The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
We may illustrate this by a farther development of the diagram on p.
279. Let the objective content of any vertical section through the
stream be represented no longer by a line, but by a plane figure,
highest opposite whatever part of the object is most prominent in
consciousness at the moment when the section is made. This part, in
verbal thought, will usually be some word. A series of sections 1-1',
taken at the moments 1, 2, 3, would then look like this: horizontal
breadth stands for the entire object in each of the figures; the
height of the curve above each part of that object marks the relative
prominence of that part in the thought. At the moment symbolized by the
first figure _pack_ is the prominent part; in the third figure it is
_table_, etc.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.]
We can easily add all these plane sections together to make a solid,
one of whose solid dimensions will represent time, whilst a cut across
this at right angles will give the thought's content at the moment when
the cut is made. Let it be the thought, 'I am the same I that I was
yesterday.' If at the fourth moment of time we annihilate the thinker
and examine how the last pulsation of his consciousness was made, we
find that it was an awareness of the whole content with _same_ most
prominent, and the other parts of the thing known relatively less
distinct. With each prolongation of the scheme in the time-direction,
the summit of the curve of section would come further towards the end
of the sentence. If we make a solid wooden frame with the sentence
written on its front, and the time-scale on one of its sides, if
we spread flatly a sheet of India rubber over its top, on which
rectangular co-ordinates are painted, and slide a smooth ball under
the rubber in the direction from 0 to 'yesterday,' the bulging of the
membrane along this diagonal at successive moments will symbolize the
changing of the thought's content in a way plain enough, after what
has been said, to call for no more explanation. Or to express it in
cerebral terms, it will show the relative intensities, at successive
moments, of the several nerve-processes to which the various parts of
the thought-object correspond.
* * * * *
The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn
in this first rough description of its stream is that
5) _It is always interested more in one part of its object than in
another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks._
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