Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/257

237 THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 237 object as being thought of at different times in non-identical conscious states. This, too, will grow clearer as we proceed. Meanwhile a necessary consequence of the belief in permanent self- identical psychic facts that absent themselves and recur periodically is the Humian doctrine that our thought is composed of separate independent parts and is not a sen- sibly continuous stream. That this doctrine entirely mis- represents the natural appearances is what I next shall try to show. 3) Within each personal consciousness, thought is sensibly con- tinuous. I can only define ' continuous ' as that which is with- out breach, crack, or division. I have already said that the breach from one mind to -another is perhaps the great- est breach in nature. The only breaches that can well be conceived to occur within the limits of a single mind would either be interruptions, i^me-gaps during which the con- sciousness went out altogether to come into existence again at a later moment ; or they would be breaks in the quality, or content, of the thought, so abrupt that the segment that followed had no connection whatever with the one that went before. The proposition that within each personal consciousness thought feels continuous, means two things : 1. That even where there is a time-gap the conscious- ness after it feels as if it belonged together with the con- sciousness before it, as another part of the same self ; 2. That the changes from one moment to another in the quality of the consciousness are never absolutely abrupt. The case of the time-gaps, as the simplest, shall be taken first. And first of all, a word about time-gaps of which the consciousness may not be itself aware. On page 200 we saw that such time-gaps existed, and that they might be more numerous than is usually supposed. If the consciousness is not aware of them, it cannot feel them as interruptions. In the unconsciousness produced by nitrous oxide and other anaesthetics, in that of epilepsy and fainting, the broken edges of the sentient life may