Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/245

THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 225 stating the fact most simply and with the minimum of as- sumption. As we cannot, we must simply say that thought goes on. FIVE CHARACTERS ZN" THOUGHT. How does it go on ? We notice immediately five impor- tant characters in the process, of which it shall be the duty of the present chapter to treat in a general way : 1) Every thought tends to be part of a personal con- sciousness. 2) Within each personal consciousness thought is always changing. 3) Within each personal consciousness thought is sen- sibly continuous. 4) It always appears to deal with objects independent of itself. 5) It is interested in some parts of these objects to the exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects — chooses from among them, in a word — all the while. In considering these five points successively, we shall have to plunge in medias res as regards our vocabulary, and use psychological terms which can only be adequately de- fined in later chapters of the book. But every one knows what the terms mean in a rough way ; and it is only in a rough way that we are now to take them. This chapter is like a painter's first charcoal sketch upon his canvas, in which no niceties appear. 1) Thought tends to Personal Form. When I say every thought is part of a personal con- sciousness, ' personal consciousness ' is one of the terms in question. Its meaning we know so long as no one asks us to define it, but to give an accurate account of it is the most difficult of philosophic tasks. This task we must confront in the next chapter ; here a preliminary word will suffice. In this room — this lecture-room, say — there are a mul- titude of thoughts, yours and mine, some of which cohere mutually, and some not. They are as little each-for-itself and reciprocally independent as they are all-belonging- together. They are neither : no one of them is separate,