Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/480

 .466 GUSTAV SPILLER: ROUTINE PROCESS. gation. An organic trend means a simplified trend one where all that is unessential is rejected and forgotten, where effort is reduced to a minimum, where the present is treated in the light of the past, where the bonds of time and order are absent, where reaction accompanies its customary stimulus. When we, therefore, speak of reasoning and thinking, or imagining and willing, or feeling and pleasure- pain, and allow that they are routine activities, it at once follows that, by themselves, these processes though they adequately serve their respective purposes lack intelligi- bility from a psychological standpoint, just as the process of writing does. They can only be explained organically, and in the light of the past. Whatever they were in their earlier stages, they are now entirely transformed. To expect to find in them connected and self-consistent wholes, such as our imagination might create, is out of the question. Hence careful observation alone can offer a clue to the various modes of mental activity. To deduce these modes from principles not based on the previous study of the special phenomena is as disastrous as thus to deduce the functions of the brain. The explanations which we have proffered, must, accordingly, be interpreted so as to include the acquirements of children, savages, and animals, as well as the highest flights of genius. 19. The Cause, of Organic Trends. The struggle for existence and comfort solves the riddle of the evolution of animal life. Had each species possessed in plenty what it required, the raison d'etre of transmutation would have been absent. Thus with the evolution of organised thought. If attention energy were indefinite in quantity, all ideas might dwell peaceably side by side, except those which are in their nature opposed to each other. There would be no organised reaction. We should take an interest in everything and forget nothing. But attention energy is very limited, while our desires tend to be boundless. Hence a struggle for the field of attention ensues, as the result of which thought is simplified. On the widest view, therefore, the existence of organised forms of activity is explained by the struggle of varying interests for the narrow field of attention.