Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/108

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. III.

remain stereotyped. His book is full of examples that can be explained in no other way,—how else account, for example, that to a certain person Wednesday always appears like a folding pocket-comb with a mirror in its handle? Yet such associations never appear as definite memories, and hardly ever as merely external connexions, like that of the sound of a letter with its appearance as written. The connexion seems one of inner congruity. "Il faut avoir l'esprit mal fait et de travers" says one of M. F.'s subjects, "to think a certain word as of another color than that in which it appears to me." This points strongly to the need of supposing an underlying bond of similar organic tone aroused. But on all these matters the book itself must be consulted. It is full of acute psychological reflection, and must be described as eminently thorough, judicious, and readable. It will fill the reader with a wondering sense of the complication of our mental workshop, and, by increasing his insight into the extraordinary diversities of inner scenery, so to speak, by which different men's minds are characterized, it will tone down his hopes, if he ever had any, of a general union of all intelligences on a purely logical and articulable basis. Unformulable sympathies and repugnances amongst our ideas have more to do with our thinking than logicians will ever admit; but (with tolerance once established as the law of the land) probably human life will be much richer so than if this were not the case.

W. James.