Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/307

 306 F. H. BRADLEY : some identified with an irreducible act of attention. I believe this tendency to be a serious obstacle to psychology, and there is another tendency not less injurious. Attention may be given such a position that the reader cannot tell if it is primary or derivative, or, if primary, whether it is an original element or something that supervenes ; or, again, whether it is one of a class of activities, or itself a class of different activities, or one function exerted on different objects. And my purpose is first to ask why we should desert the conclusion that attention is a product ; and, if we must desert it, to urge that the alternative should at least be stated distinctly. The attention I am to speak of is active attention. Attention (whatever it may be besides) at any rate means predominance in consciousness. Some element or elements, sensational or ideal, become prominent from the rest and seem to lower them in strength, if they do not entirely exclude them from notice. That which we attend to is said to engross us. " The expression means that a sensa- tion tends more or less strongly to exclude from conscious- ness all other sensations." 1 Not theorising but applying descriptive metaphors, we may call attention a state which implies domination or chief tenancy of consciousness. Or we may compare it to the focusing of an optical instrument, or to the area of distinct vision in the retinal field. 2 Now in active attention we produce this condition (there is no doubt of that), and the question is how we are able to do this, or what is the machinery which effects the production. In order to answer this question, we must first make a general survey of the facts. A flash of lightning by night, the report of a firearm, the sudden prick of a knife, or a violent internal pain, all these for the moment so occupy our notice that everything else becomes feeble or is banished. I shall not ask how it is that these intruders prevail, whether there is one cause or various ones, and, if so, how they are related. 3 Nor shall I enquire Aliluvviated from J S. Mill on James Mill's Analytic of the Unman ii. 372. Hamilton, M,'t. i. 238, Lot/e, .Mil. l'.o:>, and (Liter) V.'undt, /Vi//x. Psych, ii. 206. I may lake this opportunity of saying that I have con-
 * -ed Wundt's doctrine of Apperception am! am unable to adopt it, per-

hap~ because 1 have tailed to understand it.
 * ! Then- i.- mere strength, pleasure and pain, and habit, including under

that head inherited predispo.-iiions as well as the attractions of familiarity and change. How these stand to one another is matter of Controversy which does not concern us. Stumpf, Tun^ijch. i. 71, is inclined to doubt