CHAPTER II SYSTEMS AS DISTRIBUTED* Men attend, whilst 'wake they be, 14.-ATTENTION AND INATTENTION. It is winter time, and several of us are sitting around the blazing waitingroom fire. [Observe such an occasion.] While the others are busily talking, I am reading. The rumbling of trains penetrates from the depths beneath. Doors are being noisily opened and shut. Some persons are speaking loudly now and then in different parts of the spacious room while others may be heard crossing it. The street below sends its quota of noises. The place is haunted by sounds, if we but incline our ears. As with the sense of hearing, so with the sense of sight and with general sensibility. Yet, since the book I am interested in contains extremely hard passages, I am entirely absorbed in what I read. Consequently, so it seems, I hear nothing, I see nothing (except the page before me), I smell nothing, and I feel nothing. Or did I really hear and see and smell and feel, and have forgotten that I did so? 15.-SENSATIONs, Images and Feelings do not exist apart FROM ATTENTION. To test the likelihood of this conjecture, let us inquire into what is implied in following a conversation. In attending to speech we make good what is not pronounced, what is half-pronounced, or what we do not hear.† We put spaces between the words. We range them into sentences, and the sentences into paragraphs. Inwardly, we track the trend of thought. For * I have assumed, what I feel to be indisputable, that physiology offers as yet no scientific data of an advanced nature for the student of psychology. For convenience' sake I have retained the term Attention, in spite of its vagueness and its misleading implications. My own opinions are sunimed up in sec. 33, and more especially in the last paragraph of that section. †The conjectured trend of thought often helps us in interpreting what is only partly heard. Thus, having a headache, and some one saying to me "Are you going at eight?" I took that person to say "Have you a headache?" the purpose of illuminating what is put forward, memories of all kinds are awakened, involving sometimes a considerable strain. On the other hand, what is irrelevant to the conversation is kept jealously apart. The rumbling of trains, the opening and shutting of doors, the movements of persons about the room, the chatter of other groups, the street noises, must not be intermingled with the conversation, or else all will be confusion. As with irrelevant sounds, so with what is irrelevant in general. Plainly, to follow a conversation argues a complex process. That process, in the case we are considering, implies a double direction. We must make sense of what is said, and we must banish what is irrelevant. If that be so, it becomes probable that I could not have followed the conversation while I was absorbed in reading. I was occupied with the book. Nothing else could I even have recognised as something or as a mass, unless the direction of the attention had changed. The sounds, sights, and other sensationssupposing, what is a contradiction, that there were such for me-jostled each other freely, and possessed precisely a like value. They were ranged in time, and not in order. The ordering is a distinct act. A puzzle picture will help to elucidate the part which the sense of order plays. [The student should have a puzzle picture before him.] If we do not at once perceive the hidden figures, it is not because the outlines are not there. They are there just as much, or as little, as are the outlines of the figures first observed. It is only a certain form of education, leaving aside heredity, which forces us to see one set of lines to the exclusion of another set. Apart from educated activity of an advanced character there are only lines on the card, and the business of the attention is the formation of these lines into a distinct whole. When the attention is not directed to that task, we have no whole whatever. Indeed, the background, the lines, and the surrounding objects are one indifferent mass, or have passed away altogether, when the attention is withdrawn from them. To discern a single line, preventing fusion with the background and with the surroundings, to discern at all, implies attention. Ac Some geometrical patterns offer another convenient illustration. cording as we direct our attention, so the lines form one whole or another,* X, W, M, V, D, A, etc. Lastly, any bold sketch in black and white brings out strikingly the importance of regulative activity in forming an intelligible whole out of scattered lines and hints. One may now with confidence answer in the negative the question which we asked at the end of sec. 14. Apart from acute attention, i.e., complex activity, there is no such thing as a conversation, and hence, as I did not busy myself with it, I could not have followed its windings. To *The question of visual illusions is fully dealt with by Lipps, Raumaesthetik, 1897. The reader may also consult Bolton, Illusions, 1898; James, Psychology, 1890; Jastrow, Illusions, 1892; Judd, A Study of Geometrical Illusions, 1899; Sully, Illusions, 1895; Thiéry, Ueber geometrisch-optische Täuschungen, 1895; Titchener, Experimental Psychology, 1901; and Wundt, Die geometrisch-optischen Täuschungen, 1898. this must be added that the simplest sensation implies a complicated process. We are justified, therefore, in concluding that nothing intelligible— no total, no detail, no form-exists for us in the absence of attention. The whole outer world as given by the senses, as well as the whole inner world, is essentially dependent upon it. In walking along the street every object we meet with, however faintly perceived, is, qua perceived object, due to an intricate process. 16.-ATTENTION IS DEPENDENT ON STIMULI. Ex nihilo nihil fit remains nevertheless true in psychology. Attention, at least physiologically considered, is powerless in the absence of extraorganic or organic stimuli, and is conditioned by their differences. Bent on attending, we may hear or we may see; but we cannot indifferently hear or see. Only certain light-waves or sound-waves, or what corresponds to them, lead to sight and hearing, while in their absence there will be neither visual nor auditory sensations. Yet it is still true that sensations and images, as such, are essentially connected with the action of the central nervous system. Open eyes and open ears, unless exploited, yield neither sight nor hearing. They offer faint modifications, void of tangible significance, which, if they are not instantly, or within a few seconds, utilised, remain lost for ever. They cannot, by any effort, be afterwards elaborated into a self-sufficing system of thought, e.g., the conversation which I missed I cannot build up afterwards by any effort of the will. [Test this.] It happens, though, occasionally that we have been told something very rapidly, and that we only decipher the word or the phrase after a moment or two. [Observe instances.] Here, however, there is something definite to work upon. There is before us a distinct whole which, by re-attention, is transformed into another whole.