a stuffed bird. They readily name the features they know already, such as leaves, tail, bill, feet. But they may look for hours without distinguishing nostrils, claws, scales, etc., until their attention is called to these details; thereafter, however, they see them every time. In short, the only things which we commonly see are those which we preperceive. and the only things which we preperceive are those which have been labelled for us, and the labels stamped into our mind. If we lost our stock of labels we should be intellectually lost in the midst of the world.

Organic adjustment, then, and ideational preparation or preperception are concerned in all attentive acts. An interesting theory is defended by no less authorities than Professors Bain * and Ribot,† and still more ably advocated by Mr. N. Lange, who will have it that the ideational preparation itself is a consequence of muscular adjustment, so that the latter may be called the essence of the attentive process throughout. This at least is what the theory of these authors practically amounts to, though the former two do not state it in just these terms. The proof consists in the exhibition of cases of intellectual attention which organic adjustment accompanies, or of objects in thinking which we have to execute a movement. Thus Lange says that when he tries to imagine a certain colored circle, he finds himself first making with his eyes the movement to which the circle corresponds, and then imagining the color, etc., as a consequence of the movement.

"Let my reader," he adds, "close his eyes and think of an extended object, for instance a pencil. He will easily notice that he first makes a slight movement [of the eyes] corresponding to the straight line, and that he often gets a weak feeling of innervation of the hand as if touching the pencil's surface. So, in thinking of a certain sound, we turn towards its direction or repeat muscularly its rhythm, or articulate an imitation of it."§

The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed. p. 370. + Psychologie de l'Attention (1889), p. 32 ff. Philosophische Studien, Iv. 413 ff.

§ See Lange, loc. cit. p. 417, for another proof of his view, drawn from the phenomenon of retinal rivalry.

But it is one thing to point out the presence of muscular contractions as constant concomitants of our thoughts, and another thing to say, with Herr Lange, that thought is made possible by muscular contraction alone. It may well be that where the object of thought consists of two parts, one perceived by movement and another not, the part perceived by movement is habitually called up first and fixed in the mind by the movement's execution, whilst the other part comes secondarily as the movement's mere associate. But even were this the rule with all men (which I doubt *), it would only be a practical habit, not an ultimate necessity. In the chapter on the Will we shall learn that movements themselves are results of images coming before the mind, images sometimes of feelings in the moving part, sometimes of the movement's effects on eye and ear, and sometimes (if the movement be originally reflex or instinctive), of its natural stimulus or exciting cause. It is, in truth, contrary to all wider and deeper analogies to deny that any quality of feeling whatever can directly rise up in the form of an idea, and to assert that only ideas of movement can call other ideas to the mind.

So much for adjustment and preperception. The only third process I can think of as always present is the inhibition of irrelevant movements and ideas. This seems, however, to be a feature incidental to voluntary attention rather than the essential feature of attention at large,t and need

* Many of my students have at my request experimented with imagined letters of the alphabet and syllables, and they tell me that they can see them inwardly as total colored pictures without following their outlines with the eye. I am myself a bad visualizer, and make movements all the while.-M. L. Marillier, in an article of eminent introspective power which appeared after my text was written (Remarques sur le Mécanisme de l'Attention, in Revue Philosophique, vol. xxvII. p. 566), has contended against Ribot and others for the non-dependence of sensory upon motor images in their relations to attention. I am glad to cite him as an ally.

Drs. Ferrier (Functions of the Brain, §§ 102-3) and Obersteiner (Brain, 1, 439 ff.) treat it as the essential feature. The author whose treatment of the subject is by far the most thorough and satisfactory is Prof. G. E. Müller, whose little work Zur Theorie der sinnlichen Aufmerksamkeit, Inauguraldissertation, Leipzig. Edelmann (1874?), is for learning and acuteness a model of what a monograph should be. I should like to have quoted from it, but the Germanism of its composition makes quotation quite

not concern us particularly now. Noting merely the intimate connection which our account so far establishes between attention, on the one hand, and imagination, discrimination, and memory, on the other, let us draw a couple of practical inferences, and then pass to the more speculative problem that remains.

The practical inferences are pedagogic. First, to strengthen attention in children who care nothing for the subject they are studying and let their wits go wool-gathering. The interest here must be 'derived' from something that the teacher associates with the task, a reward or a punishment if nothing less external comes to mind. Prof. Ribot says:

"A child refuses to read; he is incapable of keeping his mind fixed on the letters, which have no attraction for him; but he looks with avidity upon the pictures contained in a book. What do they mean?' he asks. The father replies: When you can read, the book will tell you.' After several colloquies like this, the child resigns himself and falls to work, first slackly, then the habit grows, and finally he shows an ardor which has to be restrained. This is a case of the genesis of voluntary attention. An artificial and indirect desire has to be grafted on a natural and direct one. Reading has no immediate attractiveness, but it has a borrowed one, and that is enough. The child is caught in the wheelwork, the first step is made."

