Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/476

 462 GUSTAV SPILLER : is no halt between point and point, whether we have two steps or ten. They follow each other uninterruptedly. Their number does not affect the nature of the process. There are many occasions in mental as in physical routine when we take a fixed but relatively round-about course. Some one asks how many days September has. His question is scarcely finished when I begin (unheard) " Thirty days hath September," (aloud) " Thirty days ". I do not ponder, nor do I answer directly. There is neither doubt nor certainty present only what has been described. We shall revert to these intermediate links. Meanwhile we wish to take a more general view. Do organised re- actions enter into thought proper ? Is there an evolution of lines of thought ? Does the process of judgment evolve like the process of writing ? Are observation and imagination subject to training? Does the training, if such there be, pursue the same lines as the training involved in trends such as writing ? However bold it may appear, we must answer the questions in the affirmative. Let us consider the reasons which induce us to take this course. Suppose a man thinks that it would be best to dismiss certain impracticable thoughts, immediately they occur, by the turning of his attention into other channels. An oppor- tunity arrives, he remembers his resolution, and carries it out. After a period of practice the resolution is forgotten or not referred to ; but whenever anything impracticable suggests itself he dismisses it immediately. The resolution forms no link between the objectionable thought and the act of dismissal. As that thought appears, so it is thrust back. There may be, after a time, entire ignorance that certain thoughts are dismissed. The man may, for instance, either deny that such is the fact ; or he may give some plausible but inaccurate explanation. As with physical activities, so with mental, a resolution need not be verbally conceived, nor need it be, at first, of wide application, nor need the sum of the consequences be apprehended. Much of a man's thought is as dim as the twilight, and hence there is often hardly anything definite to recall. An organic trend, such as the one just described, is an essential in thinking, and yet there is no perceptible difference between it and a physical activity of an organic nature. Consider another example. Some one notices that when authors say, " There are three (or four, or more) ways of accounting for this phenomenon," they are frequently wrong. So he makes it a rule to question every numerical statement. After a time his resolution forms no part of the thought