There is no space between consecutive thoughts, or between the never-ending series of actions.

All pack tight, and mould their surfaces against each other, so that in the long run there is a wonderful average uniformity in the forms of both thoughts and actions, just as you find that cylinders crowded all become hexagonal prisms, and spheres pressed together are formed into regular polyhedra.
Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped by him.

So, to carry out, with another comparison, my remark about the layers of thought, we may consider the mind as it moves among thoughts or events, like a circus-rider whirling round with a great troop of horses.

He can mount a fact or an idea, and guide it more or less completely, but he cannot stop it.

So, as I said in another way at the beginning, he can stride two or three thoughts at once, but not break their steady walk, trot, or gallop.