Date: January, 1884

"They involve no new psychic dimension, as when the transcendentalists, after letting a number of 'pure' feelings successively go 'bang,' bring their deus ex machina of an Ego swooping down upon them from his Olympian heights to make a cluster of them with his wonderful 'relating thought.'"

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"If so coarse a thing as a telephone-plate can be made to thrill for years and never reduplicate its inward condition, how much more must this be the case with the infinitely delicate brain?"

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"And in states of extreme brain-fag the horizon is narrowed almost to the passing word, -- the associative machinery, however, providing for the next word turning up in orderly sequence, until at last the tired thinker is led to some kind of a conclusion."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1901-2, 1902

"In the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium. A mind is a system of ideas, each with the excitement it arouses, and with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or reinforce one another."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1901-2, 1902

"Every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency. A given machine will run best under a certain steam-pressure, a certain amperage; an organism under a certain diet, weight, or exercise."

— James, William (1842-1910)