts immediately so as to negate them. They do not fit into its mould. And the gap of one word does not feel like the gap of another, all empty of content as both might seem necessarily to be when described as gaps. When I vainly try to recall the name of Spalding, my consciousness is far removed from what it is when 1 vainly try to recall the name of Bowles. Here some ingen ious persons will say : " How can the two consciousnesses be different when the terms which might make them differ ent are not there ? All that is there, so long as the effort to recall is vain, is the bare effort itself. How should that differ in the two cases ? You are making it seem to differ by prematurely filling it out with the different names, although these, by the hypothesis, have not yet come. Stick to the two efforts as they are, without naming them after facts not yet existent, and you'll be quite unable to designate any point in which they differ." Designate, truly enough. We can only designate the difference by borrow ing the names of objects not yet in the mind. Which is to say that our psychological vocabulary is wholly inadequate to name the differences that exist, even such strong differ ences as these. But namelessness is compatible with existence. There are innumerable consciousnesses of

emptiness, no one of which taken in itself has a name, but all different from each other. The ordinary way is to assume that they are all emptinesses of consciousness, and so the same state. But the feeling of an absence is toto coelo other than the absence of a feeling. It is an intense feel ing. The rhythm of a lost word may be there without a sound to clothe it ; or the evanescent sense of something which is the initial vowel or consonant may mock us fit fully, without growing more distinct. Every one must know the tantalizing effect of the blank rhythm of some forgotten verse, restlessly dancing in one's mind, striving to be filled out with words.

Again, what is the strange difference between an expe rience tasted for the first time and the same experience recognized as familiar, as having been enjoyed before, though we cannot name it or say where or when ? A tune, an odor, a flavor sometimes carry this inarticulate feeling of their familiarity so deep into our consciousness that we are fairly shaken by its mysterious emotional power. But strong and characteristic as this psychosis is — it probably is due to the submaximal excitement of widespreading associational brain-tracts — the only name we have for all its shadings is ' sense of familiarity.'

When we read such phrases as ' naught but,' ' either one or the other,' 'a is b, but,' 'although it is, neverthe less,' ' it is an excluded middle, there is no tertium quid,' and a host of other verbal skeletons of logical relation, is it true that there is nothing more in our minds than the words themselves as they pass ? What then is the mean ing of the words which we think we understand as we read ? What makes that meaning different in one phrase from what it is in the other? 'Who?' 'When?' 'Where?' Is the difference of felt meaning in these interrogatives nothing more than their difference of sound? And is it not (just like the difference of sound itself) known and understood in an affection of consciousness correlative to it, though so impalpable to direct examination ? Is not the same true of such negatives as ' no,' ' never ' ' not

ing but signs of direction in thought, of which direction we nevertheless have an acutelj discriminative sense, though no definite sensorial image plays any part in it whatsoever. Sensorial images are stable psychic facts; we can hold them still and look at them as long as we like. These bare images of logical movement, on the contrary, are psychic transitions, always on the wing, so to speak, and not to be glimpsed except in flight. Their function is to lead from one set of images to another. As they pass, we feel both the waxing and the waning images in a way altogether peculiar and a way quite different from the way of their full presence. If we try to hold fast the feeling of direc tion, the full presence comes and the feeling of direction is lost. The blank verbal scheme of the logical movement gives us the fleeting sense of the movement as we read it, quite as well as does a rational sentence awakening defi nite imaginations by its words.

What is that first instantaneous glimpse of some one's meaning which we have, when in vulgar phrase we say we ' twig ' it ? Surely an altogether specific affection of our mind. And has the reader never asked himself what kind of a mental fact is his intention of saying a thing before he has said it ? It is an entirely definite intention, distinct from all other intentions, an absolutely distinct state of consciousness, therefore ; and yet how much of it consists of definite sensorial images, either of words or of things? Hardly anything ! Linger, and the words and things come into the mind ; the anticipatory intention, the divination is there no more. But as the words that replace it arrive, it welcomes them successively and calls them right if they agree with it, it rejects them and calls them wrong if they do not. It has therefore a nature of its own of the most positive sort, and yet what can we say about it without using words that belong to the later mental facts that replace it ? The intention to-say -so-and-so is the only name it can receive. One may admit that a good third of our psychic life consists in these rapid premonitory perspective views of schemes of thought not yet articulate. How comes it about that a man reading something aloud for the first time is able immediately to emphasize all his words

aright, unless from the very first he have a sense of at least the form of the sentence yet to come, which sense is fused with his consciousness of the present word, and modi fies its emphasis in his mind so as to make him give it the proper accent as he utters it ? Emphasis of this kind is almost altogether a matter of grammatical construction. If we read ( no more ' we expect presently to come upon a 1 than'; if we read ' however ' at the outset of a sentence it is a ' yet,' a ' still,' or a ' nevertheless,' that we expect. A noun in a certain position demands a verb in a certain mood and number, in another position it expects a relative pronoun. Adjectives call for nouns, verbs for adverbs, etc., etc. And this foreboding of the coming grammatical scheme combined with each successive uttered word is so practically accurate that a reader incapable of understanding four ideas of the book he is reading aloud, can nevertheless read it with the most delicately modulated expression of intelligence.

