Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/71

58 J. WAED : field of psychology, found the one action of attending or thinking sufficient. Between attentive consciousness and inattentive consciousness or consciousness simply there is, it is maintained, only a difference of degree. If we say that consciousness is an act and must have some intensity, that the more it is concentrated on some objects the more it is withdrawn from others, then this difference of degree is traced to a difference of distribution : the more we intensify our hold on A, the more we must relax our hold on B ; but between the intension and the remission there is perfect con- tinuity, and not a difference of kind. The act is one, and it is only in its relation to its effects on A and B that we are tempted to resolve it. But it is not enough to contend that if there is one common factor in all psychical activity this factor is atten- tion ; to make out a case it is necessary to show directly that all the various faculties with which a mind can be endowed are resolvable into powers of attention and various classes or relations or states of presentations. In particular it is desirable to show that volition as well as intellection, about which there will be less question, is such a case. This has been attempted already in the second of the two former articles, but perhaps a brief re-statement in a some- what different form may conduce to clearness. In as far as volition implies not merely action overt or intended but de- termination, whether by motives or in spite of them, in so far also it contains an element not resolvable into attention to motor presentations. This farther element, in fact, is that which Prof. Bain describes as " the volitional character of feeling " : having once noted its presence, we may now leave it aside. Apart from the direct spring of action, then, the question is whether action in process is anything more than attention to a special class of objects. To depart as little as may be from current usage and to avoid Prof. Bain's charge of presumptuous meddling with the sacred ark of words, the question may be put in this fashion : Are apperception and innervation reducible to one (attention) ? First of all, it is noteworthy that they have the same charac- teristics. Thus what Hamilton has called the law of limita- tion holds of each alike and of either with respect to the other ; and it holds too not only of the number of presenta- tions but also of the intensity. We can be absorbed in action just as much as in intuition or thought ; also move- ments, unless mechanical, inhibit ideas, and vice versa ideas other than associated trains arrest movements. It is as impossible to lift a heavy weight and go on thinking as it is to