remonstrating impotently as it drags us after it. It rivets, as we say, our attention.
In short, involuntary attention is simply the dynamic outcome of the idea. The idea results as fatalistically in turning and fastening our attention as a bright object does in rotating the fovea upon itself, or as the percussion of the cap does in the discharge of the gun.
Now voluntary attention appears to differ from the involuntary kind not the least in attent, but only in intent. We seem in the latter case to choose which idea we shall press upon, the consequent pressure proving quite similar in both.
In our search for the noumenal, then, in what we call will, we are driven back upon the act of choice alone.
Now when we search for the cause of our choice we always bring up against some determining thought. Whenever we succeed in overtaking that will-o'-the-wisp, our own will, and triumphantly clutch it, we find invariably that we have caught—an idea. Why am I willing to write these words, when as a matter of fact I am tempted to lie on the grass and gaze into the drifting islands
