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06623_Field_TCUM T188.txt
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inquiry than that of the present chapter. Perhaps there are
better approaches along quite different lines; for example,
consciousness is regarded as the mark of a rational being, yet
there is nothing lineal or sequential about the total field of
awareness that exists in any moment of consciousness.
Consciousness is not a verbal process. Yet during all our
centuries of phonetic literacy we have favored the chain of
inference as the mark of logic and reason. Chinese writing, in
contrast, invests each ideogram with a total intuition of being
and reason that allows only a small role to visual sequence as a
mark of mental effort and organization. In Western literate
society it is still plausible and acceptable to say that something
“follows” from something, as if there were some cause at work
that makes such a sequence. It was David Hume who, in the
eighteenth century, demonstrated that there is no causality
indicated in any sequence, natural or logical. The sequential is