* We have advanced a step. Not only could I not have followed the conversation because of absence of attention; but to me, fully absorbed as I was, there came only doubtful impressions, and no sound or other sensation. 17.—THE BEGINNINGS OF SENSATIONS. Where, then, lies the threshold of a sensation? This must be cleared up before we proceed. Under normal circumstances the sounds of the conversation would have seemed of a certain pitch and strength. Corresponding to them we meet with air-waves of a certain size and frequency, and these condition hearing. Given equal attention, and, within narrow limits, the sounds we hear vary with the air-waves which reach us from every direction whether we are pre-occupied or not. [Test this.] Does close attention to the book necessarily mean that these air-waves yield nothing, because they yield no sound, and that they leave no trace in the *As to this last point, see Daniels, The Memory After-image and Attention, 1895; also Lotze, Psychologie, 1881, ch. 3, § 4. brain? Inquiry negatives these suggestions. I know that if I had been reading the book in a room where all was still, the course of thought would have been in an appreciably different state from what it is when I am reading in a noisy railway station. [Test this.] I somehow continue to ignore the conversation. I hold the sounds back, as it were. I stave them off. I prevent their intrusion. That is to say, I attend, among other things, to something which, when more fully or differently attended to, is sound. At this lowest point we are confronted with a vague detailless feeling. As the air-waves are less impetuous, so is the feeling vaguer, until at last we detect neither sound nor feeling. Probably there is a point where minimal systems become differentiated, and that point must be for us the threshold of a particular system. The lowest element is, therefore, a very faint feeling,-a feeling so faint that it makes no perceptible stir, and is apparently not reproducible,-a feeling which is perhaps so unstable that it disappears immediately it is specially attended to, States of this faint quality exist in abundance. A good example is the effect produced by a noisy clock in an otherwise quiet room. Ordinarily, when absorbed, we do not hear the ticking, except at intervals. [Is that so?] We seem oblivious of the acoustic waves. Yet when the clock stops, we frequently notice the fact. [Experiment in this direction.] If the air-waves have left no mark, then their cessation should have made no difference. We conclude, therefore, that the sounds from the clock leave a faint trace on the organism; and also that this trace is not a sound, not the monotonous tick-tick, but some residue. The same holds true under certain circumstances of the innumerable "possible " sensations which we are ever ignoring, and of the silent working of the brain as a whole. We often observe things indolently. In such cases, our attention no sooner turns away than we forget that we have been attending in those directions. The subject is frequently discussed among psycho-physicists. (Münsterberg, Intensifying Effect of Attention, 1894.) Faint feelings are of considerable frequency. Systems which were at one time sharp in outline and could be easily developed and re-membered, gradually lose these properties without being essentially changed in their constitution. (Ch. 3.) In casual routine processes (or organised reaction)* the feelings are still there generally; but they are no longer lively. The gentle stimulus, under the changed conditions, preserves the motive force of the pronounced activity. The general organic life of the body, the general individual life, as well as the routine of life, swarm with these silent and impalpable presences. However, as organic adjustments to demands become closer and induce far-reaching changes, so feelings are more and more dispensed with, till, with total re-adjustment, they cease to exist. In less extreme cases, the feelings remain, but become almost wholly unobtrusive. I have said that the dimmest of these feelings form the first degree in *To emphasise the process involved in habit, I shall generally speak of habitual process as organised process, organised trend, trend, and economisation. the scale of sensations. At their faintest they probably cease to exert an influence individually. It may be asked, "Is it not possible that in routine. of a pronounced kind the work is done apart from any feeling?" This is extremely improbable. Reflection, strengthened by observation and experiment, admits feeling wherever there has been feeling before, provided that there has not been a profound change in the form of the activity. Where feeling wholly or nearly ceases, with the attention not diverted, we have discontinuance of the accompanying activity. If any action is ever accompanied by feelings, it will be continued only so long as the feelings continue. If these abate, the action also abates. Common sensibility supplies us plentifully with partial proof. We often sit in a certain position brooding over some problem and apparently oblivious of organic stimuli. [Repeat this experimentally, recording the results.] Gradually, quite gradually, the fact obtrudes itself that a limb is tired. There is no reason to believe that in such an instance there has not been a feeling for some time previous; only the uneasiness was so faint that it made no appreciable difference to the organism. Very slowly that difference developed until it is recognised as a particular stimulus. Hence when we are strongly absorbed, it is necessary to increase a stimulus considerably before action or feeling ensues. One other instance. I go to my shelves to take down a volume. [Observe such instances.] I do not apparently think of my errand. Suddenly, in the midst of some thought, I come to a standstill, and ask myself where I am going. However faint the residue or whatever its form, we must yet assume that the notion of an errand normally persists, and that when the notion vanishes, we naturally stop. Considering such happenings as these, we are warranted in assuming that no felt process ever becomes a feelingless process unless, indeed, a change or growth supervenes which displaces such process. (Sec. 56.) [Examine.] 18.—THE AREA OF SENSATIONS AND IMAGES. More difficult still than fixing the beginnings of sensations and images (or primary and secondary systems), is the determination of their sphere of influence. It may be generally posited that wherever there are nerve-endings, or that wherever the influence of the cerebro-spinal system extends, there exists at least a possibility of connected feeling. Under ordinary circumstances, it is reasonable to suppose, the majority of the feelings are so void of detail that they do not affect the general development of systems, at least not individually. The same holds good of stimuli when we turn towards them only minimally.. Exploiting our general sensibility, i.e., those sensations not derived from the five senses, we gather that various portions of the body yield sensory systems when attended to. [Carefully repeat the following experiment.] I feel that I possess toes and feet, though I cannot tell from my observations the number of toes, or the fact that they are imprisoned in wool and leather. The feelings are extremely |