Boris Sidis

“ To have the idea of a conglomeration, of a multiplicity of objects, images or ideas, a synthetizing moment consciousness is required, a moment-consciousness that should take cognizance of all these objects, images or ideas and synthetize them into a unity, the one idea of the many. The many words, the many ideas must be synthetized in one moment-consciousness before the idea of the sentence can emerge, This synthesis, in fact, is that one idea. Ideas, images, thoughts, feelings do not come together, fuse into one, and make one idea. ”

“ One of the fundamental principles of psychology is mental synthesis. Objects that appear within the same consciousness are synthetized in a unity, if they are taken cognizance of. An object a may be presented to consciousness, and another object b may be similarly perceived. They remain two and separate as long as consciousness does not take cognizance of their duality, of their being two objects, but as soon as the two appear in consciousness together and are perceived as two, they are by this very fact synthetized into a unity. ”

“ The reason is that the mind is accustomed to dwell on the object of thought, not on the function of thought itself, and is therefore used to take the object for the thought. The confusion between the thought that possesses the object, and the object of thought is a fallacy that is as a rule committed by the intelligence trained to busy itself only with external objects. Our reader sees, of course, through this fallacy, he knows that the thing of the idea and the idea of the thing are not identical. ”

“ The question as to the nature of that mental synthesis does not fall within the province of psychology. Like all other problems that refer to the ultimate nature of things and how they are possible, the problem of the inner nature of mental synthesis does not belong to science, but to epistemology and metaphysics. ”