As the dog pretends to be anxious to fetch a stick out of the water when his desire is to bathe, so we often make believe that we are busy with many details when we are hurried along by the imperative necessity to continue acting.

(3) Just as before going to sleep we frequently doze, attention being on the decline, so ill-health often tends to decrease the energy available for functioning. This usually expresses itself in two ways. First, we attend less absolutely. Secondly, the value of an effort is largely reduced, so that no suggestion is pursued to its legitimate issue. In robust health, on the contrary, attention is at its maximum both as regards strenuousness and effectiveness. Hence, other things being equal, attention is most effective in good health.

(4) In our analysis we noted that unfamiliarity offers a barrier to voluminous attention. While the flowers and grasses along a lane are meaningless to one individual, to another, a botanist, they yield a rich harvest of knowledge. This man recounts a score of floral species which he has observed, with much other information, while the former cannot distinctly recall anything. What is most easily attended to, is that which has been attended to strenuously on former occasions. As a magician's wand was said to rear a castle in a moment, so attention, with bewildering swiftness, utilises the bricks and mortar of memory. It sorts, sifts, distinguishes, classifies and re-cognises, a variety of details in a very brief space of time. Attention is, therefore, most effectively employed on what it has been previously engaged upon.

(5) For practical purposes it will not be enough merely to re-cognise, to re-attend. Re-attention is most useful when it is combined with simple attention, or, at least, with attention to something not well recognised. When the comparatively new is involved in the comparatively old, the consequences are most fruitful. In proportion as the new is isolated, so will it be difficult to make it a permanent possession. Thus when new truths stand by themselves, they are hard to assimilate and re-member, while, if they are shown to be part of an old truth, they are often re-instated or comprehended with the greatest ease. For the advancement of knowledge—for effective attention-nothing is more valuable than to show the old in the new.

(6) What is conveniently grasped, other things being equal, is also more conveniently attended to. If an object exhibits a special design; if the parts are correlated; if its scheme is not fantastic; if it is not so small or so large that much effort is required in its examination; if it is of a class known to us, then we readily busy ourselves with it. Thus a fine mansion is easily conceived of as a whole; a name encountered for the first time is yet fluently read by one accustomed to reading; a geometrical figure of regular proportions is not as exhausting to take note of as one of irregular proportions; a picture representing a scene from human life is understood the more readily the more evident the relations of the figures to each other.

(7) The business of the attention, i.e., the business of the central nervous system, is to serve the organism, and in this sense attention is teleological. Some demand of our nature, muscular or neural, nutritive or regulative, sets the brain going and, if advisable, keeps it going until the demand is satisfied. Then another want acts as a stimulus, and so forth. This is an abstract way of regarding the matter. We have normally several wants engaging the attention simultaneously; and, as a rule, the want absorbs the attention for a time only, and not until it is satisfied. If a man is fond of strawberries and they are before him, his attention, or part of it, will probably be devoted to the strawberries until he has done with them; but if they are difficult to procure, a little speculation is all which is ventured upon. Our wants are also frequently complex; a man goes for a walk, for instance, because he desires exercise, fresh air, the music of the birds and the sight of flowers. The purpose of neural activity is to satisfy our primary and other needs; but when we are specially eager about one matter, the whole available attention is concentrated on that alone.

(8) When interest is acute, attention is highly effective without any strain being perceived, though the consequences often show that such strain existed; when interest is slight, attention is comparatively ineffective, while the related effort of attention is distinctly felt. In interest there is a rush of available energy towards a certain point.

(9) When interest, for any reason, is absent, ennui sets in. We then long to do something. We are uneasy as the result of being unemployed. Adults, under such circumstances, yawn and grow languid, while children cry for something to do. In ennui the attention is largely absorbed in uneasiness, as there is no sufficient incentive to make use of it through the accustomed channels. The existence of ennui proves, in addition, that the tendency to action is constant, and not solely determined by the presence of this desire or that.

(10) An important aid to continuous attention is to dismiss decidedly and completely the previous thought, and to turn whole-heartedly to the matter to be attended to. If that matter be fairly interesting, the attention will then easily be sustained, and quickly recur to the subject in the case of momentary absent-mindedness. Much of children's inattention is due to the difficulty they find in ridding themselves effectively of thoughts which precede, or arise out of, the lesson.

