Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/21

 ON SOME OMISSIONS OF INTROSPECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 9 unwilling to admit the supernatural principle, end with the philosophical melancholy of a Hume at the conclusion of his treatise, or with Mill's dismal confession of failure at the close of his chapter on the Psychological Theory of Mind. But if we descend to the root of the trouble and deny the initial hypothesis, all difficulties and all need of discussion disappear at a stroke. And in truth there is no evidence whatever for supposing the pure atomic ideas of red and yellow, and the other elements of mental structure, to exist at all. They are abstractions, mere fictitious psychic counterparts to those elementary qualities of which we come to believe the real world is made up, but no one of them is an actual psychic fact. Whenever an elementary quality of the outer world is thought by us, the vehicle of the thinking is a feeling representing a highly complex object, that quality in relation with something else. Let us consider the mental stream and try to see what its constituents are like. Every one will admit that, as he thinks, a procession of varying objects, now simple, now complex in the extreme, passes before his attention, and that each one of these objects, whatever be its character, is accompanied by some sort of modification of his mental condition, of his subjective feeling, of the wie ihm zu Muthe as Lotze would say. Even the advocates of an eternally identical Ego will confess that it must know its objects, qt'.d changing, in and by and through changing states, affections, acts, or attitudes, which are modifications, however superficial, of its identity. We can then represent, if not the whole, at least the changing part of the subjec- tive stream by a continuous line, and if, as psychologists, we wish to isolate any portion of it for examination, we can symbolise that isolation by making cross-strokes. But, as Mr. Hodgson has so admirably shown, the cross-strokes do not pre-exist. They are " artcfacta "; and the natural function of every segment of the line is to lead continuously into the next segment and carry consciousness along un- broken. Now what differences obtain between the segments of the subjective stream between the intervals scored off upon the line ? Their differences of character must at least be as great as the differences of the objects they severally are aware of, or help to make known, whichever form of expression one prefer ; otherwise there would be a difference of perception without any subjective sign or symptom, which is absurd. If then the fact known be the-sequeuce-of-green-to-red-