Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/376

 ASSOCIATION AND THOUGHT. 363 We have now glanced at the field in which our improved Association has to develop the various faculties of the mind, and we have seen the motive powers used by the various combatants, and the heterogeneous conditions of victory. We have seen the cause of that disorder which at every moment can be found in the most regulated minds. We have now shortly to describe the beginnings of soul-life, and to exhibit roughly the means by which Thought in the proper sense comes to exist. To give a picture of the earliest psychical condition, whether in man or the lower animals, is not my intention. Nor is this necessary for my purpose, which is to show merely in outline those steps which connect the origin and the end. The nature of the earliest stage of soul-life must be largely conjectural. It is likely that in some points our knowledge will be much increased ; but we shall always be left with certain given limits within which we must construct a .sketch that is probable but which we cannot quite verify. What we can be sure of is that any theory which begins with a derivative function, such as choice or memory, cannot possibly be true. The short account I am to give avoids, I hope, such sheer barbarisms. It is, I trust, at least psycho- logically possible. 1 In the beginning there is nothing beyond what is pre- sented, what is and is felt, or is rather felt simply. There is no memory or imagination or hope or fear or thought or will, and no perception of difference or likeness. There are in short no relations and no feelings, only feeling. It is all one blur with differences, that work and that are felt, but are not discriminated. Hence to the question, Is this life discrete or continuous, our answer is ready. It can not (for the soul) be discrete, because that implies distinction. There is not only no good evidence in favour of discreteness, but there is this argument against it. Suppose that for an outside observer sensations, as a series or as a collection of series, happened in the mind, yet, for that mind at the outset, the separation and succession would not as such -exist. If the whole were not unbroken it would at least so be given to a feeble mind, because the machinery required for the perception of succession, and of relations in general between sensations, is not yet at work and could not be at work. And, if I am told that this perception is entirely 1 I must be allowed to refer once more to my Principles of Logic. Mr. Ward's excellent article (cited above) will be found in many points to sup- port the view 1 have adopted.