Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/316

IS THERE ANY SPECIAL ACTIVITY OF ATTENTION? 315 attention in any specific sense. We saw in short that attention, whether we understand it as the state of our being engrossed, or as an action which brings about such a state, was nothing unique, nothing else but a result and an illustration of more general laws. Thus, if we take interest to mean liking, attention comes from liking, my liking for the thing or for something that implies it, the idea of some person to whom I am attached, or of some pursuit or prin- ciple more or less abstract. These interests are ideas which, in the normal course of psychical events, work out their detail by a transfer of liking and support that detail against invasion. We shall see that resolve does but illustrate this process. I am to say ' I will attend,' and am then in consequence really to attend ; and on the other hand in our account attention consisted in indirect interest interest, that is, in a further idea. But here where is the idea ? It is not far to seek. If I resolve to attend, I of course have the idea of myself attending. That is, I have either an idea of myself doing this or that work, which work in fact produces atten- tion, or I have an explicit idea of myself attending to some- thing to which the work is in fact a condition. This idea of myself in such a character dominates by its pleasure, or its implication with pain, or its force, or its associations (we have agreed to leave this matter unsettled), and it produces in the common psychological way the means to its realisation. Where is then the difficulty ? I have an idea of myself doing this or that, and such an idea may surely be interesting. Or, if it is not so in itself, there are further ideas of myself ac- complishing a whole performance which includes it, pursuing (e.fj.} the greatest possible sum of pleasures, or acting upon some other principle of virtue. In short, give me the idea of myself somehow engaged, and let that idea give me, indirectly or directly, a feeling of satisfaction or success or self-approval, or in some manner interest me, then, if this idea is connected with means that lead to its reality, it surely will produce them in the ordinary way. The result of attention will follow the resolve without any mysterious ' act ' which intervenes, and the phenomenon is explained by indirect interest. It may be said that the idea works because I fix it, and that this fixa- tion is attending ; but the answer is of course that another idea, a still more remote interest, fixes the first one and sets up the process. And if some arbitrary force proceeding from the self is suggested against me, I can only reply that I do not know what this means. I cannot well discuss phrases which convey to me nothing I can find in fact, and which I am compelled to believe are simply unintelligible.