"Were it not for this perpetual process of differentiation of self from the world, of object from its scene, of attribute from object, no step of Abstraction could be taken; no qualities could fall under our notice; and had we ten thousand senses, they would all converge and meet in but one consciousness. But if this be so, it is an utter falsification of the order of nature to speak of sensations grouping themselves into aggregates, and so composing for us the objects of which we think; and the whole language of the theory, in regard to the field of synchronous existences, is a direct inversion of the truth. Experience proceeds and intellect is trained, not by Association, but by Dissociation, not by reduction of pluralities of impression to one, but by the opening out of one into many; and a true psychological history must expound itself in analytic rather than synthetic terms. Precisely those ideas -- of Substance, of Mind, of Cause, of Space -- which this system treats as infinitely complex, the last result of myriads of confluent elements, are in truth the residuary simplicities of consciousness, whose stability the eddies and currents of phenomenal experience have left undisturbed."
Principles of Psychology by William James, 1890, p. 486.
