§ 3. Conative Unity and Continuity.—Suppose that, while playing chess or whist, I am suddenly called away at a critical stage of the game to meet a visitor on a matter of business. The interruption, as such, constitutes a relation between the state of consciousness which is interrupted and that which interrupts it. But this relation exists between otherwise disparate and disconnected processes, and depends on that immediate contiguity in time which has been discussed. If, on the contrary, we consider the successive phases of the process of making up the mind about the move at chess, or of settling the matter of business, we find a different and more intimate kind of continuity, which may be called conative or appetitive continuity, or continuity of interest. From this point of view, my state of mind when I have finished my business with the visitor and returned to my game is continuous with my state of mind when I was interrupted, rather than with the intervening flow of consciousness. The very word interruption implies this. It is clear, then, that continuity of interest is more or less independent of direct proximity in time. This kind of continuity is essentially connected with mental activity in the strict sense, with the striving, cognitive, appetitive side of our nature. Its general condition is that the successive phases of a conscious process shall constitute a movement towards an end. By an end is meant a state of consciousness in which the process finds its natural termination—the termination prescribed to it by its own nature, and not by extraneous conditions. Each phase of the process before the end is reached is incomplete, and tends by its own inherent constitution to pass beyond itself. If the activity is displaced by a disparate and disconnected process before it has attained its goal, it tends spontaneously to recur after the interruption and work itself out, starting from the stage at which it was cut short. If, while it continues to occupy consciousness, its progress is in any way checked or arrested, an experience of dissatisfaction or unpleasantness arises. So long and so far as its progress is unchecked, but not yet completed, consciousness is unsatisfied, but not dissatisfied, and ceteris paribus the experience is pleasant.

Cognitive unity depends upon cognitive continuity. If we take any momentary phase in the flow of cognitive process, we find a total state of consciousness in which some constituents are irrelevant to the main direction of thought, and others are essentially concerned in its progress. Thus in playing a game of chess the modifications of consciousness due to impressions from surrounding objects are irrelevant to the main current of consciousness. Only the experiences connected with the position of the pieces on the board are relevant, and only these experiences are embraced in the cognitive unity of consciousness. This distinction corresponds broadly to that between thought and mere sentience.*

The total process of consciousness is, in general, composed of a succession of processes, each of which has a certain appetitive continuity. Some of these may be very transient and involve only a slight and evanescent interest. But in so far as they involve interest or attention at all they are essentially cognitive. Even when the mind rambles from object to object in a desultory way, its slight and transient occupation with each in turn involves some degree of attention and interest. Thus the transitions which are without cognitive continuity are transitions from one cognitive process to another. But even these are in a sense cognitive, if one process occurs as a marked interruption of another. In the moment of interruption, the interruption itself constitutes a sort of cognitive continuity between the old process and the new. Just in so far as the new process is experienced as an interruption of the old, it is a constituent part of it, an incident in its progress.

In the development of the mental life, cognitive unity and continuity is of altogether predominant importance. Such psychical relations as depend on mere proximity in time are subsidiary, and may, in a broad view of mental evolution, be neglected. Thus, in what follows, we shall almost entirely confine our attention to those mental connections which arise from the combination of mental elements as constituent parts of the same cognitive process.

* Discussed in § 5 of last chapter: The Data And Methods Of Psychology. Quantitative Methods.