Some will interpret these facts by calling them all cases in which certain images, by laws of association, awaken others so very rapidly that we think afterwards we felt the very tendencies of the nascent images to arise, before they were actually there. For this school the only possible materials of consciousness are images of a perfectly definite nature. Tendencies exist, but they are facts for the outside psychol ogist rather than for the subject of the observation. The tendency is thus a psychical zero ; only its results are felt

Now what I contend for, and accumulate examples to show, is that ' tendencies ' are not only descriptions from without, but that they are among the objects of the stream, which is thus aware of them from within, and must be described as in very large measure constituted of. feelings of tendency, often so vague that we are unable to name them at all. It is, in short, the re-instatement of the vague to its proper place in our mental life which I am so anxious to press on the attention. Mr. Galton and Prof. Huxley have, as we shall see in Chapter XVIII, made one step in advance in exploding the ridiculous theory of Hume and Berkeley that we can have no images but of perfectly definite things. Another is made in the overthrow of the equally ridiculous

notion that, whilst simple objective qualities are revealed to our knowledge in subjective feelings, relations are not. But these reforms are not half sweeping and radical enough. What must be admitted is that the definite images of tra ditional psychology form but the very smallest part of our minds as they actually live. The traditional psychology, talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other moulded forms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook, Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds and escorts it, — or rather that is fused into one with it and has become bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh ; leaving it, it is true, an image of the same thing it was before, but making it an image of that thing newly taken and freshly understood.

What is that shadowy scheme of the ' form ' of an opera, play, or book, which remains in our mind and on which we pass judgment when the actual thing is done V What is our notion of a scientific or philosophical system ? Great thinkers have vast premonitory glimpses of schemes of relation between terms, which hardly even as verbal images enter the mind, so rapid is the whole process.* We all of us have this permanent consciousness of whither our thought is going. It is a feeling like any other, a feeling

* Mozart describes thus his manner of composing : First bits and crumbs of the piece come and gradually join together in his mind ; then the soul getting warmed to the work, the thing grows more and more, " and I spread it out broader and clearer, and at last it gets almost finished in my head, even when it is a long piece, so that I can see the whole of it at a single glance in my mind, as if it were a beautiful painting or a handsome human being ; in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as a succession — the way it must come later — but all at once, as it were. ]( is a rare feast ! All the inventing and making goes on in me as in a beau tiful strong dream. But the best of all is the hearing of it all at once,''

of what thoughts are next to arise, before they have arisen. This field of view of consciousness varies very much in extent, depending largely on the degree of mental freshness or fatigue. When very fresh, our minds carry an immense horizon with them. The present image shoots its perspec tive far before it, irradiating in advance the regions in which lie the thoughts as yet unborn. Under ordinary conditions the halo of felt relations is much more circumscribed. And in states of extreme brain-fag the horizon is narrowed almost to the passing word, — the associative machinery, however, providing for the next word turning up in orderly sequence, until at last the tired thinker is led to some kind of a conclusion. At certain moments he may find himself doubting whether his thoughts have not come to a full stop ; but the vague sense of a plus ultra makes him ever struggle on towards a more definite expression of what it may be ; whilst the slowness of his utterance shows how difficult, under such conditions, the labor of thinking must be.

The awareness that our definite thought has come to a stop is an entirely different thing from the awareness that our thought is definitively completed. The expression of the latter state of mind is the falling inflection which be tokens that the sentence is ended, and silence. The ex pression of the former state is ' hemming and hawing,' or else such phrases as ' et cetera,' or 'and so forth.' But notice that every part of the sentence to be left incomplete feels differently as it passes, by reason of the premonition we have that we shall be unable to end it. The ' and so forth ' casts its shadow back, and is as integral a part of the object of the thought as the distinctest of images would be.

Again, when we use a common noun, such as man, in a universal sense, as signifying all possible men, we are fully aware of this intention on our part, and distinguish it care fully from our intention when we mean a certain group of men, or a solitary individual before us. In the chapter on Conception we shall see how important this difference of intention is. It casts its influence over the whole of the sentence, both before and after the spot in which the word man is used.