When I sharply dismiss a thought, I do it usually by shutting my eyelids forcibly; by looking emphatically at some object; or by some other abrupt muscular act. The only alternative is to refuse to think, when, after a little while, some casual percept or idea emerges. In any case, dismissal seems due to change of activity alone. It is as if we could only dismiss visitors by inviting others to take their place.

(11) The more the attention is trained, and the more we can appeal to some congenital or acquired predisposition, the more readily are we active in any chosen direction. [Test (1) to (11).]

45. THE EDUCATION OF THE ATTENTION.

What has been remarked concerning the conditions which favour attention must be considered in education. There are at least three principles to

be taken into account.

(1) The attention should be deliberately exercised. No tasks requiring either no sensible effort or a great effort should, as a rule, be imposed, for in both instances the labour is almost wasted. Supposing now that the exercises are rational, we shall discover that what at one time could not be done at all, can later on be readily accomplished. After appropriate practice we glide at will from subject to subject, or row deliberately among the shallows and deeps of one thought. In the education of the attention it is of prime importance to prevent aimless thought, and to develop the power of firmly, freely and fully fixing the attention on any subject we choose. It is not sufficient for us to be trained in certain directions, as mathematics or languages. If no more is done, vast tracts will remain uncultivated. Education must enable the individual to control his activities generally, or rather should aim at perfecting, as a whole, the neural mechanism.

(2) The motive for attending must be detached from special interests, and the supreme notion to plant in the child, as regards attending, is to make it desirous of acting effectively. In other words, the child must be brought to have a strong inclination (sec. 146) in favour of proper attention. The need for reasonable effort should be the incentive. The employment of the attention must be dissociated from the interest in the thing immediately attended to. In all sound reflection there is readiness to attend to what is not specially interesting except as a means to some remote end. *

(3) The training of the attention must begin early in life. Later results are most disappointing. †

46.-FACTORS PRODUCING CHANGES IN THE FIELD OF ATTENTION.

Changes in the field of attention are mainly induced by one of the following circumstances: (1) when attention has attained its end (Stout); (2) when fatigue sets in (Stout); (3) when a strong sensation competes (Stout); (4) when, through lax or overwrought attention, the topic tends to change; (5) when a new or old topic recently thought of, takes possession of the attention; (6) when a word, a tune, a sentence, etc., haunts us; (7) when we are full of anxiety; (8) when attention was due to a mood which is receding; (9) when we attend to various objects alternately; (10) when we dismiss a thought deliberately; (11) when a thought shows signs of tiring, and is not of pressing importance; (12) when we have given sufficient attention for the time being; (13) when in a subject or in our

The Associationist school lays the stress on feeling, interest or pleasure-pain; the Herbartians, on connecting what is new with what is old.

On the subject of the training of the attention, see Carpenter's Mental Physiology, 1876, ch. 3.

+We usually devote only a short period at a time to any particular problem.

surroundings we observe something of special interest; (14) when some routine duty is to be performed; (15) when, by previous resolution, we are to do something at a stated time, or on encountering something or somebody; and (16) when a feeling of hunger, etc., becomes imperious.* [Test the list, and, if possible, add to it.]

cance.

47.-General CONCLUSIONS.

We have endeavoured to discover a satisfactory answer to questions such as the following: Why does attention not vary normally in any one individual or from individual to individual? Why do we normally attend to, or tend towards, something or other without interruption? Why can we increase or decrease the range of attention but to a very limited extent? Why do we reason in subjects, and move quickly from point to point? Why can we not stop attending? Why is attention normally easier when the subject is familiar? Why can we attend to more than one thing at a time? Why are observation and thought slow? etc., etc. Secondary systems or facts of non-bodily feeling have supplied us with no clue to the solution of these questions, and assuming only these, any answer, as long as it was not self-contradictory, could be tendered, each being equally empty. But on turning to the bodily organism, we met with facts of great signifiAll activity, we learnt, is apt to leave traces behind. Certain classes of activity are followed by growth of a more or less extensive nature. The organism as a whole varies little in individuals. Development proceeds along well-marked lines. Different parts of the body are more or less active, the heart and the lungs working ceaselessly and uniformly without need of rest, while the voluntary muscles require more intermittent and varied exercise. The brain in the waking state, we know, is an organ which is steadily active like the heart and unlike the muscles. Assuming the central nervous system to be the complement of the laboratory of thought, we saw that all that was evident, and all that was obscure, in the process of attention was readily explicable. Indeed, it became evident that the completest understanding of our nature, the general form of thought, could be arrived at deductively from a contemplation of the body in general ́and the brain in particular, there being no connected continuity in the secondary realm while there is such continuity in the brain.

