individual characteristics, among which we no more see the composing
lines than we see the components, oxygen and hydrogen, in water. In no
scientific or artistic production, says Wundt, does the whole appear as
made up of its parts, like a mosaic."[31] In other words, it is a case
of mental chemistry. The exactness of this expression, which is due, I
believe, to J. Stuart Mill, has been questioned. Still it answers to
positive facts; for example, in perception, to the phenomena of contrast
and their analogues; juxtaposition or rapid succession of two different
colors, two different sounds, of tactile, olfactory, gustatory
impressions different in quality, produces a particular state of
consciousness, similar to a combination. Harmony or discord does not,
indeed, exist in each separate sound, but only in the relations and
sequence of sounds--it is a _tertium quid_. We have heretofore, in the
discussion of association of ideas, very frequently represented the
states of consciousness as fixed elements that approach one another,
cohere, separate, come together anew, but always unalterable, like
atoms. It is not so at all. Consciousness, says Titchener, resembles a
fresco in which the transition between colors is made through all kinds
of intermediate stages of light and shade.... The idea of a pen or of an
inkwell is not a stable thing clearly pictured like the pen or inkwell
itself. More than any one else, William James has insisted on this point
in his theory of "fringes" of states of consciousness. Outside of the
given instances we could find many others among the various
manifestations of the mental life. It is not, then, at all chimerical to
assume in psychology an equivalent of chemical combination. In a complex
state there is, in addition to the component elements, the result of
their reciprocal influences, of their varying relations. Too often we
forget this resultant.

At bottom the ideal is an individual concept. If objection is offered
that an ideal common to a large mass of men is a fact of common
experience (e.g., idealists and realists in the fine arts, and even
more so religious, moral, social and political concepts, etc.), the
answer is easy: There are families of minds. They have a common ideal
because, in certain matters, they have the same way of feeling and
thinking. It is not a transcendental idea that unites them; but this
result occurs because from their common aspirations the collective ideal
becom