Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/319

 318 F. H. BRADLEY : why use them at all ? For a psychology that could not get on without them would most assuredly pass its own sentence. And (to apply what I have said to the present case) if the activity which is revealed tells me something about the origin and the nature of those events which we call atten- tion, then, until its message is translated into clearness, we cannot regard it. But if it is meant to be a feeling which gives no message at all, and the question is whether this fact is essential to the process of attention, and again whether and how far we are able to decompose it, then it seems to me that the language applied to this feeling has been strangely misleading. For suppose that a psychical event which we cannot analyse is a necessary link in the process of attending, then from this it will follow that attention so far cannot be explained. But from this there is no passage to a statement about activity, which (whatever it may be) seems certainly complex and largely to be built upon inference from experience. But on the assertor of such a link in the process of atten- tion lies the burden of proof. Even suppose that a feeling of activity is present, yet we have explained the fact of attention without it, and so we deny its efficacy. And in the second place we remark that a feeling of energy can hardly be asserted in all attention, and that it is difficult to say at what stage (if at any) it is always a concomitant. And where it is concomitant, perhaps there we go on to call the attention " active " for no reason but the presence of this delusive feeling, which (so far as we have gone) seems not active at all but an accompaniment more or less superfluous. And if it is said, " But you have not explained this feeling," I might reply that I cannot be called upon to do so. If I do not, does it follow that my account of attention is incorrect ? Or, if so, would it follow that therefore attention reveals activity or energy or will or any other tidings of the kind ? But if this could not be maintained, then perhaps, with a view to make good my case, I should do better to deny the claim of the feeling and to rest on the denial. Still, to throw light on the subject so far as I can, I will offer some remarks on the nature of this much-misused phenomenon. First let me say that by calling a feeling ' derivative ' I do not mean that it comes singly from the union of other psychical elements. I do not mean that an emotion is simply those conditions which we say produce it. The conditions, the presence of certain psychical elements, must often, if not always, produce other states before the whole is present which we call the emotion. Of course how, for