I think of something else. Sensations, feelings, volitions,
ideas--such are the changes into which my existence is divided and which
color it in turns. I change, then, without ceasing. But this is not
saying enough. Change is far more radical than we are at first inclined
to suppose.

For I speak of each of my states as if it formed a block and were a
separate whole. I say indeed that I change, but the change seems to me
to reside in the passage from one state to the next: of each state,
taken separately, I am apt to think that it remains the same during all
the time that it prevails. Nevertheless, a slight effort of attention
would reveal to me that there is no feeling, no idea, no volition which
is not undergoing change every moment: if a mental state ceased to vary,
its duration would cease to flow. Let us take the most stable of
internal states, the visual perception of a motionless external object.
The object may remain the same, I may look at it from the same side, at
the same angle, in the same light; nevertheless the vision I now have of
it differs from that which I have just had, even if only because the one
is an instant older than the other. My memory is there, which conveys
something of the past into the present. My mental state, as it advances
on the road of time, is continually swelling with the duration which it
accumulates: it goes on increasing--rolling upon itself, as a snowball
on the snow. Still more is this the case with states more deeply
internal, such as sensations, feelings, desires, etc., which do not
correspond, like a simple visual perception, to an unvarying external
object. But it is expedient to disregard this uninterrupted change, and
to notice it only when it becomes sufficient to impress a new attitude
on the body, a new direction on the attention. Then, and then only, we
find that our state has changed. The truth is that we change without
ceasing, and that the state itself is nothing but change.

This amounts to saying that there is no essential difference between
passing from one state to another and persisting in the same state. If
the state which "remains the same" is more varied than we think, on the
other hand the passing from one state to another resembles, more than we
imagine, a single state being prolonged; the transition is continuous.
But, just because we close our eyes to the unceasing variation of every
psychical state, we are obliged, when the change has become so
consi