Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/313

 312 F. H. BRADLEY : stay before our minds, or in reflection we fail to keep hold of an idea or maintain a process. We make an effort and succeed, but where is the machinery? The machinery, I answer, consists of an idea which is able to dominate and so fixes an object connected with itself. This idea may be simply the idea of the presence of the idea required. Again it may be some other idea which implies the first and makes a whole with it, a process familiar under the name of Contiguity. This idea will retain partly by means of Redintegration. It has a context which perpetually suggests the idea to be retained as often as that wavers ; and this context again is more or less extensive, and therefore self-supporting or self- restoring. And secondly, the idea (as was mentioned before) will strengthen by blending, and so tend to retain. These I think are the means employed for retention, and if so, there is no specific activity. Let us pass to observation. When we watch, say a trap, or perhaps a rabbit-hole, or the proceed- ings in a law-court, what is it that we do ? The last example suggests an instructive distinction. When we observe we must do it in a certain interest ; but we may either want to see what happens in this or that special way, or generally to see whatever may happen. And the explanation seems simple. The idea of the object changing itself in such or such a manner is an interesting idea, and so naturally causes retention of this object in prominent perception. And where we are said to watch simply the idea is the same, only now indefinite. If I am told to keep my eye upon anything, the idea of my seeing some change is suggested, and my observa- tion is a case of motived retention. 1 We may say then that either there is no activity or that the activities (mental or physical) are not a specific attending. Attention will be everywhere a mere example of the common processes of mind, and will consist in the influence of a dominant idru. (&) Or if it is said that this dominant idea could not influ- ence, the answer is easy. It must be admitted that, by what has been called "Contiguity," the idea of the end both prompts and selects the means which produce it. And the dominance of that idea is surely indisputable. It may not contract the muscles, and may fail even to produce " a nascent stage of the process of innervatioii " or " a tendency 1 We should avoid the mi* take of treating these phenomena as ca E Comparison. They ////// involve Comparison, but cannot do so from the first, since they certainly precede it. At an early staiv there are not two things held In- fore, the mind, and BO Comparison IB inipo. iMr. They belong to the same class as elementary Recognition, where we find a win difference without knowing what that is.