CONSCIOUSNESS AS A PROCESS OR STREAM.--In looking in upon the mind we
must expect to discover, then, not a _thing_, but a _process_. The
_thing_ forever eludes us, but the process is always present.
Consciousness is like a stream, which, so far as we are concerned with
it in a psychological discussion, has its rise at the cradle and its end
at the grave. It begins with the babe"s first faint gropings after light
in his new world as he enters it, and ends with the man"s last blind
gropings after light in his old world as he leaves it. The stream is
very narrow at first, only as wide as the few sensations which come to
the babe when it sees the light or hears the sound; it grows wider as
the mind develops, and is at last measured by the grand sum total of
life"s experience.
