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"From the dawn of an individual consciousness to its close, we find each successive pulse of it capable of mirroring a more and more complex object, into which all the previous pulses may themselves enter as ingredients, and be known."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Author

James, William (1842-1910)

Work Title

On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology

Date

January, 1884

Metaphor

"From the dawn of an individual consciousness to its close, we find each successive pulse of it capable of mirroring a more and more complex object, into which all the previous pulses may themselves enter as ingredients, and be known."

Metaphor in Context

The demand for atoms of feeling, which shall be real units, seems a sheer vagary, an illegitimate metaphor. Rationally, we see what perplexities it brings in its train; and empirically, no fact suggests it, for the actual contents of our minds are always representations of some kind of an ensemble. From the dawn of an individual consciousness to its close, we find each successive pulse of it capable of mirroring a more and more complex object, into which all the previous pulses may themselves enter as ingredients, and be known. There is no reason to suppose that the same feeling ever does or can recur again. The same thing may recur and be known in an indefinite number of successive feelings; but does the least proof exist that in any two of them it is represented in an identical subjective state ? All analogy points the other way. For when the identical thing recurs, it is always thought of in a fresh manner, seen under a somewhat different angle, apprehended in different relations from those in which it last appeared. And the feeling cognisant of it is the unitary feeling of it-in-those-relations, not a feeling of it-pure plus a second feeling, or a supernatural "thought," of the relations. We are so befogged by the suggestions of speech that we think a constant thing, known under a constant name, ought to be known by means of a constant mental affection. The ancient languages, with their elaborate declensions, are better guides. In them no substantive appears "pure," but varies its inflection to suit the way it is known. However it may be of the stream of real life, of the mental river the saying of Herakleitos is probably literally true: we never bathe twice in the same water there.
(p. 11)