Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/304

290 W. MCDOUGALL : Selection and concentration are not entirely absent, but are carried to a low degree only, one or other figure or part of a scene may predominate over the rest, but it remains ill- defined and its parts are not discriminated ; it is as though the scene were viewed by an eye, which, though capable of movement, lacks a region of acutest vision. Attention must, I think, be admitted to be present, but in its lowest, most rudimentary form. Whether Attention is ever completely absent during the waking state is a disputed point, but cer- tainly it may be of a very low grade only, as when one lies dozing in a warm bed after being roused from sleep. Oc- casionally one experiences a rapid transition from the state of profound sleep to a state of maximal attentional activity. I will first trace such a transition in terms of consciousness and bodily changes and then describe what I take to be the nature of the nervous changes underlying it. During the small hours of the morning while I am lying in deep dreamless sleep, the stillness is broken by some unusual sound of moderate intensity arising within the house and repeated at short intervals. This commotion falls upon my auditory apparatus several times without provoking any response, whether in the form of movement or of affection of consciousness. On a further repetition of it my limbs make some aimless movements or I roll over in bed, and this, I think, is apt to occur before consciousness is at all affected. On looking back on the course of these events when fully awake, it appears that the auditory stimulus first affected consciousness as a pure undiscriminated sensation of sound having no objective reference ; there was no attention to the sound and there was also, at this stage, complete absence of self-consciousness. On further recurrences of the sound consciousness is further aroused and its state may be repre- sented by the phrase * There is a noise,' and perhaps at the same time I become aware, through a dim retrospection, that this noise has been going on for some time. There is the minimal degree of Attention, a vague discrimination of the noise as such and a dim objective reference, together with a dawning self-consciousness that is the necessary correlate of this objective reference ; and the whole state has a faintly disagreeable affective tone. If I were lying at an hotel it might well happen that further repetitions of the noise would fail to arouse any higher degree of consciousness or attention, and that I should presently fall asleep again in spite. of recurrences of the noise, for under those conditions it would be for me a meaningless noise. But if I am lying in my own house further repetitions of the noise produce