Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/318

 IS THERE ANY SPECIAL ACTIVITY OF ATTENTION? 317 attention," I may be told, " we feel that we are active ; we are aware of energy, and we know this directly. In the account which you have given this factor is omitted, since attention comes there as a result from elements that are not active. And we object that the essence of the matter is omitted since the essence is just this revealed activity." But I should reply that, if attention is not derivative, the right course is to show my mistake in its derivation. If I have either accounted (or am able to account) for every single thing which your " energy " performs, you will hardly persuade me that the feeling you speak of is really effective, or is anything but a concomitant, more or less constant and more or less obscure. And I think that I might fairly leave the matter so. But, since the consciousness of force has been given an importance which is paramount (and I might add transcendent and absolute), it is better to add some further remarks. I would first suggest that a revelation of activity or of force or of will or of energy (or indeed of anything which answers to a phrase of this sort) is open to dangerous meta- physical criticism. If these ideas can be shown to contradict themselves, then the revelation could be met by an admission of its existence, but also by a denial of the truth of its mes- sage ; and in England at least I am sure that this criticism has (to speak in general) been merely ignored. I mention this ill passing, and I lay no stress on it, since in psychology I do not think such a criticism would be relevant any more than it would be in physics or physiology. But, confining myself to the field of psychology, I utterly deny the alleged revelation. It gives us not a fact but an intellectual con- struction, and (I should add) a thorough misinterpretation. In the first place I should like to be told what it is that the message conveys. Does it tell me of my body or of my mind or of both, and what precisely does it tell me ? I have supposed (perhaps wrongly) that psychology is a science which deals with psychical events and the laws of those events, and that the phrase "activity," whenever used, should be explicable in those terms. But though others no doubt may have had better fortune, my own experience is that in our leading psychologies it is difficult or impossible to know what " active " or " energy " means. And since apparently these words stand for something important, I cannot but feel that we have a right to complain. If I may say what I think, the present use of these phrases is little better than a scandal and a main obstacle in the path of English psycho- logy. If one cannot employ them with a definite meaning,