The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity
Context: Consciousness, the craving for more, more, always more, hunger of eternity and thirst of infinity, appetite for God — these are never satisfied. Each consciousness seeks to be itself and all other consciousnesses without ceasing to be itself; it seeks to be God. And matter, unconsciousness, tends to be less and less, tends to be nothing, its thirst being a thirst for repose. Spirit says: I wish to be! and matter answers: I wish not to be!
“As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.”
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 9
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William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910Related quotes
"Address to the Harvard College Alumni, Class of 1949" (1974), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 429.
The Highest of the High (1953)
Context: Consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, each and every creature, each and every human being — in one form or the other — strives to assert individuality. But when eventually man consciously experiences that he is Infinite, Eternal and Indivisible, then he is fully conscious of his individuality as God, and as such experiences Infinite Knowledge, Infinite Power and Infinite Bliss.
“Time is the primitive form of the stream of consciousness.”
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Space—Time—Matter (1952)
Context: Time is the primitive form of the stream of consciousness.... If we project ourselves outside the stream of consciousness and represent its content as an object, it becomes an event happening in time, the separate stages of which stand to one another in the relations of earlier and later.
“A stream of consciousness leads to an ocean of revelations.”
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1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)
"Rivers Grow Small" (1963), trans. Czesław Miłosz
Bobo's Metamorphosis (1965)