Much of our thinking consists of trains of images suggested one by
another, of a sort of spontaneous revery of which it seems likely enough
that the higher brutes should be capable. This sort of thinking leads
nevertheless to rational conclusions, both practical and theoretical.
The links between the terms are either 'contiguity' or 'similarity,' and
with a mixture of both these things we can hardly be very incoherent. As
a rule, in this sort of irresponsible thinking, the terms which fall to
be coupled together are empirical concretes, not abstractions. A sunset
may call up the vessel's deck from which I saw one last summer, the
companions of my voyage, my arrival into port, etc.; or it may make me
think of solar myths, of Hercules' and Hector's funeral pyres, of Homer
and whether he could write, of the Greek alphabet, etc. If habitual
contiguities predominate, we have a prosaic mind; if rare contiguities,
or similarities, have free play, we call the person fanciful, poetic, or
witty. But the thought as a rule is of matters taken in their entirety.
Having been thinking of one, we find later that we are thinking of
another, to which we have been lifted along, we hardly know how. If an
abstract quality figures in the procession, it arrests our attention
but for a moment, and fades into something else; and is never very
abstract. Thus, in thinking of the sun-myths, we may have a gleam of
admiration at the gracefulness of the primitive human mind, or a moment
of disgust at the narrowness of modern interpreters. But, in the main,
we think less of qualities than of concrete things, real or possible,
just as we may experience them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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