Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/34

22 WILLIAM JAMES. as we call the kernel, can, then, by virtue of this principle, be thought in widely differing ways. Some of these ways are complete ways, the others are relatively incomplete ways. As a rule, the more substantive and sensational a way is, the more complete we usually suppose it to be. When now, as psychologists, we undertake to describe any one^of these ways of thinking, we call them all "thoughts about that reality," ticketing them with its substantive name* For instance, whether I say "I write with steel pens," having such a pen in my hand, and seeing it move over the paper; or whether I say "I write with them," in a con- versation whose general topic is steel-pens ; or whether I say " Quills are better"; or whether I simply intend to say any one of these things, but no image verbal or other arises, because my attention is suddenly diverted ; whichever of these facts occur, most people would describe my mental state as "thought about steel-pens". They would name a substantive kernel, and call that the "object" of each of the several thoughts. And the professed psychologists would agree with them. But the psychologists would then begin f as the laymen do not, to wonder how thought can be " about " an " object," which may be present to the thought neither in its own sensible shape, nor by its name, nor even by a pronoun, or any sort of an articulate representative what- ever for these seem to be the predicaments of the last three thoughts about the pen. And the psychologists would then after their several fashions spin ingenious theories as to the typical and normal mode of " presence " to the mind of the "object" of its thoughts; each one finding in some one of the cases observed a warrant for his own peculiar views. The whole puzzle arises from the wrong mode of describing the several cases, by which the layman and the psychologist alike substitute the "reality," which is their own object, and which happens to be also the substantive kernel of the object of the first thought instanced, for the several objects, of the other three thoughts. Clearing up our ideas of " the object " brings us out of the wood. The object of any thought is its entire content or deliver- ance, neither more nor less. It is a vicious use of speech to take out a substantive kernel from its content and call that its object ; and it is an equally vicious use of speech to add a substantive kernel not articulately included in its content, and to call that its object. Yet either one of these two sins we commit, whenever we content ourselves with saying that a given thought is simply " about " a certain topic, or that that topic is its " object ". The object of my thought in the