Nothing is easier than to symbolize all these facts in terms of brain-action. Just as the echo of the whence-, the sense of the starting point of our thought, is probably due to the dying excitement of processes but a moment since vividly aroused ; so the sense of the whither, the fore taste of the terminus, must be due to the waxing excite ment of tracts or processes which, a moment hence, will be the cerebral correlatives of some thing which a moment hence will be vividly present to the thought. Represented by a curve, the neurosis underlying consciousness must at any moment be like this :

Each point of the horizontal line stands for some brain-tract or process. The height of the curve above the line stands for the intensity of the process. All the processes are present, in the intensities shown by the curve. But those before the latter's apex ivere more in tense a moment ago ; those after it iviU be more intense a moment hence. If I recite a, b, c, d, e,f, g, at the moment of uttering c?, neither a, b, c, nor e, /, g, are out of my consciousness altogether, but both, after their respective fashions, ' mix their dim lights ' with the stronger one of the d, because their neuroses are both awake in some degree.

There is a common class of mistakes which shows how brain-processes begin to be excited before the thoughts attached to them are due — due, that is, in substantive and vivid form. I mean those mistakes of speech or writing by which, in Dr. Carpenter's words, " we mispronounce or misspell a word, by introducing into it a letter or syllable of some other, whose turn is shortly to come ; or, it may be, the whole of the anticipated word is substituted for the one

which ought to have been expressed."* In these cases one of two things must have happened: either some local accident of nutrition blocks the process that is due, so that other processes discharge that ought as yet to be but nascently aroused; or some opposite local accident furthers the latter processes and makes them explode before their time. In the chapter on Association of Ideas, numerous instances will come before us of the actual effect on con sciousness of neuroses not yet maximally aroused.

It is just like the ' overtones ' in music. Different in. struments give the ' same note,' but each in a different voice, because each gives more than that note, namely, vari ous upper harmonics of it which differ from one instrument to another. They are not separately heard by the ear ; they blend with the fundamental note, and suffuse it, and alter it ; and even so do the waxing and waning brainprocesses at every moment blend with and suffuse and alter the psychic effect of the processes which are at their cul minating point.

Let us use the words psychic overtone, suffusion, or fringe, to designate the influence of a faint brain-process upon our thought, as it makes it aware of relations and objects but dimly perceived. f * Mental Physiology, § 236. Dr. Carpenter's explanation differs materi ally from that given in the text. f Cf. also S. Strieker : Vorlesungen tlber allg. u. exp. Pathologic (1879), pp. 462-3, 501, 547; Romanes: Origin of Human Faculty, p. 82. It is so hard to make one's self clear that I may advert to a misunderstanding of my views by the late Prof. Thos. Maguire of Dublin (Lectures on Philoso phy, 1885). This author considers that by the ' fringe ' I mean some sort -»f psychic material by which sensations in themselves separate are made to cohere together, and wittily says that I ought to " see that uniting sensa tions by their ' fringes ' is more vague than to construct the universe out of oysters by platting their beards " (p. 211). But the fringe, as I use the word, means nothing like this ; it is part of the object cognized,— substantive Dualities and things appearing to the mind in & fringe of relations. Some parts —the transitive parts— of our stream of thought cognize the relations rather than the things ; but both the transitive and the substantive parts form one continuous stream, with no discrete ' sensations ' in it such as Prof. MK guire supposes, and supposes ip,e to suppose, to be their

states of mind, we may feel assured that the difference be tween those that are mere * acquaintance,' and those that are ' knowledges-a&ow£ ' (see p. 221) is reducible almost entirely to the absence or presence of psychic fringes or overtones. Knowledge about a thing is knowledge of its relations. Acquaintance with it is limitation to the bare impression which it makes. Of most of its relations we are only aware in the penumbral nascent way of a ' fringe ' of unarticulated affinities about it. And, before passing to the next topic in order, I must say a little of this sense of affinity, as itself one of the most interesting features of the subjective stream.

In all our voluntary thinking there is some topic or subject about which all the members of the thought revolve. Half the time this topic is a problem, a gap we cannot yet fill with a definite picture, word, or phrase, but which, in the manner described some time back, influences us in an intensely active and determinate psychic way. Whatever may be the images and phrases that pass before us, we feel their relation to this aching gap. To fill it up is our thoughts' destiny. Some bring us nearer to that consum mation. Some the gap negates as quite irrelevant. Each swims in a felt fringe of relations of which the aforesaid gap is the term. Or instead of a definite gap we may merely carry a mood of interest about with us. Then, however vague the mood, it will still act in the same way, throwing a mantle of felt affinity over such representa tions, entering the mind, as suit it, and tingeing with the feeling of tediousness or discord all those with which it has no concern.