48.-A BIRD'S EYE VIEW.

In

The term most intimately connected with attention is direction. attention, therefore, regarded physiologically, we consider the play of neural changes from the point of view of the direction in which they take place. It is not so much change, as the line-of-change, which we refer to

"Attention in any given direction ceases only under one or more of the following conditions: (1) when its end is attained ; (2) when fatigue sets in; (3) when some competing sensation interrupt [s] it; (4) when some sensation or image occurs connected with a system of psychical dispositions which . happen to a relatively high degree of excitability," i.e., casual associations (Stout, Analytic Psychology, 1896, i, p. 197).

possess

in speaking of attention. In this sense the present chapter deals with a certain aspect of cerebral change-with the reasons why neural change tends now in this direction and now in that. Further, since normal activity is subject to interference and has certain characteristics, we speak of the degree and the volume of attention. Attention thus treats of the direction, the degree and the volume of cerebral change. It embraces all activity; its field is the field of activity. Thus the word attention is as useful as is the word direction. It helps us to express the fact that the brain is busy in this direction and not in that; that its forces are massed here and not there; and that in the normal waking condition it functions incessantly, to the same extent and in varied directions.

From this position it is but one step to a looser use of the term where it sometimes only spells activity or change. Thus when we say that we attend in a certain direction, we mean that we are active in that direction. In this way attention has come to be identical with change and change with attention. In the strictest sense, then, our subject has been the systematic aspect of neural functioning.

We have identified attention with cerebral change. The meaning of our key-word is readily distinguishable from the only other term, besides activity, with which it might be confounded. Willing is divided from attention, and attention from willing in that attention always is change and nothing else, while volition never is change, but only points to it. The relation between these two is that between being and becoming, between sein and werden.

Viewing the subject of attention from a still higher position (which embraces the physiological aspect), we say In the normal waking state something is always immediately given and that something is a constant quantity which constantly changes at a constant rate. Here the terms attention, activity, functioning and energy, become superfluous. In our exposition, however, we have found it impossible to break with the old terminology without endangering the sense and making comparison difficult. Nevertheless one feels that it is most undesirable to assume some mysterious power or capacity along with what is immediately given; for such a power or capacity describes nothing and explains nothing, and has, therefore, no place in science.

Additional References.-Angell and Pierce, Experimental Research upon the Phenomena of Attention, 1892; Angell, Habit and Attention, 1898; Angell and Moore, Reaction-time: A Study in Attention and Habit, 1896; Binet, Attention et Adaption, 1899; Birch, A Study of Certain Methods of Distracting the Attention, 1897; Bradley, On Active Attention, 1902; Braunschweiger, Die Lehre von der Aufmerksamkeit, 1899; Cattell, Aufmerksamkeit und Reaktion, 1892; Darlington and Talbot, Distraction by Musical Sounds, 1898; Dohrn, Das Problem der Aufmerksamkeit, 1876; Drew, Attention, Experimental and Critical, (with Bibliography), 1896; Dwelshauvers, Untersuchungen zur Mechanik der activen Aufmerksamkeit, 1890; Griffing, On the Development of Visual Perception and Attention, 1896; Lalande, Sur un Effet particulier de Attention appliqué aux Images, 1893; Martius, Ueber die musculäre Reaktion und die Aufmerksamkeit, 1890; Moyer, A Study of Certain Methods of Distracting the Attention, 1897; Münsterberg and Kozaki, The Intensifying Effect of Attention, 1894; Pillsbury,