Consciousness resembles a stream also in other particulars. A stream is
an unbroken whole from its source to its mouth, and an observer
stationed at one point cannot see all of it at once. He sees but the one
little section which happens to be passing his station point at the
time. The current may look much the same from moment to moment, but the
component particles which constitute the stream are constantly changing.
So it is with our thought. Its stream is continuous from birth till
death, but we cannot see any considerable portion of it at one time.
When we turn about quickly and look in upon our minds, we see but the
little present moment. That of a few seconds ago is gone and will never
return. The thought which occupied us a moment since can no more be
recalled, just as it was, than can the particles composing a stream be
re-collected and made to pass a given point in its course in precisely
the same order and relation to one another as before. This means, then,
that we can never have precisely the same mental state twice; that the
thought of the moment cannot have the same associates that it had the
first time; that the thought of this moment will never be ours again;
that all we can know of our minds at any one time is the part of the
process present in consciousness at that moment.
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