I take another example, from M. B. Perez: *

"A child of six years, habitually prone to mind-wandering, sat down one day to the piano of his own accord to repeat an air by which his mother had been charmed. His exercises lasted an hour. The same child at the age of seven, seeing his brother busy with tasks in vacation, went and sat at his father's desk. 'What are you doing there?' his nurse said, surprised at so finding him. 'I am,' said the child, 'learning a page of German; it isn't very amusing, but it is for an agreeable surprise to mamma.'"

Here, again, a birth of voluntary attention, grafted this time on a sympathetic instead of a selfish sentiment like that of the first example. The piano, the German, awaken

impossible. See also G. H. Lewes: Problems of Life and Mind, 3d Series, Prob. 2, chap. 10, G. H. Schneider: Der menschliche Wille, 294 ff., 309 ff.; C. Stumpf: Tonpsychologie, 1. 67-75; W. B. Carpenter: Mental Physiology, chap. 3; Cappie in 'Brain,' July 1886 (hyperæmia-theory); J. Sully in Brain,' Oct. 1890.

L'Enfant de trois à sept Ans, p. 108.

no spontaneous attention; but they arouse and maintain it by borrowing a force from elsewhere.*

Second, take that mind-wandering which at a later age may trouble us whilst reading or listening to a discourse. If attention be the reproduction of the sensation from within, the habit of reading not merely with the eye, and of listening not merely with the ear, but of articulating to one's self the words seen or heard, ought to deepen one's attention to the latter. Experience shows that this is the case. I can keep my wandering mind a great deal more closely upon a conversation or a lecture if I actively re-echo to myself the words than if I simply hear them; and I find a number of my students who report benefit from voluntarily adopting a similar course.t

Second, a teacher who wishes to engage the attention of his class must knit his novelties on to things of which they already have preperceptions. The old and familiar is readily attended to by the mind and helps to hold in turn the new, forming, in Herbartian phraseology, an Apperceptionsmasse' for it. Of course it is in every case a very delicate problem to know what 'Apperceptionsmasse' to use. Psychology can only lay down the general rule.

IS VOLUNTARY ATTENTION A RESULTANT OR A FORCE?

When, a few pages back, I symbolized the ideational preparation' element in attention by a brain-cell played upon from within, I added by other brain-cells, or by some spiritual force,' without deciding which. The question which?' is one of those central psychologic mysteries which part the schools. When we reflect that the turnings of our attention form the nucleus of our inner self; when we see (as in the chapter on the Will we shall see) that volition is nothing but attention; when we believe that our autonomy in the midst of nature depends on our not being pure effect, but a cause,

Principium quoddam quod fati fœdera rumpat,

Ex infinito ne causam causa sequatur

# Psychologie de l'Attention, p. 53.

+ Repetition of this sort does not confer intelligence of what is said, it only keeps the mind from wandering into other channels. The intelligence Bometimes comes in beats, as it were, at the end of sentences, or in the midst of words which were mere words until then. See above, p. 281.

we must admit that the question whether attention involve such a principle of spiritual activity or not is metaphysical as well as psychological, and is well worthy of all the pains we can bestow on its solution. It is in fact the pivotal question of metaphysics, the very hinge on which our picture of the world shall swing from materialism, fatalism, monism, towards spiritualism, freedom, pluralism,—or else the other way.

It goes back to the automaton-theory. If feeling is an inert accompaniment, then of course the brain-cell can be played upon only by other brain-cells, and the attention which we give at any time to any subject, whether in the form of sensory adaptation or of 'preperception,' is the fatally predetermined effect of exclusively material laws. If, on the other hand, the feeling which coexists with the brain-cells' activity reacts dynamically upon that activity, furthering or checking it, then the attention is in part, at least, a cause. It does not necessarily follow, of course, that this reactive feeling should be 'free' in the sense of having its amount and direction undetermined in advance, for it might very well be predetermined in all these particulars. If it were so, our attention would not be materially determined, nor yet would it be 'free' in the sense of being spontaneous or unpredictable in advance. The question is of course a purely speculative one, for we have no means of objectively ascertaining whether our feelings react on our nerve-processes or not; and those who answer the question in either way do so in consequence of general analogies and presumptions drawn from other fields. As mere conceptions, the effect-theory and the causetheory of attention are equally clear; and whoever affirms either conception to be true must do so on metaphysical or universal rather than on scientific or particular grounds.

As regards immediate sensorial attention hardly any one is tempted to regard it as anything but an effect.*

We

* The reader will please observe that I am saying all that can possibly be said in favor of the effect-theory, since, inclining as I do myself to the cause-theory, I do not want to undervalue the enemy. As a matter of fact, one might begin to take one's stand against the effect theory at the outset, with the phenomenon of immediate sensorial attention. One