Now there is no doubt that seeing the picture of a string
of beads being pulled out of a box through a hole in the lid, I
should say: “These beads must all have been
together in the box before”. But it is easy to
see that this is making a
65.
hypothesis.
I should have seen the same picture if the beads had
gradually come into existence in the hole of the lid. We
easily overlook the distinction between stating a conscious mental
event, and making a hypothesis about what one might call the
mechanism of the mind. All the more as such hypotheses
or pictures of the working of our mind are embodied in many of the
forms of expression of our everyday language. The past
tense “meant” in the sentence “I meant the
man who won the battle of Austerlitz” is only
part of such a picture, the mind being conceived as a place in
which what we remember is kept, stored, before we expresses
it. If I whistle a tune I know well and am interrupted
in the middle, if then someone asked me “did you know how
to go on?” I should answer “yes
I did”. What sort of process is this
knowing how to go on? It might appear as
though the whole continuation of the tune had to be present while I
knew how to go on.