The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
Here we may pause. The reader sees by this time that it makes little or
no difference in what sort of mind-stuff, in what quality of imagery,
his thinking goes on. The only images _intrinsically_ important are
the halting-places, the substantive conclusions, provisional or final,
of the thought. Throughout all the rest of the stream, the feelings of
relation are everything, and the terms related almost naught. These
feelings of relation, these psychic overtones, halos, suffusions, or
fringes about the terms, may be the same in very different systems of
imagery. A diagram may help to accentuate this indifference of the
mental means where the end is the same. Let _A_ be some experience from
which a number of thinkers start. Let _Z_ be the practical conclusion
rationally inferrible from it. One gets to the conclusion by one line,
another by another; one follows a course of English, another of German,
verbal imagery. With one, visual images predominate; with another,
tactile. Some trains are tinged with emotions, others not; some are
very abridged, synthetic and rapid, others, hesitating and broken into
many steps. But when the penultimate terms of all the trains, however
differing _inter se_, finally shoot into the same conclusion, we say
and rightly say, that all the thinkers have had substantially the same
thought. It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be
let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery
there was from that in his own.
Thought is in fact a kind of Algebra, as Berkeley long ago said, "in
which, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to
proceed right, it is not requisite that in every step each letter
suggest to your thoughts that particular quantity it was appointed to
stand for." Mr. Lewes has developed this algebra-analogy so well that I
must quote his words:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account