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 I vainly try to recall
the name of Bowles. There are innumerable consciousnesses of _want_, no
one of which taken in itself has a name, but all different from each
other. Such a feeling of want is _toto cœlo_ other than a want of
feeling: it is an intense feeling. 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 fitfully, 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.
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. 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 modifies its
emphasis in his mind so as to make him give it the proper accent as he
utters it? Emphasis of this kind almost altogether depends on
grammatical construction. If we read 'no more,' we expect presently a
'than'; if we read 'however,' it is a 'yet,' a 'still,' or a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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