lacks the major idea, and the feeling of direction which emanates from that.13 We no longer compel our thoughts along a definite track, but let them float, sink and mount according to their own gravity. According to Kulpe14 thinking is a kind of inner will action, the absence of which necessarily leads to an automatic play of ideas. James understands the non-directed thinking, or "merely associative" thinking, as the ordinary one. He expresses himself about that in the following manner:
"Our thought consists for the great part of a series of images, one of which produces the other; a sort of passive dream-state of which the higher animals are also capable. This sort of thinking leads, nevertheless, to reasonable conclusions of a practical as well as of a theoretical nature.
"As a rule, the links of this sort of irresponsible thinking, which are accidentally bound together, are empirically concrete things, not abstractions."
We can, in the following manner, complete these definitions of William James. This sort of thinking does not tire us; it quickly leads us away from reality into phantasies of the past and future. Here, thinking in the form of speech ceases, image crowds upon image, feeling upon feeling; more and more clearly one sees a tendency which creates and makes believe, not as it truly is, but as one indeed might wish it to be.15 The material of these thoughts which turns away from reality, can naturally be only the past with its thousand memory pictures. The customary speech calls this kind of thinking "dreaming."
