第53章

While the components of each current cohere strongly with their neighboursof the same current, most of them do not cohere strongly with those of theother current. Or, more correctly, we may say that the vivid current unceasinglyflows on quite undisturbed by the faint current; and that the faint current,though often largely determined by the vivid, and always to some extent carriedwith it, may yet maintain a substantial independence, letting the vivid currentslide by. We will glance at the interactions of the two. Save in peculiarcases hereafter to be dealt with, the faint manifestations fail to modifyin the slightest degree the vivid manifestations. Those vivid manifestations,which I know as components of a landscape, as surgings of the sea, as whistlingsof the wind, as movements of vehicles and people, are absolutely uninfluencedby the accompanying faint manifestations which I know as my ideas. On theother hand, the current of faint manifestations is always perturbed by thevivid. Frequently it consists mainly of faint manifestations which clingto the vivid ones, and are carried with them as they pass, memories and suggestionsas we call them. At other times when, as we say, absorbed in thought, thedisturbance of the faint current is but superficial. The vivid manifestationsdrag after them such few faint manifestations only as constitute recognitionsof them: to each impression adhere certain ideas which make up the interpretationof it as such or such, and sometimes not even this cohesion happens. Butthere meanwhile flows on a main stream of faint manifestations wholly unrelatedto the vivid manifestations -- what we call a reverie, perhaps, or it maybe a process of reasoning. And occasionally, during the state known as absenceof mind, this current of faint manifestations so far predominates that thevivid current scarcely affects it at all. Hence, these concurrent seriesof manifestations, each coherent with itself longitudinally and transverselyhave but a partial coherence with one another. The vivid series is quiteunmoved by its passing neighbour; and though the faint series is always tosome extent moved by the adjacent vivid series, and is often carried bodilyalong with the vivid series, it may nevertheless become in great measureseparate.

Yet another all-important difference has to be named. The conditions underwhich these two orders of manifestations occur, are unlike; and the conditionsof occurrence of each order belong to itself. Whenever the immediate antecedentsof vivid manifestations are traceable, they prove to be other vivid manifestations;and though we cannot say that the antecedents of the faint manifestationsalways lie wholly among themselves, yet the essential ones do. These statementsneed a good deal of explanation. Changes among the motions and sounds andaspects of what we call objects, are either changes that follow certain othermotions, sounds, and aspects, or changes of which the antecedents are unapparent.

Some of the vivid manifestations, however, occur only under conditions thatseem of another order. Those known as colours and visible forms presupposeopen eyes. But what is opening of the eyes, translated into the terms weare here using? Literally it is an occurrence of certain vivid manifestations.

The preliminary idea of opening the eyes does, indeed, consist of faint manifestations,but the act of opening them consists of vivid manifestations. And the likeis still more obviously the case with those movements of the eyes and thehead which are followed by new groups of vivid manifestations. Similarlywith the antecedents to the vivid manifestations which we distinguish astouch and pressure. All the changeable ones have for their conditions ofoccurrence certain vivid manifestations called sensations of muscular tension.

It is true that the conditions to these conditions are manifestations ofthe faint order -- those ideas of muscular actions which precede muscularactions. And here arises a complication, for what is called the body, ispresent to us as a set of vivid manifestations connected with the faint manifestationsin a special way-a way such that in it alone certain vivid manifestationsare capable of being produced by faint manifestations. There must be named,too, the kindred exception furnished by the emotions -- an exception which,however, serves to enforce the general proposition. For while it is truethat the emotions must be classed as vivid manifestations, which admit ofbeing produced by the faint manifestations we call ideas; it is also truethat because the conditions to their occurrence thus exist among the faintmanifestations, we regard them as belonging to the same general aggregateas the faint manifestations -- do not class them with such other vivid manifestationsas colours, sounds pressures, smells, etc. But omitting these peculiar vividmanifestations which we know as muscular tensions and emotions, we may sayof the rest, that their antecedents are manifestations belonging to theirown class. In the parallel current we find a parallel truth. Though manymanifestations of the faint order are partly caused by manifestations ofthe vivid order, which call up memories, as we say, and suggest inferences,yet these results mainly depend on certain antecedents belonging to the faintorder. A cloud drifts across the Sun, and may or may not change the currentof ideas: the inference that it will rain may arise, or the previous trainof thought may continue -- a difference determined by conditions among thethoughts. Again, such power as a vivid manifestation has of causing certainfaint manifestations depends on the pre-existence of appropriate faint manifestations.