Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no
man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped by him. So,
to carry out, with another comparison, my remark about the layers of
thought, we may consider the mind as it moves among thoughts or events,
like a circus-rider whirling round with a great troop of horses. He can
mount a fact or an idea, and guide it more or less completely, but he
cannot stop it. So, as I said in another way at the beginning, he can
stride two or three thoughts at once, but not break their steady walk,
trot, or gallop. He can only take his foot from the saddle of one
thought and put it on that of another.
--What is the saddle of a thought? Why, a word, of course.--Twenty years
after you have dismissed a thought, it suddenly wedges up to you through
the press, as if it had been steadily galloping round and round all that
time without a rider.
The will does not act in the interspaces of thought, for there are no
such interspaces, but simply steps from the back of one moving thought
upon that of another.
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