"Our mental life, like a bird's life, seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings."
— James, William (1842-1910)
Author
Date
January, 1884
Metaphor
"Our mental life, like a bird's life, seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings."
Metaphor in Context
When we take a rapid general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is the different pace of its different portions. Our mental life, like a bird's life, seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings. The rhythm of language expresses this, where every thought is expressed in a sentence, and every sentence closed by a period. The resting-places are usually occupied by sensorial imaginations of some sort, whose peculiarity is that they can be held before the mind for an indefinite time, and contemplated without changing; the places of flight are filled with thoughts of relations, static or dynamic, that for the most part obtain between the matters contemplated in the periods of comparative rest.
(pp. 2-3)
(pp. 2-3)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
James, William. Mind, Vol. 9, No. 33 (Jan., 1884), pp. 1-26. <Link to JSTOR>
Date of Entry
02/09/2010
